April: The Disappeared

This is what we're currently reading...

From the Amazon review:
After more than 30 years Anne Greves feels compelled to break her silence about her first lover, and a treacherous pursuit across Cambodia's killing fields... There are wounds that love cannot heal, and some mysteries too dangerous to know. Haunting, vivid, elegiac, The Disappeared is a tour de force; at once a battle cry and a piercing lamentation, for truth, for love.

Meeting and discussion will be on Thursday 5 April .

Thoughts on 'Pi' (part 1)

In my mind, Life of Pi generated one of the better Page Turners discussions of late, despite there being only four of us present. As I am yet to finish the novel, I will hold my comments until I complete the experience (nearly there!), but I am very keen to record the thoughts of those who couldn't make the meeting, yet felt compelled to write their thoughts down. If anyone else has thoughts, please either post or send to me for posting!

Helen
What did I think? I think I got some of the point of the book. To start with I should mark the spot at which I stopped believing the "story" which was when he got off the lifeboat onto the floating island of seaweed and it was so big that it had palm trees growing on it. At that point I thought to myself...well now he is clearly hallucinating/dreaming. Which brings me to what I think is the point of the book at the end - how we all have different belief systems based on our experience/information/knowledge collected over a lifetime. I'm sure other readers will have stopped believing at a different point from me.


That's all well and good - and I did already know this (anyone who has done the Forum will know about filters) but I don't think I got much more out of it than that.

The other idea, that a story is more or less believable if it is more or less pallatable seems obvious - but I found the less nice story he told more believeable, is that the way everyone else felt?

With all the religion at the start, I'm guessing there is supposed to be some revelation about this at the end and I got nothing?!!Was it just trying to say that all religions have stories that are just metaphors and should not be interpreted as fact..or that the reason we have different religions is that people develop with different filters and need to find "their" explanation?

Really disappointed to miss this discussion as I was hoping this would reveal something for me.

Nat
I really enjoyed reading 'Life of Pi'. This was an interesting and well written book with quite a twist at the end.

I found the beginning of the book a bit drawn out and spent about the beginning quarter wondering when the story was going to start. I also found that the religious discussion over done and generally difficult to relate to. I found the interludes with the author injecting himself into the story confusing and detracting, particularly in the beginning.

The survival part of the story was riveting and, although I was under no illusions that it was true, was very well told. The imagery in the story was particularly well done. Some of my favourites:

Chapter 3: "deep pleasure of doing a stroke with increasing ease and speed, over and over, till hypnosis practically, the water turning from molten lead to liquid light" (I like this one because I'm a swimmer...)

Chapter 4: "it was a huge zoo... Now it's so small it fits in my head"

Chapter 25: "For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart."

Chapter 61: "I was sixteen years old, a harmless boy, bookish and religious" Actually, on reflection, I think this quote wins the irony award.

Chapter 82: "I ate like an animal, that this noisy, frantic, unchewing wolfing-down of mine was exactly the way Richard Parker ate."

Chapter 92: "... strength and comfort seemed to be physically pouring into my system through my eyes."

Chapter 92: "I felt even my soul had been corroded by salt"

In the face of such beautiful phrasing, the whole overt religious mentions are coarse, unnecessary and I felt detracted from the story. I even thought in the early part of the book that he was kind of cynical about organised religion, viewing it as a competition between who had the better story. But maybe that was the point? That organised religion gets in the way of communing with G-d?

The humour was pretty good too and I guess important in such a sad story:

Chapter 3: "The porters... were... friendly in an ill-tempered way"

Chapter 34: "the paperwork involved in trading a shrew weighs more than an elephant, that the paperwork involved in trading an elephant weighs more than a whale, and that you must never try to trade a whale, never."

Chapter ??: "The only reason I didn't stand up and beat it [the hyena] off the lifeboat with a stick was lack of strength and a stick..."

Chapter 77: "I was at the mercy of turtle meat for smiles"

The part where he is waiting at the zoo for Mr Kumar and meets the other Mr Kumar is really very funny and extremely cleverly written, so you don't know throughout the entire exchange which one is speaking.

This is the sort of story that once you reach the end makes you want to go back to the beginning and read it again with different eyes. Magnificent choice.

currently reading . . .

Meeting in 2 weeks!

