by Judi Dench

as told to John Miller

***** (5/5)

Autobiography: And Furthermore by Judi Dench

Click here to buy the book And Furthermore by Judi Dench (with free delivery)

Book Review:

This autobiography of Judi Dench’s career was a fun and easy read. As an actor myself, I loved reading about her stage productions and the different experiences, directors and actors she encountered. Dench comes across extremely down to earth and hard working actor with a playful sense of humour. I read the book with a mixture of envy and awe – Dench was actually fought over to play Shakespeare’s Cleopatra by two directors, Peter Hall and Terry Hands, who had both decided to direct the play at the same time!

The autobiography, as told to John Miller, contains lots of stories about the productions that she acted in throughout her long career, a couple she directed and also touches on some major personal life events – meeting her husband Michael Williams, their daughter Finty, the fire that destroyed their first home and Michael’s death. I was surprised about how candid she was in recounting her bad experiences with productions – run-ins she had had with theatre directors, or how disorganized a film set was. She goes into the negative experiences she has had as much as the positive ones.

I loved reading about Dench’s playful side. She is such a trickster, always enjoying a good laugh. One example is the long running challenge that developed between her and one of her actor colleagues Tim Piggot-Smith to see who could return a black leather glove to the other in the most unexpected places – usually on stage. The game has become so well known over the years that when questioned by the audience, someone always asks, ”Where is the glove now?” I guess it’s stunts like this and other more subtle games Dench and her fellow actors play on stage that keeps them going through a 6 month run of the same show!

Dench recounts her Oscar experiences when she was nominated for Mrs Brown and Shakespeare in Love. She even kept a diary of the days leading up to the first one because she knew how surreal it would be. It was fun to read about her amazement and awe at the experience, to know that even seasoned actors get excited and swept up in it all. Dench, who won the Oscar for her supporting role in Shakespeare in Love, said, “I was so surprised to win it for eight quick minutes with bad teeth.”

This is a good book for actors as well as people interested in theatre, not to teach you about acting, but to get an insight on how Dench lives the life of an actor, as well has her attitude towards working in theatre. I read ‘And Furthermore’ with a healthy dose of jealousy, but moreover received inspiration from a veteran actor whose work I really admire.

I’ll end with an anecdote about Anthony Hopkins who was playing Anthony to Dench’s Cleopatra in Peter Hall’s production for the National Theatre (Hall won out in the end). Hopkins never minded not being in the fifth act, in fact he actually loved it. In his death scene, as he was lying cradled in Cleopatra’s arms, he would whisper, ”I’m going upstairs to have a nice cup of tea. You do Act V, and I’ll have a nice cup of tea.”

Love that!

x Julie

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by Li Cunxin

Autobiography / Biography / Memoir / Non-Fiction

Click here to buy the book Mao’s Last Dancer (with free delivery)

Here’s Reading Like Rabbit’s first guest review by a good friend of mine, Naazli Somjee, who being such a fast reader, probably gets through more book than I do!

Thanks for your recommendation Naaz!

x Julie

Book Review:

A book you have to read is Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin! It is lovely, touching story about the author’s growing up years in China towards the end of Chairman Mao’s rule. He talks about the abject poverty of his childhood and his feelings for his family and the opportunities he is given. It could all become very melancholic but he writes with a combination of humour and matter-of-factness that you need to keep turning the pages till you reach the end. You will then feel the need to youtube the author to watch him dance, and go out and watch a ballet, and hug your parents all at the same time

x Naazli

Online Bookstore and Book Review Site

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A Memoir of Life in Death

by Jean-Dominique Bauby

Translated from the French by Jeremy Leggatt

****½ (4.5/5)

Memoir / Non-Fiction / Inspirational

Click here to buy The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (with free delivery)

Book Synopsis:

At the age of 43,  Jean-Dominique Bauby, the editor-in-chief for French Elle, survived a massive stroke which resulted in locked-in syndrome.  Paralysed from head to toe, but with his mind still as alert as ever, Bauby wrote this book with the help of Claude Mendibil. Mendibil would recite the alphabet to him and when she arrived at the letter he wanted, Bauby would blink. Blinking his left eyelid was Bauby’s only means of communication with the outside world. This book was literally crafted letter by letter.

In a place of enforced stillness, Bauby manages to truly take a step back and observe his world. From the depth of his diving bell, he still manages to travel with the wings of a butterfly.

Jean-Dominique Bauby died just two days after the French publication of his book.

Book Review:

First off, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly gave me a healthy dose of perspective. It reminded me of how easily we can give up when things don’t go our way. You could say that Bauby had lost everything. Unable to move, let alone speak, communicating via a slow and tiresome method of reciting the alphabet and blinking at the desired letter, it would be so easy to be overtaken by helplessness. But Bauby reached through the physical and mental barriers and with the help of a friend, created a unique and powerful piece of writing, that has the ability to speak to all of us.

Much of the memoir is about his day to day struggles – from boredom, to the inability to communicate a simple request to a nurse, frustration, to the sounds that agitate him. However, Bauby’s situation of being “paralyzed, mute, half-deaf and deprived of all pleasures” is juxtaposed with the power of his imagination which would transport him from his hospital bed, to anywhere he desired. “There is so much to do. You can wander off in space or in time, set out for Tierra del Fuego, or for King Midas’s court….discover Atlantis, realize your childhood dreams and adult ambitions.”

