Book Review: Family Life

Author: Akhil Sharma
Genre: Cultural, India, Immigration
Rating: 1.5/5
Verdict: A depressing, dark story with a seemingly rushed ending. Don't bother reading this.

I have heard about Akhil Sharma in a few of the Asian authors list and his books have always been on my to-read pile. This was a pretty short book and there was no reason for me not to pick it up from the library. Even though I finished this book in a few hours straight, it was a pretty depressing story for the most part and leading nowhere.

The book is about an Indian family of four (father, mother and two sons) that immigrated to the US in the 70's in search of a better life and how tragedy strikes and their lives change in a matter of 3 minutes when their elder son becomes brain dead after an unfortunate pool accident. The story is narrated by the younger son and we learn about the father's alcohol problems and how he feels that his mother hates him and spends all her time with the elder son caring for him. Until this point, Akhil completely lured me into the story and I just kept turning pages to find out where he led the readers to next. But, it was at this point in the story that it started becoming very repetitive, long-winded and boring. I continued to read in the hopes of the story going somewhere, but it never changed gears. It lacked depth and never left an impact on me. I am glad it was a short book and I just finished it. I am sure I would have abandoned if it was a tad longer. I do not even want to get started about the ending which seemed completely abrupt, rushed and meaningless. I do not expect a happy-ending or a redemption for every book I read, but at the very least there should be a message. I cannot help but compare this with the other books with the same theme - Wave by Sonali Deraniyagala and Take this man by Brando Skyhorse. Both narrated brilliantly and left a huge impact and the message at the end was very clear.

A very ordinary lifeless book with repetitive prose. I just don't get the hype about this book. I don't think I will pick up any more of Akhil Sharma's books after being burnt by this one.  I would definitely warn you to stay away from reading this. 

Book Review: The Good daughter - A memoir of my mother's hidden life

Author: Jasmin Darznik
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: A wonderful memoir filled with strength and endurance and rich details about Iran. Read it!

I received this book from my Secret Santa during the holiday book exchange. I read it through the holiday season last year and the holiday mood definitely did cheer me up when some incidents detailed in the book were unbearable. When I read the title, the first thoughts that came to my mind was it was going to be a book detailing the relationship between Jasmin and her mother, their connection and their life experiences and such. I read the first few pages and realized I was totally wrong :)

The book opens with Jasmin discovering a photograph of her mother, Lili as a child-bride only that she doesn't recognize the man standing next to her in the photograph. When she confronts Lili about this, Lili doesn't want to speak about it. Later, Lili sends Jasmin a series of tapes in which she herself narrates her family and life in Iran. The first tape talks about Lili's grandmother and then moves on to her mother, Kobra and gradually goes on to detailing Lili's life in Iran. Married at 13 to an abusive husband and bearing a child at 14, the details from Lili's past are very painful and disturbing.
But Lili is a pretty srong and amazing who divorces her monster of a husband (but had to give up her child in this process) and goes to Germany for education and becomes a midwife, where she meets her husband-to-be. The book spans across three generations, and we can see the traditions gradually shifting from one generation to the next. Throughout the book, we get to see the endurance and strength of the women and their attempts to keep the family intact and its very moving. Towards the end of the book is when we learn about Sara, the good daughter who Lili had to give up who still lives in Iran. The good daughter reads so much like a intriguing fictional story, while its not. I had to remind myself many times that this was a true story. When I finished the book, I really wanted to meet Lili - the strong and ambitious woman with a lot of resilience.

This book is a must read - there is so much I didnt know about Iran until I read this. When I think about Iran, the first thing that comes to my mind is war and revolution, but Jasmin takes us through so many rich details about Iran - the women, food, culture, marriage customs and clothing that you finally get to see Iran in a totally different angle through her narration. One thing I would have loved to see and hear were pictures and the audio cassette tapes that Lili had sent to Jasmin. I would have also liked to read more about why exactly Sara is considered the good daughter while, Jasmin was not.

In short, A very moving memoir!

Book Review: The Buddha in the Attic

Author: Julie Otsuka
Genre:  Literary fiction
Rating: 3.5/5
Verdict: A small jewel of a book. Dont' miss it!

I had never heard about this book nor read any reviews of it until one of my friends posted the following link to our reading group:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/11/30/obama-does-some-small-business-saturday-shopping/?hpt=hp_t2
We all looked through the list and this book sounded really interesting! Needless to say, I picked it up right away. Its a really short read, 125 pages in total.

Buddha in the attic is about the plight of Japanese mail-order picture brides who sail in hundreds to San Fransisco holding photographs of men who they believe are their new husbands and who they have never met, some of the brides as young as 14 years.

A photograph of Japanese picture brides,.
Photo Courtesy, CA State Parks Collection

When they arrive, they are shocked to see a crowd of men who are bald, old and don't look one bit as in the photograph. Only then the women realize all the photographs they were holding were 20 years old. These men are not bankers, teachers or silk merchants either as represented in their letters, rather they are farmers, fruit-pickers, gardeners or laundry men struggling to make a living.
The book walks us through the plight of the Japanese women through various stages in their lives with these men. Starting with chapter 2, "The first night" where they recount the harrowing experience of the physical consummation, the pain, the suffering, Julie takes us through various stages in their immigrant life divided into eight chapters, from getting jobs to having a child to establishing their own J-colonies in America before they are relocated back to Japan right after the pearl harbor attack. There are even some moments of joy well captured when they move from working on farms to being farm owners and their children going to school. Then comes the world war II, when they are forced to leave the country, abandon whatever they have built so far, with children in universities, their noodle shops, their laundries and sell them to white neighbors. The book ends with the white neighbors thinking a lot about their disappearance and not able to come to terms with it but then it slowly fades, memories erased and a whole colony of ethnic group has been forced out of the country.

All through this review, I've been mentioning the collective term "they". Yes, that is how the book talks about the women indeed. There is no single protagonist or lead character like in a tranditional story. The main character is "we", plural, instead of taking up a single family or Japanese woman.
Julie's style of writing is a worthy-mention here. A few pieces from the book:

On the boat, we often wondered: Would we like them? Would we love them? Would we recognize them from their pictures when we first saw them on the dock?

On the boat we carried our husbands' pictures in tiny oval lockets that hung on long chains from our necks. We carried them in silk purses and old tea tins and red lacquer boxes and in the thick brown envelopes from America in which they had originally been sent. We carried them in the sleeves of our kimonos, which we touched often, just to make sure they were still there.

Almost the entire book follows this style of narration making it almost close to poetry. The rhythmic prose feels like a conversation. The structure of the book is very different from the traditional story and that makes it a very interesting read! Definitely read it for the language and the breath-taking details of the lives of Japanese immigrant women!