"Solange" by Alexandre Dumas (1842)

I read The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (1802 to 1870) when I was at ten or so years.    I remember thinking this must be the greatest book ever written.  Maybe my judgment was a bit premature but based on the number of movies made of the story, the plot must have universal appeal. I soon went on to The Three Musketeers.  Dumas was a very productive writer.  If he were living now he would probably be fabulously wealthy with all his books pre-sold to Hollywood for millions.  I know he is not considered the literary equal of Balzac, Zola, Hugo or de Maupassant but his work brings pleasure still to millions.   I know there are still ten year old boys out there amazed by The Count of Monte Cristo.

"Solange" is set in Paris during the time of terror right after the French Revolution.   In its twenty or so pages it contains most of the elements that made his big novels so popular.  We have a beautiful young aristocratic woman pretending to be a laundry woman who desperately wants to save her father from the guillotine.   The story is told in the first person by a citizen of good standing who helps the woman when she is stopped in the street and had no pass.  The man vouches for Solange.  He can tell from her demeanor and other clues that she is an aristocrat.  She soon reveals she is trying to get her father to England to save him from execution.  A melodramatic plot develops.  They fall in love.  Then in a twist of plot that would have most contemporary M A programs saying, "oh come on" we find the man is making a scientific study of the bodies of those guillotined, he gathers the bodies from the pit in which they are thrown and takes them back to an abandoned church and lays them out for study on the alter.  One morning two laughing executioners bring him a body sack.   The sack is still moving.  It contains the head of Solange. Her removed from her body head speaks to him.  Her final words were either very emotional if you can keep in sympathy with the story or they might make you think here an author really reaching to wring as much pathos out of a story as he can.  

If you Google search it you can find this story online.  I enjoyed reading it and reminiscing about first reading Dumas.   

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Andre Gide, Honore Balzac ,Zola and now Dumas. I plan to next post on a short story by Anatole France.

Mel u

"The Boot Polishing Virgin" by Emile Zola (from Parisian Sketches, 1880)

Emile Zola is among the greats of European literature.   My favorite, of the four of his many novels I have read, is Nana.     There are twenty novels in his monumental saga of French life, The Rougen Macquart Cycle.  I think a reading of these novels in publication order would be a great reading experience.  I could not let Paris in July come to an end without posting on a story by Zola.  (You can buy for $2.99 an  e book  English edition of the complete works of Zola). 

"The Boot Licking Virgin", taken from a set of four set in Paris short stories, Parisian Sketches, is pretty much a near for its time r rated account of an man raving on to himself about how one of his young female  household staff looks  when she is sleeping.  His first focus of attention is on her "large alabaster bust" which he can glimpse a bit.   The desired female body type, we see this in other writers of 19th century France, was heavier than today and she is described as "plump".  At the end of the story a conversation between the man and the young woman makes me wonder if she is still a virgin.  One of her duties was to polish the boots of the household.   The ending is interesting.  There are no innocents in Zola's Paris.  

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I enjoyed this story for the same reasons its first readers probably did.  Zola has much better work than this O. Henryist story, but it was fun to read.  I think the next Zola novel I read will be The Ladies Paradise, set in  a Paris department store. 

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Andre Gide, Honore Balzac and today Zola.  I plan to next post on a short story by Anatole France.

Mel u

Best American Short Stories 2012 edited by Tom Terrotta

I started reading this collection of short stories almost a year ago.  The 2013 volume will be out soon so I decided to finish the collection.  I over all was a bit disappointed in the collection.  Of the twenty writers whose work is included, I would only desire to read more of five of them.  

Here are my favorite stories, in order of preference.  

1.  "The Sex Life of African Girls" by Taiye Solasi.  This is the author's first published work of fiction. Her debut novel Ghana Must Go is drawing rave reviews and I hope to read it soon.  For me this story was clearly the standout.  

2.  "The Tenth of December" by George Saunders.  I was glad to be able to read by first Saunders, one of America's highest regarded contemporary short stories.  I hope to read more of his work in the fixture.

3.  "Axis" by Alice Munro.  Typical set in rural Canada Munro story about the lives of women. 

4.  "Beautiful Monsters" by Eric Puchner.  A very well done dystopic story about a world where people stay forever ten.  For sure derivative from works like Brave New World but still a fun read.

