Category: Books

Survivor’s Story of Fight Against the Islamic State and Hope to be The Last Girl

~ debeernecessities

Diane de Beer

The Last Girl: My Story of Captivity and my Fight Against The Islamic State by Nadia Murad and Jenna Krajeski (foreword by Amal Clooney) (Virago):

The-Last-Girl_

We read the headlines and we see the awful images, especially those horrific beheadings but then a mudslide, another refugee crisis, drownings in the Mediterranean Sea or a Trump tweet swamp the news cycle and the ISIS terror falls through the cracks.

They were topping all the news broadcasts at a specific time but only in very specific instances. We knew much more of those leaving their own safe homes in the UK and Europe to join the Islamic fighters in their endeavours to establish a caliphate than about the people in the devastated countries like Syria and Iraq.

But it is these little lives – those we don’t read about, those who lose everything and have never had a voice – who have to live the everyday horror on the ground of what it means to become part of the statistics of these terror groups that have only their ideology (power and money) to dictate their actions.

Humanity isn’t part of what they believe which is a scary thing when you are at their mercy.

This is the story of one of the voiceless women snatched from everything she ever knew to be a sex slave for men who had all might on their side and believed they had the go-ahead of the Koran to do their worst. Nothing could stop them.

Nadia Murad was born and raised in Kocho, a small village of farmers and shepherds in northern Iraq. She is a member of the Yazidi community and with her brothers and sisters lived a quiet and quite isolated life.

On August 15, 2014 when she was just 21 years old, life as she knew and loved it, ended abruptly. Even though the village had been waiting for the Islamic State militants who were on the march in the region, no one could have predicted what was about to happen to this community.

Already regarded as a fringe of a fringe community in the wider Iraq, they believed their Arab and Iraqi neighbouring villagers would step in and come to their aid. But they were left on their own without any chance of survival. Nothing could have prepared Nadia for the devastation and emotional upheaval of her life.

Scenes of the holocaust and people being pulled from one another without any warning, or simply shot if there was any resistance, play out in your imagination as you follow this story of a young girl who had hardly ever set foot outside her village.

Once the rape begins, it isn’t only the horror of that brutality that is overwhelming but also her belief and being told that her family would reject her because she is no longer a virgin and it won’t help for any of them to escape. In the end they would be killed by friend or foe.

Survival is part of our genes and this is also how it plays out here in even the direst circumstances. Nadia never stops fighting for her life. She knows even with her family decimated, that she wants to go on, fight the good fight and tell the world what is happening to the tiny Yazidi community that is in the last spasms before being obliterated.

The frightening thing about Nadia’s story is that it is happening today in a time where no one goes unseen. But there’s so much going on, countries devastated, people wiped out by other people or natural disasters, that we can hardly keep up. So even if the means are available, the audience is overwhelmed.

Think of Rwanda. Nadia herself makes that comparison, saying that never in her life would she have thought her horrors would be compared to that of Rwandan women. It is like a cycle repeating itself over and over again and the picture is of course far bigger than this one small corner of Iraq where ISIS has now been removed to go and battle and sow chaos somewhere else.

But Nadia has done this the way that works best. She wanted to tell her story, to bring justice to her world, not to allow the Islamic State militants to further their reign of terror and to make people pay attention – one story at a time.

It must come to that or it simply becomes a mass of horror. It’s like the body of the small boy that washed ashore that stopped everyone in their tracks – for a moment at least.

Learning about the Yazidi people, listening to Nadia explain how fractured Iraq is since the fall of Saddam, understanding when she notes how ISIS occupied the roads in these outlying regions which meant that they controlled all the movement. There was no other way in or out.

This is a story not only of the atrocities but also of a country that has splintered into tiny pieces with everyone fighting and mistrusting each other and even the larger groups we are aware of, consisting of infighting, splinter collectives.

It’s madness and in amongst this, real lives are battered and destroyed. Nadia has become an activist and a Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations but every time she tells her story – and that is often what she does – she relives the horror of every rape and the loss of every member of her family and friends.

She also remembers how they searched the horizon for help, how they hoped above all that their neighbours would be there for them. It’s an anger and a mistrust that is difficult to curb to the point where she couldn’t speak Kurdish once she managed to escape even when it meant it could save her life.

