Quote: "Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be." So true.
It is one of the most popular books at the moment. So, I got curious and got it on my Kindle - yet another good buy for 20p. At first, I was laughing - the idea of a 100 year old escaping from a care home on his 100th birthday, still wearing his splippers and stealing a suitcase from a young unpleasant man (who could not fit this suitcase with him in the bus station toilet) was really funny. So, the story begun. And it got crazier and crazier with every page (btw - on Kindle there are no pages but percentages showing how much of the book one has read so far). Anyway, there are two stories being told pararellely - one, the story of now (2005 in fact), and the other the story of life of Allan (the 100 year old man) since he was young. When I got to the moment that he was in Spain during the Civil War and saved Franco's life (by pure coincidence), I though 'how ridiculous this book is!' and was almost ready to put it down. Yet, I continued. Yes, both stories got even crazier and more ridiculous, completely absurd - yet entertaining. And I began to enjoy it again. In his long life Allan managed to travel the world in a most peculiar way. He helped Oppenheimer in building the atomic bomb, saved Mao's wife in China, walked Himalayas, offended Stalin and as a result spent years in a Gulag in Vladivostoc (if I remember well) and much more... A man with no political views, no religion, strong attachement to vodka, extremaly intelligent (even though he did only three years of school in his life), very hard working, with little material needs and no worries at all. It seemed as everything that happened to him did not bother him much. He decided to break out from his imprisonment in Russia only because there was no vodka. And here is something that I would question. My grand-uncle (my grandmother's brother) was sent to Siberia to a gulag for many many years (people were sent to Siberia's camps for a lot of reasons). In fact, the family did not see him for over 35 years! Then the only way he could survive was thanks to alcohol. Because in Siberia it was sooo sooo cold the only way to keep warm was to drink a lot of alcohol. They did have it there,somehow. I remember this grand-uncle of mine, when I was a little girl at family reunions, he could drink a litre of spirit that was almost twice the strength of vodka and was still fine. Years of practice you see!
Anyway, one hundred-year-old not only found a lot of money in that stolen suitcase but also made some friends on the way, and somehow managed to kill (not directly) two young unpleasant men that were after the suitcase (which was full of money). There is also an elephant pet and much more... I would recommend the book to anyone who wants to read something entertaining. The book is enjoyable, light and ridiculous but clearly conveys the message that life if for living not for worrying about it!
Some quotes from the book:
"It took a while before the message seeped into his soul, but once there, it was there for ever: Things are what they are, and whatever will be will be."
"Revenge is like politics, one thing always leads to another until bad has become worse, and worse has become worst."
"Allan had always reasoned about religion that if you couldn't know for sure then there was no point in going around guessing."
"You should beware of priests, my son. And people who don't drink vodka. Worst of all are priests who don't drink vodka."
"Allan thought it sounded unnecessary for the people in the seventeenth century to kill each other. If they had only been a little patient they would all have died in the end anyway."
"Never try to out-drink a Swede, unless you happen to be a Finn or at least a Russian."
(well, my personal note: thinking about my grand-uncle - no one could outdrink him, so I would add to that list Polish as well)
"People could behave how they liked, but Allan considered that in general it was quite unnecessary to be grumpy if you had the chance not to." (love this one!)
"...the very biggest and apparently most impossible conflicts on earth were based on the dialogue: 'You are stupid, no it's you who are stupid, no it's you who are stupid.' The solution, said Allan, was often to down a bottle of vodka together and then look ahead." (my note: if it was only that simple!)
"Well, now you can see how sensible it is not to start your day by guessing what might happen, said Allan. After all, how long would I have had to go on guessing before I guessed this?" (Allan was referring to the fact that in the morning he was sitting in the park (in Sweden) on a bench with no plans for the day and in the evening he found himself on a Russian sub-marine.)
"Allan admitted that the difference between madness and genius was subtle, and that he couldn't with certainty say which it was in this case, but that he had his suspicions."
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