5.  "What We Talk About When We Talk About Ann Frank" by Nathan Englander.  Englander won the 2012 Frank O'Connor prize so I was glad to have the opportunity to read the lead story in the winning collection.  I found it an OK story but I would not buy the full collection based on this story.

I am glad to have completed this collection but it is not on a par with new anthologies of Irish, English and European  Short Stories.    It is only a book for those very into the short story.  I will buy the 2013 edition out in September but I hope it is better than the 2012 offering.  

Mel u

Q and A with the author of This is the Way by Gavin Corbett - Winner of the Irish Novel of the Year Prize 2013

Irish Novel of the Year 2013

This Is The Way by Gavin Corbett won the Irish Novel of the Year Prize at this year's Listowel Writers' Week.   The 15,000 Euro prize is the largest one available to only Irish authors.   I have been very interested in Irish Travellers since I first became aware of their

culture through reading the short stories of Desmond Hogan so when I read the glowing review by Kevin Barry on this book in The Guardian and learned it was told from the point of view of a young Traveller man hiding in the poor areas of Dublin from members of a rival clan, I knew I wanted to read it soon.  

Previous winners of the award include  John McGahern, Anne Enright, William Trevor and John Banville

I first became aware of the Irish Traveller culture through the short stories of Desmond Hogan.  How do you think Irish Travellers originated.?  Was it when Cromwell invaded, are they descended from tribal  groups that did not convert to Christianity as some claim, or is their origin more recent.?  What drew you to focus on Travellers in Dublin rather than in Caravans?

I am not an ethnologist, a folklorist or a professional historian, so I have no idea whence the Irish  Travellers came. The Travellers have their own theories, none of which are backed by scientific or historical proof. The fact is, nobody – not ethnologists, not folklorists, not historians, not Travellers themselves – is sure where the Travellers came from, and I’m not sure if it’s possible to find out. I have heard all of those pieces of speculation that you mention, and probably until the end of time they will remain speculation. What drew me to write about Travellers in Dublin was not any particular need to represent a whole section of Irish society in fiction; I simply wanted my character Anthony to come from this interstitial, in-between world – not belonging to the city, and feeling outside his own traditionally  nomadic culture too.

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Tell us a bit about your non-literary work experience please.  What drew you to leave Ireland for New York City?

I worked in an Irish newspaper called the Sunday Tribune for a good many years. I was a sub-editor: I put mistakes into other people’s articles, and wrote headlines. It was a great newspaper to work for: left-leaning, campaigning. When that went out of business in January 2011, I left Ireland for a while, to live in New York. I struggled to find work there, but then I got a pretty good book deal, so I could breathe easier. But I’m back, for the time being, in Ireland now.

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How did you research the dialect and vocabulary of Anthony and Arthur?  Is there a distinct Traveller version of Hiberno-English, can the dialect be traced back to older periods?

I didn’t do any research into the dialect and vocabulary of my characters. I made all of that up. I trusted my own ear, and my knowledge of how Travellers spoke. I just had this sound in my head, and wrote Anthony and Arthur’s words with that humming away. There certainly is a distinct Traveller version of Hiberno-English. It’s called cant, or shelta. Like every other language in the world it does, of course, have old, deep roots. I didn’t try to learn it, or even consult a shelta lexical guide in my writing of This Is the Way. I just went with the sound, and tried my best to convey that sound, and to get across the gear changes in Anthony and Arthur’s speech.  

   Your novel, This Is the Way has been named the Irish Novel of the year. Congratulations!   How has this great honor begun to impact your career?   

Well, the prize money has been a huge help. It’s bought me a few extra months in which to write my next novel. And for my name to go on that roll of honour, alongside the likes of John McGahern, Anne Enright, William Trevor and John Banville, is like, “fuck”. But it’s early days yet. The Irish state broadcaster RTE was very good in giving the prize-win a bit of attention, but the newspapers have shown very little interest. They’ve been terrible, really. The book shops too: shocking. They just don’t give a damn. You can hardly find my book in a Dublin book shop.

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Who are some of the writers whose work you are drawn?

Russell Hoban, Hubert Selby Jr, William Faulkner, JP Donleavy, James Kelman, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett and lots of other people I’m forgetting.   

