On this sunny,
cool Sunday morning, as I sip my Chai tea, I am thinking about my reading and
listening experiences over the past week.
I usually try to
read one book each week, which I then write about here on the weekend. Last weekend I started reading Canadian novelist Heather Clark’s
new novel, Elephant in the Sky. A
couple of years ago I read and wrote about her first novel, Chai Tea Sunday
(no mystery about why I had to read that title, is there?!), which told the
story of Nicky, a young woman who, having recently miscarried and learned that
she can never have children, leaves her marriage and her current life to accept a teaching
position in Kenya. This assignment is
both more difficult for her than she had anticipated, yet also more rewarding,
and she is able to overcome her grief and once again find purpose in her
life. It has been a couple of years
since reading this title, but I remember enjoying it. Elephant in the Sky, on the other
hand, has proven to be a different story.
Alisha is a high-power advertising executive who struggles with the
feeling that she is not spending enough time with her family. Her husband Pete works freelance and
is a stay-at-home father for their two children, 13-year-old Grace and 9-year-old
Nate. When Nate begins exhibiting
bizarre behaviour, including paranoid delusions, Ashley’s struggle becomes more
intense as she must choose between saving her family and saving her
career (or this is how I suspect the story will go). Sounds like an interesting story, right? Unfortunately, this is not the case. Told in alternating chapters narrated by Nate
and Ashley, I was at first excited to read the novel’s opening chapter, which
reminded me of Mark Haddon’s excellent novel, The Curious Incident of the
Dog in the Night-time, narrated by a young boy with autism who decides to
solve the mystery of “Who killed Wellington?”, as well as to find his mother,
whom he was told had died, but whom he discovers is actually still alive and
has been trying to keep in touch with him.
Nate’s first chapter tells of the strange feeling he has in his stomach,
like bubbles in his belly, and how he ultimately acts on his irresistible urge
to go to the store and get gum, any colour, even though he has forgotten his
money. He is clearly experiencing some
form of childhood mental illness, but the reader is not sure what this illness
is. Then Ashely has her turn to tell her
story – her chapters include much product placement, including her red Prada
laptop bag, and a “killer Dolce & Gabbana suit”, which put me off a bit,
but I kept reading because I am interested in novels that explore mental
illness. There were many instances when tears
sprang to Ashley’s eyes as she encountered one and then another of Nate’s
difficult situations, at home and at school, but by the halfway point, I had to
set this book aside and pick up another that I hoped would be more
interesting. This novel was just bland. It didn’t go anywhere. Where Chai Tea Sunday was a riotous,
colourful African morning, Elephant in the Sky was a wet, grey,
ceaselessly rainy day. I did try reading
this for a full three days and half the book before closing it forever (or at
least until someone who has read it to the end tells me it is worth sticking it
out to the final page). The reason I
stopped reading this book? It was a copy
I was given to review for the local paper, and I knew that the only reason I
would finish it would be to submit a review but that the review would be, if
not outright negative, bland to the point of, well, pointlessness. This begs the question: Is it worthwhile to write bad reviews? Should reviewers only review “good”
books? My response to these questions is
that reading and book choice reflects an individual’s taste like almost nothing
else that we do. It takes into account
our reading history and life experiences, and so what appeals to me may not
appeal to you, and vice versa. If I
write a bad review, you may not expose yourself to that title, a book that you may
have otherwise read and which may, in fact, have spoken to you. If I write a positive review of a book that
appealed to me, on the other hand, you may pick it up and read it, and either
like it or not, depending on your reading taste. So I guess I’m saying that I choose not to
write negative reviews, because a) I am not obligated to review any particular
titles, b) chances are if the book is not appealing to me, I wouldn’t even bother
to finish it, and c) I do not want to deter anyone from reading a book, in case it will appeal to them, even if it did not appeal to me. I feel safe in writing
about my negative reading experiences in my blog, though, since I am certain that far
fewer people are reading this than read the reviews in the local paper, and
also this blog reflects my own personal reading experiences, not really book reviews. WOW, that was a lot more than I thought I had
to say about Elephant in the Sky! Anyway, halfway through the week, I started reading The Colonial Hotel by Jonathan Bennett, another Canadian author, which I am finding much more interesting. More on that novel when I finish it...
I am also nearly
finished listening to Wife of the Gods by Kwei Quartey, the first in the “Darko Dawson” series. This novel is set
in Ghana, and features Detective Inspector Dawson, a good husband and father
working in Accra who is assigned to help with a murder investigation in Ketanu,
a village in the Volta region. Gladys
Mensa, a young medical student who is trying to educate people about AIDS, is
found murdered in the woods, and Dawson must fight the local police every step
of the way as he struggles to uncover the secrets buried deep in the village’s
community, a village where his mother disappeared nearly 30 years before. Dawson also learns of the Trokosi, women who were
offered to the fetish priests to become their wives in order to bring good
fortune on the families by the gods.
Quartey introduces readers to West African traditions and superstitions
still practiced in small villages, as well as to the changes and supposed progress
that have taken over in the bigger cities.
This novel was a treat to listen to, as it provided not only a great
mystery, but also a lesson in the culturally diversity of Ghana. I highly recommend this title, and will try
to find out if Quartey has written more in this series.
And I want to
give you a (very short) list of books about royalty that I have read, in honour
of Victoria Day:
Nicholas and
Alexandra by Robert Massie, about the lives of the Romanov
family in the last days of Imperial Russia (non-fiction, but reads like a novel
- awesome!)
The Winter
Palace by Eva Stachniak, about the life of
Catherine the Great as told from the point of view of her servant, Barbara (haven’t yet read this, but it is on my
book club list for November)
Famous Last Words by Timothy Findley, which I thought was mostly about the abdication
of King Edward VIII to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson, but which is also about so much more (amazing book,
and one of my favourites, which is probably due for re-reading)
This short list
shows that I am not a reader of historical fiction or non-fiction, and that’s
OK. I’ve had to justify this reading taste to people in the past, which I feel
is unfair – as adults, we should be free to read whatever books suit us. I personally find historical fiction too descriptive, when really I am more interested in character or plot development.
I’m all “posted-out”
or I would talk about the power of well-written prose as encountered in the Lee
Valley flyer this week. Perhaps I will
save that for next week’s post…
Happy Victoria
Day weekend!
Bye for now…
Julie
Julie
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