CBR15 Post 27: "De kaller meg ulven" (They Call Me the Wolf) by Zeshan Shakar

Page count: 240 pages

Rating: 2 stars

#CBR15 Passport Challenge: Books from different countries (Norway)

CBR15 Bingo: You are Here (It's set in Norway, where I am)

15-word-review: A son constantly yearning for more social mobility tries to understand his elderly father, unsuccessfully.

Official book description (translated from Norwegian by me):

"Why didn't they have more? I remember thinking after my grandmother died. They were from here, Norwegian, shouldn't they have had more things? Those things other Norwegian parents and grandparents have, at least a simple cabin, the kind without power or water, somewhere no one else wanted a cabin, in the middle of the woods? But no, nothing. I asked my mother once why it was like that. - It was just the way things turned out, she replied."

They Call Me the Wolf is a story about growing up with the knowledge that not everyone is dealt as fair a hand as others. The parents of the protagonists have worked their entire lives, so hard that their health has suffered. Nevertheless, they don't have a lot to show for it. There is nothing to inherit except memories and some family stories, from his father's early life in Pakistan, his mother's life in Finnmark in the north of Norway, and from their life together in Oslo.

Now that home has been dissolved, the father wants to leave Norway to grow old in Pakistan, leaving behind the protagonist, with his unquenchable hunger to own and acquire that which everyone else has more of. 

Back in 2017, Zeshan Shakar became a publishing phenomenon in Norway with his debut novel, Tante Ulrikkes vei. It has gone on to sell over a million copies, which is impressive when you consider that Norway only has a population of about 5.7 million people. This is Shakar's third novel and I think that each new book he writes is less interesting than the last. His previous novel, Gul bok (yellow book) was underwhelming and I didn't really think there was any real character development or progression in it. This book basically just has a protagonist who is always dissatisfied with his life, constantly wishing for a bigger and better house, all the while bemoaning any real closeness to either of his parents, despite the fact that they have had no meaningful contact since the protagonist grew up and left the home he seems mostly ashamed of.

While our protagonist clearly has a big house, a successful job, and a picture-perfect family, he keeps striving for more. He's also unhappy about the fact that his father, elderly and rather alone, having been evicted from his council estate flat because the city council is planning to upgrade his building, would rather move back home to Pakistan than let his son buy him somewhere to live in Norway. The son is frustrated because his father doesn't really seem interested in packing his remaining belongings to have them shipped to Pakistan, and keeps reminiscing about events in his childhood and adolescence that shows his disconnect both with his two very different parents, and his sense of alienation with the people he grew up with. 

As seems to be the case with me a bit too often when I read contemporary Norwegian literature, I kept reading in the hopes of finding out what the book reviewers had found so impressive, because like Shakar's other novels, this book was fairly universally well-reviewed. I suspect this may be because there are so few authors with a multicultural and immigrant background writing in our country today, so anything written about the multicultural experience must therefore be encouraged and lauded, so it doesn't become obvious just how narrow-minded and secretly prejudiced a lot of middle-class Norwegians really are. I really don't this that if this book was about a white, middle-class Norwegian dude with divorced parents who just couldn't seem to talk properly to his dad, written by a white, middle-class Norwegian dude - so many people would be raving about it. Then again, maybe it's just me who's a bit racist? I'm willing to live with that if it allows me to say that this book felt like a waste of my time. 

Judging a book by its cover: With this cover, the publisher has moved away from the design choices of the past two books, where they had a single-coloured background with some simple line drawings, choosing instead to just use the same ugly living-room decor from the early 80s twice on the cover instead. Not a fan. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR13 Book 25: "Hør Her'a!" (Listen here) by Gulraiz Sharif

Page count: 178 pages

Rating: 4 stars

CBR13 Bingo: Free (borrowed at the library)

Official book description:

It is summer vacation and fifteen-year-old Mahmoud is imagining long days on the bench outside his building with his friend, one-eyed Arif. This summer will be different, however, because the family is getting a visit from Uncle-ji from Pakistan and Mahmoud's job will be to show his uncle around. Uncle-ji is very surprised at what he sees in Norway, and what is going on with Ali, Mahmoud's little brother, who is not behaving the way boys should? Over the course of the summer vacation, Mahmoud will be tested both as a brother and son in a Pakistani family. 

