Book Description
What would you do to inherit a million dollars? Would you be willing to change your life? Jason Stevens is about to find out in Jim Stovall's The Ultimate Gift. Red Stevens has died, and the older members of his family receive their millions with greedy anticipation. But a different fate awaits young Jason, whom Stevens, his great-uncle, believes may be the last vestige of hope in the family. "Although to date your life seems to be a sorry excuse for anything I would call promising, there does seem to be a spark of something in you that I hope we can fan into a flame. For that reason, I am not making you an instant millionaire." What Stevens does give Jason leads to The Ultimate Gift. Young and old will take this timeless tale to heart.
Customer Reviews:
Read the book, watch the movie - both will inspire!.......2007-10-01
I received this book as a gift shortly after watching the movie by the same name - I was greatly impressed with the movie and anxious to read the book (since everyone knows that the book is always better than the movie). This book is no exception to that rule - an outstanding read and it was as easy to read as the movie was to watch. This is a novel, a work of fiction that drives home some real life points! The premise of the book is about what's really important in life - is it what we build with our hands or the money and worldly success we achieve, or is it something more than that, something that isn't tangible and can't be bought or sold for any amount of money? In his final will, a dying wealthy man tries to communicate from the grave the true meaning of life to a family member who up until this point hasn't got a clue!
I would think that this book could probably be read to children in upper elementary school and could be read by 7th or 8th graders on their own. The book should be read by parents first so that they can engage their children in conversation along the way. While the book isn't overtly Christian, you'll find that the lessons taught in this novel are very similar to the wisdom shared in the Book of Proverbs and throughout Scripture. Stovall isn't preaching, but he sure can drive a point home with this story; and these twelve "gifts" passed from one generation to the next are essential for each and every one of us to learn as well.
While some say that the movie isn't as good as the book, I say that they are a pretty good compliment of each other. The movie takes various liberties with the book to get this message on screen, but you won't be disappointed with either. The book is written to provoke thought and discussion and families should use them as tools to teach valuable life lessons to their children - Red Stevens would have wanted it that way!
The Ultimate Gift DVD.......2007-09-27
The Ultimate Gift you sent me was a total disaster. I ordered the movie edition and you sent me a book and a promotional DVD. I did not receive the movie edition of the Ultimate Gift. Unfortunately I had ordered it to take on a bus trip that I was directing and I had not taken the time to watch what you sent me, thinking it was the movie edition. When I put it in the DVD player with everyone on the bus eager to watch the movie there was only the promotional disc. Needless to say I was embarrassed and not too happy. Fortunately along the way I was able to purchase the DVD that I thought I was buying from Amazon at a much higher price. I have ordered from Amazon before and have been very pleased but not this time.
A Timely Gift.......2007-09-24
Several copies of The Ultimate Gift were placed on a table at my workplace. A handwritten note read, "Take one and pass it on." The title was intriguing and never one to pass up something free or an opportunity to read, I took one.
Having gained knowledge of most of these gifts through the ups and downs of life, I enjoyed the validations, while unfortunately identifying with Uncle Red's mistakes. I am grateful to the person who made it possible to have a copy of the book.
I titled this review 'a timely gift' because I received in time read it and mail it to my son as a gift for his 26th birthday. Like Uncle Red, wishing to provide, I robbed my children of many of the gifts. I am hoping the book will make a difference in my son's life as he is not a happy person even though he has many blessings. When and if I am in touch with my prodigal daughter, I will share The Ultimate Gift with her, also. It is my goal to share copies of The Ultimate Gift with many, many young persons.
Good , but not terrific.......2007-09-19
The reviews I read promised an inspiring book. It was not to be. It was an interesting premise and story. But the lack of detailed story left me disappointed. Reading the story from the lawyer's view did not give us an opportunity to really travel the road to enlightenment. I felt I was reading the summary, not the story.
A movie of the book is coming out soon. I dare say, I see an immense opprtunity for the movie to outshine the book.
Great book!.......2007-09-17
This is a great book and I would recommend buying used items from Amazon as I have always been satisified with my purchases and most of all, the money I save. This book has been made into a movie that is really great, but the book is always better.
Average customer rating:
- Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: What an amazing book!
- It makes me want to burn my bra!
- A Beautiful Story!
- Page turner!
- Book Club selection - Wonderful and rich
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Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: A Novel
Lisa See
Manufacturer: Random House Trade Paperbacks
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Suite Francaise
ASIN: 0812968069
Release Date: 2006-02-21 |
Book Description
In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, “old same,” in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she’s painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower send messages on fans, compose stories on handkerchiefs, reaching out of isolation to share their hopes, dreams, and accomplishments. Together, they endure the agony of foot-binding, and reflect upon their arranged marriages, shared loneliness, and the joys and tragedies of motherhood. The two find solace, developing a bond that keeps their spirits alive. But when a misunderstanding arises, their deep friendship suddenly threatens to tear apart.
Download Description
Lisa See is the author of Flower Net (an Edgar Award nominee), The Interior, and Dragon Bones, as well as the critically acclaimed memoir On Gold Mountain. The Organization of Chinese American Women named her the 2001 National Woman of the Year. She lives in Los Angeles.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: What an amazing book!.......2007-10-10
My favorite book in my 2 year book club. I love the way she writes and describes a world and lives of strong women who have no choice, no love, no life but yet have each other, dreams, and and hope.
It makes me want to burn my bra!.......2007-10-09
I thought this book was very well written and the story was very interesting. However, it doesn't change the fact that it infuriated me to no end. I am so thankful I am an American woman, even a Western woman, where women are valued and important to society. It makes me sick to think how little value women have and that they see themselves that way, no better than a slave. And then whent these young girls move into their new home, their mother-in-laws treat them so abominably, even though they had gone through the same things. Women become subservient in every possible way, mentally, emotionally, and of course, physically because of that accursed foot-binding tradition. YUCK! This type of culture is just so alien to me. Wow! What a great story, though. It really got me thinking.
A Beautiful Story!.......2007-10-08
This book was effectively able to intertwine a story about lifelong friendship between two women and many historical details from Chinese culture such as food binding and the role of women in society. I loved how the author was able to look back on her life and point out her flaws, and the strengths of her friend. I highly recommend this book!
Page turner!.......2007-10-06
This book will make you both sad and happy and both love and hate the characters at the same time. Very interesting to learn about chinese traditions of arranged marriage and wrapped feet. I couldn't put it down.
Book Club selection - Wonderful and rich.......2007-10-06
I was put off by this book being another narrative. It seems like that's all I've read in the last few weeks. But it was a wonderful story, so intricate and filled with rich details. I saw some critisim about the lack of details abut the rest of their lives, like how they gave birth. but that kind of detail is not needed here. The lives of these women are so very interesting to me. I really liked this book. it had a valuable lesson at the end as well. Ok and the footbinding was awful but integral to the story.
Book Description
By the early l940s, when Ukrainian-born Irène Némirovsky began working on what would become Suite Française—the first two parts of a planned five-part novel—she was already a highly successful writer living in Paris. But she was also a Jew, and in 1942 she was arrested and deported to Auschwitz: a month later she was dead at the age of thirty-nine. Two years earlier, living in a small village in central France—where she, her husband, and their two small daughters had fled in a vain attempt to elude the Nazis
—she’d begun her novel, a luminous portrayal of a human drama in which she herself would become a victim. When she was arrested, she had completed two parts of the epic, the handwritten manuscripts of which were hidden in a suitcase that her daughters would take with them into hiding and eventually into freedom. Sixty-four years later, at long last, we can read Némirovsky’s literary masterpiece
The first part, “A Storm in June,” opens in the chaos of the massive 1940 exodus from Paris on the eve of the Nazi invasion during which several families and individuals are thrown together under circumstances beyond their control. They share nothing but the harsh demands of survival—some trying to maintain lives of privilege, others struggling simply to preserve their lives—but soon, all together, they will be forced to face the awful exigencies of physical and emotional displacement, and the annihilation of the world they know. In the second part, “Dolce,” we enter the increasingly complex life of a German-occupied provincial village. Coexisting uneasily with the soldiers billeted among them, the villagers—from aristocrats to shopkeepers to peasants—cope as best they can. Some choose resistance, others collaboration, and as their community is transformed by these acts, the lives of these these men and women reveal nothing less than the very essence of humanity.
Suite Française is a singularly piercing evocation—at once subtle and severe, deeply compassionate and fiercely ironic—of life and death in occupied France, and a brilliant, profoundly moving work of art.
