"One Good Turn" (by Kate Atkinson)

Finished reading 'One Good Turn' almost two weeks ago.  Gripping -same as other books by Kate Atkinson  that I have read so far  - I could not put it down. Jackson Brodie - ex-policeman, ex-private eye, ex-husband, visits Ediburgh during the Ediburgh Festival, two years after 'Case Histories'. He is still with Julia (whom he met in 'Case Histories') but only just.
The novel starts with a road-rage incident and developes into murders somehow connected with one another. Russian girls, 'Honda man', a hitman, a writer of criminal novels, a wife of a rich dishonest businessman etc.. all together much much lighter than the 'Case Histories'. It even made me lough at times - at the end of the day it is subtitled "A jolly murder mystery" which implies that it is not as serious as the dark and gloomy 'Case Histories'.
 I love the way Atkinson tells the story from different characters' perspectives - I felt I wanted to know more about them and their lives. I have realised, with every Atkinson's book I read,  that the author has this capacity of encouraging certain bond between the characters and me - as it is easy to get an insight of the characters' mental state and inner feelings. Very enjoyable read, and I would recommend it as a holiday read.

One good quote (from Jackson Brodie):
"You said five little words to someone - How can I help you? - and it was as if you'd mortgaged you soul out to them."
 

'Case Histories' (Kate Atkinson)

This is the second book by Kate Atkinson that I have read, and Gosh did I enjoy it... I only confirmed my-previously-made opinion that Kate Atkinson is a brilliant writer.

Different cases, in different time - yet all connected as one private detective - Jackson Brodie - investigates them. A mystery of a child that dissapeared over thirty years ago, a murder of a young women ten years earlier, a story of a young mother sentenced to prison for murder of her husband... All is revealed in the end but the reader is kept in anticipation as the facts are given out slowly and in moderation presented within a totally manipulated timeline - once we are in the present, than in the past, then something happens then we are reading about what happened just before, than again we are going back to the past, all a bit gloomy yet written in great style.
 

I am so pleased  that there are more books by Kate Atkinson in my local library.

'Portrait in Sepia' (Isabel Allende)

I have just finished reading this wonderful novel and I am totally under the spell of the style and the characters in the book. I borrowed it from one of the participants of the  'Spanish - Conversation and Culture' class I attend each week. I assumed that I would not be returning it for a few weeks as I was in the middle of reading other books at the time. I couldn't have been more wrong. The moment I opened the book and immersed myself in reading the first few pages my attention shifted - I put aside all the other books, to read them later. I simply had to continue reading the 'Portrait...' It didn't take me long - I simply 'swallowed' it (I mean I read it very quickly).

Sitting on my sofa at home with a cup of coffee or tea in one hand and the book in the other, I was transferred to the 19th century San Francisco (US) and  Chile (with a quick visit to London and Paris). The story takes place before, during and after the War of the Pacific up until the first decade of the 20th century. A family saga with the most colourful, powerful and unpredictable characters one can imagine. Aurora del Valle is the narrator in the book. She describes her upbringing and the stories of her maternal and paternal relatives. Yet, not everything is revealed straight away as she does not actually know for a very long time who her parents were. She is in a strong need for closure and slowly over the years she keeps on finding out .... Aurora, suffers from terrible nightmares where people in black pyjamas appear. In the last pages the horrible truth behind the black-pyjamas people is revealed.

Aurora was brought up by her paternal grandmother - Paulina del Valle - a huge-in-size business-orientated extremely-rich matron with the most interesting and headstrong personality - firstly in San Francisco then in Chile.  Her paternal grandmother was Chilean. Her maternal grandparents were Chilean and Chinese, but she could not remember them since she had lived with them only until she was 5. Throughout her life she missed her Chinese grandfather emotionally (as if there was a huge hole in her)even though her little head could not remember him physically (and she did not even know for a very long time he even existed) - as a little girl she had had such a strong wonderful bond with him that it affected all her life.
In my opinion Tao Chi (Aurora's Chinese grandfather) is the most beautiful character here - with his eagerness to help people (he had an acupuncture clinic in San Francisco), wonderful love for his wife, his children and Aurora, and humble yet noble personality and dis-attachment to material things (as for whatever money he could save he would buy young slave-prostitutes from the brothels of china town to set them free and give them chance of a descent life). There are many other brilliantly portrayed personalities: Paulina del Valle, her English butler Williams (later her second husband!), Severo del Valle (who married Aurora's mother when she was pregnant), and Nivea - second wife of Severo (with whom she had 15 children!)...

