Eva
This reads very much autobiographical, even though the author says it's “not quite fact, not quite fiction”. The narration is moving between the present and a past set in the late 1970ies. Back then, during the day, she worked on the conveyor belt of an electronics factory, producing stereos, while at night she went to high school. The present is a rather distracting stream of consciousness, but the stories of the past are fascinating: the widespread poverty, the shame associated with being a factory girl, the tumultuous political climate, the struggles of forming the first unions at the sweatshops, the friends she made along the way, the devoted older brother who took it upon himself to care for all his younger siblings, ...
This is the story of a bracelet and how it's complicated path through interconnected families shines light on multiple relationships build on secrets and lies! ;)Or rather, this is a coming-of-age story where a girl discovers, revolts against and finally tries out for herself - the lies the adults have constructed around her until-then innocent childhood. The catalyst for her transformation is her vulgar aunt Vittoria, whom she apparently starts to ressemble. And Giovanna sets out to discover a part of her family, and a part of her home town, she hadn't known before. It is set in Naples in the 90ies, and yet we don't feel half a decade passed since the adolescent years of the Neapolitan Novels. Older guys still lust after way-too-young girls. We're still in the middle of a tug-of-war between the highbrow world of words and ideas and the low-income world of vulgarity. There are a lot of similarities in setting, in character, and in experiences between this book and Lila and Lenu's early adventures. I wished perhaps Ferrante would have taken us to a place that felt different ([b:The Days of Abandonment 77810 The Days of Abandonment Elena Ferrante https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1412532798l/77810.SY75.jpg 75142] feels different!). But nevertheless I enjoyed this, because her depiction of teenage girls that are simultaneously sensitive and bold, cruel and loving, is still a very good yarn. And I close this book with a sense of elation, as Giovanna manages to break free at the end. From the ties that bind her to her family's past (in the very physical manifestation of the bracelet), the idolisation she feels for her crush (NOT letting it happen), and from her aunt by deliberately disobeying her final advice! And then she goes off into the sunset with the secret favorite (Ida) who's been hiding in the sidelines all along!
Notre narratrice sans nom est la seule enfante dans un groupe de quarante femmes. Elles sont captes dans un prison souterraine. Elles dorment, elles mangent, elles excretent, suivi par les gardes. C'est une vie sans une sphere privee et sans les attouchements. C'est la seule vie notre narratrice connait parce qu'elle etait trop jeune quand l'evenment mysterieux s'est passe. Toutes leurs compagnons de cellule ne veulent pas et ne saient pas parler de ce qu'est s'est passait. Mais notre narratrice veul comprendre, et c'est la ou la livre commence ...
Ma memoire commence avec ma colere.
.. l'unique plaisir que je pusse obtenir etait celui, si rare, de la curiosite satisfaite.
The stream of narration pulls you along and leaves you breathless. I was captivated but also felt held captive, incapable of escaping the text's inertia and lack of periods.
A gritty portrait of a small Mexican town overrun with poverty, drugs, whores, abuse, gangs, violence. The novel circles around the murder of the local “witch” and every chapter presents a different characters life and point of view, slowly untangling the turn of events.
Relentless, and genius.
Inspired by the very real phenomenon of Colony collapse disorder (CCD), the novel tracks the history (and future) of bees across three stories on three continents and centuries. A 19th century biologist gets out of depression by trying to invent a new bee house. A professional beekeeper must face the changing realities in the field around 2007. And a professional pollinator at the end of the 21st century tries to understand what happened to her son.
All three stories are tied together through bees, and a parent's attempt to sculpt their son's life to his/her wishes. You could also say the stories are portraits of people too stuck in their traditions and prejudices, which makes them blind to the people and changing realities around them. Which turns into a nice allegory for today's climate change challenges.
The stories build very slowly, which was partially frustrating as the characters are not particularly likable in their stubborn ways. Yet it does heat up towards the end when they are finally tied together and we learn more about how the disappearance of bees led to the collapse of agriculture and food scarcity in the future.
3.5
This book had a wonderful quality of pulling me into a trance. Banana Yoshimoto's writing is like a soft ephemeral melody. It has the Japanese attention to details, and cherishes the mundane. Little encounters, good food, the comfort in rituals. There's not a lot of plot, a daughter and her mother grieve for a recently passed father. They move to a new part of town, and try in their own ways to reinvent themselves. This is also a love story about Shimokitazawa, the neighborhood in Tokyo they move to. By exploring the local shops and restaurants, by establishing new patterns, they learn about each other, and slowly heal.
That was what a town was made of.I could sense the daily movements and patterns of people i hadn't even known about few years ago coming in and out of this town like breath. I wasn't alone. There were other people, people I didn't know, coming in and out of this town, too, the same way, and all of that was how a town was made.
A tapestry of love and family dynamics, set in Oman, across several generations. It's a great portrait of a changing Omani culture over the last 100 years. From slavetrade, to date farms, to praying to jinns, arranged marriages, to Western interest and development of the oil industry. Woven into this are family secrets, disappearing mothers, a bedouin lover, husbands with lives abroad, sisters with opposing pragmatic and romantic visions of love.
