MostlyFiction Book Reviews » Children’s We Love to Read! Wed, 14 May 2014 13:06:32 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.3 CHIKE AND THE RIVER by Chinua Achebe /2011/chike-and-the-river-by-chinua-achebe/ /2011/chike-and-the-river-by-chinua-achebe/#comments Mon, 22 Aug 2011 13:45:07 +0000 /?p=20428 Book Quote:

“The more Chike saw the ferryboats the more he wanted to make the trip to Asaba. But where would he get the money? He did not know. Still, he hoped. “One day is one day,” he said, meaning that one day he would make the journey, come what may.”

Book Review:

Review by Friederike Knabe  AUG 23, 2011)

Chike is Chinua Achebe’s young hero in this gentle, touching story of an eleven-year-old Nigerian boy who has to leave his village in order to continue his schooling in the big city on the shores of the mighty Niger River. It is a charming tale about finding your way in a totally new environment and learning some important life lessons about loyalty, honesty, courage and the strength and limits of dreams. Originally published in 1966 this slim volume has been reissued in a very attractive presentation, fitting beautifully into the publisher’s Achebe publication series, standing out in their stark traditional colours of ochre red, ivory-pale yellow and black, with simple, wood cuts-style images throughout the text. Best known for his first novel, Things Fall Apart, published in 1958, Chinua Achebe is revered as the father of the African novel and and THE standard for African fiction writing.

In a few simple sentences, Achebe captures both Chike’s happy childhood in the village of Umuofia and his mother’s struggle to make ends meet and to keep him and his two sisters in school. When Chike is told one day that he will be living with his uncle in the big city of Onitsha to continue his schooling, he is excited. Yet, his first impressions of life in Onitsha are filled with confusion: “He could not say who was a thief or kidnapper and who was not. In Umuofia every thief was known, but here even people who lived under the same roof were strangers to each other…” His uncle is very strict with him and Chike finds easier companionship with his uncle’s servant, Michael and his new school friends.

With ease Achebe describes this new world from the boy’s perspective. His friend Samuel tells him how “easy” it is to cross the River Niger by ferry, it only costs one shilling for the return trip. From that moment on, Chike dreams of taking the ferry to the other side of the wide delta and to the much more exciting city of Asaba. But Chike has no money, his uncle having refused to give him any. We can follow the ups and downs of Chike’s search for that one shilling he needs – from finding a sixpence piece, to losing half of it to finding out the hard way that magicians who claim to double your money are not to be trusted. While very specific in its setting, Achebe’s story is universal in its messages.

A great story teller, who is deeply attached to his people’s traditions and values, Chinua Achebe is also a committed educator. In this relatively uncomplicated story he conveys, nonetheless, atmosphere and day-to-day reality of both, rural and urban, African life, illustrated by his comparisons of Umuofia and Onitsha. While written more than forty years ago, much of the underlying issues and realities are still relevant today in African countries and elsewhere. Children are still sent off to relatives who can better afford to look after them and their education. Children still feel lonely and lost in new environments and align themselves to real or false friends. They still yearn as much to travel to places they have dreamed of or can even see in the distance, on the other side of a river… and get themselves into potential trouble for taking such an initiative into their own inexperienced hands. Achebe writes in a gentle, warm and caring way about Chike and his environment, about the severe uncle who could have been a bit more understanding and generous. He brings out the possible temptations and the pitfalls that a young boy can fall into – before he learns his lessons and, of course he does succeed in the end.

Is this a book for children? Yes and no. While usually categorized as a children’s story, I wonder how much young readers in our society would appreciate this for what it is: as much a social portrait and introduction into another society and culture as it is a growing up story with lessons that are important as they are timeless. I prefer to describe Chike and the River as a story for “children of all ages”; those who have remained young at heart will enjoy this tale. And as many of us readers have young people in their closer or wider family, we might also like to share it with children around us. There is much to talk about in this book that both informs about life in an African country and, as well, much that transcends our respective cultures.