Mahmoud lives in a large high rise in the east of Oslo (from his descriptions, I'm going to guess it's very near where I myself live), where the majority of the population are first, second and third-generation immigrants. He describes the strict, overworked fathers, the worried, loudly gossiping mothers, and his wishes to just take it easy over the summer until school starts again. No such luck. His father's elder brother is coming to visit them from Pakistan, leading his mother into a cleaning, cooking, and baking frenzy to prove that she is a worthy wife (something her in-laws don't seem to believe). Mahmoud's father is a taxi driver and since he doesn't have the time to show his brother the sights of Norway's capital, Mahmoud is given the job, very much against his wishes.

Mahmoud's uncle clearly comes from a very traditional Pakistani background, and initially seems very taken aback by the liberal views and attitudes of Norwegians, even those of foreign descent. As the weeks pass, he seems rather seduced by the country, though, and keeps asking Mahmoud what it would take for him to be able to move there (as Mahmoud says, with the current rather strict immigration policies towards brown people, it's not likely to happen). While Mahmoud resents his given task, to begin with, he comes to enjoy the various outings he can drag his uncle along to. He also discovers that Uncle-ji may not be as strict and conservative as he appeared at first.

Which is a good thing, because it's becoming more and more clear that Mahmoud's little brother Ali isn't like all of the other boys his age. He mostly wants to play dress-up with his mother's clothes and experiment with make-up, and could there be a different reason he loves his Disney Princess dolls than the fact that he sort of fancies the way they look? Mahmoud's father will not tolerate anything but traditional masculine behaviours from his two sons, so a worried Mahmoud, aided by his mother, tries to cover up Ali's actions as much as possible. But it's proving to be more challenging than Mahmoud was prepared for and his little brother is clearly miserable. What's a guy to do?

I really don't read a lot of Norwegian (which is absurd, as I teach it every year), and when I do, it's usually a book that is relevant to my teaching in some way. This book, which has become a bestselling publishing sensation had me laughing out loud so hard I nearly fell off the sofa within its first few pages, because Mahmoud, our narrator is a very funny guy and has a very honest view of what he feels about Norwegian society, the way he is treated as compared to those born in Norway with white skin and a Scandinavian-sounding name. He also keeps speaking directly to conservative politicians like our current prime minister, Erna Solberg, to offer his opinions about her politics (he's not a huge fan). 

I didn't actually know all that much about the novel before picking it up at the library. I thought it was just going to be a rather humorous tale about a minority background youth growing up in the east of Oslo, and by all means, it is that. I was not prepared for the fairy serious LGBTQIA-heavy subplot that emerges and is dealt with in such a sensitive and insightful (as it appears to me, certainly) way. There is a high chance that we will be using this book as part of our curriculum in 10th grade next year, and if so, I'm really looking forward to teaching it. 

Judging a book by its cover: Considering that this is a YA novel written by a minority background Norwegian immigrant, which seems to be targeting teenage boys as part of its core audience, I'm surprised at how unassuming and neutral the book cover they've chosen for this is. I suspect the rather plain mono-coloured background with a picture of a high rise is in part inspired by the most successful "immigrant narrative" in Norway in the last decade, Tante Ulrikkes vei. There are a lot of similarities, but as someone who teaches teenagers, the majority of whom happen to be of the boy variety at the moment, I'm pretty sure none of them would voluntarily pick this book up because of the cover. This seems like a missed opportunity by the publishers, really. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read 

#CBR13 Books 22-23: "Eg snakkar om det heile tida" by Camara Lundestad Joof and "Ikkje ver redd sånne som meg" by Sumaya Jirde Ali

Eg snakkar om det heile tida (I talk about it all the time)

Page count: 94 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Official book description:

I call a friend. 

Did the man in the bar call me a black b*tch when I didn't want to give him my number? That time we had arranged to drink beer, but we drank tequila instead?

She goes quiet.

No. He called you the n-word.

Thank you, I say. Thank you for remembering.

I talk about it all the time is a witness statement, an appeal and a personal examination. Camara Lundestad Joof is born in Norway, with a Norwegian mother and Gambian father. This book describes how the racism she constantly experiences infects her everyday life and controls her thoughts. She searches her memories. What if she remembers something incorrectly, how will anyone believe her? How many details do you have to remember to seem credible? Does she believe in herself? And can she ever be free of the question of skin colour?

