I picked up Uzodinma Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation last week nudged by a memory of the positive press the book got in late 2005.
“Astonishing,” “staggering,” “harrowing,” “startling,” and “stunning” ring through the mostly positive reviews. Maslin’s unfortunately titled review praises the book while pointing to its lack of subtlety. The subject matter—child soldiers in Africa—is dire and the prose distinctive. Unlike other readers, though, I found Iweala’s avoidance of the past and future tenses annoying: there’s only so much present and past progressive I can take. And in the end, I don’t think the stylistic choice solved the difficulty of representing an African child’s war history.
This interview touches on one of the women whose war history inspired the story; and this longer one explores the novel’s language . And here’s an NPR interview which like much of the other coverage focuses as much on the child soldier problem rather than on the writing.
Bird sound wars. My site beats his–more variety.
It’s odd where reading will take you.
I started with Bock’s A Communist’s Daughter and then dissatisfied with its portrait of Jean Ewen, I moved on to Ewen’s autobiography, China Nurse. From there, I went to her communist father Tom McEwen’s autobiography, The Forge Glows Red. And from there I ended up reading an uneven biography of Annie Buller.
Buller died thirty-four years ago today. Most of the photos I’ve seen of her are, like this one, very unflattering. (Photo source)
A founding member of the Canadian Communist Party, she was an union organizer who seems to have moved between Ontario and Manitoba in order to organize the needle trades. Like many of labour activists of the period, she spent time in jail. She did two stints–for a year after the Estevan Coal Miners Strike and for two years during the early WWII crackdown on the CPC party. (Her husband was interned at the same time.) After that, more CPC work, including a run in a federal election.
She must have been a woman with a great deal of energy.
Heather
In your relationship, which one is Pinky and which one is the Brain?
After one miserable week and one draggy week, I’m approaching post-flu. The two key signs of this are that my brain now thinks in sentences of more than five words and that my sense of smell is starting to come back. I’ve never lost my sense of smell before and it’s been more disconcerting than I would have predicted (see–long sentences). And without smell it’s almost impossible to cook well.
So today I learned two things. The secret ingredients for any tasty meal are garlic and bacon fat. This revelation brought to you by my laziness. Yes, I know it’s a shock, but I’ve been too lazy to clean out a frying pan after cooking up our December treat of bacon.
The first bacon and garlic miracle was performed with kale–sauteed with garlic and a bit of bacon drippings. Amazing.
The second bacon and garlic miracle was performed this morning when I used the same (still unsoaped pan) to brown some stewing meat which I plopped drippings and all into the crock pot with a lot of garlic, pureed tomatoes, and root veg. Eight hours later very good stew was had.
The grannies with their cans of dripping were on to a good thing.
Heather
Wonder if something like this is eBayable?
Seen here. Via plep‘s feed.
Heather
The mousie that just came in from the bad weather is going to smell really really bad if it can’t find its way back out. Good thing the flu has destroyed my sense of smell.
Heather