Download Description
Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev in 1903 into a wealthy banking family and emigrated to France during the Russian Revolution. After attending the Sorbonne, she began to write and swiftly achieved success with her first novel, David Golder, which was followed by The Ball, The Flies of Autumn, Dogs and Wolves and The Courilof Affair. She died in 1942.
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews:
Not Up to the Hype.......2007-10-06
I really wanted to like this book. I read it after reading Vasily Grossman's LIFE AND FATE, a masterpiece of WW2 literature if there ever was one. And maybe it was the juxtaposition of that book with this that caused my disappointment. Where Grossman's book at 800 pages is taut and serious throughout, Nemirovsky's seems trivial by comparision. Had it been published soon after it was written, it would have been considered an interesting popular novel containing interesting observations of occupied France but ultimately lightweight in its' often pedestrian storyline and execution. It often reads like a mass paperback romance set within the larger context of the war, and too often devolves into hackneyed popular novel tropes - the cowardess and duplicities of the moneyed classes set against the native nobility of the poor, love amidst the ruins of war etc.
Interesting light reading, but a "classic?" Sorry.
Enjoyable and Interesting.......2007-10-05
A really enjoyable read and extremely interesting. It was such a good book! Highly recommend. The ending leaves you trailing though...
A magnificent, tragic fragment........2007-09-29
Irene Nemirovsky's "Suite Francaise" will stand with "The Diary of Anne Frank" as one of the most poignant literary monuments of World War II and the insanity of the Holocaust. But whereas Anne Frank was a young girl whose hopes and dreams ended forever at Belsen, Irene Nemirovsky was a novelist of enormous talent who would have been recognized as one of the greatest European writers of the 20th century had her life not been extinguished at Auschwitz. Considering all she suffered during the war, and how she was murdered in the very middle of it, it is amazing that Nemrovsky completed as much of it as she did, and that what she completed is of such a high order. "Suite Francaise" consists of the first two parts of a projected five-part novel depicting the fall of France to the Nazis, the panicked flight of Parisians and the return to something vaguely resembling normalcy under German military rule. The first section, "Storm in June," gives readers a panoramic view of several groups of fleeing Parisians, representing every class of society and every conceivable moral and mental attitude; the second, "Dolce," depicts life in a French village under the Germans, bringing back some of the characters from the first book and making it plain that Nemirovsky planned to reintroduce more of them in the following three books. Superbly translated by Sandra Smith, "Suite Francaise" is a swift and graceful read, depicting the characters and action with breathtaking clarity and excitement. Many of the characters are presented only in a few sentences, yet all live and breathe with total realism. What is really astonishing about "Suite Francaise," however, is Nemirovsky's authorial impartiality and clear-eyed sympathy for all her characters. There are no saints and no monsters in Nemirovsky's universe, just people--some more likable than others, but even the most despicable among them are given sharp moments of deep and moving humanity. Even the Germans are human--they have their faults, but also their virtues. To be able to write such panoramic fiction in the midst of war, with such a detached and pragmatic yet sympathetic eye, is truly amazing, even more so from an author who rightly feared she would be arrested and deported to the death camps at any moment. A Russian-Jewish emigree to France who moved in the highest literary and societal circles, Nemirovsky was an exceptionally keen observer of the French class system and how it warps individuals, in that sense (and in others) the equal of Balzac, Flaubert and Proust. The argument in Chapter 16 of "Dolce" between the snobbish, sickly-sentimental Vicomtesse de Montmort and the brutish peasant Benoit Sabarie stands out: both are sympathetic, as people and as representatives of their social classes, and both are utterly despicable. Nemirovsky sums up their fight neatly: "What separates or unites people is not their language, their laws, their customs, their principles, but the way they hold a salad fork." This argument has repercussions that promise to ripple across the rest of the story, except that Nemirovsky, alas, never had a chance to show us how. Appendices to the book include Nemirovsky's copious notes on how she planned to continue the story; correspondence to, from, and about her; and the preface to the French addition, included as an afterword here, which tells the poignant story of Nemirovsky's life and death, and of how Nemirovsky's daughter discovered the manuscript of "Suite Francaise" more than sixty years after her mother's death. "Suite Francaise" is a magnificent fragment and an eternal testimonial to the genius of its author. We can only mourn that the book, like her life, will remain unfinished.
A taste of things to come.......2007-09-26
It's a known fact that this work has gotten much attention due to the circumstances that surrounded Irene Nemirovsky's life. Left in a suitcase as she attempted flight, the author found her demise at the hands of the Nazis before this manuscript could be published.
Who knows what she might have added or excluded or expanded? And I could not help but think this as I read along.
There are two novellas under one umbrella here--depicting day in the life scenes of how things were in these troublesome times. I certainly found this to be gratifying reading, but it did not take me out of myself in that complete way I enjoy when I read truly remarkable fiction.
Will recommend, but for a story that brought me to that special place of compelling fiction, I recommend the lesser-known, SIM0N LAZARUS, a book more should know about.
Remember - Two Novellas.......2007-09-24
It must be remembered that this one book consists of two novellas. With the exception of minor mentions in the second book of a few characters from the first, there is nothing in common between the two. Thus, they really should be evaluated as two books.
The first was about Parisians fleeing Paris before the German occupation in June, 1940. Most are from the upper class and they are forced to "mix" with the lower classes. Almost all the characters are unlikeable and the characterizations almost seem to be caricatures of snooty Frenchmen and women. It is amazing that a French author would draw such scathing portraits.
Although the writing is good, I found the pacing extremely slow and tedious. There was a relentless litany of whining and complaining without corresponding renderings of real suffering. At one point I thought the tedium was by design, to show the relentless hardship. If that were the purpose, it did not work. The first book was simply over-written, slow and tedious. There really was no plot. It consisted of mere accounts of the plight of some atypical Parisian refugees.
The second book, "Dolce" was much much better. I wish I had not been jaded by the first novella. It was the account of the occupation by the Germans of a small rural town. It had tensions between farmers and town people, rich and poor (rich were still lambasted mercilessly), sympathizers and patriots and, best of all, the internal tension of a French woman forced to billet a German officer. This was the heart of Dolce. The woman's husband is a prisoner of war. Despite that, she realizes she is falling love with the German officer and he with her. The plot rotates around this tension and events that effect it.
In sum, I wish I had skipped the first novella but enjoyed the second. Thus, the average to 3 star rating.
Average customer rating:
- This from a Pulitzer winning author?
- Heavy on sensory description, light on story
- Caught between two cultures
- the struggle with traditions
- Lahiri takes you deep into Bengali culture, American culture and all that brings to fore.
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The Namesake: A Novel
Jhumpa Lahiri
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
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ASIN: 0618485228 |
Amazon.com
Any talk of The Namesake--Jhumpa Lahiri's follow-up to her Pulitzer Prize-winning debut, Interpreter of Maladies--must begin with a name: Gogol Ganguli. Born to an Indian academic and his wife, Gogol is afflicted from birth with a name that is neither Indian nor American nor even really a first name at all. He is given the name by his father who, before he came to America to study at MIT, was almost killed in a train wreck in India. Rescuers caught sight of the volume of Nikolai Gogol's short stories that he held, and hauled him from the train. Ashoke gives his American-born son the name as a kind of placeholder, and the awkward thing sticks.
Awkwardness is Gogol's birthright. He grows up a bright American boy, goes to Yale, has pretty girlfriends, becomes a successful architect, but like many second-generation immigrants, he can never quite find his place in the world. There's a lovely section where he dates a wealthy, cultured young Manhattan woman who lives with her charming parents. They fold Gogol into their easy, elegant life, but even here he can find no peace and he breaks off the relationship. His mother finally sets him up on a blind date with the daughter of a Bengali friend, and Gogol thinks he has found his match. Moushumi, like Gogol, is at odds with the Indian-American world she inhabits. She has found, however, a circuitous escape: "At Brown, her rebellion had been academic ... she'd pursued a double major in French. Immersing herself in a third language, a third culture, had been her refuge--she approached French, unlike things American or Indian, without guilt, or misgiving, or expectation of any kind." Lahiri documents these quiet rebellions and random longings with great sensitivity. There's no cleverness or showing-off in The Namesake, just beautifully confident storytelling. Gogol's story is neither comedy nor tragedy; it's simply that ordinary, hard-to-get-down-on-paper commodity: real life. --Claire Dederer
Book Description
Jhumpa Lahiri's debut story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, took the literary world by storm when it won the Pulitzer Prize in 2000. Fans who flocked to her stories will be captivated by her best-selling first novel, now in paperback for the first time. The Namesake is a finely wrought, deeply moving family drama that illuminates this acclaimed author's signature themes: the immigrant experience, the clash of cultures, the tangled ties between generations. The Namesake takes the Ganguli family from their tradition-bound life in Calcutta through their fraught transformation into Americans. On the heels of an arranged wedding, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli settle in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Ashoke does his best to adapt while his wife pines for home. When their son, Gogol, is born, the task of naming him betrays their hope of respecting old ways in a new world. And we watch as Gogol stumbles along the first-generation path, strewn with conflicting loyalties, comic detours, and wrenching love affairs. With empathy and penetrating insight, Lahiri explores the expectations bestowed on us by our parents and the means by which we come to define who we are.