What the last three novels you have read?  Last movies?  Do you have favorite TV shows?

The last novels I read were ‘Dublinesque’ by Enrique Vila-Matas, ‘From The Mouth of the Whale’ by Sjón and ‘There But For The’ by Ali Smith. Movies? Blimey, I’ve stopped watching movies. I don’t know why; I love cinema. The last film I went to see was probably Woody Allen’s ‘To Rome With Love’. Oh no, I saw a terrible film a few months ago called ‘A Late Quartet’ with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Christopher Walken in it. And I re-watched Mike Leigh’s ‘High Hopes’ on DVD the other week ahead of a trip to London. TV shows? I’m addicted to an afternoon game show on the BBC called ‘Pointless’. I watch a lot of documentaries and sport too. I have no patience for these epic drama series that take up 160 hours of your life.

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I recently read Strumpet City by James Plunkett (the 2013 Dublin One City One Book Selection). It presents a culture whose very life blood seems to be whiskey. Drinking seems much more a factor in Irish literature than Indian, Japanese or even American. There are rude sayings like “God Created Whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world” and “Without Guinness the birth rate in Ireland would be near zero”. What do you think are some of the causes of this or is it just a myth?. It seems to me from my reading of Irish short stories that few important conversations or events happen without drinking. Is anything like this a factor in your work?

This is a huge area worthy of several PhDs, but to answer your question in as simple a way as possible: the pub is the focal point of social life in Ireland. The smallest village will have at least one pub in it. Sometimes the pub is the village; look at a map of the east of Ireland and you’ll find “settlements” called “Jack White’s” and “The Golden Ball”. An average-sized town of 3,000 people will have about 15 pubs in it. Why is the pub so important in Irish life?The average Irish person’s front parlour is not big enough to accommodate all his friends where they might comfortably observe the latest Japanese Noh drama. Nor do we have the weather here that allows us sit in the evening sun for hours playing chess and boules and sipping cafés au lait. We’re a cold, wet country. We like to huddle. We like to talk shite. Huddling is uncomfortable without a glass of liquid under one’s nose to stare into at silent moments, and shite-talking comes easier with alcohol in the system. We have a dearth of sporting facilities in this country too. A lot of Irish men feel the need to prove that they are not homosexuals by showing that they can drink huge amounts of alcohol in a single sitting. If there were tennis courts or climbing walls in every Irish town, perhaps the young males would not so much feel the need to prove that they have the stamina to deal with high levels of toxicity. I guess, also, we have problems with depression in this country. There are many reasons for this – genetics, lack of opportunities, being an island nation, being a Westernnation, being a northern nation, constantly feeling that you’re being judged by eerie blue-eyed versions of Jesus and Mary.

R. F. Foster has said that Irish History has been turned into a theme park to draw in tourists-do you agree with this-where do Travellers fit in this theme park?  I have seen travellers stopped by the road waiting for tourists to photograph them for a few Euros.

True, probably, but isn’t that the case with the way history is assembled and presented anywhere? History is tendentious. That’s the nature of history. History, as opposed to the past, is just a story. The past is immutable, but unknowable; none of us are immortal and omnipresent. What we must make do with is “history”, which is basically a flawed, corruptible system of notation.

​Now, I’m not R.F. Foster, nor do I holiday in Ireland, so I’m not familiar with the contents of our many interpretive centres and museums. But I do keep my eyes open for how Ireland, and Ireland’s past, is represented when I go abroad. Our writers figure a lot. As do politically neutral protagonists like saints and hermitic monks. Little else does, as far as I can see. Official Ireland, Diplomatic Ireland, tends to play things safe. History ignores the people by the wayside – both metaphorical and literal – anyway

Declan Kiberd has said the dominant theme of modern Irish literature is that of the weak or missing father?   Do you think he is right?   how doe this show up in your work?  

I’ve no idea if he’s right. I’m not well-read enough. But thinking off the top of my head – and when you think off the top of your head about modern Irish literature the first thing that comes to mind is Joyce – I know, so I’ve been told, that one of the main themes of Ulysses isthe absence of a father; all that shadowing of Telemachus and Hamlet. I didn’t try to work the theme into my own novel. When you try to write your way into future students’ theses your book is dead in the water. But lo and behold – there is a weak and absent father in This Is the Way! I don’t care to psychoanalyse myself to discover why. (Although, lest there seem to be any ambiguity, can I just state that my own father was a good man, always there for me.)

