Burma: The Lizard Cage by Karen Connelly

Thoughts: Sometimes you read a book that is good and meaningful and important but it doesn’t do a single thing for you. This book, about a political prisoner in a Burmese jail was like that. Something held me back from really melting into the story, into the characters, into the time and the place. Again, like earlier this month, I can’t say a single thing that didn’t work if we attack this book from a technical standpoint. It’s just me and this book aren’t going to be friends.

Rating: 3/5

I finished reading When A Crocodile Eats the Sun. Andrew Solomon has blurbed the back with what I put above: the unknowability of Africa. Seriously? Have we not moved past Heart of Darkness thinking of Africa yet? Moreover, it makes no sense while applied to his book written by an African about Africa in which he details stuff that happens in Africa to Africans. I am unclear as to how presenting data and stories about Africa contributes to unknowability; in my opinion, it contributes to the opposite, namely knowability.

I have been to Africa twice (Ethiopia and South Africa). Is it different than here? Yes. But I find everywhere is different than here. I even find parts of Canada different than here (Calgary is a lot different than the Maritimes, except for the large number of Maritimers out there working). Was it unknowable? Only in the sense that anything that isn’t your norm is unknowable for everyone. I’m sure if you took some of the people I met in Africa and dropped them here in New Brunswick, New Brunswick would be unknowable to them. Yet we don’t perpetuate the unknowability of Atlantic Canada around the world.

It also implies in the blurb that Philip Gourevitch also wrote about the unknowability of Africa, I am assuming in reference to We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families, which is also a book where it discusses Africa, specifically the Rwandan Genocide, in a very non Heart of Darkness unknowability fashion.

Are people so blinded they expect Africa to be unknowable? The internet tells me there are over one billion people living in Africa. I bet each one of them knows something about the place they live. Can we stop pretending that Africa is just this impermeable mass when we talk about it? Completely othering and, as I’ve said, it didn’t even apply to this book. Maybe blurbers just skim through. I’ve never blurbed (or been blurbed) so I don’t know.

The book I have out from the library now having finally finished yesterday‘s, smells like sun screen and beaches. It must have had a more interesting winter prior to now than me.

I never know what to do when I am reading a book that is, for all the ways you can think of “good” meaning, is good (good characterization, realistic dialogue, great pacing, intelligent story), but that I don’t like. Currently, I am reading Above All Things and while every word I read reinforces that this should be a great book, I am not enjoying reading it. I can say books are like people and sometimes you meet people and you’re just not friends, not matter how hard you try, but I want to enjoy books that are well written with engaging story lines, not feel like I have to slog through it before the library return date.

Con with Above All Things: It reminds me of my longer story, but my longer story is on my brain so everything reminds me of my longer story.

Pro: This quote

None of it seemed appealing, the parties where I’d stand off to the side, the dinners talking about how wonderfully proud I must feel.

As a wife of an academic of whom not one other academic at his new job has asked me what I do, I know how this feels. Although, if they did ask me what I did and I told them about letting my PhD to collect dust so I can be a writer with six stories published online, yeah, I doubt they’d think much more of me with that.

Should I quit? Should I keep going? If it’s a good book, maybe I’ll learn something even if it doesn’t feel like there’s any spark between us. Or maybe I should cut my losses and go re-read a book I know I love again to perk myself up.