Tag: book

Book Review: Plainsong by Kent Haruf

~ erinhenkels ~ Leave a comment

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I received this book in the mail as part of an international book exchange. But the person who sent this is a friend and she picked this for me because the author lived in Colorado and the novel is set in the rural plains of Colorado. While this book has been around for awhile, it is a part of a series (according to Goodreads.com) and the most recent book was out in 2013. I had not heard of the author and so had no expectations. But I enjoyed this book immensely.

It is a fairly simple story that follows the lives of community members of Holt, Colorado–a fictional farm-town on the plains East of Denver. The characters are multi-generational. While the characters are not poor, they are also on the edge and a lost job or bad crop could spell disaster. But mostly, the stories seem to highlight how people in a community will care for one-another. I get the sense that we are losing true community as populations swell, people pay less attention to each other and rely on each other less. So this book is a nice reminder of what small town life looks like, or used to look like.

In the end, this novel is a beautifully woven tapestry of the muted colors of peoples’ lives that invariably intertwine. The kindness and humanity of the old bachelor farm brothers who take care of an abandoned teenage mother and the very young brothers who befriend an old lonesome woman seem to reflect each other. No matter the age or life story, kindness is kindness and love is love.

Book Review: The Pearl that Broke Its Shell by Nadia Hashimi

~ erinhenkels ~ Leave a comment

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I borrowed this book from a friend who read it over the Christmas break and loved it. I, however, had mixed feelings. I recognize that this puts me in the minority. I see a lot of online reviews praising the story telling in this book as though it is staggeringly remarkable and I just can’t agree about the craft. But I do think it’s worth a read in some instances. I enjoyed it at times, but I did not love it and was even a bit annoyed at times.

The book traces the path of a young girl growing up in Afghanistan. So, already you know what this story is about. She is married off too young to a man who could be her grandfather and is nearly killed in childbirth, is beaten by him and is generally treated horrifically by her new family of in-laws and additional wives. Her story is different though in that, as a child, she had the opportunity to go to school–being from a family of only girls, this story sheds light on the practice of making a female child into a boy, a bacha posh, who is allowed by society to move around the world like a boy. This is a great help to mothers who cannot leave the house and need errands taken care of. Of course when the child hits puberty, she has to return to her female identity. As a result, this girl becomes literate which eventually saves her life when it becomes necessary to escape.

The heroine finds inspiration in the parallel story of her great-great-grandmother, Bibi Shekiba. Shekiba was also a poor village girl, mistreated in every possible way, who eventually found herself living in Kabul and witness to the modernization of Afghanistan–before the Russian and Isis backslide, of course.

Both Shekiba and Rahima, the protagonist, have interesting stories that keep you wanting to know what will happen next. They both seem marked for better lives. The cruelty they experience at the hands of their relatives, other women, and the attitudes of society are frustrating and causes some dissonance for the reader to reconcile how horrible people are to each other. It makes you wonder how minds will be able to be changed and while Shekiba and Rahima rise above, they feel like a minority, and the treatment-of-women (often by other women) situation feels pretty hopeless.

So, the stories are interesting and compelling, but the way Bibi Shekiba’s story is told seems pretty sophomoric. Rahima is often visited by her aunt who tells her the story of Shekiba. Throughout, the aunt has to be there to continue the story. And Rahima asks to be told about her. But by the end of the novel, the author just continues with chapters about Shekiba. So, she clings to this plot device for 2/3 of the book before finally abandoning it into a much more comfortable parallel telling of the two stories. I think after reading Marra, my expectations for story weaving are pretty high and so I found this device annoying and difficult to overlook. The writing, at moments, uses a bit of imagery, and the bird references are a nice linking device, but there should be so much more of this to engage readers, transport them to Afghanistan, and allow for a moment of reflection. However, the lack of much imagery or thought makes this a very quick read, which I appreciated once I realized that I wasn’t going to love it but wanted to finish it anyway. I more easily forgave the editing lapses, like the accidental point of view shift in Shekiba’s stories. The editors hurried through the book and so did I!

So I think this is a good read if you are unfamiliar with the experiences of women in Afghanistan or if you need a light quick read for the beach or airplane. If you only love literary fiction, there is not much here to sink into and you should go pick up one of those Anthony Marra books.