That’s what happens in these circumstances when the world turns its back.

“More than anything else,” concludes Nadia in this astonishing book, “I want to be the last girl in the world with a story like mine.”

Hence the title and the reason you should take the time and read her story.

This is our world – sadly.

Gordon Forbes Plays his Best Hand

~ debeernecessities

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

– Ray Bradbury

 

DIANE DE BEER

 

I’ll take the Sunny Side by Gordon Forbes (Bookstorm):

 

Ill-Take-the-SunnysideI’m a tennis fanatic so I loved his first memoir A Handful of Summers, but that was some time ago and as I started this one and set off with a bunch of ageing guys having lunch and the discussions emanating from that, I wasn’t sure I was up for it.

Sorry guys, but many of us, not part of that demographic don’t feel the need to be privy to your conversations. They’ve been too dominant for most of our lives and we need and have found more diversity elsewhere.

But then he turned his pen to the place that interests me – again – and I was hooked. As one of his lunch companions wisely points out, this is his expertise. After all, how many of us have played tennis on his level. He still mixes and watches the best and has much to say about everyone.

Also, Forbes knows how to spin a yarn and doesn’t seem to have a mean bone in his body, hence the title. So while he tittle tattles a touch, there’s no malice and for those of us interested in the great game, he has more than enough knowledge to impart. Of course, he is nostalgic about the old ways and condemns the impact that a world with social media has had on the game, but he does speak his mind on all kinds of things relating to tennis and for those of us who were already glued to our screens from the Hopman Cup and the Brisbane Open with the Australian Open almost in full flow, this is heaven.

Who doesn’t want to know what somebody with Forbes’s expertise thinks about the game today? In his time, it was a gentleman’s sport and they weren’t purely driven by the money. Just watching Federer raise record crowds simply by being in Australia, tells you in which way the game has evolved. Even the Australian pairing at the Hopman Cup couldn’t do the same with their own people. They wanted to see The Fed, that’s it.

But Forbes is also someone who has a led a life which gives him a specific perspective. He has fun with his chums around a table in a Joburg club, one of those that started without allowing women but had to change with the times.

It is though his tennis participation – still-  in a world that those of us who follow can never learn enough especially from an insider and that Gordon Forbes is. He and his partner Abe Segal, who he writes about with great dexterity, still hold the record for the longest set in men’s doubles at Wimbledon – 32/30! Makes sense that they have discussions about matches ending in the dark at the hallowed Wimbledon courts.

With a partner like Segal, the stories abound and every occasionally, he drops titbits like the win he and his first wife Val had in Gstaad in the mixed doubles when it meant they were presented their silver cups by Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. That’s the kind of life he has led, and he spins a great yarn about these meanderings.

It’s the kind of book you read with a gentle smile about times gone by, but it also focusses you on a life worth living and how people go about sharing what they regard as stories worth telling.

While I might have been dubious at the start especially in these times when writers have more important stories to tell, it is a good thing to escape the fury of today’s world sometimes, catch your breath and listen to a voice that might not be your obvious selection from the start.

You might just learn something and for me the tennis insight was invaluable.

Bosch’s latest thrill boringly by the book

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Sleep is good, he said, and books are better. 

– George R.R. Martin

DRIES DE BEER

Guest Writer

 

 

Two kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly (Orion Books)

 

Two Kinds of TruthHarry Bosch has been with us for a long time.

This the 23rd book in the series and I have not read all of them.

Bosch is now in his mid-60s, semi-retired and working cold cases for the San Fernando police department. The current cold case is more of a missing person case. A mother disappeared leaving behind a husband and a baby. Her body was never found.

Bosch’s current office is a police cell and his table a door that he scrounged from somewhere and placed across two stacks of file boxes.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is lurking in the background and the action starts when they re-open an old case of Bosch when newly-discovered DNA evidence now shows that an innocent man has been imprisoned by the seasoned detective. The suspicion is that either Bosch or his now dead partner planted evidence to get a conviction.

Bosch naturally is very sure that he had the right man sent to jail but the Conviction Integrity Unit has other views; they work old cases but unlike Bosch, it is not unsolved cases, but rather badly solved ones.

Just as the LAPD is trying to get Bosch back in court, a double homicide happens at a local pharmacy and the detective gets roped in.

