Review: The Translation of Love

The Translation of Love by Lynne Kutsukake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This story was so beautifully written and wrapped up. As I neared the end, I was worried on how Lynne Kutsukake will tie the loose ends, but the last four or five chapters gave me a feeling of gratification; a feeling of completeness. (Although I would have loved to know more about what happened to Wada and Lieutenant Baker.)

The book is told in different points of view of key characters living in Japan at the wake of World War II. These characters are neither extraordinary nor historically famous. In fact, they could be anyone from the Japanese masses. And yet, all had their stories beautifully told by Kutsukake's amazing prose. When all tied together, they form one authentic picture of Japan's culture, and a jarring picture of one of the biggest events in Japan's history.

I guess this is one of the reasons why I'm starting to fall in love with historical novels. You know how the history will play out--you've read about it, studied it, or heard accounts of it--and yet the story is still so surprising and unpredictable. You realize that there are so many eyes you can view it history from and still feel varying emotions. Reading historical fiction like this allows you to experience the past through eyes of even the simplest man.

It's also a book of language: of how emotion transcends all lingual differences and cuts across all races. Of how powerful a commodity words are for humanity.

Understandably, it took a while for me to finish this book. It is not a suspense or a mystery novel, and so I did not blaze through it as I would on gripping thrillers. It's not a book that has a prize in the end. It's the type of book that you slowly go through, digesting the philosophical and even the simplest of phrases.


--

"..his goal was simply to be a conduit through which words in one language would pass and be transformed into words of another... But once he started working, he came to see that the words were not just letters or symbols on the page. Each word was bursting with emotion. There were the emotions felt by the writer and by the reader, but also by him, the translator caught in the middle, reading secrets between lovers or dark truths shared."

"How should a man live? Maybe there was no answer. How to live? How to be? Just day by day. Going forward. And then? Just live."

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Review: Boo

Boo by Neil Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

So rarely do I come across a book so strange and so humbly profound. It's not my usual gore, thriller, or horror, but it held me captive. Each page begged to be read and turned. I never expected I'd enjoy this book, much less love it as much as I did. It is set in a fictional heaven called Town where Boo woke up after dying. As he grows accustomed to living his afterlife, he learns the merits of friendship, forgiveness, and healing--things that were obscure to him when he was still living.


Smith delivered an emotionally-charged book told from the perspective of an emotionally 'challenged/disabled' boy. How absolutely clever is that? Boo might as well be one of the most important books of this generation.


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Review: My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars


When you read this book, expect to be bemused and derailed on most part. That's what you get from reading at the perspective of the lonely but shrewd little Elsa. The fairy tales fused within the story are often confusing, but so Delphic and lovingly constructed, it makes you want to reflect on life after reading any profound details from them. As the story progressed, it became harder to distinguish which are part of the plot and which are part of her Granny's fairy tales. Nevertheless, I think I would've enjoyed reading this story more at a younger age. And it's really easy to relate to Elsa, seeing as we both love Harry Potter and how as kids, we were both different from our peers.

I was willing to give this book a three-star rating halfway through. Like I said, the book was confusing in almost all aspects. But when I got to the end, everything fell into place, and I can't help but feel so ecstatic and undone by the sheer magic and simplicity of Granny's fairy tales and how they continue to help Elsa cope (hence, three became four). I realized, the fairy tales ARE the story. I can't help it, I'm still a sucker for happy endings. 

Few of my favorite lines:

"Maybe she was disappointed in you because you're so disappointed in yourself."
"The mightiest power of death is not that it can make people die, but that it can make the people left behind want to stop living..."
"...because the people who reach the end of their days must leave others who have to live out their days without them."



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