We follow multiple perspectives from multiple families, jumping back and forth in time. Listening to this on audio, made it hard to track who is who. Until i got a hold of the family tree from the print edition, and stared at it about once per chapter, I felt quite lost. It's absolutely also possible just to immerse oneself in the flow of stories, but I always feel more at ease if I can track my characters.
Well-told and an interesting window into a culture, but I'd always prefer focused stories to tapestries.
L'histoire de Telumee et de ses ancetres femelles qui vivent sur l'islan Guadeloupe qui a fui son passe colonial et sa esclavage il n'ya pas longtemps. Nous suivons la vie de Telumee dans un monde qui a un rhythme impregne de nature, d'esprits, d'histoires et de tradition folkloriques.
Telumee grandit avec sa grand-mere, la sage Reine Sans Nom, elle tombe ameureuse, elle travaille pour un proprietaire de plantation blanche, elle travaille dans les champs de canne a sucre, elle apprend la medecine traditionelle. Elle aime la vie, et elle doit lutter contre de nombreux obstacles, rencontre le desespoir et la folie. Mais elle l'emporte, et ce livre devient une belle ode a l'esprit des femmes.
Parfois les expressions etaient trop lyriques pour mon niveau de francais, mais surtout cette histoire etait tres belle.
My second Samanta Schweblin. I thought [b:Fever Dream 30763882 Fever Dream Samanta Schweblin https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1471279721l/30763882.SX50.jpg 42701168] was marvellous, and then I skipped her short story collection, because I have a hard time engaging with short stories. Little Eyes is almost like a collection of interlaced short stories, but they are tied together in their focus matter: Kentuckis are remote avatars in cute toy format. They are the new craze on the market. Keepers host their kentuckis like pets, dwellers remote control those kentuckis with the help of a video camera and toy-car style motor control. Dweller and keeper are randomly assigned. Communication is limited and needs to be negotiated. What follows is a range of stories that show how (and why) we find companionship even if the companion is a small purring bunny toy, or a person in another country you watch on a computer screen for three hours a day. People are driven by loneliness, escapism, boredom, a wish for adventures...Why were the stories about kentuckies so small, so minutely intimate, stingy, and predictable? So desperately human and quotidian.While some enjoy the one-way anonymity this relationship offers, others exploit that. And because Schweblin is a horror story teller, here's where the creepy aspect of keeper-dweller dynamics creeps in. What started as an innocent attempt at forming a connection, slowly turns into something unhealthy. Schweblin masterfully moves some of the stories from quiet to disquieting territories. I quite enjoyed these stories as an interesting study of humanity's presence/future with technology. It tackles our behaviour with pieces of technology that have agency (artificial or human), and also every technology's potential for exploitation. In additional it questions if all relationship that rely on an unequal power dynamic are ultimately doomed? Is the one-way flow of information what causes the thrill of exhibitionism and voyeurism that makes us invade the lifes of strangers? The human-inhabited kentuckis stand in interesting contrast to our fears of anthropomorphism of A.I. controlled robots.
A little village high up in the Armenian mountains has lost most of its population due to war and famines, and is now solely inhabited by old people. We hear their life stories and follow them through some tragic and some mundane everyday events.
There's certainly charm in these connected tales, that are sprinkled with supersticions and moments of magical realism. Yet it worked better for some people and some stories than others. I felt the narrative stagnated a bit in the middle, lacked some structure from maybe too many time jumps. Only when Anatolia and Vasily embarked on their second marriage towards the end, I felt the novel really found its groove.
A girl is returned to the family she didn't know she had. For a year she misses her old life, tries to understand what brought her here, and slowly warms up to her new siblings. She yearns for the motherly love she lost, cautiously encounters her new and real mother, yet failed by both, she finds the strongest and most realiable connection in the brave younger sister she only just met. For a short novella-length time you're back in a world similar to [a:Elena Ferrante 44085 Elena Ferrante https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] Neapolitan Novels. In an Italian town, where poverty and misogny reign, parents use their fists and never terms of endearment, and teachers need to fight for their smart pupils continued education.I very much enjoyed this and wouldn't have minded spending more time with our unnamed protagonist.
Gilgi is a chipper young secretary with ambitious dreams and ideals, living through the Weimar Republic in Cologne. She's driven by a strong sense of independence, she expertly knows how to divert her boss' advances, she can party until 5am at the carnival, yet still diligently visit her language classes. All of this is challenged when she falls in love and is confronted with the rise of the depression in her city.
I just discovered Irmgard Keun, and this book and Gilgi's voice felt so fresh, despite it being written in 1931. Obviously it's a book of its time, but the sentiments, and Gilgi's quest for female independence still feel modern. The ending was devastating in so many ways, and yet still she manages to build herself a path out of it.
The German audiobook warrated perfectly and with so much flair by Camilla Renschke.
Iris is haunted by a lover that left her 30 years ago, and by a suicide bombing that shattered her body 10 years ago. Physical and emotional pain are the themes throughout this novel. It starts out as the story of a rekindled love and then transforms into the study of a marriage and a family. How all lives are consequences of choices, and sometimes you can get stuck on individual choices and play endless blame games. And sometimes you put in the extra effort, to build up and mend people, even if they hurt you.
