It’s snowy and overcast and chilly this morning, although it’s much milder than it was last week. I’ve got a cup of delicious steeped chai to keep me warm as I write this short post about two great books.
The first book I will tell you about is A Great Country by Canadian author Shilpi Somaya Gowda. I’ve really enjoyed her books in the past, Secret Daughter and Golden Son, both set in India. This one is set in an upscale, gated community in Pacific Hills, California, where the Shah family has recently moved from their lower-class neighbourhood of Irvine a few months ago. Priya and Ashok emigrated to California twenty years earlier with not much more than enough to see them through their first few months, but they worked hard to attain the American Dream, and they want to raise their children to strive for a better life. Their three children, Deepa, sixteen, Maya, fourteen and Ajay, twelve, are living more independent lives than either parent ever dreamed of back home, but this comes with a price. While out flying his drone at the Wayne County airport after school one day, Ajay is brutally arrested and taken to a jail cell, where Priya is eventually called once it is discovered that, despite his height and appearance, he's still a child. What follows is an exploration into immigration and racism, and how the Shah family deal with this possible racial-profiling-related arrest. It was a good, solid read that explores the shades of racism and threats of deportation that face many people in the US, as well as challenges faced by people in India regarding caste hierarchy. It was very interesting and enlightening, though sometimes a bit flat or heavy-handed, but a good, solid, worthwhile read that tackles many important themes.
The other book I want to talk about, by another favourite Canadian author, is The Mystery of Right and Wrong by Wayne Johnston. This audiobook, performed by several narrators, sucked me in immediately and kept me listening with increasing shock and horror until the very last word (I even listened to the lengthy Author’s Note at the end, which is very important to understand the significance of this story and the characters). In this autobiographical fictionalized novel, Wade Jackson is a recent university graduate in St. John, Newfoundland who wants to be a writer but doesn’t know where to begin. He meets Rachel van Hout, also a recent graduate, who can’t stop reading or writing, specifically reading Anne Frank’s diary (in multiple languages) and writing in her own diary, sometimes in what she calls “the Arelliad”, written in a language she created and which no one but she can use or understand. Born in Cape Town, South Africa, the youngest of three sisters, Rachel grapples with her obsessions with reading and writing as she also grapples with her own family history and dynamics. Her father, Hans van Hout, also narrates portions of this novel in the form of his own epic poem, “The Ballad of the Clan van Hout”, which serves as both a family history and an indoctrination, as the girls are made to memorize this poem even as they are sexually abused at the hands of its writer. I don’t even know how to describe this ambitious, disturbing, heart-wrenching, thought-provoking fictionalized disclosure of the truth about the lives and histories of Johnston, who has been a long-time sufferer of hypergraphia (the compulsion to write endlessly) and hyperlexia (the compulsion to read all the time) and his wife, Rose, who suffered serial sexual abuse at the hands of her own father, along with her three sisters, in both South Africa and Newfoundland. This was an amazing read, and I’m especially glad I listened to it, as so much of the book is written in poetry, which is best appreciated when read aloud. It was brilliant, disturbing, and so very important, and I have a new appreciation for this author, whose books I’ve been enjoying since I was a student at Lakehead University so many decades ago and a fellow English grad student literally walked me to the library shelves and placed The Story of Bobby O’Malley in my hands, insisting I read it. This book, like Bobby O’Malley, will stay on in my memory for years to come. I would highly recommend it to anyone, but be warned that very disturbing themes are explored.
That’s all for today. Time to get out for a long walk and enjoy the milder temperatures.
Bye for now! Julie
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