I am definitely going to read more of Isabel Allende.  I already have one of her books on my Kindle and there are plenty in the local library. I might even treat myself to one or two of her books in original Spanish.

 

Quotes:

 

" 'I'm going to die' I screamed, throwing myself on her.

  ' This is not a convenient time to do that,' my grandmother replied dryly."

(Aurora just discovered she was bleeding (menstruating) for the first time, on the same day Civil War broke out)

" 'You already lost one leg in the war, Severo; if you lose the other, you'll look like a dwarf'.
'I don't have any choice, I'd be killed in Santiago anyway.'
'Don't be so melodramatic, this isn't the opera!' "
(conversation between Severo and his aunt Paulina before he left for another war - he indeed had lost one leg in the previous war)

" 'A printing press? Here? In my house?' my grandmother bawled.
  'I'm afraid so, Aunt,' murmured Nivea.
  'Shit! What will we do now!' And the matriarch fell back into her chair with her head in her hands, muttering that her own family had betrayed her, that we were going to pay the price for such incomparable idiocy, that we were imbeciles, (...)

"Since she was always pregnant. Nivea never relied on counting days but calculated instead the proximity of the coming delivery by the number of times she used the chamber pot. When for two nights in a row she got up thirteen times, she announced at breakfast that it was time to send for a doctor, and in fact her contractions began that same day."

"He was breathing, but his soul was already travelling through other dimensions. 'Good-bye, Papa,' I told him. It was the first time I had called him that. He agonized for two days more, and at the dawn of the third day he died like a baby chick."
(death of Aurora's father - she found out he was her father only a couple of months before)

" 'Light is the language of photography, the soul of the world. There is no light without shadow, just as there is no happiness without pain,' Don Juan Ribero told me seventeen years ago during the lesson he gave that fist day in his studio on the Plaza de Armas."

"Leaf Storm" (by Gabriel García Márquez)

It has been such a long time since I read Márquez! I am still remembering what impression ´One hundred years of solitude´ made on me when I read it as a teenager (in Polish). Everyone was reading it those days in Poland (I am talking late 80s here). Anyway, since then I have not come back to reading Márquez till now.

 

This novella (short novel) introduces the village of Macondo (which is exactly the same place as in ´One hundred years of solitude´). It is just that ´Leaf Storm´ was published in 1955 and ´One hundred years...´ in 1967. One can read ´Leaf Storm´ at one sitting really as it is not exactly long. But it is not a light read. Written from the three individuals perspectives - the grandfather (the Colonel), his daughter and his grandson. Three of them go to the corner house to the wake of the hated-by-the-whole-village doctor. They come to fulfil the Colonel´s promise given to the doctor years back - the promise to bury the body of the doctor when the time comes. It is a gruesome scene - filthy neglected house in which lonely, withdrawn and rejected (with quite peculiar and not exactly pleasant personality) doctor hang himself. His body gets put in the coffin, one shoe left behind.... They are waiting for the official permission to bury the body. Time is dragging, and in the meantime the reader is being told the story of the doctor (and bits of the town´s story) in retrospection and in no particular order by entering the thoughts of those three characters (granddad, daughter and her son). It kept me guessing and interested. Yet, not everything is revealed - not even the name of the doctor, or where he really came from nor what happened to his Indian mistress (who mysteriously disappeared years earlier). Gloomy but brilliant!  

 

I am planning on reading ´One hundred year of solitude´ again but in original - the copy of the book on my book shelf - a gift from my partner - awaiting me patiently. I know it is not going to be easy to read it in Spanish (even though I have  read it before and in my native language - but it was over 20 years ago so it does not count) but I have been wanting to do it for quite a while now. 

'Gandhi' A photographic story of a life (by Amy Pastan)

It is a very well written biography and a quick interesting read. I know it is primarily written for younger people to introduce them to this important character of the relatively recent history, but I would very much recommend it to anyone who is interested in finding out about Gandhi's life and work but would not want to get into all the detail. Feel-good shiny quality paper and the content loaded with photographs and notes explaining key terminology or briefly introducing  other important characters in Gandhi's life make it feel like a treasure. I think this book would be a brilliant gift to a teenager. I fairly enjoyed reading it, and will strongly recommend it to my daughter in the near future.