The police investigation about the wrongful conviction drives the timeline and Bosch must juggle his time between the double homicide, the cold case of the missing mother and the pending investigation and possible overturning of one of his old cases.

The Lincoln Lawyer, Harry Bosch’s brother in law and his motorcycle-riding sidekick, also make an appearance in the book, racing in to help Harry and his wrongful conviction case.

So, there is a small legal drama on the side with the Lincoln lawyer providing at least some sense of drama while Bosch’s other investigative ventures appear to be pretty much by the book.

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Titus Welliver as Harry Bosch. Check Universal Channel (DStv 117) for updates on broadcast dates. Photographer Jennifer Clasen and Amazon Studios

The double homicide leads to an undercover job for Bosch as he tries to unmask an opioid drug ring in order to find the gunmen who killed the two people in the pharmacy. This also kicks the story into the current addiction crisis in the US, and perhaps more could have been made of this.

While the opioid drug smuggling and abuse is very current and interesting, the drug bosses are portrayed stereotypically as Eastern Europeans and Russians cast as invincible and without feeling for corrupt drug runners.

Connelly is an accomplished writer and this is an easy read. But it lacked suspense. The perpetrators are revealed early on and the only mystery is how Bosch has been conned into an unlawful conviction.

I have to confess that I read this book while trawling through an awfully repetitive and at times, boring biography and I needed a break. Connelly’s crime thriller provided the breathing space, but no more than that. Perhaps the Harry Bosch genre has been over-traded and perhaps, dare I say it, it is time that he is put out to pasture.

I dread to think about the last cold case that Bosch will have to unravel. He may be using a zimmer frame by then.

 

 

 

Love in a Heatwave

~ debeernecessities

I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.
― Jorge Luis Borges

DIANE DE BEER

Three very different love stories in three marvellous books are perfect to start off your year.

Atomic Weight of LoveFirst dip into what might be the more traditional story, published in 2016, magically titled The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church (4th Estate).

 

It’s intriguing and the title has significance as the backdrop is Los Alamos where scientists worked on the development of the atomic bomb.

The cover notes also divulge that the author is a lawyer who was born in Los Alamos and lives there now, which explains her interest but also the fact that she’s writing from within a world she has experienced herself.

But the title referring to that era when atomic bombs were still under the radar, also points to a young woman with a burgeoning career who falls in love with her professor two decades her senior and sacrifices her future to nurture his career.

She lives in a time when women are just beginning to question their submission. While at the beginning of her marriage, the stars in her eyes propel her in a direction which she later battles with, it is also the complete acceptance of her husband that she should sacrifice her desires to fulfill his that leads to her disillusionment.

It’s the old, old story for women and what makes it gripping even now is that while we cannot argue that we have come a long way, with the current #MeToo so overwhelming, it really is two steps forward and four back – all the time – still. And while that’s sad, women in the workplace anywhere will not be surprised.

That’s why even this one set almost 80 years ago, still has such relevance. It’s a story of a woman’s awakening, finding herself and a life that she wants to lead as she takes control of her own life, listens to what she really wants and sets out to find it.

in-the-midst-of-winterIsabel Allende’s In the Midst of Winter (Scribner) veers off into a completely different universe. For those of us who have loved her since the magic realism days of Eva Luna and House of Spirits, her amazing storytelling qualities might sometimes teeter on the brink of soap opera but her writing is of a quality that pulls it back just at the right time.

And this one has a movie quality in which I can almost see the Coen brothers do something quirky as an unexpected friendship blossoms between three people who are unexpectedly thrown at each other by circumstances.

Richard Bowmaster is a lonely university professor in his 60s who unexpectedly slides his car into the car driven by a young undocumented migrant from Guatemala, Evelyn Ortega, in one of the worst snowstorms experienced in Brooklyn in living memory.

That’s a handful already and in the background, moving centre of the story, is Chilean academic, Lucia Maraz, which is where this love story ignites. She has been invited to teach in New York by the professor, but she has much more than her work in mind – yet he doesn’t budge. Then Ortega literally crashes into their lives which take a dramatic turn as they go on a thrilling road trip.

