Mira Stout: One Thousand Chestnut Trees

I found this book at my library and it sounded intriguing, about an young American woman whose mother immigrated from South Korea and her search for her identity through her mother's memories of Korea during the war as well as during her own actual visit to family in South Korea in 1987. It is a fascinating story, although I only really got into it when she finally got to her grandmother and mother's stories in Korea, and then at the end, her own visit there.

This book will teach you a lot of facts about Korea's history but at the same time it is an incredibly moving story of a family being torn apart by war and repression, first by the Japanese and then through the events of the Korean War. Living abroad myself, I could relate to many of the author's thoughts and impressions on being multicultural, removed from your home country, feeling like an alien. Of course, for her, being half caucasian and half asian brought its own challenge:

Naïvely I had expected to discover an instant identity; to be clasped to the country's bosom and greeted like a returning prodigal daughter. Instead I drew stares of indifference, incredulity or sufferance. After all, I was an outsider. Being half-caste had the same effect in the East as in the West. Your face was subliminally unsettling to both races. Eyes brushed over you as if you did not quite count, you were an aberration, a blip that would be smoothed over by the next manifestly white or coloured face that came into view

Stout writes about the division of Korea, and the families that were split by it, in a way that makes it seem so tangible to those of us who cannot imagine having no news, no visits, no information whatsoever about our loved ones. I got as choked up as the main character did while she visited the demilitarized zone:

A strange pressure built up behind the lump in my throat, burning and pushing at my chest; a surge of grief so powerful that I knew it could not be mine alone, but an accumumated, collective grief. My mother's unclaimed loss lay within me, along with aunts', uncles', and grandparents' suffering, and the interwoven despair of myriad families similarly caught in this division.

While visiting Korea she briefly toys with the idea of staying there, learning the language and making a life there. She can appreciate the way the Koreans' lifestyle differs from what she has known in the United States:

I felt exhausted by being American; weathering a constant storm of revisionism and the accompanying babble of inflamed opinion; the abrasive worship of celebrity and riches; even the massive choice of junk foods in the supermarket was tiring...

The descriptions of life in Korea are detailed and fascinating, the cultural mishaps often amusing. An engaging story that allows the reader to learn a great deal about the country - the perfect kind of book for the Book Around the World Challenge!

Garth Stein: The Art of Racing in the Rain

Jenny and Mark brought this book with them on their recent visit to us and left it for me to read and bring back to Mom (our own family version of Bookcrossing). I was initially very resistant to reading it, as I try to avoid books and movies with dogs, because they are always too sad - something bad always happens to the dog. But both Jenny and Mark convinced me that this book was worth it, and yes, although the dog does die at the end, that it is from natural old age and not some tragic accident, so I gave in and put it in my carry on to read on the plane.

Well the first chapter got me all teary eyed from the get go, and by the end, on the last leg of our journey I was nearly bawling - having to dig in my bag and find a tissue to blow my nose. The story IS sad, but it WAS worth reading.

The race car references were a bit over my head at times, but I absolutely loved the part when the main character, Denny, takes his dog, Enzo, the narrator of the story, for a test run at the race track, Enzo's first and only time to join his master at top speed. In fact what makes this book brilliant is the way the writer gets us inside Enzo's head, showing us what he thinks, feels, and observes. Incredibly well done.

Summer reading

Why, oh why, do I do this to myself? Staying up til the wee hours reading books that I just can't put down, because I have to find out what happens! I was at our library on Saturday and brought two books home and now I am all finished and hoping to sleep at a reasonable hour tonight!

Anita Shreve: Body Surfing

Just finished this last night! The story of a young woman, Sydney, who has been divorced once and widowed once by the age of 29, and is spending the summer at a cottage on the shore as a tutor for the daughter of a wealthy family. All is well til the two older sons arrive for the weekend, and one of them sweeps Sydney off her feet. This causes a rift between the two brothers, and a year later, on her wedding day, Sydney finds out why.

I enjoyed it, Shreve's novels are always so well written, they just barrel you along like a train. The characters are well presented, real people. And the twist between the two siblings certainly gave me food for thought!

Jodi Picoult: The Pact

This was the one that kept me up all Sunday night. This book is already ten years old, but I hadn't heard of it. I have a read some of Picoult's other books and enjoyed them, and this one is just as engaging.

It's the story of two neighboring families who have a son and daughter, respectively, who have grown up together all their lives and become a couple in high school. The daughter carries a secret with her that makes her desperately unhappy and she convinces her boyfriend, the son, to help her commit suicide. The rest of the story follows the prosecution of the son for killing her, and what this does to everyone involved.

Well written, could not put it down! Even though the outcome was what I was rooting for, in some sense, it did not come across as believable that a jury would make that decision at the end of that trial. It seemed a bit too convenient.

Tara Brach: Radical Acceptance

The full title of this book is "Radical Acceptance: Embracing your life with the heart of a Buddha". I bought it some time ago in my attempts to explore meditation and fit a practice into my daily life. I've done quite some reading on the subject, quite a lot less actual meditation, but it is still something I strive towards as it has huge benefits, spiritually, mentally, as well as physically.