AMAZON READER RATING: from 2 readers
PUBLISHER: Anchor; Original edition (August 9, 2011)
REVIEWER: Friederike Knabe
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Chinua Achebe
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Nonfiction:

Children’s Books:

  • Chike and the River (1966; August 2011)
  • How the Leopard Got His Claws (1972)
  • The Flute (1975)
  • The Drum (1978)
]]> /2011/chike-and-the-river-by-chinua-achebe/feed/ 2 SUDDENLY IN THE DEPTHS OF THE FOREST by Amos Oz /2011/suddenly-in-the-depths-of-the-forest-by-amos-oz/ /2011/suddenly-in-the-depths-of-the-forest-by-amos-oz/#comments Mon, 21 Mar 2011 13:32:49 +0000 /?p=16881 Book Quote:

“Just then a cow came toward them, a slow cow, an extremely proud and well-connected cow, a very distinguished cow adorned with black and white spots. She trudged and swayed her way slowly, filled with self-importance, past the sleepy tigers, nodding her head two or three times as if she was totally and completely and entirely not surprised, absolutely not surprised, on the contrary, all her calculations had been correct and all her early assumptions had proved to be accurate, and now she nodded also because she was pleased she was right and also because she definitely agreed with herself fully and utterly and always, and without the slightest shadow of a doubt.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (MAR 21, 2011)

Any writer who can so completely capture the essence of cowness, even in translation (here by Sondra Silverston) is most certainly worth reading, and I am entirely pleased to make the acquaintance of Israeli novelist Amos Oz. Never mind that this airy little story of 2005, which the author describes as “A fable for all ages,” is almost certainly merely a footnote to Oz’s work, barely reflecting what I understand to be the seriousness of his major work, let alone the outspoken commitment of his political writings. It is still a story worth reading once for its charm and twice for its meaning.

The appearance of this gloriously self-satisfied cow is significant because the story opens in a village entirely without animals. A few older inhabitants, such as Emanuella the teacher or Almon the Fisherman, still remember what dogs, cats, and goats looked and sounded like, but people treat their memories with unconvinced indulgence. Almon, of course, is no longer a fisherman because there are no longer fish to catch; he spends his days talking to his scarecrow, even though there are no birds to scare away. No woodworm, either, to send him to sleep with the sound of their gentle chomping on his furniture. One night, all the animals suddenly disappeared, taken up presumably into the dark forest-clad mountains surrounding the village. The inhabitants lock their doors securely at night, for Old Nehi the Demon is liable to come prowling and snatch children away, as he has already taken the animals.

One child does disappear into the forest: Little Nimi with the gap between his buck teeth and the snot hanging out of his nose, who was never really part of the other groups of children, though eagerly tagging along behind. Little Nimi, who disappears one day only to come back three weeks later, whooping like an owl but insanely happy to be going his own way. Which was all very well, since of course he could not go back to school with his whoopitis, or even to his home. Two other children, Matti and Maya, also stay a little apart from the others, because they share a secret: that once, in the depths of a very narrow pool in the river, they saw a small, silvery, but very live fish. One day, Matti and the even bolder Maya decide to go up into the forest to see for themselves; the second half of the book tells of what they found there.

A fable for all ages? Perhaps. I could certainly imagine reading it to children, although they might get bored with the first part of the book, which moves slowly, telling much the same thing over in only slightly different ways. But it certainly builds an atmosphere, a brooding sense of fear, sterility, and repression. By contrast, the book moves almost too quickly at the end, as its targets multiply well beyond the simple moral of acceptance. More than once I was reminded of Browning’s Pied Piper. Children whose interest ends with the rambunctious rounding-up of the rats would be too young for the Oz. But those who can be moved by the pathos of the final scene where the children disappear, all except for the one who was too lame to keep up, would find a lot in this little book.

The best fables always do work for adults too. While nothing is every crassly hammered home, there are resonances of many kinds. Is it, for example, a fable for our century, with climate change and the loss of biodiversity? Is it about people haunted by their past but unable to embrace it? Is it a political parable for a nation living in fear of its neighbors? I feel it is almost insulting to put these things in such stark terms, for Oz is far from simplistic. But the resonances are there, and I look forward to reading some of his other books where he addresses them more directly.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-3-5from 27 readers
PUBLISHER: Harcourt Children’s Books; 1 edition (March 21, 2011)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Wikipedia page on Amos Oz
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Youth:

Nonfiction:

Other:

]]> /2011/suddenly-in-the-depths-of-the-forest-by-amos-oz/feed/ 0 LUKA AND THE FIRE OF LIFE by Salman Rushdie /2010/luka-and-the-fire-of-life-by-salman-rushdie/ /2010/luka-and-the-fire-of-life-by-salman-rushdie/#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2010 14:40:42 +0000 /?p=13657 Book Quote:

