This year, I’ll group other books I’ve read outside of the 2016 Reading Challenge into themes. Today’s post is the first in this series with a focus on traveling the world through books.
If I can’t travel, I want to be visiting somewhere different through the pages of a book. Many of my book blogs have included novels set in different places, but if you love to travel as much as I do, check out these picks that will take you around the world.
Chechnya: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (Anthony Marra): Confession: I had to look up Chechnya on a map because as much as it has appeared in headlines over the years, I didn’t have a strong sense of place until I read this novel. My clear favorite in the bunch, Marra’s novel takes place over seven days in 2004, which followed the second Chechen war. Eight-year-old Havaa hides in the snowy forest while her father is taken away by the police and her house burns to the ground. Akmed, Havaa’s neighbor, decides he must take her away so she will be protected from the people who took her father. He seeks out a (rare) female Doctor named Sonja, who along with two other people, is running a hospital that is in utter ruin and does not want to shelter a child.
The season and the barrenness of the land, the craters in the road, the piles of rubble, the stray, starving dogs — all contribute to the feel of desperation that pervades the novel. Yet in such a terrible place there is also creativity, art, music, and hope, and that is what connects these three characters. Each has memories of a better time in Chechyna and each, in their own measures, believes that this country is destined for something better again. After reading the book, you’ll hope so too.
Japan: I Called Him Necktie (Milena Michiko Flasar): “Every person is an accumulation of stories. Bu. I. I hesitated. I am frightened of accumulating stories. I’d like to be one in which nothing happens.” This odd, understated novel details the relationship of two Japanese men that meet in a park. Taguchi has spent two years as a hikikomori — a shut in — and has just left the house for the first time. Ohara is a middle-aged man who has lost his job but continues to leave the house every morning, dressed in a suit and tie with bento box in hand — because he cannot bear to tell his wife.
Only 128 pages, the novel is comprised of almost as many mini-chapters, short vignettes told from either man’s point-of-view. If there is a theme that ties them together, it is the expectations that they both feel they must meet and the way they bond of their shame of failing to meet them.
“If I had. If I were,” Taguchi writes. “There is nothing more depressing than the past conditional. The possibilities it indicates will never be fulfilled.” Such deep realizations from such a small book, but with the weight of the culture pressing down on them, it’s no wonder.
Australia and SE Asia: The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Richard Flanagan): When a book wins the Man Booker Prize, it comes with high expectations. And this book has such a strong sense of place, whether it is in rural Tasmania or constructing the Thailand-Burma railroad, you feel like you are standing alongside the characters. Jumping from modern day to WWII and back again, the book follows Australian War Hero Dorrigo Evans.
There are so many threads to follow here — love gained and lost, unity for country, heroism (small deeds and large), and suffering. We are led to believe that Dorrigo, while a war hero, is somewhat unlikable and throughout the rest of the book we learn why.
I walked away with mixed emotions about this book. Flanagan is an exceptionally gifted writer, though the jumps in the narrative are a bit jarring at times. The book is also highly descriptive which can be particularly difficult for the weak-stomached among us (myself included). If you are looking for a challenging but readable novel, wait until you digested dinner and then give The Narrow Road to the Deep North a go.
Cambodia: The Rent Collector (Camron Wright): Because I’ve chosen such positive, uplifting books, let’s make it fourth and look at Wright’s book, set in the Cambodian landfill called Stung Meanchey. Inspired by his son’s documentary, this fictionalized version follows the relationship between two trash pickers, Sang Ly and Sopeap, better known as the Rent Collector.
Stuck in an everyday grind of picking through trash for items to sell and taking care of her ailing son, Nisay, Sang Ly becomes in the Rent Collector’s debt when they are forced to spend money on medical care. But Sopeap breaks down when she sees a book that Sang Ly had picked for Nisay. Before we know it, Sopeap is teaching Sang Ly how to read.
The setting of this book is particularly grim and, like the characters, you can almost smell the fuggy air and feel the heat radiating from the tin shelters. It is a stark reminder of how billions of our fellow humans life — in poverty.
And two past reads you might consider, both slightly more upbeat:
Saudi Arabia: City of Veils (Zoe Ferraris): The Middle East is on top of my “really want to visit when it’s just a liiiitle bit safer” list (not now, Mom, I promise!). Ferraris has written three books set in Saudi Arabia but City of Veils is probably my favorite. It details the murder of a filmmaker named Leila who is ruffling some feathers. When she is discovered brutally beaten on a beach, Katya, one of the medical examiners, starts to dig a little bit and things start to get scary.
I liked this book not only for the descriptions of the location (Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) but of the culture too — the people, the clothing, the shops, the daily routines, etc. In many ways, this isn’t much different than an average mystery novel, but set in a different place with different boundaries (where can she eat lunch without a veil to not offend colleagues? what about men who refuse to speak to her without another man present?) the book takes on a different tone.
The Netherlands: The Dinner (Herman Koch): Koch’s debut novel burst onto the scene when it was released in the United States in 2013 because it is a little bit twisted, but just enough to be believable. Organized into courses of a menu, the book opens with two couples sitting down to dinner in an Amsterdam restaurant. Their sons, Rick and Michel, have committed a horrible crime that we learn about as the courses pass on. To give you much more information would be to ruin the journey you’ll take with this book. Hear the tires rattle on brick and cobblestone and imagine splitting a bottle of wine at a canal-side restaurant.
Happy reading! I hope one of these books brings you joy.
xo, Sarah
P.S. January is almost over and I can’t wait to share the first month of my #MMDchallenge reading adventure!
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