Six Degrees of Separation ~ The Safekeep

Yael Van Der Wouden
"The Safekeep" (De bewaring) - 2024

#6Degrees of Separation: 
from The Safekeep (Goodreads) to Demon Copperhead

#6Degrees is a monthly link-up hosted by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. I love the idea. Thank you, Kate. See more about this challenge, its history, further books and how I found this here.

The starter book this month is "The Safekeep" by Yael Van der Wouden. Again, I have not read the starter book. This is the description of the novel:

"An exhilarating, twisted tale of desire, suspicion, and obsession between two women staying in the same house in the Dutch countryside during the summer of 1961—a powerful exploration of the legacy of WWII and the darker parts of our collective past.

A house is a precious thing...

It is 1961 and the rural Dutch province of Overijssel is quiet. Bomb craters have been filled, buildings reconstructed, and the war is truly over. Living alone in her late mother’s country home, Isabel knows her life is as it should be — led by routine and discipline. But all is upended when her brother Louis brings his graceless new girlfriend Eva, leaving her at Isabel’s doorstep as a guest, to stay for the season.

Eva is Isabel’s antithesis: she sleeps late, walks loudly through the house, and touches things she shouldn’t. In response, Isabel develops a fury-fueled obsession, and when things start disappearing around the house — a spoon, a knife, a bowl — Isabel’s suspicions begin to spiral. In the sweltering peak of summer, Isabel’s paranoia gives way to infatuation—leading to a discovery that unravels all Isabel has ever known. The war might not be well and truly over after all, and neither Eva — nor the house in which they live — are what they seem.

Mysterious, sophisticated, sensual, and infused with intrigue, atmosphere, and sex, The Safekeep is a brilliantly plotted and provocative debut novel you won’t soon forget."

I'm not a fan of Booker Prize novels, I've read too many that I didn't like, so I am sure I won't read this one. Also, there is no word I can use to carry on my usual way. I like to use a word and then find a new book with the same word. That way, I have a much wider variety of books as if I stick with the theme in the book. Also, the name is not one that I can continue with, neither the first nor the surname.

Looking at the similar books on Goodreads didn't help, either, since I have not read a single one of them. So, I do guess correctly, this isn't a book for me.

I could have taken a book with the word "keep" but didn't read one that I like, so I will not go with it.

Then I thought about reading Dutch books of which I have read several and since a lot of Dutch books relate to WWII (they still live in the 1940s), I could find several that would link to the starter book. Not a huge variety there but if someone wants to read books written by Dutch authors, they can find a few here.

In the end I went for another option. This book has received the Women's Prize for Fiction and there are a few that I have read and really liked, so this is my list. Most of them were the winners, only Elif Şafak was on the short list. But I think her book is fantastic and would have deserved the prize. This time, I listed the books in chronological order when receiving the Prize.

Shriver, Lionel "We Need to Talk About Kevin" - 2003
What is going through the mind of a mass murderer? What is going through the mind of his mother? This book is trying to answer that question.

Smith, Zadie "On Beauty" - 2005
Again, I quite like the author's style, the way she portrays the different characters. Apparently, an homage to E. M. Forster's "Howards End". The fact that she manages to make this into a very modern story shows how timeless a writer she is.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Half of a Yellow Sun" - 2006
I totally can relate to the quote "The world was silent when we died." I don't think many of us knew where Biafra was. Here we can learn about it.

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Lacuna" - 2009
This story stretches from Mexico over the United States to Russia, describes the lives of Mexican painters Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo and Russian leader Trotsky, all woven together by the life of one Mexian-American guy who is thrown into their lot.

Şafak, Elif "The Island of Missing Trees" - 2021
This takes place in Cyprus and we learn about the people on this divided island. As an example we have Greek Kostas and Turkish Defne. They fall in love but - as usual in such cases - their love is forbidden.

Kingsolver, Barbara "Demon Copperhead" - 2022
David Copperfield in a modern version, written by one of the greatest contemporary writers.

* * *

There is a huge connection between all the books, they are all written by women. And for me, both the first and the last book were given to me by friends who though I would love them. And I did.

📚📚📚

Herrndorf, Wolfgang "Why We Took the Car"

Herrndorf, Wolfgang "Why We Took the Car" (German: tschick) - 2010

My book club recommended this book to me; they had read it some time ago.

Two boys from different backgrounds but with a similar fate. And both outsiders.

I found the novel very entertaining, but also very compassionate. You could both laugh and cry at the experiences of the two.

What can I say, it was really a great reading experience.