Ms. Joof is a stage performer and dramatist who works with documentary stage shows and deals with intersectionality, de-colonialism, and the criticism of common societal norms. While she is born and raised in Norway, and her mother is Norwegian, she has faced absolutely staggering acts of racism for much of her life. This short work of non-fiction is a series of short vignettes, some only a paragraph or two long, some covering a few pages, where she gives the reader insight into only a selection of all the 

insults, slurs, prejudice and micro-aggressions she faces on a daily basis.

I read this essay collection as part of my job, as we Norwegian teachers were looking for short and engaging texts in "nynorsk", a written variant of Norwegian that secondary and high school kids here are required to learn. For those students who don't live in one of the geographical areas where the language variant is the majority written language, there tends to be a lot of complaints and grumbling, and getting the pupils motivated to learn and write gets harder with each passing year, as English becomes more and more dominant in society. Nevertheless, the excerpts we used from this collection certainly sparked a lot of discussions, and also gave a lot of our minority background kids a chance to talk about difficult and unpleasant experiences they, friends or family members have faced over the course of their young lives. 

While I was able to borrow this book for free through the school, I bought my own copy, as I was deeply affected by Ms. Joof's words and her understandable anger, sense of despair and just disappointment that despite not ever wanting to, she keeps having to "talk about" new racist and prejudical experiences all the time. While Norway is a wonderful place to live in many ways, we have a long way to go when it comes to dealing with racism.

Ikkje ver redd sånne som meg (Don't be afraid of people like me)

Page count: 92 pages

Rating: 3.5 stars

Official book description: 

"It's only now, as a twenty-year-old, that I understand how crushing the 22nd of July was to me. To my identity. I was thirteen years old, and I did not escape the political. I carried it with my entire being"

Sumaya Jirde Ali came to Bodø (in the North of Norway) as a child and was treated like everyone else, she felt that she belonged. In this book she recounts the carefree days of her childhood. She tells about the schock when she heard about the terrorist attack in Oslo on the 22nd of July 2011 and what it did to change her self image and beliefs about belonging. She describes the feelings of shame and self contempt, of becoming dehumanised, and the need to belong. We also get insights into what she does to counteract hate, keep her spirits up and stand up for what she believes. 

I read this back in April (yup, that's how far behind I am on my reviews right now) and it feels very strange to review only a few days after the tenth anniversary of the terrible tragedy that features so prominently in this little book. As a teenager, Ms. Ali, whether she wanted to or not, was forced to face up to the knowledge that Anders Bering Breivik, the white supremacist who ended up killing a total of 77 (8 with a bomb in the centre of the Oslo government district, 69 at Utøya, a small island where the Labour Party Youth Association were having their annual summer camp) did it because he believed it was wrong for Norway to accept immigrants like her and others like her. While this horrific terrorist attack was so shocking and devastating to the Norwegian public, this book highlights how much worse it must have been for people with an immigrant background. Ms. Ali came to Norway as a young child, her family were refugees, she didn't ask to move here. However, after the events in July 2011, despite a relatively idyllic childhood in the North of Norway, she very much did not want to stay here. She had terrible guilt, just because of her immigrant status and the colour of her skin. 

 

As someone not directly affected by the terrorist attack, it's staggering to me how many people had their lives irrevocably changed by it, and still deal with the aftermath. Ms. Ali eventually accepted that her family were not going to listen to her pleas about moving back to Somalia, and got involved in public debates and tried to make a difference with her life - which sadly has led to her facing a lot of harassment in public and online. Like Ms. Joof, she's had to have police protection on occasion, and she admits to now having several mental health issues, anxiety among them, because of all the verbal persecution she has faced. 

Both of these books are short essay collections as part of a series called Norsk Røyndom, which translates as Norwegian secrets. The series asked a number of prominent members of society from a number of minority and discriminated groups to write and tell their stories. As well as these books about racism and racial harassment, there are books covering disability, LGBT+ issues, religion in modern society and other kinds of otherness in Norway today. It's a very informative and interesting project and I suspect I will seek out more after seeing the high quality of these two books. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read. 

