Review: And the Mountains Echoed (by Khaled Hosseini)

My Rating: 5 stars

Don’t expect his review to be a long one because I honestly don’t have the words to describe how I felt reading this beautifully written book. From the moment I read the interesting first line – “So, then. You want a story and I will tell you one. But just the one…” – I was preparing myself for an absorbing story, but I didn’t anticipate how truly exquisite the experience would be. Khaled Hosseini is indeed a masterful storyteller, but this novel also proves that he is a masterful writer as well.  Unlike his previous 2 novels, Hosseini employs a unique structure this time around in the form of a series of interlinked stories across nine chapters, each narrated from the perspective of a different character.  The format is nonlinear, with the narrative jumping back and forth between various settings (from Afghanistan to Paris to California to the Greek island of Tinos) and timelines (1940s through 2010).  Each chapter comes across vignette-like, where we get a glimpse into the life of each individual character, some of whom narrate their own stories in first person, while others are told in third person, with one chapter that is completely epistolary.  On the surface, it may not be readily apparent how each character’s story correlates with the other, but once I got to the end of the book, I couldn’t help but marvel at Hosseini’s genius in structuring the narrative this way.  Interconnectedness is a huge theme in the novel and Hosseini demonstrates this in multiple ways – through the plot and story, through the characters, and especially through the narrative’s structure.

 

Emotionally, this was one of those books that was simultaneously heartbreaking and uplifting -- to the point that I lost count of how many times the story and its characters broke my heart and then put it back together again. There were many moving and poignant moments that triggered a jumble of different emotions – sadness, anger, confusion, awe, wonder, surprise, relief, dread, hope, etc. (just to name a few).  Hosseini presents humanity and all its emotional complexities in such a realistic (yet not overwhelming) way that you get the sense he truly understands human nature -- the ‘good, bad, and ugly’ that resides in all of us.  The story is filled with flawed characters who find themselves in various morally and ethically ambiguous dilemmas – much life we would in real life – yet through it all, and despite the poor decisions that some of them make, I felt like I understood where they were coming from and so I couldn’t help wanting to root for all of them (with the exception of one or two characters).  This is illustrated best through the words of one of the story’s most prominent characters, Dr. Markos, a Greek plastic surgeon who dedicates many years of his life providing care to those in Afghanistan who sustained physical injuries and deformities from the violence and fighting: “If I've learned anything in Kabul, it is that human behaviour is messy and unpredictable and unconcerned with convenient symmetries.”

 

I’ve had Khaled Hosseini on my list of “must-read” authors for years (on the advice of multiple trusted reader friends who are huge fans of his works) and actually have all 3 of his novels sitting on my shelf, but regretfully, I hadn’t been able to get to his works until now. I started with And the Mountains Echoed first because that is the novel I’m studying in my Literature class, but I hope to also read his two previous (and even more famous) novels at some point as well.

 

Review: Relish: My Life in the Kitchen (by Lucy Knisley)

My Rating: 4 stars

Lucy Knisley's Relish is a fun graphic memoir about growing up in a household surrounded by good food and good fun.  With a mother who is a chef and a father who knows how to appreciate fine dining, Knisley had a special relationship with food from an early age.  As a cartoonist, Knisley recounts various food-related moments from her life through amazingly rendered illustrations that vibrantly bring her love of food to life.  Unlike other books about food, this one bears a positive message about food that I really appreciated — the notion that all foods (from junk food to gourmet dishes) should be celebrated rather than shunned.  Food-themed books can be a hit and miss at times, as some (whether directly or indirectly) often come across as "preachy" and can take on a tone that feels like it is reprimanding readers for eating certain types of food. Knisley's memoir does the opposite in that it does not pass judgment on the merits of the food we decide to eat, but rather celebrates all food for its connection to life and environment.

I don't consider myself a foodie (despite the fact that I love food and love to eat), but I enjoyed this charming, funny memoir about food and definitely recommend it.  I'm not much of a cook so the recipes at the end of each chapter didn't do much for me, but it was still a lot of fun to read through them and see Knisley's witty spin on dishes both traditional and outlandish.  Seeing that this will likely be the last book I read this year and the last review before my year end recap, I'm glad it will be on a positive note with such a feel-good, delightful read!

Review: Mastering the Art of French Eating (by Ann Mah)

 

