Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

They say "write what you know." So physician Abraham Verghese, born in Ethiopia from Indian parents, chose for his first novel a narrator born in Ethiopia that was raised by Indian parents and who eventually becomes a surgeon.

Cutting for Stone is an epic soap opera worthy of Sidney Sheldon's best. A nun traveling by ship from India to Ethiopia saves the life of a British doctor onboard. They later become colleagues in an Addis Ababa hospital, Missing, and silently fall in love with each other. The outcome is tragic - the nun gives birth to twins, Marion and Shiva, and dies in the process. The father, Dr Thomas Stone, is overcome with grief and abandons the babies to a pair of Indian doctors - Hema and Ghosh - to raise.

The twin boys grow under the shadows of Missing and experience some of Ethiopia's historical changes. Marion, the virginal and unremarkable twin, is the narrator. He's not as clever and seductive as his brother Shiva (who steals the girl he loves from under his nose), nor is he his adoptive mother's favourite. Fate eventually exiles him from Ethiopia, to a life in a poor hospital in New York where all doctors are foreigners, all patients are on Medicare and all corpses can expect to be organ harvested for rich Americans.

You can really see Ethiopia and its people in Verghese's novel and it is one of its few pleasures, alongside the look at the unfair healthcare system in America. But the plot - full of sentimental coincidences and love making worthy of a Bad Sex in Fiction Award - leaves a lot to be desired. Marion is an unlikeable narrator, but I don't think that was Verghese's intention. The writing only comes alive with the scenes of hospital proceedures, and although these come along quite often they are not enough to hold this long novel together.

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A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Z, a young woman from a small village in China, is offered a trip to England by her parents so she can learn English and improve her prospects in life. She arrives in London during a typical grim winter in the mid-noughties, oblivious as to how to behave and comprehend this Western capital. Her hostel is dire and the students in her English course label her a pariah because of her inability to behave in a "Western" way.

Z spends most of her time trying to decode this new world with a Chinese-English dictionary - and the novel itself is also divided this way, with each chapter starting with a word and its dictionary definition (relevant to the chapter in question) that sheds light onto Z's uncovering of this world. Often, Z's misunderstandings are meant to be humorous, but because Z is such a nutter - and a slightly unsympathetic one - the humour is a misfire.

One evening, she strikes conversation with a much older man in a cinema and very soon she's his lover. He's a van driver and part-time artist based in Hackney. They fall madly in love, things get kinky, summer arrives, she travels across Europe under his suggestion (to improve her understanding of the West)... then things get complicated.

The novel is based on Xiaolu Guo's own experience of moving to London in 2002 and keeping a journal. There are some pleasures to be found in its description of Hackney, and an interesting twist relating to the older lover. The cover is deceptively chick lit - this novel is anything but.

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Trout Fishing In America by Richard Brautigan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Enjoyable quick, stream of consciousness writing, with chapters loosely connected to each other by a character/notion called Trout Fishing in America. I hear that a fan of this book actually changed his name to Trout Fishing in America and now teaches English in Japan. I hear that Brautigan has many fans and many followers, like the Beat Poets he slots so nicely alongside.

Like Burroughs' novels, it feels like you can read this in any order you like. Trout Fishing in America is equal parts hobo, traveling memories and acute poetical observations of the American North West. A lot of it seems to be inspired on Brautigan's personal life (he sadly took his own life years later.) It definitely needs more than one reading to give away its full power, but it has the potential of alienating some.

A book to be read by rivers.

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Last Man in Tower by Aravind Adiga

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The word Shanghai conjures up images of an utopian paradise where all are happy and life is good. In this novel, The Shanghai is a new development planned beside Mumbai's airport by big shot (and unscrupulous) real estate developer Dharmen Shah which will bring to the area smart apartments, shopping malls and other comforts that the rising middle-class in India believe is their right. There's only one obstacle in Shah's way: a retired and grieving teacher, Masterji, who lives in the old building - Vishram - where the new development is planned. Unlike his neighbours, Masterji refuses to take the big payout offered by the real estate developer on principles that sit at odds with modern capitalistic India. His stance sets in motion a chain of events that throws him against his neighbours, leading to tragedy.

