Random Acts of Heroic Love

Nuffin random or heroic going along here.

'Room on the Broom'

This book ROCKS.
Don't fight it...

A Thousand Splendid Suns

I think I'm going to have to dedicate a shelf to this genre and label it 'Bad Things Happen to Blameless Women' and on that shelf I'll put 'Snow Flower and the Secret Fan', 'The Red Tent', 'Memoirs of a Geisha' and now 'A Thousand Splendid Suns'. I'm aware that bad things do indeed happen to blameless women but bad things happen to blameless men too and I don't see a whole host of supportive literature for that. It's not even as though women having a voice is such a new thing - we've been able to publish under our own names for quite some time now. And in that I think that perhaps that's what makes this book a little different to the others - the fact it was written by a man (as, indeed, was 'Memoirs'. Just don't get me started on that...). This appears to have been a conscious effort on his part to counter-balance the very masculine text that was 'The Kite Runner'. He writes women well by the simple method of letting them speak. This isn't bells'n'whistles writing - just voices from the dark.

And it's written very well although I am occasionally troubled by the tone. The text is at times horrific and somewhat relentless in its violence but I can't for the life of me work out its function. It's a novel so clearly it's purpose isn't to educate, as a piece of fiction it can't very well be to inform either and this leaves us entertainment. Well, I for one sure as hell ain't laughing. The violence endured by the women by their husband is in somewhat stark contrast to the muted grace - almost reverence - Miriam receives whilst waiting for her sticky end. Perhaps this is a reflection that in order to really be able to hate we need to love first (although it is highly questionable as to whether the husband is capable of such an emotion. Adore - yes - love? Not so much) and I also wonder if Hosseini (having spent nearly all of his formative years in the States) was cautious of labeling too heavily the Taliban as Irredeemably Bad Men. Perhaps he is understandably cautious of shouting judgments from across the waters.

I liked this book. It upset me - but as a mother - not as a citizen of the world. I think I'm going to have to accept that this is just a novel - nothing more. I'll find a way of coming to terms with it.

Then We Came to the End...

...at which point I said 'Thank God'.

I really really thought I was going to like this book - indeed - I really wanted to. It has left me a little unsettled. Not in a 'what is the meaning of life/who am I/what did that mean' kinda way bit more of an 'is that IT?'

Granted the plot has some clever twists but on the whole the book struck me somewhat as an idea someone had that they refused to quit and into it they slid other pieces of writing they'd done that they couldn't quite bring themselves to abandon.

Ferris is a good writer - I'm not for a moment suggesting he isn't - and can quickly and efficiently draw characters both likeable and awful. From the moment Karen Woo appeared I loathed her yet straight away felt an affinity for Jim. And I like that the narrator is unspecified. A good touch that allows both the writer and reader a much greater freedom of movement with regards to access to the plot. It grants the reader much more ownership than other devices would have.

I appreciated from the blurb that this was a text about not a lot - a haiku of a novel if you will - but even so I expected to be able take away something. And perhaps part of the objective was to create an ultimately disposable novel in a bid to reflect how the workers in the text felt about their working lives. Are we done now? Then I'll go home as the others really do nothing for me and so I'll leave them behind.