The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox

Maggie O'Farrell is a British author, who has written 5 novels this far. The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox is her fourth novel. It was first published in 2006. 

I had had The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox on my TBR list for a long time. Just like with The Picture of Dorain Gray I am really happy I finally read this novel.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox starts with Iris, a young single woman receiving the information that she should come and pick her great-aunt up from the mental institution where she has spent over sixty tears of her life. Little by little as the story progresses we get to know (at least most of) the story that lead to Esme's being forced into an institution at the age of 16. The story is told from three points of view: Esme's, who recollects her childhood and youth, Iris's contemporary view, her problematic love life and the surprise of finding a, maybe mad, great-aunt (or is she mad after all?), and thirdly through the fragmentary memories of Esme's sister Kitty, who has Alzheimer's.

The novel has been said to be gripping and "a horrifying story of jealousy and betrayal" and I wholeheartily agree with these comments. It was astonishing, apalling really, how totally Esme's parents seemed to misunderstand her, how horribly she was treated by her own family and also by some others. I also liked Iris's storyline, small as it was, and would actually have liked to know more about her. All in all I found O'Farrell very clever in revealing small parts of the plot along the way.

The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox was a quick and enjoyable read. I am pretty sure I will read more O'Farrell in the future. But now I'm facing the terrible problem of which, oh which, book to read next! I have too many possibilities...

Teaser Tuesday 29.6.2010

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by LizB of Should Be Reading.

The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Open to a random page.
• Share 2 teaser sentences from somewhere on that page.
• Be careful not to include spoilers.
• Share the title and author, too, so that other Teaser Tuesday participants can add the book to their TBR lists if they like your teasers!

I'm trying to fill in some gaps in my reading and am at the moment in the middle of two totally different classics: Middlemarch by George Eliot which I'm trying to get read for Nymeth's readalong, and The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov which I have read many praising comments about. My teaser this time is from The Master and Margarita.

'Among other things,' the prisoner recounted, 'I said that all authority is violence over people, and that a time will come when there will be no authority of the Caesars, nor any other authority. Man will pass into the kingdom of truth and justice, where generally there will be no need for any authority.' [p. 36]

What are you reading at the moment?

The Lovers of Algeria

It's the long Midsummer weekend over here and I have been celebrating with enjoying the days off and, surprise, surprise, reading! :) I spent most of yesterday with one of the books from my latest library loot, The Lovers of Algeria by Anouar Benmalek.

The Lovers of Algeria is a heart-wrenching novel about two lovers separated by circumstances they could not have done anything about. It is also a novel about the insanity of war, terrorism and colonialism.

The story begins in 1955, when Swiss Anna, a former circus artist, and Arab Nassreddin have just been married in his native Algeria. Forty years later Anna returns to Algeria to visit the graves of her and Nassreddin's murdered twins. Algeria in the 1950s was not an easy place to be for a mixed race couple, and Algeria in the 1990s is a very dangerous place for foreigners. As Anna decides to try and reach Nassreddin's old homestead she employs the little Jallah, a street-urchin from Algiers to act as her "grandson". Before leaving Algiers Anna sends a telegram to Nassreddin without knowing if he is still alive or not.

Something very bad happens during Anna and Jallah's trip. Here the writer very cleverly turns the narrative into reminiscences from Anna's, and also Nassreddin's childhood and yound adulthood. We get to know how they actually met and fell in love and what happened to their children.

Well, I think I'll leave telling about the plot here. You just have to read The Lovers of Algeria yourselves to learn more about what happenes in the story! All I can say that this was a book that I did not want to put down. I started reading it on Friday and spent most of Saturday with it in order to finish it as quickly as possible. I wanted very badly to know how the story ends! And I must say that even the ending was very well written.

This is the only book I've ever read that is set in Algeria. My only critisim with the book is that it was sometimes a bit too violent for me, but I also acknowledge that the violence was an integral part of the narrative and simply had to be there.

I'm a bit behind with my participation in the Reading the World Challenge. I did not finish any book for the challenge in May, and will thus not be able to complete the challenge in time in July, but I hope it is okay to bend the rules a little. :) I will count The Lovers of Algeria as my Africa book for the challenge. Let's see if I then try and read my two remaining books (South America and Antarctica) both in July or I might also read one in July and the other in August.

Icelandic Memories

 

This week I had the great priviledge of participating in a creative learning camp in Reykjavik, Iceland, where ca. 70 library professionals from 7 different public library systems in the Nordic countries spent two work-filled but fun days creating ideas for common Nordic concepts for public libraries. On our last day in Iceland some of us spent the evening taking a tour to see some of the natural wonders of Iceland. Most of the photos in this post are from that tour. The link above is for the Nordic Camps Ning. If  you want to see some pictures from the camp, here's a few of group 6 to which I belonged to. I'm the one wearing the gray Greenwich hoodie. :) And if you are wondering what an earth are we doing in the first few pictures... We were preparing our final presentation, or pitch as they were called on the camp, and we decided to do that through a little play. Much more interesting and fun than a couple of PowerPoint slides, don't you agree? :)

During my stay in Reykjavik I also learned about the Literature.is -website, which is an English language website dedicated to contemporary Icelandic fiction writers. Do take a look! The site also lists all the translations available of the books.

