OK, executive decision time then!

 

Of the two books that are ahead of the others by just about a nose (1 vote) at this point -- namely, Chitra Banerjee Divakarumi's Sister of my Heart and Rosario Ferré's House on the Lagoon -- Ferré's House on the Lagoon is calling more to me at this point.  So that one it will be.

 

Here's the complete result:

 

 

 

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I've made it to square 100 (yey!), which calls for letting the BookLikes crowd decide my next read.  So, please vote:

 

 

The Blurbs:

 

Chitra Banerjee Divakarumi: Sister of My Heart

From the award-winning author of Mistress of Spices, the best-selling novel about the extraordinary bond between two women, and the family secrets and romantic jealousies that threaten to tear them apart.

Anju is the daughter of an upper-caste Calcutta family of distinction. Her cousin Sudha is the daughter of the black sheep of that same family. Sudha is startlingly beautiful; Anju is not. Despite those differences, since the day on which the two girls were born, the same day their fathers died -- mysteriously and violently -- Sudha and Anju have been sisters of the heart. Bonded in ways even their mothers cannot comprehend, the two girls grow into womanhood as if their fates as well as their hearts were merged.

But when Sudha learns a dark family secret, that connection is shattered. For the first time in their lives, the girls know what it is to feel suspicion and distrust. Urged into arranged marriages, Sudha and Anju's lives take opposite turns. Sudha becomes the dutiful daughter-in-law of a rigid small-town household. Anju goes to America with her new husband and learns to live her own life of secrets. When tragedy strikes each of them, however, they discover that despite distance and marriage, they have only each other to turn to.

Set in the two worlds of San Francisco and India, this exceptionally moving novel tells a story at once familiar and exotic, seducing listeners from the first minute with the lush prose we have come to expect from Divakaruni. Sister of My Heart is a novel destined to become as widely beloved as it is acclaimed.

 

 

Rosario Ferré: The House on the Lagoon

Finalist for the National Book Award: A breathtaking saga from Puerto Rico's greatest literary voice.

This riveting, multigenerational epic tells the story of two families and the history of Puerto Rico through the eyes of Isabel Monfort and her husband, Quintn Mendizabal. Isabel attempts to immortalize their now-united families -- and, by extension, their homeland -- in a book. The tale that unfolds in her writing has layers upon layers, exploring the nature of love, marriage, family, and Puerto Rico itself.

 

 

Alexandra Fuller: Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight

Alexandra Fuller tells the idiosyncratic story of her life growing up white in rural Rhodesia as it was becoming Zimbabwe. The daughter of hardworking, yet strikingly unconventional English-bred immigrants, Alexandra arrives in Africa at the tender age of two. She moves through life with a hardy resilience, even as a bloody war approaches. Narrator Lisette Lecat reads this remarkable memoir of a family clinging to a harsh landscape and the dying tenets of colonialism.

'Told with all the intensity of Lorna Sage's Bad Blood ' -- The Times.

 

 

Elif Shafak: Three Daughters of Eve

Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground -- an old Polaroid of three young women and their university professor. A relic from a past -- and a love -- Peri had tried desperately to forget. The photograph takes Peri back to Oxford University, as an 18-year-old sent abroad for the first time and to her dazzling, rebellious professor and his life-changing course on God. It also takes her to her home with her two best friends, Shirin and Mona, and their arguments about Islam and femininity and, finally, to the scandal that tore them all apart.  

 

 

This book is not for me. The author jumps around in time and the very short chapters plus the disjointed narration keep me from getting into the book. On top of that there isn´t a single likeable character in this whole novel and the parents are just awful. My personal favorite of parental awfulness has been:

 

One of the girls gets sexually assaulted and nearly raped and after having told their parents about it, their response is "Don´t exaggerate".

(spoiler show)

You would imagine that the author would have some fond feelings toward Africa, but from what I have read I got much rather the impression that she really hates the country. Guns, landmines, blown up people, dogs and the heat, there is not much more to her story. Everything is unpleasant and yet the family still persevere, eventhough war is raging around them. Based on the mothers view, this might not be surprising, though:

 

"Look, we fought to keep one country in Africa white-run" [...] "just one country".

[...]

"If we could have kept one country white-ruled it would be an oasis, a refuge. I mean, look, what a cock-up. Everywhere you look it´s a bloody cock-up."

 

I´m expecting more colonialism along the way and since I don´t like anything else about this book, I will DNF it at this point.

 

This has been my second free friday read for the Booklikes-opoly.

 

Page count: 301 pages - DNF at page 99

Money earned: $2.00

 

If I´m not allowed to net money for at not finished free friday read, please let me know.

Mum says, "Don´t come creeping into our room at night."

They sleep with loaded guns beside them on the bedside rugs. She says, "Don´t startle us when we´re sleeping."

"Why not?"

"We might shoot you."

"Oh."

"By mistake."

"Okay". As it is, there seems a good enough chance of getting shot on purpose. "Okay, I won´t."

 

After having read the first couple of pages yesterday, I decided to finish up Three Souls before digging into this book porperly. But now I feel more inclined to read Alexandra Fullers memoir, so I might reconcider.

I have heard good things about the story of Alexander Fullers childhood in Rhodesia in the 70s, so I´m happy to dig into this book starting today.

I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.

Unlike most readers of this book, I suspect, I have not read Fuller's previous books, so this was my first exposure to her voice. I loved it. She is open, honest, not overly critical but also questioning. She is near a divorce and looking back on her adult life and examining how she got there. What was she looking for in marriage? As an adult, what did she expect from herself? How is her family and upbringing tangled up in all that?

I don't agree with all the choices that she made, but I don't think I need to in order to love the book. I love the writing and the characters she paints around herself. These are, of course, real people, but in a good memoir they also need to be painted as characters. Her voice is clear and strong, and her examination of her own life is inspiring.

The central question of the memoir deals with how to live with risk. Her childhood was fraught with risk, danger. She was looking to escape that when she got married, but none of really can escape it. The finanacial risk was made obvious to her when the recession of 2008 hit, but it was clear before that, as well. The discussion she has with herself in this memoir reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother years ago, when my employment was uncertain and I didn't know where I would be in a year. My mother looked confused at my complaint about the stress of uncertainty. "No one knows where they're going to be in a year,", she said. "They just think they do. You're simply better informed." So we all make choices about how ordered our lives will seem, what rules we choose to enforce. Fuller grew up without rules, and married a man who liked rules. But that seems to be a conflict she needs to resolve now in her adulthood.

In the end, I liked the writing, I liked the ideas, and I liked the author. Great read.