#CBR11 Book 42: "The Bride Test" by Helen Hoang

Page count: 320 pages
Rating: 4 stars

From Goodreads:
Khai Diep has no feelings. Well, he feels irritation when people move his things or contentment when ledgers balance down to the penny, but not big, important emotions—like grief. And love. He thinks he’s defective. His family knows better—that his autism means he just processes emotions differently. When he steadfastly avoids relationships, his mother takes matters into her own hands and returns to Vietnam to find him the perfect bride.

As a mixed-race girl living in the slums of Ho Chi Minh City, Esme Tran has always felt out of place. When the opportunity arises to come to America and meet a potential husband, she can’t turn it down, thinking this could be the break her family needs. Seducing Khai, however, doesn’t go as planned. Esme’s lessons in love seem to be working…but only on herself. She’s hopelessly smitten with a man who’s convinced he can never return her affection.

With Esme’s time in the United States dwindling, Khai is forced to understand he’s been wrong all along. And there’s more than one way to love. 

This novel has an unusual and interesting concept for a story. There is the autistic hero - which you don't see too often in romance. The only book I can remember reading with one was The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie, which I really didn't like much at all. Obviously, in Helen Hoang's previous novel, The Kiss Quotient, the heroine is on the autism spectrum. Khai, the hero of this book, is the cousin of Michael (the hero of The Kiss Quotient). 

It's very difficult for me to say how authentic Khai is as an example of someone on the autism spectrum, but since this is an #Ownvoices story, and the author became really huge with The Kiss Quotient, I cannot imagine she hasn't done her research properly. While Khai frequently struggles with social interaction, he's clearly not someone to really be pitied and he's clearly doing excellently business wise. One of the things I like about the book is that we never actually have it confirmed just how wealthy and successful Khai is, it's all just hinted at.

We also have an immigrant heroine, from a very poor background, in a situation that veers closely towards the arranged marriage trope. Esme (this is the Westernised name our heroine gives herself, because her favourite Disney movie is The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Her Vietnamese name is given as M. From now on I will refer to her as M/Esme.) works at a cleaner at a fancy hotel. She lives with her mother and grandmother, as well as her little girl, and everyone (except the child) has to work hard to make ends meet. The amount of money Khai's mother is willing to pay her, even if she never makes a match with her son, is staggering. M/Esme would be able to secure a much better life for her child and extended family, especially if she gets a job while in the States (which she insists on, as she doesn't want to be useless and a burden). M/Esme also has a vague hope of being able to track down her own father, who may or may not be connected with Stanford university in some way.

There are huge cultural and social differences between the main couple. The whole book is pretty much nothing but misunderstandings from either side. Yet while something like that could annoy the crap out of me in a different book, here it's entirely understandable, as the couple are separated by background, culture, language - one of them is neuro divergent, the other is desperately trying to rise above her lack of education and impoverished background. Early on, M/Esme lies and claims to have a background in accounting, because a successful, handsome man like Khai couldn't possibly come to love her if he knew she was just a hotel maid. She works diligently not just to learn English as perfectly as possible during her stay, but also starts taking evening classes to make the lie a reality.

M/Esme is the real star of this story, she's such a fierce, wonderful, determined heroine. Even when she's desperately poor, she has morals and while she keeps her daughter a secret from Khai's mother and Khai himself for much of the book, she feels so guilty about it. She also makes it clear early on that she is not a prostitute and that Khai needs to be a willing suitor, she's not going to lie and manipulate him, just because Khai's mother wants him to get married. It made me sad that M/Esme always took pretty much every misunderstanding between her and  Khai as criticism of her and her background, but also served to make her all the more determined to make something more of herself.

I would say that more important than the actual romance in this book is M/Esme's journey of self discovery. Her learning to appreciate her self worth, that even if she's a poor, uneducated single mother from a small Vietnamese village, she deserves respect, love and happiness. She works so hard to make herself something, setting an example for her daughter. The sections where she thinks about her little girl or talks to her over the phone, broke my heart a little bit.

Is it always going to be like this when I read or watch TV and movies now? Because I have a child of my own, I'm going to find stories of motherhood and especially mothers sacrificing for their children, so incredibly painful. M/Esme has recurring nightmares about her daughter's father (who has a rich wife) showing up and taking the little girl away from her. She really has no choice but to leave her daughter for a few months, but I still found it difficult to read about, in a way I can't remember feeling before I had a little boy of my own.