It’s made for the movies and a real page-turner in the best sense of the word. As always, because Allende seems to have so much fun as she stretches the story, she takes you along on this whirlwind of a yarn that has you rooting for this band of adventurers who might not be operating strictly in the law but always with the best intentions and heart.

This is the perfect book if you want to start your year with some escapism while having huge fun along the way.

Standing ChandelierOn a more serious note but no less entertaining, Lionel Shriver will always test your mindset and where you are on issues as she is never simply telling a story. And of the three love stories, her The Standing Chandelier (The Borough Press) is perhaps the most intriguing.

Weston Babansky and Jillian Frisk are best friends which all works out wonderfully for the two of these sometime lovers until Weston falls in love and a triangle comes into play.

It’s that age-old question. Can men and women truly be friends? Just friends? Or is there always something else at play on some level.? For the two friends, their friendship might appear innocent – after all, they have tried the other thing and it didn’t work out.

But for the third party, things are never that simple. It is all these issues and more that Shriver explores so magnificently – that and of course some other modern and moral dilemmas that are swirling about.

That’s always what makes her storytelling so enticing. She lives now, she approaches the world in that way and she dissects and discusses what she experiences around her.

It’s going to be fascinating when she gets to what is happening with #MeToo and how it is expanding in all kinds of directions with women finding a voice to tackle different dilemmas.

With this one, she dips in and out of different issues but at the heart of the novel is the nature of friendship and how it impacts the lives of so many when two people find a meeting of minds that they might think is sacred and non-negotiable.

As always, even in what is best described as a novella (only 122 pages), Shriver digs deep and takes you to places you wouldn’t have imagined to best solve what she has determined is her current theme(s).

Shriver fans will be mesmerised.

He, the Funnyman with the Saddest Eyes

~ debeernecessities

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.” – Dr Seuss

 

 

DIANE DE BEER

 

He cover

He – A Novel by John Connolly (Hodder & Stoughton):

 

You probably have to be of a certain age to know or even recognise the names Laurel and Hardy. If you’re not, you might be more familiar with the name Charlie Chaplin.

They’re of the same era and if you’re being generous, ilk, but Chaplin was the one who grabbed the world’s imagination and with reason.

Yet Connolly, a writer perhaps better known for his Charlie Parker stories, has always been someone who every once in a while, lunges off in a contrary direction to the delight of those who follow him. Even when we’re fans of Parker, it’s good to travel with the writer on his other journeys as well, to see where he will take us.

And this time it’s truly intriguing. I remember watching Laurel and Hardy as a child and loving these two contrary characters who got into all kinds of scrapes. Their tomfoolery amused me at a very young age and as I grew older, they disappeared. Even though my interest has also been movies, I didn’t have the dedication of this writer.

When I realised just who this book was dealing with, it was fascinating to witness how Connolly approached his subject and how he told this story. He is very clear that it is not biographical, calling it a novel and a reimagining of the life of one of screen’s greatest comedians

Laurel and Hardy2

And the back page is also quite clear with the following precis:

he was one of the most famous screen comedians in the world.

he was loved by millions.

he was divorced 4 times.

he was betrayed by his idol.

he lost a fortune.

he lost his greatest friend.

he is Stan Laurel.

Now in a quiet room by the sea, at the closing of the day, he remembers.

One must assume that the bare facts stick to those of Stan Laurel’s life, at least what is known. But Connolly walks us through this ultimately sad man’s life and he does it purposely in this almost painstaking way as he sketches that which we are mostly unfamiliar with – behind the scenes. And in those days, it was still true and did still happen.

There wasn’t any social media and stars were still stars even though they were always on a tight leash because of their careers and the image they had to adhere to and project.

It’s almost as if some of them could not resist but behave like naughty children all their lives, because that’s how they were treated by the studios.

Laurel and Hardy

When you think of Laurel and Hardy, it is Stan Laurel’s sad eyes that haunt you. It is the ultimate picture of the tragic clown, the one who makes others laugh but cries within. Connolly writes that he also had memories from his childhood, but this novel is about more than memories. It’s almost like a love letter to a time gone by when there was still space for private lives even for those who lived so publicly.

That’s what is best captured. This man seemed so open on screen and yet he was duped by almost everyone in his life. He held onto those who he should have let go and allowed those who really made a difference, to get away.

And once his partner in crime, Oliver Hardy, died, he felt his life was diminished.

