Foreign Language Friday: In The Sea There are Crocodiles by Fabio Geda

Dear Blog,

Original Title: Nel mare ci sono i coccodrilli

Original Language: Italian

Translated by: Howard Curtis

Summary (from Goodreads): One night before putting him to bed, Enaiatollah's mother tells him three things: don't use drugs, don't use weapons, don't steal. The next day he wakes up to find she isn't there. They have fled their village in Ghazni to seek safety outside Afghanistan but his mother has decided to return home to her younger children. Ten-year-old Enaiatollah is left alone in Pakistan to fend for himself. In a book that takes a true story and shapes it into a beautiful piece of fiction, Italian novelist Fabio Geda describes Enaiatollah's remarkable five-year journey from Afghanistan to Italy where he finally managed to claim political asylum aged fifteen. His ordeal took him through Iran, Turkey and Greece, working on building sites in order to pay people-traffickers, and enduring the physical misery of dangerous border crossings squeezed into the false bottoms of lorries or trekking across inhospitable mountains. A series of almost implausible strokes of fortune enabled him to get to Turin, find help from an Italian family and meet Fabio Geda, with whom he became friends. The result of their friendship is this unique book in which Enaiatollah's engaging, moving voice is brilliantly captured by Geda's subtle and simple storytelling. In Geda's hands, Enaiatollah's journey becomes a universal story of stoicism in the face of fear, and the search for a place where life is liveable.

Review:  When I sat down to start reading this book, I wasn't sure how many boxes of tissues I was going to need.  Surprisingly, I didn't need any- the story was told in a very straightforward manner, without  much strong emotion at all.  But although it didn't make me cry, it was still an entirely hard-hitting and harrowing book.  There were some moments now and again that just struck me as particularly horrifying, perhaps because of the unadorned and almost casual way they were described, as if they were nothing exceptional to Enaiatollah.  It reminded me a little of The Book of Everything in that respect; having things just told as they are, without any exaggeration, strong emotions and such put in, makes the events seem entirely shocking.

Enaitollah talks about human trafficking, the extremely hard time police across the Middle East and southern Europe give him and the desperate measures he'll go to in order to go abroad in such a frank way I want to just grab him and trap him in a massive bear hug.  Still, I think that was only because of his experiences; sometimes I wished that there had been more of his own thoughts and emotions included.  Although it's a very direct book, like he's sat right across the table from you telling his story, it would have been nice to have felt what he felt, as well as see what he saw.

In The Sea There are Crocodiles reminds me a lot of the Breadwinner trilogy by Deborah Ellis, which were some of my favourite books a few years ago (I read the whole trilogy in about three days). It's very insightful into the world of illegal immigration, and if I hadn't read this book then I  wouldn't have been aware of how it works in any detail. As well as that, there were things like the places Enaiat worked; for fourteen hours a day in a stone-cutting factory, and running all the errands for a hotel, that reminded me how lucky I am to be able to just babysit once a week and still be able to eat three meals a day, sleep with a roof over my head and get a good education.

Still, it's not entirely without hope, which was a pleasant surprise.  Enaiatollah, once he reaches Italy, recounts how he managed  to (gradually) settle down and live an ordinary life.   Enaiat was so resilient and just kept on going whatever life threw at him.  He did such brave and resilient things aged ten or eleven that, as a teenager, makes me feel hopelessly ditzy and (hypothetically) incapable of surviving in such a harsh world.  His fearlessness and determination to keep going, through five years and six countries, will stay with me for a very long time.

In three words: Insightful, hopeful, direct.
Reccommended for: Armchair travellers.
Rating: 3.

Thank you to Random House for sending me a copy for review.

In My Mailbox 25 or The One with the Armchair Travelling

Dear Blog,
IMM is hosted by Kristi at The Story Siren.
I got a lot of books this week, which is mostly the fault of the huge charity shop in the centre of town, which has shelves and shelves and shelves of secondhand novels. I've probably sung its praises before, and with reason.
A lot of the books I obtained are a sufficient transportation method to other corners of time and space; Japan, Korea, Greece, Russia, China and so on, which is entirely ideal because I've been wanting to read lots of books set abroad lately.

BOUGHT

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis de Bernières

This Lullaby by Sarah Dessen

Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

The Last Day of a Condemned Man by Victor Hugo (read, review here)

Ten Thousand Sorrows by Elizabeth Kim

We The Living by Ayn Rand

Beijing Doll by Chun Sue

Stolen, er, BORROWED FROM MY MOTHER

Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami (she's reading this with her book club at the moment, and though I'm quite the Murakami fan I haven't read this one yet.)

FROM THE LIBRARY

The Teahouse Fire by Ellis Avery (currently reading. Entirely fascinating, but pretty heavy going)

So, there you go.  I'm off now to push on with The Teahouse Fire and write poetry.  Over and out.

Review: How I Live Now by Meg Rosoff

Dear Blog,

a short-ish review because I have lots of homework to get through.

Summary (from Goodreads): Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.
As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.
A riveting and astonishing story.

Review:  I really wasn't sure what to expect with How I Live Now.  The cover, the blurb, never gives away any elements of potential war and dystopian life.  It's only when you start reading then you realise how big a part war plays in the book.
Well, never judge a book by it's cover, I guess.