My friend who recommended this book to me described it as ‘the essence of life’. Yes, Bauby’s situation was wretched, and I’m positive that given a choice, he would have done almost anything to avoid the stroke that paralysed him. But this is a fantsatic example of making the best of your situation. Bauby drew on his strength as a writer and created for himself a legacy. From a point of personal observation and personal stories, Bauby cleanly lays out his thoughts in this short and simple book. As a reader, we have the opportunity to see into the mind and experiences of a man with locked-in syndrome, but more importantly, we can take away with us Bauby’s perspective of the duality of life -  you can be trapped in a diving bell, but from within that, you also have the ability to take flight like a butterfly.

x Julie

Online Bookstore and Book Review Site

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P.S. I recommend watching this TED Talk by Dr. Brené Brown, a researcher professor who has spent the past ten years studying a concept that she calls Wholeheartedness. It kind of relates to this book in a vague way, but even if it doesn’t relate at all, it’s a good talk to watch as it that makes some very interesting observations.

P.P.S. I love TED Talks. If you don’t know what they are, go to TED.com

by Waris Dirie

with Corinna Milborne

Translated by Sheelagh Alabaster

***** (5/5)

Non-Fiction / Memoir

Click here to buy Desert Children by Waris Dirie with free delivery

Book Synopsis:

Desert Children is about Waris Dirie and Corinna Milborn’s investigation into the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Europe. It is estimated that up to half a million girls and women have undergone or are at risk of FGM in Europe.

Presently, France is the only country that convicts offenders. What’s more the threat of female genital mutilation is not officially recognized by any European country as a reason for asylum.

Waris Dirie was a top model and UN ambassador. Her story, Desert Flower, of growing up in Somalia, enduring FGM at the age of 5, fleeing though the desert and being discovered as a model by Terence Donovan was an international bestseller.

In Dirie’s second book, Desert Dawn, she writes about her experience as a UN Special Ambassador against Female Genital Mutilation, and returning home to her family in Somalia.

In this latest book, Desert Children, reveals the appalling truth of Female Genital Mutilation throughout Europe.

My Book Review:

I picked up this book by chance at the Library Book Fair over the weekend. It’s an eye opening, important read. I’d recommend this book to everyone. Men and women. We need to know what is happening to women all round the world, and we need to do something about it.

This book focusses on Waris Dirie’s research into the practice of Female Genital Mutillation in Europe. You wouldn’t think that FGM is widespread in modern Europe, but unfortunately, thousands of women and girls are at risk of this horrific ‘cultural’ ritual. What’s worse, many of the reasons behind the practice of FGM are complete myths. And these beliefs surrounding FGM are so infuriating in their ignorance, it’s unbelievable. Some women even think that they will be unable to give birth naturally unless they are circumcised. Others want to have their children circumcised in the belief that it will keep the girl pure, that she will be dirty if she is un-cut, that FGM is the only way to find a husband.

This book is an education in the reality of the widespread mutilation that is being inflicted on girls in our world today, and along side this, of the plight of African immigrants to Europe who refuse or are unable to assimilate and embrace the country they have chosen to live in.

We have to have compassion for the women who were cut against their will and without knowledge as girls, but it is these same women who are agreeing either wholeheartedly or through family pressure to have their own children cut.

I was shocked to find out that of all the women worldwide who have undergone FGM, about 15% are infibulated. But in Somalia or Sudan, the figure rises to 99%. Infibulation is a severe form of FGM. It involves ‘cutting out parts or the whole of the genitalia, with subsequent stitching together the opening to leave a tiny hole. In this procedure, usually the inner labia are completely removed and the outer labia are sewn together so that scar tissue covers the entrance to the vagina’. (Taken from WHO’s classification of FGM)

FGM operations are often done without the use of anesthetic.

Victims of FGM are often left with the traumatising memory of the incision, and grave psychological and physical damage. What’s more, the cutting of females is still a taboo subject and is often never talked about between women and especially not with men. This culture of silence firstly leaves women to suffer alone, and secondly without any dialogue, this practice will just keep repeating itself generation after generation, without any assessment on what it is doing to the victims, what it is for and why on earth it is being practiced.

Furthermore, FGM has nothing to do with Islam. ‘Many of the countries that defend the practice mistakenly base their arguments on Islam. But there is no mention of the practice in the whole of the Koran, and certainly no recommendation of it… FGM is a phenomenon that pre-dates Islam.’ (Quote taken from Desert Children)

It is so easy to turn and blind eye and not to interfere because it is a cultural belief. Who are we to question someone else’s traditions? It infuriated me to read what this person wrote on a forum site with the topic of Female Circumcision:

CK: “Whilst being terrible to us remember its part of their culture. One of my friends used to shag a circumcised girl and there was no complaints from either party. Whilst you guys get on your high horse about injustices in the world how about feeding the homeless man you walk past each morning.”

There are so many elements that are exasperating about this apathetic and uninformed remark. And if we remain with this attitude, FGM will never stop. Girls clitoris’s and labia will continue to be cut out everyday.