This was an easy and engrossing read. I didn't necessarily love it, but I still was hooked to find out the ending of their family story. 3.5
The scene where he learns she's a vegetarian and then forcefully inserts meat into her mouth through a kiss ... I am having been that revolted by a fictional scene in a while.
There are certain disappointments in reading that sting, and one of them is discovering that you dislike the new book by an author you loved before ([b:My Year of Rest and Relaxation 44279110 My Year of Rest and Relaxation Ottessa Moshfegh https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1553096683l/44279110.SY75.jpg 55508660] was one of my favorite reads in 2018). In addition to that, it's impossible NOT to draw parallels between this book and [b:Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead 42983724 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Olga Tokarczuk https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1547225640l/42983724.SY75.jpg 8099373]: An elderly lady, a newly settled recluse, living alone in a nature-heavy sparsely populated area, with a dog, stumbling upon a murder mystery, that dissolves into a psychological mind game. So these extra disappointments piled up may make me judge the book harsher than necessary. The writing is still good. But Vesta really wasn't very interesting.
Two young Chinese American-born sisters are all that's left of a complicated family that fell apart amidst the aluring yet harsh gold-rush era of the Wild West. They are guided by the believes and dreams their parents bestowed upon them: old Chinese mysticism, the promise of gold and adventure, the bond of family. These believes often stay at odds with each other, as the girls needs to figure out where and how to claim their home.
The prose is lyric, the characters very memorable yet the narrative is slightly uneven. I wished the story would just be told in a more straight-forward way, as I really enjoyed to hear about Lucy and Sam's adventures. The book somewhat lost steam for me in the middle of the book, where it felt too meandering, and even introduced a new narrator. But it then thankfully returned to Lucy and Sam for a strong finish.
Debating between 3 and 4, as my experience of the book was so uneven across it.
Seemingly Kafkaesque in its depiction of a Chinese reeducation labor camp, yet when you learn about the conditions during China's Great Leap Forward (1958-1962), you realize that the book is actually very close to reality. Blinded by a vision of communist ideals and a planned economy, Mao set out to restructure China's agriculture with unrealistic goals and poor decision making. Intellectualism was punished, scholars become peasants, production goals were lies and exaggerations, a reward systems encouraged cheating, and everyone was made to report on everyone else. All together this led to economic disaster, the great famine and a death count between 18 and 45 million. Quite brilliant, a good history lesson, and not as dry as you'd expect from an allegorical story. The novel falls in line with other Kafkaesque, allegorical and surreal tales like [b:The Woman in the Dunes 9998 The Woman in the Dunes Kōbō Abe https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1361254930l/9998.SY75.jpg 58336] or [b:The Queue 30186905 The Queue Basma Abdel Aziz https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1463240555l/30186905.SY75.jpg 24080947].
I love [b:Ein ganzes Leben 22550484 Ein ganzes Leben Robert Seethaler https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1406198884l/22550484.SY75.jpg 42007512] a lot, so while Der Trafikant was a good well-told story, it didn't live up to my high expectations. Or maybe there's something about the Austrian tongue, that felt too “schrullig”, occasionally too in love with its carefully constructed phrases.
Un autre exemple qui montre pourquoi les histoires d'amour homosexuel sont si puissantes. Ils doivent lutter les conventions, mais souvent le plus grand combat pour certains d'entre eux est au sein. Ca se positionne entre [b:L'Amant 145542 L'Amant Marguerite Duras https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1465743340l/145542.SX50.jpg 1009849] et [b:Call Me By Your Name 36336078 Call Me By Your Name (Call Me By Your Name, #1) André Aciman https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1519203520l/36336078.SY75.jpg 1363157]. Un beau recit d'un amour secret, un recit de jeunesse et de grandir, de partir et de rester. Oh les hommes stoiques et leur entrave. Philippe Besson joue vraiment magistralement avec les lecteurs, en ni niant ni confirmant que c'est sa vraie histoire de vie. Il relie les points a certains de ses autres livres, et l'edition que j'ai lue a CETTE PHOTO sur la couverture. J'ai eu un moment assez emouvant en decouvrant ca. Le titre pourrait avoir tant de sens ici.
A road-map of the last 150 years of Indigenous heroes and the crimes and injustices that the Canadian government has committed against the Indigenous people. From the passing of the Indian Act and its many freedom-limiting amendments, to the cruelty of residential schools, to the stealing of land, various standoffs. And through it all the ever resilient spirit of the Metis, Inuit and First Nations people, fighting for their land and their right to live on their own terms. 10 stories told and illustrated by mostly Indigenous artists.
A tragic love story set in Shanghai in the 1930. It's a good portrait of what life was like at that time. When family politics and societal conventions were worth more than a daughter's happiness. A time when more was thought and assumed, then spoken out loud.
While the first half of the book is very tender and slow, the second half almost becomes a dramatic series of tragedies, regretful life choices and missed connections. It's very engaging. The ending is a double punch of emotions.