Customer Reviews:
This from a Pulitzer winning author?.......2007-09-28
I have to admit I was surprised at the accolades heaped on this book...it is simply a bland but well-written description of an immigrant family experience in America, a theme previously touched by numerous Indian-American authors (such as Bharati Mukerjee). I felt that the writing was very passive and disinterested, as if the author didnt feel the need to engage the reader with a more compelling storyline, and who instead felt that a quaint description of an exotic cultural experience would suffice to make it a worthwhile read.
And I couldnt help comparing this book to another novel released at the same time which also delves into immigrant experience but within the context of a gripping, heartwrenching story--The Kite Runner (which has received over 200 reviews in Amazon). There, the reader was able to appreciate the Afghani culture and historical context as the author deftly combines it with his storytelling. In the Namesake, the reader is put in the position of an anthropologist, curiously observing a culture from outside. An Indian friend of mine, majoring in Sociology, jokingly referred to the Namesake as a dissertation in immigrant experience. Interestingly, none of my Indian-American friends thought highly of the book!
Heavy on sensory description, light on story.......2007-09-23
Lahiri has created an evocative masterpiece, a minutely detailed world that the reader can imagine tasting, smelling and hearing. The description begins in the first paragraph with a vivid account of a heavily pregnant woman and her unusual cravings. Other reviews cite Lahiri's gift for chronicling the outsider experience; I have never lived anywhere other than the US but I think everyone has felt slightly different at times, and she captures that sentiment perfectly. It is remarkable that the more specific a piece of writing is, the more universal it can feel. On the whole, lovely description of a family's experience; the reader should expect no cliffhangers here.
Caught between two cultures.......2007-09-15
"The Namesake" is the story of Gogol Ganguli, a man born to Indian parents who moved to America shortly after they were married. Gogol's name has always been a source of deep resentment for him, as it is neither Indian or American. Eventually Gogol opts to have his name legally changed before he leaves for college. In addition to adjusting to his new name, Gogol continues with a struggle he's faced his entire life: How to relate to and maintain his Indian culture while living on American soil. Gogol rejects most things about his heritage, preferring to lead a more "Americanized" lifestyle. His choices create a barrier between him and his family, but try as he might, Gogol never feels completely at ease within the American culture, either. He establishes a successful career for himself and has has several serious relationships, but Gogol never really finds a comfortable place for himself in this world. Eventually he finds happiness with an Indian woman, of all people, who relates to him on so many levels. However, Moushumi has her own way of rebelling, and at the end of the novel we find Gogol back at the very place his life began, where he begins to rediscover himself.
I fell in love with this book after reading the first few pages, and I couldn't put it down. I enjoyed it even more than author Jhumpa Lahiri's collection of short stories, "Interpreter of Maladies." Lahiri writes in a simple yet emotional style that is rich in detail. Although the novel revolves around Gogol, Lahiri occasionally shifts perspective and gives the reader a glimpse of the story from the eyes of Gogol's parents and Moushumi. All of the characters make a lot of mistakes, but I was able to easily relate to and empathize with each of them.
This is a book about family, identity, heritage, and self-discovery. You don't have to be the child of immigrants in order to relate to the process of pulling apart from your family and discovering the person you're destined to become. I think this book has something to offer everyone, and it also happens to be a beautiful, poignant story. "The Namesake" is a must-read.
the struggle with traditions.......2007-08-31
I just finished reading "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri and I am still trying to figure out if I liked it or not. There was no story, per say. There was no mysterie to solve, no one to really root for, no hero. The story is a 30 year slice of life of the Ganguli family - how the husband and wife married, how the wife joined her husband in America while he was in school, them having children and the children growing up. The book was slow, sometimes even boring and it was easy for me to not like the main character, Gogol (the son), because he was never happy about anything and he was always whining to himself about something. But through all this, Lahiri is illustrating the importance of traditions and how they can be simultaneously comforting, necessary, burdening and sometimes hated. This, I believe, is what Lahiri is trying to show her readers. I ended up really liking this book, but it didn't move fast enough for me and at times felt like a chore. The content of traditions and family values and relations is in there - in fact it is quite strong at times, however the way that Lahiri presented it was too slow for me to want to seek out her other works. One thing that stood out for me with this book though, was the food. Lahiri made me so hungry in the way she described the food in how it was prepared and what was in it, describing how it tasted and what it looked like. I wrote down some of the foods so that I can look them up and try them out.
Lahiri takes you deep into Bengali culture, American culture and all that brings to fore........2007-08-29
We meet a couple who are married and must set off to America for better employment. They are quite young. Soon, they have kids, he has a job at MIT and she stays at home. It sounds tame but the tale is exquisite in the detail it uses to describe common staples of Bengali life, American life, the issues immigrants and first generations face. All the characters are loveable even when they are lost. You become shocking intimiate with them all before you turn the last page. Their family haunts you because while you read, you became that immigrant mother worrying about her son dating an American. It's a great tale of immigration, assimilation, struggling between cultures.
Average customer rating:
- great book
- Enthralling But Grim Picture
- An absolute delight
- just a matter of taste, I guess . . .
- Intriguing Story
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The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai
Manufacturer: Grove Press
ProductGroup: Book
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ASIN: 0802142818 |
Book Description
Published to extraordinary acclaim, The Inheritance of Loss heralds Kiran Desai as one of our most insightful novelists. She illuminates the pain of exile and the ambiguities of postcolonialism with a tapestry of colorful characters: an embittered old judge; Sai, his sixteen-year-old orphaned granddaughter; a chatty cook; and the cook’s son, Biju, who is hopscotching from one miserable New York restaurant to another, trying to stay a step ahead of the INS. When a Nepalese insurgency in the mountains threatens Sai’s new-sprung romance with her handsome tutor, their lives descend into chaos. The cook witnesses India’s hierarchy being overturned and discarded. The judge revisits his past and his role in Sai and Biju’s intertwining lives. A story of depth and emotion, hilarity and imagination, The Inheritance of Loss tells a story of love, family, and loss.
Customer Reviews:
great book.......2007-10-10
This was a great read. I enjoyed the analogies between the lives of all the different characters as they played out in the novel. Most of them were very pitiful and sad, and indicative of changes we all must make in this globalized new world, good or bad. I really enjoyed the authors use of words; they were very unusual. The author left all the characters dangling as far as their future was concerned. They all came to a crossroads in their lives with no resolution and it bodes the possibility of a sequel to this. I would really enjoy that. I recommend this book for anybody who is interested in the human condition as it applies to decisions we make as our world advances forward not be leaps and bounds but by turbocharge.
Enthralling But Grim Picture.......2007-10-02
This novel is set in a relatively isolated village in India, with characters ranging from poor to upper middle class. A secondary setting is Manhattan where undocumented immigrants work in squalor and try to survive. The picture of life in India is one I had never seen, and the picture of the impact of British rule is far from complimentary. Character development, plot and historical context are all quite strong, leading to a bittersweet ending. I thought this work was a little drawn out toward the conclusion, which is the only reason for 4 rather than 5 stars.
An absolute delight.......2007-09-25
Beautifully written, charming, playful and yet melancholy, fantastically absurd at times and bitterly realistic at others. I was hooked from the first page. It is a book to be savoured: delightful imagery and perspectives. In the same company as The God of Small Things, another Booker winner that has clearly (and surprisingly) polarised readers into those who loved it (me included) and those who could not finish it. For anyone who enjoys good modern Anglo-Indian writing.
just a matter of taste, I guess . . ........2007-09-24
There isn't much I can add to the positive reviews here. Kiran Desai is a wonderful and talented writer; her canvas is vast and all-encompassing. Far from being bored, I couldn't put it down from the first page. And when I was finished, I went right back to the beginning and read the first few chapters all over again. Go figure.
