Alone In Berlin

I  finished this book in 5 days and to be honest I'm exhausted! What a dark, dark book. What a testimony.. I was totally gripped and have been reading late into the night to get this finished. It's taken me on a roller coaster ride and to be honest I'm glad it's over because it kind of took me over.  I just needed to know what was going to happen ( I had already  guessed  that there would be no happy ending!)I will never forget the power this book held over me whilst I was under its spell.

 I can't believe I'd never heard of this book before I found it in a charity shop. Hans Fallada wrote it in 1946 in just 24 days and it is probably the first real testimony of what it must have been like to live under the Nazis. Fallada was one of only a few authors/artists who didn't leave Germany during the war.   Unfortunately he died before this book was published and for some strange reason it was only translated into English a few years ago.(Maybe because some publishers thought Fallada was complicit with the Nazis, as are so many of the normal, everyday characters in this book.)
 I found out more about Fallada later; his life was totally bonkers too...

Anyway ,the style of the book was pretty easy to read, almost like a newspaper report with added parts of black humour (pitch black humour). the translation is obviously modern and it's like a book written in the last 10 years. It also has an amazingly beautiful end section...which is incredibly positive even in such dire circumstances.

 I think it's the the most heartbreaking book I've ever read about fighting against injustice. The main character drops hand written postcards around the city denouncing Hitler and the Nazis.He innocently believes that if people read them there will be a people's uprising but instead 95% of the cards are instantly handed into the Gestapo and a massive man-hunt begins.

I loved the way he perfectly crafted his characters, the strength of some people against the cowardly behaviour of others. All kinds of low-life people appear in this book...and their weaknesses and strengths are so well described..(To be honest most of the characters are foul.)
 It does ramble off in places and could have been shorter but ultimately I enjoyed (if that's the right word) reading this book but I am looking forward to a far less harrowing read now!

In Defense of Food.

I didn't think I would have much to blog about this book, but hey, I'll give it a shot..I've decided to write about everything I read. This book was  interesting but really aimed at the American market because lots of the 'food' he wrote about I didn't recognise.  His message was how to save the obese nations and get us back to eating normal food. He ranted about health food and said that if a product claimed to be good for your health it was definitely best not to buy it. (This was a good message for me because I have always wondered whether I should be spooning mouthfuls of benecol margarine into me as it claims to reduce cholesterol)
He said that if you were eating food that a Grandmother or Great Grandmother of the world wouldn't recognise you were probably on the super highway to type 2 diabetes and a mobility scooter.
His mantra was EAT FOOD, NOT A LOT, MOSTLY PLANT BASED. He then broke down each part and gave a rather scathing history of the 'nutrition' and marketing behind most of the health food in the West today. I liked the part on how all the cultures which moved to the States all had their own food culture at the beginning but the power of the American nation made them slowly over time forget their food histories and eat a more processed and blander diet to literally bind the people into an identity of being American.
I really enjoyed the history of food production; how sweet food has become much sweeter over the last 40 years due to using cheaper corn syrup,  which unfortunately doesn't interact well with the body making us unaware of when we are full.  And how trans fat has turned from the newly created super fat of the 70s to the biggest killer now.
He talks about how vitamins can't work well in isolation...we still have no idea how the micro nutrients within a banana are extracted so efficiently by the human body. He is scathing about Mr. Kellogg blaming his weird approach to eating as a basis for the strange Western cereals on the market today. Kellogg's deeply religious beliefs meant he turned eating from a pleasure into nothing more than a way of getting fuel into the body...in fact this way of seeing food as nothing more than fuel is one of the biggest problems behind the western diet.
Then he traipses off round the world talking about the diets of other countries and how superior they are and  how the big black cloud of the Western Diet has encrouched and how societies  are trying to turn away from the influence of Western food companies.
All this scientific terminology and food history could have become boring but somehow Mr. Pollen pulled it off and the book remained fun and interesting.  Lots of it to me were just common sense but it was still a good read.
Here is Mr. Pollen's helpful list on how to eat yourself thin, healthy and maybe more beautiful:

• Don't eat anything which has more than 5 ingredients on the tin and make sure you can pronounce them.
• No high fructose corn syrup
• Avoid food with health claims
• Stay out of the middle of supermarkets...that's where most of the shit lives. keep to the walls!
• Shop at markets when you can.
• You are what your meat has eaten.
• eat more like the French, Italians, Japanese, Indians, Greeks, Turks, Lebanese...blah, blah, blah.
• Don't buy food where you buy petrol
• Pay more and eat less
• eat at a table
• try not to eat alone
• Cook

Simple really...

