Book Review : Born A Crime by Trevor Noah
Written By: amodini
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Sep•
22•21
Author : Trevor Noah
Genre : Non-fiction; Memoir
Publisher : One World
Pages : 304
Rating : 3.5/5
I borrowed Born A Crime by Trevor Noah from the library because I do watch Trevor Noah’s show on Comedy Central, I have seen his stand-up comedy and heard about his background. While his show is entertaining, I do find him a little juvenile as compared to Jon Stewart, the previous host of The Daily Show, but that might be because he is trying to target the younger demographic. His live stand-up comedy show (which I saw a couple of years back) was a lot more “mature” and far more perspicacious than I’d thought it would be.
The tone of this book is trademark Noah – informal, colloquial, casual. And interesting.
Noah was born in South Africa during apartheid, to an African Xhosa woman and a Swiss Caucasian man, when an inter-racial relationship was a crime punishable by a 5 year prison term. So in the initial years at least, relatively light colored Trevor had to be “hidden away” and couldn’t be seen with his mother – as in she could not identify herself as his mother, lest she be convicted of the crime an inter-racial relationship. Later, as apartheid lifted, Trevor had more freedom and he narrates his life as his little family unit – him and his mother and later his younger brother move back-and-forth between black neighborhoods and black townships like Soweto.
His independent-minded, strong-willed mother Patricia strove to give him everything within her power, because she wanted him to have a better life than she had had. His childhood was mired in poverty and he describes quite a few hair-raising episodes – like the one time he and his mother jump out of a moving bus – and some hard ones, like the time in his life when he ate caterpillars, day after day; he describes the taste and texture and feeling of eating caterpillars – extremely unpleasant – and tells us that it is the food of the poorest of the poor.
Noah describes himself as an imp, a prankster and a practical joker, a hustler who managed to earn a few bucks here and there using his street-smarts. He also describes situations where he was caught between two worlds – he was light colored enough to not be considered black enough, and he didn’t actually fit in with the colored folks – and had to pick a side.
He endured hard times, but Noah is completely frank and honest about all his experiences, and tells them with grace and good humor, qualities that he appears to carry with him in real life. Despite all the hard times, the injustices, the unfairness of it all, he comes across not as an embittered young man but someone who appreciates life, a person imbued with a splendidness of spirit.
Audiobook Review : Go Set A Watchman by Harper Lee
Written By: amodini
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Aug•
25•21
Author : Harper Lee
Narrators : Reese Witherspoon
Genre : Romance
Publisher : Caedmon
Listening Length : 6 hours 57 minutes
Rating : 1/5
Narrator Rating : 4.5/5
I’d wanted to read “Go Set a Watchman” because it’s written by the author of To Kill a Mockingbird and I was curious about the sequel. This book was disappointing, because even though it is chronologically a sequel it doesn’t follow through with an equally interesting story or even one that continues in the same spirit.
Scout, the little girl in To Kill a Mockingbird is now a young woman, 26 year old Jean Louise living in New York , and she’s visiting home. This time though, she notices that her father – the saintly Atticus Finch, who has taught her everything she knows and believes about morality and equality, has racist views. And so does her boyfriend Henry Clinton. Confrontation brings disillusionment and a whole lot of gobbledygook about heartbreak.
To say that I’m confused is putting it mildly. This book completely reverses the character of Atticus. It is not a very coherent book. Although it is not very long, it meanders around for about 3 hours before bringing us to the crux of the problem, and then 4 long hours later comes to an unsatisfactory end. Jean Louise is the main protagonist and she is an annoying one – a smug, entitled miss who goes to pieces when she finds dearest daddy isn’t what she thought he was; I wasn’t sure I felt for her.
If you loved “To Kill A Mockingbird” you should skip this book. Now I read, as I go about finding how dear old Atticus went from being the upholder of justice to just another Southern man subtly advocating segregation, that it was an initial draft of Mockingbird. It does read like an unpolished draft, so I see no purpose in its release, except to tarnish the image of a much-beloved, righteous hero.
Narrator Reese Witherspoon does a marvelous job with her Southern accents, and helped me finish this otherwise disappointing book.
Audibook Review : The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
Written By: amodini
-
Jul•
28•21
Author : Kristin Hannah
Genre : Historical
Publisher : Macmillan Audio
Narrator : Polly Stone
Listening Length : 17 hours 19 minutes
Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Narrator: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Kristin Hannah’s Nightingale is about 2 French sisters in World War II. When Hitler invades France, Vianne Mauriac the elder sister is living happily with husband Antoine and daughter Sophy in the small village of Carriveau. The younger and more impetuous sister, 18 year old Isabelle, is in a finishing school having been rusticated from several different educational institutions. She does not last long at the Finishing school either and makes her way back to her widower father in Paris. When the Nazi soldiers march into Paris, Isabelle’s father sends Isabelle to Vienne for safety, but once there Isabelle chafes to join the active fight against the Germans.