Culture is not fixed, it inevitably changes over time. The reasons for ritualistic practices often get diluted and change meaning. It is so easy to just follow cultural practices because they are ancient and traditional. Old age does not make a thing moral or right. Blindly following culture has resulted in people unquestioningly cutting out a vital part of their child’s body.

As Kadi, one of the victims that Waris Dirie speaks to in her book, tried to explain to her cousin who is in favour of FGM said: “I’ve tried to tell her that FGM is a bad thing and I’ve told her about the health problems that can result. But only when I told her, “It’s like society deciding it’s better for children to live with just one eye, so they cut the second one out” – that made her stop and think.”

Desert Children will make you stop and  think. Is FGM happening in my own country, in my own neighbourhood?

How can we solve this problem and end the practice of mutilation? I am neither Muslim nor of African descent, and I understand how hard it is for people of other cultures to come butting in on other people’s decisions. This is one of the issues discussed in Desert Children, the difficulty of outsiders to intervene, and also the need for sensitivity in this issue.

But I want to do what I can. If we all take on the attitude of ‘CK’ in the online forum, taking a back seat in the name of culture and remain uninformed and uninvolved, tossing a few coins to the homeless, the mutilation of girls will go on and on.

Upon reading Desert Children, I can’t help but feel the need and the passion for wanting to help and be involved in this fight. To protect other girls and women from suffering this fate. I am now trying to find out what the status of FGM is in Singapore and if there are laws in place to prevent FGM.

Please do leave a comment on this page and tell me what you know or think about this issue. Even if you are for FGM, I’d like to hear your opinions. And if you are against it, what we can do to help end FGM?

x Julie

Online Bookstore and Book Review Site

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Here are some websites I came across about FGM in Singapore:

“Muslim rite is modernized”

- Overview:

1) ‘There are no laws regulating the practice in Singapore’

(Article was published in 2002, I don’t know yet if the laws have changed or not)

2)  ‘In Singapore’s small Muslim community, female circumcision involves nicking the prepuce, the skin covering the clitoris. It is markedly different from the practices of some Muslim communities in Africa and the Middle East decreed by human rights activists as female genital mutilation.’

3) ‘most Muslim women go along with the practice. They say it does not affect sexuality nor cause discomfort.’

What I want to find out is: What exactly is this procedure? Does it really differ from what we call FGM? and Does it really not affect sexuality nor cause discomfort?

Article ‘Female Circumcision’ on Singapore’s AWARE website

- Also, have a look at the video on ‘Labiaplasty’ and though the contents of the video may be disturbing to some viewers, it’s an eye opener to how we, modern women, view our nether regions.

Inside a Female-Circumcision Ceremony

- a slide show of a female circumcision ceremony in Indonesia

Expat Singapore’s discussion forum: Very Sensitive topic – Female Circumcision in Singapore

- People’s discussions, questions and opinions on the issue.

by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Memoir / Biography / Autobiography

Sequel to Hirsi Ali’s autobiography Infidel (click here to read the book review of Infidel)

Hirsi Ali has also written The Caged Virgin: An Emancipation Proclamation for Women and Islam

Click here to buy a book by Ayaan Hirsi Ali (free delivery worldwide)

I have great respect for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Against the odds, she is standing up and speaking out for what she believes in. Ayaan’s journey in her first memoir Infidel is fascinating. And I have just got my hands on Nomad, her follow up memoir about her new life in America, based on my friend Vani’s email, which she has allowed me to publish:

Hi friends,

You may or may not have heard of Ayaan Hirsi Ali but I think it would be a pity to miss reading this one-helleva woman. I first heard of her in 2007 when I was setting out for my Watson year of travels and research and I was putting together a list of all the books I wanted to read when I hit the road. One of the books was Ayaan’s autobiography “Infidel.” I remember walking into Borders in Melbourne to purchase it, flipped through some of the pages, hit a chapter entitled “the caged virgin” about the emancipation of women in Muslim nations, and I ended up staying in the store for a few hours and finished the entire book. (of course I went ahead and still bought it!)

What’s mind-blowing about this woman is her personal struggle (survived child genital mutilation, escaped a forced marriage in Somalia to seek refuge in the Netherlands, got herself educated and within just 12 years became a MP in the Dutch Parliament), and how even in the face of fatwas, she’s got the balls to put her life on the line and still voice out her views about Islam and its treatment of women. What’s really interesting (and hugely controversial!) is how she rejects even “regular Islam” as a religion that suppresses the liberty of women by preventing them from making basic life choices, over their sexuality, jobs, attire, etc.

Her new book, Nomad, apparently makes that case and has been featured in today’s issue of the Guardian

I’m not quite sure what I think about it from the look of it and I don’t like to form an opinion without reading it first, but I definitely disagree with her suggestion that Muslims could fare better by learning from the Christians.

Anyway! The point of this e-mail is to suggest a summer read if you’re in the process of putting together a reading list for the upcoming holidays. I recommend “Infidel” – it’s highly inspiring, thought-provoking, and might bizarrely have you build up an intimate relationship with the author. That rarely happens to me.