Intriguing Story.......2007-09-14
In my opinion, this book was an intriguing and interesting story. I always enjoy reading a book that not only relates a wonderful story but also gives me an education. With this book it was the insight into India's way of life, customs and culture. Kiran Desai, detailed India's social order, and vividly described the living conditions and way life of the people living in the countryside. I could not help myself from being touched by the characters in the story, especially Biju life in New York. From Kalimpong to New York City, the author created these characters with such realism that when tragedy struck, I felt their pain. I did feel that the author was a bit weak in the romance side of the story, but overall I enjoyed this very interesting story.
For a Woman's Fiction that reveals the emotions and feelings of a women check out Gathering of Cans by Robert L. Saunders. This refreshing story is a real stunner. In this romance with a bit of mystery story the author heralds the relationship between husband and wife. I read this warm and wonderful story and I wasn't disappointed. You will travel with Zoie Baker, the heroine, on her quest to build a swimming pool by gathering aluminum cans. She feels right down to her bones that this is her destiny. Unique cans that she stumbles on, i.e., Nehi, Mountain Dew, etc., takes the reader on a glorious journey in the life of Zoie from World War II where she meets her soon to be husband, Nat, a Marine, through the 1980's. This gripping story will keep you up to read just one more chapter. You too won't be disappointed! Bye.
Average customer rating:
- Missing color and texture
- A three-star thriller
- Compelling story of life in America after 9/11
- Clever, insightful, entertaining -- faultless prose and construction
- Reluctant Of All the Fundamentals
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The Reluctant Fundamentalist
Mohsin Hamid
Manufacturer: Harcourt
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ASIN: 0151013047
Release Date: 2007-04-03 |
Amazon.com
Mohsin Hamid's first novel, Moth Smoke, dealt with the confluence of personal and political themes, and his second, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, revisits that territory in the person of Changez, a young Pakistani. Told in a single monologue, the narrative never flags. Changez is by turns naive, sinister, unctuous, mildly threatening, overbearing, insulting, angry, resentful, and sad. He tells his story to a nameless, mysterious American who sits across from him at a Lahore cafe. Educated at Princeton, employed by a first-rate valuation firm, Changez was living the American dream, earning more money than he thought possible, caught up in the New York social scene and in love with a beautiful, wealthy, damaged girl. The romance is negligible; Erica is emotionally unavailable, endlessly grieving the death of her lifelong friend and boyfriend, Chris.
Changez is in Manila on 9/11 and sees the towers come down on TV. He tells the American, "...I smiled. Yes, despicable as it may sound, my initial reaction was to be remarkably pleased... I was caught up in the symbolism of it all, the fact that someone had so visibly brought America to her knees..." When he returns to New York, there is a palpable change in attitudes toward him, starting right at immigration. His name and his face render him suspect.
Ongoing trouble between Pakistan and India urge Changez to return home for a visit, despite his parents' advice to stay where he is. While there, he realizes that he has changed in a way that shames him. "I was struck at first by how shabby our house appeared... I was saddened to find it in such a state... This was where I came from... and it smacked of lowliness." He exorcises that feeling and once again appreciates his home for its "unmistakable personality and idiosyncratic charm." While at home, he lets his beard grow. Advised to shave it, even by his mother, he refuses. It will be his line in the sand, his statement about who he is. His company sends him to Chile for another business valuation; his mind filled with the troubles in Pakistan and the U.S. involvement with India that keeps the pressure on. His work and the money he earns have been overtaken by resentment of the United States and all it stands for.
Hamid's prose is filled with insight, subtly delivered: "I felt my age: an almost childlike twenty-two, rather than that permanent middle-age that attaches itself to the man who lives alone and supports himself by wearing a suit in a city not of his birth." In telling of the janissaries, Christian boys captured by Ottomans and trained to be soldiers in the Muslim Army, his Chilean host tells him: "The janissaries were always taken in childhood. It would have been far more difficult to devote themselves to their adopted empire, you see, if they had memories they could not forget." Changez cannot forget, and Hamid makes the reader understand that--and all that follows. --Valerie Ryan
A Conversation with Mohsin Hamid
Set in modern-day Pakistan, Mohsin Hamid's debut novel, Moth Smoke, went on to win awards and was listed as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His bold new novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, is a daring, fast-paced monologue of a young Pakistani man telling his life story to a mysterious American stranger. It's a controversial look at the dark side of the American Dream, exploring the aftermath of 9/11, international unease, and the dangerous pull of nostalgia. Amazon.com senior editor Brad Thomas Parsons shared an e-mail exchange with Mohsin Hamid to talk about his powerful new book
Read the Amazon.com Interview with Mohsin Hamid
Book Description
At a café table in Lahore, a bearded Pakistani man converses with an uneasy American stranger. As dusk deepens to night, he begins the tale that has brought them to this fateful meeting . . .
Changez is living an immigrant’s dream of America. At the top of his class at Princeton, he is snapped up by the elite "valuation" firm of Underwood Samson. He thrives on the energy of New York, and his infatuation with elegant, beautiful Erica promises entry into Manhattan society at the same exalted level once occupied by his own family back in Lahore.
But in the wake of September 11, Changez finds his position in his adopted city suddenly overturned, and his budding relationship with Erica eclipsed by the reawakened ghosts of her past. And Changez’s own identity is in seismic shift as well, unearthing allegiances more fundamental than money, power, and maybe even love.
Customer Reviews:
Missing color and texture.......2007-09-10
The language in this novella is fluid; it is a short piece (framed as a tale told over a dinner) that pulls in the reader. The narrator (Chargez) spins his story of his initial embrace and ultimate rejection of the upwardly mobile existence of a Pakistani-born Princeton alum living in corporate America post-9/11. The book tries to answer big questions about why America both attracts and repels the alien observer in the early 21st century. It disappoints. The novel surfs instead of diving deep into motivations and milieu. The characters surrounding the narrator (a sad beautiful WASP love interest, a workplace mentor) are drawn sketchily. Is it because these Americans are ultimately unfathomable to Chargez? Perhaps, but the characterization of the narrator, and his transformation, also remains oddly unspecific. There is a lack of detailed descriptions of either New York after 9/11 (which had a distinct feel) or Lahore. Chargez watches Afghanistan being bombed, and tensions rising in South Asia, and he increasingly finds himself questioning his role in his adopted country. His disillusionment seems reasonable enough (we know from poll statistics the punishment that US image has taken globally in the last 6 years), but Hamid does not offer probing insight to the issue. The book would be strengthened by more particulars about the situation and attitudes of South Asian and Muslim immigrants to the US. Chargez's transformation and radicalization comes so quickly. The novel's conclusion offers a nice ambiguity which would have been welcome throughout.
A three-star thriller.......2007-08-28
I suspect there will be two different categories of readers attracted to this book: those who have heard it is a good thriller and those who have heard it is a novel of literary merit...those approaching it as a thriller will be more satisfied, but it does not quite make it in either category, at least for me.
"The Reluctant Fundamentalist" tells the story of a Pakistani named Changez as he narrates his life story to an American in a cafe in Lahore, post 9-11. There were some aspects of the novel that I liked... Changez, has a firm and consistent tone throughout, and his love interest, Erica, is believable, at least at first. While the prose is well-crafted (Changez adopts a somewhat archaic and formal tone to the American stranger) the claims for the beauty of the language in other reviews seem somewhat overblown.
There are some tricks played with the reader, based mainly on our assumptions about the characters, but I did not find this very clever. It heightens the suspense, but rather in the fashion of a movie where the fright device suddenly jumps out at the viewer. But in a purportedly realistic novel, one likes to have the details right or credibility suffers. The business setting, Changez's job as a "valuation analyist" at an American hot-shot "valuation firm," just did not seem credible to me...such jobs, mainly done by investment banks or consultants, would not be assigned to a 22-year-old fresh out of undergrad Princeton. Although the author has reportedly worked as a financial consultant in New York, the work setting did not convince. Changez's firm would not send a team of 5 or 6 to Manila for three months to "value" a local CD manufacturer...I mean, what were they doing, counting the paperclips? We are also told that it is up to Changez to devise his own "valuation model," a strangely ad hoc and imprecise approach melded to the unbelievably precise. Perhaps the author is trying to make some sort of point about Changez's character, in that he has aspects of the precise and vague in his personality, but if so, it didn't work for me and just detracted from credibility, important in a thriller. Without giving away any essential plot developments, Changez's later "change" I found rather forced and inexplicable. A-type personalities who get into Princeton just don't act this way, and that also detracted from his girlfriend Ericka's believability, who similarly went to Princeton. Changez seems always to be graded and judged, at Princeton, and at the firm, yet there seems little questioning of the validity of this system. Is he just a grade-grubbing bourgeois striving to climb into the upper ranks of the plutocracy or does he see this more cynically? The tension does build as the narration proceeds, but there are continual nagging questions about credibility that slowly add up throughout but thr reader is always aware of authorial manipulation throughout. There is little discussion of issues of religion, class or race and that too detracted from the credibility of the novel's resolution. But the author deserves credit for his handling of this theme, identity problems of a Pakistani in post 9-11 America, but I wish he had set it in a background with which he may have had more familiarity.
