From the Mouth of the Whale - #33

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This book is beautifully written. It's lyrical. It picks you up and carries you along. You are swept through streams of consciousness and through herbal medicinal books, and then through third person narrative. You switch from one to the other seamlessly. It's a masterpiece in that regard.

But I am left with one overwhelming question.

What the fuck was that all about?

I mean I get it. It's the story of Jonás the Learned and his exile. It's about the amazing things he does or witnesses before he is accused of sorcery  It is about his weird magic realism visions. It's about his wonderfully patient wife. It's about him going to Denmark. But... what's the point?

I dislike getting to the end of the book and being thoroughly confused. It's the awkward break up conversation. "It's not you, it's me. I just don't think I can see this going any where." The book is as silent as my exes on the receiving end of the speech. Which could be a credit to my exes. But you just burble to fill in the space. In the end you just convince the other person they are better off without you or your understanding, because you have just revealed yourself as being slightly insane and they feel like they have dodged a bullet. "Why doesn't this girl just shut up?!?"

But I don't like that it my reading. The book that is cute and charming enough to get you to snog it while you're a little bit drunk, and then wake up thinking "What the hell did I just do? Please tell me it's not lying next to me." The book that tells your these epic sagas and then gets to the punchline and tells you "Oh I would tell you the point but it's too existential for you." (which is an "excuse" I was given by a staff member turning up 5 hours late for a shift (shifts were 4 hours long)).

See. This makes me grumpy. It conjures up images of break ups, drunken snogs with pretty, vapid boys and horrible prats who think they are all higher plain but are just fuckwits. It takes you on a pretty journey and I don't get the conclusion. If there is one. And I just don't know why I was taken on the journey.

I really do wonder if it is a cultural thing. Do I not get it coz I'm not Icelandic or even Scandinavian? I'd hope not but I may be right. I will read another of his books. I hope it is just this book, and it is the longest of them all. But I am prepared to be completely confused again. I'm not saying don't read it, just in case it is really me.

The Old Man and His Sons - #26

This was one of those books that leapt out of the huge list of the books people had already found for their own Around the World list. Scrolling down the page: Estonia, Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Faroe Islands, Fiji…. Hold on what? The Faroes? There are books written about or in the Faroes? I have to read it!

So on I went, and ordered the book and it arrived in the giant shopping spree of parcels I had delivered to work (the postman was very grateful I was solely keeping him in a job). And then it sat patiently waiting until I managed to get to it.

I will state first of all, this is one of the nicest covers on any of the books I own. It’s gorgeous. I frequently took it off the shelf over the last 9 months just to look at it. Not only I think this, but Lexx in his grumpy, judging, Graphic Designer way even said it was a really nice cover. Get it for the cover. Make it a coffee table book. It’s pretty!

Story wise though, I didn’t love it. It was another story of a country fighting with modernisation and the problems with loosing ones own culture while developing as a country. And that is sad. It must have been heartbreaking for these old Faroe people to see their children doing what they deemed as rejecting their heritage and culture. I am sympathetic to that. I think it is important while developing and modernising to still keep your identity and culture in check. Those are the things that make you and your country different and interesting. For example, while not the same in any way shape or form, it annoys me that Aus is getting more and more Americanised. So I am sure these people felt this annoyance and then sadness a thousand times more than my feelings.

However, I feel that if their children, all of them, are that big a jerks that they insinuate, then maybe, just maybe, they may need to work on their parenting skills. They just went on and on about how ungrateful, and rude, and horrible, and whatnot their children were. And how their grandchildren were always begging from them. Well maybe, one of the reasons ALL of your MANY children are horrible may come down to the common factor with all those children? And you can say “No! Go home!” to your grandchildren once in a while. I couldn’t sympathise with that. It bugged me.

But as much as that annoyed me, this did not even compare to the son who was still living at home, Kálvur. Dear god I wanted to slap him upside his face and tell him to get the hell over himself. He was a complete and utter drip. 24ish years old and crying all the time because things were scary. Seriously boy! Grow a pair! Living at home (in a 2 room house) with his parents, and then lying in his bed yelling at his mum to bring him food because he couldn’t be bother getting up. They getting pissed off as she wasn't there as she had gone out. Once. Ever. I’d tell you what would happen if I ever tried that with my Mum, there is very little chance I would still be here writing this.

Whinging aside, both mine and sniveling boy’s, the book was very well written. I wanted to keep reading it, even though I found the people not overly engaging. The way of storytelling was, and the culture and customs were intriguing. And it was only a short book, so you knew that even though the snotty-nosed boy was crying again, you only had another 50 pages with him.

The whale hunt at the beginning of the book, and the premise for the whole book was really interesting and eye opening. I had always thought that if people could hunt whales traditionally with a spear and a wooden boat, good on them. I had the idea that these cultures only kill as much as they need, therefore being much more sustainable than the horrible commercial whaling that has just started up in the oceans below me as we speak.

This book changed that way of thinking though. It was so real and evocative. I was so upset for the whales, and I am not sure if I was supposed to be. I have a feeling that is a product of reading the book with my background and in my time. 70 years ago I may have identified with the hunters more, been on their side. Not now, I was so drawn in to the book, hoping a whale would get away or take someone with them. It almost made me cry this hunt.

Also there wasn’t that idea of sustainability I thought went with it. They killed as much as they possibly could, which allowed Ketil to get into the mess he did by accidentally buying some obscene tonnage of whale meat. It really opened my eyes.