From the back cover:

"A beautifully written, darkly funny coming-of-age story from an award-winning, bestselling German author

Mike Klingenberg isn’t exactly one of the cool kids at his school. For one, he doesn’t have many friends. (Okay, zero friends.) And everyone laughs when he has to read his essays out loud in class. And he’s never, ever invited to parties — especially not the party of the year, thrown by the gorgeous Tatiana.

Andrej Tschichatschow, aka Tschick (not even the teachers can pronounce his name), is new in school, and unpopular as well, but in a completely different way. He always looks like he’s just been in a fight, he sleeps through nearly every class, and his clothes are tragic.

But one day, out of the blue, Tschick shows up at Mike’s house. It turns out he wasn’t invited to Tatiana’s party either, and he’s ready to do something about it. Forget the popular kids — together, Mike and Tschick are heading out on a road trip across Germany. No parents, no map, no destination. Will they get hopelessly lost in the middle of nowhere? Probably. Will they make bad decisions, meet some crazy people, and get into trouble? Definitely. But will anyone ever call them boring again?

Not a chance."

Keyes, Daniel "Flowers for Algernon"

Keyes, Daniel "Flowers for Algernon" - 1959

This was our international online book club book for August 2024.

I wasn't really keen on reading this, you know how much I dislike science fiction. But this is a different one, yes, it's about science and it's about fictional science but it's got nothing to do with aliens or made-up planets, it wouldn't be an action movie with loud noises if the turned it into a film. Actually, they did turn it into one and it doesn't look like an action movie.

This is an interesting story about a young man who can hardly write his name let alone a decent sentence without any mistakes. They perform an operation on him and his IQ increases to astronomical heights. We see the change in Charlie. Phenomenal. As he understands more and more what they have done to him, the story reaches a different perspective.

Quite a good read.

From the back cover:

"Winner of both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, the powerful, classic story about a man who receives an operation that turns him into a genius...and introduces him to heartache.

Charlie Gordon is about to embark upon an unprecedented journey. Born with an unusually low IQ, he has been chosen as the perfect subject for an experimental surgery that researchers hope will increase his intelligence - a procedure that has already been highly successful when tested on a lab mouse named Algernon.

As the treatment takes effect, Charlie's intelligence expands until it surpasses that of the doctors who engineered his metamorphosis. The experiment appears to be a scientific breakthrough of paramount importance, until Algernon suddenly deteriorates. Will the same happen to Charlie?"

Daniel Keyes has received both the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award for this novel.

Dangarembga, Tsitsi "Nervous Conditions"

Dangarembga, Tsitsi "Nervous Conditions" - 1988

The first line "I was not sorry when my brother died" should be included in the best first lines list.

This story gives us a glimpse into the life of 13-year-old Tambudzei, a girl from Zimbabwe, then called Rhodesia, in the 1960s. One rarely reads books by African women. The author was born in 1945 and can report on the traditional structures in which only men count. The novel is semi-autobiographical. The protagonist is clever and wishes to use her intelligence elsewhere than in the kitchen and in the nursery. Her cousin, who spent part of her childhood in England, further contributes to Tambu's hunger for education.

A fantastic book that describes the situation of women in almost every society. Yes, here too, unfortunately, there is still a difference whether you are born a man or a woman and in a rich or poor household.

I definitely want to read the other two books in this trilogy: The Book of Not and This Mournable Body.

From the back cover:

"Two decades before Zimbabwe would win independence and ended white minority rule, thirteen-year-old Tambudzai Sigauke embarks on her education. On her shoulders rest the economic hopes of her parents, siblings, and extended family, and within her burns the desire for independence. A timeless coming-of-age tale, and a powerful exploration of cultural imperialism, Nervous Conditions charts Tambu's journey to personhood in a nation that is also emerging."

"…the story I have told here is my own story, the story of four women I have loved and the story of our husbands; it is the story of how it all began." Tsitsi Dangarembga

"This novel is an excellent portrayal and interpretation of an African society whose younger generation of women is struggling, with varying degrees of success (to the point of near defeat), to free society from being dominated by patriarchy and colonialism. There has never been a convincing account of anorexia in African literature." Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Literatur aus Afrika, Asien und Lateinamerika e.V. (Society for the Promotion of Literature from Africa, Asia and Latin America e.V.)

The German translation is by Ilja Trojanow, a really good author, so it should be a good one.

"Nervous Conditions" was named one of the 100 best books that shaped the world by the BBC in 2021.

The book received the 1989 Commonwealth Writers Prize for best first work for the African region.

Tsitsi Dangarembga received the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade (Friedenspreis) in 2021.
The jury's explanation read: "In her trilogy of novels, Tsitsi Dangarembga uses the example of an adolescent woman to describe the struggle for the right to a decent life and female self-determination in Zimbabwe. In doing so, she shows social and moral conflicts that go far beyond the regional context go out and open up resonance spaces for global questions of justice. In her films, she addresses problems that arise from the clash of tradition and modernity. Her messages are successfully aimed at a broad audience both in Zimbabwe and in neighboring countries."

