My Friends - Hisham Matar

One of the many books suggested by my mother, and yet again one of her many on-point suggestions. I greatly enjoyed reading this, but for me it was very much a story of two halves. 

The first half, with the main character's walk from King's Cross to his home in Shepherd's Bush was a work of art, introducing me to something I didn't know about (the shooting from the Libyan embassy in 1984), talking about something that I feel I know so well (that part of London, in particular the shout-out to the caryatids of St Pancras New Church, right outside my beloved undergraduate student hall), and making me think about some of my favourite London writers (Kureishi obviously, given the period being discussed and the immigrants' stories). 

The second half, however, was just a bit much. While it is true that wars are being increasingly fought by middle-aged men, I found it a bit far fetched and hard to buy into that two semi-intellectuals would find themselves at the forefront of the violent actions of the initial phases of the Libyan Civil War, and  reading about their discovery of Ghedaffi in hiding really appeared excessive to me. 

Red Sorghum - Mo Yan

 

I had meant to read this book since discovering years ago a beautiful collection of short stories by Mo Yan. 

Red Sorghum ended up being very much in line with what I expected. My mother said she found it a Chinese version of Doctor Zhivago, but in all honesty I enjoyed this a fair deal more than Pasternak's book. 

A number of things were obviously "lost in translation" for me: the heroic tone of many tales, the frequent repetition of words, idioms and plot twists, and also the characters' sentimental dynamics. Yet, it brought to life a period of Chinese history that I had read about at length from a historical point of view in a way that I had not experienced before, and that to me is rather commendable. 

A Long Petal of the Sea - Isabel Allende

 

Granted, I only read this book because of the dearth of other available titles from Southwark's ebook library at the time, but damn this was bad...

Pretty much every book I've ever read by Allende brings in her uncle Salvador, which I actually find quite frustrating after a while. One thing is to do it in an autobiographical tale like Paula, but doing it here feels just like a cheap trick to get people to say "oh, yes, I know that guy" (a feeling that then most people vaguely familiar with 1973 Chile will experience again at the multiple mentions of Neruda and Victor Jara). 

Mini-rant aside, for me this book read just like a melodrama aimed at a 19th century audience - everything was theatrical and pseudo-poetic. Of all the things that this novel attempts to cover, the only passages that I found (vaguely) interesting were the ones covering the escape from Barcelona at the end of the Spanish Civil War. On the plus side, at least it was a quick read...

Persepolis - Marjane Satrapi

Is it bad of me to say that I didn't particularly enjoy this book?

As far as the graphic aspects of graphic novels go, I wasn't blown away by the visual aspects of Persepolis.

And as far as novels go, the personal story of Marjane is extremely interesting (though I suspect not too dissimilar from that of a lot of people in a similar position in the 1980s), but I didn't learn much that I didn't know already about the big historical issues that frame the book.

At times the book appears to me to be a bit too raw, but maybe that's because it is ultimaltely written and drawn through the eyes of a young woman still trying to find her way into the world.

The Comedians – Graham Greene

I bonded with the former Registrar at LSE over our common love for literature – although, honestly, I was mostly listening to his suggestions rather than offering much of my own (with the exception of some tips on some Italian novels, at best). I remember telling him that I wished I could teach the Vietnam War by starting with a discussion of The Quiet American, and him saying that his favourite Graham Greene book was actually The Comedians. I can see where he was coming from (although this is not my favourite Greene novel – that’d probably be Our Man in Havana, at least at the time of writing).

In terms of white men trying to find their place in Latin America, I liked The Comedians a lot better than The Honorary Consul, and that’s probably because Haiti to me is much more exotic than Argentina and Paraguay. Also, the Live and Let Die-vibe of the book is truly excellent, as is the self-criticism of Mr Brown (who really reminded me of Rick in Casablanca). I just can’t understand how they managed to make an awful movie out of this book…

Now I think I’ll have to stop reading books by Greene, chiefly because I’ve read a few too many over the last couple of years and I am afraid I might be overdoing (my relationship with Ian McEwan serves as a serious warning here).

Oh, and whoever designed the back-cover of my Penguin edition is an absolute ass committed to spoiling the plot – bravo!