Connolly is an extraordinary writer and once again his curiosity and imagination takes his reader down an unusual road. While I wasn’t always sure whether I really wanted to get this much into the life of Stan Laurel, by the end of the book, what the author describes as a construct of a life, is compelling because it captures both a time and a world that is long gone and imagines how people functioned in what seems like much gentler times.

Nataniël wears his Art on Stage

~ debeernecessities

DIANE DE BEER

Closet – the remarkable wardrobe of Nataniël (Human&Rousseau, R390):

Nataniel book cover

 

This past year, 2017, was Nataniël’s 30th year as a solo artist on stage. He celebrated in many ways and amongst others, with this extraordinary encyclopaedia of his stage wardrobe.

“It is beyond logic that I have been able to be this politically incorrect and unashamedly Eurocentric in presentation, content, sound and inspiration, and still managed to go unpunished,” he writes.

He describes the book as both a celebration and a preservation. Books and costumes are what he collects and holds dear. They cover his walls and fill many rooms. “I love them like others would love their children.”

For him his costumes are works of art. “I wouldn’t go on stage, if that wasn’t true,” he explains.

From Slow Tear booklet 1998.
From stage show Coronation 2009 planet coat Floris Louw Picture: Lorinda van den Berg
Costume Floris Louw. Picture: Lorinda van den Berg

 

They are conjured by those with creative minds, “crafted by skilful hands, worn by those lucky enough to have been chosen and admired by those who need to escape, travel or dream”. He wanted to document his life, and this, he thought, would be the easiest way to do it. What he didn’t heed was the fact that getting hold of the pictures would be an impossible task. But, he still has every costume which meant that those not captured on film could tell new stories.

Nataniël has written, staged and appeared in more than 80 original stage productions. He has released 17 albums and five DVDs, filmed three TV series (“Edik van Nantes” now being broadcast on DStv’s kykNET, channel 144, on Wednesdays at 8pm), and published 17 books. Together with 28 concert tours, numerous collaborations, food shows and lifestyle talks, he has given more than 6 000 performances.

Whatever he decides to do and whenever he is creating a new show, it always starts with a costume. This is where his fantasy world begins. It began quite simply and organically. He says in his early performance days, he had no role models, no one to look up to or to follow. “I was part of a society that was anxious, conservative, judgemental and fearful.”

He made his own clothes, dressing like fictional characters and with the help of friends, made his own costumes. “I dressed like someone looking for trouble and appeared on stage wearing as little as possible, as tight as possible.” It seemed to work because he caught everyone’s attention and people were talking. That’s a performer’s dream. He had found a formula that worked.

On a trip one day, he bought a magazine somewhere and spotted a faux fur, Dalmatian printed, short-cropped jacket with a large collar and a red lining. The designer was listed as Blue Zoo with a phone number which he called the next day. A new world opened for this young performer. “I could have pieces created that nobody else had. The possibilities were endless: the picture could change as often as I needed it to. The music would become visual. The stories would follow.”

His three designers then dictate the way the book unfolds, with Shani Boerstra from Blue Zoo starting the show. She introduced Nataniël to the wizardry of costumes and how to make the impossible become possible and that is how the structure of his shows developed and evolved. He selects wisely and is intensely loyal with his first designer still creating daywear for him, zips and all, he tells.

She was followed by James Edward Moulder, whose attention to detail and dedication to the understated, blew Nataniël’s mind. His ability to draw was exceptional and he was also tasked with doing the graphics for the show posters and programmes as well as illustrating Nataniël’s book “Tuesday”. When he left for the UK, he told Nataniël about a young fashion student named Floris Louw who had just completed his studies and won every possible award.

Nataniel Red Period
From stage show After Animals, 2015; Coat Floris Louw. Picture: Lorinda van den Berg

For Louw it is all about texture – layers and layers of texture, says Nataniël. It runs from quilting to beading to embroidery to fringing to fraying to plaiting to printing and even welding. The two of them together explored new horizons both in costume and show. “Through the years I have worn crystal, metal, lace, wood, canvas, rope, chains, vinyl X-rays and foam. One costume had a dancer inside, one had to be carried by dancers, one was on wheels, one had hundreds of meters of ribbon, one covered the entire stage, one turned into a backdrop.”