So with saga-esq storytelling, a rare insight for me into the lives of another place in the North and Norwegian Seas, another story of the struggle of traditional vs modern ways of living, and an eye opening account of traditional hunting methods, that I will admit has changed my thinking immensely, I felt outweighed the frustration with annoying characters. One day, one day I will read a book with characters I like. Or I’ve just become a cantankerous old lady who hates everyone already… oh dear…

An African In Greenland - #18

I loved the thought of this book when I heard about it. The idea that a young African boy learns about a place like Greenland and then runs off to live there. It’s so ridiculous and yet so fantastical.

That’s the story of Michel. He grew up with his father’s family on the coast of Togo and starts with a lovely whimsical illustration of his life there, starting with an encounter with a snake up a coconut tree. There was something so jovial and carefree about the stories of him in Africa, first in Togo and then as he journeys to Greenland, through the entire north-west of Africa earning money, in to Europe and beyond.

The thing that starts being apparent during this journey is that Michel is a very privileged African boy. He has been schooled and knows a couple of languages (benefit of Togo being an ex-French colony of course). But this seems to have made his transition through Europe and ability to get jobs much easier.  Lucky him of course, but it starts to draw away from his “typical” African boy image.

I really liked the book and was recommending it to everyone, until I got to Greenland.

Now the book wasn't bad from Greenland on. However it began to take on this air of condescending judgement. Michel wasn't happy with the people he found in Greenland. He didn't approve of their lifestyle all that much. He had an idealised idea of what Intuits should be, without much knowledge of the background of the area (Denmark colonised Greenland and was very big on getting the Intuit’s to give up their traditional way of doing things, but without much consideration to what they should be doing instead). As like most people with uninformed, idealised points of view, he was a little disappointed.

 And not to mention had a huge heap of double standards. Alcohol and promiscuity wasn't his thing. Unless he was doing it. He even goes on to mention that he is happy to sleep around, but not happy when it’s “his” girl who does it. I am not sure if this is a result of his home polygamous culture, a result of being a product of the 1950s-1970s or just being a misogynist.

Otherwise it was a good introduction into the ways of the Greenlandic community, their culture and their activities. There is a lot of blood and slaughtering in this book. If you don’t like the thought of people eating meat or whale blubber raw, this probably isn't for you. But if you get over that slight turn of your stomach when he describes his meals there is a lot to learn.

I did enjoy it, don’t misunderstand me. I just am frustrated that a book that started out so well fell into the trap of the usual judgement of other cultures. “It’s not what I expected and therefore it’s not the right way to act”. And hypocrisy always annoys me. So it’s not one I’ll be running out and telling everyone to read any more. But it’s still worth a good 3 stars.

Smilla's Sense of Snow - #9

This is one of those books I hope so much that the author did their homework and therefore all the interesting facts I learnt are true. This book at times is like reading a science textbook, but an interesting one, that has a murder mystery behind it. Maybe our educators could learn something from that (although as is the way with most "educational initiatives" there would be a 97% chance that they would make it incredibly lame).

This book spends half it's time in Copenhagen and then the other half either in Greenland from memories or actuality, or travelling to Greenland. I have therefore counted it (maybe in a slightly dodgy way) as a read for both countries. Coming from the humidity and heat of the Solomons to the icy chill of Denmark and Greenland in winter, suited my switch from Singapore back to icy Canberra.

The book was interesting and had a good pace to it. It did have some twists in it that you felt like you knew exactly what was going to happen in the build up, and then it threw you in a different direction. The writer had the lovely Scandinavian way of not patronising you, of taking you on a journey but allowing you to work things out for yourself along the way. I am beginning to *love* this way of writing as a wonderful refreshing change. And the ending was unlike any English book I had read before, which was infuriating but kinda cool.

Gripes. My English translation was titled "Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow". I hate it. Smilla's Sense of Snow has this beautiful ring to it and conveys the meaning perfectly and concisely. The Miss is completely useless and redundant and is only there to let sexist English speakers know the gender of the protagonist. I bet that there are people who have put it down because of the Miss, or picked it up because of it, or gone "Oh thank you publisher for explaining this ridiculous foreign name to me on the cover as I am too stupid to pick it up in the first couple of sentences". Why does gender matter? Argh!

Also, and this is because I am the victim of my Australian upbringing, if it is an English translation could you please translate the German as well as the Danish. Place names were not translated thank god (overtranslations are sometimes worse!), and the Greenlandic words weren't translated but explained. The Swiss cook however spoke entire sentences in German which had important plot points in them without them being explained in English. I know that it was trying to portray him as an other, but you could say the German and then get him to translate it into English or something. Google translate and I formed a close relationship over the last few days, and I now know enough German (of words I memorised in order to not look them up again) to say "I am not a Swiss clock." Useful.

Lastly and most importantly, there were two sentences that nearly made me hate the book. They were jarring and not written like the entire rest of the book. They were unnecessary and I just don't know what happened. Either the author or the translator had a massive brain fart, and it really bugs me. I would be interested in knowing if anyone else had this feeling when they read this book. But these two sentences turned me from about to exclaim to my Mum from the back of the car that she had to read this book, to going nope, no way if this is what the rest of the book is like. Luckily, it wasn't and I will recommend it to her again, but with this disclaimer. Where the hell was the editor is what I want to know.

But besides these things, and the fact that it went on longer than I thought entirely necessary however I still very much wanted to read it, it was a great book. I am slightly cold still after finishing it, and have an overwhelming wish to travel to Greenland. 4 stars!




Next: To Chile to warm up with Zorro