Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress – Dai Sijie

I cannot even look at books set in Europe during World War 2, I’ve read too many and have no interest in reading more.  Conversely, I love reading books set during historical periods I know little about and the setting for Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, China’s Cultural Revolution, is one such period.  The story's setting is important too, because this semi-autobiographical novel has a very meandering and often inconsequential plot.

The story centres on two adolescent boys, who, like many young adults of the period, come from middle-class families and have been sent to the remote countryside for re-education by the “noble” peasants.   There they meet and befriend the “Little Seamstress.”  They also come into possession of a stash of banned western novels. 

Through detailed and enjoyable tales of the boys’ adventures we see the transformative effects these western novels have on both the boys and the Little Seamstress.  I think it’s unfortunate that I read this directly after Mister Pip; another book about the transformative power of classic western literature.  While the story remains believable, the message did start to feel a little preachy.

On a final note, while I mentioned that the plot for the most part feels inconsequential, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress does have a very satisfying conclusion.  I won’t spoil it, but it was one of those rare endings that I didn’t see coming, but not only did it make sense, it helped the rest of the story make sense at the same time.

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is available as a book group set from Maribyrnong Library Service.

The opinions posted here are my own and not those of Maribyrnong City Council.

Michael Lay

Mister Pip - Lloyd Jones

Mister Pip is the story of Matilda, a girl in her early teens living on Bogainville Island during the civil war in the 1990s.  When her teacher leaves the island, Matilda is surprised to find the replacement teacher is Pop-Eye, the only white man left on the island.  He introduces the kids to Charles Dickens through Great Expectations.

Listening to Pop-Eye read Great Expectations becomes the highlight of Matilda's day to day life and provides an escape from the mounting tensions surrounding the war.  Pip in particular becomes a friend and model for Matilda who believes his story can provide answers she cannot find on the island.  Her mother, a devout and superstitious Christian, clashes with the more logical and worldly Pop-Eye, especially over what values Matilda and the other students should be brought up with.  As Matilda is evermore swayed by Pop-Eye and Dicken's description of the virtues of the English gentleman, Matilda's combative mother becomes increasingly desperate to teach her daughter traditional native and Christian values.

Mister Pip's main detractor is its pacing.  For the most part the plot moves at a barely discernable pace, then in the space of a couple of chapters several major events occur that significantly impact Matilda's life.  While this might be an attempt to imitate the nature of life's uphevavals, I found it made for an unsatisfying narrative structure.  However, the characters are well fleshed out and overall the book was an enjoyable read.

Mister Pip is available as a book group set from Maribyrnong Library Service.

The opinions posted here are my own and not those of Maribyrnong City Council.

Michael Lay

The Namesake – Jhumpa Lahiri

Jhumpa Lahiri won the 2000 Pulitzer prize for Fiction with her short story collection Interpreter of Maladies.  The Namesake is her first novel and with it she has won critical acclaim for her ability to create characters that her readers care about.

The main character in The Namesake is Gogol Ganguli, the American-born son of Indian immigrants.  His pet baby name, Gogol, (named after the Russian author) sticks with him throughout his childhood and adolescence and is a constant source of frustration for him.  To him it signifies his difficulties in assimilating with both the American way of life and his family’s Indian culture.

The Namesake has also been lauded for its accurate portrayal of the challenges immigrate families face in a new country and the struggle to find personal identity within such a clash of cultures.

The Namesake is available as a book group set at Maribyrnong Library.

The opinions posted here are my own and not those of Maribyrnong City Council.

Michael Lay

Ready Player One – Ernest Cline

In a near future dystopia, an energy crisis has reduced the quality of living to the point where many people spend a great deal of their time in a simulated virtual reality world named OASIS.  OASIS was designed and owned primarily by James Halliday, now the richest man in the world, but with no heirs upon his death, Halliday instead leaves a public video will in which he states that the first person to find 3 keys that unlock 3 hidden gates within OASIS will inherit his fortune.  However, Halliday was obsessed with the 80’s and the quests to find the keys reference obscure 80's pop culture prompting a worldwide resurgence of 80’s fashion, music and movies as people and corporations around the world attempt to solve the riddles Halliday left behind.

3 years later, after all but the most die-hard contestants have written Halliday’s will off as a joke, Wade Owen Watts, or “Parzival”, discovers the first key, and suddenly the competition is on in earnest.