Also, if you guys have any recommendations for a nice summer read (mindless ones are more than welcome!), PLS let me know. I’ve got 2 months to get delirious without legal textbooks! The only books I’ve got on my list right now are Arundhati Roy’s latest -”Field notes on Democracy – Listening to the Grasshoppers,” and the Bhagavad Gita. (a decent point to start from?)

Vani

Click here to browse through books to buy with free delivery worldwide

Thank you Vani!

x Julie

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a memoir by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi

***** (5/5)

Autobiography / Biography / Memoir / Non- Fiction

Click here to buy Stolen Lives by Malika Oufkir and Michele Fitoussi (free delivery)

Book Cover Synopsis:

Malika Oufkir has led a split life. She spent her childhood days raised as a princess, but from the age of nineteen, she was imprisoned with her mother and siblings for the next 20 years.

Maika was General Oufkir’s eldest daughter. He was the closest aide of the King of Morocco, who adopted five-year-old Malika and brought her up as his daughter’s companion. Malika grew up in privilege and luxury, in the shelter of the court harem.

But on 16^th August 1972, everything changed. General Oufkir was executed for attempting to assassinate the king. Malika, her mother, her five siblings, and two loyal friends were immediately arrested and imprisoned.

After being locked up for fifteen years, the last ten of which they were placed in solitary cells, the Oufkirs dug their way out of the prison using their bare hands, and made a courageous escape.

After 5 terrifying days of freedom, they were recaptured and eventually put under house arrest for another five years.

In 1996, at the age of 43, Malika was finally free to leave Morocco and begin her new life of freedom.

Stolen Lives is a shocking true story of resilience in the face of extreme hardship. A tremendously touching account of bravery and perseverance An example of how humor can exist even in the darkest of places. It is difficult to comprehend that it could have happened in our own times.

My Book Review:

You must read this book. As the last paragraph of the book’s synopsis says, ‘it is difficult to comprehend that it could have happened in our own times.’ Malika’s story is almost like a fairytale, except in fairytales, we often skip the horrible bits and drive through to the happy ending. It’s dispicable that King Hassan II, in our day and age could have imprisoned the innocent family of his attempted assassin,  the youngest of which was 3 years old, for what amounted to 20 years. It’s completely shocking, yet this happened. And is still happening to others now, I’m sure, in various parts of the world.

In all, Malika, her mother, Malika’s 3 sisters and 2 brothers, along with 2 women who came with the family out of loyalty (a commitment which is extraordinary and admirable to me) were locked up for an unknown indefinite amount of time. They were the ‘disappeared’. And it just got worse at every step along the way. They were truly being punished for their father’s sins. Every time they there was some semblance of  comfort in their lives, it was taken away from them. They never knew where they were being moved, were extremely malnourished, and what’s most heartbreaking is that the family was separated from each other, blocked by cell walls for 10 years.

But out of this horrifying life story comes moving human stories. Whilst locked in separate cells, they constructed an amplifier out of wire and radio parts which they pushed through small holes in the walls to communicate with each other. Through this hidden device, what sustained them was a story that Malika made up. A story that she kept going for 10 years. They also survived on humour. The Story, humour and looking out for each other and i guess sheer survival instincts kept them all alive.

None of them knew how long they would be imprisoned, when this torture would end – maybe, maybe, this is what gave them hope, that King Hassan might one day pardon them. However, I think, this lack of knowledge of a future caused what Malika calls ‘the night of the long knives’, a night of true despair, where a mass suicide could very well have taken place had they been successful.

Then comes their astonishing and terrifying escape. Failed, but magnificent because they managed to get their story out to the world and eventually secure their own freedom.

After 20 years outside time, obviously assimilating back into modern society would be hard, extremely hard. Abdellatif, who was imprisoned at only 3 years old, and 23 when he truly got to see the world, missed his childhood, teenage and early adult years. All he knew was prison. It was almost worse for the rest of the family who had lived a life of luxury in their past life, Malika herself as an adopted princess. This is what I didn’t understand when I read Malika’s follow-up autobiography Freedom. I read Stolen Lives and Freedom the wrong way round, and I had no idea what they truly had experienced. When you read ’20 years in prison’, 20 years is long, but its just a number until you go on the journey of Stolen Lives. As I said in my review of Freedom, an intellectual understanding of her circumstances is no where near an emotional understanding of what she went through.

Click here to buy Freedom by Malika Oufkir (free delivery)

Click here to read my Review of Freedom

I highly recommend this complex autobiography. It shows the ugly and vengeful side of human beings, but more so the strength and love that we are capable of. And it is because of these qualities that this story has a happy ending.

My admiration goes out to the 9 individuals who suffered through those 20 years, they truly deserve peace and happiness.

x Julie

Book Reviews -Reading Like Rabbits

]]> http://readinglikerabbits.com/stolen-lives-twenty-years-in-a-desert-jail/feed 1 http://readinglikerabbits.com/the-year-of-magical-thinking http://readinglikerabbits.com/the-year-of-magical-thinking#comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 14:44:14 +0000 juliewee http://readinglikerabbits.com/?p=950 The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

****~ (4/5)

Non-Fiction / Autobiography / Memoir

Click here to buy this book (with free delivery)

Book Synopsis:

In a second, Joan Didion’s life was thrown into turmoil when her husband John Gregory Dunne unexpectedly died of a massive heart attack in 2003. Not only was her husband of 40 years gone, but two days before his death, their daughter Quintana had been hospitalized after falling seriously ill. Life as Joan knew it had ended.

