Book Report 9

War Child by Emmanuel Jal

This is Jal’s story of growing up during the Sudanese Civil War as a child soldier.  Unlike the typical tale of abduction and forced service, Jal’s father was a rebel commander who sent him to a training camp, and Jal was an eager participant until a particularly brutal raid made him recoil.  A British aid worker formed a relationship with Jal and helped him to start a new life in Kenya before being killed in an auto accident.  Instead of telling a rosy rags-to-riches story, Jal is honest about his struggles on the road to rehabilitation, which made his story more believable.  Still, it does have a happy “ending”, with Jal’s rap career allowing him to perform with Peter Gabriel and other noted musicians at the Live 8 aid concert.

IQ84 by Haruki Murakami

Originally published as three separate books in Japan, I avoided this book for a long time due to its length despite having really enjoyed the other two books I’ve read by Murkami, Kafka on the Shore and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle.  All of his books begin with scenarios that seem grounded in reality and slowly devolve into fantasy.  While I usually don’t enjoy fantasy, I think it’s his compelling description of his characters that leads me to make an exception for Murakami.  This book alternates the chapters with the tales of two characters whose stories seem unrelated but whose paths are eventually linked through their relationship to a bizarre pseudo-religious cult.  I spent entire days of the end of my pregnancy devouring this book, so it didn’t seem so long after all.

Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding

I don’t know many women my age who didn’t eagerly devour Bridget Jones Diary, and even they probably saw the film.  I also read Fielding’s non-Jones-oriented books and found them entertaining, so I was checking Amazon before this book was even published.  It follows Bridget into her 40s as the mum of two small children, which like me, probably made the book less relatable to some of the readers who felt like Bridget’s story was their own in the original books.  Whereas Bridget’s adventures were somewhat exceptional in the early books, her conversations and actions in this book seemed to exceed the bounds of possible reality.  While it was a fun, throwaway read, I wouldn’t necessarily recommend it to even the most hard-core Bridget fan.  Then again, I read it in the hospital and during feeds in the first days home with Genevieve, so it’s possible my sour outlook is tinged by sleep deprivation.

The Book of Margery Kempe by Margery Kempe

I’ll be honest that I only made it half-way through this book, but I include it here because I found it interesting despite not being able to finish it.  Margery’s book is the first autobiographical account recorded in English, which is even more revolutionary given that she was female.  Although her father was mayor of her English town and well-respected, like most women (and people more generally) born in 1373, Margery was unable to read or write.  As such, her story was dictated to monks who were devoted to telling the world about her piety, which lead her to sob uncontrollably for hours at the thought of Christ’s birth or the passion, and her personal relationship with Jesus, which was creepily described with strong sexual overtones – bride of Christ indeed!  After bearing 13 children and then receiving a message from God that she should no longer have sexual relations with her husband (no kidding!), she made pilgrimages all over Europe and even to Jerusalem trusting the kindness of strangers.  Hilariously, she keeps giving away the money she borrows to the poor, which really irritates her debtors.  The flowery early writing style and what passed for good Christian behaviour (sobbing more so than helping others) make the book interesting, but at half-way through I found her adventures seemed to repeat themselves, and I could understand why her travelling companions kept abandoning her for being so sanctimonious and weepy.

By Myself and Then Some by Lauren Bacall

It’s funny how I lump everyone who appeared in a black-and-white film in the same era, when in reality Bacall grew up idolizing Bette Davis and saw Casablanca in the cinema when she was 17 years old.  She makes light of hardships as a child of single mother but is refreshingly honest about her struggles to enter the theatre with no experience and minimal training.  Her voice is direct and disarming, and I kept reading a number of times when I really should have been napping.  I was left wanting to watch every old Bacall and Bogart film, which has to be a positive review.

The Transition to Parenthood: How a First Child Changes a Marriage (Why Some Couples Grow Closer and Others Apart) by Jay Belsky, PhD and John Kelly

This book was a gift from one of my mothers-in-law, Anne, who is a family counsellor.  Belsky carried out an extensive longitudinal study of first-time parents, focusing on the first year but following up through the child’s seventh birthday.  From this study, he identified six variables that tended to impact whether the parents’ relationship improved, maintained, or declined: self-awareness of each parent, communication skills, realism of expectations of parenthood, gender ideology (whether both parents shared an ideology, rather than there being a “correct” ideology), emotionality/positivity, and social support.  He illustrates how these variables play out by describing his interactions with three very different couples, which makes it a compelling read, although I would hate to be one of the couples whose dirty laundry is aired in such detail!  Nothing in the findings in the book were particularly surprising, but I found reading it an extremely valuable reminder of some of the behaviours I could control that could impact how Eric and I come out of this year.  There are lots of things I know I should do but still tend to do otherwise because it’s easier; a gentle reminder to be more mindful about my words and actions is always appreciated.

Having a Child Without Losing Yourself by Amy Richards

Richards defines herself as a feminist and is so labelled by the media, and this book presents her thoughts on how pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing can be approached from a feminist perspective.  The book was also a gift from Anne, one of my mothers-in-law, and I was interested to read it from the moment I read Gloria Steinem’s endorsement on the cover: “If Amy Richards’s example and writing had been around earlier even I might have had children.”  Hearing Steinem speak during my Master’s program was electrifying, and I think many would be surprised to know that her remarks centred around more rights and social acceptance of active parenting for fathers as critical to achieving gender equality. 

Similar to what I expect Steinem would promote, Richards primarily argues that feminism should mean greater acceptance of a range of choices for women in all of these areas, rather than a militant adherence to a set of proscribed “feminist” choices, which seems a sane argument to me.  Frankly, I didn’t even realise that the feminist community had weighed in on issues like IVF or foetal testing.  As someone who identifies strongly with that community, it was brave of Richards to go into detail about why she chose to behave contrary to feminist “rules” on some of these issues.  While I found her arguments a bit loosely supported in some areas, and some of her chapters seemed to jump from topic to topic without a clear trajectory, she presented some facts of which I was unaware and some perspectives that I just hadn’t ever considered.