Right now, this is long-listed for the Booker Prize. Of others on the list, I have read only Ian McEwan's "On Chesil Beach" a stronger novel, at least in terms of the prose, but it is not McEwan at his best. I also read several Booker-eligible novels that never made the list but should have(particularly John Burnside's "The Devil's Footprints")... there are stronger candidates on the Booker list than "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" and the list itself seems very weak this year. But if one is after a decent short thriller to occupy oneself for a few hours, this may serve the purpose.
Compelling story of life in America after 9/11.......2007-08-22
This book is compelling on the 9/11 issue without being overbearing or preachy. In these times, that's a hard feat to pull off.
I liked the narration, and how the conceit of two men talking in a Lahore restaurant allowed Hamid to move from story to story, letting us know the events that shaped Changez's life. It's tough to describe how conflicted first generation immigrants feel when American actions cause strife in their homelands. But through Changez, Hamid shows the reader the many different motivations at play (Changez's family, his sense of alienation from American culture, the feeling of being an outsider). I am also from Pakistan, so the book resonated deeply with me. I've been in this country for almost 18 years. Even so, if Pakistan was to be attacked, I don't know that I could support the US. The conflicted feelings Changez experiences are likely more common than most would like to believe.
The narrative is well-paced and gives the reader little surprises at just the right moments. Particularly well done is the atmosphere of the Lahore tea shop. Hamid does a masterful job of conveying the lazy, but tense atmosphere present in many such places.
Finally, the story of Changez's love interest is a good bit of symbolism. Before 9/11, she's bubbly and joyous. After, she deteriorates and decays, unable to get over the problems of her past. In a lesser author's hand, this would have been heavy handed, but Hamid makes the depiction nuanced enough to make her a real character.
I am anxious to read Mr. Hamid's next book. Pakistan needs more authors like him.
Clever, insightful, entertaining -- faultless prose and construction.......2007-08-14
On first glance, "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" by Mohsin Hamid appears to be about a brilliant young Pakistani national named Changez who finishes at the top of his class at Princeton and is hired by Underwood Samson, the most prestigious and world-famous corporate valuation firm based in New York City. We are encouraged by the title and the dark overtones of the dramatic monologue in which the book is narrated, to believe that somehow, by the end of the novel, Changez turns into a Muslim fundamentalist and implied terrorist. Wow, now that is a theme that really hits a bull's-eye with the American psyche!
Most Americans are sincerely confused by what is happening in the world today. We see rampant anti-Americanism, frightening Islamic terrorism, news of successful professionals being recruited into the ranks of the terrorists, and we can't imagine why. We hope to get inside the head of one of these characters and see the world from their point of view--perhaps finally understand what drives them to these drastic ends.
The book delivers on these issues and much more--very clever indeed! The monologue is narrated with spare, well-crafted prose that is often old-fashioned--and disconcerting. The archaic prose casts the story in a shroud of strangeness elevating the suspense and making the whole an unequivocal, unrelenting page-turner.
There is a marvelous linguistic and thematic trick built into that word "fundamentalist" used in the title and the text of the book. In the entire novel, religion is never once mentioned. Fundamentalism, in the context of terrorism, always refers to religious fundamentalism. But this book is not about a budding Muslim fundamentalist. So what type of fundamentalist is this, and why is he reluctant?
This is about a man fighting two inner battles: one moral and one political. In the beginning of his skyrocketing American dream career, Changez is temporarily blinded to one of his most ingrained core moral values: compassion. He comes from a family and a culture where people, no matter how poor, routinely celebrate their greatest joys by giving generously to the poor. When Changez comes home to Pakistan for a brief visit with his family, his mother dances ecstatically twirling a 100-rupee note over her head. What a wonderful image! Now, ask yourself how we in the West celebrate our greatest achievements and joys, and let this, and the other similar nuggets of open, cross-cultural insights peppered throughout this work, ignite your thinking about contemporary world issues!
In the beginning, Changez feels stirrings of compassion for the "soon-to-be-redundant workers" (p. 99) that will, no doubt, fall victim to his brilliantly accurate valuation analyses. Sensing this, Jim, Changez' corporate mentor at Underwood Samson, coaches him often to "focus on the fundamentals"--the bottom line, the numbers, don't let emotion or compassion get in the way. However, by the time the book draws to a close--when Changez is in Valparaiso, Chile helping valuate a troubled book publishing firm that spends too much of its assets publishing worthy academic, literary, and poetic books that eventually end up losing money for the firm--here Changez becomes the reluctant fundamentalist of the book's title. He can no longer focus only on the bottom line. He can no longer ignore the deep core of compassion that is his personal moral compass.
So, does he also become a fundamentalist terrorist? The author leaves that up to you to decide. The ending is deftly and provokingly ambiguous. But no matter which ending you choose to imagine--and you will vacillate--the overall cross-cultural thematic points have already been made, and that is what is important and what endures long after you've finished the book.
There is also the inner political battle that Changez undergoes during the course of the novel. He begins his job at Underwood Samson a few months before 9/11. How he reacts to that news, and how America changes in the wake of that news--both form crucial themes that resonate throughout. In many ways the book is about the dangers of not embracing change. The author and the main character find much fault with America's fundamental backwards-looking reaction after 9/11. Instead of trying to come to terms with how America must fundamentally change in the new post-9/11 world order, Changez sees Americans retreating back to an old-fashioned nostalgia for America, the righteous superpower, the imperialistic dominator of the globe. To Changez, America's self-righteous nostalgia is a terminal illness. To mirror this theme, there is lovely parallel story of Changez' love for the mentally fragile Erica. She fails precisely because she cannot free herself from her nostalgia for her dead former lover. She cannot move forward with her life, despite the fact that the reader can see very clearly that Changez and Erica have the makings of a truly enduring love.
So if America is failing to change, and Erica fails to change, what happens to Changez? He changes (change-ez)! [Is this, too, along with the word "fundamentalist," perhaps another linguistic thematic pun?] We the reader are left to figure out if the main character's change is for the better, or not. Thus the ambiguous ending leaves us wondering.
This novel is so clever! It really makes you think. It entertains with suspense as well as giving you an achingly beautiful love story--and underlying all is much to be learned about the current state of the world.
I recommend this book highly, as I also do one of the other top contenders for the 2007 Booker Prize, namely Ian McEwen's "On Chesil Beach." (I've also reviewed this book here on Amazon.) Personally, I hope Hamid's "The Reluctant Fundamentalist" will win. I believe it clearly deserves it.
Reluctant Of All the Fundamentals.......2007-08-13
Rarely will I describe a book as beautiful. Yet I cannot think of a more befitting descriptive for Mohsin Hamid's THE RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST.
The story centers around a meeting at an outdoor café in Lahore between a Pakistani man named Changez and a suspicious-looking American with the bearing that makes him out to be either military or intelligence agent. Changez engages the man initially in tea and conversation. After awhile, seeing the American most attentive --and also a bit wary of his surroundings, the Pakistani orders dinner for the two of them; meanwhile going deeper into his memories about times spent in America, as a student at Princeton and later as a rising star at a New York valuation firm. Changez also recollects his budding romance with Erica, the daughter of a wealthy investment banker who was sure to enable Changez's entry to high society. Changez was well on his way to success when the twin towers of the World Trade Center came tumbling down on September 11, 2001.