Joan’s grief leads her to a state of ‘magical thinking’, and Joan lucidly writes of her experience of that time in her life. A time when although she knew intellectually that John was dead, she found herself keeping John’s shoes for him. For when he returned.

This is a unique and honest revelation of Joan’s personal experience of grief. Of a time spent wishing. Her year of magical thinking.

My Book Review:

“Life changes fast.

Life changes in the instant.

You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.

In a heartbeat.

Or the absence of one.”

I have been fortunate that I have not lost someone close to me. Not yet. But the inevitability of death is ever present.

In this book, Joan reveals her experience of grief in the year following her husband John’s death. She reveals how her state of mind changed and flowed over the next few months, her inner turmoil, the strange ideas and convictions that gripped her and the overwhelming loss that she felt.

“Grief, when it comes, is nothing what we expect it to be.”

Joan uses the comparison of the death of her parents to her experience to the death of John. Her parents were 85 and 91 when they died, and she felt sadness, loneliness and regret, but she “would still get up the morning and send out the laundry.”

But “Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life.”

Joan talks about “the vortex effect” – of how one trigger of thought, like passing by a restaurant, would remind her of a time they ate there, which would remind her of another experience, which would take her to a different event years ago, eventually sucking her deep into the past. Into memories of John. She began avoiding any venue that she might associate with him to avoid the vortex.

This is strangely not a depressing book. It is of course about an extremely sad, lost and depressed woman, but Joan Didion writes her murky state of mind with such clarity. Moreover, the state of grieving is not something I have had to experience, nor would choose to, but someday I might have no choice but to experience it. I feel that I want to know something about grief, especially because in our society, displays of grief are frowned upon, and therefore our understanding of it is so limited.

“Visible mourning reminds us of death, which is construed as unnatural, a failure to manage the situation…A single person is missing for you, and the whole world is empty…But one no longer has the right to say so aloud.”

Joan Didion offers a peephole into this foreign world.

This book is sensitive, grounded in the real life experience of a woman grieving. Through raw eyes, looking in dismay at her new life, to which she is now bound, the reader can, if only vicariously, come to glimpse the experience of loss.

x Julie

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by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

***** (5/5)

Autobiography / Non-Fiction

Click to buy this book (free delivery)

Book Synopsis:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is among today’s most controversial yet admired political figures. She made international headlines when her friend and colleague Theo Van Gogh was assassinated in the Netherlands for making the film Submission with Hirsi Ali. His Islamist murderer stabbed a note to his body threatening that Hirsi Ali would be next.

This celebrated writer of The Caged Virgin, and courageous champion of free speech has led an extraordinary life.

In her astonishing memoir, she tells of growing up in Somalia in a staunch Muslim household, to escaping an arranged marriage, to her intellectual re-birth in the Netherlands, to becoming a member of the Dutch parliament, and finally of her life under constant security protection because of her open critique of Islam.

Having made the immense and dangerous ideological shift from a devout Muslim to an outspoken atheist, Hirsi Ali now fights for the rights of Muslim women and the reformation of Islam.

My Book Review:

The journey that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has made up till now is nothing short of amazing.

To be honest, it’s been about a year since I read this book, but the power of the incredulous journey that Ayaan made from the traditional life with her family in Africa to escaping into the Western world without a penny or a friend, to being elected a member of the Dutch House of Representatives, has remained firmly in my psyche.

The most astonishing aspect of this autobiography is in observing Ayaan’s development and her changing, progressive way of thinking.

Ayaan is now an activist who made the open conversion from Islam to atheism. She is very critical of Islam, speaking out especially about the place of women in Islamic societies.

This is an important, current and true life story. Ayaan speaks up loudly for what she believes are grave injustices in this world and suffers the consequences – constant death threats and the threats carried out with the murder of her friend Theo van Gogh. But still she speaks out.

x Julie

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a memoir

by Jeanette Walls

***** (5/5)

Memoir/Autobiography

Click to buy this book (free delivery)

Book Synopsis:

The Glass Castle is an extraordinary memoir of a dysfunctional yet effervescent American family. Jeanette’s father is an intelligent, compelling figure, who educates his children on geology, physics and joie de vivre. However, more often than not, he was a drunk who was caustic and dishonest.

Jeanette’s mother was a free spirit who loved painting but hated conformity and the domestic life of raising children.

And so, Jeanette and her siblings grew up taking care of themselves. Jeanette became a successful writer in New York, a place where her parents eventually moved, choosing out of their own free will to live homeless.

In The Glass Castle, the behavior of Rex and Rose Mary Walls is shocking and unacceptable, yet at the same time, it is abundantly clear that they possess deep love and loyalty for their children. It is this contradiction that makes this memoir so gripping.

My Book Review:

I read this memoir in disbelief.

It begins with the adult Jeanette sitting in a taxi, stuck in New York City traffic, on her way to a party, when she sees her own mother in rags picking through the trash. Despite Jeanette trying to help both her mother and father countless times, her father would always say they didn’t need anything and her mother would ask for something silly like electrolysis treatment. “They said they were living the way they wanted to.”