These all served the shows and have very little to do with fashion, yet everything with history. Both the performer and his designer tap into specific periods in the past, which they revisit for different looks and references. “We do occasionally take a breath, exhale and visit minimalism,” he adds.

Having honoured his three designers, he turns to the way his costumes determined his shows. The knee-length coat, for example, evolved because he felt the need for more costume changes. It only appeared about 10 years into his stage career. Because of the nature of his performances, he could only leave the stage so many times for a costume change. Thus, layering came into play – hugely.

Nataniel in Nantes historical setting
Costume from show inspired by historical events, shot in Nantes in historical castle. Pictured by Nataniel’s brother Erik le Roux

Open with a dramatic coat, have a smaller garment underneath and a lighter but striking top or shirt beneath that. A fourth could then be thrown on during a blackout or lighting change. During an instrumental or a guest solo, he could leave and change into another set or two or three!

That was how the “formula” for his current shows started and how the knee-length coat made its first appearance. Nataniël also understands that the cut accentuates your waist, the length adds elegance and the shape is a perfect canvas for detail and play.

Add to all this drama, his love of colour – from red and gold to black and white – and he gives just a small taste of his storytelling with a short story (from a show) on coats (in Afrikaans), all included and elaborating on his closet.

For Nataniël, the stage is his perfect world. This is where he paints his pictures, creates a land where things work the way he imagines they should. Here he allows his imagination to run riot as he tells stories set against extravagant landscapes in which his costumes explode in full splendour.

With more than 300 pictures and a story that explains his creativity, Closet documents a stage career that is as extraordinary as it is explosive. It captures a time, a place and a world that is unique to Nataniël, a reminder of a world-class act.

Full Disclosure: Diane de Beer wrote the foreword in the book.

 

John le Carré builds on his legacy of Spies

~ debeernecessities

“I have always imagined that

Paradise will be a kind of Library”

Jorge Luis Borges

DIANE DE BEER

A Legacy of Spies by John le Carré (Viking):

A Legacy of Spies1It’s always a treat when a new John le Carré thriller makes its way onto your bookshelf and with a name like this one, which points to the kind of thrillers we first fell in love with like The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, expectations are high.

It’s John le Carré , no less and writing about Smiley, Peter Guillam and a gang of familiar rogues.

But that was quite some time ago and yet, Le Carré  manages to twist the past and the present together in a tangled web that takes serious attention to unravel.

Not only do you have to reach back a few decades when you last met up with all these characters but then you fast forward to not only a much older and craggier George, but his younger colleague Peter, who himself is retired on a farm in Brittany (he was half French and British), is the one who tells this particular tale.

And it’s some tale as you can imagine. It grabs hold of you right from the start and whirls you through another almost Cold War-style escapade that has you guessing from beginning to end.

It also takes you back to a time when the Cold War ended and everyone was wondering what would happen to writers like Le Carré who made that specific era their specialty. Not to worry though, he focused on that time because that was what we were living. But as astutely as he could dissect that period of time in the world, so he could move on to other issues that the powerful would latch onto as times moved on and political constructs shifted and changed.

John le Carre

At his age, (85!), it makes sense that he looks back but how smart to go to the past yet write about the current world. He pulls us back to a different time and place and points to the way time changes how we behave, what we think and how people and governments run their lives and their daily business.

Don’t think for a second that he lets the reader off the hook. If you were a fan of his earlier novels, you have aged with the author. You will have to grab hold of all those mental faculties to stay with this tale of espionage. It might come from a different age yet it is pulled quite abruptly into today’s world by two children who are on a path of vengeance for their parents who were killed on the wrong side of the Berlin Wall at that time.

It’s Le Carré genius. Not only does he give us the past and characters that we have met before, but it plays out today which gives him many different options to comment on the world as he sees it now. His is never a simple story to tell. There’s much more going on which keeps you on your toes and makes it even more intriguing.

So for those who wondered in the past whether he was going to have anything to write about post Cold War, he’s still at it and to my mind, even got to say quite clearly why Britain should be careful of breaking away from Europe.

This is not someone who has any problem with what or how he wants to write.

A Legacy of Spies is the perfect retro-hangover from someone who wanted to take leave of old friends. Fans will love it.