Catch 22

OK, here goes...this book is a total mystery to me because I have been trying to read it for years.  I start each new attempt (four so far) full of good intentions, thinking that this time I will manage it. I hope each time  that I will finally see the light about why this book has been called  One of the greatest novels of the century. But I never manage it and by a third through I'm infuriated, bored, depressed and totally lacking any empathy for any of the characters.  They can all die in the war for all I care.
On Amazon this book gets 4.5 stars out of 5 and thousands rave about it.  I JUST DONT GET IT!! It's a conspiracy!
 It's badly written, confusing and lacking any narrative. It jumps around like crazy and new characters just appear every few lines. Yes, parts of it are funny but mostly it's just a deeply depressing rant. OK, Heller is good at playing with words and that's amusing and clever for a while but his 'humour' never seems to move on from this and it all becomes a bit embarrassing; like he's showing off in front of his Mum.
A friend of mine says I should stick with it and that I will be rewarded for my patience as it starts to make more sense half way through. But I can't be bothered now. I have lost the will to live with this book and even reading one page is a chore.  I just jump from the first line to the last on each page! I want a book to be good all the way through...is that too much to ask? I really don't want to be rewarded for having waded through crap for a week! (A week, yes, I have been stuck with this damn book for over a week!)
My response  does upset me because I really want to like it but I find it weak and dated. The reason this book is such a classic is just because it spawned a saying and was a catalyst  for  great series like M.A.S.H but apart from that it just infuriates me.
The last laugh is on Heller though...because with me he has created a perfect personal Catch 22. If so many people like it, I must be missing something so I have to read it again, but I think it's shit...what's going on?!!!  I'm sure I will have to return to  this irritating book one more time before I die!

The Hunger Games

I read this in about 3 days and enjoyed it a lot. It was like a drug and real life was put on hold whilst I tore through this novel.  It was exciting, entertaining, disturbing and frivolous all at the same time. It's written for teenagers and did bring out the latent teen gene within me!

 The idea behind the story is fantastic.  It's set in a post-apocalyptic world where America has been split into 12 districts. these districts then send two of their teenage kids off to fight to the death in a reality TV outward bound adventure world gone mental.

The premise of this is so brilliantly obscene but 'Lord of the Flies' it is not! Characterisation is minimal. It's action all the way...my problem was that I felt like a member of the despised rich district; a person who was addicted to watching/reading about what the hell was going on. So when a kid died I didn't feel particularly upset because I was just completely driven onwards by the action.

It was a totally addictive book and I loved the way it subtly mocked the American Army and the horrors of reality TV.  But I finished it over a week ago and to be honest I can't remember any of the characters anymore.

I loved it when I read it, but it was a bit like eating a massive meal, enjoyable but you feel a bit bloated afterwards.  I think that's because it's target audience was 14 and I'm 40!

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

I finished this book last weekend and only now do I have the energy to write anything about it.  I didn't like it at all. The first third of the book was OK, but then it just went  rapidly downhill from there.   I just feel indifferent about it and the way it is marketed as a 'typically British, humourous book'  is just insulting. Parts of it were so cringeworthy I just don't know how it was ever allowed to be printed.

Finishing it was a chore, as I think it must have been for the writer Paul Torbay. Although it was supposed to be a satire I just found it grey, boring and slightly irritating. God only knows what they must have done to this book to make it worth turning into a movie. All I know is I sure am NOT going to watch it!  I can't even get too emotional and 'rantish' in true Jane fashion about why I didn't like it. It was just dull...dull...dull.  Yawn.
(Sorry Catherine Weller if you read this, hope you enjoy/are enjoying it FAR more than me!)

