Seven Moons of Maali Almeida: One of the Few Books I Couldn't Finish

  

When I started this exercise some weeks ago, I intended to talk about books I didn't like, as well as ones I did.  This is not supposed to be a place to do nothing but boost books, becaues there are some  out there that don't deserve a boost, in my opinion.  So this time it's the turn of The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida by Shehan Kuranatilaka.  The book was one of the New York Time's 100 Notable Books of 2022 and was on NPR's  Books We Loved list  in 2022.  What is more one of the particpants in the book discussion group I was leading at the time was extremely enthusiastic about it.  "It's so funny," she said. 

 

I didn't think so!

 

Here's the Goodreads resumé:

"Colombo, 1990. Maali Almeida, war photographer, gambler and closet queen, has woken up dead in what seems like a celestial visa office. His dismembered body is sinking in the serene Beira lake and he has no idea who killed him. In a country where scores are settled by death squads, suicide bombers and hired goons, the list of suspects is depressingly long, as the ghouls and ghosts with grudges who cluster round can attest. But even in the afterlife, time is running out for Maali. He has seven moons to contact the man and woman he loves most and lead them to the photos that will rock Sri Lanka."

 

Ordinarily I'm not bothered by a book which  begins with mysteries, where you aren't sure at all where the author is leading you, where you have to figure out what the main themes are, what the drama will be.  But this one made very little sense to me, and I found much of what was happening in the first chapters extremelyi distasteful.  Perhaps I'm too bound the culture I live in to appreciate the irony, to enjoy the satire. Whatever, this is one of the rare books I had to put aside.  One of my rules is to  give the author at least  50 pages to show me what he or she is doing, so I kept reading until I'd passed that landmark. But then I returned it to the library, glad I hadn't bought it.

 

Needless to say, I didn't put the book on the roster of the book club that season even though that one member (whose opinion I usually agreed with) urged me to.  However, I would love to hear from anyone else who found the book a good read: please give me your reasons.   

Kim Thuy and Caroline Vu: Two Very Different Novels by Vietnamese-Canadian Women

Last week the  featured  book was written by an American who fought in Vietnam.  This week let me draw your attention to two books written by women who were born in Vientam, endured part of the American war there, and then ended up in Montreal. Caroline Vu is ten years older than Kim Thuy, but both have written stunning books of life in war torn Vietnam and the immigrant experience in North America.  Both have several to their credit, but  Thuy's debut novel Ru is my favourite of her oeuvre, while the only one of Vu's that I've read so far is her latest, Catinat Boulevard.

 

Vu left  the country when she was 11: her mother, a doctor, was able to get her and her sisters to the US, and to start a new life there.  Thuy was about the same age when her family leflt, but by then Saigon had fallen.   She and her family were among the thousands of "boat people" who fled, often in small boats and always to a future that was dreadfully uncertain. Both women are well-educated: Vu is a family doctor, and Thuy is trained as a lawyer.  Each also is fluent in English, French and Vietnamese: Thuy writes for publication in French and Vu, in English.  Each has two children, and seemingly masses of energy, as witness the number of projects they have successfully undertaken.

 

It's a truism that there are many ways to tell a story, and Vu's and Thuy's stories certainly bear that out.  Despite their similarities, the manner in which each tells hers is strikingly different.  Vu's is sprawling--470 pages--and covers the lives of two women who are school friends in the last days of the old Vietnam, plus the life of the son which one of them has with an African-American GI.   It begins in the 1960s and ends in 2020.  Along the way it deals with pedophilia, begging children, racism, Agent Orange, Communist re-education. and much more.

 

Thuy's book, on the other hand, is spare and poetic.  The trials that the family (modelled on her own, it seems) go through are harrowing, but the message at the end is upbeat.  The family may have to work in the fields in Quebec for a spell, but they have unquestionably found a better place for themselves.

 

Which is better? Hard to say, depends in part on how you like your fiction--long narratives, or short distillations of experience.  Perhaps the best thing for you is to read both and decide...

 

Is the Lesson to Draw from Tim O'Brien That Hope Is the Most Important Thing to Carry?

When I was working on the final chapters of my book Before We Forget: How Remembering Will Get Us through the Next 75 Years, I struggled with what I was going to tell people to do to prepare for tough times ahead. The book was supposed to be a hopeful one, laying out the predicament we're in now, but showing ways that we can approach the future and make sure that our civilizations survive. I knew I had to also give some advice on what to have ready to take with us as we go forward.

It took me a while, but finally I decided a good place to begin was Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried. The collection of inter-connected short stories is considered one of the very best books about the Vietnam War.
O’Brien starts the book by detailing the things carried by a group of soldiers as they fought in the country’s jungles. Some things were linked to their previous lives: Lieutenant Jimmy Cross kept letters from a girl he hoped to love folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack. Other things the soldiers carried were determined by necessity or near-necessity: can openers, pocketknives, dog tags, mosquito repellent, chewing gum, C-rations, matches, cigarettes, steel-centred nylon-covered flak jackets, one large compress bandage (usually in the helmet band for easy access), and:
"Until he was shot, Ted Lavender carried six or seven ounces of premium dope, which for him was a necessity. Mitchell Sanders, the RTO [radio telephone operator], carried condoms. Norman Bowker carried a diary. Rat Kiley carried comic books. Kiowa, a devout Baptist, carried an illustrated New Testament that had been presented to him by his father, who taught Sunday school in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. As a hedge against bad times, however, Kiowa also carried his grandmother’s distrust of the white man, his grandfather’s old hunting hatchet.
"Necessity dictated."
Necessity dictates a lot, and one of the most necessary things is the telling of stories. Sometimes the stories are explanations of what has been happening, sometimes they are a sort of spell against what may happen. If they are done right, they can be transformative, and if the story teller has a soul filled with art, they can be both a pleasure and a pain to hear.
As I write, the world is embroiled in a half dozen conflicts, some big, some small, all harrowing for the people involved. I wonder if there is a soldier somewhere taking notes, talking into his phone, preparing the way for a book that one day may cause people to reflect on the wars going on now. Would that book change the way history unfolds? Probably not. No more than O'Brien's book has kept us out of the current wars...
But we can hope that it makes some difference. And hope is perhaps the most important thing to carry.