I love Ready Player One.  It’s the best book I’ve read this year, but reviewing it is more difficult for me than reading it, because I know that I’m very much the target audience.  Firstly, the book is very well written, characters are well drawn and the threat well established which gives the quest narrative weight.  And Ernest Cline knows his stuff.  Not just the 80’s pop culture references, but he understands the online world and the people who populate it.  He understands game systems and the games industry.  Recently we’ve seen a few attempts by other authors to write books that tap into this market, but this is the first one I’ve read that actually works as an engaging story.

Ten months after Ready Player One was released, Cline revealed that the book itself contains the first of a series of puzzles for readers.  The competition’s prize will be a fully kitted out DeLorean, if you don’t know what a DeLorean is, this might not be the novel for you.  If you do, I urge you to read this book.

The opinions posted here are my own and not those of Maribyrnong City Council.

Michael Lay

The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid’s Tale tells the story of Offred, one of the few fertile women left in the Republic of Gilead, a totalitarian, patriarchal theocracy that overthrew the old United States of America by assassinating most of congress and blaming it on Islamic extremists.  Women have lost almost all their rights under the new regime and Offred’s only choice for her future is a slow death working in irradiated lands, suicide, or prove she is fertile by living as a surrogate mother for the wife of one of the powerful new commanders.

I read The Handmaid’s Tale many years ago as one of my VCE Year 12 texts and it’s easy to see why it was chosen.  Many different themes are woven into the story.  Perhaps the one that has stuck with me most over the intervening years is the idea that perhaps our relatively recent victories for race and sex equality and religious freedom aren’t as permanent as we’d like to think.  That political apathy might allow fanatics of one persuasion or another a way to regress our social development in some small or large way.

The other idea that really stuck with me was that the women in the dystopian future of The Handmaid’s Tale essentially have a counterpart in today’s society.  The most direct comparison would be with women living in nations under Islamic rule, but even within the more western religions, the role of women is still largely pushed as being subservient to men.   The theocracy depicted in The Handmaid’s Tale is a fundamentalist Christian one.  Offred’s ritualized surrogate mother role is taken from the biblical story of Rachel and Leah.  We enjoy a very liberal existence in Australia, but this book made me realize that not only are there always going to be individuals who view women as inherently inferior to men, but there are actually nations where the idea is law.

The opinions posted here are my own and not those of Maribyrnong City Council.

Michael Lay

Diving the Wreck – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Kristine Rusch  has written romance, sci-fi, mystery and crime novels, but reading Diving the Wreck you’d never know, it’s a straight up sci-fi novel and it’s done very well.

Our protagonist is Boss, a loner spaceship captain who dives wrecked spaceships she finds in the depths of space.  These wrecks are here livelihood, as she can bring tourists on dives of wrecks that she deems safe enough, but she’s also a historian, who dives wrecks for the love of the history associated with them.

Then she finds an derelict ship, incredibly old and originating from Earth, but in a sector of space it should never have been able to reach.  The ship is a mystery that could hold incredible riches, incredible danger, or both.

Diving the Wreck reads like a small story in a large universe.  Rusch concentrates on the details of Boss’s life and story.  She is a believable and compelling character and the mystery of the ship and how Boss decides to deal with it made this a very quick and easy book to read.

Michael L.

It Chooses You – Miranda July

In It Chooses You Miranda July is at her best – shining a light on the underexposed aspects of human life to reveal humour and heartbreak in unexpected places. The book was compiled as a side-project while she wrote (or avoided writing) her second film. July set out to interview thirteen individuals who placed advertisements in the Los Angeles newspaper the Pennysaver , hoping to find out about the lives behind the funny little ads for tadpoles and  large leather jackets.  She took photographer Brigitte Sire with her, and the result is a book filled with the stories of the interior lives of ordinary people, accompanied by thoughtful portraits of the people and their homes.

July’s style is tender and understated. Her interview questions are gentle and respectful, allowing her subjects to weave their own narratives . Her subjects are from all walks of life – a nervous teenage boy, a strong immigrant mother, a remarkable transsexual woman. The anecdotes they tell are in turn funny and sad, often at the same time. It’s amazing what people will reveal to you if only you ask, and that’s one of the key themes of July’s work here – in a big city it is easy to remain isolated from the people surrounding you, but it only takes a little effort to see the richness in a stranger’s life.

It Chooses You is a beautifully put together book filled with touching stories from ordinary people. I’ll never look at the Trading Post in the same way again.

Laura M.