   What is your reaction to these lines from Susan Cahill about the beauty of Ireland-”There is a hopelessness that a glut of natural beauty can create when there is a cultural and intellectual morass”.  Is the beauty of Ireland is two edged comes from nowhere and changes everything be over because of this?  

  All I have read about Ireland and all the images I have seen on the net present a country of amazing beauty.  How much does this saturation in natural beauty impact the writing of the country   Does it inspire and defeat at the same time?  

I’m very much a Dublin writer. The countryside makes little impact on me as a novelist. I’minspired by the danger and dullness of the city streets. That’s not to say that I’m not familiar with the Irish countryside. I think it’s a unique landscape. It’s a gentle rather than dramatic landscape, characterised by rolling hills and flat, wet tracts, and it’s truly very luridly green, except where it’s very, very brown. England has a gentle landscape too, but everything there seems mowed and pruned. Scotland is like Ireland, but with more and bigger mountains. Our countryside is neither genteel nor sublime. It has its great charms, but it’s sort of docile. Definitely defeated. There’s a sense almost everywhere that things have been left to go to seed. Fields full of puddles, and tufts of weeds. Read into that what you will.

William Butler Yeats said in "The Literary Movement"-- "“The popular

poetry of England celebrates her victories, but the popular poetry of Ireland remembers only defeats and defeated persons”. I see a similarity of this to the heroes of the Philippines. American heroes were all victors, they won wars and achieved independence. The national heroes of the Philippines were almost all ultimately failures, most executed by the Spanish or American rulers. How do you think the fact Yeats is alluding too, assuming you agree, has shaped Irish literature.   It is interesting to me that the American short story writers most admired by Irish writers, like Flannery O’Connor, Eudora Welty and Katherine Anne Porter all came from the American south, the only part of American to be crushed in a war.   Does defeat bring wisdom more than victory?

Well, Ireland was once a part of the United Kingdom, and played a role in the creation of the British Empire, but when we gained independence, the downtrodden took the reins and the ruling classes were told they weren’t wanted anymore. If I were Wellington or Kitchener or Shackleton I’d be full of jingo too. But I guess I’m from the other side (although, as in the case of many Irish people, it’s complicated) and so my national heroes are martyrs andwriters. What am I to do? Who else have I got? I might as well glorify defeat, and deify the tragic, and welcome back into the fold all those banished writers, otherwise I’d be embarrassed.

 "To creative artists may have fallen the task of explaining what no historian has fully illuminated – the reason why the English came to regard the Irish as inferior and barbarous, on the one hand, and, on the other, poetic and magical."-is this right? Kiberd, Declan (2009-05-04). Inventing Ireland (p. 646).   It is interesting to me in that not to long ago many white Americans viewed African Americans as very skilled at music and dancing but otherwise inferior and barbaric.  Do the Irish project bad characters onto Travellers?

There’s no doubt that the ‘settled’ Irish do project bad characteristics on to Travellers. The ‘settled’ Irish view Travellers today similarly to how the Anglo-Normans viewed the Irish as a whole in the 12th century. I have a quote at the start of my book from Giraldus Cambrensis, a scribe attached to the earliest Norman colonial expeditions to Ireland, that hints at how the Irish were thought of at the time: they are described as “being exceedingly averse to civil institutions”. That’s only the start of it as far as Giraldus and his kind were concerned; if you read the Topographia Hibernica, from which the quote was taken, you’ll find the Irish described in the vilest, most bestial terms. You’ll hear the same terminology used today by ‘settled’ Irish people towards the Travellers. It’s what groups of people do to elevate themselves. They invent an antipode; create this notion of the ‘other’ in society to be setagainst. At various times in our history the Travellers have been embraced by certain groups as having something of great value to contribute, as being possessors of magic and poetry andmusic and Gaelic authenticity, most notably by that artistic circle that revolved around Yeats and Synge and Augusta Gregory. But I can’t imagine that any of those people would have invited Travellers into their salons to eat off their plates.

