CBR18 Book 7: "The Galaxy, and the Ground Within" by Becky Chambers

Page count: 325 pages

Rating: 5 stars

Monthly Keyword Challenge 26: Ground

Nowhere Book Bingo 26: A book that came out more than 4 years ago

Defeating the Goblin TBR 26: The Gizmo Book (A Sci-fi or Dystopian book)

Reading Rainbow - Indigo cover

The planet of Gora doesn't have much to recommend itself to anyone, except as a stopover for travellers to other, more interesting parts of space. Travellers can rest, refuel, eat, restock their supplies and update any permits that might be required. It's like an interstellar truck stop between big wormholes. 

The Five-Hop One-Stop is run by Ouloo, a Laru (from the description of what the Laru looked like, I imagined a Golden Retriever with longer limbs and a long, bendable neck), and her child, Tupo. Ouloo clearly takes immense pride in catering to her guests, and has made an effort to make the Five-Hop One-Stop as comfortable for as many species who travel the galaxy as possible. She's courteous, but also curious about the various lives of the visitors who come and go. 

While Ouloo is hosting three very different guests, all there mainly to refuel and restock for a brief while, there is some sort of catastrophic event that leads a lot of the satellites around the planet to crash down, meaning all travel in and out of the planet is halted, and all communications are shut down. So for five days, Ouloo, Tupo and the three guests are stranded together at the Five-Hop One-Stop. There is Speaker, an Akarak, separated from her sickly twin sister for the first time ever. The Akarak can't breathe oxygen, so they wear space suits whenever they leave their ship. Based on the description of her species, I pictured the Akarak basically like big sloths. The second traveller, who is very distressed by not being able to travel further, is Roveg, a Quelin (seemed a bit like an armoured centipede), who has a very important appointment he needs to get to, and the delays on Gora could mean he misses his chance. The final guest is Pei, an Aeluon (they communicate in colours), who readers who have read the first book in the Wayfarers series will recognise as Captain Ashby's romantic partner. 

This book has very little plot to speak of, although there are some dramatic things that happen over the course of the five days. What the reader gets is five character studies, but that's not nothing, because Becky Chambers writes so beautifully that even five people stuck in the same place and trying their best to get along (and in the case of Speaker and Roveg, not panic about the delays) is fascinating to read, and I wouldn't have minded another hundred pages or so, especially since this is the final book in the series. While this is the fourth and final book, all the books can be read independently of each other, and work perfectly well as stand-alones.

It's difficult to pinpoint exactly what made me love this book so much. The only character who has appeared in any of Chambers' books before is Pei, and there she was a secondary character, whose point of view we were never able to share her point of view, like we do here. Yet Chambers makes you care for all of them, and become invested in their lives and futures. As is pretty much always the case, this book made me smile, and it made me cry, and I didn't really want it to end. 

Chambers doesn't appear to have published anything since the Monk & Robot novellas, which came out in 2021 and 2022. I do hope she hasn't stopped writing entirely, but whatever she is doing, I hope she is enjoying it. 

Judging a book by its cover: The UK covers for these books, with the vast views of starlit skies, are all so beautiful, and the US covers for these are so very clunky and (to me) ugly. The font, the way the images are positioned, I do not care for them. Which is why I've made sure I buy the UK editions when I have the chance. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.

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. 

#CBR12 Book 55: "Ayesha at Last" by Uzma Jalaluddin

Page count: 368 pages
Rating: 4 stars

Official book description:

Ayesha Shamsi has a lot going on. Her dreams of being a poet have been overtaken by a demanding teaching job. Her boisterous Muslim family, and numerous (interfering) aunties, are professional naggers. And her flighty young cousin, about to reject her one hundredth marriage proposal, is a constant reminder that Ayesha is still single.

Ayesha might be a little lonely, but the one thing she doesn't want is an arranged marriage. And then she meets Khalid... How could a man so conservative and judgmental (and, yes, smart and annoyingly handsome) have wormed his way into her thoughts so quickly?

As for Khalid, he's happy the way he is; his mother will find him a suitable bride. But why can't he get the captivating, outspoken Ayesha out of his mind? They're far too different to be a good match, surely...

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen must be one of the most popular classic novels to retell by modern authors. There are contemporary retellings, like Bridget Jones' Diary (the more comical), Eligible (the serious literary take), there are YA versions, like Pride and Prom and Prejudice. There are fantasy versions, like Heartstone or horror ones, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. Then there are the contemporary retellings set in different cultures than the original, like Unmarriageable; Pride, Prejudice and Other Flavors, and this one. 

Uzma Jalaluddin has set her modern retelling of the classic romance in Canada, with the headstrong and loyal Eliza Bennett becoming the hardworking Ayesha Shamsi, whose family (consisting of a grieving mother, ambitious programmer brother, and Ayesha) living with loving grandparents and feeling indebted to their richer relatives who helped them move to Canada after the unfortunate death of Ayesha's father. Because of both the financial and emotional debt to her aunt and uncle, Ayesha has trained as a teacher and is determined to make this career work, even though she struggles as a substitute teacher and her true passion is beat poetry. Having seen how much her mother still grieves the death of her father, Ayesha's not sure she ever wants to get married, but she can't help but be a bit jealous of all the attention her younger cousin (the Lydia character) is getting with her multiple suitors. 

Through a series of coincidences, Ayesha ends up being mistaken for her younger cousin when volunteering for a project at the local mosque. That's also the second time she meets Khalid, who upon their first encounter seemed cold, judgemental, and condescending. As in the original novel, the couple's first encounter is very unfortunate, and then they gradually warm up to one another once they get to know each other better. The fact that Khalid doesn't actually know Ayesha's real name and believes her to be her younger cousin definitely creates some complications as the story progresses, as does the fact that his ambitious, snobbish mother manages to manipulate the situation so that Khalid ends up engaged to Ayesha's actual cousin. 

This works well as an #ownvoices story, as Jalaluddin herself is Muslim, with great familiarity with the various cultures and traditions she's describing. She hasn't kept all of the story beats, nor all the same characters from the original novel. Ayesha has just the one brother, no sisters. The Lydia character is her rebellious cousin, not her sister. There is a Wickham parallel, who is pretty much as dastardly as his classic counterpart. The closest we get to Lady Catherine de Burgh is Khalid's mother. 

I think this book works better precisely because it doesn't try to retell Pride and Prejudice exactly, just moved to a modern, mostly Muslim environment. Jalaluddin's novel also looks at different views of what it means to be a good and dutiful daughter, the expectations of Muslim society on both men and women, the cultural clashes between different cultures in a modern city, the racism and intolerance still present towards Muslims in certain circles of Western society. 

This is Jaluluddin's debut novel, and Goodreads tells me she has a new 'rom com' loosely retelling You've Got Mail out next year. Based on this, I'll absolutely put it on my "To check out" list. 

Judging a book by its cover: I think this cover is really pretty. The golden background, the purple hijab, flowing over the page like a river, the pink lips which look good with but isn't exactly the same as the headscarf. The font used for the title. I prefer it to the alternate cover, which is pale blue. It also has a woman's head in profile, but as a dark silhouette, but neither the colour choices, nor the layout appeal to me as much. 

Crossposted on Cannonball Read.