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.

PATRICK NESS

The New World is a harsh and dangerous place. We don’t know why people left the old world but the first settlers were religious people seeking a simple life. They came to create a utopian society but what they formed if far from perfect. On the New World men’s thoughts are open and broadcast for all to see. They call it Noise. But women’s thoughts are quiet. It makes for interesting and bizarre sexual politics.

“The first thing you find out when your dog learns to talk is that dogs don’t got nothing much to say ” is the first sentence. Highly engaging. The narrator comes from an isolated town where there is no women. They all perished in a plague. He  is the youngest in the community, soon to become an adult. But his “parents” tell him he has to flee days before his adulthood.  They can’t tell him why because then his noise would draw too much attention.

KNIFE is an excellent book; it’s a page turner. But is does have a couple of drawbacks. Length: it did not have to be 500 pages. Ending: books need a definitive ending rather than setting up for the next book in the series.

MARIATU KAMARA with SUSAN McCLELLAND

The Bite of the Mango is the true story of Mariatu Kamara, a girl born in Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone, an impoverished country on the west coast of Africa, was in a horrific civil war while Mariatu was a child. Despite the poverty in her tiny rural village, Mariatu’s first few years are happy ones, filled with friends, games and chores.  Mariatu’s father has two wives, neither of whom seems very pleasant. Mariatu is given to an auntie to raise, which likely would have been a great idea had the village not been attacked by rebels. At the age of 12, Mariatu had her hands amputated by boy-rebel soldiers. She had been previously raped and impregnated by an older man in the village who wanted to marry her.

Despite the extreme pain and suffering Mariatu’s story is one of hope and redemption. She now lives in Toronto where she attends college. She also tours North America as a UNICEF Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict.

A must read.

NADEEM ASLAM

The best fiction written about Afghanistan. Incidents from the times of the Shah to the on-going war are woven into this complex tale that centres around Marcus. Marcus is English born but has lived in Afghanistan for decades. Liberal and forthright, his Afghani wife was stoned by the Taliban. (Blood leaked out the lace eye opening of her burka.) Laura, a Russian, is searching for information about her brother who never returned from the Soviet invasion. David once a CIA agent, has been in Afghanistan for 25 years.”He knew of no other war that was fought with the help of as many spies.”  Casa, a young Afghani, has been trained as a terrorist. James is an American special forces soldier who reminds David of the black and white morality that was once his. 

A must read.

CHIMAMANDA NGOZI ADICHIE

YELLOW SUN is about the birth of Biafra, a short lived country in Africa late 60’s early 70’s. I remember Biafra: pictures of starving children with swollen bellies. George Harrison organized a rock concert to raise funds for relief. I had the album. I thought drought. I was wrong. War! And all of the issues that I associate with modern trouble in Africa were in this situation in the 60’s: child soldiers, tribe against tribe, rape as a weapon of war, genocide, refugees, starvation, western nations ignoring what was happening.

If I just read what I wrote I’m not sure if I would want to read this book but it isn’t all war. The book tell the story of twin sisters Olanna and Kainene and their loves and families as Nigeria ajusts to post-colonial times.

This poem is a quote from the book. Is the title not evocative?

WERE YOU SILENT WHEN WE DIED?”

Did you see photos in sixty-eight

Of children with their hair becoming rust:

Sickly patches nestled on those small heads,

Then falling off, like rotten leaves on dust?

Imagine children with arms like toothpicks,

With footballs for bellies and skin stretched thin.

It was kwashiorkor—difficult word,

A word that was not quite ugly enough, a sin.

You needn’t imagine. There were photos

Displayed in gloss-filled pages of your Life.

Did you see? Did you feel sorry briefly,

Then turn round to hold your lover or wife?

Their skin had turned the tawny of weak tea

And showed cobwebs of vein and brittle bone;

Naked children laughing, as if the man

Would not take photos and then leave, alone.

*kwashiorkor  the illness or symptom of starving children developing a swollen belly

Great read!

DANA KAMAL MILLS

Visiting her aunt in Paris, Rasha falls in love with a non-muslim Englishman. In Paris everything is carefree and fun. But home in Beirut (early 80’s) a violent civil war is on going and family values are much different than in Western culture. The two cultures clash when her lover Luke shows up on her door step unannounced. Luke is a freelance photo journalist. His cultural insensitivity and unawareness of the danger in war torn Beirut do not ring true to the character. Like so many novels Beirut starts with lots of promise but fizzles in the end.

DIANE ACKERMAN

The beauty in Diane Ackerman’s The Zookeeper’s Wife lies in her attention to detail. She tells the story of Jan and Antonia Zabinski, the director of the Warsaw Zoo and his wife, during the Polish Occupation during WWII, with beautiful prose that stimulates all the reader’s senses. The reader experiences the sensations of the two protagonists as they fight in the Underground and use the zoo as a station for the passage of Jewish citizens escaping the Nazis. Ackerman recreates a story of heroism into a story of human nature, particularly in Antonia. Antonia – as the lioness that guards the family villa and its 300 or so Guests – must face off with German soldiers and SS agents while feeding the household (pets included) and always facing the fear of being discovered. Using Antonia’s diaries, her children books, Jan’s interviews, face-to-face interviews with survivors, and other sources, Ackerman weaves a beautiful story. The story of WWII and the Holocaust is often the background for literature – fiction and nonfiction – but this book stands out as a testament to the beauty of people like Antonia and Jan.

STEVEN GALLOWAY

Bringing you into the horror of this war, where orthodox christian (Serbs) snipers surrounded the historical city gradually shooting and shelling the citizens: men, women, children, elderly (In 1991 Bosniaks muslims formed 45% of the population, followed by Eastern Orthodox Serbs with 38%, and Roman Catholic Croats with 7%.).
Interestingly the novel does not focus on the cellist of Sarajevo but rather the stories of three main characters circle around the cellist. The cellist witnessed the death of 22 people in a bread line and vowed to play his cello out on the street for the next 22 days as a tribute to those people.

“She hopes that the girls and the rest of the city hat e the men on the hills for the same reason she does. Because they made her hate. They started a war, saying that the people of Sarajevo hated each other, and the people fought back, saying they didn’t, that they were a city without hatred. But then the men on the hills started to kill and mutilate and destroy. Ant little by little they got what they wanted, a victory as clear as it would be if they could drive their tanks through the town. They made her and her people like her hate them.”

CHRIS ABANI

“the horror. the horror.” Child soldiers. This account is particularly moving because the writing is pure poetry. At first I was somewhat put off, we are hearing the thoughts of a fifteen year old boy/man, he wouldn’t think like that. But as the book went on the magic of the writing swept me away. Such black contrasted with such beautiful writing, amazing imagery. “My Luck” when he was first a mine sweeper was looking forward to getting his pubic hair. His first sex was raping a woman with a gun pointed at his head. His lover was killed. He is fifteen!

Must read! Definately must read.