Book Review: Undress Me In the Temple of Heaven

Undress Me In the Temple of Heaven

"Truth is stranger than fiction" - I've often heard that phrase.

And I found it applies to the travel memoir, Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven, the story told by Susan Jane Gilman of her trip to China with a university friend Claire, some 23 years after it happened. Trying to figure out what caused the series of events in the book - the two 21-year old girls, or China itself - is not quite easy. Maybe it was the interaction of the two that was the key, or maybe it was that China in the mid-1980s was just a catalyst that would change these two girls in such different and dramatic ways.

The author has no easy answers herself. As it was, it took her over 20 years to write about it. Changing the name and identity of her travel companion, Claire, made it easier, too.

The book is not all serious - there are amusing parts, and the travel sections on Hong Kong, Shanghai, Dailin, Beijin, Guilin, and other areas of China are informative. I had the impression that the author must have a prodigious and photographic memory. The small details of the inconveniences of travel, the events, people, environment, and the dialogue are all set down vividly as if the story happened just recently.

Somehow it seems as if only these two travelers, among the backpackers and other tourists they met, had such uncomfortable experiences. Chalk it up to youth or culture shock, it was obvious these bright young Ivy League graduates were not prepared to meet the privations of the Third World of the 1980s.The book ends with loose ends, threads that needed to be tied up, and problems that would have been better resolved. But in the real world, I guess it doesn't always happen that way.

I recommend the book for anyone who would like to travel to distant, foreign parts but who is unsure about how he or she could or would react to dramatic environmental and cultural differences. It makes a good learning lesson.

Book provided by the publisher, for my objective review.

Tokyo Fiancee by Amelie Nothomb. book review

Tokyo Fiancee

Amelie Nothomb writes this as a work of fiction, though the main character has her name and Belgian background.

Tokyo Fiancee begins in 1989 when Amelie, who was born in Japan and lived five years there, returns to Tokyo to learn the language and reacquaint herself with the country.

What better way to accomplish this than to get a Japanese boyfriend? Though this was not a plan, Amelie becomes involved with her student, Rinri, a university student whom she tutors in French. The book covers Rinri's cross-cultural friendship with Amelie, and his courtship, which includes trips to different tourist sites in Japan, including a climb of Mt. Fuji to watch the sunrise, and several luxurious days on the island of Sado.

Only age 21 when she returns to Japan for the first time since her childhood, Amelie has all the vigor and impatience of youth and tells Rinri she is energized by tall mountains and heights. Thus her solo foray into snowy mountains, where she gets lost and barely survives an overnight blizzard.

How does this show of independence sit with Rinri, who has given her an engagement ring and gotten the approval of both sets of parents for their eventual marriage?

I enjoyed the insights into Japanese culture and food, the depiction of the gentlemanly Rinri, and the way that Amelie is able to handle cultural differences while at the same time trying to become more Japanese. There is a lot of good natured humor and the book is easy reading. I finished it in three sittings. I enjoyed it but the ending left me wondering a little....

The descriptions of her mad rush up and down Mt. Fuji, the natural beauty of Japan, and her frankness about the culture also make the book worthwhile.

"While I waited, I was witness to an extraordinary sight. After midnight, luminous processions began to climb the mountain. Apparently, there were people courageous enough to attempt the ascent at night, no doubt to avoid spending too much time waiting for sunrise in the cold air. For no one should miss the ceremony of the sunrise."(p. 81)

(The novel is translated from the French by Alison Anderson, Europa editions).

Submitted for the Lost in Translation Reading Challenge.

Book Review: Fidali's Way by George Mastras

It took me the longest time to get through this book, which I wanted to read and finish, not out of a sense of duty, but because I was really enjoying it!

However, there are pages and pages of detailed landscape and people descriptions, background information on the area, political and geopolitical history, philosophical musings by all the characters, not to mention their personal histories. All these were important to the adventure/suspense novel, Fidali's Way,  nevertheless.

I kept going through all four parts, 60 chapters, and 385 pages of dense writing, partly because I liked the storytelling and partly because of the author's way with words. His descriptions of locale, people, their characters and their motives are quite compelling.

This is a love story involving two sets of people whose paths cross though they are from different backgrounds and cultures. Nick from New York, Yvette from France, and Simon from Scotland meet in India and Pakistan while backpacking and trekking in the volatile region. Nick flees Pakistan, wanted for two murders - one he didn't commit and the other an accident. Simon is in jail for murder. Yvette's recklessness leads to her undoing.

Nick, traumatized by his loss of Yvette, flees into India with the help of two tribesmen, Fidali and his friend Ghulam, and reaches the Brigadoon-like serenity of the village of Gilkamosh in the Vale of Kashmir. There Nick becomes involved in another love triangle - with the resident doctor Aysha and her childhood sweetheart, Kazim.

How these love stories play out against the backdrop of war, skirmishes, and terror attacks against Indian forces and the inhabitants of Gilkamosh by mujahedeen, is part of the intriguing plot that kept me going.

To cope with his past and the present, Nick learns from the seemingly simple and uncomplicated tribesman, Fidali, whose way of living and thinking leaves a lasting impression on him.


REVIEW OF THE MAP THIEF

The Map Thief  by Heather Terrell links 15th century, Ming Dynasty, Admiral Zheng He with Portugal explorer Vasco da Gama, also of the 15th century. The two men sailed their ships on the same routes, perhaps 70 years apart.

How a map of Zheng He's travels lands up in the hands of the Portugese navigator to Vasco da Gama is the mystery the novel tries to solve. In present day New York, Mara Coyne, antiques finder, hopes to solve the mystery after being called in to investigate and recover a priceless 15th century map stolen from an archaeological dig in China. How did a copy of this map reach Portugal so many years ago? And where is that copy now?