Another African writer whose books I read and can happily recommend is:

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
"Half of a Yellow Sun" - Die Hälfte der Sonne - 2006
"Americanah" - Americanah - 2013
"We Should All Be Feminists" (Mehr Feminismus! Ein Manifest und vier Stories) - 2014

Petrowskaja, Katja "Maybe Esther"

Petrowskaja, Katja "Maybe Esther" (German: Vielleicht Esther) - 2014

A great tale of a Jewish family's history. One critic wrote that Katja Petrowskaja could have written a great novel, but only reproduced fragments. I think it is precisely these fragments that show more of what this family - representative of all other Jewish families - went through, all the little details that you don't often hear about.

A wonderful book.

From the back cover:

"An inventive, unique, and extraordinarily moving literary debut that pieces together the fascinating story of one woman’s family across twentieth-century Russia, Ukraine, Poland, and Germany.

Katja Petrowskaja wanted to create a kind of family tree, charting relatives who had scattered across multiple countries and continents. Her idea blossomed into this striking and highly original work of narrative nonfiction, an account of her search for meaning within the stories of her ancestors.

In a series of short meditations, Petrowskaja delves into family legends, introducing a remarkable cast of characters: Judas Stern, her great-uncle, who shot a German diplomatic attaché in 1932 and was sentenced to death; her grandfather Semyon, who went underground with a new name during the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, forever splitting their branch of the family from the rest; her grandmother Rosa, who ran an orphanage in the Urals for deaf-mute Jewish children; her Ukrainian grandfather Vasily, who disappeared during World War II and reappeared without explanation forty-one years later - and settled back into the family as if he’d never been gone; and her great-grandmother, whose name may have been Esther, who alone remained in Kiev and was killed by the Nazis.

How do you talk about what you can’t know, how do you bring the past to life? To answer this complex question, Petrowskaja visits the scenes of these events, reflecting on a fragmented and traumatized century and bringing to light family figures who threaten to drift into obscurity. A true search for the past reminiscent of Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated, Daniel Mendelsohn’s The Lost, and Michael Chabon’s Moonglow, Maybe Esther is a poignant, haunting investigation of the effects of history on one family."

In 2013, Katja Petrowskaja received the Ingeborg Bachmann Prize, one of the most important awards for literature in the German language.

Top Ten Tuesday ~ Comfort Reads

   

"Top Ten Tuesday" is an original feature/weekly meme created on the blog "The Broke and the Bookish". This feature was created because they are particularly fond of lists at "The Broke and the Bookish". It is now hosted by Jana from That Artsy Reader Girl.

Since I am just as fond of them as they are, I jump at the chance to share my lists with them! Have a look at their page, there are lots of other bloggers who share their lists here.

This week, our topic is Comfort Reads (Share which books or kinds of books you turn to when you need to escape. You can either share specific titles if you love to re-read, or you could share qualities of books you look for in a comfort read.)

This was another tough subject for me. I like challenges, I love books that have more than 500 pages, I love classics, Nobel Prize Winners, Peace Prize Winners, anything that is not too easy. I can escape the real world best when I read about it. Weird, but there you are. And I've already done my favourite Nobel Prize Winning Books last year (see here). However, there are other prizes where I like to read the latest winners or some from former winners. I know many of you will disagree that these could be comfort reads. But yes, they often give me great comfort because I realize how well off I am.

None of these authors has received the Nobel Prize though I believe they would all be worthy of it.

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Half of a Yellow Sun" - 2006 - Women's Prize for Fiction

Doerr, Anthony "All the Light We Cannot See" - 2014 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction

Hansen, Dörte "This House is Mine" (GE: Altes Land) - 2015 - Favourite (German) Independent Books and several other German prizes

Kingsolver, Barbara "The Poisonwood Bible" - 1998 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (finalist)

Leky, Mariana "What You Can See From Here" (GE: Was man von hier aus sehen kann) - 2017 - Favourite (German) Independent Books

Lenz, Siegfried "The German Lesson" (GE: Deutschstunde) - 1967 - Peace Prize of the German Book Trade and several other prizes, i.a. Goethe Price and Thomas Mann Prize

Myers, Benjamin "The Offing" - 2019 - Favourite (German) Independent Books and The Times Book of the Year Award

Owens, Delia "Where the Crawdads Sing" - 2018 - Favourite (German) Independent Books and The New York Times Fiction Best Sellers

Powers, Richard "The Overstory" - 2018 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, MAN Booker Prize Shortlist, William Dean Howells Medal and several others

Whitehead, Colson "Underground Railroad" - 2016 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and National Book Award for Fiction plus several other awards

As always, I'm really looking forward to the other comfort reads. I know we will all have a different view and share different books. I hope one or another will find one of my books interesting.

