Top Ten Tuesday: Books with Long Titles

 

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books with Long Titles.

Sometimes I am very grateful to have my handy dandy spreadsheet that goes back 15 years, especially for prompts like this when I can quickly search, or scan through the lists, to come up with ideal options.

So here are 10 books I have read at some point the last 15 years which have pretty long titles

The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or the Murder at Road Hill House by Kate Summerscale - I like the Suspicions of Mr Whicher as a title but Murder at Road Hill House probably gives you a bit better idea what the book is about.

Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice by Nam Le - Long title for a short story

Gallipoli: Our Last Man Standing - the extraordinary life of Alec Campbell by Jonathan King - Is it cheating to have a book with subtitle as part of this? I think not.

The Girl Who Married a Lion and Other Tales from Africa by Alexander McCall Smith - This is a long title for a collection of short folk stories.

Welcome to Rosie Hopkins Sweet Shop of Dreams by Jenny Colgan - What  a sweet story...pun intended

The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B by Sandra Gulland - The first book in a trilogy about Josephine Bonaparte 

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Maryann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - What a lovely book this was. It has been a long time since I read it!

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake by Sarah MacLean - This is the first book in a trilogy of books with long titles

The Weed that Strings the Hangmans Bag by Alan Bradley - This is the second book in another series with long titles!

The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodent by Terry Pratchett - Never miss a chance to include a Pratchett in the list!

The Boat by Nam Le

I don't often reread books but every now and again I will do so. It might be because I want to reread the story or it might be some other form of obligation. Over the last few days I reread The Boat by Nam Le because it was the October book for my book club.

I thought it might be fun to revisit my review of the short story collection that I wrote over three years ago and see what has changed and what has stayed the same.

I thought I would repost my original comments about each story and then add my further thoughts. If you just want to reread my original thoughts without all the added extras then the original review can be found here.

In Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, the voice is that of a writer in his late 20s who is struggling to meet the deadline for an essay that is due, and with the visit by his father. Despite being of Vietnamese our writer has chosen to try and avoid telling the refugee stories that he knows, but during this visit by his father he gets to hear at least one more story of how his dad came to be living in Australia.

I actually didn't reread the first story in the collection because I had already reread it earlier this year when it was released as a Penguin Shorts e-story. I wrote a whole post on it at that time which you can read here.

Having read that first story, it was something of a surprise to realise that the next story, Cartagena, is told from the point of view of a 14 year old hit man from the barrios of Columbia who needs to face up to the consequences of at least some of his actions.

I am going to talk a little bit about memories of reading a collection a bit further in relation to one of the other stories. This was probably the story that I remembered most about when I started rereading it. One of the things about reviewing is trying to get the heart of a story or a book without giving too much away. When I look at that sentence above, I couldn't help but think at how inadequate that sentence was. Whilst it does cover a portion of the story, there was so much more that could be said. In that one sentence I could have included that it was about friendship and loyalty and betrayal and violence (good job Le came up with a more succint title than that, unlike the first story that I mentioned above!)

Meeting Elise is another complete change of pace. This time the story is written from the perspective of an older man who is fast coming face to face with his mortality. He is hoping to meet up with his estranged daughter, but there is nothing at all certain in the arrangements.

Of all the stories in the collection, I think this is one that I struggled with the most this time around. Nam Le goes from a meta type narrator in the first story, to a young boy in the second story. In this story, we meet an old man - a famous artist who is facing his own demise. He has been separated physically and emotionally from his daughter but now he has just one chance to reconnect.  I am not sure why I found it difficult to warm to the main character. Maybe it was his obsession with his younger lover or his unpleasant behaviour but it was something. And yet, the author still managed to have me empathising with him as the story came to its end.

The fourth story is probably my favourite, Halflead Bay. The main character is a young boy who is trying to deal with his mother's serious illness, and with the budding attraction he feels to Alison, who just happens to be connected with the town bully. My teaser from Teaser Tuesday came from this story.

It is interesting that I chose this one as my favourite of the collection the first time around. It is the biggest story in the collection. As I was reading this I found myself thinking that I couldn't possibly have read this story because I didn't remember a single thing until we got to very near the end. Memory is a funny thing - you would have thought that if it was my favourite then that would make me more likely to remember this story but not the others, but apparently not! I also didn't find myself as moved by this story as I did some of the others. Is that a sign of being in a different mood this time around when I read it, or perhaps even something that has changed within me over the last 3 years. I am not sure but it is interesting to contemplate.