In his book The Commitments Roddy Doyle has the father of the family say, as if it were something commonly seen as true, “The Irish are the niggers of Europe and Dubliners are the niggers of Ireland”.  There is a lot of self loathing expressed in Irish literary works from Joyce on down to Doyle.  Is this just a family fight where one might say something terrible about a father, mother or brother or wife and kill an outsider who says the same thing or is it really how people feel?  I do not see this level of self hate in other literatures.   There is nothing like it, for example, in the literature of the Philippines.  Talk a bit about how you feel or think about this.  Do you sense a  feeling of inferiority in Irish society not found in other cultures?

A certain modest-mousery prevails among the Irish. I see it in Dublin, anyway. This is summed up for me in our attitude to new buildings. Every so often, a plan for an exciting large building will get approved by the planning authorities. Immediately the building will be scaled back to half its size, thus losing one of the elements – its scale – that made it impressive in the first place. We just don’t feel we’re big enough or good enough to live among large, adventurous buildings. Instead we fill out Dublin with diffident pastiche garbage that makes us feel we’re reconciled with our past.

​I’ve just come back from a long walk through that same modest, meek city of Dublin.I’ve seen more drug addicts stumbling around like zombies today than on all the visits I’ve made to other European cities in the last 10 years combined. I’ve seen about five people shamelessly throw litter on the streets. I’ve had to skip over puddle after puddle of vomit. I passed an endless gallery of bruised and scabbed faces. This is just a normal day in Dublin.There is something terribly broken about this place. Nobody gives a shit about these people, and these people don’t give a shit about themselves.

Please make up a question and then answer it.

Q: If you were sitting in some sort of recliner-type chair and there was a bee at your face and a cat at your feet, and if you stayed as you were the bee would sting your face and if you got up from the seat the cat would bite your ankle, what would you do?

A: I’d get stung by the bee.

  When you do readings of your work, what do you hope to bring to the audience.

Properly articulated Ts.

   When you are out of Ireland, do people sometimes expect you to act in certain ways because you are Irish?

One day, in one of my first weeks residing in New York, I went for a walk down Central Park West, and I saw coming towards me a bunch of girls – they looked like a team of cheerleaders – carrying a sign that read “Free Hugs”. The nearer I got to them, the bigger the smile I wore on my face. When I got right up close to them I let out this big, hammy, Irish, “Ah sure, you might as well!” One of the girls shrieked, “Oh my god! He’s got a Briddish accent!” Next thing I knew I was swamped by pretty young girls that smelt of apricots and strawberries. From that moment I decided: to hell with playing the green card, I’m going to let people over here think I’m British. And that’s what most people did think; they just assumed by my accent that I came from a region of northern England or something. Which was fine, because I was to discover that American people absolutely and utterly idolise the British.

 Quick Pick Questions

a.  tablets or laptops?

Laptops for eating, tablets for when I have indigestion.

b. dogs or cats

Dogs. I love dogs so much. I still have conversations with the dead dogs of my youth.

c.  best way for you personally to relax when stressed?

Go on a long walk with a camera.

d.  favorite meal to eat out-breakfast, lunch or dinner?

Breakfast. At either the Popover Cafe, Amsterdam Avenue, New York, USA, or the Three Star Coffee Shop, Columbus Avenue, New York, USA.

e. RTE or BBC or American PBS

I’m sorry, RTE – but the BBC has the best range of TV channels and radio stations in the world.

f. Yeats or Whitman

I don’t know Whitman at all, so I’m not in a position to answer this.

g.  Starbucks, McDonalds, KFC-great for a quick break or American corruption?

Eh… both. I have my political convictions, but hunger breaks them down.

h. night or day

I like both of them, equally. Day is great for getting shit done, night is ideal for relaxing.

i  Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights?

Wuthering Heights. If you read Wuthering Heights at an impressionably young age you’ll never get over it. Kate Bush discovered that too.

j-best way to experience a new poem-hear the author read it or read it in a quiet

undisturbed place?

Definitely the latter. Poets and prose writers are often terrible at reading their own work. Have you ever heard Yeats? Ugh.

k.   favorite music, country, rock, traditional Irish, ballads, opera or it just depends on the mood your are in

My favourite band is Crass. They fit into none of those categories.

GAVIN CORBETT

Gavin Corbett was born in the west of Ireland and grew up in Dublin, where he studied History at Trinity College.   He lived in New York and is now back in Ireland.

