The Paris Wife - Paula McLain

Listen to: Make Believe - Nora Bayes 

I wish it was possible for me to meet Hemingway and his wife, and have a long talk with them. Separately and then together. I have a million question to ask, and I might even get heated up. I'd like to discuss his writing, their relationship, her hopes, his dreams and their Paris. I really liked the first half of the book but afterwards, I started getting emotionally involved. I was angry at Hemingway or Hadley, shifting between one then the other and afterwards angry at both. I don't usually have this type of anger with characters, it's usually frustrations and nothing beyond that. Yet The Paris Wife made me angry so many times, as well as a few smiles and frowns here and there. I think it's the fact that they're not fictional characters, they're real, they went through this and they endured. At least Hadley did, and Hemingway doing his best till he shot himself, always knowing this was how he would go. Imagine that you have Hemingway, his first wife and their life together. Romancing a writer, living in Paris, Hemingway's struggle and how his wife lived through it all. It's just my type of book, but it crushes so many notions you might have before hand. Don't expect a romantic story, and never expect to be told what to think. It doesn't give you Paris at its finest. It gives a sense of realistic Paris. The one where artists drank their hearts out and kept daring each other to outdo each other; writing, boxing, romancing and drinking. But what was scandalous anymore? They all lived on edge, and so there's nothing shocking about the book, at least nothing the writer feels horrified about. She's maybe staying true to her story telling but she made it feel as if you're in the early 20th century with them, as much true emotion is withheld...

The writing isn't among the top of the reasons I loved this book. The writing itself wasn't bad, but it's not something you notice as you read. Perhaps I would have paid more attention to it had I not been so deeply engrossed with the details of their lives and the people they knew. They got to meet the people now considered to be icons in literature including Fitzgerald and Joyce. I loved it when the author delved into that part, how Hemingway was given advice on his writing, how Paris launched his writing career, how difficult it must have been.

I have so many thoughts about this book. Hadley is eight years older, but when she meets Hemingway her life starts. He puts his faith in her and she has to endure the moodiness of a writer, the lonely life it can be and make sure she was there for him every step of the way. Perhaps she just was the Paris Wife and nothing more, who would know for sure?

"Why is it every other person you meet says they're an artist? A real artist doesn't need to gas on about it, he doesn't have time. He does his work and sweats it out in silence, and no one can help him at all."

Hemingway was born to write, and Hadley... she looked for happiness more than anything else.

Why couldn't I be happy? And just what was happiness anyway? Could you fake it, as Nora Bayes insisted? Could you force it like a spring bulb in your kitchen, or rub up against it at a party in Chicago and catch it like a cold?


Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind -as Nora Bayes insisted- a country you could sculpt out of air and then dance into.

"It's freedom you want, then?"
"Good God, yes. Don't you?"
"I don't know. I want to be happy I suppose."
"Happiness is so awfully complicated, but freedom isn't. You're either tied down or you're not."

She thought life began and ended with Hemingway. So much so that when he left for business for the first time, she had no idea what to do with herself. That kind of reliance... it speaks so much of her love for him but she knew not who she was when he was gone. She sacrificed years of her life for him, being desolate in Paris, in company not exactly hers, away from home. She had faith in his writing. She had faith she was enough for him, but who was enough for Hemingway? He was impulsive as a young man and he lived his life that way. She was always wondering if there was more to his love for her than his need for the sense of normal he felt with her.

"I hope we'll get lucky enough to grow old together. You see them on the street, those couples who've been married so long you can't tell them apart. How'd that be?"
"I'd love to look like you," I said. "I'd love to be you."
I'd never said anything truer. I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant. Hadn't I just felt us collapsing into one another, until there was no difference between us?

Both of them angered me at the end. His unfaithfulness, and her acceptance.

There are some who said I should have fought harder or longer for my marriage, but in the end fighting for a love that was already gone felt like trying to live in the ruins of a lost city.

Just what is always and forever? How can we make such promises when change is out of our hands? Why stay if another was making you happy? Why can't one person be enough with all their flaws and imperfections? I don't think it's possible for me to express my feelings towards the end for I would spoil details and I've already said a lot. Can I judge their relationship? Perhaps it was something she lacked, perhaps it was him, perhaps it was both of them. In the end, like the book says:

"Maybe no one can know how it is for anyone else."

Mornings in Jenin - Susan Abulhawa

I haven't read a book that reduced me to tears in so long. Reminiscent of Kanafani's 'Return to Haifa', the novel moves you so deeply with heartbreakingly beautiful story-telling of a family forced to leave their home, village and belongings to a refugee camp in Jenin.

I started reading it on a Friday morning, I spent three hours in bed with the book. I was ready for something sad, I was ready to get depressed. I didn't know what I was in for though, the tragedies the family had to undergo were beyond anything I could imagine. The story mainly focuses on Amal; her childhood in the refugee camp of Jenin with her best friend Huda, her relationship with her parents, being orphaned, studying abroad, being reunited with her brother, starting her own family and all the losses she has to witness in her lifetime. They make her shut the world outside, even the one closest to her heart, she gets to understand why Dalia, her mother, wasn't able to shower her with love. This sort of explains it:

"Sorrow gave Dalia an iron gift. Behind that hard shelter she loved boundlessly in the distance and privacy of her solitude, safe from the tragic rains of her fate."