📚 Happy Reading! 📚

Menasse, Robert "The Capital"

Menasse, Robert "The Capital" (German: Die Hauptstadt) - 2017

I have lived in Brussels forty years ago and met my husband there. We have been back there at least once every year, most often more times. However, when my son found a job there, I realized that I have read very little about Belgium and nothing about Brussels itself. So, I went and searched some literature. This one received the German Book Prize in 2017 and was praised internationally. It is mentioned that it is the first book where Brussels is called the European capital. We have always called it that.

The book tells us about several officials from the Department of Culture and their jobs. The characters are as international as any of the offices of the European Union, they are from Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Cyprus, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, and the UK.

There is also a crime story for those who love that in a book. To be honest, I have no idea why that is needed for the story especially since it doesn't really have anything to do with the main story. The protagonists are mainly officials who work for the EU and try to accomplish something, mostly their promotion. We meet bureaucrats, experts, lobbyists … It shows how the different interests within the EU have to be considered for many events, laws, regulations. Not an easy task as we all know. Yet, we all benefit from our countries being a member of this large union - even if some don't want to see that.

One of the stories within this chunky book is the plan to celebrate the 50 year anniversary with a big jubilee project and how to arrange this so that everyone is happy about the outcome. We see the difficulty of reaching a European consensus and still have every state participate in the result.

Oh, and there is a pig. One of the introductions to the book is: "The threads come together in Brussels - and a pig runs through the streets." Again, not really necessary for the story.

But what makes this story worth reading is the message it brings us about the European Union. It is one of the most important organizations we have ever been part of. It has united many countries that were enemies before, brought us not only prosperity but peace for the longest time anyone can ever remember. Just for that, I think this book is significant.

From the back cover:

"Brussels. A panorama of tragic heroes, manipulative losers, involuntary accomplices. In his new novel, Robert Menasse spans a narrative arc between the times, the nations, the inevitable and the irony of fate, between petty bureaucracy and big emotions.

Fenia Xenapoulou is facing a career setback. She has been 'promoted' to the Department of Culture by the Directorate General - no budget, no power, no reputation. So the 'Big Jubilee Project' comes just at the right time for her: she is to revamp the boring image of the European Commission. Her Austrian personal assistant Martin Susmann suggests proclaiming Auschwitz as the birthplace of the European Commission. Fenia is thrilled, but she didn't take the other European nations into account. Austria: a Polish camp could not be misused to question the Austrian nation. Poland: Auschwitz is a German problem. Germany: Islam, by now a part of Germany, had nothing to do with Auschwitz. What's more, Fenia can't count on David de Vriend, one of the last living witnesses, any longer: he runs to the metro station Maalbeek at the wrong time.

Inspector Brunfaut is in a difficult situation as well. He is supposed to leave a murder case covered up at the highest level at rest. But luckily he is friends with the chief computer scientists of the Brussels Police Department, who can gain access to the secret files of the public prosecutor's office. Matek, the Polish hitman, knows nothing of this when he makes his escape. But he does know that he shot the wrong guy. That’s not nothing to Matek. He would rather have become ordained a priest; the fact that he had to follow his father's and grandfather's footsteps in becoming a 'soldier of Christ', doesn’t really make him happy. And yes, there are others who are unhappy as well: the pig farmers who take to the streets with pitchforks in protest of the existing trade restrictions blocking the profitable export of pigs' ears to China."

Le Guin, Ursula K. "The Left Hand of Darkness"

Le Guin, Ursula K. "The Left Hand of Darkness" - 1969

I'm not the biggest fan of science fiction but my book club seems to select one every couple of months. What can I say, some of them are quite interesting, others not so much.

"The Left Hand of Darkness" can be fascinating in many ways. There is a different kind of life on planet Winter, it is a cold life, as the name of the planet already suggests. But it's also different to our kind of life as in all its inhabitants are ambisexual. They call it differently and anyone who is just one gender (like the inhabitants of our planet, Terra) is a pervert. Maybe this would help people who consider anyone who is not straight a weirdo. Though I doubt they would read a book like this.

So, other than making us understand the LGBTQ community better, what else is there to learn from this book. Well, the Ekumen reminded me a little of the United Nations or the European Union which have the same kind of problems because everyone wants a communion but it should, please, be moulded on their own culture.

Apparently, this book belongs to a series of novels called "The Hainish Cycle" but you are not supposed to read them all in order, they are published as single novels without any follow-up of one of the stories.

And it definitely gives us food for thought about our world and all the people living in it.