As the occupation grows and German atrocities rise along with the targeting of Jews – first foreign-born and then all – many of whom are friends and neighbors, both sisters’ lives take very different paths. Vianne, meeker and responsible for Sophy with Antoine gone off to fight, asks no questions and tries to keep her head down, and deal with the situation a day at a time, even when that entails having a German officer “billet” in her home. Isabelle meets up with the underground protestors and becomes initially the secret distributor of resistance literature, and later comes to be known as The Nightingale, responsible for getting downed British and American Allied pilots back to safety.
I haven’t read/heard Kristin Hannah’s work before but The Nightingale is a great introduction. Although World War tales are not my cup of tea, The Nightingale is compelling reading. Hannah details out her storylines – the events in the book are major world events – and fleshes out her characters with great care, so that we know them intimately and are with them on their rocky roads. Her words show us the progression of evil in visceral detail – poverty, hunger, oppression, families being separated and taken to “work” camps in Germany, being hunted and targeted for one’s religion – and the changes it brings in the two sisters.
Narrator Polly Stone is fantastic. She gives each of the sisters their distinct personalities and even does the male voices well. This is a big book – lots of detail, most of it minutiae and personal – and while I may not have been able to maintain the momentum had I read it, it was a compelling listen because of Stone.
Book Review : Force of Nature by Jane Harper
Written By: amodini
-
Jun•
30•21
Author : Jane Harper
Genre : Mystery
Publisher : Little Brown
Pages : 347
Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2
Five women, Jill Bailey, Alice Russell, Lauren Shaw, twins Breanna and Bethany, go out on an office-sponsored survivalist-style corporate retreat, a moderately challenging exercise where they will have to make their way from one point to another in the Australian outback, trekking with essential supplies. 5 women go into the wilderness and only 4 come out on the other end. Alice Russell is missing – either of her own volition or worse. The police is called in and Federal Agents Aaron Falk and Carmen Cooper are roped in because they were already secretly investigating the family-run BaileyTennants for possible financial wrongdoing.
The present-day narrative (when Alice has already gone missing) is interspersed with events from the womens’ journey. Personal accounts from each of the women differ in their view of events Also, it comes to light that Alice had wanted to turn back from the trek at the very outset (Team Leader and BaileyTennants CFO Jill disallows it) and was privately accosted by CEO Dan Bailey during the trek, himself a part of the men’s team in a similar office-sponsored trek. Falk is worried that BaileyTennants had found out about Alice secretly smuggling financial documents to the police.
Jane Harper’s plots are interesting conundrums and this one is no different. On the face of it the retreat is supposed to be a pleasant, bonding experience, but Harper manages to imbue it with dread and creepiness. The outback is harsh and unyielding, easy to get lost in for one stepping off the beaten track. The women in the group aren’t the best of friends. Alice particularly is portrayed as a sharp-tongued, inconsiderate woman with little empathy.
Force of Nature is a suspenseful murder mystery. While I do love me a juicy Agatha Christie, mustachioed Belgian detective and all, Jane Harper’s version of the modern thriller is growing on me. I loved the slow burn of The Lost Man and the small-town intrigue of The Dry. Harper’s tales feel real and visceral and like Christie’s stem from ordinary folks, just like us, reaching the end of their tether. She draws her characters beautifully giving them believable back-stories and strews abundant red herrings to keep things interesting.
If you’re looking for a great murder mystery, look no further.
Book Review : Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
Written By: amodini
-
Jun•
02•21
Author : Anne Tyler
Genre : Contemporary
Publisher : Knopf
Pages : 192
Rating : ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 1/2
I recently read Ladder of Years and liked it very much. So I picked up “Redhead by the side of the Road” and like it even better!
This is a story of people – most are – but Tyler tells them so much better than everyone else. Micah Mortimer is a creature of habit. He’s got a side-gig as the Tech Hermit where he helps various technologically challenged folks with their issues. His main gig is being the superintendent of a Baltimore apartment building. He is living a content, low-key life when trouble strikes in the form of Brink, a teenager who says he’s Micah’s son. Also Micah’s “woman-friend”, the gentle undemanding Cass is facing eviction from her own apartment, but Micah’s humorous retort on hearing of it rubs her the wrong way.
Micah finds his life suddenly upended and he isn’t quite sure why. He is a good guy, he thinks, trying to do the right thing. He has built his life around people he loves, and at this juncture to restart, rebuild! He is not sure he can.
When I think of a word to describe the effect of Tyler’s writing, one word always pops up : heartfelt. Heartachingly heartfelt. Tyler’s writing is perceptive and empathetic. Her characters have life-changing quandaries before them, quandaries such as you and I might face, and she describes her protagonists, their situations and the people around them so beautifully – and often with humor-laced descriptions – that one is moved.
Micah of course is an easy character to root for – a good kind man who cannot see where he’s failed the ones he loves. And it’s not because he doesn’t love them enough.
Sometimes when he was dealing with people, he felt like he was operating one of those claw machines on a boardwalk, those shovel things where you tried to scoop up a prize but the controls were too unwieldy and you worked at too great a remove.
Still all is well that ends well. Highly recommend this heartwarming novel.