Love has a strong presence in the book, the love of the land, of your family, your friends, and there was the "once in a life time" love, some stories were more believably than others but you still enjoy reading it all. Love can blossom anywhere, and as Gibran says "the deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain", it seems as though those who've gone through a tragedy experience a love like no other, they understand what loss means, having no home and still one awaits her lover years even though he gave her no reassurance whatsoever, and then there's a sweet teenage love that grows as strong as ever. 

"They talked, less for meaning than to hear the other's voice."

I enjoyed the first half of the book the most, there was a lot of innocence that couldn't yet be taken away. The second half turned more political, and a bit bleak though a lot of loose ends were tied so to speak. Jenin being revisited by Amal, how her daughter makes her see things in different ways, how she opens up again. The sweet tears of being free of things you held on to, sharing them with no one else till they ate you up from the inside. Humans have an amazing god-given capacity to endure, and the books speaks of that more than anything else. I loved how literature was infused here and there, you find a Gibran quote then a part of a Darwish poem. The writing style isn't that wow, but the author has her moments, a simple phrase as "my hair had turned into winter" will make you appreciate her words.

Of course, war was a dominating theme. I don't know what to say about the book to be honest, it's a lot of history, a story that needs to be read.  At the end, Fairouz was singing somewhere in Jenin and so I spent my last hour of the book listening to Fairouz, reading and crying at how things turned out to be in the end; the injustice... I can honestly say I'm glad I read it now, and as much as I wish to transfer my feelings into words I just can't seem to do it. So read these following quotes and get a feel of what the book's like:

"No one can own a tree," he continued. "It can belong to you, as you belong to it. We come from the land, give our love and labor to her, and she nurtures us in return. When we die, we return to the land. In a way, she owns us. Palestine owns us and we belong to her."

"I had an off desire to be a fish. I could live inside water's soothing world, where screams and gunfire were not heard and death was not smelled."

"War. The word detonates a baggage of dread, which I have lugged on my back since I was five years old. Since 1948, when war and I were formally introduced. It makes my blood run cold."

"To remain silent was to accommodate the possibility that it all was merely a nightmare."

"In that week I see how familiar words can break like glass and reassemble into goblins that waylay the mind with their claws."

"I am damaged, of no use to the people I love. I'll die if I stay here. But something in me remains afire. Something that refuses to break, insists on a fight."

"We're all born with the greatest treasures we'll ever have in life. One of those treasures is your mind, another is your heart. And the indispensable tools of those treasures are time and health. How you use the gifts of Allah to help yourself and humanity is ultimately how you honor him. I have tried to use my mind and my heard to keep our people linked to history, so we do not become amnesiac creatures living arbitrarily at the whim of justice."

"Our language was Palestine. It was a language we dismantled to construct a home."

Thank you Ammar.

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

My rating: 3/5

Ishiguro takes you to an alternative world, but the perfect phrase for his writing would be like somebody else said 'deceptive simplicity'. You think everything's so normal, till bit by bit you come across weird things like 'donations' and 'guardians' and 'carers', and it really takes you a lot to understand the whole thing. You're kept in the dark, like the main characters themselves. The writing style feels raw, he starts telling you a story then he goes back to tell you what led to it. It sort of feels like you're listening to him actually talking, that's how people usually tell stories in real life. I quite liked that about the book, though some might find it annoying.

I'd like to give it a 4 star rating, but I feel the novel was too specific. Ishiguro could have told us more about details, the little things, the years he'd simply skip and not mention at all, things we would have liked to know about the characters, he mainly said things which led to other things, things that kept the story going which is fine but then again it's just all one-sided. Another thing, the characters simply accepted whatever fate they were destined to. Their submission is depressing, and though it has a science-fiction element to it, it feels real. Perhaps because of the way the story is told. The novel does feel rushed which is a shame, but perhaps that's because the author's aiming at making us feel the impact of whatever happens, but if we got more reactions and more explanations then we'd fully comprehend the bigger picture.


When I think of that moment now, standing with Tommy in the little side-street about to begin our search, I feel a warmth welling up through me. Everything suddenly felt perfect: an hour set aside, stretching ahead of us, and there wasn't a better way to spend it. I had to really hold myself back from giggling stupidly, or jumping up and down on the pavement like a little kid. Not long ago, when I was caring for Tommy, and I brought up our Norfolk trip, he told me he'd felt exactly the same. That moment when we decided to go searching for my lost tape, it was like suddenly every cloud had blown away, and we had nothing but fun and laughter before us.


“I keep thinking about this river somewhere, with the water moving really fast. And these two people in the water, trying to hold onto each other, holding on as hard as they can, but in the end it's just too much. The current's too strong. They've got to let go, drift apart. That's how it is with us. It's a shame, Kath, because we've loved each other all our lives. But in the end, we can't stay together forever.”


“I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel, world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go.” 