Some comments from our members:

• It gave much topics for discussion. Beside topics of what is Sci-fi, space travel, Mindspeak, gender difference, habitable ice planet, its people, politics and customs.
• I especially found the attitude towards time and societal progress interesting.
• Imo, her best book (not that I've read all of them) is The Lathe of Heaven. It's very different to her usual style. Highly recommend.
• While reading "The Left Hand of Darkness" I also reviewed Ursula Le Guin's rendition of Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching". It made for an enriched experience to consider the plot and characters of The Left Hand of Darkness through a Taoist lens. The shifting of Gethenian power and ways has a yin-yang quality that is very true to life.
  

We read this in our international online book club in August 2021.

From the back cover:

"A lone human ambassador is sent to the icebound planet of Winter, a world without sexual prejudice, where the inhabitants’ gender is fluid. His goal is to facilitate Winter’s inclusion in a growing intergalactic civilization. But to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own views and those of the strange, intriguing culture he encounters...

Embracing the aspects of psychology, society, and human emotion on an alien world, The Left Hand of Darkness stands as a landmark achievement in the annals of intellectual science fiction."

Urusla K. Le Guin has received many prizes for her works, i.a. the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award.

Morrison, Toni "A Mercy"

Morrison, Toni "A Mercy" - 2008

In my post about Anti-Racism, I listed many, many books that tell us a lot about the lives of black people past and present. This is another one from the past that I will add to that list.

In this day and age, nobody should have to suffer from being "different" (no matter what that entails) and, yet, so many still do. When I see all the accusations made against former US President Barack Obama, it shows that even when you have worked your way up and are an excellent, qualified person, it doesn't help you if people don't like the colour of your skin. You still get no respect.

In this story, Toni Morrison tells us all about a little girl called Florens. She is lucky in a way that she gets into this family. Her "master" is not abusive. That doesn't say she is to envy. If you can't decide where you want to live, whether you want to stay with your family (and which eight-year-old wouldn't?) or what kind of work you would like to do, you are never to be envied.

Having said that, I'm just reading another book ("Capital" by Karl Marx) and from what we can learn there, poor people in Europe were not in a much better position, either. However, that's not an excuse.

Coming back to this story. It's not just a story of Florens but of all the female members of that family, the Native American Lina, Sorrow who was shipwrecked and Rebecca, the owner's wife who was sent over from England and didn't know her husband before she got married. They all have a different kind of fate but are all in this together.

Toni Morrison knows well how to describe the feelings of her characters, you can follow her stories as if you were a member of the family, as if you were one of the characters in her book.

Her books should become a required reading in all the schools. Maybe, just maybe, we would all understand racism a little better. Her Nobel Prize is well-deserved.

Florens' mother describes her arrival in Barbados after her capture in Africa and a long sea voyage:
"It was there I learned how I was not a person from my country, nor from my families. I was negrita. Everything. Language, dress, gods, dance, habits, decoration, song– all of it cooked together in the colour of my skin."

I think this says it all. What is it that defines us? Certainly not the colour of our skin. You might as well say someone with dark (or light hair) is worth less than someone with light (or dark). What's the difference? The difference is only what some of us make of it.

From the back cover:

"On the day that Jacob agrees to accept a slave in lieu of payment of a debt, little Florens' life changes. With her intelligence and passion for wearing the cast-off shoes of her mistress Florens has never blended into the background and now, aged eight, she is taken from her family to begin a new life. She ends up part of Jacob's household, along with his wife Rebekka, their Native American servant Lina and the enigmatic Sorrow, who was rescued from a shipwreck. Together these women face the trials of their harsh environment as Jacob attempts to carve out a place for himself in the brutal landscape of the north of America in the seventeenth century."

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2022.

Toni Morrison "who in novels characterized by visionary force and poetic import, gives life to an essential aspect of American reality" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Read more about other books by the author here.

Favourite (German) Independent Books

Das Lieblingsbuch der Unabhängigen = The Favourite Book of the Independents

While waiting for the announcement of the next Nobel Prize winner, I have another prize that is presented yearly.

There are book club chains and then there are the independent bookshops. In Germany, the independent ones are working together and pronounce their favourite book every year. They have done this sincd 2015. Some of their books are German, others are written in another language (but most of them have been translated into English). I have read only a few of those but will try to get the others and then report back.

[If they have not been translated into English, I have added a translation in brackets but they will probably give it another title once they publish an English edition.]

