Oh dear, it has been a long time since I posted! Here are my latest and then I might try to catch up on the thread...
35 White Tears/Brown Scars by Ruby Hamad
This one has been idling on my Kindle for a while, and I thought it would be a good thing to read after The Transgender Issue, again as a way of challenging my bubble/echo chamber. The book grew out of an article Hamad wrote which was published in the Australian edition of the Guardian, triggered by her own observations that white women challenged by Black women in public settings would resort to claims of bullying or even tears in response. The book digs deeper into this, going back through various historical period and the role of white women in slavery (in the US in particular), and then has several more modern chapters (other readers may remember the Mary Beard/Oxfam incident, which features in the book). As with The Transgender Issue, this was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Some of the historical parts were very interesting and I learned a good deal, but, as with any polemic of this kind, I felt some of the more modern parts were exaggerated and twisted in order to shoehorn them into the author's thesis. The central point, though, that when women of colour argue back it is often perceived as aggression, when white women doing something similar would be perceived very differently, is, I think, a good and important one.
36 Latitudes of Longing by Shubhangi Swarup
First of two Shelterbox picks, read one after the other, this is really four linked novellas with a broad magical realist streak. Magical realism is not really my thing, but I really enjoyed the first and longest novella, Islands, which is a love story set in the Indian Ocean involving a scientist and a woman who is so in tune with her environment that she can see spirits and sense earthquakes. They were all beautifully written, but this one was very funny too, and had a striking ending. I found the others, which respectively focused on a prisoner and his mother (who was a servant to the original couple), the prisoner's friend and finally a grandfather who is visited in his mountain village by the grandson of the original scientist) less compelling and somewhat disjointed. Not an overall success for me, but some lovely parts.
37 Abundance by Amit Majmudar
Second Shelterbox pick, this was a much more conventional novel written from the point of view of a terminally ill mother, who reconnects with her daughter and son. I'm not entirely sure this book ever really knew where it was going and that is reflected in the blurb, which focuses on the mother and daughter reconnecting through food - but it's much more complex and intangible than that. The mother and father - the father a mathematical genius, who works by day as a neurologist - are Indian immigrants to the midwest of the USA and their children have, to a greater or lesser degree, been absorbed by America. Mala, the daughter, less so, as she has an arranged marriage with an Indian man. Ronak, the son, is married to an American Christian and has slipped far from the family's moorings. This was fine whilst I was reading it and there were interesting musings on mother-daughter relationships in particular, but I'm not going to remember it.
38 The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber
This was lent to me by a friend for my son to read, but I never read it as a child so I thought I would give it a go too. It's a gem. A tiny, short book, written in its own fantastic language and metre - a fairy story with internal logic. Recommended for anyone who likes language games and funny fantasy. My favourite line:
"We al have flaws," he said "and mine is being wicked."
(My son also loved it)