Aman, Virginia Lee Barnes, Janice Boddy, "Aman: The Story of a Somali Girl"

The most recent book club choice - and goodness knows it's taken long enough to get round to actually getting a meeting together and talking about it (over Dark and Stormys, Espresso Martinis, and Mojitos, and all on a Tuesday night). The choice was announced in May. How, then, did I find myself having to order it off Amazon the preceding Thursday and read it in three days? Sheer incompetence, and other people taking the communal copies on holiday with them.

I wish I'd had longer, because it was very heavy-going in every sense of the word. Three hundred pages, counting the contextual notes at the end, very small print, and harrowing content. It was a frustrating book and, if I'm honest, stylistically a bit of a let-down. In the introduction Janice Boddy, one of Aman's co-authors, enthuses about the Somali tradition of poetry and story-telling, which wasn't borne out in the narrative itself. The style was very same-y all the way through, no matter what was going on. Opinions at book club were divided as to how effective this was - whether it highlighted the horrors of colonialism and misogyny even as it presented them as part of everyday life, or whether it blended everything into a vaguely depressing mush.

Like I said, I read it too quickly.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10125792/

Charles Dickens, "Bleak House"

I've had a soft spot for Bleak House ever since I read it in my second year of university and discovered that Dickens was not all dire school productions of Oliver! and interminable dramatic readings of A Christmas Carol. That said, reading it now I find it more problematic than I did then. Particularly as I've become more involved in activism (of various stripes, but especially feminist) the portrayal of Mrs Jellyby and her friends has become increasingly infuriating. It's very sad that Dickens, who did so much for the poor, dismisses the efforts of many remarkable women as caricatures. Also more obvious as I get older is my sense that Mr Jarndyce is, in some ways, a rather creepy old man, though thank goodness he does the decent thing. (I remember debating this one in seminars: did Dickens mean him to be creepy?)

Generally enjoyed the re-read, though.

http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/10120410/