    2015 Dörte Hansen: "Altes Land" (This House is Mine)
    2016 Benedict Wells: "Vom Ende der Einsamkeit" (The End of Loneliness)
    2017 Mariana Leky: "Was man von hier aus sehen kann" (What You Can See from Here)
    2018 Francesca Melandri: "Alle, außer mir" (Sangue giusto) (Italian) [Right Blood or Everyone but me] 
    2019 Delia Owens: "Where the Crawdads Sing" (English)
    2020 Benjamin Myers "The Offing" (English) 
    2021 Ewald Arenz "Der große Sommer" [The Big Summer]
    2022 Bonnie Garmus "Lessons in Chemistry" (English) Goodreads
    2023 Caroline Wahl "22 Bahnen" [22 Lanes]
    2024 Bronsky, Alina "Pi mal Daumen" Goodreads 

You can always find the latest shortlist including all the recipients of the prize here.

Owens, Delia "Where the Crawdads Sing"

Owens, Delia "Where the Crawdads Sing" - 2018

This book has been recommended to me by so many friends and even though my TBR pile is growing constantly, I just had to pick it up when I came across it in a local bookshop. The choice of English books there isn't always great, so this already says a lot. I'm usually very sceptical about books that everyone praises because I don't often like them but this was different.

I think reviewing this book is one of the toughest I ever had to do. I don't want to spoil it for anyone but it's not easy to write about it after you read it all. I should have written my review before reading the last chapter.

Anyway, a great story about Kya, a girl that is left all alone by her family, one after the other leaves and she has to fend for herself at the age of nine. The villagers don't look favourable at her, to say it mildly.

In a way, there are two stories, one when Kya is a child and one when she is 19 and a murder has happened. Needless to say, it doesn't take long until she is the main suspect. The two stories are told alternately until they eventually merge together. I love that way of storytelling.

We get to know Kya not only as a very resourceful person, very down to earth, but also as a wonderful artist who gets her rightful acknowledgement in the end

I will now go on talking about the rest of the book in the spoiler section. If you have not read the book, don't open it.

Spoiler:

In case you disregarded this. Didn't I say? Don't open it if you haven't read it!!!! Don't blame me if I spoiled the book for you.

Like everyone else, I've been wondering all the time how and why Chase died. Was it an accident? Was it someone else? Was it Kya after all? If you read the book, you know how it ends. Was I surprised? Not really. But it still came as a huge shock. I don't think I could ever commit a murder but sometimes I come close to understanding the killer. This is one of those cases. What I did not understand was why Tate destroyed all the poems. That's definitely something I could not have done. And it is a pity that this was simply left out in the film. I did think it was important.

* * *

If you look for a page-turner, an unputdownable book, I can heartily recommend this one. I hope Delia Owens will write more books. Maybe I'll try one of her memoirs, "Cry of the Kalahari", "The Eye of the Elephant", or "Secrets of the Savanna".

From the back cover:

"How long can you protect your heart? 

For years, rumors of the 'Marsh Girl' have haunted Barkley Cove, a quiet town on the North Carolina coast. So in late 1969, when handsome Chase Andrews is found dead, the locals immediately suspect Kya Clark, the so-called Marsh Girl. But Kya is not what they say. Sensitive and intelligent, she has survived for years alone in the marsh that she calls home, finding friends in the gulls and lessons in the sand. Then the time comes when she yearns to be touched and loved. When two young men from town become intrigued by her wild beauty, Kya opens herself to a new life - until the unthinkable happens.

Perfect for fans of Barbara Kingsolver and Karen Russell, Where the Crawdads Sing is at once an exquisite ode to the natural world, a heartbreaking coming-of-age story, and a surprising tale of possible murder. Owens reminds us that we are forever shaped by the children we once were, and that we are all subject to the beautiful and violent secrets that nature keeps."

"Where the Crawdads Sing" has been chosen favourite book of the year 2019 by the German Indepent Bookshops.

Coetzee, J.M. "The Master of Petersburg"

Coetzee, J.M. "The Master of Petersburg" - 1994

I love Russian authors and I love Nobel Prize winners, so this was a win-win situation. A book by a Nobel Prize winning author writing about the life of a Russian author must be good, right?

It was but it was a hard read, despite it being just around 250 pages. You had to constantly remind yourself that this is a work of fiction even though a lot of the events are taken from real life. You do recognize the author Dostoevsky here and all his struggles with life, you do see parts of Russia's problems during that time, some real-life people. So, you either don't know anything about Dostoevsky and just accept this as a story or you have to constantly forget that this isn't non-fiction.

However, Dostoevsky was wonderfully portrayed, it was a great book about Russia, the book received several international prizes, i.a. the Commonwealth Writers' Prize.