Mumbai holds up a surreal mirror to London. Like here, Mumbai is riddled with a greed and fever for property development that leaves winners and losers in its wake. The growing poor and homeless in London may now not be too far from the slum dwellers in Mumbai; the alienated rich in their smart neighbourhoods (where working-class communities used to exist before) could easily be the converted Victorian houses in the West End that sit beside crime-ridden council estates. The lives spent on uncomfortable commuter trains that occasionally grind to a halt because of someone on the tracks is all too familiar to both Londoners and Mumbai residents.

The novel is beautifully set in Mumbai, offering the reader a glance to the lives of the very poor all the way up to the new rich.  Adiga's characters quickly lose their humanity to the money offered to them. Where once they lived in harmony in a communal society, helping and looking out for each other, the introduction of a chance to make it big exposes them to dark desires that had remained silent until then. The Vishram's residents love for Masterji's Agatha Christie's novels is a sort of foreshadowing of what's to come.

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The Lost City of Z by David Grann

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I first heard about Colonel Percy Fawcett when I read a biography about his life written by brasilian author Hermes Leal. Fawcett was a celebrity explorer in his time, responsible for braving uncharted territory in the Amazon (he was, for example, responsible for defining the boundary between Brasil and Bolivia) and promoting the idea that a large and complex civilization - the City of Z; or El Dorado - had once existed somewhere under its tree tops. Fawcett, amongst other things, inspired Conan Doyle's Lost World and the character of Indiana Jones.

A few years ago, this new book on Fawcett by David Grann was released and secured a nomination for the Samuel Johnson's Best Non-fiction Award and praise in many newspapers. I'd been wanting to suggest to my bookclub a read to do with Brasil and I thought this would be the perfect choice (even though the author and the main subject were not brasilian.) Although it's a compelling story about Fawcett's disappearance in the Amazon alongside his son Jack and his son's best friend, as well as its effect on his family and the world's imagination, the book's strength in my opinion is in exposing the holocaust that occurred to the Amazon's native tribes. Through Fawcett's diaries, we discover the obstacles Fawcett encountered in the Amazon (killer bugs and snakes; famine) but also why this region fascinated him so much, and why he had respect for native tribes and horror for the ways other explorers were quick to kill them. The book throws into relief the history of the Amazon from its discovery in the 1500s to the present day and the importance of preserving and studying it despite its fast destruction.

The final pages finally reveal where the Lost City of Z was located and how, ironically, Fawcett found what he was looking for without realising it.

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A friend of mine is leaving London for New York; he got a well paid job in an arts centre over there. He asked wink_martindale and I if we'd like to buy his Wii and games. I asked how much he wanted for them? He understood that I wanted to buy everything and dropped on Wink's lap a box with the whole lot. We already had a borrowed Wii from my landlady so now we currently have an excess of video game consoles in the house. I'm starting to think I don't want any of them - it's just more distraction from the stuff I need to do (study horticulture, write Mills & Boons novels, become a millionaire).

We went for a walk this morning to find a café where we could sit, read the papers and write in our journals. We chose the Rich Mix because it's always empty, has nice big windows that give you a view of Bethnal Green road and nobody bothers you if your coffee mug is empty. I briefly left to buy today's Guardian from a corner shop and walked past Preston from The Ordinary Boys. He's tiny! He went into a new hipster café with three friends. The Rich Mix couldn't attract hipsters even if it tried, bless.

We then hit the local second-hand bookshops for Paul Auster's Timbuktu (for my bookclub) but couldn't find anything. Went to my gym, watched an episode of a new brasilian soap opera while eating toast with peanut butter and now I faff around online while Wink naps on the couch. He was meant to be making carrot cake for us. I might wake him up in a sec.

I'm currently reading Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible with verybadhorse . We read one section, stop and comment before moving on. I just finished "Genesis" and I'm now halfway through the second-part, "The Revelation". Some thoughts under the tag on...

( Genesis )

wink_martindale and I pottered around the flat this morning then went to a yoga class at 12.45pm. It was the first time Wink visited my gym; we managed to snag him a free day trial as my guest and had no problem finding a spot in the class. It was only an hour long and not that strenuous. Probably perfect after a workout but not good enough as a stand-alone class.

