House Favourites

House favourites at the Bean…

Blindness, Jose Saramago

A little disturbing and slightly terrifying in its probable likeness to actual human behaviour in the face of catastrophic disaster, Blindness puts forward a world in which every human being has become suddenly and unexpectedly blind. The story follows a group that has been quarantined in a mental asylum and the one woman among them who retains her vision. The society that falls into place at the asylum is shockingly brutal as normal order and morality gives way in the face of chaos.

Saramago is a Portuguese writer; he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. Blindness is followed by companion book, Seeing, in which both society and democratic ideals are thrown into disruption when a population refuses to follow civil procedure.

Waiting for the Barbarians, J.M. Coetzee.

A great novel about the oppressed and the oppressor. The Magistrate is the leader of a frontier settlement, caught between Civilization and the land of the barbarians. A rebellious act of kindness lands him in prison and labeled as an enemy of the State. This is a moving account of loneliness and desperation, and a strong statement against complicity in an unjust society.

Coetzee is a South African author, currently living in Australia. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 and the Booker in 1999 for Disgrace.

De Niro’s Game, Rawi Hage.

After reading The Tin Flute is high school I swore off all Canadian lit in a fit of rage/frustration.  A little myopic, I know, but I’m stubborn – I really haven’t read any amount of Canadian stuff until a couple years ago. AND my big revelation: Canada has some amazing writers. Case-in-point: Rawi Hage. This guy has won pretty much every award on the planet for his first book – De Niro’s Game, about as intense as it comes.  It’s about two childhood friends in Beirut and the diverging paths they take into adulthood. War, torture, murder, suicide… read this book in a safe warm place.  Winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Scotiabank Giller.

The Namesake, Jhumpa Lahiri.

Family is tough business.  All the politics you would ever need within four walls. Lahiri follows the lives of the Ganguli family, parents arriving from Calcutta before the birth of their two children, Gogol and Sonia. The story stays with Gogol for the most part, tracing the details of his life – school, first relationships, work, marriage – from his birth until his early thirties, all the while dealing with what he views as the foibles of his parents and misfortune of his name. This was a good read – Lahiri really gets into the burden of familial guilt that every child carries at some point.  She also won the Pulitzer for the Interpreter of Maladies in 2000.

Animal’s People, Indra Sinha.

Sinha’s book was inspired by the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India.  It follows the narrative of Animal, a boy crippled by the release of the toxic gas: “I used to be human once. So I’m told.  I don’t remember it myself, but people who knew me when I was small say I walked on two feet just like a human being.”(1) The story is about Animal’s survival on the streets of Khaufpur while he keeps an eye on the old nun who raised him, becomes involved with local resistance leaders,and develops a relationship with an ambitious young American doctor.

Animal is an unflinching bugger – and a great character as a narrator. Good stuff.  Shortlisted for the 2007 Booker Prize.

The Electric Michelangelo, Sarah Hall.

The story follows the life of Cy Parks, from his childhood in a ramshackle hotel on Britain’s north coast, to his apprenticeship with Eliot Riley, a hard-edged boozy tattoo artist, and finally his escape to inter-war Coney Island, a wild carnivalistic world of circus performers, scam artists and nefariously shady characters.

Violent, edgy, beautiful – this was good stuff. Sarah Hall can write. Shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize. She has written two other books: Haweswater (2002) and Dauthers of the North (2008), about a futuristic dystopia (like Margaret Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale) – and I can’t wait to read that one.