My first read on my Kindle, all thanks to Ammar. A book you can actually hold has a different feel to it, but I'm not complaining, I love my kindle.

Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami

My favorite Murakami books. I'd like to talk about it but I don't think I can, all I can say is that it got me thinking a lot.


Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.


It just happens that I'm made. I have to write things down to feel I fully comprehend them.




"I want you to always remember me. Will you remember that I existed, and that I stood next to you like this?"

 
"I can never say what I want to say. It’s been like this for a while now. I try to say something, but all I get are the wrong words-the wrong words or the exact opposite words from what I mean. I try to correct myself, and that only makes it worse. I lose track of what I was trying to say to begin with. It’s like I’m split in two and playing tag with myself. One half is chasing the other half around the big, fat post. The other me has the right words, but this me can’t catch her."


'What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.'


O.K., so I’m not so smart. I’m working class. But it’s the working class that keeps the world running, and it’s the working class that gets exploited. What the hell kind of revolution have you got just tossing out big words that working-class can’t understand? What the hell kind of social revolution is that? 

Thank you Noor, for feeding my Murakami obsession and sending me this book.  

Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

"A certain thought was swelling in my head, growing until I couldn't ignore it any longer. I wanted to turn away from it; but I was powerless to stop that thought from taking over my mind as the wind is to stop itself from blowing."

"If a few minutes of suffering could make me so angry, what would years of it do? Even stone can be worn down with enough rain."


"Some people have difficulty telling the difference between something great and something they've simply heard of."

"We lead our lives like water flowing down a hill, going more or less in one direction until we splash into something that forces us to find new course."

"This is why dreams can be such dangerous things: they smolder on like a fire does, and sometimes consume us completely."

"I stumbled out into the courtyard to try to flee my misery, but of course we can never flee the misery that is within us."

|What if I came to the end of my life and realized that I'd spent every day watching for a man who would never come to me? What an unbearable sorrow it would be, to realize I'd never really tasted the things I'd eaten, or seen the places I'd been, because I thought of nothing but the chairman even while my life was drifting away from me. And yet if I drew my thoughts back from him, what life would I have? I would be like a dancer who had practiced since childhood for a performance she would never give."



PS1: Memoirs of a Geisha is a must-read.
PS2: Thanks to Maryam for lending me her copy, <3

A cough

``Don't keep coughing so, Kitty, for heaven's sake! Have a little compassion on my nerves. You tear them to pieces.''
``Kitty has no discretion in her coughs,'' said her father; ``she times them ill.''
``I do not cough for my own amusement,'' replied Kitty fretfully.
Pride and Prejudice

Indeed. 

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche

When a character I love did something wrong, I usually blamed them. Started thinking why did they do it, the motives and how could that character I personally related to so much do something so awful? It shocks me sometimes, and I begin to wonder about the things we do as humans, the things we don't mean. You see with books you tend to get the whole story, you know that person and they grow on you and doing what they did you live through their remorse and forgive them as they begin to forgive themselves.Yes, I know it's just fiction. In real life, you get the act, you get the apology, but you don't get the before and after. Those moments of conflict inside the person who did all of that.

Now, with Half of a Yellow Sun. Near the end. One of the characters I loved, did something horrible. So unlike themselves. It was war. He was a soldier, he wasn't used to that kind of life so when he found himself in that situation he did what his fellows did. A shameful act. He raped a girl. At that moment, there was no hesitation in him, at least nothing the author thought worth mentioning. He saw the hatred in the girl's eyes. I surprised myself then, I started blaming the author. Why did she do it? I didn't blame the character this time, I just thought of how cold Chimamanda was to do this to her beloved character. And so, I realized the possibility that she mourned him while she made him do it, but she did it anyway. Was it to give the story credibility or was it actually something that happens?

This does happen of course. Sins aren't committed by the evil only. Yet, this time, for that character, it felt like some sort of betrayal. I could be reading too much into it. He's not even my favorite character in the novel. He did that to the girl, and the author did did this to him.

War. The losses they suffered, how much they endured, the people who lost their lives in battle fields and those who died because there wasn't enough food. It's all so sad. You keep on thinking how wars are unnecessary, how evil and how they take away so much from a being. Of course, you're also amazed at people's endurance. It's a sad book let me tell you. Sad in a sense that you love the characters, you watch them fall apart, pull themselves back together and live on baseless hope. There's romance, beautiful love but the presence of loss and how they always anticipated it made whatever joys you found within the pages of the novel seem hollow.

These quotes, each is so true. So simple, yet so profound.

It came with never having had much, she knew, the inability to let go of things, even things that were useless.


Why do you need so much outside of yourself? Why isn't what you are enough?


How much did one know of the true feelings of those who did not have a voice?


Everything was moving so fast. He was not living his life; life was living him.


"You're burning memory," he told her.
"I am not." She would not place her memory on things that strangers could barge in and take away. "My memory is inside me."


I'm not sure this is a proper book review, I wasn't planning one but I had to write some of my thoughts here.
Ruqaiya, I didn't think I'd be this moved to be honest. A thank you is meaningless.