I found this to be a very quiet, truthful novel. It’s a story about a father and a son, or perhaps a father and his father and a son, or perhaps the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. But it’s also about love.

The book is written as a letter, or a series of letters left behind by a reverand reaching eighty for his seven-year old son. There are many times when he seems to be quietly apologetic for ‘just not expecting’ him. There are so many things he wishes he could grow up with him and show him, so many quiet beauties in the world he wants his son to share. The way water shakes off leaves or dresses, the way afternoon light settles gently on tables…

And it is also a story about forgiveness. This novel came quite unexpectedly to me as an airport book (an instinct I always trust; I am convinced that any book I pick up in an airport will be worth reading). I gave a copy to my own father, and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

It is sweet like a the kiss of a child.

I can’t stand this play!

Yes, it’s worth reading, or much better, seeing, because it is a cornerstone of modern theatre. But I couldn’t bear watching these characters play out their hopeless lives. There are so many chances they had to change things for themselves, and they refused to take them! Willy Loman is a tragic figure, perhaps. But his tragedy is entirely and irritatingly avoidable. Come on, Biff! Change! Change! Do something with yourself!

Man oh man. This play makes me mad.

What does this remember like?

“In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine.”

- Milan Kundera, ‘The Unbearable Lightness of Being’

Stephen Lewis is one of the Canadians that really makes me feel there is some good in this world. This book is a passionate plea to take up arms against a sea of indifference and apathy and a damning indictment of those who have sat by and allowed to AIDS crisis to reach pandemic proportions in Africa.

With quiet fortitude and ample reserves of compassion and fire, he wrote this book as a companion to the annual Massey Lecture series, of which he was last year’s speaker. It is heady at times, and he is wont to lapse into UN jargon from time to time, but he sets out simply and unflinchingly steps which must be immediately taken to head off the crisis and make education, women, children (especially those orphaned by the disease) and food uncompromising priorities. I challenge anyone to stand up and say neoliberal macroeconomic policies like structural adjustment are beneficial for developing countries after reading this book.

You will not be unmoved.

With man gone, will there be hope for gorilla?

Or, the better question…

This man… toes the fine line between insanity and genius. A very fine line.

This a visceral, extremely emotional novel about a woman in Egypt who is forced to do a terrible thing and is sentenced to death. You meet her in prison, and she does not ask for your forgiveness, and that is perhaps the most unsettling part about it.

I read this novel in high school. I have mixed feelings about it, because I think it is an important book to read for its subject matter, perspective, and sheer immediacy. I did not, however, find I could sympathise with the main character on any level (harsh, perhaps, but that was my indictment at the time). There are some things that are simply unforgiveable.

That being said, I was impressed by this quote I found from el-Saadawi:

‘Danger has been a part of my life ever since I picked up a pen and wrote. Nothing is more perilous than truth in a world that lies.’

It is at heart a book about empire, about family, and about understandings that sometimes cannot be bridged, or perhaps, must be bridged. It reminded me of A Fine Balance in the best ways, but touched more on what the immigrant ‘windrush’ from the West Indies to Britain after World War II, especially in 1948, meant for Jamaicans and other islanders from the Caribbean as well as for the British at the heart of the empire suddenly inundated with immigrants from the colonies they’d maintained at a sea’s length before. Not too vast to be epic, not too tragic to be unmanageable, but a splendid balance of bitterness and sweetness.

I highly recommend it (that is, re-commend it indeed, because everyone in my family commended it to me).

Oh, and it’s funny. Really.

Definitely too bizarre.

you fit into me
like a hook into an eye

a fish hook
an open eye