 

 

Swedish writers with something to say, do it with such clarity they grab your heart

~ debeernecessities

“Books are a uniquely

portable magic”

Stephen King

DIANE DE BEER

The Scandal by Fredrik Backman ((Penguin/Michael Joseph)

Scandal cover

How can you resist a book that starts with the following sentence:

Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barreled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else’s forehead and pulled the trigger.

Some may be familiar with the writer, Frederik Backman because of his most prominent book thus far, A Man Called Ove , an intriguing look at a man who could not relate to the rest of the world and thus turned most away from him.

This is no different. Beartown is a small town in a large Swedish forest. It is in danger of losing any economic future it might have but there’s one shard of light – a tiny one – but it’s there.

The town, 99.9 percent of it anyway, are fanatical about their ice hockey team. We’re not talking the big leagues, it’s all about the stage that will take them there if they do well. So it’s small town, small odds, and small team. But this seems to be their only hope of not shrinking to a point of no return.

And they’re all set to go with the fighting spirit and the chance of the boys pulling it through. But then bad things happen to good people and good people aren’t always willing to do the right thing.

That’s how much of this story plays out as Backman peels and dissects this town like an onion, one nick at a time. It’s fascinating as he tells the story of generations in a town where everyone is linked to their sporting success in some way whether it is the local bar owner or the mother who cleans the ice rink.

The author has stacked the odds so that everyone seems implicated in a certain act that throws their every decision into question. Are your morals going to hold or are you going to bend them a little with the knowledge that individuals might be wronged but it would be for the greater good?

Haven’t we all wondered about certain people – on a small or larger scale – and how they live with their conscience? They must bend the truth a little to do what they do and get away with it – or so they believe.

All of these issues come into play in this story which affects everyone in the town on some scale.

Because of all of the issues involved, the fact that it is driven by sport, which impacts communities whether in a large city or small town. The author has cleverly reached far and wide to draw on a reading public.

In our family, everyone is reading or has read the book and loved it. It’s that kind of tale. It’s something that people can talk about, discuss and bring their opinions to bear.

What Backman does exceptionally well, is hold your attention. Even if translated, it is tightly written but more than that, it is the way the story is told. Many different characters are brought into the game, to show what specific people do under specific circumstances. There’s mother of the wronged child for example or the father who has both his daughter and the sports team to consider.

It reminded me of the storytelling abilities of Lionel Shriver who takes a contemporary dilemma and pulls it apart by telling a specific tale.

It’s exactly what Backman does here. Whether in a snow covered Swedish town, or a Cape south coast village, the story that is told can unfold similarly which is why it is so enthralling.

If you want a good read that can be passed around the family with good results all round, this is it.

Much more than A Gentleman in Moscow

~ debeernecessities

 

READING GIVES US

SOMEPLACE TO GO

WHEN WE HAVE TO STAY

WHERE WE ARE

(MASON COOLEY)

 

 

 

DIANE DE BEER

 

A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles (Hutchinson):

Gentleman in Moscow

It’s always one of the rewards of reading when a book turns out to be so much more than its cover (or even the first few chapters) suggest.

I had been prodded by some remarks from two very different readers to have a closer look at this one, and I’m delighted I did.

More than a third into the book, I was thoroughly enjoying the sweet if sad tale but finding it slightly lightweight. Much of one’s affinity for the novel at the beginning is the main character (and narrator) who is just such a likable fella.

Count Alexander Rostov has led an extraordinary privileged life but it is now 1922, a new regime has taken over in his country and his circumstances are greatly changed. In fact, when he is marched out of the Kremlin across Red Square, this will be the last time he sees the outside world for quite some time.

Instead of his usual luxurious suite, he is taken to an attic room with a window which hardly allows him any view at all. Viewed as an unrepentant aristocrat by a Bolshevik tribunal, he has been sentenced to indefinite house arrest.

That’s where we get to meet this affable man who seems to accept his lot quite graciously, simply gets on with it as we are taken into his inner circle as he shares his life henceforth.

But this is not any life and not the one he was accustomed to in his past life as an aristocrat. He is living in  one of Moscow’s most prestigious and historic hotels and while the clientele has changed as has the government, this is still the place to be seen. Yet as someone who took his daily rituals intensely seriously, a walk in the park, a morning coffee and some such, he is initially put out by this sudden inconvenience.

