"Darcy wrote: "This one is really good and sticks with you. I hope you enjoy it."
So far, it's really good!
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Ellen's husband, Fintan, had just recently passed away, when she meets an old acquaintance from the past - someone who knew both Ellen and Fintan. In that one meeting, Ellen learns some new facts about her husband - such as the news that his mother i...more
Ellen's husband, Fintan, had just recently passed away, when she meets an old acquaintance from the past - someone who knew both Ellen and Fintan. In that one meeting, Ellen learns some new facts about her husband - such as the news that his mother is actually alive and kicking, and that Fintan was not an orphan as he had let her to believe. This discovery bothers Ellen enough to make her visit Gowna in Ireland and find out what caused Fintan to lie about his mother.
I have to say - when I first came across Dance Lessons (through the many nominations it received for the Indie Lit Awards, I wasn't intrigued at all. The cover, the title and the synopsis all repelled me, but knowing that it came from an independent press, a part of me thought there must be something else to this book that wasn't standing out at first glance. Once I finished it, I could see the merit in this book - it surprised me a lot (and the panel members, I should add) - in fact, I kept going between this and Silver Sparrow, when trying to decide the book I would rate first.
Here's the story I made up before reading the book (we all do that, right? Pretend we know where a story is going?) Ellen would go to Ireland, meet Fintan's mother, find something shocking, resolve the issues, find a local man, fall in love, and voila! Happy Ending! That isn't what happened. Some of it did, but there were enough non-conventional stuff in the book to allow me to enjoy it.
Ellen and Jo, Fintan's mother, are the main characters of the book, and even Fintan, who is already dead from the beginning, is fleshed out well through flashbacks and back-stories. Initially, I saw Fintan as a controlling man, who didn't much value his wife's opinions. But by the end, I really wanted him to be alive, because by then, a whole new side of him had emerged, one which even Ellen didn't know, and one which puts his character in a different light. Jo was a totally different case. She was an mean, inconsiderate old woman, who did make life difficult for a lot of people. Her relationship with Fintan was interesting and domineering and that set the tone for many things that happen later between them. While it could have been a one-dimensional relationship, I loved how the author took care to introduce Jo's own childhood story into the mix. That certainly put a lot of things into perspective, and left me thinking for a while on Jo's character arc. I won't say I said "A-ha!" because some of the actions confused me, but I guess that's how life is - there is a lot of ambiguity when you start thinking cause-and-effect.
The other characters however didn't feel that vivid, and I guess for me, this is where the book didn't do that well. I wished the narration had moved between a few more characters, rather than just Ellen and Jo, for the most part, because there were some characters who could have brought more to the story (based on their recollections).
This was another fast-paced book. (If there's one thing that all the Indie Lit Awards nominees share, it is their pacing.) There's also a good sense of community in this book, and a very strong feel of Irishness. I love books that evoke the culture of the setting, and I felt that this book definitely succeeded on that point. I also liked that the small-town sentiment wasn't dangled in front of me but rather subtly woven into the plot, so that it was more felt than seen.(less)
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Dana Yarboro always knew she was the other daughter and her mother the other woman. Her father, James Witherspoon already had a wife when he started an affair with Gwen and had Dana with her. Soon after though, his wife also gets pregnant with Chauri...more
Dana Yarboro always knew she was the other daughter and her mother the other woman. Her father, James Witherspoon already had a wife when he started an affair with Gwen and had Dana with her. Soon after though, his wife also gets pregnant with Chaurisse. Dana and her mother knew about James' real family. But Chaurisse and her mother were entirely in the dark. The knowledge of where they stand in the familial tree however is not without its repercussions. Dana is barred by her father from going to the same place as Chaurisse and she rarely ever gets a gift that was meant only for her. At some point, however, the two worlds begin to interfere when Dana and Chaurisse befriend each other. It's not long before the secrets start coming out in the open.
Ever since Tayari Jones' Silver Sparrow was released last year, I'd been meaning to read it. I loved the way the book started ("My father, James Witherspoon, is a bigamist"), with intrigue and promise, but my library's copy was forever in the waiting list. So it was relieving to see this title on the Indie Lit Awards nominations and then soon come as the winner. Although I didn't find this book without faults, I did enjoy the read a great deal.
Although for the most part, one could write the above story along predictable lines, Silver Sparrow was anything but conventional. Told in two narratives, in the first half, we follow Dana as she reveals her dislike for Chaurisse, even though they have barely met yet, simply because she is always the second one. Rather than interleaving between the two narratives, we hear the first half of the story from Dana's perspective and the second half from Chaurisse's. I found this a very interesting literary device, because there are a few things that appear to be unresolved, and when I approached the end, I felt extra eager to know what Dana was thinking the whole time. But seeing the story from the two different non-interleaving perspectives meant that as a reader, I didn't side with one character just because the author chose that character as the pivot.