In the afterword, Ms. Hoang says this story is inspired by her mother, who came to America after the Vietnam war and worked tirelessly to create a future for herself, her family and her future children. I cannot imagine a better tribute to what sounds like a very impressive woman. Hoang also confesses that M/Esme wasn't initially meant to be the heroine, but the third in the love triangle who lost out, so to speak. I'm so glad she changed her mind and the story, because while Khai was perfectly fine, M/Esme is who made the entire book for me.

Of the two books Ms. Hoang has written so far, this is now my favourite. The next book in the series is going to be about Khai's non-neuro divergent brother, who plays an important supporting part in this one. I don't think Helen Hoang has proven herself worthy of my pre-order list yet, but if her third novel is as satisfying, she won't be far off.

Judging a book by its cover: There seems to be a trend at the moment for a lot of "mainstream" contemporary romance to be packaged with illustrated covers, which sometimes works better than others. It can sometimes come off as a bit too twee, but I really like this one. The warm yellow background, the woman intently studying. The whimsical aeroplanes and their trails across the page, with the most prominent making a heart-shape. It makes me happy to look at and that's not a bad thing at all.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR10 Book 99: "Tante Ulrikkes vei" by Zeshan Shakar

Page count: 432 pages
Rating: 4 stars

#CBR10Bingo: Home, Something, Home (this book is set at Stovner in Oslo, three stops away from where I live on the metro. It also concerns exactly the sort of pupils that I teach.)

Two youths, both living in the same tower block in a suburb on the east side of Oslo, in Stovner (where the large majority of inhabitants are immigrants or the children of immigrants). They start out going to the same high school. Starting in the year 2000, the framing device consists of these two teenagers, later young men, being asked to take part in a social studies survey, to map out the formative conditions for children and teens in these eastern suburbs, where the social divide between the white inhabitants of Norwegian descent and the poorer residents (mostly from minority language backgrounds, either first or second generation immigrants from the Middle East, South Asia and/or African countries) keeps getting bigger and more pronounced.

Mohammed ("It is tradition to name the first born Mohammed, and the Prophet is revered by all Muslims, but really, if they are so concerned with me going out and getting a good job and everything, I'm not entirely sure why they would give me that name"), who goes by Mo, writes his answers to the survey as e-mails. He is articulate, intelligent, rather shy and does very well in school. His parents have extremely high expectations of him, and early on, at least, they seem well on course to being fulfilled. Mo does well enough at high school that he wins a special scholarship, established for academically gifted children of immigrants, enabling him to go to University. He even gets to shake the prime minister's hand during the scholarship ceremony.

Our second protagonist, Jamal, doesn't really like to write, so he records his answers on tapes that are sent to the researcher in pre-paid envelopes. His answers are informal, irreverent, full of vernacular slang - a sociolect. His father is out of the picture, after a history of domestic violence. There's just him, his increasingly depressed and ineffectual mother and his much younger little brother, whom Jamal has to step up and help raise. He has to take him to nursery every day and pick him up in the afternoons. He does most of the shopping, and even occasionally attends meetings at the nursery, and later his little brother's school, because his mother isn't really up to the job. While he complains in his reports, he doesn't do it too loudly and swears the researcher to secrecy - no one wants the state to come and take his brother away from the family. After years of struggling through primary and secondary school and getting nowhere, only to find things harder and even more frustrating in high school, one day he has enough and just quits. He gets a job washing cars at a local garage, and is initially, at least, happy to be earning money.

The book follows these two young men over a period of about six years. We see how they view the world, and how they feel about the attitudes towards immigrants prevalent in society. We learn about their hopes, their dreams, their fears and how they feel about their families. Mo studies statistics and economics at the University of Oslo and loves it (at least to begin with). Jamal works at the car wash, gets stoned with his friends, listens to rap music and wants to be a gangster. At the same time, however, he's doing his best to make sure his little brother is fed and that the staff at nursery and later, school, doesn't report that the boy has problems speaking and occasionally wets himself when he's nervous. Jamal gets frustrated at his mother's refusal to be a proper parent.

