My reading week: 6/52

Currently Reading

I’m listening to The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, which has been chosen for my March book club.

I’m reading Emotional Agility: Get Unstuck, Embrace Change and Thrive in Work and Life by Susan David because who doesn’t need to do this?

Recently Completed

I finished three novels this week. The first was No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood.

As this urgent, genre-defying book opens, a woman who has recently been elevated to prominence for her social media posts travels around the world to meet her adoring fans. She is overwhelmed by navigating the new language and etiquette of what she terms “the portal,” where she grapples with an unshakable conviction that a vast chorus of voices is now dictating her thoughts. When existential threats–from climate change and economic precariousness to the rise of an unnamed dictator and an epidemic of loneliness–begin to loom, she posts her way deeper into the portal’s void. An avalanche of images, details, and references accumulate to form a landscape that is post-sense, post-irony, post-everything. “Are we in hell?” the people of the portal ask themselves. “Are we all just going to keep doing this until we die?”

Suddenly, two texts from her mother pierce the fray: “Something has gone wrong,” and “How soon can you get here?” As real life and its stakes collide with the increasingly absurd antics of the portal, the woman confronts a world that seems to contain both an abundance of proof that there is goodness, empathy, and justice in the universe, and a deluge of evidence to the contrary.

This novel is divided into two parts, the first of which focuses on the world of the ‘portal’, which is simultaneously humorous, absurd and hits disturbingly home. It made me question my relationship to an online life and how far I want to delve into this parallel reality. I felt slightly ambivalent to this section, recognising it contains important messages but not particularly gripped.

In stark contrast, the second part shifts to a very real event in the very real world and is hard-hitting and incredibly moving. My response to the first half was knocked sideways and this novel became a great work, in my opinion. At one point, I had tears in my eyes and I am grateful I stuck with it.

I listened to this novel but I feel it is one that I should have read.

I will use it for prompt 31 of the 52 Book Club Reading Challenge: Technology-themed.

I also read The Travelling Cat Chronicles by Hiro Arikawa.

Nana is on a road trip, but he is not sure where he is going. All that matters is that he can sit beside his beloved owner Satoru in the front seat of his silver van.

Satoru is keen to visit three old friends from his youth, though Nana doesn’t know why and Satoru won’t say. Set against the backdrop of Japan’s changing seasons and narrated with a rare gentleness and striking humour, Nana’s story explores the wonder and thrill of life’s unexpected detours.

This easy-to-read novel explores the importance of friendship, both human and feline, and the impact that we have on the lives of others. I sat back, relaxed and enjoyed the pleasant, comfortable journey, until I neared the end when it became incredibly moving and emotional.

This fits prompt 34 of the Challenge: Author’s photo on the back cover.

My final completion was Three Sisters by Heather Morris.

When they are little girls, Cibi, Magda and Livia make a promise to their father – that they will stay together, no matter what. Years later, at just 15, Livia is ordered to Auschwitz by the Nazis. Cibi, only 19 herself, remembers their promise and follows Livia, determined to protect her sister, or die with her. Together, they fight to survive through unimaginable cruelty and hardship.

Magda, only 17, stays with her mother and grandfather, hiding out in a neighbour’s attic or in the forest when the Nazi militia come to round up friends, neighbours and family. She escapes for a time, but eventually she too is captured and transported to the death camp. In Auschwitz-Birkenau the three sisters are reunited and, remembering their father, they make a new promise, this time to each other: That they will survive.

This is a fictional account of a remarkable true story by the author of The Tattooist of Auschwitz, which I haven’t read. I found I wanted to pick this up and follow the sisters on their heartbreaking and horrific journey. The account of their time in Auschwitz-Birkenau is a harrowing portrayal of the evil inflicted during this dark period in history.

I therefore feel unjust in the criticism that is to follow but for me it was about 100+ pages too long and I think it would have been better to stop writing at a certain point, omit the final part, and tell the remainder of the story as a biographical summary. I also felt that at times it slipped through the gap between fiction and biography. Having said that, it is well worth reading.

This will suit several prompts but I’m going to choose number 10: A book based on a real person.

Reading Next

This will probably be another Japanese novel, At the End of the Matinee by Keiichiro Hirano.

My thought-provoking quotation this week comes from Three Sisters:

Is that it? she thinks. They went through all that horror, and now they’re just being sent home, on a bus, as if nothing had happened? Rage spikes her body. Who is going to say sorry? Who is going to atone for their suffering, the senseless deaths?