“You of all boys should know that Man is the Storytelling Animal, and that in stories are his identity, his meaning, and his lifeblood. Do rats tell tales? Do porpoises have narrative purposes? Do elephants ele-phantasize? You know as well as I do that they do not. Man alone burns with books.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  (NOV 18, 2010)

What a father Salman Rushdie would make! Imagine being read to from a book that opens with “a boy named Luka who had two pets, a bear named Dog and a dog named Bear.” And then to learn that the former “was an expert dancer, able to get up onto his hind legs and perform with subtlety and grace the waltz, the polka, the rhumba, the wah-watusi, and the twist, as well as dances from nearer home, the pounding bhangra, the twirling ghoomar (for which he wore a wide mirror-worked skirt), the warrior dances known as the spaw and the thang-ta, and the peacock dance of the south.” For Rushdie is a wizard with words, taking us in a sentence from ordinary to exotic and back again. This is a book for children to hear with wonder and for adults to understand, for Rushdie’s range of reference (and fondness for erudite puns) is immense.

Luka Khalifa is the much younger brother of the title character in Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Rushdie’s earlier fantasy for the child in all of us. His father, the great storyteller, the Shah of Blah, is in a coma and Luka must journey into the Magic World to steal the Fire of Life before his being is sucked away by the spectral Nobodaddy, who becomes more and more visible as he empties the dying man of his substance. The quest involves the assistance of elephant-headed Memory Birds, a shape-changing dragon called Nuthog, and the benevolent but fierce-speaking Insultana of Ott, who provides a magic carpet to take Luka much of the way to his destination. But Luka is no shrinking violet himself. He started the whole chain of events by cursing a cruel circus-owner so effectively that the animals revolted, and he can hold his own in a battle of riddles with a terminator-blasting Old Man of the River, or in a rigged trial presided over by the god Ra, who speaks only in Egyptian hieroglyphics. This is not a book to read in a single sitting; the point is less the journey than the encounters along the way, each chapter having its own atmosphere and treasure-trove of wonders.

Here, for a quieter interlude, is part of Rushdie’s description of the Lake of Wisdom: “Shining schools of little cannyfish could be seen below the surface, as well as the brightly colored smartipans, and the duller, deepwater shrewds. Flying low over the water’s surface were the hunter birds, the large pelican-billed scholarias and the bald, bearded, long-beaked guroos. Long tendrils of the lake-floor plant called sagacity were visible waving in the depths. Luka recognized the Lake’s little groups of islands, too, the Theories with their wild, improbable growths, the tangled forests and ivory towers of the Philosophisles, and the bare Facts. In the distance was what Luka had longer to behold, the Torrent of Words, the miracle of miracles, the grand waterfall that tumbled down from the clouds and linked the World of Magic to the Moon of the Great Story Sea above,”

I don’t know if I was simply in a more receptive mood, or if it is actually the better book, but I enjoyed this a great deal more than its predecessor. I remember thinking that HAROUN suffered from being too close to a video game such as Mario Brothers, but here the connection is quite explicit and oddly enough it works even better. Luka is a modern boy, quite at home in the electronic world; he is hardly surprised to find a life-counter in the top left-hand corner of his vision, and he knows which objects to punch to replenish his store. The modernity helps to anchor the book, to bring the vaguely Indian setting closer to home — as does the fact that Rushdie is no longer confined to his own mythology, but freely references Greek, Norse, Japanese, and other cultures as well. Indeed this is the point: in a modern world, where the old deities no longer wield their power, stories are the only means of giving them life. As Luka explains to the dilapidated deities in their broken-down pan-cultural Olympus: “Listen to me: its only through Stories that you can get out into the Real world and have some sort of power again. When your story is well told, people believe in you; not in the way they used to believe, not in a worshipping way, but in the way people believe in stories — happily, excitedly, wishing they wouldn’t end.” He might have been describing his own book.

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 63 readers
PUBLISHER: Random House; 1 edition (November 16, 2010)
REVIEWER: Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:

 
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

 

Bibliography:

Children (of all ages):

Other:

]]> /2010/luka-and-the-fire-of-life-by-salman-rushdie/feed/ 0