In addition to winning a prestigious literary award for debutant writers, Tante Ulrikkes vei (the address of the tower block that both the protagonists live in) has sold a phenomenal amount of copies in Norway. A crowd funding effort has ensured that every member of Parliament receives their own copy (which is good, because far too many politicians have no idea what the day to day life of some of the poorer kids in the "wrong part of town" is actually like). It has garnered rave reviews in pretty much everywhere, and once I started reading, I could easily see why. Not only is it a very engaging and well-written book, it's so incredibly important, because the politicians in Parliament are not the only ones who could use an insight in what growing up as the child of immigrants, especially in a both socially and economically disadvantaged families.

Mo's family are not exactly poor, but various circumstances mean they need to rely on support from the government to get by. Tuition fees at Norwegian colleges and universities are less than what it costs to buy a 30-day travel ticket on Oslo public transport, but the scholarship Mo receives allows him to focus entirely on his studies, without needing to work part-time on the side (something he initially suggests doing, but his father is vehemently against. Nothing should take the focus away from his studies, the rest of the family will get by with less, if it means making sure Mo has what he needs at Uni.

Jamal's family, on the other hand, sometimes barely have the money to pay rent and/or get groceries. While he's still in high school, he gets a small stipend to help him, but once he drops out, Jamal has to get a job to help supplement his mother's increasingly meagre benefits. Due to the stigma surrounding mental illness and the fear of child protective services, Jamal and his mother work very hard to hide just how dismal the family's home life actually is, and due to the very poor communication between school, social services and others who could get clued in and intervene (probably making the lives of both Jamal and his brother much better), nothing really changes. For a brief while, Jamal is promised help from a discretionary fund at the local mosque, but after some negative press articles, the mosque loses its additional funding, and it all comes to naught.

Both youths struggle with their families' and society's expectations of them. They are children of immigrants, growing up in Norway, bombarded with two very different and often disparate cultures. Representation is hugely important in fiction, and the two protagonists in this novel could not feel more real to me. In my ten years as a teacher in the Oslo educational system, teaching kids mainly from the east side of the city, I have met several examples of both of these boys. I have seen these kids graduate our secondary school several times.

Some are academically gifted and do well, fulfilling their families' hopes and expectations. Some are gifted and can't take the pressure, dropping out and struggling. Some are like Jamal, functionally illiterate, abrasive, taught to feel inferior and like losers from an early age, because they cannot keep up with the increasingly harder demands both of what they're to learn and how they're to behave in school. They are naturally fed up, and many (especially the boys) drop out of school. Yet others, who get sufficient support, either at school or from other places, manage to find the motivation and eventually mature enough to apply themselves, and end up doing well. I'm never happier than when I meet a former student of mine, often the ones who were very challenging and seen as "trouble", very much like Jamal in this book, and can catch up with them about how they are doing - which tends to be very well indeed.

As of yet, this book is not available in English, but I've read several articles telling me that it will be. There will be an area (or areas) like Stovner, and kids like Mo and Jamal in most cities in most countries around the world. While this book is set in Oslo, the themes it covers are universal.

Judging a book by its cover: The cover is a sort of a pinkish beige, almost the colour of a pale brick. It's very simplistic, with a cover drawing that looks pretty much like something a child would draw if asked what their house looked like. We see a tower block and a small swing set. The rest is blank, except for the title of the novel, which is printed on what looks to be a street sign. This is a novel that has sold on word of mouth, not exactly because of the flashy cover design.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR9 Book 83: "The Sun is Also a Star" by Nicola Yoon

Page count: 384 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Natasha is desperately trying to keep her family from being deported, after her father, an illegal immigrant got a DUI and attracted the police's attention. She's been in the USA since she was six and barely remembers her life back in Jamaica anymore. She's doing well in school and loves science and technology. She certainly doesn't believe in love at first sight, or fated mates or fairytale endings. Even after she meets Daniel on a crowded New York street and he insists that they are meant to be.

Daniel's parents are immigrants from South Korea and he's never stepped a foot out of line, being the well-behaved younger son. Now he's on his way to an admissions interview to get into a college he doesn't really want to go to. He'd much rather live out his dream, writing poetry, but then his parents are likely to disown him. He sees Natasha in a crowd and is instantly struck by her. He insists he can make her fall in love with him over the course of a day, but that means they need to spend the whole day together.