The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver

Over the last month this book has always been within grabbing distance  It's become my friend and I've slowly savoured it all.  Now it's finished and I feel sad.  Last night I was re-reading parts again. It's such a beautiful book.  It all finally made perfect sense once I had completed it and as you can guess, I loved it.
I've been a fan of Kingsolver for years and I think she is my favourite living, American author. Her prose, descriptions, attention to detail, characterisation and knowledge is astounding and I'm in awe at how much research she must have done to write this book. It must have been so difficult to create fictional characters who so easily fit into real events. Infact it's hard for me to realise that most of the charaters in this book are not real. The Poisonwood Bible is one of my favourite books but this one surpasses it, I think, partly because it's less preachy.
Initially the style was a bit hard to get into because it is a collection of diary entries, newspaper clippings and magazine articles all lovingly put together by the formidable Violet Brown.  It's a collection of the writings of Harrison Shepherd. Harrison's first diary entries are about his childhood in the 20s with his flapper/floozy Mexican Mother who flits from one rich horrible boyfriend to another. Harrison is everything his Mother isn't; quiet, an observer and most of all a writer...he can't be without his little cheap notebooks in which he writes everything.The first half of the book is all set in the 20s and 30s mostly in Coyoacan in Mexico City.  This first section is a bit hard going and slow but as soon as Harrison ends up being a cement mixer boy and then a chef  for the food loving, mental, city wall muralist, Diego Riviera things start to move along at a better pace! Shepherd moves into his crazy house and becomes friends with Diego's wife, Frida Kahlo. I love how Frida and Diego come across in Harrison's diaries;  Idealistic communists mixed with  vibrant, colourful and deeply traditional Mexican personalities.  They are both demanding and selfish artists who also have a strong belief in a more bohemian yet equal lifestyle for all. Kahlo is absolutely brilliant.

I won't bore you with 20th century history but somehow Lev Trotsky, an exiled leader of the Communist revolution in the USSR ends up in hiding  in Mexico living with Frida and Diego in their big Blue House. Lev can't speak Spanish so Harrison ends up translating for them so he becomes a witness to their funny, passionate and interesting conversations.

OK, the history was all new to me and could have been boring but Kingsolver cleverly mixes fact with fiction and creates a fantastic personality  in Lev Trotsky. The massive historical details are just pared down to a human level. Trotsky is funny, intelligent and compassionate. He loves Mexican food, has an affair with Frida  and adores his chickens.     From Harrison's perspective life is full of adventures, colours and interesting people who he loves deeply. he admires Tolstoy immensly and he becomes a Father figure he never had. Then suddenly Tolstoy is assassinated by a pickaxe to the head  (obviously some undercover Russian agent pounded it into his head). The house is completely gutted by the police and Harrison runs away to the United States...
The second half of the book is mostly spent in the USA and the tone and colour is suddenly drained and subdued. Life in 30s depression American is in stark contrast to the vibrancy of mad Mexico. the poverty is clearly described.  War veterans from the First World War have created The Bonus Army and Shepherd (Well, really Kingsolver!) writes an incredibly emotive diary entry about these  families living in camps on Capitol Hill and getting caught up in the tear gas used to dispel them. This scene is clearly stamped on my memory now.
  Shepherd still loves cooking and through the depression years his housemates are in awe of how he can cook so well with such meagre funds.  When the Second World War starts Shepherd gets 'A Blue Slip'.  due to 'his indifference to the female of the species.' Harrison's homosexuality is referred  to a bit but isn't a defining part of the novel at all.  Infact during the trails later it's amazing that lots of lies are created about him but this one truth is ironically not used against him at all.
Shepherd starts writing books about Mexican History and after the War they become massive best-sellers. He becomes rich and successful but he just wants to be left in peace to write.  He moves in with the wonderful, discreet Violet Brown his typist.  She is one of my favourite characters and through her we see how crazy life in the USA has become. I love how direct, honest and practical she is and her dedication and love for her friend, Shepherd.
.During the post-war years it becomes a policy that American have to have a fear, the government cultivates an inward society that holds all other systems and ways of living as a threat to the American dream and their hard fought freedoms.  First it's the fascists and then it's the Reds. Slowly America turns against Shepherd. The words used by the characters in his novels are used against him personally. His relationship with Riviera , Kahlo and Trotsky turns him into a Red. He is slandered, abused, interrogated and accused of un-American behaviour. The media makes up all kinds of rubbish about him.... his books stop selling and he is worried about being sent to prison.  This is the time of the Communist witch hunts, the McCarthy trials and everyone becomes paranoid that there is a Red in their midsts and Shepherd's interrogation near the end of the book is heart breaking.
 Even people who were fighting for black rights, people who were pro-public health programmes  along with political foes, actors and modern artists were often accused of having pro- communist tendencies and either they left the country or were publicly vilified and dispatched to boring, paper shuffling jobs. Anything which was different or other was deemed un-American.
Through all this gloom the ending is surprisingly wonderful and uplifting and finally everything becomes clear about why Violet has written this book out of love for her great friend Harrison. As soon as I finished I had to start reading again because some of the imagery at the start of the book had become clearer too.