Changez's reaction to their collapse alarms and confuses him; he finds himself smiling and overjoyed. The elation, however, isn't over the deaths of 3,000 innocent people, but rather thet there are those who are able to strike at the United States --an entity which has long held him in awe with its almost limitless power, wealth and ability to affect the world: sometimes for the best, sometimes for the worst. As America becomes enraged and seeks revenge upon anything and anyone Muslim, he reads reports of Pakistan becoming coerced into the war against Afghanistan and of India taking advantage of this situation threatening his homeland. Becoming ever more distanced from our society and his work, it becomes increasingly harder for Changez to continue at his career. A job which he now sees as dependent upon the expense and suffering of others. Making matters worse, Erica, the one person who perhaps could have kept him grounded and focused, suffers a mental relapse over the shock of 9/11. Erica slips back into the debilitating state she suffered over the death of her longtime childhood friend and lover, Chris, two years earlier. Eventually Changez returns to Pakistan. Changez today is a different man from the ambitious and obedient corporate cog he described living back in New York. Yet as he speaks to the American about his country's indifference to the rest of the world, about America's unconcern for the expense her wars of revenge are costing others, he still he cannot hide his love for America. However, it is no longer the romanticizing love of an infatuated innocent, instead it is the love one has for another depite all the other's faults and abuses. A love reluctant, but love nonetheless.
The monologue telling of this story is beguiling. Changez holds the reader spellbound as he keeps the unidentified American man's interest for hours. Mohsin Hamid's gift for words and symbolism, and the intricacies he creates with them, is astounding. Admittedly, some of Changez actions and statements will repel many of us American readers (his gleeful response to the jets slamming into the Twin Towers certainly did it to me). Keep in mind, however, that this is a voice which exists amongst millions of those out there, from Totonto and London, to Pakistan and Indonesia. It is a voice we have been told to ignore, but it still won't go away. That's because it is not only the voice of the popeyed rageboys constantly being shown in our media, but also the voice of men like Changez, who tried making sense of America's dichotomies, but can no longer struggle to reconcile the willful ignorance and arrogant indifference that exists within our nation's beauty and spirit. So, we may call them "fundamentalists," but we must start to recognize that many are reluctant to be such. They have the rageboys, but we have the coldly calculating geopolitical experts, who smile and assure us of our "national interests." Changes must come from all of us.
Amazon.com
In his debut novel, The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini accomplishes what very few contemporary novelists are able to do. He manages to provide an educational and eye-opening account of a country's political turmoil--in this case, Afghanistan--while also developing characters whose heartbreaking struggles and emotional triumphs resonate with readers long after the last page has been turned over. And he does this on his first try.
The Kite Runner follows the story of Amir, the privileged son of a wealthy businessman in Kabul, and Hassan, the son of Amir's father's servant. As children in the relatively stable Afghanistan of the early 1970s, the boys are inseparable. They spend idyllic days running kites and telling stories of mystical places and powerful warriors until an unspeakable event changes the nature of their relationship forever, and eventually cements their bond in ways neither boy could have ever predicted. Even after Amir and his father flee to America, Amir remains haunted by his cowardly actions and disloyalty. In part, it is these demons and the sometimes impossible quest for forgiveness that bring him back to his war-torn native land after it comes under Taliban rule. ("...I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded, not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.")
Some of the plot's turns and twists may be somewhat implausible, but Hosseini has created characters that seem so real that one almost forgets that The Kite Runner is a novel and not a memoir. At a time when Afghanistan has been thrust into the forefront of America's collective consciousness ("people sipping lattes at Starbucks were talking about the battle for Kunduz"), Hosseini offers an honest, sometimes tragic, sometimes funny, but always heartfelt view of a fascinating land. Perhaps the only true flaw in this extraordinary novel is that it ends all too soon. --Gisele Toueg
Book Description
The timely and critically acclaimed debut novel that's becoming a word-of-mouth phenomenon...
Download Description
"Taking us from Afghanistan in the final days of the monarchy to the present, The Kite Runner is the unforgettable, beautifully told story of the friendship between two boys growing up in Kabul. Raised in the same household and sharing the same wet nurse, Amir and Hassan nonetheless grow up in different worlds: Amir is the son of a prominent and wealthy man, while Hassan , the son of Amir's father's servant, is a Hazara, member of a shunned ethnic minority. Their intertwined lives, and their fates, reflect the eventual tragedy of the world around them. When the Soviets invade and Amir and his father flee the country for a new life in California, Amir thinks that he has escaped his past. And yet he cannot leave the memory of Hassan behind him. The Kite Runner is a novel about friendship, betrayal, and the price of loyalty. It is about the bonds between fathers and sons, and the power of their lies. Written against a history that has not been told in fiction before, The Kite Runner describes the rich culture and beauty of a land in the process of being destroyed. But with the devastation, Khaled Hosseini also gives us hope: through the novel's faith in the power of reading and storytelling, and in the possibilities he shows for redemption."
Customer Reviews:
Review of The Kite Runner.......2007-10-10
The plot line of this novel is AMAZING however the author chooses at times to bludgeon us with language at the moments when he should pull back and let the horror of what he's describing speak for itself. Especially at the conclusion whichis the coincidence of all coincidences - I almost ended the book early as the writing fell apart and was so melodramatic. Howver the descriptions of daily life are vivid and sensitive and I recommend the book for this alone.
good book.......2007-10-09
i had to read this book back when i was in high school and i was really surprised to find this book to be good. I personally really like this book and finished reading it in no time. I don't know what it is, but this is one book you will always get mixed reviews. It all depends on what kind of books you like,There were some parts of the story that were overrated or unnecessary.
Plot device after plot device after plot device.. .......2007-10-08
The Kite Runner isn't "brilliant" nor it is a "work of genius" Rather, quite simply, The Kite Runner is good story about a boy named Amir and his "friend" Hassan. Oh, and Amir's father, Baba, too. Oh, and Afghanistan.
After hearing rave reviews about this book for years, I decided to pick up a copy to read while between classes. What I found was nothing more than a story that perhaps would have been better if it were told around a campfire or when your Afghani uncle comes over for a visit. The writing style I could let slide - hey we're all not Hemingway. What I could not let slide, however, were the ridiculous plot devices that the author employed (and the 5-star reviewers call "brilliant") to "move" the story along..
Soon after I began reading, it became painfully obvious to me that the author is well aware, I mean WELL AWARE of the plot device known as "Chekhov's Shotgun" (which basically states that if there is a shotgun hanging on the wall in one scene, it had better be used in a later scene).. It is an amateur move and the more I read, the more and more frustrated I became by this and the other unbelievable predictable "twists" that kept popping up. Eventually, I had to put the book down and walk away for a while because I knew what was going to happen - we all knew what was going to happen.
All in all, plot twist, prediit is a good story. But I don't believe it to be worthy of the critical acclaim that it received when first released. Perhaps there is a feeling of guilt because it is about a country we are not occupying that led to so many jumping on board the "brilliant" bandwagon.. The narrator is an unlikable wimp and it was completely ridiculous to think for a second that he would suddenly "man up" and face Assef (or even go to Kabul for that matter). I say this only because we as readers "knew" him from birth and all throughout his life nothing gave any indication that he would have it in him to do what he did. Ugh. I feel as though I need something to cleanse my reading palate.
It Involves Afghanistan .......2007-10-08
I read many books and write many Amazon reviews, but there's not much I can add that the previous 2,042 other reviewers have not already said. I picked up `The Kite Runner' a year ago at a used book sale for the local library, but put it on my stack of TBR's (to-be-read). Frankly, the gushing acclaim and high-powered publicity put me off the book (e.g. the back jacket has plugs from Diane Sawyer and People magazine, not sources I rely on for book suggestions). A debut novel getting that much praise put me on guard.
News of the movie adaptation's imminent release finally got me to give it a go. I finished less than 24 hours later. Few books grab this reader by the collar and demand absorption. `The Kite Runner' did and I simply can't recommend it highly enough.
I will skimp on a summary of the book - to paraphrase Woody Allen after speed-reading War and Peace, it involves Afghanistan. While Hosseini does wonderfully create a sense of place (or rather two Afghanistans separated by 25 years and a millennial view), this tale involves much more. `The Kite Runner' is a powerful roller-coaster of human drama: love, joy, hate, cruelty, fear, betrayal, abandonment, commitment, loyalty, pride, shame, happiness, pain. Hosseini delivers several powerful gut punches (perhaps not all of them entirely fair or necessary) along the way.
Tom Wolfe has commented that many good young writers only ever write one really good book because that first effort is largely autobiographical and they can only tell that's story once. Reviews of Hosseini's second book A Thousand Splendid Suns suggest he is the real deal.