And so begins a fascinating look back into the true life of this strange, unconventional but loving family.

Rex is an intelligent, well read man and Rose Mary is artistic, and they choose to live life they way they want to live it. The couple are fiercely anti-establishment and seem unwilling to provide for their children (despite their apparent intelligence and skills they are very often jobless and extremely poor) and yet they love their children intensely. They simply don’t function the way we expect people (especially parents) to function, choosing to live life according to their own rules. They are infuriating in their negligence, but at the same time they shine in their individuality and are absolutely captivating – they are characters that are so well written, it’s hard to believe they are not fiction.

I won’t give away too much, just one example from the 2nd Chapter. Jeanette is severely burned because she was cooking for herself – a regular activity for her – at the age of 3. Three year old Jeanette was standing on a chair in front of the stove when her dress caught fire. They brought her to the hospital (a rare decision for this family, who would either go to a witch doctor, or to no one at all, when their children were injured) Then, prematurely broke her out of hospital “Rex Walls style”.

A few days after their escape, when Jeanette started cooking for herself again, her mother said, :

“Good for you…You’ve got to get right back in the saddle. You can’t live in fear of something as basic as fire.”

They were peculiar because they seemed incapable of looking after their children in some ways, but at the same time had a strict sense of conduct when it came to things like chewing gum, “A disgusting low class habit.” This is just the beginning, this memoir is filled with stories just like this, if not more astounding, and my heart went out to the children who suffered the brunt of Rex and Rose Mary’s choices.

The actions and inactions of Jeanette’s parents are so ironic that this memoir is addictive. The Walls parents choose to live this strange and ‘unsuccessful’ life in the conventional sense, but they have a good sense of humour and seemed to be content with their decisions much of the time. I almost wonder if I should do the same and truly follow what I feel. I know I would never do that, I like my comforts and sticking out of the crowd is not something I’d aspire to. But I suspect Rose Mary and Rex Walls were actually happy in the way they chose to live their life.

x Julie

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The True Story Behind ‘Hotel Rwanda’

By Paul Rusesabagina with Tom Zoellner

***** (5/5)

Non-Fiction / Autobiography

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Book Synopsis:

Paul Rusesabagina’s extraordinary courage inspired the film Hotel Rwanda, which received 3 Academy Award nominations and starred Don Cheadle.

“The killer would not look at me.

In that one small turn of the face, I saw there might be some room for me to maneuver. I saw that I had a small chance to save the lives of thirty-two of my neighbours who were huddled in the cars behind me.

All I needed was to find the right words. Everything now depended on my words…”

During the Rwandan genocide of 2004, Rusesabagina used his position as general manager of the Hotel des Mille Collines to protect over twelve hundred Tutsis as well as moderate Hutus. Though a delicate balance of diplomacy, smooth talking and cautious trickery, he managed to maintain the Hotel des Mille as a safe house, while the madness raged beyond its gates.

Rusesabagina transports the reader to those 100 days of cold-blooded murder, to the torment of those who witnessed their loved ones murdered before them. He relates how he felt as he served liquor and cigars to killers by the hotel’s pool, when just above them, he was attempting to hide as many of their potential victims as he could in the upstairs rooms.

What’s more, he describes his feelings of betrayal and deep disappointment when the international community chose to ignore the genocide.

Rusesabagina’s autobiography reveals the racial complexity of his personal life being a Hutu but married to a Tutsi and his attempt to address the question: What causes a whole nation to go insane?

The strength of Paul Rusesabagina’s character is clear, but more importantly, he was an ordinary man who stepped up and acted with true courage and humility during an extraordinary time.

My Book Review:

Where do I start? This is the personal story of a man who did what he could amidst the unthinkable. 800,000 people were killed in Rwanda in just 100 days, the fastest and most efficient genocide in history.

The hotel manager, Paul Rusesabagina, is the most admirable man I have ever had the privilege of encountering. In the face of brutal chaotic killers, some of them his neighbours, who blindly hacked apart friends, children and the elderly, Rusesabagina, stood calm and rational. He used every word in his power to protect the 1,200 people who were hiding in his hotel.

Rusesabagina begins by explaining the history of Rwandan racial politics. How the disparity of power and apparent facial structure built up over the years, split Rwanda into two, The Hutu’s and The Tutsi’s,  eventually erupted into anarchy and frenzied killing.

The autobiography is divided into 3 parts:

• The history behind Rwanda’s racial politics

• The 100 days during the genocide when Rusesabagina and the refugees were living in the hotel, constantly fending off imminent slaughter and

• Rusesabagina’s life and view of Rwanda after the genocide.

I found I had to distance myself from the descriptions of the horrific killings that are described in the book, in order to sanely get through reading it. Despite the almost unimaginable events, this was surprisingly a very easy book to read.

Easy to read for 2 reasons:

1) Rusesabagina is an amiable and humble man, with unmatchable integrity.

2) Because it is important. It is important to know this history that is so recent we should consider it the present. It is important to see and respect men like Paul Rusesabagina and know that words and non-violence really can work in real life.