From the back cover:

"Winner of The Nobel Prize For Literature 2003

In The Master of Petersburg J. M. Coetzee dares to imagine the life of Dostoevsky. Set in 1869, when Dostoevsky was summoned from Germany to St Petersburg by the sudden death of his stepson, this novel is at once a compelling mystery steeped in the atmosphere of pre-revolutionary Russia and a brilliant and courageous meditation on authority and rebellion, art and imagination. Dostoevsky is seen obsessively following his stepson's ghost, trying to ascertain whether he was a suicide or a murder victim and whether he loved or despised his stepfather."

J.M. Coetzee "who in innumerable guises portrays the surprising involvement of the outsider" received the Nobel Prize in 2003 and the Booker Prize for this novel in 1999.

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Giordano, Paolo "The Solitude of Prime Numbers"

Giordano, Paolo "The Solitude of Prime Numbers" (Italian: La solitudine dei numeri primi) - 2008

When I saw the title of this book, I thought it might be a book about mathematics or at least a novel about mathematics. Well, it's a novel about a mathematician. Not exactly the same but it was a very interesting story and I can see why the author received the highly renowned Premio Strega and the Premio Campiello for this first novel. They even turned it into a film and I can see that it gets a wide audience.

It's difficult to describe this book, and that's probably what makes it so interesting. There are twins in this story and people who are almost like twins. It's not really a love story but there is love involved. It's not a story about (mental) illness and/or death but that's involved, as well. The story jumps back and forth in time by telling us the stories of Mattia and Alice.

The title alludes to the fact that prime numbers are natural numbers that are divided only with number 1 and itself. They never stand together, are always divided by at least one (even) number, so they are always alone.

A brilliant first novel, makes you want to read his next ones.

From the back cover:

"A prime number can only be divided by itself or by one - it never truly fits with another. Alice and Mattia, both 'primes', are misfits who seem destined to be alone. Haunted by childhood tragedies that mark their lives, they cannot reach out to anyone else. When Alice and Mattia meet as teenagers, they recognize in each other a kindred, damaged spirit. 

But the mathematically gifted Mattia accepts a research position that takes him thousands of miles away, and the two are forced to separate. Then a chance occurrence reunites them and forces a lifetime of concealed emotion to the surface. 

Like Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, this is a stunning meditation on loneliness, love, and the weight of childhood experience that is set to become a universal classic."

NDiaye, Marie "Three strong women"

NDiaye, Marie "Three strong women" (French: Trois femmes puissantes) - 2009

As I already mentioned in my review about the author's book "Rosie Carpe", I like reading a French book from time to time in order to use and improve my French. Unfortunately, I rarely enjoy them because they are always so weird. Not any different with this one.

I liked the description of the novel, or what I thought was the novel about three women who knew each other. But while reading it, I had to find out that these are three different stories with no relation to each other (other than one of them is a distant cousin of the other but the stories don't overlap). As I'm not a huge fan of short stories, I was quite disappointed when the first story ended in the middle of the book, and also in the middle of the story. None of the stories really has an end, well, the last one, sort of. None of the characters was really likeable, they all had some weird traits that I couldn't agree with.

The stories were unpleasant and ended abruptly. The characters didn't seem to even want to do anything to change their lives for the better. That is always the worst part of these kind of stories.

Nope, not my kind of book. I will have to remember not to fall into that trap again and read another book by this author.

From the back cover:

"In this new novel, the first by a black woman ever to win the coveted Prix Goncourt, Marie NDiaye creates a luminous narrative triptych as harrowing as it is beautiful.

This is the story of three women who say no: Norah, a French-born lawyer who finds herself in Senegal, summoned by her estranged, tyrannical father to save another victim of his paternity; Fanta, who leaves a modest but contented life as a teacher in Dakar to follow her white boyfriend back to France, where his delusional depression and sense of failure poison everything; and Khady, a penniless widow put out by her husband’s family with nothing but the name of a distant cousin (the aforementioned Fanta) who lives in France, a place Khady can scarcely conceive of but toward which she must now take desperate flight.

With lyrical intensity, Marie NDiaye masterfully evokes the relentless denial of dignity, to say nothing of happiness, in these lives caught between Africa and Europe. We see with stunning emotional exactitude how ordinary women discover unimagined reserves of strength, even as their humanity is chipped away. Three Strong Women admits us to an immigrant experience rarely if ever examined in fiction, but even more into the depths of the suffering heart."

Wright, Richard B. "Clara Callan" - 2001

Wright, Richard B. "Clara Callan" - 2001

I received this book from a Canadian member of our book club. As everyone knows, my TBR pile is enormous, that's the only reason it took me so long to start this. My friend has passed away shortly afterwards, that is probably the main reason why I didn't tackle it. I am sorry I could never tell her how much I enjoyed the book. Thank you, Mary.

This is the stories of two sisters in the 1930s. One who goes to New York to become a famous radio celebrity and the other one who stays at home to be a teacher. While they have their different opinions about religion, they mostly agree about other subject, especially political matters.