Tara Brach's book approaches meditation through the Buddhist concept of Radical Acceptance, which Brach defines as "the willingness to experience ourselves and our life as it is." By accepting everything as it is in the present moment, we free ourselves from suffering and pain. Of course, this is no simple task, it takes attention to our state of mind, which is best achieved through the practice of meditation, for which the book gives detailed instruction of many types and ways to meditate.

Another crucial concept in the book is compassion, both for ourselves and others. The first step is to have compassion and loving kindness for ourselves, and then move on to extend it to people around us:

Even if we don't like someone, seeing their vulnerability allows us to open our heart to them. We might vote against them in an election, we might never invite them to our home, we might even feel they should be imprisoned to protect others. Still, our habitual feelings of attraction and aversion do not have to overrule our basic capacity to see that, like us, they suffer and long to be happy...Our circle of compassion naturally widens to include them.

In what was to me one of the best chapters in the book, Brach further talks about seeing the goodness in and forgiving ourselves and others. A Herculean task sometimes, but something worth striving for as being able to forgive is so important in relieving pain and suffering:

We maintain the intention to forgive because we understand that not forgiving hardens and imprisons our heart. If we feel hatred toward anyone, we remain chained to the sufferings of the past and cannot find genuine peace. We forgive for the freedom of our own heart.

Brach's book is filled with insight, food for thought, case histories from her therapy clients and her own personal experiences with meditation and Radical Acceptance, and detailed instructions of how to go about incorporating these ideas into your life. I highly recommend it.

William Golding: Lord of the Flies

Who else had to read this in high school? We had this one year, I think it might have been sophomore English class with Mr. Seidel, where we had to read all these very depressing novels. Lord of the Flies, Catcher in the Rye, and a couple others along those lines. It seemed dangerous to me at the time, because if you were already a little bit bummed out, the books we had to read would have really pushed you over the edge.

I was at our library recently, stocking up on some books for summer, when this caught my eye. I thought my oldest might be interested in it, since he's an avid reader, and then I thought perhaps I would re-read it myself, wondering what the effect would be after all this time. I remember that reading it as a high school student, certain things in the book just didn't seem clear to me, and it always had this air of mystery to it for me.

Well, re-reading Lord of the Flies didn't have quite the same effect on me as when I saw the original Willie Wonka movie in college (I was amazed at how many things in that movie simply flew over my head as a kid), but I definitely "got" certain plot elements much better this time around. Especially the whole thing about the kids having confused a parachutist who crashed on the island as some kind of a "beast". Golding is sometimes very subtle in his way of describing certain things and you have to be reading with attention not to miss things.

The other thing that was interesting was reading it with the perspective of being a mom of three boys as opposed to being a teenage girl which gave me much more compassion and sympathy for the boys on the island. I felt sorry for them that things went so terribly wrong.

Another thing that was fun about reading it again was realizing how much the makers of the television series "Lost" must have been influenced by this book. Only a brilliant novel could still inspire us like that 50 years on.

Atonement by Ian McEwan

I haven't seen the movie, but stopped in my local library last week and picked up a few novels in English, and decided to take this one home. I didn't know anything about it except that it was made into a movie and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 2001, so I figured it must be good.

I just loved this book. The supsense in the first part of it was nearly unbearable, as you just know something bad is going to happen and the feeling of impending doom is palpable. I actually couldn't sleep the first evening I started it because I kept worrying about what was going to happen, and to whom.

Then the awful sequence of events starts to get underway and I had a sickening premonition of what it would be. And yes, three lives ruined, two families destroyed...and no way back, no way to fix it.

And then the war. Robbie as a soldier trying to get himself evacuated out of northern France, struggling for the landing beaches while suffering from a shrapnel wound in his side. Cecilia and Briony both nurses in military hospitals, with their gruelling work load. At the end a sort of reconciliation, a possibility of atonement...or is it?

The third and last section of the book was devastating: I had to read the fourth-to-last paragraph of the book at least five times before the "reality" of the ending got through to me. The promise of atonement and a life after the war were but a "fictional" account, nothing more.

More on "The Sorrow of Belgium"

I was glad to be able to lend my copy of the English translation of "The Sorrow of Belgium" to a fellow blogger who just happened to be a student in one of my husband's classes (talk about that 'it's a small world" feeling!). The semester is drawing to a close, and my book came home with a nice note from Joan, where he gave his take on the first part of the novel:

From the first part I especially liked the description of Flanders and Belgium. It is also interesting, the personal evolution of Louis, how he loses many things throughout the years...It's amazing, the descriptive ability of Mr. Claus.

Joan promised to review the book if he ever finds time to finish it once he returns to Barcelona!

Samantha in the Netherlands also recently reviewed the book at: http://bookwormsandtea.blogspot.com/2008/05/sorrow-of-belgium.html I enjoyed where she said sometimes she liked Louis and sometimes she didn't! I think this speaks to the ability of Hugo Claus to create complex charachters, that, just like people in real life, are not all good or all bad, but a mixture of both.