1. The photo above: Geysir park. This was the most spectacular of the geysirs.

2. Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland

3. A lake in a volcanic crater

4. Standing on the American Plate & looking over the rift area towards the Euro-Asian Plate

5. Another picture of the geysirs

6. The Golden Waterfall (Gullfoss)

The Picture of Dorian Gray

The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's only published novel, is a book loved by many. I had tought of reading it many times along the years, but somehow just never managed to get to it. Then finally I bougth a pretty, little Penguin Classics edition of my own. Still it took me months to actually read the book. I'm very glad I finally did.

I knew the general idea of the book before reading it. The man would stay young while his portrait would age. But other than that I did not quite know what to except. I reasoned that this could not be a humorous story full of that famous wit of Oscar Wilde. Actually I was wrong. Actually the book was very different from any of my expectations! There was, maybe not humour, this was surely not that kind of a book, but wittiness and great charm, and also degradation and pure evilness. I found The Picture of Dorian Gray to be a multifaceted story that simply cries for a reread.

I will count The Story of Dorian Gray as one of the books read for the GLBT Challenge because of the author.

Train to Trieste

As I mentioned earlier I 'm again very much into reading books set in Middle/Eastern Europe. I guess, for me, nothing beats The Cellist of Sarajevo, the best book I read last year and one that immediately went into my all time favorites list, but there really is so many interesting novels set in Middle/Eastern Europe. I'm writing Middle/Eastern because geographically some of those countires are in the middle of Europe (actually Finland is geographically much more in the East than many of these countries) and here in the EU we are trying to learn and talk of them as Middle Europe, where as back in the day all those now ex-communist coutries were called Eastern Europe for a political reason. 

I have had a pause in reading novels about the Balkans or any of the other Middle/Eastern coutries, but I must say, that I wanted to read Train to Trieste by Domnica Radulescu immediately when I say it in a bookstore simply because of its name. Back then, however, I tried to be reasonable and did not buy it. :)

The copy I read now is form the library. But Trieste! That town has always had a magical sound in my mind! It is a port from where ships left for exotic places already in the 18th century, and I have wanted to visit Trieste for a long time. Thus, it was the name of the book that made me pick it up in the first place.

Trieste in the book, is not only a real town, but also a symbol. The train to Trieste is a symbol of freedom, and a concrete way to freedom for some in Ceausescu's Romania. And that is what the novel is really about. It is a story of Mona Manoliu, a young woman from Bucharest, who falls in love with Mihai, a boy from another town. They meet during holidays and at one point Mihai even moves to Bucharest, alledgely to be closer to Mona. But in Romania in the 70s and 80s it is difficult to know who to trust, who is for Ceausescu's dictatorship and who is against it, who works for the resistant and who is an informer. Mona begins to doubt Mihai. Maybe he is a member of the secret police after all? When Mona's father gets repeatedly harrassed by the secret police and some people close to her die in suspect circumstances, Mona's parents think it better that she leaves the country. The next twenty years Mona tries to build a new life as an exile in a new country, but in the end the loose ends of her past make her return to her native Romania.

I liked this novel a lot. I liked Radulescu's writing and I especially enjoyed the first half of the book that was set in Romania. At some point during the story of Mona's exile years I lost my interest just a tiny bit, but it was soon rekindled, and the ending was just perfect. I would warmly recommend Train to Trieste to anyone interested in a book set in Romania or really for anyone wanting to read a love story that has a bit more substance to it and is not so straight forward than many others.

Random House's page about Domnica Radulescu and her book is here.

An interesting video interview of Domnica Radulescu can be found here.

Life According to Literature, Take 2

I did this meme once last year. You'll find that post here. Already back then I thought this would be something fun to do every once in a while, so here comes:

Life According to Literature, Take 2:

To answer the following questions I'm using only books I have read this year (2010). Click on the title to find more info on the book. 

Describe yourself: Empress of the World

How do you feel: Little Boy Lost

Describe how you currently live: In This House of Brede

If you could go anyway, where would you go: To the Lighthouse

Your favorite form of transportation: The River

Your best friend is: The Lieutenant

You and your friends are: Bluestockings

What's the weather like: Greengage Summer

You fear: Consequences of Sin

What is the best advice you have to give: How Beautiful the Ordinary

Thought for the day: Rapture

How I would like to die: Before the Throne

My soul's present condition: Happenstance