While the story switches between Clara's diary and letter written between her and - mainly - her sister, it meticulously follows the chronological order. I don't mind if a book switches between the times but it is nice to read one that starts at a certain point and then carries on as time goes by.

This is not just a story about two sisters, it's about women in general at the time between the two wars, about the perception people had, about what was "done" and what wasn't? You can't but like both Clara and her sister Nora, they are both amiable people in their own way trying to find their own niche in a world that would rather see women the same as they always were, wives and mothers, housekeepers.

As an avid reader myself, I am always happy to find characters in novels that enjoy reading as much as I do. Clara Callan was such a person. She even read a lot of books that I enjoyed myself. Another reason to like her.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel. And I'm not surprised that the author received three prestigious Canadian book awards for this novel: The Giller Prize, the Trillium Book Award, and the Governor General's Award.

From the back cover:

"It's the late 1930s and two sisters, Clara and Nora Callan, face the future with both hope and uncertainty. Clara, a 30ish schoolteacher who lives in small-town Ontario, longs for love and adventure. Nora, her flighty and very pretty younger sister, escapes to the excitement of New York, where she lands a starring role in a radio soap and becomes a minor celebrity. In a world of Depression and at a time when war clouds are gathering, the sisters struggle within the web of social expectations for young women.

Clara and Nora, sisters so different yet so inextricably linked, face the future in their own ways, discovering the joys of love, the price of infidelity, and the capacity for sorrow lurking beneath the surface of everyday experience. A brilliantly realized, deeply moving novel, Clara Callan is a masterpiece of fiction."

Guo, Xiaolu (郭小橹) "Language"

Guo, Xiaolu (郭小橹) "Language" - 2017

The story of a Chinese girl who moves to England.

I found this little book at the till when paying for another book (or two or three ...) and it sounded interesting. It really is only an extract from another book, "A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers" which certainly must be interesting, as well. Anyway, our Chinese girl has learned some English but she really doesn't know much when she first comes to England. It must be quite daunting living in another country and not knowing the language, especially if you are from a completely different culture. I have lived in several countries in my life but always knew the language and the cultures between some Western European countries are not all that different.

The book is written like a diary of the young girl who comes to England and at first, her English is rather limited. But you can tell by the time you get to the end that she gets better all the time. I quite liked that.

Anyway, I have learned more about the Chinese customs in this book than about the English language and that is exactly what I like. Nice short read.

From the back cover:

"Have you ever tried to learn another language? When Zhuang first comes to London from China she feels like she is among an alien species. The city is disorientating, the people unfriendly, the language a muddle of dominant personal pronouns and moody verbs. But with increasing fluency in English surviving turns to living. And they say that the best way to learn a language is to fall in love with a native speaker…

Selected from the book A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo"

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Americanah"

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi "Americanah" - 2013

I read "Half of a Yellow Sun" earlier this year and really liked it. This is another novel about Nigeria even though a very different one. It takes place about thirty years after the events in the first book (Biafra war). The author tells the story about a young woman from Nigeria who emigrates to the United States and comes back years later.

This was an interesting book for me not only because of all the information you can get about Nigeria but also because it resembles my life. I didn't flee from a war-torn region but I have lived abroad for almost half of my life and I always hear comments by others who haven't who have a completely different idea about that, both people from my home country as well as those from my host country. So, for me this is not just a book about Nigeria but about immigrants and their torn-apart worlds. It is not as much a love story but a story about what you do if you end up somewhere where you are not wanted. It might as well have been a story of my life, without the love story gone wrong. Same as Ifemelu, I will go back to my own country one day and I am sure it won't be the same as it was when I left.

Someone mentions in the book that "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe was a great book but didn't help them to understand Africa but "A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul did. I have not read the first book (now I have) but it's on my wishlist whereas I really can recommend the second one.

In any case, I did enjoy reading this book even though it touched a completely different side of Nigeria than "Half of a Yellow Sun" . I am looking forward to reading the author's third book, "Purple Hibiscus".

From the back cover:

"As teenagers in Lagos, Ifemelu and Obinze fall in love. Their Nigeria is under military dictatorship, and people are fleeing the country if they can. The self-assured Ifemelu departs for America. There she suffers defeats and triumphs, finds and loses relationships, all the while feeling the weight of something she never thought of back home: race. Obinze had hoped to join her, but post-9/11 America will not let him in, and he plunges into a dangerous, undocumented life in London.

Thirteen years later, Obinze is a wealthy man in a newly democratic Nigeria, while Ifemelu has achieved success as a blogger. But after so long apart and so many changes, will they find the courage to meet again, face to face?"