Old Paperbacks...

Question?

What do the novels, “The Boat Rocker” by Ha Jin and “Meet Me at the Museum” by Anne Youngson have in common?

Answer:

Absolutely nothing, except that they are the only two books I have completed during this historic COVID Confinement, I am embarrassed to admit.

My new daily resolution? To finish the many petulant paperbacks, which have been lying around for years, waiting for...say.... a Pandemic of Epic Proportions, so they may be noticed. Well paperbacks….you got your wish.

“The Boat Rocker”, written in 2016, by the esteemed author of “Waiting”, tells the story of a naturalized Chinese ex-pat living in New York, and working as journalist for a small Chinese news agency. Feng Danlin is a principled truth teller who exposes the corruption and hypocrisy of the Communist regime, which makes him both popular around the world and an enemy of the Communist officials. His latest assignment is to investigate and uncover the fraudulent scheme of his ex-wife, an unscrupulous novelist of questionable talent. Yan Haili is married to an American now, and has written an “utterly autobiographical” transnational romantic story of horrific proportions. It is about as autobiographical as “A Million Little Pieces”.

I liked the book, in that it is a simple story about a complicated behemoth of a topic. You flit in, imagine the Chinese police state, and leave with your American passport, happy to be alive. Reading fictional accounts of Falun Gong attacks, while receiving copies of the “The Epoch Times” in real life made me wonder, “Coincidence? Art imitating life or the other way around?”. Still and all, this is a skip. Read “Waiting” instead.

“Meet Me at the Museum” is a debut novel written in 2018 by a retired grandmother who lives in Oxfordshire, England. She’s my kind of gal, so I was favorably biased at the outset. It’s a lovely story, crafted in the epistolary style of "Where'd You Go Bernadette?", of a post-middle aged English woman who starts corresponding with the Danish curator of the Silkeborg Museum. Tina Hopgood, exhausted from living all of her life in the same, isolating countryside she calls home, is thrust into an existential crises when a childhood friend dies. She writes to the Museum for information about the historically significant Tollund Man. , a pre-Roman Iron Age artifact that she and her friend always wanted to see. Anders Larsen, curator, becomes her pen pal of significance, as he reveals Tollund Man facts and then his own worldly malaise.

As someone prone to sloppy existential thought, I found this book to be sweet, but it will likely appeal only to women of a certain age. It's an easy read, which is also appealing to women of a certain age, unless, like me, you become curious about The Tollund Man. I Wiki'd him, then wiki'd the Elling Woman, then the Pre-Roman Iron Age...then.....

Still and all, good fun.

On to the next….

The Stationary Store by Marjan Kamali