My Rating: 3 stars

I will admit that I was a bit torn over how best to rate this book, as I usually go into memoirs with an entirely different set of expectations than I do novels and it can be a “hit and miss” whether I’m actually able to connect with the author’s story or not.  When I first started this book, I was really into it, especially the first few chapters, as I felt there was a good balance between musings about food and the history of various dishes that the author Ann Mah had tried during her time in France, and the culture clash with her background as a Chinese-American wife of a diplomat whose job requires them to move constantly from one country to another.  The parts I enjoyed most were when Mah talked about her childhood as the daughter of immigrants growing up in the U.S. juxtaposed with her “fish out of water” experiences later on adjusting to a life of having to move to a new place every couple of years and having to learn its language, culture, cuisine, etc. each time.  I found the segments where Mah describes her “adventures” traveling to different parts of France to learn about various dishes and their history quite interesting, engaging, and a bit whimsical too.  With that said though, the tone of the book seemed to change after Mah’s husband Calvin left for Baghdad, where he was stationed for a year, with her having to remain behind in Paris until he returned (though he was able to fly back and visit her every couple of months).  The tone seemed to shift to a more wistful one, where it felt like Mah’s spirits were permanently dampened by the long separation from her husband and nothing could lift them again until he returned.  The second half of the memoir felt like it focused a little too much on Mah’s loneliness and how much she missed her husband, to the point that it seemed the earlier enthusiasm she had in discovering the whimsies and delights of a country (France) that she had been dreaming about living in since childhood, was no longer there.  This ended up detracting from the story a bit, at least for me. The writing also didn’t flow as well as I would’ve liked, as some sections seemed to be all over the place chronologically – I would be reading about the history of a certain dish one minute, then it would jump to something unrelated, then go back to the dish that was the focus of that particular chapter.  This made some of the chapters a little hard to follow, resulting in me having to re-read some parts in order to refocus my attention.

Despite the fact that I love to eat, I’m not much of a food connoisseur, so I don’t usually read a whole lot of food memoirs.  Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposed to reading them, but it’s not really a priority for me, especially in light of all the other books out there that I want to read.   I decided to pick this one up because, aside from the fact that it was chosen for one of my book clubs this month, there’s also the shared cultural familiarity in terms of the author’s background (Chinese-American, daughter from immigrant family, grew up in the U.S., etc.) – but more than that though, I also have an interest in French culture and cuisine that stems from my school days (eons ago) when I had actually studied French for a number of years, even nearly majoring in it in college.  For all these reasons, I was excited to read this and even though in the end, it didn’t quite live up to expectations, I still liked it well enough overall for me to feel that it was worth my time.   In addition, I’m also interested in reading the 2 novels that Mah wrote, especially the one about Chinese cuisine, which she mentioned briefly in this book.   Hopefully, it’s something I’ll be able to get to next year.

 

 

Review: Fangirl (by Rainbow Rowell)

My Rating:  3 stars

Rainbow Rowell's Fangirl is not the type of book I would've picked up on my own to read, mostly because the book's target audience is the younger generation and I'm clearly outside the age range now. I'm not opposed to reading YA books as an adult and admittedly I've read my fair share of them over the years (though I base the decision to read mostly on the summary rather than the genre) – however they are usually lower priority for me unless they get picked for book club, which was the case here. I went into this book with much lower than usual expectations, even thinking at some point that I would for sure dislike it given that I've been reading a lot of "adult" books over the past few months and this was too much of a departure from what I usually read, both in style and content. I tried to keep an open mind however and it paid off, as I ended up enjoying this book more than I thought I would (though it also helped that I dusted off my figurative "YA hat" and put it on prior to reading, lol). In glancing through the reviews for this book, it seems like majority of readers fell into one of two camps – either they LOVED the book or they HATED it. I think I fall somewhere in the middle in that I didn't "like" the book enough to give it 4 or 5 stars but also didn't feel it deserved a low rating either, so in the end I settled for 3 stars.

This is the first Rainbow Rowell book that I've read so I can't speak to her style or how this book stacks up compared to her other ones. One of the things I appreciated about this book was the character development – the characters were well-written, realistic, believable, and, despite their many flaws, were quite endearing. There were a few characters I liked throughout the story, such as Levi, Wren, the dad, and even Reagan at certain points. With the main character Cath, I can't really say I "liked" her, as I often found her frustrating, especially when she would stubbornly overthink things (which seemed to be all the time), but I definitely empathized with her. In fact, out of all the characters, I'm able to relate to Cath the most, as I was very similar to her back in my college days. I was also an insecure, socially inept book nerd whose greatest fear was having to interact with people I didn't know in public settings. I disliked going to parties, disliked group projects (because had to work closely with other classmates for extended amounts of time), and basically disliked anything that had a remotely social element to it (except being in class because that was a structured environment). My favorite place to "hang out" was always the library, where I would sit in a corner and read or work on a paper for hours on end. I was also "quirky" and "weird" in that I would take copious notes in class and then spend most of the down time between classes reviewing and re-copying my notes into new notebooks, sometimes even copying the same notes several times! So yea, I can totally understand where Cath was coming from and why she reacted the way she did in certain situations.

