A Dangerous Crossing by Jane Mitchell - #bookreview #blogtour

I sprint around the perimeter of Freedom Square in the centre of Kobani. I hardly recognise this place any more, it is such a wreck now...

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I am required to make it clear at the beginning of my reviews that I received this book for free from The Write Reads. I have not been paid for doing this and all opinions are my own. I am Bookshop.org affiliated, which means I earn a very small amount of money if you buy from there using my direct link. Although I include purchase links to Amazon, I am not affiliated with them. I include them to make it easy for you to navigate to them if you so wish.

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The Blurb

Ghalib doesn't want to leave his home in Syria. But the city has become too dangerous, and his family has no choice but to flee. Together they make their way through Syria to the Turkish border, where Ghalib gets separated from his family. Stricken with grief and fear, fighting cold, pain and hunger, he manages to make it to a refugee camp in Turkey. Ghalib is safe for now, but life in a refugee camp is wretched and hopeless, and this boy's journey in search of safety is far from over. Based on true accounts and real Syrian children, A Dangerous Crossing is the story of one boy's search for refuge.

My Review

This is probably one of the best books I have read this year. Quite the accolade when considering that I have currently read 83 books so far.

The main character in the book is thirteen-year-old Ghalib. He was a contented child, living with his parents, older sister and younger brother until the war began in Syria. From then, every day was a fight for survival.

The story has been beautifully told and the writer has demonstrated real skill in the telling. The entire book came alive on the pages. It is well-written, compelling and highly engaging. This is one of the few books where I could have cried simply because the book had ended. I wanted to scoop Ghalib up into my arms and to somehow make the world a better place for him. It isn't often that I become this invested in a book.

The book is aimed at a young adult readership. I would encourage every secondary school library to have a copy of this on their shelves. That said, it is highly suitable for adults too.

This was a deeply moving and heart-wrenching book and I would challenge anyone to read this and not be deeply moved. Each of the characters in the book is the name of a real Syrian child who was killed during the war. What a wonderful tribute to so many young lives so needlessly lost.

Book Details

ISBN: 978 1910411582

Publisher: Little Island

Formats: e-book and paperback

No. of Pages: 224 (paperback)

Purchase Links

Bookshop.org

Amazon UK

Amazon US

About the Author

Jane Mitchell lives in Dublin and works with children with physical disabilities. Her Amnesty International- endorsed novel A Dangerous Crossing (Little Island), about a Syrian family fleeing the war, has sold more than 100,000 copies worldwide. Jane spent time volunteering at the refugee camp in Calais to research the book. Chalkline (Walker), about child soldiers in Kashmir, won the Children's Choice Award at the 2010 CBI Awards.

You can also find Jane at:

Author Website

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(ARC and media courtesy of The Write Reads)

(all opinions are my own)

(Bookshop.org affiliated)

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga - #BookReview

 

Sir,

Neither you nor I can speak English, but there are some things that can be said only in English.

My ex-employer the late Mr Ashok's ex-wife, Pinky Madam, taught me one of these things; and at 11.32 p.m. today, which was about ten minutes ago, when the lady on All India Radio announced, 'Premier Jiaboa is coming to Bangalore next week', I said that thing at once.

In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country I say it. Not that I have anything against great men. In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind...

***

Balram Halwai is the White Tiger - the smartest boy in his village. His family is too poor for him to afford for him to finish school and he has to work in a teashop, breaking coals and wiping tables. But Balram gets his break when a rich man hires him as a chauffeur, and takes him to live in Delhi. The city is a revelation. As he drives his master to shopping malls and call centres, Balram becomes increasingly aware of immense wealth and opportunity all around him, while knowing that he will never be able to gain access to that world. As Balram broods over his situation, he realizes that there is only one way he can become part of this glamorous new India - by murdering his master.

***

I am not in the least surprised that this book won the Booker Prize in 2008 and was a nominee for several other awards. It is a remarkable debut novel and I am thrilled that the author has gone on to write several more books.

I was completely gripped by the story of Balram Halwai. He is like no other main character that I can bring to mind. The entire book is composed as him writing a letter to the President of China, prior to him making a visit to India. Through this letter the main character is able to convey, to the reader the whole socio-economic situation in India at the time the book is set.

The novel superbly illustrates the width of the divide between rich and poor. The author's observational eye and exact placement of words is outstanding. At one point he says:

"...the poor dream all their lives of getting enough to eat and looking like the rich. And what do the rich dream of? Losing weight and looking like the poor."

It is at times, both heartbreaking and humorous, shocking and powerful,  and I think it is a book that I  will never forget reading, such was the impact of this profoundly thought-proking book on me. 

I cannot recommend this highly enough and I would be surprised if it does not make it into my top ten books at the end of the year.

ISBN:978 1848878082

Publisher: Atlantic Books

Formats: e-book, audio, paperback and hardback

No. of Pages: 336 (paperback)

About the Author:

Aravind Adiga was born in 1974 in Madras (now called Chennai), and grew up in Mangalore in the south of India. He was educated at Columbia University in New York and Magdalen College, Oxford. His articles have appeared in publications such as the New Yorker, the Sunday Times, the Financial Times, and the Times of India. His first novel, The White Tiger, won the Man Booker Prize for fiction in 2008. Subsequent novels are: Last Man in Tower (2011), Selection Day (2016) and Amnesty (2020).

(author photo courtesy of Harper Collins India)

(bio. info. courtesy of the author's website - aravindadiga.com)

The Tunnel by A. B. Yehoshua - #BookReview - Translated by Stuart Schoffman

"The father ladles the thick red tomato sauce with floating yellow egg yolks into two deep, white dishes, and makes room on the table, next to the cheese, for the brain scan. And as the storm rages outside, and daylight grows dim, he turns on a reading lamp so the son can study the convolutions of his father's brain like the innards of a computer."