Read with Caution.......2007-10-07
I agree with the vast majority of reviewers that this is an excellent novel - unique, well-written, and haunting. There is no reason for me to reiterate the praises. I am writing this review simply to warn people with delicate sensibilities like mine to be forewarned before buying this book: the "terrible incident" everyone refers to is the brutal rape of a young boy by a pack of sociopathic, privileged teens. Perhaps because I am the mother of a young boy, I found the scene totally gut-wrenching and utterly horrible. I couldn't finish the book. So, my point is simple: don't read the book if you might be upset by a graphic description of the rape of a young, sweet boy.
Average customer rating:
- What a great book!
- Perfect for Book Clubs
- A Passionate Historical Novel of Anthropoligists and Christians in Thailand
- Great writing, but zenith of story was disappointing
- Both nuanced and gripping!
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Fieldwork: A Novel
Mischa Berlinski
Manufacturer: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0374299161
Release Date: 2007-02-06 |
Book Description
A daring, spellbinding tale of anthropologists, missionaries, demon possession, sexual taboos, murder, and an obsessed young reporter named Mischa Berlinski
When his girlfriend takes a job as a schoolteacher in northern Thailand, Mischa Berlinski goes along for the ride, working as little as possible for one of Thailand’s English-language newspapers. One evening a fellow expatriate tips him off to a story. A charismatic American anthropologist, Martiya van der Leun, has been found dead—a suicide—in the Thai prison where she was serving a fifty-year sentence for murder.
Motivated first by simple curiosity, then by deeper and more mysterious feelings, Mischa searches relentlessly to discover the details of Martiya’s crime. His search leads him to the origins of modern anthropology—and into the family history of Martiya’s victim, a brilliant young missionary whose grandparents left Oklahoma to preach the Word in the 1920s and never went back. Finally, Mischa’s obssession takes him into the world of the Thai hill tribes, whose way of life becomes a battleground for two competing, and utterly American, ways of looking at the world.
Vivid, passionate, funny, deeply researched, and page-turningly plotted, Fieldwork is a novel about fascination and taboo—scientific, religious, and sexual. It announces an assured and captivating new voice in American fiction.
Customer Reviews:
What a great book!.......2007-09-24
I picked this book up randomly and couldn't be happier that I did! At first it was a little hard to get into, but soon the story just hooks you! The style of writing was so natural, it felt like you were in the author's head, thinking right along with him. The twists and turns, the suspense - I loved it! I'd definitely recommend this book!
Perfect for Book Clubs .......2007-08-05
In the course of fieldwork, we learn about The Curiosity, the way anthropologists get hooked on a culture. There's a puzzle they want to solve. So they become reluctant to leave, although they know it's time to stop.
As a reader, I got hooked on The Curosity about Martiya van der Leun, the book's subject though not the heroine. Within 15 pages we learn she is serving a 50-year prison term for murder. What would lead a scholarly anthropologist to murder? And how could she survive the horrors of a Thai prison where (in some regions) inmates enter the visiting room on their knees?
Mischa (it's not clear why the author named his hero after himself), sensing a story, detours from his casual series of journalism gigs to solve the mystery. Along the way, he interviews Martiya's three tribes: her friends and former colleagues from the UC Berkeley anthropology department, her odd association with the Walker family of hard-core missionaries and of course the tribe where she lived for many years, attempting to do fieldwork.
This book can be appreciated on so many levels. As a work of literary fiction, the author's prose keeps pages turning even while he takes us back to the beginnings of the missionary Walker family. In just a sentence he captures the ways of large close-knit families, such as their unspoken but decision to accept or reject outsiders.
Parts of this section do seem rather long, but we also discover the grueling struggles of the early missionaries. Imagine a cadre of opium-soaked servants awkwardly carrying a pregnant woman across treacherous paths...floods destroying the family...and more. I wonder if we are meant to find parallels and contrast between the Walkers and Martiya, such as destruction of everything they owned by water versus fire.
On another level, this book captures the essence of fieldwork for female anthropologists. I loved Martiya's struggle with her curly hair (mine frizzes too).
Relief organizations, military and Peace Corps organizations put their members through rigorous training before deploying them to exotic locations. Anthropologists receive little preparation in dealing with the psychological aspects of moving to a new culture, let alone the withdrawal pangs of returning home. It's amazing they cope as well as they do.
Mischa's fieldwork turns out to be more promising than Martiya's. Then again he enjoys leisure, journalism skills, and a girl friend who provides both economic and social support. Ultimately he uncovers the story behind her death. But as a journalist, he gives us the facts. The "why" is something that could be debated at book clubs, with different perspectives provided by psychologists, sociologists and just about everyone.
Was Martiya truly possessed, as one character suggests? Has she gone native like the "Eskimo Kathy" of graduate school legend? Was she betrayed by her own desires and demons at a difficult time in her life? Or (as I would argue) was she feeling so stressed and alone that she began to unravel, like the wayward astronaut who stalked her lover's rival? That's the Curiosity that remains after a careful reading.
Early in the story, Mischa's friend Josh actually meets Martiya in the relatively benign modern Chiang Mai prison. Martiya just received an inheritance and, Josh points out, money would help her. Martiya declines. She has no place to go and she's just beginning to understand "the way things work around here."
Some readers will guess what Martiya means. Later we realize how Martiya has in fact coped with her new environment in a tragicomic irony that summarizes the trajectory of her once-promising life.
A Passionate Historical Novel of Anthropoligists and Christians in Thailand.......2007-07-30
A lot of hard work and research went into this excellent work of historical fiction. It is fiction, as the author reminds us at the end of the book and yet, the characters are so excellently described and brilliant that you could swear that this is a biography. The main character is a dedicated, unselfish, female anthropologist doing work with a tribe of Chinese/Thais in Northern Thailand. We find out early on that she may be involved in a murder and the author painstakingly researches her life and work through interviews with her friends, boyfriends, teachers, the Thai people she is working with and finally, with a family of Christian missionaries who have been involved in missionary work in China since the 30's. The observations about differences in cultures and what it takes for an anthropologist to leave behind pre-conceived notions of God, sprirituality, morality and what makes the world tick, and then enter into a world so different and yet spiritual and religious in its own way, is the real eye opener of the book. The dedicated anthropologists who do this fieldwork have an experience vastly different and scary compared to say a chemist or physicist doing experiments in a lab somewhere here in the US.
We also get a good dose of what the Christian missionaries are trying to do and how their work can sometimes seem somewhat arrogant and un-needed. And yet, to some of the converts, leaving their old belief system and joining a much simpler belief system like "The Good News" of Christianity, can be liberating. But once our main character has virtually become a member of this Thai tribe and falls for one of the male members, she is devastated as some of them convert to Christianity.
The story is very well told and I walked away with a better understanding that this is a huge and complicated world with many interesting belief systems. I think Mischa Berlinski is here to stay. (Mischa, maybe you should come up with a more marketable name.)
Five Stars and, like Stephen King, I highly recommend that you read it.
Great writing, but zenith of story was disappointing.......2007-07-11
Loved the prose; also loved the earlier aspects of the book, including the Walkers background. But I was definitely disappointed when the mystery was revealed--was expecting and hoping for more.
Also, the book started to stall toward the end.
Both nuanced and gripping!.......2007-06-18
This is the best piece of contemporary fiction I have read in quite some time. It is an absolute thrill to discover a smart and complex novel that is also compulsively readable. I'm baffled by the ambivalence of the PW review -- Fieldwork is HIGHLY suspenseful; a complete page-turner (at one point, I was so absorbed that I missed my subway stop and didn't notice for ten minutes). It's easy to see, then, why Stephen King chose it as a discussion point in his (mostly rightful) critique of the painful divide between popular and literary fiction; Fieldwork indeed problematizes these genres by writing a thriller that could also easily be taught in universities (in Anthropology and English courses alike).
Please do yourself a favor and pick up this entertaining read immediately.
Amazon.com
Mr. Kapasi, the protagonist of Jhumpa Lahiri's title story, would certainly have his work cut out for him if he were forced to interpret the maladies of all the characters in this eloquent debut collection. Take, for example, Shoba and Shukumar, the young couple in "A Temporary Matter" whose marriage is crumbling in the wake of a stillborn child. Or Miranda in "Sexy," who is involved in a hopeless affair with a married man. But Mr. Kapasi has problems enough of his own; in addition to his regular job working as an interpreter for a doctor who does not speak his patients' language, he also drives tourists to local sites of interest. His fare on this particular day is Mr. and Mrs. Das--first-generation Americans of Indian descent--and their children. During the course of the afternoon, Mr. Kapasi becomes enamored of Mrs. Das and then becomes her unwilling confidant when she reads too much into his profession. "I told you because of your talents," she informs him after divulging a startling secret.
