February 14, 2008 at 8:21 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Historical Fiction, Mystery and Suspense, World Literature
11. The Chinese Bell Murders by Robert van Gulik (Historical Mystery) 254 p.
Judge Dee, the protagonist of Robert van Gulik’s series of mysteries set in ancient China, is based on a true historical character. After van Gulik found and translated a Ming-dynasty work featuring the Tang-dynasty judge solving a series of mysteries, he decided to write his own novels along the same lines. The Chinese Bell Murders was the first of these.
The novel opens with a framing narrative, wherein a retired tea merchant of the Ming dynasty, a collector of objects relating to famous crimes, has an unsettling experience in a curio shop. He proceeds to tell the tale of Judge Dee’s arrival in his new district of Poo-yang and his first few cases there.
The brutal rape and murder of a young woman, an old and bitter feud between two wealthy merchant families, and the suspicious powers of a group of Buddhist monks to cure barrenness in rich and attractive women, all provide ample space for Judge Dee to exercise his formidable intellect.
My copy of this book calls Judge Dee “the Sherlock Holmes of Ancient China,” a comparison not without some truth to it. Although he doesn’t use Holmes’s methods, he is often able to deduce facts about a case from very little evidence, or from factors that others have overlooked.
As a window into some aspects of life in Ancient China, The Chinese Bell Murders is quite entertaining. I only find it unfortunate that van Gulik didn’t take it further; I would have liked to see more domestic scenes, for example. I like the very upright, moral Judge Dee, but aside from his performance as a magistrate, the reader doesn’t get much of a glimpse of his personality, or of anyone else’s, for that matter.
The three mysteries solved by Judge Dee were interesting, although the book wouldn’t have been worth reading on that basis alone—it’s the setting, the details about life in another time and place, that made this a worthwhile read.
Naturally, the book focuses on the justice system, which at the time routinely included torture as a means of extracting a confession after a successful investigation, as well as some pretty gruesome forms of capital punishment, which (thankfully) aren’t graphically described.
Van Gulik resists the temptation of imposing his own cultural mores onto Judge Dee, allowing him to be a very honest and moral man who nonetheless oversees many brutalities in the name of justice. A lesser writer might have given him anachronistic guilt about, or opposition to, some of his actions, but van Gulik is wise enough to avoid that trap.
All in all, an interesting mystery set in a historical period I’m not familiar with; I’ll be sure to check out more Judge Dee mysteries.
Pages read: 3,449
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Judge Dee, Robert van Gulik, World Lit Challenge
February 13, 2008 at 3:46 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Mystery and Suspense, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, World Literature
10. Snake Agent by Liz Williams (Mystery, Fantasy, Science Fiction) 267 p.
Detective Inspector Chen Wei is Singapore Three’s snake agent, the police officer who deals with the city’s supernatural crimes. He is approached by the wife of a prominent citizen whose daughter, a young girl who ought to be among the peach orchards of Heaven, has instead been photographed in Hell. Investigation at the funeral parlour shows that all Pearl’s paperwork seems to have been in order, her entry visa properly filed, so Chen has no doubt that something sinister is going on. He teams up with an agent from Hell’s Ministry of Vice, while his wife, Inari, deals with problems of her own.
Snake Agent isn’t quite like anything I’ve ever read before. It blends elements from a number of genres—mystery, fantasy, science fiction, horror—into a cohesive whole. The story takes place in the near future, in a modern city, but with a background of Chinese Taoist culture and beliefs. While this isn’t the best book I’ve read recently, the sheer novelty of the setting and some of the characters more than made up for it, and there are even a few funny moments:
The ghost-tracker scuttled along, casting about itself with its long whiskers. Its claws clicked on the pavement. Passers-by took one look at Detective Inspector Chen hastening down the road with a lobster on a string, like one of the more eccentric French surrealists, and gave him a very wide berth. (85)
I’ll certainly be keeping an eye out for the next books in the series, The Demon and the City and Precious Dragon. (Frankly, the books in this series are worth buying for the cover art alone, which I loved as soon as I saw Carl V.’s recommendation—not surprising, since they’re drawn by Jon Foster, who is probably my favourite cover artist ever.)