El laberinto del Fauno (película 2006)

El laberinto del Fauno, una película inventada, escrita y dirigida por Guillermo del Toro. Cada vez que la veo estoy tan conmovida que tengo que llorar. Es una película muy emocionante y llena de símbolos.
 

Es 1944 en España - los primeros años de la dictadura de Franco. A Ofelia - la protagonista - le gustan los cuentos de hadas. Ofelia es totalmente inocente y en mi opinión simboliza todo lo inocente: los niños, la gente en sociedad española. El capitán Vidal - el antagonista - está obsesionado con el tiempo y siempre lleva consigo el reloj de su padre. Vidal es un facista, una persona muy cruel y brutal, totalmente sin emociones. El definitivamente simboliza la dictadura de Franco y el nuevo orden de España. En la película la realidad (con sus verdaderas escenas de terror) está mezclada con la fantasía (representada por el fauno, hagas, hombre pálido, los cuentos, el libro de las encrucijadas, y el reíno subterráneo y otros elementos más). Todo eso le hace una película inolvidable.

En el mundo mágico Ofelia es una princesa perdida a quien le buscan sus padres verdaderos -  el rey y la reína del reíno subterráneo. Para regresar a su reíno - Ofelia - tiene que pasar por tres pruebas muy difíciles y al final sacrificar su propia vida. Al mismo tiempo, en el mundo real Capitán Vidal - un verdadero monstro - controla la gente de este zona de España, persigue a los guerilleros, tortura y mata personas. La madre de Ofelia muere al dar a luz su hijo - el hermano de Ofelia.

Todo un verdadero horror.

Los simbolos, en la película, son muy fuertes.

El árbol, por ejemplo. La higuera seca con un sapo que la destruye por dentro, parece en su forma a un útero de la mujer. La higuera seca puede significar el útero de la madre de Ofelia que está muriendo por el embarazo - por culpa del niño de Vidal (y ella). O más probablemente la higuera puede significar España que sufre tanto por la dictadura que por dentro arruina todo el país.
 

El hombre pálido, una creatura horrorosa que come a las inocentes que se atreven tocar la comida del banquiete que él guarda, puede significar cualquiera de los dos: el capitán Vidal o Franco mismo. Los verdaderos monstros en el mundo real.

Él cuento de la montaña y la rosa inmortal va así:

"Hace muchos muchos años, en un país muy lejano y triste existió una enorme montaña de piedra negra y áspera. Al caer la tarde en la cima de esa montaña, florecía todas las noches una rosa que otorgaba la inmortalidad, sin embargo nadie se atrevía acercarse a ella, pues sus numerosas espinas estaban envenenadas. Entre los hombres solo se hablaba del miedo a la muerte y al dolor, pero nunca de la promesa de la inmortalidad. Y, todas las tardes la rosa se marchitaba. Sin poder otorgar sus dones a persona alguna, olvidada y perdida en la cima de la montaña de piedra fría, sola hasta el fin de los tiempos."´

La rosa puede significar el pueblo español rodeado por el veneno del facismo, y nadie le puede ayudar. O el país triste puede simplemente significar España, y la rosa puede ser la libertad, y las espinas con veneno - el facismo y dictadura.

 

Quiero reflexionar sobre una afirmación en relación con la película:

"Ejercer el derecho a la desobediencia es una forma de ser libre."

El director Guillermo del Toro durante su entrevista con Jack Rico (¨"Jack Rico entrevista al director Guillermo del Toro sobre Pan´s Labyrinth" - YouTube) dijo que "la desobediencia es la clave de la fé y de la responsibilidad". La niña tiene que hacer lo que ella cree y lo hace por su instinto y está de acuerdo con su corazón. Y lo demuestra en casi todo lo que hace. Por ejemplo al final aunque quiere tanto volver al reíno subterráneo no sique la instrucíondel Fauno y no está dispuesta a sacrificar a su pequeño hermanito. Pero matada por Vidal sin embargo entra al reíno subterráneo como princesa. Resulta que ha elejido bien. Aunque ha desobedecido consigue lo que siempre quería y está libre de remordimientos.