OK, this book sounds like a really worthy, intellectual read and in a way I suppose it is because I've learnt a lot. But it's more than that, the style is beautiful and the lives of the people are so well created you can almost smell the food in Mexico and the poverty in 30s America and I'm really going to miss Lev, Violet and Frida!

 This is Kingsolver's masterpiece and I think it's a labour of love for the unrecorded little events which happen in even the most important of historical times. Also she knows that as a writer, what happened to Harrison could happen to her or any author or artist.When you write or paint you open your soul and put your life and integrity in the hands of a politically fed media circus.
 I now understand a bit more about the fear Americans have for any kind of universal welfare state being implemented in the US,  because for them  it has  dubious, socialist under tones which are totally un-American.
The parallels with life today are scary for us all. History just keeps on repeating itself. Change the word communist to terrorist and the fear still successfully continues.

Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

I've gone back to 1953 and travelled from a Syrian Nunnery in Kerala Southern India to Madras and then on a typhoid ridden boat to Aden in Yemen. The lovely Indian Nun/nurse now has to decide if she is going to travel on to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia with the rather emaciated English doctor.       (GO WITH HIM!!!!)  So much has happened in just 25 pages...I think I'm going to get totally absorbed by the remaining 500 pages of high adventure!

25th March .   

This morning I finally finished.  I couldn't get up until I knew how this book ended. It was all pretty emotional really and this is definitely my book of 2012 (so far!) This book took me longer to read that normal but to be honest I quite enjoyed taking my time because the characters, places and history could just stay with me for longer. I really felt as if i were in Addis Ababa living the tumultous times of the 50s,60s and 70s.  As I really want to visit Ethiopia  it was a great introduction to what life was like in this country under Haile Sallesie and then the Stalinist dictator, Melinik.

But really this book was about people.  The lives of the twin brothers born to the Indian Nun (She tragically dies when they are born) and the distraught Dr. Stone just runs away from his children in shame and grief.  So the twins are bought up by another Indian couple who are absolutely superb characters...Verghese sure knows how to create wonderful, well rounded people.  I really believed that the people at Missing Hospital in Addis Ababa were real and that I was priviliged to witness the highs and lows of their lives.

Sometimes the details of surgical procedures were a bit too clinical and over long but apart from that this book was excellent and even more so because it was so different. The journey to Aden from Madras was thrilling, the live in Aden was tense, the family lifestyle created within the hospital was amazing , especially so with all the political strife and madness surrounding the country at this time.  The adoptive parents were inspirational and the life in a poor Harlem hospital was also incredibly well described.  You realised that life for a poor sick immigrant in New York was just as bad ( if not worse )  than Ethiopia.  Let alone being accepted within the expensive 'White' run hospitals of the rich if you were a foreign doctor.

This book was so beautiful to read but at  times you could not believe the horrors of people lives. Verghese is clever though, because he doesn't wallow and write  a lot about people's problems he leaves it up to the reader to imagine what things must have been like and I found this style of writing to be extremely powerful. Like in reality, lots of things are just left unsaid.

 A rift is drawn between the twin boys but you never feel that one character is bad and the other good.   We all do good and bad things and it's how we choose to deal with this fact which makes the difference.

Ultimately it was a book about living for the moment, forgiving the people who have harmed you, realising  what true love means (or doesn't mean) and accepting people for who they are.  I'm sad to have finished it and I won't write anything more about the plot because I want anyone who has read this review to get the book and read it too.

Thank you Helen and Rhiannon for posting this to me...you knew I'd love it!