Pages read: 3,195
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, Detective Inspector Chen, Liz Williams, Unread Authors Challenge, What's in a Name?, World Lit Challenge
January 10, 2008 at 12:52 pm · Filed under Uncategorized
I set myself quite a number of reading challenges this year. I met my main goal of 100 books for the year, and I completed the 2nds challenge. For the rest, I’ve decided to make my goals slightly more reasonable, partly so that I’ll have room for some of the other interesting challenges that have cropped up.
World Lit Challenge: I actually love this challenge, and I think it will probably be an annual thing. It forced me to search out new authors I wouldn’t otherwise have heard of, and encouraged me to read books I might otherwise have avoided.
Looking over the list of books I read this year, it seems that quite a few turned out to be favourites, and there are only 3 I didn’t like (Reading Lolita in Tehran, Like Water for Chocolate, and Portrait in Sepia, if anyone’s interested.)
I managed to finish 26 books. While that falls far short of my goal of 50, it works out to one book every two weeks, which isn’t bad at all. So I’ve decided to renew the World Lit Challenge for 2008 and read a further 26 books in 2008.
Sci-fi Classics Challenge and Fantasy Classics Challenge: I’m definitely not going to meet my stated goal of 25 books for each challenge by June 2008, so I’m lowering my goal for each to 10 books.
Tags: Fantasy Classics Challenge, Sci-Fi Classics Challenge, World Lit Challenge
October 24, 2007 at 1:31 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, World Literature
108. Chocolat by Joanne Harris (Fiction) 242 p.
World Lit Challenge: France
Most people have probably seen the movie, but although the basic plot is somewhat the same, the entire tone of the story was changed, while many of the characters and events were cut. It’s entirely understandable, since I’m not sure the book as it is would make a very good movie, especially a Hollywood movie. Both the book and the movie are good, but very different.
Vianne Rocher and her little girl, Anouk, arrive in the small French village of Lansquenet just before Mardi Gras. Vianne opens her chocolate shop, La Celeste Praline, just in time for Lent. Much to the dismay of Lansquenet’s priest, it is a success, and the unwed, atheist Vianne becomes popular with the villagers—much more popular than the Father himself.
I really liked the book. The two first-person perspectives, those of Vianne and the priest, are a perfect way to tell the story. They see things so differently that it isn’t the slightest bit boring to read about the same events twice over. Joanne Harris has a real talent for characterization: her likeable and unlikeable characters and equally fascinating, and she makes many of them endearing without sentimentalizing them.
I’ll have to re-watch the movie soon, and see how it compares. Plus, Johnny Depp!
Books read: 108
Pages read: 32,124
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Joanna Harris, World Lit Challenge
September 8, 2007 at 10:28 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, World Literature
98. I Am the Messenger by Markus Zusak (Fiction) 357 p.
World Lit Challenge: Australia
Ed Kennedy is nineteen years old. When he’s not earning a living as an underage cabdriver, he’s spending time with his best friends Marv, Ritchie, and Audrey, or his dog, the Doorman. After he stops a bank robbery, he receives a playing card in the mail: the ace of diamonds. On it are written three addresses. Ed begins to realize that he has been chosen to deliver messages to the people at those addresses—and that it’s up to him to figure out what messages these people need to hear.
I am in love with this book. I am in love with Markus Zusak. I will read The Book Thief as soon as I can get my hands on a copy.
Ed isn’t at all the kind of character I could imagine myself liking, at least not at first glance, but he’s incredibly endearing, and he really grows on you. He lives a life nothing like mine, but his ability to appreciate love and beauty (sounds stickily sentimental, but I can’t think of any better way to put it) lets me connect with him.
The Book Thief is the Zusak book everyone recommends, and I’m dying to read it, but someone recommended I Am the Messenger to me for my world lit challenge. I was lucky enough to find it used a few days ago, and it was worth every penny.
Books read: 98/100 (98%)
Pages read: 29,305/30,000 (98%)
Two books or 695 pages to go! (Although I have 50 or 60 books left to read for various challenges this year.)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Markus Zusak, World Lit Challenge
September 7, 2007 at 11:39 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, World Literature
97. Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami (Fiction) 186 p.