 

La muerte de Dr Ferreiro es una escena que muestra desobedencia como una forma de ser libre. Dr Ferreiro desobedece a Vidal y mata (eutaniza) un pobre rebelde torturado por Vidal, lo mata pare que el no sufra más y porque el se lo pide. Dr Ferreiro lo paga con su propia vida, pero antes de morir dice a Vidal:

"Es que obedecer por obedecer, así sin pensarlo, esto solo lo hacen gentes como usted, Capitán."

'Life After Life'- Kate Atkinson

What a book! What a style!
 

I got encouraged to read this book by recommendations on Amazon. And as it was on my local library's list of most-read books at the moment I added my name to the online queue of people awaiting the copy of it. I think I was 9th on the list, but it did not take long, only a few weeks, and I received an email from the library to pick it up. Well, that was encouraging, it meant people had read it quickly.
 

And yes, it is definitely a page-turner. Big time. I could not put it down, and even though the book is not short (477 pages) it took me about 4 days to read it (during breakfast before going to work, after work and a bit of weekend). It grasped me from the very beginning. The baby dies, the same baby gets born again, the same child dies, and is born again and again. I cannot count the amount of times I cried. Almost every time Ursula dies, every time something wrong happens to her.
 

"What if you had the chance to live your life again and again until you finally got it right?" is written at the back cover of the book. What if? Ursula did, and with a vague memory of consequences of certain decisions in her previous lives, her life took unexpected turns each time. She lost life as a child many a times, she lost life during London blitz a number of times, she was raped, she was murdered by her husband, she was entertained by Hitler before the war, she was childless, she had a child and committed suicide in Berlin at the end of war,  she was single, she had husbands, she killed Hitler, she died of brain cancer (I think), she was bombed, every time 'Darkness fell'- she always died, her life never really fully satisfying. But is it ever? Is it ever satisfying? Every time 'darkness' will fall - we will always die in the end, won't we? 

There is no pay-off in the book. She is just born again on 11 Feb 1910, yet again.

 

It is hardly a new idea. And I am thinking here about the 1998 film 'Sliding doors' (with Gwyneth Partlow) where she lives two parallel lives - in one she catches the train and discovers her boyfriend cheating on her, in the other the door slides before she can jump on board and does not find out about the cheating - her life led completely differently just because of that little detail. Another example, the 1993 'Groundhog day' (with Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell) where a main character gets to repeat the same day over and over again until he gets it right - changes completely and gets the girl. Also, this reminds of the famous and popular scientific theory of parallel universes, which Micho Kaku explains so well in his book 'Parallel Universes'. According to one of the theories of the multiple universes, every time one takes a decision another parallel universe is created with the opposite or different decision being taken and therefore different life path and consequences. Mind blowing.

Anyway, going back to Kate Atkinson, the author of 'Life After Life', I am soooo going to read some more of her. I think she is a brilliant novelist with a wonderful capturing style.

 

Some quotes from the book:

 

" 'She doesn't believe in dogs,' Bridget said. ' Dogs are hardly an article of faith,' Sylvie said."

 

"Childbirth was a brutal affair. If she had been in charge of designing the human race she would have gone about things quite differently. (A golden shaft of light through the ear for conception perhaps and a well-fitting hatch somewhere modest for escape nice months later.)"(Sylvie's thoughts, after giving birth to Ursula)

 

"When she was sure Frieda was asleep she took the little glass capsule that the chemist had given her and placed it gently in Frieda's mouth and pressed her delicate jaws together. The capsule broke with a tiny crunching noise. A line from one of Donne's 'Holy Sonnets' came into mind as she bit down on her own little glass vial. 'I run to death, and death meets me as fast, And all my pleasures are like yesterday.' She held tightly on to Frieda and soon they were both wrapped in the velvet wings of the black bat and this life was already unreal and gone. She had never chosen death over life before and as she was leaving she knew something had cracked and broken and the order of things had changed. Then the dark obliterated all thoughts." (suicide in Berlin)

 

"Ursula sighed and stretched. 'You know I really, really have had enough of being bombed. 'The war's not going away any time soon, I'm afraid,' said Millie."

 

"What if we had a chance to do it again, and again,' Teddy said, 'until we finally did get it right? Wouldn't that be wonderful?' ' I think it would be exhausting."