If I had to pick my least favourite of this collection it would probably be Hiroshima. Le once again assumes a female voice, this time a young girl who is living in Hiroshima in the days before the end of WWII. Despite saying that it was my least favourite it was still a very poignant story, especially as the young girl comments about being able to differentiate between a squadron of planes flying overhead, and the war time slogans such as "do without until victory". One question that this story did make me think of is whether there are any historical fiction novels that are out there that speak about the Japanese WWII experience. There are a few that are set in Germany, but I don't know of any set in Japan about the normal Japanese persons experience.

My reaction to this story was similarly very different to my reaction the first time around. Far from being my least favourite I would say that this time it was up there with my favourites. Whilst it was a story that was still difficult to read, I found it incredibly moving and very interesting. It was also the story that prompted nearly all of the bookclub discussion. The discussion talked a lot about WWII prisoner of war experiences that one of the members had heard from her father who was a POW, as well as a pretty in depth discussion about the differences between that war and the current situation that our soldiers find themselves in in places like Iraq. One of our members had actually lived in Hiroshima for a while so it was fascinating to hear her talk about her experiences there, the conversations that she had with people who lived through the dropping of the atom bomb and so much more. 

In Tehran Calling, a young woman is trying to escape her broken romance and goes to visit her best friend who is now living in Tehran, and who is agitating for women's rights. Sarah and her friend Parvin had been somewhat estranged, but Sarah sees this as a chance to rectify that, but her visit to Tehran surprises her in many ways.

Not much to say about this one. I guess I don't really get what the point of it was, especially the ending!

The final story in this collection, The Boat, is the story of a young girl who is trying to escape from Vietnam as one of the boat people. The boat is barely seaworthy, and very overcrowded, and it isn't long before the journey becomes perilous in many ways.

This time reading the collection, this was my favourite of the stories. In a few short pages, Nam Le manages to tell us of the harrowing journey a young girl takes on a boat from Vietnam. In addition to what I noted above, there isn't enough food or water and when a storm damages the engine, the boat drifts aimlessley for days. On the overcrowded boat, illness soon becomes the biggest danger, but it isn't the only problem that these people who are desperately seeking a better life face.

I think part of the reason why this story has resonated so much more this time is that over the last couple of years there has been a lot of focus on refugees here. This has been both in terms of those who want to 'stop the boats' but also in terms of programs like Go Back Where You Came From which have attempted to show the kind of dangers that people have experienced in their lives that makes getting on a leaky boat that may or may not make it to countries like Australia a better option than staying in their homelands.

In summary, Nam Le's chameleon like ability to write different characters and settings once again shone brightly, easily standing up to a reread. I did however find myself wondering when we might see a new collection from this author, or maybe a novel, or just something really! I haven't seen anything about any new works but I will be sure to be reading whatever he decides to come out with next.\

Last time I read this I gave it a rating of 4/5 and that hasn't changed this time around!

I also read this book for the following challenge:

Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice by Nam Le

Over the last couple of months, at least two of the big publishers here in Australia have started putting out ebook only individual short stories by some well known Australian authors!  When I saw them on Netgalley I jumped at the chance to read at least a couple of them.


I was especially pleased to see a new Nam Le story, having read and enjoyed his very successful collection, The Boat, several years ago. I possibly should have read the description because it turns out that this story is one that was previously published in that collection. In other words, this ended up being a reread for me. Not that this was a huge hardship though.


It is interesting to revisit a short story several years after you first read it, particularly in the context of being a standalone story and not part of the collection. In The Boat, this was the first story  and so the other stories built on top of this one. At one point, the character Nam (who does seem to share a lot of characteristics with the author Nam) makes references to other stories which turn out to be the other stories in the original collection.


Our character, Nam, is a writer who is just about to finish his time at the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is, however, very blocked creatively and is resisting as much as possible the idea  of writing an ethnic story like the one that is the story of his family. With a deadline looming, the last thing he needs is the added pressure of his dad coming all the way from Australia to spend some time with him.

The relationship between the two men has been precarious for a long time. Nam thinks he knows his father's story that led him to escape to Australia as a refugee, but does he really? His father doesn't necessarily understand Nam and his modern ways. This is a common immigrant story - the disconnect between the two generations who have very different life experiences and who have two very different cultural experiences.


As the deadline for his submission continues, he decides that he will write his father's story, but is it possible for the son to understand exactly what it was that the father went through as a young boy in the Vietnam war; his loss, his actions, the lasting impact both on his father as a man and as a family man who now lives in a far away country.


It's a bit meta, with Nam the character taking on some of the story of Nam the author, but ultimately it is a compelling short story to read to occupy a few minutes in your day.


Now, I need to keep on waiting for the next new story from Nam Le.

Synopsis

A young Vietnamese-Australian named Nam, in his final year at the famed Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is trying to find his voice on the page. When his father, a man with a painful past, comes to visit, Nam’s writing and sense of self are both deeply changed.


