Three Strong Women

In honor of Oscar weekend, I'd like to give this book an award.  And the winner for Most Misleading Book Title goes to.......THREE STRONG WOMEN.

I saw this book recommended in Essence and it just happened to be on my local library's shelf.  So score one for me, right? Wrong. First let's look at the cover of the book (see below).  The title is there, the author's name is there, beneath the author's name an award is mentioned, and in the upper left corner the words "A Novel" are printed.  There are two things wrong with this cover. Number one it is not a novel. There are three novellas in the book.  The inner book jacket says this will be a "narrative triptych" about "three women who say no".  Well the three stories are not connected in any concrete way other than singular name mentions.

The first story is about Norah, an attorney whose father is essentially a misogynistic d-bag. She is summoned by her father from France to Senegal to help get her brother out of jail.  While she's at her father's house she is so unnerved by things she wets herself on several occasions. At no point in time during this story does she stand up to her father and say no as the book jacket said she would.  Then this story abruptly ends and the second story begins.

This second story, the book jacket says, will be about Fanta who is from Senegal and travels with her French boyfriend/husband to France to live.  The story is not about Fanta though! It's about the husband and told completely from his point of view.  This story is over 120 pages where the husband's depression and insecurity is discussed.  Fanta is only mentioned in relation to how the husband essentially ruined her career by bringing her to France because now she's not eligible to teach at college there, whereas she was a professor in Senegal. He goes on and on about how much she must resent him.  Once again, Fanta's point of view is not shared and she never says no to anyone.

The final story is about Khady.  We have only seen Khady once before in Norah's story. She was washing dishes and babysitting two little girls. That's it.  Norah says, "What's your name?" and she replies "Khady Demba".  In this story, which occurs after Norah's story, we find out Khady's husband has died and his family has put her out because she didn't have children.  They say they are going to send her to a distant cousin named Fanta in France.  This is the only mention of Fanta from the second story. Anyway, things go immensely wrong while she is trying to illegally immigrate to France and she ends up a prostitute.

And so that brings me to my number two problem with the cover. The title.  It was unclear why or how these women were strong.  I guess if you endure constant humiliation, depression, degradation, and hopelessness there is a type of strength in that endurance.  Perhaps, the author intends for us to re-evaluate our own perceptions of strength.  However, I would have preferred that these women exhibited the kind of strength that had more to do with hope, independence, and assertiveness.  A more appropriate title may have been Three Exploited Women.  Read at your own risk.

Man in the Empty Suit

Readers will most likely compare this book to the movie Inception or maybe Memento.  I can always get behind a good story if it requires some problem solving. This book, however, I couldn't really get behind.  The main character is a time traveler who travels to New York City, 2071 to celebrate the 100-year anniversary of his birth.  Along for the celebration are all his previous and future selves.  He gives these other selves nicknames like "The Drunk", "Yellow Sweater", "The Nose", and "Screwdriver".  These nicknames were problematic for me.  I am an orderly person and would have much preferred that the nicknames simply be the age of the guy.  There is one guy nicknamed "Seventy" because he's around seventy years old, but that's it.  It would have been easier to track the characters and their linear location in life if they were numbered based on age.  The twist in the story comes in the form of a murder.  When he is 39 years old, his 40-year-old self is murdered at the party so he has to travel back in time to figure out what happened and stop it.  Mind you he's been coming to this party every year but this is the first year he finds out about the murder.  Presumably, there is a murder every year because the party doesn't change.  Throw into the mix that a lady named Lily also happens to show up at the party that year (or has she been there every year?) and you have a mind-bending story that leaves you with more questions than answers.  I don't profess to know all the ins and outs of time travel writing, but I think this could have been written a little more clearly. It has a good premise, but it wasn't carried out to its fullest potential.

The Warmth of Other Suns

Being a descendant of grandparents who migrated during The Great Migration, I was greatly interested in this story.  This is a non-fiction book that details the migration of millions of African-Americans from the South to the North and West in the early to mid 20th century.  I found this book fascinating!  The author does an excellent job of interposing the stories of three individuals with the facts and figures of the time.  I enjoy a non-fiction book that relates on a human level by incorporating stories of actual individuals and not just statistics.  This book comes in at about 600 pages, but the reading goes quickly because you will find yourself wanting to know how the decision to leave the South plays out for all involved.  This is a book I'd strongly recommend if you have an interest in a rarely-covered piece of American history or if you, like me, have family who made the decision to aim for a better life in an unknown city.

7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess

I read this book for a Bible Study group I recently joined.  It was pretty good, but I've been reading a lot about anti-consumerism and minimalism for about 2 years now. With that being said, I didn't feel like this book necessarily added anything to the plethora of articles and books I've already read on simplifying life.  What I did appreciate was the fact that this particular author decided to pare down her life because of her desire to live more like Christ.  She includes inspirational scripture in the book and documents her own failures and triumphs.  I think once I start the discussion group this Sunday, I will probably get more from the book via talking with others about living a simple life as Christ did. If you don't care for religion, you can skip this book.  However, if you are interested in religion and its applications in life and you have never tried to simplify your life or decrease the amount of "stuff" you own, this is a solid starting point.

The Winter Rose

This is the sequel to The Tea Rose that I read in December 2012.  It is a trilogy, but I don't know if I will make it to book three.  If I do, I think it will be later this year or maybe next. I really enjoyed Book One.  I enjoyed Book Two as well, to a certain extent.  There did come a time where my belief could no longer remain suspended.  We find ourselves meeting Fiona and Joe again, now happily married. This time around, however the focus of the story is Sid Malone (Fiona's criminal brother) and his love life.  He falls for India Selwyn Jones, a physician working in the slums of London. India is just as much the strong heroine as Fiona was in The Tea Rose (up to a certain point....then she gets a bit bland). Now, as we all know, falling in love with a strong-willed good girl is where all the problems start for a bad boy and thus the story takes off and we travel from London to Africa to California. There is love, deception, redemption, and adventure.  I did find myself rolling my eyes at some of the "coincidences" that occurred and the blatant stupidity of some of the characters to see what was going on in front of their own eyes.  I also began to get upset with the characters because if only they would speak a few words of truth instead of trying to be so secretive about every damn thing there wouldn't have been so much drama, and perhaps 200 pages could have been shaved off the 700+ page volume.  I just needed to accept it for the soap opera that it was.  I do think it was a solid sequel, but it didn't leave me excited for the third installment. Nice travel read on an e-reader if you don't want to lug the heavy tome with you.