The parts of the book that I did not care for at all were all the Simon Snow-related sections. I'm sure there is a reason why Rowell opened each chapter with excerpts from the fictitious Simon Snow books as well as Cath's fanfiction version of the story, but the significance was lost on me. I honestly was not interested one bit in Simon's story or his relationship with Baz (perhaps because I'm not into the whole magic / fantasy / vampire story thing) – to me, it was boring and an unnecessary distraction from the actual story about Cath and her college life. I skimmed most of the Simon Snow sections in the beginning and by the second half of the book, I was skipping those sections altogether. Even though I wasn't able to appreciate the "story-within-a-story" sections involving Simon Snow, I do applaud Rowell for addressing the whole concept of fanfiction itself and incorporating the debate over fanfiction versus "real fiction" via Cath's struggles in her Fiction Writing class. I've never written fanfiction myself but I have friends who do (and are phenomenal at it), plus I'm relatively active in those discussion forums for the subjects they write about, so from that perspective, the "controversy" over fanfiction is a pretty familiar topic for me. In that regard, it was interesting to see how the debate over fanfiction is applied outside of the context of the forums.

And so that leads me to the ending of the book. When I got to the last page of the book and realized it was over, my first reaction was: HUH??? Did I miss something or is my copy of the book actually short a few pages? I'm not sure if the reason why I didn't "understand" the ending was because I skipped over most of the Simon Snow stuff thinking it wasn't relevant? Or did Rowell deliberately write the ending that way to send a particular message? Writing this review now after having some time to think about it, I think the problem with the ending goes back to the fact that there was not much of a story in this book to begin with so there was nothing really to "end" per se. I don't know, but up until the ending, I was actually considering giving 3.5 stars – the ending pushed it back down to 3 stars.

Overall, despite its flaws, this was an enjoyable read – a nice brief escape from the "seriousness" of all the "adult" books that I've been reading lately. Yes, there were some things in this book that were typical YA and most of the "heavy" issues that this book touched on were done mostly surface-level, but I honestly didn't have a huge problem with it considering I wasn't expecting an in-depth exploration of those issues in the first place. I also felt that the book was way longer than it needed to be (especially for a book that has very little to offer in terms of actual story and plot), but at least it was a relatively quick read!

Review: The Light Between Oceans (by M.L. Stedman)

My Rating:  4 stars

I actually finished reading this book yesterday, but needed some time to gather my thoughts before proceeding with this review. To be quite honest, this is a book that I found difficult to write a review for, as I felt so conflicted the entire time I was reading it. Majority of the time, I was on an emotional roller coaster with this book, torn between so many different feelings every couple pages that in the end, I wasn’t quite sure how I really felt anymore. After getting a day to think it through and reflect on what I had read, I guess the best way to describe my feelings for this book is that I both loved it and hated it (not the entire book but some aspects of it).

What I loved about the book was the story itself as well as the writing. For a debut novel, I have to say that the author M.L. Stedman did an amazing job (I, for one, was definitely shocked to find out that this was the author’s first book!). The writing was beautiful and there was a good mix of dialogue from the characters and forward-driving plot elements as well as descriptions of the setting that adequately established each scene without going overboard. There was a complexity to the storytelling in that the story was told from multiple perspectives, with all the characters – even the minor ones – getting the chance to give their point of view, yet these perspectives did not distract from the story in any way, since all of them tied back to the main story. In fact, I felt that telling the story in this way actually added to the emotional intensity and overall impact this story had.

The ending was another area where Stedman did an excellent job and again made it hard for me to believe that this was her first book. Well-crafted endings are hard to come by (whether in books, movies, television series, or the like) and for me especially, I’ve encountered too many instances where a well-written story completely unravels with a poorly written ending, which I find extremely frustrating. For me, the ending to this book was “perfect” in the sense that it fitted in extremely well with everything that had occurred in the story – the author did not try to force the ending to go in a direction that would have completely contradicted the rest of the story, which I definitely appreciated given how easy it would have been to go this route due to the moral ambiguity of the characters and the story itself.

In terms of what I hated about the book – well, pretty much it was the characters, primarily the two central characters Tom and Isabel. Ok, I guess in the case of Tom, I didn’t really hate him but rather I was frustrated with him for most of the story, especially all those times when he would give in to Isabel’s whims against his better judgment and put himself in tough/risky positions that I felt weren’t really worth the consequences that would for sure follow. The one character in this book that I hated with a passion was Isabel. While it’s true that Isabel had suffered through a lot of hardship and in a sense, all of that plus her circumstances of being isolated from the rest of the world played a huge role in shaping the person she eventually became, I found it very difficult to sympathize with her for some reason. Normally I am able to find at least one or two redeeming qualities in a character like hers and rarely would I have such strong disgust for a main protagonist in a story, so in a way, I was surprised myself at how much I detested Isabel, to the point that I could not compel myself to find one reason to like her, even up until the end. Perhaps it is the way Isabel was portrayed in the story and the juxtaposition of Tom’s character and how much his moral compass had changed after he met Isabel. With all that said though, I do agree that the portrayal of almost all the characters in this book was realistic and truly brought to light the flaws of human nature.

Regardless of how I felt about the book, I definitely recommend it as a book that is absolutely worth reading. I’m sure each person will get something different out of the book – some may love it, some may hate it, some may be somewhere in the middle (like me). I would say read this with an open mind (all the way to the end though, because the whole story has less impact if not read to the end) and see where it leads you.