How I Live Now is, if this makes sense, wonderfully chaotic (I just realised how I contradicted myself with that sentence.  Baha).  The writing style is absolutely all over the place, but the confusing-ness seems to add
to the essence of the story. I don't know why, but the almost freewheeling air of carefree-ness reminded me a lot of Bonjour Tristesse.  Which is a little strange, but still, to my mind, true.  Even amidst occupation, the first weeks Daisy spends in England just seem totally perfect anyway, cut off from the world in the middle of the countryside in an English summer where-gasp- it's not raining non-stop. It's so idyllic and perfect.
That is of course until the war really affects Daisy and her cousins.  When she and Piper are sepearated from the boys and sent to live elsewhere, tragic things ensue. 

The main romance in the book is the relationship between Daisy and her slightly younger cousin Edmond.  Incest in some circles, just slightly strange in others.  True, but Edmond himself is absent for the second half of the book, only really appearing at the beginning and then right at the very end, and even though he remains much of a mystery to the reader.  Still, you can't help but wish that he and Daisy could be re-united, and bitter and disappointed when you do.  Daisy's emotions seem so real, that the reader ends up longing for Edward to turn up and make everything right again.

One thing that I'm not so keen on, though, is how vague the book is. You never really find out why England is at war, or who the occupiers are.  I suppose this is to make the situation seem more real, as if it could happen at any time, but instead it just doesn't make much sense.  Still, it's interesting to watch England fall apart in such a way, seeing as it features little in YA dystopian fiction. 
Despite that slight flaw, How I Live Now is devastating and utterly heartbreaking anyway.  Especially part two, the last twenty pages or so of the book.  It's hard to explain without giving heaps away, so I'll keep my lips zipped. Still, it was utterly devastating with one of those tiny flickers of hope at the end that makes it even more tragic, in a way. 

In Three Words: confusing, heartbreaking, wonderful.
Reccomended for: teenagers and adults. 
Rating: 4.5

Review: Guantanamo Boy

Dear Blog,

Summary (from Goodreads): For Khalid, the war on terror  just got personal.

Fifteen-year-old Khalid likes seeing his friends, playing football down the park, the normal things. He isn't too excited about going to visit his family in Pakistan, but his mum and dad want him to come with them. So he goes.   And a living nightmare begins.

Khalid is kidnapped and forced to go to a place no teenager should ever see. A place where torture and terror are the normal things. Somewhere he doesn't know if he will ever escape from.
A place called Guantanamo Bay.

Review: I first saw this on my friends' bookshelf a few years ago.  I saw the cover and the title and I was like, OMG where did you get this book I must read it now.    And  then I found a copy in a library and, naturally, borrowed it.   

Well, where can I start?  Guantanamo Boy is the most difficult, disturbing book I've read in a long time.  Yet I read it in a morbidly fascinated sort of way to find out what was going to happen next- the sort of book where you both want to throw it out the window and go and watch a cheerful Disney movie instead, and both read on in the hope that something good might happen.  I won't give much of the plot away, because you'll have to read it and see for yourself. 

You can't not like Khalid, the protagonist of the book.  Because it's just so wrong that at aged fifteen he should be accused of terrorism and have to be subject to such torture- things like being tied to a board and then tipped backwards into a tub of water until he confessed to crimes he didn't commit, and being chained to the floor and having his eardrums practically burst and such.  It's kind of hard to describe such scenes- on one hand it was too terrible to be happening to an ordinary teenager, to anybody, but on the other I guess it could have been  a lot more graphic (I'm glad it wasn't).

I suppose in that case, then,  it's very emotionally draining.  So much of the book is focused on Khalid's thoughts and emotions.  Which makes sense for two reasons: 1) in the 2 years he is in Guantanamo, a lot of it was pretty uneventful, and 2) that makes him a much more believable character who you can really feel for, whose thoughts you can really see into.  I think that was the most affecting thing about the book.

The ending was...strange.  It felt very surreal, perhaps because the reader gets as used to the bleak solitariness (real word?  I guess not) of Guantanamo as Khalid does.  The conclusion seemed kind of rushed and "oh, that's it?"  It seems kind of hard to accept that after everything he's been through, the book ends at that stage, with everything (seemingly) wrapped up nicely.  It's supposed to be satisfying, I think, but the rest of the book was so difficult to read, it seemed a little irritating.

At first the writing style seemed to get on my nerves- it was so simplistic, with little description.  And when there is it's very basic indeed,  I guess to convey the stark nature of the book (which I think the cover sums up perfectly).  Also, Khalid is no poet but your average teenage boy, so the writing style, however basic it may be,  makes sense I suppose. 

This is one of those books that absolutely everyone should read regardless of age and background.  Whether you're a teenage boy or a 40-year-old politician then it will no doubt at least make you think.  It will certainly change your attitudes to terrorism. In that respect it's a very thought-provoking book without being overly preachy and "death to America."  Which was pleasing.

In three words: unforgettable, disturbing, heartbreaking.
Recommended for: everyone. 
Rating: 5.