World Lit Challenge: Morocco
From the back cover:
For reasons as different as the lives they are leaving behind, four Muslims illegally cross the Strait of Gibraltar in an inflatable boat headed for Spain. What has driven these men and women to risk their lives? And will the rewards prove to be worth the danger?
(There’s something strange about the use of the word “Muslims” in that blurb, since the chief thing the four have in common is that they are Moroccan, not that they are Muslim.)
While in search of world literature for my challenge, I came across a recommendation for this book. Although I didn’t immediately order it from the bookstore, I was intrigued enough by the description and the attractive cover to check out Laila Lalami’s blog, as well as some of her articles. She’s an intelligent, articulate writer (and one who writes often about African and Asian authors and novels, for those interested in world lit.) Although great articles do not necessarily indicate a talent for writing fiction, I was intrigued enough to order her debut novel.
I’m so glad I did.
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits is divided into three sections; anyone who has read Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Purple Hibiscus will be familiar with the structure. The novel’s prologue opens on an inflatable raft in the Strait of Gibraltar, where thirty-odd people, mostly adult Moroccans, are hoping to make the 14-kilometre crossing without attracting the attention of the Spanish coast guard. If caught, they will be arrested and deported, returning to Morocco 20,000 dirhams poorer. If they remain free, they will have the chance to start from nothing in Spain, but with better prospects than they would have had at home.
Part I goes back and follows the four main characters as events in their lives begin to lead them to attempt the crossing. A woman with an abusive husband, a young man with a wife and parents to support, a young woman involved in an Islamic fundamentalist group, and a man whose degree in English language and literature have left him unqualified for any of the few jobs available. Part II follows the same people after the trip, showing the changes it has made in their lives. Since the characters are united only by the trip itself, the book reads a bit like a book of short stories, albeit one more unified than most.
Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits did what all good fiction does for me: it took me out of my life and dropped me into someone else’s, and not only for the few hours I spent reading it. Laila Lalami has created characters who will stay with me. She has also given me some insight into the culture and the socio-economic situation in Morocco today.
Lalami’s prose is straightforward but graceful. I particularly liked the way her characters would (briefly) explain things the reader already knew, but which it would be natural for a narrator to expand on. It made their accounts seem more natural, rather than tailored to fit the format of the book. It was a lovely touch to an already excellent work of fiction.
I hope to see lots more from Laila Lalami, although at the moment this is her only published novel.
Books read: 97/100 (97%)
Pages read: 28,948/30,000 (96%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Laila Lalami, World Lit Challenge
September 7, 2007 at 10:12 am · Filed under Book Reviews, Fiction and Literature, World Literature
95. I Think of You by Ahdaf Soueif (Fiction, Short Story Collection) 182 p.
World Lit Challenge: Egypt
I Think of You is a collection of nine short stories by Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif. I’d heard good things about one of her novels, The Map of Love, so I bought this collection to see if I liked her writing. I do. I’m not sure that the short story is her ideal medium, although that could be my own preferences at work.
I like my short stories to be reasonably complete and contained, while Soueif’s stories are fleeting slices of life. She offers brief glimpses into other lives, other worlds, but never gives the reader all the information about the situations in which her narrators find themselves. This isn’t a fault, but it means that she’ll never be one of my very favourite short story writers.
All Soueif’s protagonists are women: a child with nightmares, a Muslim teenager trying to fit in at a school in England in the 1960’s, a woman returning to her former husband’s home. Failed marriages, failed love affairs; I Think of You is a book of love stories only in the broadest sense. The best word for the emotional tone linking the stories is “melancholy”. I enjoyed all of the stories; the only one I was ambivalent about was Melody, which features a strangely emotionless narrator, but even still, it was well-written and had some very good stuff in it.
Books read: 95/100 (95%)
Pages read: 28,505/30,000 (95%)
Besides being the author of The Map of Love, Soueif is also the translator of Mourid Barghouti’s I Saw Ramallah, which is likewise on my TBR shelf. I’ve never read anything translated by an author whose fiction I’ve read, but Soueif’s light, clear prose makes me look forward to the experience.