I thought The Holocaust would have been lesson enough, but this is the list of genocides from Wikipedia that have occurred between 1951 to 2000:

Australia (1900-1969), Zanzibar, Guatemala, Bangladesh War of 1971, Burundi, Equatorial Guinea, Cambodia, East Timor, Argentina, Sabra-Shatila in Lebanon, Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Iraqi Kurds, Tibet, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo, Azerbaijan, West New Guinea/West Papua and Sri Lanka.

It would be so easy to write these mass killings off as ‘things of the past’ or ‘things that only happen elsewhere’. We live privileged lives in cushy 1st world countries, and as we discover in An Ordinary Man, it was countries like ours who could have put a stop to the mindless slaughter. But we didn’t. The world did nothing. Even with 2,700 UN troops stationed in Rwanda, Rusesabagina says:

“In my opinion the UN was not just useless during the genocide. It was more then useless. It would have been better off for us if they did not exist at all, because it allowed the world to think that something was being done, that some parental figure was minding the store.”

Rusesabagina made endless calls and faxes to government bodies, including the White House, but was ignored every time. There is a passage in which he describes a conversation he had with a woman at the White House. It will make your blood boil.

Paul Rusesabagina speaks plainly and sincerely. Watch the movie and read the book. This is present and possibly continuing history.

x Julie

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Train Man

by Nakano Hitori

Translated by Bonnie Elliott.

****~ (4/5)

Fiction / Biography (Train Man is supposedly based on true internet chat forum conversations)

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Book cover synopsis:

“The story of the Train man who fell in love with the girl, Hermes.

The best selling internet-generation love story from Japan.’

Train Man is lifted directly from Japan’s 2-Channel chat forum, the world’s largest message board and the most popular website in Japan, handling a million posts every day.

On the web you can say what you feel and be who you want, no strings attached. But sometimes the web escapes into reality and the truth becomes more amazing than fiction.

When a nerdy young guy saves a girl from a drunk on a train and posts the story on a net forum, it’s just one message among millions. But somehow the thread keeps unwinding and through the other messengers enthusiasm ‘Train’ is spurred on to get it together with the girl ‘Hermes’.

Train continues to update his virtual friends as his relationship progresses and they continue to offer him advice – some good, some awful. Hermes knows he’s got helpful friends, but what will happen when he reveals just who these friends are and what he’s been telling them?

Nakano Hitori (meaning ‘one of us’) was the name used by an anonymous messager who first collected Train Man’s adventures into a single complete and magic thread. Since then Train Man has become a Japanese social phenomenon, generating a hit movie, a TV series, stage play, five manga relisations, a guidebook and three companion books. The true identity of Train Man remains a closely guarded secret.

My Book Review:

No one really knows if Train Man is fiction or reality, but I’d like to think it’s closer to reality. Train Man is a charming and extremely endearing love story told through posts on an online chat room full of computer geeks. Boy meets girl, but is too shy to approach her on his own, so he asks for help in the chat room. It’s a truly contemporary tale which demonstrates the modern mode of community support in action.

The story is printed in the form of posts on the forum.

Eg:

’733 Name: Anonymous Post Date: 14/03/04 21:28

What’s goin’ on man?

734 Name: Anonymous Post Date: 14/03/04 21.28

>> 731 did you get a girlfriend?’

It takes a little while to get used to the style but once you get past that you’ll be hooked. Train Man is quite clueless about how to deal with a girl but his chat room buddies (often as inexperienced), all have some sort of advice to give. They seem to be living vicariously through Train Man, eager for him to succeed. They sometimes stay up waiting up late into the night to find out how his dates with ‘Hermes’ went. Because the story is told from the chat room, neither the netizens nor the reader can go with Train Man on his dates, we can only find out what happens when Train Man returns and writes about it.

The translation is sometimes a tiny bit jarring using words like ‘the old geezer’, which to me, is very colloquially English. I found it hard to imagine young Japanese men/women saying ‘geezer’.

Because of Train Man’s inexperience, he is very cautious in his progress with ‘Hermes’, so it takes a while for things to develop. Train Man is a fun read if you’re looking for a tender love story, or need some help ‘getting out there’ yourself.

x Julie

Book Reviews

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I – My Father Bleeds History

II – And Here My Trouble Begin

by Art Spiegelman

***** (5/5)

Fiction, Graphic Novel

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Book Synopsis:

“The Jews are undoubtedly a race, but they are not human.” – Adolf Hitler

Maus is the story of Vladek Spiegelman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler’s Europe, and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father, his father’s terrifying story, and history itself. It’s form, the cartoon (Nazi’s are cats, the Jews are mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of our any lingering sense of familiarity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive. It is, as the New York Times Book Review has commented, “a remarkable feat of documentary detail and novelistic vividness…an unfolding literary event.”

Moving back and forth from Poland to Rego Park, New York, Maus tells two powerful stories: The first is Spiegelman’s father’s account of how he and his wife survived Hitler’s Europe, a harrowing tale filled with countless brushes with death, improbable escapes, and the terror of confinement and betrayal. The second is the author’s tortured relationship with his aging father as they try to lead a normal life of minor arguments and passing visits against a backdrop of history too large to pacify. At all levels, this is the ultimate survivor’s tale – and that too, of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

Part I of Maus takes Spiegelman’s parents to the gates of Auschwitz and him to the edge of despair. Put aside all your preconceptions. These cats and mice are not Tom and Jerry, but something quite different. This is a new kind of literature.