The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins

In a dystopian future, an oppressive regime has the power to keep 12 districts in line from a single gleaming capitol city.  To display their power, as punishment for a failed rebellion and simply for their own entertainment, the capitol demands one male and one female teenager from each district every year.  These tributes compete against each other in a televised battle to the death.

I resisted reading The Hunger Games for a long time.  The premise above really didn’t appear to have much room for depth, but I read the first few chapters of my mother’s copy when she was visiting one weekend and reserved a copy for myself the next day.

It’s well written.  Right from the start the protagonist, Katniss, is a believable and likable character, but more importantly, the tension between the capitol and the districts is obvious.  Katniss is a hard and sometimes cold character, but she’s inherently good.   She loves her sister and looks after her family any way she can, but Katniss is headed for the barbarism of the Hunger Games where only one tribute can survive.  While many of her opponents there are vicious killers there is also Peeta, the male tribute from her home district who’s act of kindness towards her years earlier has Katniss feeling indebted to him and Rue, the youngest competitor in the games who reminds Katniss of her own sister.  

Katniss enters the games with her life and her humanity, and while we can foresee ways for her to survive the games with one, surviving with both seems impossible.

Michael L.

Fated – S. G. Browne

Fate is a real, his name is Fabio.  It’s his job to determine the fates of most of the human population and it’s a job he is completely sick of.  He’s sick of his humans consistently choosing paths that lead to unfortunate and often early ends, and he’s jealous of Destiny, whose humans are chosen for great deeds.  Many other immortal beings such as, Death, Karma, Lady Luck, Truth, Honesty, all the seven deadly sins, and many more also exist and this setup immediately had me associating the book with Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, which I absolutely love.  Unfortunately for me, Fated is a very different beast.

Many characters are introduced throughout Fated, mostly other anthropomorphic personifications of various human traits, but very few make repeat appearances and unfortunately even the main characters are one dimensional.  Browne does very little world-building either, and if you look too closely at what there is it often seems either contradictory or simply not explained deeply enough to understand how it’s all meant to work.

What seems to make or break this book is the humour.  It’s meant to be black humour, and while I did laugh at a few of the jokes, I found the tone and pacing of the book too inconsistent to truly enjoy it.  Looking online however, many people laughed all the way through this book and it was often awarded 5 stars by those that did.

The last thing that needs to be mentioned about Fated is the ending.  It’s weird.  After finishing the book, I suddenly had to re-evaluate the entire story to try to make sense of the ending.  I couldn’t.

Michael L.

The Rook – Daniel O’Malley

“Dear You, The body you are wearing used to be mine.”  Thus begins The Rook, Daniel O’Malley’s first novel.  The story’s protagonist, Myfanwy Thomas, is a highly placed manager in a secret government organization called the Checquy; an organisation run by and concerned with the affairs of the supernatural in Britain.  She also has amnesia.

 

Her old personality has been wiped, and a new version of herself has just awoken in the rain surrounded by bodies wearing latex gloves.  I’m fairly wary of stories that use amnesia as a plot device, it’s sometimes used to artificially inject some mystery/suspense into a story, but here it’s done well.  In fact, despite the fact that she has amnesia, it doesn’t follow the usual narrative associated with amnesia.  This is partly because her old self isn’t really gone.  In fact, almost half the book is taken up with letters from her old self.  Letters she wrote to her future self, because she knew she was going to lose her memory.  She knows that while her body will survive, her personality will die.

And this is where the story shines.  Sure, there are weird and wonderful supernatural characters and events, imaginative action scenes, cunning detective work and humorous observations aplenty, but it’s the differences between the old and new versions of Myfanwy that I found the most interesting.  They’re quite different characters, both have the same nature and the same supernatural abilities, but where post-amnesia Myfanwy is a blank slate in terms of nurture, everything about pre-amnesia Myfanwy is affected by her life to that point.  It’s a credit to Daniel O’Malley that he manages to pull this distinction off in a believable and compelling way.

Michael L.

We Need to Talk About Kevin – Lionel Shriver

We Need to Talk About Kevin is an uncomfortable book.  We know from the start that it is a book about a young boy who ends up shooting and killing staff and students at his school in a Columbine-style school massacre.

The story is told from the perspective of Kevin’s mother, Eva Khatchadourian, in the form of letters she is writing to her estranged husband.  In these letters she examines the life of her son, trying to find the seeds of his horrible act of violence.  She is plagued with guilt over the possibility she is somehow responsible for her son’s violence or that there may have been a way to reach her son to turn him from his murderous path. 

