Donna's Orange Books

The name has changed but I'm still feeling Orange! I'll leave the year off so my thread can go on...
and on...just like these migrating birds.

January 2013 Orange Reviews:

Sorry by Gail Jones. 4.5 stars.

Secrets are not always bad things, except perhaps when you keep them from yourself. Someone is murdered on the first page of this book. It is only through the slow release of the story that we find out the reasons why.

Set against the background of WWII and her mother's frequent recitation of Shakespeare's words, Perdita is growing up in a lonely part of the world. Her parents didn't want children and do their best to ignore her. Her father works as an anthropologist in a remote area of Australia and her mother is in and out of mental institutions. Perdita relies on her two friends: Billy, a deaf mute neighbor and Mary, a teenage Aboriginal servant to be her family.

This is not a happy story, but the eloquent writing makes up for the bleakness. Perdita became aware of the unfairness of life at the age of ten: "Between the four of them they spent many hours at cards, and for a brief period at the beginning of 1941, it was a rational system surrounding them all, an inconsequential orderliness, reassuring and trite. Newspaper cuttings had begun reappearing on the walls. Once Perdita glanced sideways during a game and began to read what was before her. The Germans and Italians had engaged in conflict with the Greeks, and British, Australian and New Zealand forces had been dispatched from Egypt. Perdita imagined armies in the night, marching orders, columns of uniformed look-alike men. At once she knew with startling clarity, like a punch in the ribs, one of the terrible unassimilable anomalies of this world: that there is always war somewhere and peace somewhere else, that there are people dying and at the same time there are people playing cards..." (94) Perdita's life lessons get crueler and closer to home as the story unfolds.

Repeating, this is not a happy story. But it is a memorable one and has implications much larger than Perdita's story. It was longlisted for the Orange Prize in 2008. I'm pretty certain it would have garnered my vote.

Hi Donna. I love your graphic. It is lovely. And I left the year off mine so that I can continue on with it next year as well. Wish I had thought of it sooner. I will be interested to see what Oranges you read.
hugs,

Hi Belva, I've read my first Orange book of the year. Women's Prize book just doesn't have the same ring, does it? Anyway, I loved Sorry by Gail Jones. My review will be in Post #3 as soon as I can move it there.

Hi, Donna. It's hopeless for me to try to catch up with your 75 thread, but at least I was able to do it here! You make Sorry sound very inviting, so I think I'm going to wish for it if I haven't already. Thanks for that very helpful review!

You're welcome, Peggy. It is easy to keep up with this thread as I rarely post on it. I do love my Orange books, though! I think the next one I read will be The Giant, O'Brien by Hilary Mantel. I had no idea she was such a prolific writer. I've been lucky to be able to pick up some of her older books at used bookstores recently.

Really nice review on Sorry. Makes me want to read it and I will undoubtedly check my library for this one. So good to see you here Donna. I will be checking back with you to keep up with your Orange reads. :-)

Wondering what you are planning to read in Orange July? It's almost upon us.

I haven't updated this thread in quite awhile. Sorry about that! I actually thought it had been longer because I was looking at my old thread here which has gone dormant!

It looks like I read a total of ten Orange books in 2013 which I have listed in Msg. #2. I have been reading the books, just not adding them here. Hopefully, I will do better in 2014.

On looking at my updates, I think I got disillusioned after my first choice for the 2013 winner, Life After Life wasn't chosen. I should be used to this by now as I rarely like the winner in most of the major book awards. Oh well. I'm over it and looking forward to the nominations for the 2014 Women's Prize for Fiction. Or do we have a new name for it? I've already forgotten the proposed sponsor. It's still ORANGE to me.

>8 rainpebble:, 9: Belva, I am so impressed with your Orange reading. I hope you don't run out of books. There are many of the long listed books I am not familiar with. Lots of good reading ahead!