Why I love Maus:

Yes, this is a graphic novel, but don’t be fooled by its form. You simply cannot be snooty and turn your nose up at this particular comic strip. This cartoon is history. I have a fascination with stories about the Holocaust because I cant quite believe how it could have happened and that people can be so horrifically cruel. (I should state here that I of course believe it happened, I just can’t believe it happened.)

In Maus, the Jews and Nazi’s are anthropomorphized as mice and cats respectively, distancing the reader from reality making it seem more like a story, a fairy tale, than a biography. But very soon, once you become familiar with the characters, and as the story moves into darker areas, the cats and mice become powerfully human, menacing and vulnerable, dragging you headlong into the fear of the Nazi occupation.

I found Maus a simple yet sophisticated insight into the personal life story of a Holocaust survivor, and the shell-shock that remains with such survivors for the rest of their lives. You can’t help but have compassion for the grumpy old man Vladek Spiegelman becomes, because you realise what hell he’s been through.

There is also some humour in Maus, as you identify with the son, (and author) Art, in his dealings with his stubborn father. Also, people of other races are depicted by different animals – for example, the French are frogs, the Poles are pigs and the Americans are dogs. This may seem that Spiegelman is typecasting, but he is actually showing how ridiculous it is to classify a human being based on their ethnicity.

Maus took a total of thirteen years to complete and is studied in English literature courses as well as courses on Jewish culture. If you have older children, read it with them.

This book is accessible, intensely moving and important.

x Julie

Book Reviews

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a memoir by Malika Oufkir

****½ (4.5/5)

Autobiography

Freedom is the sequel to Oufkir’s Autobiography Stolen Lives

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Book Cover Synopsis:

Stolen Lives, Malika Oufkir’s intensely moving account of her twenty years imprisoned in a desert jail in Morocco, was a surprise international bestseller.

In her highly anticipated follow-up, Malika reflects on the life she lived before and during incarceration and how dramatically the world had changed when she emerged. Malika was born into extreme privilege as the daughter of the king of Morocco’s closest aide, and she grew up in the palace as companion to the Moroccan princess. But in 1972, her life of luxury came to a crashing halt. Her family was locked away for two decades. After a remarkable escape, Malika and her family returned to the world they’d left behind, only to find it transformed.

Living for the first time as an adult, Malika writes candidly about adjusting to the world – from negotiating ATMs to the excesses of shopping malls, to falling in love and learning to be intimate. When she is finally free, motherhood becomes crucial to Malika’s ability to fully live her life: she becomes legal guardian to her niece, then she and her husband adopt a baby boy from Morocco. Full of insights and piercing observations, as well as humour, Freedom is as masterful and thought provoking as Oufkir’s astonishing debut.

Malika Oufkir was born in 1953 and divides her time between Miami and Marakesh.

Review Update: 1 June 2010

I read these 2 memoirs the wrong way round. I read Freedom before Stolen Lives. After reading Stolen Lives, I now understand emotionally what I understood only intellectually whilst reading Freedom. I have a renewed empathy for Malika and her family. Read these books in the right order. Especially read Stolen Lives.

Click here to read my review of Stolen Lives

My Book Review:

I should have read Stolen Lives before reading Freedom. But I didn’t. Stolen Lives chronicles Malika’s 20 years in prison, while Freedom is about her experience of life after prison. I should have read it in the right order, and understandably, it took me a little while to catch up. So, although I understood intellectually that being imprisoned for 20 years from the age of 19 with the rest of your innocent family (her youngest brother was 3 years old), is a terrible thing and would undoubtedly have potentially irreversible consequences, it took me a lot of time to understand emotionally how Malika came to be a frightened woman, unable to touch the abundant produce on the shelves of French supermarkets. I naïvely expected that after years of depravation, one would naturally gorge on the rainbow of delights available at your fingertips.

In the first couple of chapters, I began to feel guilty for not understanding the reactions and details of this woman. Guilty, because this is a true account, and you cant just close the book and place it back on your shelf like you would fiction that you ‘couldn’t get into’. I kept reading, and I quickly immersed myself into the mindset of Malika who really was discovering freedom and the modern world for the first time as an adult.

Her insights are striking. The busy, cluttered, automated and free world that we are so used to was both amazing and terrifying for Malika. Things we take for granted, like censor taps, paying using a credit card and the ability to walk past a policeman without fear, are baffling and difficult for Malika to comprehend. You see a woman who has been through more hardship than we can imagine as a mouse or a wide eyed deer ready to bolt at any sigh of danger.

As the reader I felt a sense of triumph on behalf of Malika every time she managed to conquer her demons and take truly brave steps forward in her new life.

Reading about Malika’s experience redefined my notion of bravery and courage. I would have Hollywood-ly assumed a woman released would embrace her freedom with vigour. But in truth, and in accordance with human nature, baby steps are required to step into this frightening vast new world that does not posses the controlled limits of a cell.

I haven’t read Stolen Lives yet (I have just placed a reservation for it at the library), but I know through Freedom that Malika is a brave woman whose fragility, guts and truthful personal revelations will inspire and humble any reader.

x Julie

Book Reviews

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