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It’s Christmas and I’m probably not the only person who will be
doing some 11th hour shopping for Christmas gifts. So to those of
you who haven’t even started looking for gifts, and whose budgets
are affected by the global financial crunch, try any of these great
paperbacks: A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Never Let
Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro and Strawberry Fields by Marina Lawycka. I
found them all in National Bookstore in Cebu City at a little over
P300 each.
Few of my friends read novels. In fact I have
the impression that they consider it waste of time to read fiction.
But a good novel can lighten up the corners of the mind that are
left unused in the course of regular work and chores. It creates a
new universe, new perspectives and new possibilities. A good novel
tickles, stimulates and challenges the reader. With a great book as
your companion you can explore depths of your mind and soul that you
didn’t even know existed.
A Thousand Splendid Suns is about Afghanistan.
Khaled Hosseini takes us through the modern history of Afghanistan
by telling us the stories of Mariam and Laila. This is about
loveless marriage, domestic violence, hunger, death, war, war and
more war, but it is also about human dignity that survives,
affection that develops despite the devastating hardships. The
description of life—especially for women—during the Taliban rule
is painful, though the book does not pass judgment. Every regime,
every policy, every opinion and action is a result of something that
came before it. One can only wish peace for Afghanistan and its
much-tried people.
Never Let Me Go is a strange story of human
beings created for the purpose of donating organs. This is revealed
slowly only, and the reader is often left confused. However, this is
a story of love and loss—and the strange, creepy underlying
reality for the characters in the book simply a way of showing that
many of us are like them—either driving from place to place
without actually getting anywhere or simply waiting for the end to
come to us because we think there is nothing else to do. “ . . .
and though the tears rolled down my face, I wasn’t sobbing or out
of control. I just waited a bit, then turned back to the car, to
drive off to wherever it was I was supposed to be,” Kathy narrates
having lost the love of her life. Never Let Me Go is a
thought-provoking book for adults whose lives appear busy and
complete, but might not be the meaningful lives that we could have
chosen.
Marina Lewycky’s Strawberry Fields is a witty
account of one of today’s human tragedies: the exploitation of
foreign migrant workers in Western Europe. This story, which will
make you laugh and cry, is told by its various protagonists,
including a dog named Dog. Irina and Andriy, both from Ukraine, are
in England to earn good money and find the bowler-hat wearing
English gentleman and sports car-driving blond girl of their dreams.
Of course, they end up finding each other! This is a story of white
slavery, broken dreams, and gross exploitation, inhumane, sickening
working conditions and animal cruelty so that Western consumers can
get the cheapest consumer goods. “The cages are filling up; the
captive chickens, exhausted with terror, tremble and cluck
hopelessly, covered in the excrement of the newly captured birds
still flapping and struggling above them. After a couple of hours
enough of the chickens have been caged that [the migrant workers]
can begin to see the floor of the barn. It is a reeking wasteland of
sawdust, urine, and feces in which injured and ammonia-blinded birds
are staggering around.”
A real life story of an immigrant is that of
Evangeline from Cebu City, and this brings me to a prospective
Christmas gift: “Sandbox” by The Collectibles. Evangeline met
her British-American husband in 1986 while she was working as a
nurse in New York City. Their son Colin is guitarist and vocalist of
this alternative folk pop rock band. The album isn’t yet available
here in the Philippines but check out The Collectibles, Boston,
Massachusetts, on www.myspace.com. Who knows, with the growing
popularity of The Collectibles in America, the band, with its
half-Filipino front figure, might perform in the Philippines some
day soon.
opinion@manilatimes.net
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