We Need to Talk About Kevin is available as a book group set at Maribyrnong Library.

Housewife Superstar: the Very Best of Marjorie Bligh by Danielle Wood

This biography introduces you to Tasmania’s very own domestic goddess, the bright and charming Marjorie Bligh; the rumoured source of Barry Humphries’ much loved character Dame Edna Everage. Danielle Wood takes you on a tour of the highs and lows of Bligh’s life. Three times married and a lover of  all things domestic, her skill and resourcefulness makes her a lovable and entertaining figure.  A ferocious competitor in local agricultural shows, her blue ribbon skills lead her to becoming an advice columnist in the local Launceston  paper.  Bligh went on to publish several  books of advice,  recipes and household management.

Bligh is an impressive character and you cannot help but love her as you learn of the colourful life she lead.  Never one to sit still and waste time,  she found a way to knit while breastfeeding her children.  Having grown up in the Great Depression,  Bligh never wasted household items and her crocheted rug and matching outfit made out of old pantyhose is a testament to that.  The book is littered with hints from Bligh’s advice books and I recently taped slices of garlic to my feet to ward off a cold on her advice. Who knows if Bligh’s eccentric advice worked but like the book it was very amusing.

Though the book never resolves whether Bligh was the basis of Dame Edna,  Household Superstar is a highly satisfactory read.  This entertaining and informative book is a resource to  all those interested in Australian historical characters and household resourcefulness.

AG

Blackout – Connie Willis

Blackout is the first book in a two-book series, (All Clear is the second novel) that tells the stories of a group of time travelling historians stuck in England during different periods of World War II.  While it’s a stand-alone series, Blackout is not the first novel set in this universe and unfortunately it shows.  Blackout won both Hugo and Nebula awards for Science Fiction, but the book contains very few sci-fi elements.  The plot centers around the use of time travel, but time travel is never explained. 

I really enjoyed the early chapters of this book where, due to some mysterious circumstances that are tantalizingly hinted in early chapters, our time travelers are frantically trying to get ready for their trips back in time whose departure dates have suddenly been brought radically forward leaving them underprepared for such a dangerous period in history.  Unfortunately, those mysterious circumstances are never explained.  It was the most interesting hook in the book, but as soon as our time travelers have made it to their destinations in World War II England, they promptly get stuck there and the rest of the book is essentially comprised of WWII stories as told by panic-stricken narrators. 

And our narrators are some of the least likable characters I’ve ever encountered.  Despite knowing how and when the war ends, where every bomb falls  in London and believing that they cannot change the course of history no matter what they do, every character allows themselves to be pushed around by others and they worry constantly about alterations to the timeline.  Also, despite knowing something has happened to prevent them from returning to the future, when our characters finally manage to meet up (after a series of ridiculous co-incidences that prevented them from doing so for most of the book) do they discuss their number one problem?  No.  They’re too worried that their fellow time-travelers are too mentally fragile to handle such a discussion. 

Ultimately the plot feels contrived, the characters are unlikable and the one decent plot hook goes frustratingly undeveloped from chapter four onward.  How this novel won both a Hugo and Nebula award I’ll never know, because despite persisting with this book long after I normally would, I cannot bring myself to continue the story with All Clear.

Michael L.

Y: The Last Man – Brian K. Vaughan

Y: The Last Man is a graphic novel set in a dystopian future where every mammal with a Y chromosome has suddenly and inexplicably died except for one man, Yorrick Brown and his monkey, Ampersand.  The story follows Yorrick as he journeys across America to find his mother, a US congresswoman.  With all men and many women dead from the incident, society is quickly breaking down.

Y: The Last Man is filled with interesting characters and the changes society undergoes in order to adjust are depicted well.  But one of the main aspects of the story that kept me reading was the resolution of the main premise: the mystery of what killed all the male animals and why Yorrick was spared?  All is revealed late in the series, but even then a couple of plot holes and, ultimately, my reluctance to accept the final explanation left me feeling like Y: The Last Man is a bit of a missed opportunity.

Michael L.

Shantaram – Gregory Roberts

Lin is a convict who escapes his Australian prison and flees to India to hide in the slums among the masses of people living there.  He is eventually caught, and extradited back to Australia, but Shantaram, loosely based on author Gregory Roberts’ life, is the story of the highs and lows of his time in Bombay.

Over the course of the story, Lin sets up a makeshift clinic, works as a mafia agent, finds a lover, is betrayed and seeks revenge, spends time in a Bombay prison and runs guns to Afghanistan.