Jones has created some really strong characters in Silver Sparrow. On the one hand, there is Dana, who wants her father to notice her and acknowledge her. From a very young age, she knew where she stood - she understood that whether she could attend a school depended entirely on whether Chaurisse also wanted to go to the same place, in which case she couldn't go. At some point, she gets rebellious and that doesn't go down well with her parents either. Her mother makes every effort to protect Dana from the effect of growing up as a sort-of-illegitimate child - one whose father's identity is supposed to remain a secret in public. And then there's Chaurisse and her mother, totally unaware of James' other family but not any luckier for that knowledge.
I also loved that James, the father of the two girls, wasn't painted as a stereotypical bigamist. He was definitely a responsible man (except for the fact that bigamy isn't the act of a responsible man) and did his "best" to be involved in both families. He wasn't abusive or a drunk, like I see many of such characters portrayed in books. Gwen, Dana's mother was also a strong woman, who despite being involved with a man she cannot be seen out with made the best of the situation. I'm not sure that was the right choice (she had at least one opportunity to change things around but that didn't work), still she stayed a strong woman throughout.
I did mention earlier that this wasn't a perfect read for me, and that had mainly to do with the ending. The epilogue set about 10 (? I don't remember how far out it was) years in the future shows how the characters settled in the aftermath of the secrets tumbling out. For me that time frame seemed way too long for any of their actions to make sense to me. In addition, the characters' actions/beliefs didn't seem in sync with what I had pictured of them through the book, until that point.
Overall, I felt that Silver Sparrow totally deserved the honor of being the winner of the Indie Lit Awards. It was intricate, intriguing, fast-paced and holistic enough to be a serious contender as well. The themes it explored - access to and role of contraception (I totally missed out on this theme until nomadreader pointed it out during the discussions), father issues, insecurities arising out of the feeling of not being loved, and an unconventional bigamist relationship - were well conceived and made the book a wonderful read. This was also the first African American book I read that didn't have segregation as the central theme so it was also a wonderful change of flavor (although I do enjoy - a lot - books on the segregation too!)(less)
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Guy Montag is a fireman. Not a fireman that put out fires and rescued people from crumbling rubble, but a fireman who burnt books and even people who chose to be burnt with their books. That's what their system dictated. That's how things have been f...more
Guy Montag is a fireman. Not a fireman that put out fires and rescued people from crumbling rubble, but a fireman who burnt books and even people who chose to be burnt with their books. That's what their system dictated. That's how things have been for as long as he could remember. He's never questioned the system or entertained any curiosity towards books and their contents. That is, until a sixteen-year old girl stops him one day and asks him a lot of questions that are beyond him. These questions make him both curious and angry because he never thought about them before but he didn't want to feel cornered by her questioning either. But then a few days later, he never sees her again and something he does as part of his job (something he has done for many years) makes him pause and question the status quo, thus opening a can of worms.
Fahrenheit 451 is yet another book that a lot of people have read in school but I am only now reading it for the first time. And just like many books that are read by the younger population (Brave New World, Animal Farm, The Fountainhead), I wonder if perhaps I might have identified with it more then.
I've always wanted to read this book, because one of the commonest references to this book that I come across is the idea that - if you could save a book, which would it be? There are plenty of challenges around this question and plenty of bookish games as well. The last 40 or so pages of the book are what addresses this question, and when I reached that point, I tweeted this:
The last 40 pages of this book are so worth sitting through the stream-of-consciousness in the first half!
And that's exactly what I still feel. Not that the ending was eye-popping-worthy or shocking. It was just impressive and satisfying. It oozed a feeling of respite coming a world that was bent on destroying books. There are plenty of passages that condemn books and even more that indicate the ignorance of the people who question the value of books. Unlike in the other "utopian" societies I have read about, Fahrenheit 451 didn't arrive at its bookless state through the evil State's draconian laws or after some insensible war. People slowly stopped being interested in reading, and began entertaining themselves in front of the television. When the State saw that people were happier without books, they decided to ban reading completely and that's where the definition of firemen changed. Even to firemen in the present world of Fahrenheit 451, the idea of stopping fires is laughable.
Although I enjoyed the concept of the book, and would definitely recommend it to any one, I had issues with the preaching and the stream-of-consciousness flowing through most of the book. Those two aspects sorely reminded me of Brave New World, and while I get the need for the authors to preach to get the point across, I guess I can simply not stand any form of forceful advising. I could also see how the stream-of-consciousness was necessary since Montag gets a shock of awakening and all he could think of was why some people protected books. But his transition from the I-don't-really-care to the Books-are-important felt way too abrupt and unconvincing to me. And that's the other reason why the narration bugged me initially.
Oh, and what's up with all those horrible metaphors that made me cringe terribly?
Her face was fragile milk crystal with a soft and constant light in it. Eh what?
There were quite a few like that which didn't make for pleasant reading. Despite the issues I had with this book, I do feel that it is one that people should read. Honestly, I don't think such a world would ever come to pass, but I liked the concepts that were explored in this one, even if the book felt poorly executed.(less)
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