 

Review: Emelie Forsberg’s Sky Runner: Finding Strength, Happiness, and Balance in Your Running

~ erinhenkels ~ Leave a comment

IMG_5075I love to read about running. I love all running books–training, nutrition, mental game, history, inspiration, etc etc. I have become a student of the science and craft of running and a follower of running lifestyle. So I was primed to enjoy Emelie Forsberg’s book about her journey to be one of the world’s best and most accomplished mountain runners and ski mountaineers. Emelie is an athlete I already follow on Instagram and beyond because I always loved how happy she looked and how humble she seemed. In the Instagram world, you can tell pretty quickly which athletes truly love the spiritual flow of running, and which ones just love their own abs. I am not inspired by the half-naked ab chicks. I love the people who are moved by running and nature who I can feel a connection too. Yes, Emelie has tons of talent, but she’s always smiling and always looks so grateful to be in the mountains doing what she loves–even at mile 84. So I pressured my husband to buy me her book for Christmas and he complied 🙂

I enjoyed this book as a light read about Forsberg’s thoughts on her journey. She includes some recipes, some exercise ideas, some interval ideas, and a sun salutation progression as inserts among her story about her professional running journey. I really enjoyed the last section of the book about her attempt on Cho Oyu with Killian. As an armchair mountaineer, I quite like a good mountain climbing read. Additionally, I enjoyed this as a photo-journey. Killian provided all the photos and they are of professional quality (because of course–what can’t he do?)–it really is a picture book that will look nice on a coffee table or in a place of prominence on a bookshelf.

I would have to place this book firmly in the “inspiration” -only category of running books as it is not particularly informative. It’s more of a reflective piece on how Forsberg found herself becoming an elite athlete, making a living from running and skiing, and then some reflections on how she finds balance in making a living from her sports while also always finding joy and love there. Many ultra runners seem to have a hard time transitioning from normal life to full-time athlete and still maintaining that love and joy. She continues to reflect on the balance she needed to overcome an injury and surgery and then how she incorporates nutrition, farm living and yoga into her life to form a complete whole. There are some training tips but they are pretty hap-hazard. Either Forsberg does not want to or cannot share her true training strategies, or she really is a whimsical runner and can just go out and do whatever she feels like for the day. Mere mortals tend to need a bit more regimen to avoid injury. She has some nice ideas for how to incorporate some speed play and how to incorporate some intervals, but the advice is really, just, “so… do some of this sometimes if you want.” Even the strength training descriptions are so vague it is difficult to use as a tool to inform your training. Perhaps you could use some pieces here and there as a way to think about your own training, but you need to turn away if you expect to find a complete picture of what she does and how to do it too.

I think I will continue to use this book as an occasional flip-through when I want to feel a little inspired or when I need to remember to not take training so seriously. As an aging runner, I need to prioritize strength and pre-hab and relaxation. In other words, I need balance which is really the central theme of Forsberg’s thoughts. I’m glad I read it but I’m not particularly blown away. I would have preferred some more specifics so that the first half would not sound so repetitive. I wanted to learn something.

If you approach this book as Emelie’s story, you will be inspired. In the end, we all need to not take ourselves so seriously and find things we love as much as she loves mountain running.

Review: Anthony Marra’s The Zsar of Love and Techno

~ erinhenkels ~ 1 Comment

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In recent years, no other author has broken my heart like Anthony Marra. I read his first novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, about three or four years ago. It was one of those books that you wish will not end because you know you will never find any other words so beautiful. No other novel will be able to compare. I half-heartedly read other books after that until I found Marra’s second book, The Zsar of Love and Techno. Billing itself simply as stories, it is decidedly not just a collection of short stories. It is very much a cohesive novel written into stand alone stories. Once again, I am left wondering if any book can ever again impart so much magic for me.

The stories jump from various locations in Russia (mostly Kirovsk) to Grozny and the Chechen Highlands, beginning in 1937 and spanning through to outer space, the year unknown. There is an interesting connection via a painting in the first two stories and then by the middle of the third story, you begin to realize that all of the stories will have characters overlapping in some way and that this is perhaps not what you thought it would be at first. It slowly dawns on you that each story is a vital piece of the whole and that all of the stories will be linked by the painting.

The second linking device is the use of a mixed tape, made by one of the characters, but that also forms the organization of stories, as though each was a song. There is an A side, followed by an extended intermission in which we learn about two central characters and the origin of the tape–to be opened only in case of emergency, and then the side B stories do a lot of ends-tying. All stories, characters, and time periods converge so beautifully by the end of the second to last story. You see it coming and know you’ll weep but that does not make the resolution any less powerful.

The final story is the last end to be tied–Kolya must be the last person, Russian of course, the only human survivor of planetary nuclear holocaust. We know that his brother Alexi’s name will be the last human word and thought and it’s delivery is so poignant it cuts through the solar system, into the great beyond.

While I think the devices Marra confidently uses in all of his work are marks of literary accomplishment–shifting time, points of view, narrative voice, perfectly chosen imagery, diction, plot, overlap, etc–his real genius lies in making forgotten people profound. He humanizes people, places, and wars that most Americans, and world citizens alike, know nothing about. He then expresses through these people love so pure and heartrending, you can’t help but feel that these people could be you. He makes you care.

Like I said, I believed that I had been ruined forever from enjoying another book again after loving A Constellation of Vial Phenomena so very much. But this book has touched me again at my core. It is so extraordinary. Please, someone, give this man a gigantic grant so that he may continue to write and write and write…