Shantaram is only the first in a planned series of four books spanning Gregory Roberts’ life and comes in at a whooping 933 pages.

Shantaram is now available as a book group set from Maribyrnong Library.

The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters

The Little Stranger is an old-fashioned ghost story set in post World War II English countryside at Hundreds Hall, an eerie old mansion home to a host of varied characters most of whom form the local genteel society.  The story follows Dr Faraday, a hapless and penniless man who has returned to his home town to find the glorious hall he remembers from his childhood reduced to a shadow of what it once was.

Strange happenings begin to occur at Hundreds Hall and Dr Faraday, who considers himself a rational man, is often the one called upon to provide the terrified occupants with a reasonable explanation.

Sarah Waters has won much critical acclaim with past works (Tipping the Velvet, Fingersmith, The Night watch) for her ability to build a rich atmosphere and complex narrative and now she brings that style to a suspense/mystery/horror genre.

The Little Stranger is now available as a book group set at Maribyrnong Library.

Caleb’s Crossing – Geraldine Brooks

Geraldine Brooks was inspired to write Caleb’s Crossing after discovering that the first Native American to graduate from Harvard was from her home town, Martha’s Vineyard, and graduated in 1665.  Caleb’s Crossing is set at this time and told primarily from the perspective of Caleb’s good friend Bethia Mayfield.  

Both characters are hungry for knowledge but Caleb struggles with racism and Bethia struggles with sexism.  Bethia’s mother died when she was 12 and so she runs the household and while her father is quite liberal, arguing against the subjugation the local native Indians and tutoring Caleb, he sees books and learning as a purely male domain.  It is this struggle against the bounds imposed upon these characters by their culture and religion that dominates Caleb’s Crossing.

Caleb's Crossing is available as a Book Group Set at Maribyrnong Library.

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

I first read The Handmaid's Tale for Year 12 English and the totalitarian theocracy it is set in really struck a chord with me.  I had read stories set in dystopian worlds before reading The Handmaid's Tale, but the way Margaret Atwood described her dystopian world through the eyes of the protagonist, Offred, really hit home just how powerless most people, and in particular women, were within this society.  Despite being set in the future, it was as if society had regressed.  Offred's only sorce of information was the propaganda spewing news service and snippet's of guarded gossip with strangers who could easily be spies.

It was particularly striking because, while foreign to me, Atwood's dystopian society shared a lot of traits with real-life countries where religion or culture separates the rights of men and women.  It made real for me a lot of talk about freedom and the phrase "to live in fear."

The Handmaid's Tale is one of our new Book Group titles for 2012.

Terry Pratchett - Author Spotlight

Terry Pratchett is one of the highest selling authors of the last twenty years.  Most of his books are set in a fantasy world known as the Discworld: a flat disc of land supported on the backs of four giant elephants who, in turn, ride through space on the back of the giant turtle, A’Tuin.

However, this fantastical scenario belies the true nature of Pratchett’s work which is concerned with real life issues both historical and contemporary.  Over Pratchett’s large body of work within the Discworld he has addressed such issues as: the role and responsibility of media in society, the difference between politics and governance, the authority and power of officers versus soldiers during wartime and mob mentality.  However, that makes his work sound serious.  Ultimately Pratchett crafts colourful, funny, easy to read stories that simultaneously explore more serious issues for those who care to listen.  I happily recommend Terry Pratchett to teenagers and adults alike.

Terry Pratchett has currently released 39 Discworld novels plus several spin-off works and they feature a wide variety of main characters.  His latest book is Snuff.

One discworld novel, “Going Postal”, has been adapted for a two-part TV series which recently aired on ABC.

The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern

Another book 10 years in the writing, The Night Circus is centered around Celia and Marco, two magicians who hide the magical nature of their work as exhibits in Le Cirque des Rêves or Circus of Dreams.  The circus is fantastically imagined and beautifully described by Morgenstern, accounts of various tents and attractions scattered between story chapters as well as the impressions of minor characters’ visits to the circus are always welcome reading.  The chapters are also broken up along the plot’s timeline.  Jumps back and forwards in time are usually easy to distinguish, though I found one towards the end quite confusing.

The Night Circus has been criticized for prioritizing imagery over plot but, while I agree the plot is slow-moving, I’ll be remembering this story for a long time, not for the plot, but for the circus, which is so well imagined.  This gives the plot weight too, because the fate of the circus is directly interwoven with the fate of Celia and Marco.

Michael L.