I'm tired of feeling so terrible all the time. Eight years, Mr. Kapasi, I've been in pain eight years. I was hoping you could help me feel better; say the right thing. Suggest some kind of remedy.
Of course, Mr. Kapasi has no cure for what ails Mrs. Das--or himself. Lahiri's subtle, bittersweet ending is characteristic of the collection as a whole. Some of these nine tales are set in India, others in the United States, and most concern characters of Indian heritage. Yet the situations Lahiri's people face, from unhappy marriages to civil war, transcend ethnicity. As the narrator of the last story, "The Third and Final Continent," comments: "There are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept." In that single line Jhumpa Lahiri sums up a universal experience, one that applies to all who have grown up, left home, fallen in or out of love, and, above all, experienced what it means to be a foreigner, even within one's own family. --Alix Wilber
Book Description
Navigating between the Indian traditions they've inherited and the baffling new world, the characters in Jhumpa Lahiri's elegant, touching stories seek love beyond the barriers of culture and generations. In "A Temporary Matter," published in The New Yorker, a young Indian-American couple faces the heartbreak of a stillborn birth while their Boston neighborhood copes with a nightly blackout. In the title story, an interpreter guides an American family through the India of their ancestors and hears an astonishing confession. Lahiri writes with deft cultural insight reminiscent of Anita Desai and a nuanced depth that recalls Mavis Gallant. She is an important and powerful new voice.
Customer Reviews:
UNUSUALLY BORING.......2007-09-20
I had heard so much about this writer and was anxious to read her work. I was highly disappointed when I did. The stories and characters are exceptionally bland and flat. The author has virtually nothing interesting to say about any subject. In fact, the stories come across as being naive--even affected. From what I have gathered about her bio, Ms. Lahiri has spent most of her life sequestered in academia. Perhaps this is a contributing factor for the inauthentic quality of her work. Her style of writing, however, (sentence structure for example) does have a nice quality to it. But style is only one part of the art of writing. In regards to all other aspects (story, characters, suspense, human interest) this collection fails utterly. An extremely disappointing read. I was taken nowhere. Hard to believe this book garnered so many awards.
The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri.......2007-09-19
This collection of nine short stories won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1999. The author, Jhumpa Lahiri, is of Indian descent, born in London and currently lives in New York, so each story is a look into a different part of Indian culture or into Indian people and their way of life. The first three stories were great and the title story was my favorite. The man literally is an interpreter of maladies, who works at a hospital translating patients' symptoms to the doctor and in this it is revealed he has a lot of power and obligation in telling the doctor exactly what the patient is suffering from so the correct diagnosis can be given. After this story, I found the rest of book slow, kind of boring, and the stories just weren't as engaging.
What started to annoy me as a I progressed through the book was that here you had a no doubt rich and well treated Indian woman who went to very good schools, lived in a good home in England, went to a good writing school for her MFA - probably in New York - and proceeded to publish her work in prestigious magazines like the New Yorker, and yet she is writing about Indian life and how hard it is for most people, especially those not as well off, and it just really got to me that she had succeeded in this way writing about a way of life she'd never experienced.
Now, having finished the book, my thoughts towards Lahiri have changed a little. For with her upbringing she was never able to experience Indian culture as an Indian living in India. This was no doubt a big deal to her, and is to Indian culture. A friend at work, who is of Indian decent, but born here, told me the other day that Indians don't consider him Indian because he was born here. I realize now that this was probably the very thing that changed my mind about this book. It helped me realize that in writing these stories, Lahiri is living the lives of these people, getting the experiences, that she was never able to, and in doing so is helping to define her Indian heritage better.
The result is a collection of interesting and unique stories - perhaps not quite deserving of the Pulitzer -- about Indian people trying to live ordinary Indian lives.
For more book reviews, and other writings, go to www.alexctelander.com
Great stories.......2007-09-10
I liked every one of the stories in "Interpreter of Maladies". Well written.
It's rare to find a collection of short stories where all of the stories are good.
Worthy of a Pulitzer Prize.......2007-09-07
After seeing numerous praises of this book, I finally had to read it for myself. And I'm glad I did. Even though this book is a compilation of nine unrelated short stories with the only common theme being either India or Bangladesh, it leaves the reader with plenty to think about. Lahiri's writing is vivid and fresh. Her subjects and dialogue are realistic and touch upon the human experience. Of all the stories, I enjoyed "A Temporary Matter" the best, if only because it is the one story I related to best. But all are worth reading. The book overall is short, but the stories will linger with you for a long time.
Interpretation of well-built characters.......2007-08-07
I had to read this book for one of my college lit classes and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Even though I've not been in the class for a long time, this book has stuck with me and I occasionally reread my favorite stories.
Interpreter of Maladaies is a collection of nine short stories generally about Pakistani/Indian and their family, relationships, tribulations and joys. For each of the stories being so short, I was surprised that the characters were as truly realized in their development as any character in a 250+ page book. Each story also had a lesson that the characters learned or something that they overcame and it was uplifting to me to read it.
Though I've not read anything else by Jhumpa Lahiri, I would highly recommend this collection of shorts because they're not as demanding to a reader in the sense that you can read one story in a few minutes rather than having to dedicate hours into one story in one book.
My favorites out of this book were Sexy, Interpreter of Maladies and The Third and Final Continent.
Book Description
Paulo Coelho's enchanting novel has inspired a devoted following around the world, and this tenth anniversary edition, with a new introduction from the author, will only increase that following. This story, dazzling in its powerful simplicity and inspiring wisdom, is about an Andalusian shepherd boy named Santiago who travels from his homeland in Spain to the Egyptian desert in search of a treasure buried in the Pyramids. Along the way he meets a Gypsy woman, a man who calls himself king, and an alchemist, all of whom point Santiago in the direction of his quest. No one knows what the treasure is, or if Santiago will be able to surmount the obstacles along the way. But what starts out as a journey to find worldly goods turns into a discovery of the treasures found within. Lush, evocative, and deeply humane, the story of Santiago is an eternal testament to the transforming power of our dreams and the importance of listening to our hearts.
Customer Reviews:
If you find yourself lost in the life path, this may bring you home.......2007-10-10
I've read hundreds of books with many more pages, and more complex storylines and none can compare with the simplicity and knowledge to be gained from reading this wonderful book. I highly recommend this book as a great read for anyone suffering from a loss of a sense of purpose, unrealized dreams or waining ambition. Paul Coehlo is a master with words, imagery and unconscious teaching strategies.
Worth it!.......2007-10-04
I was satisfied with the price and shipping, and really loving this book! It was recommended to me, and now I recommend it to others!
What's all the fuss about?.......2007-10-02
I was looking forward to this book, and I must admit I am a bit disappointed with the outcome. I give three star because I don't want to be too harsh (I think the reader who offered a one star and called this book pure trash is quite misguided!). Part of my disappontment is a result of my poor research on this book as I did not realize it had some biblical influences, and, although that's all nice and fine, those are not the books I am interested in. This being said, I did find this story to be rather typical, run of the mill, story about one, perhaps via a godly intervention, following his/her dream and discovering the meaning of life in the process. I found myself looking forward to the end of the book, just to be satisfied with my having completed it to then put it away. For a book that is supposed to be very inspirational, I am finding myself rather uninspired by its message. Perhaps it is a result of my lack of interest in inspirational books. In any case, I am glad this was a quick read.
Inspirational.......2007-10-01
When I heard about this book from others it seemed a little good to be true. Books/movies are usually overrated by the time I get to them. But this novel lived up to it's hype. This may be because I read it in a time in my life when I needed a little inspiration. But mainly, it's an excellent book with a story that lifts the spirit. Paul Coelho really knows how to create characters you can relate to and root for. It is beautifully written and definitely inspirational. And it's so short you can finish it in no time. I highly recommend it.
you should read it.......2007-09-29
I haven't given a 5 star review yet. Maybe it's because this is one of few `inspirational' novels that have actually held my attention, but I truly believe that every person should read this book once in their life. It's cheap and it's worth so much more than the money you spend. The irony is that this book fell into my hands at exactly the time it should have. You can only understand that after you've read the book...and more importantly...after you understand what you`ve read.
If you find this book to be poorly written and you get nothing out of it, then you've read it at the wrong time in your life or you simply didn't understand the message. I think most people who read it will get what they need from it, though.
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