I finished this book at the end of August, before my social media feeds and all the newspapers became full of the disastrous news that the Trump administration plans to terminate the DACA program. I read the book because it fit into my Monthly Keyword Challenge, but it turns out that I possibly couldn't have chosen a better time to read and review this book. Reading about the desperate plight of a daughter of illegal immigrants, who never had a choice about coming to the US, trying her very best to avoid being deported was affecting enough before I knew that hundreds of thousands of young people were facing the same terrifying fate.

Earlier this year, I read Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon and liked it, but this book deals with much more serious concerns. There is a bit of a fairytale quality to Natasha and Daniel's coincidental meeting and adventures on the New York streets - can two people actually fall in love over the course of a day and do they stand a chance when their families are clearly going to be against their relationship, even if Natasha actually does succeed and her family gets to stay in the country?

Yet part of what Yoon explores in this book is coincidences and the strange ways in which lives are connected in this great big universe. How lives touch each other in big or small way, and how one momentary decision or action can have wider repercussions for so many other people. As well as including chapters from Natasha and Daniel's points of view, we get the story of how Daniel's parents came to America, how Nathasha's father's life turned out completely different from what he expected. There are chapters giving us insight into the life of the security guard who Natasha has met multiple times when trying to get her case changed, and a number of other people, whose lives are in some way affected by either of the teenagers or people around them.

While this book absolutely qualifies as a romance, it covers a number of themes, one of the more serious of which is obviously immigration, both legal and illegal. Daniel's family don't need to worry about sudden arrest and deportation, but as the son of two ambitious immigrants, it's difficult for Daniel to forge his own path, without disappointing his parents, who worked so hard to give him the best possible life. There are Natasha's mother, who has to work two jobs to support her family, and Natasha's father, who dreams of being an actor and has had to realise that his dreams are unlikely to ever come true.

While I had little interest to see the movie adaptation of Everything, Everything, a quick internet search confirms that this book is also being adapted, and this is a story I think would work really well on the screen. Based on the two novels of hers I've now read, I am absolutely going to keep an eye on anything else Ms. Yoon publishes. She's an excellent YA author.

Judging a book by its cover: The cover image is actually made up of tons of different coloured yarn and made by designer Dominique Falla. As one of the underlying themes of the book is exactly how people connect and change impact on each other's lives in big or small ways throughout life, the web with so many different coloured strands is really cool and rather unusual. The colours chosen are all really vibrant and draw the eye in a good way as well.

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

#CBR5 Book 39. "Ett öga rött" (One Eye Red) by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

Page count: 252 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Halim is a teenager in Stockholm, who feels as if he's in opposition to everything and everyone. When he's told the Arabic lessons in school have to stop because of funding cuts, he shows his displeasure by covering the school toilets in graffiti. His father, who runs shop selling a little bit of everything,  worries about his academic progress and stresses the importance of speaking good Swedish if he wants to make something of himself. Both feel the loss of Halim's mother, who died a few years back, greatly. They both try to be supportive of their friend, Nourdine, a washed up actor who's convinced he's just the right interview away from a big break.

Ett öga rött is one of the books I have to read for my Norwegian course, and it's an important and representative example of the sort of migration literature that second and third generation immigrants have written in Scandinavia in the last few decades. While this book is about a second generation teen in Stockholm, his struggle to reconcile the various sides of his identity, and figure out what he wants from life, is just as applicable to immigrants in Norway (which is why we're reading it for my course). A lot of the issues raised in this book are things I see several of my pupils experiencing as well.

Khemiri uses language very deliberately, writing in a broken Swedish that reflects the language and syntax Halim feels most comfortable with. The book is structured as a diary, written in a notebook Halim is given by an elderly family friend, who's the closest thing Halim has to a maternal figure, and who tries to encourage his patriotism towards all things Arabic. It's also made clear from parts of the narrative, that Halim could write syntactically correct Swedish if he wanted to, but he chooses to write the way he does in protest of the oppressive forces who are trying integrate him against his will, by serving fish sticks in the cafeteria, slanting the media against all things Arabic and blaming financial difficulties for the school's cut backs.