Zvi Luria has begun to lose his memory. At the beginning he only makes small mistakes, forgetting first names and taking home the wrong child from his grandson's kindergarten, but he knows that things will only get worse. He's 73 and a retired road engineer. His neurologist hints at the path his illness might take and suggests ways of combatting it, with the help of his wife, Dina.

Dina, a respected paediatrician, is keen for him to return to meaningful activity, and suggests he volunteers to work with his old colleagues at the Israel Roads Authority.

This is how Luria finds himself at the Ramon Crater in the Negev desert planning a secret road for the army with the son of his former colleague. But there's a mystery about a certain hill on the route of this road. Who are the people living there and why are they trapped? And should the hill be flattened and the family evicted, or should a tunnel beneath it be built?

With humour and great tenderness, A. B. Yehoshua depicts the love between Luria and his wife as they confront the challenges of his illness. Just when Luria's sense of identity becomes more compromised, then does he find himself on this extraordinary adventure involving people even more vulnerable than himself, enabling a rich meditation on the entwined identities of Israeli Jews and Palestinians and on the nature of memory itself.

Yehoshua weaves a masterful story about a long and loving marriage, interlaced with biting social commentary and caustic humour.

***

I enjoyed reading this book very much indeed. It's gentility was mesmerising and the writing and translation from Hebrew by Stuart Schoffman is superb. 

Perhaps wrongly, I would not ordinarily rush to read a book about an elderly man who is grappling with the onset of dementia. My presumption would be that it would be rather depressing as, in reality, it is something that many of us may have to face one day. How wrong that assumption would be as this is a novel that is sensitive, compassionate and full of love. It is often humorous and exquisitely moving.

The book begins with Luria, along with his wife, receiving his dementia diagnosis from the neurologist who advises this elderly retired man to return to work and to be passionate with his wife. Volunteering to assist in designing a road with the company that he used to work for brings the titular tunnel into focus. Not only does the book deal with the designing of a tunnel, which at no point becomes dull, but it is also a metaphor for what Luria feels is happening with his deteriorating brain as he realises that whole sections of his memory are disappearing.

As his condition deteriorates throughout the book we see him become increasingly disorientated. Witnessing his attempts to come to terms with what is happening to him was extremely poignant.

I loved the characters in this book. Luria could be anyone's grandfather. There were several times in this book that I would have happily hugged him.

It is intelligently written and thought provoking. It does not shy away from the Israeli and Palestinian conflict but considers it with awareness and sensitivity. 

An excellent novel that I highly recommend.

ISBN: 978 1912600038

Publisher: Halban

About the Author:

Born in Jerusalem in 1936, A. B. Yehoshua is the author of twelve novels, a collection of short stories and several plays and volumes of essays. He has won prizes worldwide and his work has been translated into twenty-eight languages and adapted for film and opera. An outspoken critic of both Israeli and Palestinian policies, he continues to speak about and search for solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.







About the Translator:

Stuart Schoffman, a journalist and screenwriter, moved to Jerusalem in 1988. His latest translations of Israeli fiction are To the Edge of Sorrow (Schocken) by Aharon Appelfeld and The Tunnel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) by A.B. Yehoshua.

(bio information courtesy of Jewish Review of Books)

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry - #BookReview

"The morning express bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as though to resume full speed. The trains brief deception jolted its riders. The bulge of humans hanging out of the doorway distended perilously, like a soap bubble at its limit."

Set in the mid 1970's in India, A Fine Balance tells the story of four unlikely people whose lives come together during a time of political turmoil soon after the government declares a 'State of Internal Emergency'. Through days of bleakness and hope, their circumstances - and their fates - have become inextricably linked in ways no one could have foreseen.

Written with compassion, humour and insight, A Fine Balance is a vivid, richly textured and powerful novel by one of the most gifted writers of our time.

The first thing I did when I finished this novel was to order everything else the author has written. This is an extraordinary novel written by a highly skilled author who has wholeheartedly won my admiration.

I was gripped from the very first page of this novel. The authors ability to create characters that are multilayered along with an atmosphere that made me feel as though I was living in India were quite remarkable. In fact, I think it is the sense of involvement that kept me hooked throughout the entire novel.

I felt as though I understood and knew these characters. Although the novel focuses around the four main characters whose backgrounds are all very different but whose lives become intertwined, the more minor characters are equally multi-layered. Indeed, Mistry's ability to breath life into his characters is superb and I am not sure I have ever come across another author who has done this with such excellence.

There is nothing superficial about this book.  It is packed full with depth and meaning and so beautifully written I could not get enough of it despite it running to over 600 pages in my edition. Indeed, for a few days after I finished reading I have felt a sense of loss and I could happily have kept reading this book for so much longer.

I cannot recommend this book highly enough and fully urge you to read it for yourself. Or perhaps, you have you read this book? Have you read any of Rohinton Mistry's other novels? I would love to hear your thoughts.

ISBN: 978 0571230587

Publisher: Faber & Faber

About the Author:

Rohinton Mistry is the author of a fine collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), and three novels that were all shortlisted for the Booker Prize: Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1996) and Family Matters (2002). His fiction has won, among other awards, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book (twice), The Los Angeles Times Award, The Giller Prize, The Governor-General's Award, and the Royal Society of Literature's Winifred Holtby Award. In translation, his work has been published in over twenty five languages.

Born in Bombay, Rohinton Mistry has lived in Canada since 1975.