Book Buzz

CHRIS CLEAVER

Completely sorrowful yet at times full of joy. Little Bee is a refugee in Britain from Nigeria.  In Nigeria people are killed because they witnessed the things that Little Bee saw done to her sister, her parents, her friends and her village. “All the bad stories start with, “And then the men with guns came.” The soldiers were eliminating the people in the way of an oil company.

Only when she manages to get to Britain,  she is kept in a “immigration removal centre.” For two years she is detained in this virtual prison  until she is released by accident. She has the address of a couple who she had met on a beach so she sets out to find them.

It is not an easy book. The horrors modern war are not pretty. One of the themes is the power of stories – telling the stories of people who died terrible and senseless deaths. There is power in the many. One alone is weak.

JOHN IRVING

TWISTED RIVER could have been called the Fugitives, or John Irving on Writing.

Twisted River is about the relationships among three men: Dominic Baciagalupo, an Italian-American cook with a warm heart and a bad limp; his son, Danny, who resembles his father, save for the limp; and the outdoorsy, hard-drinking Ketchum, their friend and protector. In 1954, after an inadvertent tragedy, Dominic and Danny flee the rural New Hampshire logging camp where they lived in order to escape the wrath of a vengeful cop.bad cop named Constable Carl.

It is yet another excellent book that could have used serious editing. It did not need over 550 page to convey these themes.

MEG WOLITZER

The Position is about family relationships and dysfunction. The parents write a Joy of Sex type book, Pleasuring: One Couples Journey to Fulfillment which included explicit drawings of them ”engaged in sexual practices both common and obscure, Western and Eastern, ancient and modern, freehand and apparatus-aided.” The book was an instant best seller. The parents were hot on talk show,  interviews and book signings. The children were horrified and felt that this would scar them for life. ”Once we’ve seen it,” Holly, the oldest, cautions, ”then we can never unsee it. It will stay in our minds.”

Most of the book takes place thirty years later. The publishing house wants to rerelease a celebratory anniversary edition. The children have matured into variously maladjusted adults. Michael, a brilliant and worry-prone do-gooder dot-commer, is on antidepressants that have made him anorgasmic, he can no longer climax during sex. His sister Holly is ”a strange hologram” of a person, out in California with her doctor husband, opting for an isolation from her parents and siblings that’s ”almost religious.” The doctor and their son have finally given her a reason to clean up and become drug free. Claudia, a film student who lives alone in the East Village, thinks her body looks ”like a garbage bag full of leaves.” Dashiell, a political speechwriter, suffers from a liberal family’s most severe pathology: gay Republicanism. Clearly, each son and daughter has a burden, and they’re certainly all victims of the once-sexy excesses of the 70’s.

A must read! I think I will seek out some of her other books.

Vikas Swarup

This is the book that the movie Slumdog Millionaire was based on. And the book is completely different than the movie except for the basic theme and structure. Ram Mohammad Thomas is a contestant for a billion rupees. The book highlights an excerpt from his life that explains how he knew the answer. And what a life! Poverty, desertion, murder, prostitution, abuse, it is all in his life. But there was always some fascit that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no wte of his life that he remembered thas that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no ws that mattered most. I find it astounding, and if it’s typical of the things she’s asked, no wt provided an answer. The neighbour naming the pet Pluto because the kitten is tiny and Pluto is the smallest planet in the solar system. Despite the torture and abuse it is aThis is the book that the movie Slumdog Millionaire was based on. And the book is completely different than the movie except for the basic theme and structure. Ram Mohammad Thomas is a contestant for a billion rupees. The book highlights an excerpt from his life that explains how he knew the answer. And what a life! Poverty, desertion, murder, prostitution, abuse, it is all in his life. But there was always some fascite of his life that he remembered that provided an answer. The neighbour naming the pet Pluto because the kitten is tiny and Pluto is the smallest planet in the solar system. Despite the torture and abuse it is actually a light read. Fun. Now I would like to revisit the DVD.ctually a light read. Fun. Now I would like to revisit the DVD.

DOUGLAS COUPLAND

I ‘m sorry another dud. What is happening to Can Lit? I usually laugh out aloud reading Coupland.

A is speculative fiction in the near future where bees have gone extinct. Today a frightening possibility. But after several years of extinction five people are stung around the world. As soon as they are stung they are seized by officials and studied by computers. After they are released they are drawn together. At this point all is well. But this is what looses me. The five characters are taken to Canada’s most remote archipelago, Haida Gwaii. There they are told to tell each other stories. So a third of the book is pithy, little allegorical tales.

Maybe you will get more from it than I. Doug write us a book for heaven’s sake!

MARGARET ATWOOD

one word: DISAPPOINTING. Much to my surprise and dismay. I love Atwood’s writing. What got me with this book is that it did not live up to it’s hype. The hype being that FLOOD starts off where Oryx and Crake left off. I kept waiting for that to happen. It does around page 350. Before that she is exploring the life of a couple of characters before the apocalypse. All very interesting. All superbly written. I am likely the only one in all of Canada who was left embittered by this novel. Be for warned. I wish I had been. I could have enjoyed it more.

STEIG LARSSON

A rousing read. Quite a page turner. GIRL is a continuation of Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Set in Sweden, Michael Blomkvist ,the journalist, writer and publisher, is trying to help his friend and one time lover Lisbeth Salander.  Salander is wanted for three counts of murder. No one beside Blomkvist is looking for other leads. The murdered couple had researched and written an expose of human trafficking and prostitution. Some powerful people will be named when the book is published by Blomkvist. Salander was severly abused as a child. She trusts no one. Not even a friend.

Again a horrible cover in Canada. I borrowed this pic from Culture Witch.

JAMES A. LEVINE

Not an easy book. Batuk is a child prostitue. She was sold into the trade by her father.  Auctioned to wealthy man, her owner likely received more from that first customer than the father was initially paid. Life goes downhill from there being sold to increasingly cheaper, less classy brothels.

She befriends a boy in the brothel. Puneet earns at lease double to what men pay for her because he is a boy. But after a visit from two police officers he is left bleeding and wounded from have a night stick inserted into his wiry  frame. The men leave the brothel laughing.

Author Levine is a doctor at the Mayo clinic. He was inspired to write NOTEBOOK after doing medical research in India. He devoting the proceeds from the sale of the book to help exploited children.

Well worth reading despite the pitiful ending.

JEFF HOBBS

A dark, dark look at the wealth, sleazy young of New York finance, design and fashion. The main characters are linked through their time together at Yale seven years earlier. But now everyone is screwing everyone; most doing a lot of drugs. Bi-sexuality is quite casual.  Manipulation for the sake of manipulation and power and abandonment are major themes. Definitely not a book for everyone, especially if you don’t like reading books that you don’t like the characters.