A very insightful and engaging novel, showing the development of Halim over the course of his final year of secondary school. His two closest male role models, his father and Nourdine, are both wonderful supporting characters. It's clear that a lot of the turmoil Halim feels, is because of the loss of his mother, and the fact that he and his father rarely speak about the things that really matter to both of them. It probably helps that the protagonist so closely reminds me of several of the boys I've taught over the years, and I recognise a lot of his attitude in the kids I see in my work. One of my favourite course books that I've read this year.

CBR3 Book 8: "Brick Lane" by Monica Ali

Publisher: Black Swan
Page count: 496 pages
Rating: 1 star
Date begun: January 29th, 2011
Date finished: January 30th, 2011

Brick Lane was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003. It's an international bestseller and was turned into a movie in 2007. It's been sitting on my shelf since 2004, and has been moved with my stuff from Scotland to Norway. It was Monica Ali's debut novel, and the cover and first three-four pages are covered with quotes from rave reviews from literary critics on both sides of the Atlantic. I'm wondering if they read the same book as me, but more on that later.

Nazneen is born in a small village in Bangladesh in 1967 and at first appears to be stillborn. She miraculously draws breath and starts screaming after a minute or two, but refuses to nurse for the first five days of her existence. Her mother is determined to leave her to her Fate, rather than interfering with said Fate and taking the baby to the nearest hospital. After five days, the baby finally starts eating, and Nazneen is told throughout her childhood and adolescence in rural Bangladesh that she must never stand in the way of her Fate, but calmly accept all life throws at her. Her younger sister, the beautiful Hasina has no intention of accepting the traditional path her parents have planned for her, and runs off with the nephew of the village's saw-mill owner to make a love marriage. Shortly after, eighteen-year-old Nazneen is married off to a fat stranger twenty years her elder. Having been raised to be compliant, she doesn't protest, even when he takes her far away to London, England.

Nazneen knows no English and spends most of the early days of her arranged marriage confined to a council flat, cleaning, dusting and cooking. Her husband fancies himself a great scholar, with a degree in English literature from Dhaka University. He occasionally has the local doctor over for dinner, and is sure he will be promoted in his job soon, as he has a much better education than many of his colleagues. Nazneen treasures each new English word she learns as a gem, and founds diversion from her monotonous life by watching glamorous figure skaters on the TV occasionally. She is aware that she is lucky - her husband doesn't hit her, and buys her new saris or anything else she might want, but neither does he understand why she'd want to learn to speak English or leave the confines of the council estate once in a while.

Years pass, Nazneen becomes the mother of two girls, and gets to know most of the the other housewives in the Bangladeshi community near London's Brick Lane well. Her husband is still full of dreams and schemes for making enough money to take the family back "home" to Bangladesh, where the girls can be raised the "proper" way, without all the influence of English society. Nazneen, despite her quiet discontent, is aware that she is much better off than her sister Hasina, who keeps writing every so often. Her love marriage didn't turn out well and as the years go by she ends up worse and worse. Nazneen tries to get enough money put aside to send to her sister, but it's difficult when her own family barely has enough to get by on, and her husband won't let his wife break with tradition and get a job as well.

This book is nearly 500 pages long. It's a very detailed description of immigrant life in London from the 1980s to early 2002, and shows the many difficulties faced by young women brought over from "the old country" through arranged marriages. The meal Nazneen cooks, the clothes she wears, the contents of the flat she lives in, the council estate, Brick Lane and all the people in Nazneen's life are described in painstaking detail. The letters from Hasina are written with a limited vocabulary and poor grammar, which again adds authenticity, but also makes them (at least for me, an English teacher) painfully difficult to read without getting a headache. Despite the great attention to detail and local colour, I found the book dreadfully dull.

I shall from now on think of Brick Lane as the literary equivalent of Woody Allen's film Match Point, which was also lauded by critics everywhere, and which nearly bored me to tears. I'm still convinced all those enthusiastic movie critic saw a different Match Point from me, one that was actually worth all those rave reviews. Same with this - perhaps all those book reviewers read a different book, coincidentally called Brick Lane, which was not a dreary 500-page slog. This book is being donated to charity as soon as possibly, as I'm definitely never reading it again, and I won't have it taking up precious book shelf space any longer either.