The book takes you from New York, to China, and to Lisbon, and blends historical facts with fiction to explore an interesting theory regarding the first sailors to "discover" America and the New World.

Book Review: A Gift from Brittany by Marjorie Price

A Gift from Brittany

I thought at the beginning that A Gift from Brittany would be a book along the lines of Frances Mayes' Tuscany books - "love letters" to Italy that are light, mostly cheerful accounts of life in Tuscany.

Marjorie Price's life-altering experience living in an obscure hamlet in Brittany, France, however, the author describes as a "Memoir of Love and Loss in the French Countryside." Though it has cheerful and colorful aspects, the memoir is a poignant story of love lost but also of true friendship found in an quiet corner of rural France.

A young artist in Chicago in the 1960s, the author Midge decides to travel to Paris for several months, against her parents' wishes. In France she meets Yves, an up and coming artist, and as in a fairy tale story, falls in love and marries the Frenchman. They have a daughter, both continue to paint, and all seems to go well until Yves decides to buy a farm in Brittany. The farm turns out to be several farmhouses, half of a hamlet.

The extensive renovations needed to the farm houses, which Midge finds herself in charge of managing and financing, and Yves' obsession with the idea of his being a great painter, a "genius", is balanced somewhat by Midge's developing friendship with a supportive and sympathetic neighbor, Jeanne.

Jeanne is in her late 60s, cannot read or write, never used a telephone, does not have television, has never traveled to the ocean that is not far away, and has been working all her life without electricity or running water. Jeanne however becomes a protector to Midge, an American who does not know the ways of rural Brittany.

The memoir describes days in Brittany with its difficulties, its disappointments, its successes, as well as the joy of good friendship. The book really tells two stories - the story of an American artist in France transformed by her experience there, and the life story of Jeanne, a simple Breton woman.

Of Jeanne, the author wrote:"Like a messenger heralding her arrival, her low starched white lace coif revealed her to be a Morbihanaise. Everyone greeted her; she struck up a conversation with everyone." The memoir describes how these two helped each other and how in the end, Midge feels regret and wonders if different decisions along the way might have made the final outcomes any different.

Marjorie Price writes with the eye of the artist, with detail and a love of color. Her descriptions of her painting and of landscape easily transport you to Brittany, its farms, coastline, and the feel of its people.

"In summer, the heat was so intense it was a streak of fire on my back and soaked up the moisture on the paper, making it difficult to work with the transparency and fluidity of watercolor. But on cool days, or on days when the fog lingered and moisture hung in the air, I could blend the light of the morning mist with the emerging sun, lay color over color like a theme in a fugue that fades as another unfolds...." - (ch. 15)

I recommend this heart-warming book for its story, its descriptions of people and place, and its exploration of relationships, some that "worked" and others that did not.

I have read A Year in Provence by Peter Mayle and Under the Tuscan Sun, enjoyed them, but had no real desire to read the follow up books that both authors wrote. A Gift from Brittany I found to be much more serious and realistic, and true, and very moving.

Book received from the author for review.

Book Challenge: Lost in Translation

Lost in Translation Book Challenge is the first I have ever signed up for!

Reading only six translated books for the year looks like something I can actually do (I am a great procrastinator).

Books I've chosen:

Tokyo Fiancee by Amelie Nothomb, translated from the French, already posted.

Real World by Natsuo Kirino, translated from Japanese, already posted

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (translated from Japanese).

The Good Women of China : hidden Voices by Xinran, translated from Chinese by Esther Tyldesley.

Two more to go.....

It Happens in Threes: book review

Ruby Goodman hurriedly leaves her ex-fiance Thomas for her parents' family vacation home in the Florida Keys. In the Keys, she meets up with an old boyfriend, Michael, and a former employer, Nico. Michael uses her programming skills to help him crack Nico's money laundering business that is spread over many countries and involves millions.

The Florida trip doesn't turn out to be a nice holiday, rent free, with an old boyfriend and a job to go along with it. Ruby is in danger from Thomas, who refuses to let her go and begins to stalk her, and from another anonymous threat that also involves Michael. She also has to be wary of Nico, whose scheme she is trying to expose.

The book, It Happens in Threes, takes you from the sunny Keys to diving trips off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. Ruby lounges around backyard pools, swims in the nude, dances suggestive hulas, and in general uses her femininity to keep the men around her interested but in check.

This book by Denise Robbins is romantic suspense, with heavy emphasis on the romance aspect. The love scenes often distract from the advancing of the plot, however, and made me impatient at times. Nevertheless, Ruby is an intriguing personality who surely knows how to use her womanly wiles to get her way, and who makes the reader want to continue the story to the very end!

The book ends with a twist to the plot. A very entertaining debut novel!

Book provided by the author for my objective review.

Book Review: The Fire Kimono by Laura Joh Rowland

The Fire Kimono

Well, I finally finished The Fire Kimono, not because it was dull or boring, quite the contrary, but because my cabin fever had me out and about. I finally had to head to the bookstore to sit in a corner and finish it in installments, all 207 pages.

Laura Joh Rowland does another excellent job in having her early 18th century protagonist, Chamberlain Sano Ichiro, solve crimes while avoiding family disasters as well as execution by an ineffective and vascillating shogun.

The discovery of a 40 year old skeleton buried under a tree brings to light old family secrets involving the shogun's family as well as Chamberlain Sano's mother. Trying to protect her as well as discover the truth about her past puts Sano and his immediate family in grave danger.

I loved the unfolding of the plot and how relationships are developed and tested during the novel: mother/son, husband/wife, daughter-in-law/mother-in-law, shogun/vassal, and the samurai/bushido code of conduct. Rowland has excelled in one of the best in this mystery series.