Review: Homegoing

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

His grandmother didn't speak at first, just watched him. "We are all weak most of the time," she said finally. "Look at the baby. Born to his mother, he learns how to eat from her, how to walk, talk, hunt, run. He does not invent new ways. He just continues with the old. This is how we all come to the world, James. Weak and needy, desperate to learn how to be a person." She smiled at him. "But if we do not like the person we have learned to be, should we just sit in front of our fufu, doing nothing? I think, James, that maybe it is possible to make a new way."

I'm overwhelmed, to say the least. Two highly emotional, deeply unsettling books in a row have left me feeling wretched and wrung out, craving something light-hearted and silly. But I am so thankful to have read this story, stories I should say, no matter how disturbing and unsettling they and their entirely living characters have made me feel. Their ghosts will walk with me for a while, I believe, and even then I don't think I'll be able to forget them. How can I when all around us the remnants of our violent and terrible history still exist today? An incredible piece of work from Gyasi, and so important for this world.
4.5 / 5 stars.

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Review: The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is a beautifully written and highly imaginative story that reads so easily I continuously lost track of time whenever I picked it up. I truly could not get this one out of my head - the characters alone are captivating, mysterious, and almost frustratingly elusive. For the book's entirety I was spell-bound not only by the unexplainable magic of Nella's cabinet-house and life-like dolls but also by the human characters and their constant presence, lurking in the passageways and shadows just beyond our reach, guarding their many secrets, indulgences, and guilty pleasures.

Heart-wrenching and sensitive, dark and mysterious, I loved getting to know the few characters throughout this story whose lives centred almost entirely around the cultivating and maintaining of each others most precious secrets. Fear of the Church, of the Burgermasters, and of themselves, I felt that Jessie Burton did a wonderful job of keeping us just beyond grasping what made these characters tick - many remained a complete mystery up to the very end.

Having lived in Amsterdam myself for almost a year at the time of reading this, it was as if I was rediscovering the city all over again through Nella's 17th-century eyes, strolling familiar streets whose existence remain today. Although drastically different now than the Amsterdam of long ago, Burton's incredible historical accuracy throughout shed so much light on the Dutch's idiosyncrasies and often times frustrating hypocrisies that I felt comforted and armed with a new knowledge of the complicated, sordid past of my new home.

My only reservations would be with how the story ended. Without giving anything away, I would have loved to come away from this story with more closure for certain characters, more answers, and more about the Miniaturist!

Although I would guess that this was exactly Burton's aim. The story began in mystery and shadow, and so it ends in mystery and shadow.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves historical fiction - bonus if you love a good mystery as well as some elements of magic / fantasy.


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Review: The Nightingale

The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Men tell stories," I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. "Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over."

If I could give this story 6 out of 5 stars I would. I am so overwhelmed with how deeply this story touched me - it haunted my dreams at night, I thought about it all day. It both sickened and saddened me, fascinated and terrified me. We've all heard the stories, we have listened to the real-life accounts of survivors, learned about the major battles in school and the horrifying statistics and figures that came out after WWII ended, and to this day, we still remember. Yet this isn't merely a story about the war as a whole, but rather it is about the war as endured, fought, and survived by the women. This is their story. This is their battle. And this is their victory.

I am not at all new to the subject-matter in this book, yet this story, written so beautifully, so delicately, brings everything I ever learned about the war to a whole new level. Kristin Hannah is a remarkable story-teller; she pens the most beautiful sentences that evoke such emotion and sensation within you. The detail is fantastic, her research is incredible - so much so that my own morbid curiosity was satiated time and again through her intricate weaving of fact and fiction.

A dark, emotional, and powerful story lies within these pages. I cried - I never cry while reading, honestly - but I did, big tears, because of how emotionally charged that ending is after feeling like I myself had gone through Hell and back with the Rossignol sisters. I know their stories in this are fictional, but the fact is that...these things really happened, there is truth in everything that the Rossignol sisters endured and achieved and lost during the war. I feel ignorant that I hadn't really known just how bad it became for the occupied countries, for France - I assumed it was terrible, but not anywhere near as terrible as what I just read. And that is always the mistake, assuming. To know that similar atrocities endure today, all around the world, is sickening.

I smile at them...Because of them, I know now what matters, and it is not what I have lost. It is my memories. Wounds heal. Love lasts. We remain.

I cannot do this story or these these characters the justice they deserve. I cannot say that, if I were ever in a similar situation, I would have had a similar strength to endure and to carry on. But they inspire me, the whole cast of them, those real and those fictional, and will continue to do so forever after.


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