Love and Honour and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice is a deeply moving story of identity, family and the wellsprings of creativity, from Nam Le’s multi-award-winning collection The Boat

The Boat by Nam Le

A stunningly inventive, deeply moving fiction debut: stories that take us from the slums of Colombia to the streets of Tehran; from New York City to Iowa City; from a tiny fishing village in Australia to a foundering vessel in the South China Sea, in a masterly display of literary virtuosity and feeling.

In the magnificent opening story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” a young writer is urged by his friends to mine his father’s experiences in Vietnam—and what seems at first a satire of turning one’s life into literary commerce becomes a transcendent exploration of homeland, and the ties between father and son. “Cartagena” provides a visceral glimpse of life in Colombia as it enters the mind of a fourteen-year-old hit man facing the ultimate test. In “Meeting Elise,” an aging New York painter mourns his body’s decline as he prepares to meet his daughter on the eve of her Carnegie Hall debut. And with graceful symmetry, the final, title story returns to Vietnam, to a fishing trawler crowded with refugees, where a young woman’s bond with a mother and her small son forces both women to a shattering decision.

Brilliant, daring, and demonstrating a jaw-dropping versatility of voice and point of view, The Boat is an extraordinary work of fiction that takes us to the heart of what it means to be human, and announces a writer of astonishing gifts.

Last year there was a great deal of excitement around this collection of short stories, culminating to being awarded at least one major literary prize (The Dylan Thomas Award). The author, Nam Le, was born in Vietnam, came to Australia as a child, and has lately been splitting his time between Australia, America and soon in the UK as well. We definitely claim him as an Aussie!

Nam Le has a chameleon like quality to his writing. In one story he is a struggling writer dealing with the visit of his father, in another he is a teenage assassin in the barrios of Columbia, and then again as a young woman visiting her friend in Tehran. He really doesn't miss a beat no matter whose voice he is telling the story in.

In Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice, the voice is that of a writer in his late 20s who is struggling to meet the deadline for an essay that is due, and with the visit by his father. Despite being of Vietnamese our writer has chosen to try and avoid telling the refugee stories that he knows, but during this visit by his father he gets to hear at least one more story of how his dad came to be living in Australia.

Having read that first story, it was something of a surprise to realise that the next story, Cartagena, is told from the point of view of a 14 year old hit man from the barrios of Columbia who needs to face up to the consequences of at least some of his actions.

Meeting Elise is another complete change of pace. This time the story is written from the perspective of an older man who is fast coming face to face with his mortality. He is hoping to meet up with his estranged daughter, but there is nothing at all certain in the arrangements.

The fourth story is probably my favourite, Halflead Bay. The main character is a young boy who is trying to deal with his mother's serious illness, and with the budding attraction he feels to Alison, who just happens to be connected with the town bully. My teaser from Teaser Tuesday came from this story.

If I had to pick my least favourite of this collection it would probably be Hiroshima. Le once again assumes a female voice, this time a young girl who is living in Hiroshima in the days before the end of WWII. Despite saying that it was my least favourite it was still a very poignant story, especially as the young girl comments about being able to differentiate between a squadron of planes flying overhead, and the war time slogans such as "do without until victory". One question that this story did make me think of is whether there are any historical fiction novels that are out there that speak about the Japanese WWII experience. There are a few that are set in Germany, but I don't know of any set in Japan about the normal Japanese persons experience.

In Tehran Calling, a young woman is trying to escape her broken romance and goes to visit her best friend who is now living in Tehran, and who is agitating for women's rights. Sarah and her friend Parvin had been somewhat estranged, but Sarah sees this as a chance to rectify that, but her visit to Tehran surprises her in many ways.

The final story in this collection, The Boat, is the story of a young girl who is trying to escape from Vietnam as one of the boat people. The boat is barely seaworthy, and very overcrowded, and it isn't long before the journey becomes perilous in many ways.

If you are looking for a short story collection, then this is certainly one to consider.

This is one of my reads from the Book Awards Reading Challenge II.

Teaser Tuesday

Teaser Tuesday is hosted by Should be Reading:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) “teaser” sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title of the book that you’re getting your “teaser” from … that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you’ve given!
• Please avoid spoilers!

I am not quite sure how this has happened but I seem to be reading two short story collections at the same time. Luckily, they have very different tones - one is paranormal/romance and the other is more literary! This week's teaser comes from page 135 of The Boat by Nam Le. The lines comes from a short story called Halflead Bay:

The sea was like this. You could wait all day and then, just when you were leaving, it might offer something up - the rubbery back of a whale, the glass-sharp glint of jumping mackerel - something.