What starts out as seemingly a minor obstruction, at least for the ingenuous Count Rostov, turns into quite a madcap adventure as different people come into his life to show him new ways of navigating this peculiar and unexpected life-changing world. It’s fun and reads almost like a contemporary fairy tale but what adds substance and weight is the changing Russia that emerges with something new happening on an almost daily basis.

It makes sense then that the hotel becomes a leitmotif for what is transforming in the rest of the country.. While the Count cannot stick his nose outside, he is kept in touch with the reality by those entering the doors of this much revered establishment. It plays out in full to the extent that the identity of the next powerful leader emerges at a dinner that takes place in a sacred dining room and the way the seating arrangements unfold.

It is in the telling of the tale, the language (”of course, there’s now more canvas than cashmere in the room, more gray than gold. But is the patch on the elbow really that much different from  the epaulet on the shoulder?”), the way the characters spill out and over one another, the ages of the different participants and the changing of the guard that doesn’t have to mean the end of anyone’s expectations of inhabiting some kind of world, that keeps one intrigued.

It also reminds us – again – that the more things change, the more they remain the same.

 

 

Zakes Mda Tells African Stories that Resonate and Grow Stronger with Time

~ debeernecessities

CION_Maqoma_0235Summertime and the living is easy. DIANE DE BEER kicks off this season of reading and catching up with all those books that were put aside during the year. She starts her holiday reading with two award-winning novels by the erudite Zakes Mda: one old, one new-ish, but both will take you into a world where you can lose yourself – while learning more about our people and this place:

 

©Siphosihle-Mkhwanazi_CION-29-1-1024x300
Cion

 

Earlier this year, before I had the luxury of this blog, I had the chance to see the sublime Gregory Maqoma’s Cion at The Market – and very little has surpassed that experience this year.

He explains the creation thus: “I am drawn to Zakes Mda’s character Toloki the professional mourner from his beloved Ways of Dying as he further uncovers in his book Cion the story of the runaway slaves. In my interpretation, Toloki rediscovers death in a modern context, inspired by the universal events that lead to death, not as a natural phenomenon but by decisions of others over the other. We mourn death by creating death. The universe of greed, power, religion has led us to be professional mourners who transform the horror of death and the pain of mourning into a narrative that questions what seems to be normalised and far more brutal in how we experience death and immigration. I am creating this work as a lament, a requiem required to awaken a part of us, the connection to the departed souls.”

Nothing prepares you for the performance by Maqoma who has gathered a group of dancers, musicians and singers who mourn death in a way that both embraces and expunges the horrors of this world.

From the design to the dance to the magnificent music and singing, Maqoma transports you to a place of healing by tearing the horror apart step for step, note by note.

If you ever see Cion is being performed anywhere, don’t hesitate, just go. It’s world class and feeds the soul.

 

 

What he left me with, amongst other things, is a realisation that I had never read Ways of Dying, but I had put the book aside for just this kind of timing. Telling the story of Toloki, the professional mourner that so inspired Maqoma, Mda has created something that deeply touches the soul – on every level.

Toloki is a man who spends his life mourning the lives of others while trying to define a life of his own. It’s a story of sadness, of seeing yourself through the eyes of others, but living with a purpose that keeps you going as you bring some reason for hope to the lives of others.

“Death lives with us every day. Indeed our ways of dying are our ways of living,” says Toloki capturing the essence of this haunting tale.

Then Mda highlighted his year when running off with the Sunday Times fiction award for Little Suns (Umuzi) which meant I could simply stick to this amazing author having delved into his past writing and now encouraging him to delve into his family’s past.

It is a love story embedded in a history lesson of sorts. While he seemingly writes about a lame and frail Malangana who searches for his beloved Mthwakazi, Mda writes a searing revision of the past as it was told by the strongmen of that time.

What can you expect from history when the vanquished were not allowed a voice?

He is scathing in his account of colonialism (as he should be), discovering this intriguing tale as he set out to investigate his own roots.

The story is as intriguing as the writing and the characters who take you on this wild ride.

And if you have been hooked, which is a high probability, you might as well close off this chapter with the illuminating Heart of Redness, from a writer who always has the African soul at heart.