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It is a beautiful March day here in the desert Southwest: warm sun, wide blue sky, and a gentle cooling breeze. I'm sitting outside on the patio with a good book, a glass of red wine, and the promise of a radiant sunset. Here are some suggestions for your future reading - enjoy the promise of spring!
This book literally dropped into my lap, delivered by a neighbor one day. You have to read this, she said, and left me to open the pages and fall under the spell Jan Philipp Sendker's mystical novel set in Burma, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats. Julia Win has come halfway around the world in search of her Burmese father who left New York on a business trip to Asia and disappeared in Thailand four years ago. After finding a letter that her father wrote to a woman in Kalaw, Burma, before she was born, Julia impulsively flies to Rangoon hoping that she can find more clues about her father's whereabouts. She now sits in a teahouse with an old man who claims to have knowledge of her father but who must first take Julia back to Tin Win's birth and the circumstances of his life before he arrived in New York City so many years ago. The narrative moves back and forth between Julia and U Ba, the quiet patient storyteller who seems to hold the key to discovering Tin Win's past and present. Although Julia is half-Burmese, she knows little about the culture and beliefs of this unfamiliar and sensual country. She is deeply suspicious of the old man's motives but feels compelled to listen to his story. It is hard for her recognize the character that U Ba claims is her father, a poor abandoned boy who developed cataracts and spent his childhood and adolescence in darkness, adopted by a kind neighbor and educated by Buddhist monks. U Ba's narrative unfolds as essentially a love story that has no boundaries, no compromises. It reveals the essence of the Burmese, a way of life that is guided by the intrinsic spirituality of Buddhism as well as by ancient superstitions. Tin Win made choices in his life that Julia finds so hard to understand but U Ba helps her to broaden her perspective and accept that we can never really know someone completely, especially our parents. For more insight into this novel, see Sendker's well designed website : http://artofhearingheartbeats.com/
Other books about Burma that I recommend:
Explore the colonial history of Burma through the end of World War II in Amitav Ghosh's expansive novel, The Glass Palace. In 1885, Rajkumar, a young ambitious man of little means, befriends one of the Burmese Queen's lovely servants, but when she is sent into exile to India with the royal family, he loses contact with her. Eventually he creates a successful teak business by toiling in the forests of Thailand and Malaya but he never forgets the girl who captured his heart as a youth and he is determined to find her again. This skillfully written novel intertwines a compelling love story with the complex history of imperialism and expansion in Southeast Asia, providing a unique glimpse into a little known period of Asian history. Although almost 500 pages in length, I must warn that you will find this one hard to put down.
A real life journey into Burma is recorded in Emma Larkin's Finding George Orwell in Burma, as she attempts to trace the five years that Eric Blair (later writing as George Orwell) spent as an officer in the British colonial police force. Orwell left Burma in 1927 but his experiences in the country served as the foundation for much of his writing including Animal Farm and 1984. Larkin (she adopted a pseudonym fearing that she might be banned from the country) was continually followed as she travelled the country from south to north, under the suspicion of the State Peace and Development Council, the party that has ruled Burma for more than 40 years. Despite the surveillance, Larkin was able to gain the confidence of numerous people throughout the country on her journey and to reveal the fear and quiet resistance of the Burmese people. This is a valuable resource on the history and politics of Burma/Myanmar as well as a fascinating personal narrative.
Waiting . . . in my reading corner:
Me Before You by JoJo Moyes - Accomplished former athlete,Will Traynor, is confined to a wheelchair and does not want to accept the help of his new assistant, Louise Clark. Both of them need to move forward yet neither realizes how much their relationship will influence the life-changing decisions that each makes.
The House Girl by Tara Conklin - Two extraordinary women, one a house slave on a Virginia farm in 1852 and the other an ambitious lawyer seeking reparations in 2002 for the descendants of American slaves, become inexplicably linked in this intriguing first novel.
In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner - Influenced by four years enduring forced labor and starvation under the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia before escaping to the United States as a young girl, Ratner tells the story of a child whose childhood is interrupted by civil war and how she clings to the mythical legend and poems of her father as she struggles to survive the horror around her.
Have a wonderful week and join me next week for the latest book news.
THEBOOKJEANIE
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