Our landlords/friends then invited us for a coffee in Victoria Park's Pavillion Café. We got our cappuccinos and sat outside, chatting about this and that - but mostly gossiping about people in my bookclub and the quiz night I attended on Friday.

I'm now lying in the bedroom, listening to iTunes, watching episodes of the brasilian soap Passione, reading bits of Tim Moore's Spanish Steps while Wink plays Zelda in the living room.

I discovered this great community which I think all of you photography lovers would enjoy too: everyday_i_show

If you ever happen to be in the Shadwell/Limehouse area (London's Docklands) or you want somewhere unusual to go for a cup of coffee, a meal and a spot of art, then I highly recommend the Wapping Project. It used to be Wapping's Hydraulic Power Station and much of the original equipment and building features are still there. In the back, there's a large warehouse type room where different art projects get showcased from time to time.



We visited the Wapping Project last weekend because wink_martindale thought there was a bookshop on its roof. The bookshop is actually on the lawn outside the building, with pillows and chairs scattered about for you to read or drink your coffee/tea in peace.



I've been enjoying this summer but I'm no fool in thinking London doesn't need some rain soon. We lay in the park yesterday and all the grass was brittle and dry. Brought back memories of that summer a few years back when everything got scorched and some people passed away because of the heat. That would be terrible! In my ideal world, it rains all week during the day and the nights are balmy and quiet; during the weekends we get lovely sunny weather up there in the 40s Celsius. Wouldn't that be perfect?

On Friday, we had some drinks with rosamicula and her friends in Saff London because she's soon off to somewhere that rains all week, has balmy and quiet nights, and the weather can go up to the 40s: Sri Lanka! Or at least that's my guess of what Sri Lanka is like. I didn't think I'd know anyone apart from Rosamicula at the gathering (in a beer garden at the end of Lower Marsh), but quite a few recognisable (and one or two infamous) faces were present. It was a particular pleasure to speak to stickette, who has known Rosamicula since they were 11, as well as catch up with arkady. Arkady got to meet Wink and our table had some lively discussions on aluminium-made arrows, Sherlock Homes, and a whole lot more - we even rebelled and refused to move when Rosamicula came around and told us we should go sit on the side of the garden that was well lit. I was drinking on an empty stomach all night and unaware until then we were all sitting in darkness.

Today, I'm dropping by Rosamicula's at some point to borrow all her french books. I'm taking care of them while she's in Sri Lanka until 2011.



Scenes from "Chorus" and a brief wander in Canary Wharf afterwards. "Chorus" is a piece by the British collective United Visual Artists, presented at the Wapping Project (16 June - 18 July 2010). Soundtrack is Motoi Sakuraba's "Floating in the Air" (unrelated to "Chorus").

(I really really need to get a new camera.)

For any of you who were fans of the TV show Spaced and were wondering what Jessica Stevenson is up to at the moment, she's starring in a very good comedy at the Royal Court called The Priory. In a way she revisits her character from the series (a somewhat failed writer) only this time she's older, slightly more melancholic and stuck in a medieval monastery-cum-weekend getaway for a New Year Eve's party with trainwrecked friends. I loved how natural the dialogue felt - the kind of chit chat I have myself with friends, but funnier - and how some of the characters, in particular the women, were fully fleshed and unforgettable. What's meant to be a relaxing holiday with friends descends into drugs, drinks, The Big Chill soundtrack pumped through an iPhone and a menacing hooded figure that may, or may not, be the ghost of a monk. Everything that could possibly go wrong on a New Year Eve's party, goes wrong - with some funny but also slightly shocking consequences. It's been extended until mid January and I highly recommend it.

Afterwards, wink_martindale and I hit Sainsbury's for some Xmas food and last minute gifts. Now I'm listening to some Madge while preparing to make the living room off limits for Wink until I've wrapped presents and placed them underneath our spider plant. Later, I will finish a Xmas story I'm writing and which I wish to post here tomorrow. It's a story about one of you!! Wink is drawing some images to go alongside it too...

Last night, we had a Xmas party with our book club. I won some homemade chutney and a strange contraption that makes my ears glow. It will come in handy when I walk down Regent's Canal at night.

( Glowing Ears )