I offer my thanks for Gavin Corbett for taking the time to provide us with such interesting responses to my questions.  I hope to read more of his work in the future.

My Post on This is the Way

Mel u

"A Passion in the Desert" by Honore Balzac (1839)

Henry James, Proust, and James Joyce considered Honore Balzac (1799 to 1850) the greatest novelist of all time.  He certainly was among the most productive with upwards of 100 novels to his credit.  Every time I read a work by him, I tell myself I must read more Balzac then a year plus goes by before I read another one.  If I were younger I would set myself as a long term reading project his La Comedie Humaine, a collection of 41 or so novels in which he tried to capture all of human experience.

It is easy to see  "The Passion of the Desert" as the perfect mini-Balzac.  It is set in Paris but through the memories of a French Army veteran we travel over much of the empire and Europe.  Vast aspects of history can be found in this story.  The soldier begins to tell a passerby a story of his time fighting in an African desert.   He finds himself cut off from his unit, with little food.  He falls asleep by a small oasis.   He awakes to see bright yellow eyes peering at him through the darkness.  He soon discovers it is a panther and of course he is terribly frightened.  The story is really entertaining as a friendship, really a passion develops between the soldier and the big cat.  Balzac does a wonderful job of letting us see the cat in the panther.  I really enjoyed seeing their unlikely bond develop and we have to accept that the man can never really let his guard down.  The soldier also talks about his European experiences.

If you look you can probably find this story online.  In the edition I read, in Great Masters of the Short Story, there is no translator credit.

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Andre Gide, Honore Balzac and coming soon Emile Zola.  

Mel u

 

  

 

"The Purloined Letter" by Edgar Alan Poe (1844)

Edgar Allan Poe (1809 to 1849, Boston, USA) has as good a claim to be the grandfather of the modern  short story as anyone.   He never set foot in France but his stories helped shaped and initiate the modern French short story, just like they did the Japanese and Filipino short story.  He wrote lots of short stories.  "The Purloined Letter", along with "The Murder in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Roget" are set in Paris and helped created the modern detective story.  The all focus on the adventures of a fictional French detective, C. Augusta Dupin, who Arthur Conan Doyle acknowledges as an inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, who used deductive reason and acute observation to solve crimes.  The Paris of Poe is not that of Zola, Balzac, or Proust.   It is the product of an incredibly rich imagination, a city of intrigue, decadence, elegance, wealth and corruption with sensual pleasures not to found in his Boston.   

"The Purloined Letter" is one of Poe's longest stories.  (I am slowly working my way through them.). As the story opens a police inspector friend of Dupin comes to visit him.   He has a case he cannot solve, one that has the potential to bring him a huge reward.   A letter in which a grand lady  compromises her integrity has been stolen.  The inspector thinks he knows who purloined it but inspite of exhaustive searches of his house and person he cannot find it.  He offers Dupin his share of the reward if he can find it as his superiors are putting a lot of pressure on him to find if.   Of course he does.   How he does it is terribly clever.  

The very real fun of this story is in hyper elegant prose of Poe and the imaginary Paris he created.  

All the French master writers read, some devoured, Poe.   

If you Google it, you can find this story online.

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.

I having a very good time reading set in Paris short stories.  I hope shortly to read stories by Balzac and Zola.

Mel u

Mother and the Tiger: A Memoir of the Killing Fields by Dana Hui Lim

Mother and the Tiger:  A Memoir of the Killing Fields by Dana Hui Lim is a very important book with much to teach us within its spellbinding beautifully crafted pages, deeply felt, very personal account of one of the darkest episodes in post W W I I history.   Before I try to talk a bit about why I admire this book so much, I want to set out briefly the historical background as sadly many or perhaps most  do not know it.  

In 1975, Cambodia was taken over by a group called the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pat.  He had a vision of turning Cambodia into a purely agrian society, starting over at "year zero".  He ordered all residents of cities to vacate.   Under armed guard, often by children, millions were forced out of their homes to work in agricultural projects. Iintellectuals, ethnic Chinese, business people, those who wore glasses, those who gave the slightest resistance were executed.  This continued from 1975 to 1979. As Lim explains in her narrative, it was in large part the destruction, destabilization, and atmosphere of terrible fear and suffering created by the senseless American bombing of Cambodia which created a society where this could happen.  About two million, twenty five percent of population,  died from disease, starvation, exposure and execution from 1975 to 1979.  It ended when the Vietnamese, the traditional enemy of the Cambodians, invaded the country in 1979.  One of the most exciting episodes in Lim's book was the time those in her slave labor camp realized the Khmer Rouge guards were all gone and they were free.   