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Ahdaf Soueif, World Lit Challenge
July 22, 2007 at 2:07 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Canadian Literature, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, World Literature
67. China Dog and Other Stories by Judy Fong Bates (Fiction, Short Story Collection) 173 p.
World Lit Challenge: Canada
I read a recommendation for her novel, Midnight at the Dragon Café, but the hardcover copy I found at the used bookstore was a little pricey. Since I love short story collections, I decided to try this and see if I liked her writing before reading her novel. As it turns out, I like her writing very much. The collection as a whole is excellent. Judy Fong Bates uses very simple, direct prose, which I enjoyed very much. The stories are all narrated in the first person or from an intimate third person limited point of view, and the protagonists and narrators are almost all women.
All the stories are focused on the experiences of Chinese immigrants to Ontario in the mid- to late-twentieth century. The author herself came to Canada when she was a young girl, and grew up in various small towns in Ontario, which I suspect are the ones featured in the story. She is clearly writing what she knows, and doing it with immense skill. As Bates has pointed out, there was a time when every small town in Ontario had two things: a Chinese laundry and a Chinese restaurant.
The book opens with “My Sister’s Love”, which is one of the two weak stories in the collection. It started off well, but felt too short, incomplete, with a message that was too obvious and predictable. Following it is “The Gold Mountain Coat”, a funny and charming picture of two brothers through the eyes of a young girl.
The third story in the collection is “Eat Bitter”, a sad story about a young man longing to leave Canada and return to China. Although grateful to his uncle for giving him the chance to come to Gam Sun, the Gold Mountain, he is unhappy with the laundry business and the racism of small-town Ontario. And with the Canadian climate:
Back in China, he had listened in disbelief to stories about the frigid temperatures in Canada. He laughed when he heard about men losing their ears and fingers after they were frozen. He had pictured them falling cleanly off, making a clink as they hit the ground! Every time he stepped out of the laundry he was shocked by the biting winter air. Even though he felt it every day, this Canadian winter would always be a mystery to him. They would never be on familiar terms.
In “Cold Food”, my favourite of the bunch, a old woman longs for independence after many years of forced reliance on her husband, her stepson, and finally her daughter. It’s an exceptionally vivid depiction of the cultural as well as generational differences which can arise between immigrant parents and the children they raise in a new country, and gives insight into the isolation of women living in communities with only one or two other Chinese families.
“The Lucky Wedding” is the story of a young woman who elopes with her white boyfriend, and of the differences between those Chinese-Canadians born in Canada and those who immigrated from China. “The Good Luck Cafe” is the second weak story in the collection. Like the first story, it starts out strong but finishes with a rushed and slightly pointless ending. In it, the arrival of a young mail-order bride leads to strife between two brothers.
“The Ghost Wife” relates some of the fears felt by mothers, particularly that a daughter might marry a white man, and bring up her children without knowledge of Chinese language and culture, and without being able to communicate with their grandparents. The collection ends on strong note with “China Dog”, the sad story of a young wife and mother who becomes convinced that a curse of her husband’s family will have disastrous consequences for her husband.
Aside from some smooth, solidly good storytelling, I particularly enjoyed recognizing many of the details of life in Ontario scattered throughout the collection. The Canadian weather, the bus stop outside a store rather than a station in small towns, Toronto’s Chinatown, Timothy Eaton United Church, the five Christian denominations in every small town…they make up a picture I recognize, and make the things I don’t know about seem that much more real.
I can’t wait to read her novel.
Books read: 67/100 (67%)
Pages read: 19,825/25,000 (79%)
Days passed: 203/365 (56%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Judy Fong Bates, World Lit Challenge
July 9, 2007 at 8:00 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, Historical Fiction, World Literature
61. Cinnamon Gardens by Shyam Selvadurai (Historical Fiction) 386 p.
World Lit Challenge: Sri Lanka
Cinnamon Gardens is Shyam Selvadurai’s second novel, set in 1920’s Ceylon (modern-day Sri Lanka), a country still under British colonial rule. The book narrates one year from the lives of members of a wealthy Tamil family living in Cinnamon Gardens, one of Colombo’s most affluent suburbs. Particularly two of its members: Annalukshmi, a young teacher unsure of whether she is willing to reject all offers of marriage in order to continue in her beloved profession, and her uncle Balendran, who himself gave up his lover and married in order to please his father.
