Categories
fangirling raves writers

The Wondrous Oscar Wao

There may be a new writer for me to swoon over. Haruki Murakami may be given a run for his money.

Here’s a book I’d been waiting to read until it came out in paperback and I had a really good stretch of uninterrupted time to enjoy it. Now I know I don’t usually blog about new books, because well, there are so many brilliant book review blogs, I’d rather leave that to them.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (by Junot Diaz) though, was a crystal-exploding-in-my-cortex type of book. You know when you feel like a book was written specially for you?

This one won the Pulitzer Prize, too. So it must be good.

Reading Oscar Wao felt to me like reading a funky hip take on Gabriel Garcia Marquez/Mario Vargas Llosa, set to a reggaeton rhythm…but about a character whose references were straight out of my own young-adulthood; Dungeons and Dragons, Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who, Watchmen, Lord of the Rings.

To my young blog readers – this is probably one to save until you are an adult. I would NOT want you to tell your parents I recommended this book. Like many works of Latin American literature, especially those set in brutal dicatorships, there are tales of violent atrocities and some extremely ‘adult’ situations.

To the old fogeys among you, READ THIS! It’s probably unlike any book you’ve ever read. It’s unlike any book I’ve ever read but then I can’t imagine there being another book like it.

Here’s the story: Oscar is a fat nerdy boy growing up in New Jersey. He adores comic books, fantasy role-playing games and sci-fi, he also falls hopelessly in love with girls all over the place but to no avail. Oh the shame of it, because he for all his geekery he is still a Dominican (from the Dominican Republic – it’s the Spanish part of the island of Hispaniola, the other half is French/African Haiti).

Dominican men are meant to be super-macho! They’re akin to Afo-Cubans – part African, part Spanish – 100% macho. Oscar’s mum nods with approval when aged 7 he dates two little girls at once. Once they dump him, Oscar’s romantic life is effectively over. Until much later, when fate returns him to the island of his heritage – and final destiny.

The story of Oscar is narrated with dispassionate energy by Yunior, a close friend. It’s not just Oscar’s tale but the island story of his mother and grandfather, just two of the many, many victims of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Hideous horrible violent and utterly unjust things happen to his mother and her family. It’s all described by Yunior with the pitiless yet sympathetic omniscience that is similar to the sweeping narratives of Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa. More minimalism though, which I like. Which I admire, too.

Historical footnotes provide more information – and it’s here that the voice becomes irreverently venomous. The DR sure was a total rathole (putting it VERY mildly) during Trujillo’s reign, a nightmare totalitarian state where justice ceased to exist and fear ruled supreme.

In common with other Great Writers, it’s not just the power of the story but the evidence of wisdom, shrewd observations of depths of human truths which mark out this author. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Note to authors. Set your story in a totalitarian state and watch as plot just falls out. When every single person might legitimately be a liar who is about to feed your hero to a torture machine, the streets are paved with pure High Drama.

Categories
youtube zero moment

Glad to be back

How to adjust to being back from what may well be the best holiday of my life…? Yes – it was perfect. And so was the company of my sister, brother-in-law, niece and nephews.

Cos sometimes it can be a right downer, getting back to the everyday disorder of life. And I live with people who have decided to torture me on a daily basis with their flagrant disregard for my OCD. Everywhere I look in my house I see things which make me sad.

I do have a choice, obviously – I can give up all notion of doing anything else with my life other than cleaning and tidying after my children. Or I can try to ignore it by writing stories.

(Btw you wouldn’t know I have OCD-levels of tidiness tendencies to look at my house, you’d think ‘what a family of slobs.’)

That’s why I don’t invite people to my house. (A Stygian stables of housework or stories. Can’t manage both.)

Luckily I have a job I totally love – I write children’s books and I’ve just started a new one. A few nice literary festivals coming up – Stratford, Hay-on-Wye, West End Festival in Glasgow.

Joshua 3 (ZERO MOMENT) to revise. Joshua 4 (title under wraps) to write. I met Editor Polly for coffee and cake in Oxford yesterday. We chatted about what needs doing on ZERO MOMENT and then I told her The Entire Plot Of Joshua 4.

That’s right. Someone apart from me now knows what is going to happen in the next two Joshua books.

Ahhh but. I know that some of you are watching this blog for any hints of what is going to happen. Well there’s a lot I won’t reveal because it’s part of the Puzzly Twisty Mysterious side of the story. But maybe I can let spill that the Sweet Lurve side of the story is going to develop over the next two books. And mostly it will be agony for Josh. I’ve been listening to a lot of songs about boys in love with girls they can’t have. heh heh.

Frank (German translator of Joshua) says I am ‘evil’. Or was it ‘cruel’? It’s true. I am. But what am I gonna do? Unrequited love is the only romantic kind.

Been watching lots of YouTube too. Seinfeld, salsa dancing. I hear there’s a bigscreen version of this where the shows go on for ages! Must investigate.

Here’s a YouTube clip of cute Northerner, Anthony Hill, a student who is also a singer-songwriter. Does a lovely line in covers of other songs too. Sings while playing guitar, sitting on his bed.

This is his version of Scouting for Girls ‘She’s So Lovely’. All about a guy in love with a girl – who has a boyfriend. “She’s so lovely…” he sings and wonders, “I don’t know how we’ll make it through this…”

Yep. That’s Josh in the next two books. *evil laff* Can you guess who the girl is?

If you enjoy this, be sure to watch some of Anthony’s own songs. My new favourite is Ode to Sangria.

Categories
travel

Ubud-ists

Ubud-ists
We’re in the Holy Spring temple in the monkey sanctuary in Ubud.
Don’t stare the macaque monkeys in the eyes! (or they can get aggressive) Don’t feed them bananas! (they will snatch them out of your hands and woe betide if you keep some food in your pockets, they’ll jump on you and grab for it).

Originally uploaded by mgharris

Ubud-ists are wonderful artisans. So many painters, stone carvers, makers of gorgeous things.

This delicious sojourn is almost over. *sigh*
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Categories
travel

Easter in Bali

Easter in Bali

Originally uploaded by mgharris

The hotel very kindly left us a basket of choccie eggs in case we felt homesick…meanwhile the Easter bunny left a trail of brightly-coloured foil-covered treats that our kids and their cousins hunted down in the early morning. We didn’t have long…they were already melting.
How come the Easter bunny knew to leave eggs in the hotel, our little girl asked. Yup, a good question. Will there be an unharvested trail of eggs back in our garden in Oxford? And anyway how does Fr Christmas get around the world in one night?

Meanwhile Bali is providing me with more pampering and luxury than anyone has a right to expect. The fact that it’s so undeserved only makes me enjoy it all the more. If we only enjoyed things we truly deserved in life then how could we enjoy anything nice? Its like the parable of the vineyard, I’m like the last worker to arrive at the vineyard, being paid as much as the ones who got there in the morning. And it feels pretty, pretty good!

That isn’t ‘Catholic guilt’, btw, that’s just plain old hedonism.
MG Harris

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