As I read Lim's narrative, I of course knew she had survived to write her book and was relocated in Australia.  I knew the basic outlines of the history (I visited Siem Reap in 2001 to see great temple.   The carved murals there are among the most amazing cultural entities I have ever seen) but as the terrible events of this story begin, I totally mesmerized by a desire to learn her story and find out how she survived.   

The story begin's at Lim's family home in the third largest city in Cambodia. Her family were Buddhists   of Chinese heritage, fairly prosperous, lighter skinned than ethnic Cambodians.  The parents, as was normal, had an arranged marriage, the husband was twenty years older.  Lim was among the youngest of several children.  In 1975 armed men show up at her door and tell her parents to vacate the propery in a few hours, they are being moved out of the city.  The pretence given is that a huge American air raid is imminent.  They, along with 1000s of others were force marched to remote jungle camps where children were taken from parents (and rewarded for informing on them), boys and girls were separated.  The children were told their parents were now the leaders of the Khmer Rouge.  Lim straight forwardly narrates a horrific account of terrible labor in the rice fields, starvation diets (much of people's energy and thoughts center on the search for food, nothing that might be eaten is overlooked).  Many nights after 12 hour plus work days there were "re-education meetings" in which children were singled out for harsh criticism for deviant thoughts and lack of dedication.  Many girls were taken from the meetings never to be seen again.   What Lim relays is a tale of amazing courage buttressed by a deep love of family.  There is too much in the narrative to summarize and I really think this book should become a classic.  One day in 1979 a girl notices that the guards are all gone.  At first the people are too scared to run, thinking it is a trick and they feel anyone who leaves will be shot in the back.  Then one girl gets the courage to run and soon all run.  Shortly after this millions of former captives are on the road.  Lim desperately wants to find her family, she is 13 or so.   Through incredible luck the family is united.   The father can hardly walk and her older brother, a truly wonderful person, looks after the family.  The father insists they return to their old home but when they get their another family lives there and they have no proof of ownership.  Things are never again as bad as they once were but Lim and her families ordeal was far from over.  Lim and her siblings had missed years of school.  Lim desperately wanted an education but her parents could hardly pay for lessons.  Her mother wanted her children to get out of Cambodia.   One of the most joyous  and very positive parts if the book lie in the account of how she got to Australia.  I can only try to imagine how she felt when she landed.   I could not help but feel tremendously proud of the accomplishments of Lim and her siblings.

  One of my Australian Facebook contacts,  a writer, recently posted a status report on Facebook about a festival event she attended.  Her post said, "where do all these  f***ing immigrants come from?"  I think if she read Lim's book, she would feel a deep sense of shame and mortification when she learned the answer.  

Mother and the Tiger:  A Memoir of the Killing Field is a tribute to to the power of the human spirit.   The true wonder of Lim's marvelous book is letting us see the incredible hard times she went through without becoming hard.  Her prose is simple and beautiful.  Anyone who ever hated someone for their skin color, the birthplace, their language or religion should be required to read this book.  

Bio of Dana Hui Kim (from publisher, Odyseey Books)

Dana Hui Lim was born in Cambodia and was only six years old when the Pol Pot regime seized power. She survived the rule of the Khmer Rouge through a combination of good luck, and a determination to survive that she had not previously known she possessed.

Dana arrived in Australia when she was eighteen years old. She was unable to speak English and had virtually no formal education. She began high school in Year Ten, went on to complete a university degree and began a career in the Australian Public Service.

Dana wants to share her story with others to encourage them to persevere in the face of adversity. She would also like to urge her countrymen to discuss their experiences, or set down their own stories so that they are not lost forever. Her book serves as a warning to people of all nations and races, to be wary of the danger than can occur when ideology is not subjected to reason.

http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tiger-Memoir-Killing-Fields/dp/1922200107/

Odyssey books.com.au

Dana Lim has agreed to participate in  a Q and A session on The Reading Life soon so please look for it.  

Mel u