Little Bee by Chris Cleaves

This books was recommended to me by a colleague. She described it as one of the best books she ever read, and I tend to agree that it is highly moving, disturbing and like the novel Blindness, illustrates the strength of the human spirit -- at its worse and best... I wish I had never read the rape scene. I'm not sure if I can ever erase the horror this passage created.

I was wonderfully written. I particularly like the way Cleaves alternatives the narrator between chapters and the way he has the story unfold. Intriguing, horrifying, beautiful and moving are just a few words that come to mind when thinking about this book. My colleague did not lead my astray by recommending this book.

Summary: Sarah Summers is enjoying a holiday on a Nigerian beach when a young girl named Little Bee crashes irrevocably into her life. All it takes is a brief and horrifying moment of crisis -- a terrifying scene that no reader will forget. Afterwards, Sarah and Little Bee might expect never to see each other again. But Little Bee finds Sarah's husband's wallet in the sand, and smuggles herself on board a cargo vessel with his address in mind. She spends two years in detention in England before making her way to Sarah's house, with what will prove to be devastating timing. Chapter by chapter, alternating between Little Bee's voice and Sarah's, Chris Cleavewholly and caringly portrays two very different women trying to cope with events they'd never imagined. Little Bee is experiencing all the fullness and emptiness of the rich world for the first time, and her observations are hopeful, charming and piercing: "Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl," she says: "Everyone would be pleased to see me coming." Sarah is more cynical and disheartened, a successful magazine editor trying to find meaning in the face of turmoil at home and work. As the story develops, however, we learn about what matters most to her, including her fierce, protective love for her funny little son ("From the Spring of 2007 until the end of that long summer when Little Bee came to live with us," Sarah says, "my son removed his Batman costume only at bathtimes."). Sarah is trying to find herself as much as Little Bee is -- and, unexpectedly, each character discovers a ray of hope in the other. What follows when Little Bee comes back into Sarah's life is a powerful story of reconciliation and healing, but it is mixed in with a generous helping of satire about the daily difficulties of modern life. This is a novel about important issues, from refugee policy to the devastating effects of violence, but more than that, it does something only great fiction can:Little Beeteaches us what it is like to live through experiences most of us think of only as far off disasters in the news. As ever, the author says it best: "It's an uplifting, thrilling, universal human story, and I just worked to keep it simple. One brave African girl; one brave Western woman. What if one just turned up on the other's doorstep one misty morning and asked, Can you help? And what if that help wasn't just a one-way street?"

The Elegance of the Hedgehog

French author, Muriel Barbery, writes an engaging and inspiring novel that is both rich and succulent, full of nuances and humour. The use of language is divine -- I had to look up such words as incunabulum and kolkhoz. I loved the language, as well as the characters. It was lovely... I'm almost sad that it is finished.

From Booklist: In a bourgeois apartment building in Paris, we encounter Renée, an intelligent, philosophical, and cultured concierge who masks herself as the stereotypical uneducated “super” to avoid suspicion from the building’s pretentious inhabitants. Also living in the building is Paloma, the adolescent daughter of a parliamentarian, who has decided to commit suicide on her thirteenth birthday because she cannot bear to live among the rich. Although they are passing strangers, it is through Renée’s observations and Paloma’s journal entries that The Elegance of the Hedgehog reveals the absurd lives of the wealthy. That is until a Japanese businessman moves into the building and brings the two characters together. A critical success in France, the novel may strike a different chord with some readers in the U.S. The plot thins at moments and is supplanted with philosophical discourse on culture, the ruling class, and the injustices done to the poor, leaving the reader enlightened on Kant but disappointed with the story at hand.

The Lost Painting

What a slog this books was to read. I enjoy the works of Caravaggio and thought this would be something similar to Girl with a Pearl Earring. I was very wrong. First of all, it's non-fiction but it presents itself as fiction. I was so disappointed, and so glad to finish this completely dire text.

Publisher's blurb:

An Italian village on a hilltop near the Adriatic coast, a decaying palazzo facing the sea, and in the basement, cobwebbed and dusty, lit by a single bulb, an archive unknown to scholars. Here, a young graduate student from Rome, Francesca Cappelletti, makes a discovery that inspires a search for a work of art of incalculable value, a painting lost for almost two centuries.

The artist was Caravaggio, a master of the Italian Baroque. He was a genius, a revolutionary painter, and a man beset by personal demons. Four hundred years ago, he drank and brawled in the taverns and streets of Rome, moving from one rooming house to another, constantly in and out of jail, all the while painting works of transcendent emotional and visual power. He rose from obscurity to fame and wealth, but success didn't alter his violent temperament. His rage finally led him to commit murder, forcing him to flee Rome a hunted man. He died young, alone, and under strange circumstances...