Donna, it is still and always will be the ORANGE to me. And I promise you, I won't run out of books. I doubt I have even read a fourth of the long listed, short listed or winners of the Orange Prize books. I am certain that I will die without having read them all.
I try for 8 in Orange January & Orange July and then at least 1 per month the rest of the year. But it is really hard when the lists come out not to go for those on the lists, ya know?
I was really bummed by last year's winner. There were so many that were better........even on the long list.
Oh well, it is what it is & will keep reading Oranges because on the whole I find them the best 'prize listed' books out there.
hugs,

I'm so glad I could find my Orange/Bailey's Thread. I agree with you, Belva. Those Orange books are on the whole my favorite prize winners!

I am currently reading The Ghost Road which was on the 1996 Longlist after winning the Booker Prize in 1995. Billy Prior is a wonderful "rascally" character, and I am glad to get back to his story about the ill effects of WWI.

I found this list interesting. These are the winners of the books written by women that have had the biggest impact on readers:

To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte
Harry Potter, J.K Rowling
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott
The Secret History, Donna Tartt
I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
Beloved, Toni Morrison
Gone With The Wind, Margaret Mitchell
We Need To Talk About Kevin, Lionel Shriver
The Time Traveller's Wife, Audrey Niffenegger
Middlemarch, George Eliot
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou
The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing
The Colour Purple, Alice Walker
The Women's Room, Marilyn French

I have read 17 of these, 18 if I count the first Harry Potter book. Looks like I need to read I Capture the Castle and The Women's Room.

Orange/Bailey's Books Read in 2014…

February
The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt. 4.3 stars. On the OP 2014 Shortlist.
A long, detailed story woven around the theft of a famous painting after an explosion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art which kills Theo's mother. He spends the next 14 years mired in drugs and finding comfort in the exquisite art piece which he knows he should return. A memorable read.

April
Burial Rites by Hannah Kent. 4 stars. On the OP 2014 Shortlist.
Agnes is accused of a double murder and sentenced to die. End of story, right? It could be if you just wanted the facts of the last execution in Iceland. However, Hannah Kent takes the facts in the case and expands on them to give Agnes a voice to tell her story. It's a bleak story but one that gets under the skin and deep into the heart. As Agnes tells her side of the story to her confessor, a young Assistant Reverend who had once helped her cross a cold river as a young girl, she is overheard by the family who has custody of her until her death sentence is carried out. Their hearts are softened toward her as they begin to think of her as a human being instead of a murderer. At the same time Kent is exploring the humanity of the characters she describes the brutal beauty of a remote part of Iceland and the harsh conditions in which the people of the 19th century lived. This is not a happy book!

June
All the Birds, Singing by Evie Wyld. 3.5 stars. On the OP 2014 Longlist.
The title is a misnomer as the book is more suspenseful than bucolic. Set in both Australia and an island off the coast of England, it is a mystery about who or what is killing Jake Whyte's sheep in a brutal way and also a trip back in time to see why she is in hiding.

August
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. 3.9 stars. On the OP 2014 Longlist.
A death, a disappearance, and a presumed attempted suicide all occur on the same day in January of 1866. It is the height of the gold rush in New Zealand and a small fortune in nuggets, flakes, and gold dust is the center of these mysterious events. The tangled web is slowly unwoven when Walter Moody seeks to steady his nerves with a drink and encounters a diverse gathering of twelve men in a Hokitika hotel smoking room. They relate their knowledge of the story to him in detail…360 pages of detail in Part One, which mercifully has a summary before we leave the bar reeling from all these tales. Some readers may run out of patience before everyone tells the story from his own perspective.