On a two-week school trip to Ghana in 2002, plagued by nightly panic attacks caused by homesickness and a few bad memories, I soon became desperate for books that would take my mind off my surroundings for a while. Since we each brought only one large backpack, I couldn’t have brought enough books for the trip even if I’d known how much I would need them. One of the hotels we stayed in had a small number of books left by previous guests, but the selection was unfortunate considering my state of mind.
Luckily for me, one of the teachers and another student had each brought some lighter fare, which helped me get through the few days. Philip K. Dick’s Clans of the Alphane Moon and Ubik were nicely distracting, but it was Shyam Selvadurai’s Funny Boy that I really fell in love with on that trip. I have no idea if it would have made as deep an impression on me if the circumstances had been different, but it might have. It was one of the first books I ever read with a gay protagonist, and certainly the first outside of genre fiction. A contemporary novel set in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Funny Boy was a revelation in a number of ways.
It’s taken me a surprisingly long time to get around to reading Cinnamon Gardens, which I bought used two or three years ago. I enjoyed it enormously. It was the way the book ended that pleased me the most, but I won’t get into that. The novel is populated with very sympathetic, believable characters, many of whom I would be pleased to encounter in real life. Family members who didn’t always understand each other but had affection and respect for each other anyway lent the story a sharp realism. Descriptions of Colombo under the British were many and vivid, without ever becoming tedious or intrusive. I was especially fond of the two main characters, Annalukshmi and Balendran, and I was sad to leave them when the book ended. The story doesn’t really invite a sequel, but I wish there was one anyway.
Books read: 61/100 (61%)
Pages read: 18,105/25,000 (72%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Shyam Selvadurai, World Lit Challenge
July 8, 2007 at 8:38 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Fiction and Literature, Historical Fiction, World Literature
60. Brahma’s Dream by Shree Ghatage (Historical Fiction) 422 p.
World Lit Challenge: India
Mohini is born with a type of anaemia that is debilitating and often painful, but which she bears with fortitude and hope. She is thirteen years old, living with her wealthy Brahmin family in Bombay, when India achieves its independence from the British.
While I was visiting my aunt last month, I saw Brahma’s Dream on the discount table outside a mall bookstore, for only $2. Since it sounded interesting, I bought it. I’m so glad I did.
Brahma’s Dream is an excellent contrast to What the Body Remembers by Shauna Singh Baldwin, one of my very favourite books. They have a lot in common: each written by contemporary Indian-Canadian women writers, each set during the 1940’s, each a third-person account of the life of a young woman. But that’s pretty much where the similarities end. Whereas What the Body Remembers focuses on Sikhs living in Punjab and on the events leading up to the Partition of India, Brahma’s Dream focuses Hindus from Bombay and Poona, and is more concerned with the struggle leading up to independence. Those aren’t the greatest differences, though.
When I reviewed Gail Tsukiyama’s Women of the Silk, I remarked that, “I knew there had to be some people in China who enjoyed themselves at least some of the time.” That’s how I felt about Brahma’s Dream: I knew there had to be kind, well-educated, affectionate families in India, even in the first half of the 20th century, and Shree Ghatage showed one of them to me. The book revolves around Mohini, particularly her relationships with her family: her mother Kamala, father Keshav, grandfather Vishnupant, aunt Vasanti, best friend Hansa, and many others.
Mohini is a very likable protagonist, a good-natured and generally happy person, but not the kind of sappy “inspirational” character that she might have been in less competent hands. All the characters were well-drawn, and the writing was so good I could hardly put the book down.
Books read: 60/100 (60%)
Pages read: 17,719/25,000 (71%)
Days passed: 189/365 (52%)
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2007, Shree Ghatage, World Lit Challenge
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