Blindness by Jose Saramago

This month, I took the liberty to read something different, since I wasn't going to be able to get a copy of Parentonomics in time. A month or so ago, I saw a preview for a movie called 'Blindness' where there is an epidemic of a contagion that causes blindness. I was intrigued by the plot, only to later discover that it is a book by Jose Saramago, a Portugese writer who received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. By coincidence, a friend of mine had a copy of the book, so I jumped at the opportunity to read it.

From the first page, I was completely drawn into the story, which begins with a man going blind while waiting in his car for the traffic lights to turn green. At this stage, it is not known that the blindness is contagious, and someone offers to take him home. Later, his wife takes him to the eye doctor, who is stumped by this man's condition. Only later, when the doctor himself goes blind, does he realise that this could be a potentially serious situation. In the attempt to contain the contagion, those that are afflicted are quarantined in an empty mental institution. And there, the real story begins.

Imagine a society where everyone is blind. Imagine having to fend for oneself without being able to see, and without any support. Saramago's novel depicts this situation, and in essence, the breakdown of society under such conditions. Those that are quarantined are ostracised. Those that are still able to see are scared of getting to close for fear of going blind. But how does one clean oneself, feed oneself and take care of ones wellbeing without external help? Let me just say that the consequences are not pretty.

Saramago's novel is one of extremely powerful imagery, almost frighteningly realistic. He initially seems to suggest that we are just one major disaster away from chaos. But is this a fair assumption? If we lived in a society without laws, without a governing body, would this lead to chaos? As the novel progresses, there is a change in the behaviour of people. By the end, there is almost an acceptance of the situation, which results in a different sort of social awareness and order. The blind have adapted to their limitations, and although it is not life as we know it, there is civility amongst the people. This seems to imply that people are to a certain extent malleable - that no matter what is thrown at us, society will always adapt. Does this mean that after any type of social disruption that ultimately some sort of order will be achieved?

Saramago's style of writing is unusual, and in many cases difficult to follow. No one has a name and is referred to by a defining feature (the first blind man, the girl with the dark glasses, the thief, the doctor's wife). There is also a overwhelming lack of punctuation, sometimes making it difficult to know who is talking to whom, with sentences often as long as paragraphs. But these aspects of the book intrigued me, as it was mentioned in the book, how do you put a face to a name when you can't see the face?

When I consider the books that I have read over the past year, many have touched upon this theme of social breakdown. I seem to have a fascination for reading about people who have been taken out of their normal environment, and seeing how they cope with change. I wonder what this says about me?

The Kite Runner (3)

Much of what I have to say has already been mentioned by Ellen and Kate, but here is what I sent to Allyson...

I actually finished 'The Kite Runner' a few weeks ago, having made an early start but also since I found it to be quite an easy read. I must admit that I also watched the movie when I was only about half way through the book. Of course this gave away the ending, but I was surprised at how close the movie followed the book. This only spurred me to finish the book faster, to see if the plot lines were indeed the same.

For me, the story of Amir and Hassan was incidental. I found it to be cliched and highly predictable, and in that regard, I was not particularly moved by their story. However, what I really enjoyed was the insight into life in Afghanistan. I knew (know?) very little about Afghanistan and Afghani culture and history, and so it was nice to be able to get a better feel for life there, both prior the the coup and Russian invasion as well as the situation under the Taliban rule.

I got the impression that in the early 1970's that life was on the whole good and that there was to some extent freedom and choice (at least for the Pashtuns). To me, the tradition of the kite flying symbolised this freedom. However, you also got the feeling that there was a dissidence towards the ethnic groups that at some point was going to explode.

From the book, it seems that the Afghans are very proud people, and I think that this was reflected most in the behaviour of the Afghans in California. I can really imagine that a general would dress up in a suit each and every day, in preparation for an immediate return to Afghanistan should his country request him to do so. Also that there was still a strong sense and respect of cultural beliefs, even when in a foreign country. It was these aspects that I enjoyed most about the book.

One thing that I noticed, however, was that the imagery of Amir's childhood and life in California was very vivid. But when he returned to Afghanistan, the description of the country in its present state did not seem to have the same impact. The book was published in 2003 but it was only in 2007 that Khaled Hosseini returned to Afghanistan after he and his family left in 1976. I can imagine that Hosseini was able to draw on his own personal experience when describing Amir's childhood and his life in the USA. But with no first hand experience of life in Afghanistan in the early 2000s, there was no personal reference. I think this lack of first hand experience of the Afghanistan under Taliban rule was reflected in his writing.