I mostly liked this 2013 Booker Prize Winner, but then I don't mind a long, complicated story. What I don't like, however, are gimmicks in books. While I mostly ignored the astral aspects, I couldn't help but be suspect about the structure of the book. Ms. Catton chose to have the twelve parts of the book wane like the moon. That's why Part One was so long. Part Two was half the length and the final part was only two pages long. It didn't bother me while I was reading, but I couldn't help but think that the wordiness in the first part of the book was mainly to set up this convoluted structure. I wish the author had spent more time on character development than counting words. She got close a few times as she did in one of my favorite scenes when Anna and Emery Staines get their first glimpse of New Zealand and marvel at the albatrosses. Anna offers to leave so Emery can enjoy the scene by himself but he objects. "Oh, no. Solitude is a condition best enjoyed in company. Especially the company of one other soul." Anna goes on to compare an albatross to a ship:

"Heavy ships are so graceful in the water. Compared to lighter crafts, I mean. If a boat is too light--if it bobs about on the wave--there's no grace to its motion. I believe that it's the same with birds. Large birds are not buffeted about by the wind. They always look so regal in the air. This fellow. Seeing him fly is like seeing a heavy ship cut through a wave." (630)

With writing like that, I can see why Ms. Catton is a prize-winner at such a young age. While I enjoyed this book, I'd have to say I was more impressed with it than in love with it. It was an interesting mystery in a terrific setting. The coincidences even made sense. As Walter Moody observed, "…what was a coincidence but a stilled moment in a sequence that had yet to be explained?" Too bad those explanations went on a little too long for me!

A few more updates:

The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri. Read in 2013. 3.5 stars. On the OP 2014 Shortlist.

My Review:
Lahiri's second novel focuses on two brothers and the political unrest in India in the 1960s that came between them. Subhash is the elder by only 15 months. He is reserved and lets his younger brother Udayan take the lead in many of their activities. However, the Naxalite movement that is pushing India toward Communism using guerrilla terrorist techniques divides them. Subhash goes to Rhode Island to continue his education while Udayan gets deeper in trouble.

A family emergency calls Subhash back to Calcutta. In his effort to fix things, he returns to the U.S. with an Indian wife and a baby on the way. Some problems are so deep they have no solution. Their melancholy lives made for large sections of drab reading. Even Lahiri's exquisite writing can't put emotion into the lives of a family so disconnected. I wanted to love this book but ended up liking it mainly for its historical value and the vivid descriptions of Calcutta and Rhode Island.

Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Read in 2013. 4.5 stars. On the OP 2014 Shortlist.

My Review:
There is no doubt that Adichie is a gifted author who writes passionately about Nigeria. In this book she centers her focus on African Immigrants and racial relations in the United States. Ifemelu grew up in poverty in Nigeria, but was exceptionally talented academically and qualified for a scholarship at a Philadelphia university. She had to leave her boyfriend Obinze behind but they both hoped he would be able to follow her in the near future. Unfortunately, life had other things in store for him. Times were hard for Ifemelu at first and she made a shameful mistake which caused her to cut off her ties to Obinze. Eventually she made new friends and created a popular blog about her experiences in America.

It's interesting that Ifemelu didn't think much about racial differences until she left Nigeria. She learned the difference between an American-African who might live in America but had African values and the African-Americans who are descended from slaves. She found out that blacks and whites often work together but play together infrequently. Furthermore, when Non-American blacks come to this country, they are not known as Nigerian or Jamaican, they are just Black. Ifemelu is a keen observer of behavior and started her blog -- "Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black" -- as a way to express her serious views in a lighthearted manner. It turned out to be a passion and a way to make a living and a name for herself. The entries are both entertaining and insightful, but do they serve as a way to further the story (remember, this is supposed to be a novel) or does the blog provide a means to promote the theme of racism in America? This may be a minor point, but the episodes that wind up as material for the blog take up much of the middle 300 pages or so of the book.

I really enjoyed this book and think Adichie is an amazing writer. However, just as Ifemelu began to speak in an American accent and relax her hair so it could swing like a white girl's and start to become a true "Americanah," the book likewise began to sacrifice the story to the point where it was beginning to sound like an agenda. Thankfully, Ifemelu dropped the affected accent and began to wear her hair in a short Afro and the story got back on track when she moved back to Nigeria after over a decade in America. Despite my slight complaint, I thought this was a fine book that is a likely and deserving candidate for the Booker Prize and will end up in my Top Ten for 2013.