Even if the nights are short…

In Order to Live
A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom
by Yeonmi Park

A terrible but ultimately triumphant story, beautifully told. This lovely person escapes from North Korea, first to China, at 13 with her mother; the famines of the 90’s had blighted much of her childhood, such that children had tried to fill their bellies with crickets, and dragonfly heads roasted with a lighter. (North Korea had been financed from its beginning by China and Russia, and when these countries abandoned it, it slid immediately into meltdown. The government, however, pretended everything was fine. The dictator’s family got regular shipments of choice foods via special cars attached to every railway train.)

In China the two were immediately sold as slaves; women fetched higher prices than men, for reasons you can imagine. There was, however, food to eat. This horrible and terrifying existence among criminals challenged the teenager to grow up too soon in order to survive and help her family (her beloved dad was still in North Korea, sick, and her sister had vanished.)

Finally Christians got into the act, and with much bowing and scraping and bible study, the two women were included in a desperate escape plan, to South Korea via Mongolia. In the middle of winter.

Says the writer:

“As North Koreans, we were innocent in a way that I cannot fully explain.”

In South Korea: “Our schoolbooks no longer used ‘American bastards’ as units for addition and subtraction – now we had cute, colorful things like apples and oranges.”

“In North Korea, we don’t have words for ‘depression’ or ‘post-traumatic stress’, so I had no idea what those things were or whether I might be suffering because of them. The concept of ‘counselling’ was so foreign to me that when it was offered… I had no idea what they were talking about.”

“I read to fill my mind and to block out the bad memories. But I found that as I read more, my thoughts were getting deeper, my vision wider, and my emotions less shallow. The vocabulary of South Korea was so much richer than the one I had known, and when you have more words to describe the world, you increase your ability to think complex thoughts. In North Korea, the regime doesn’t want you to think, and they hate subtlety.”

“The whole idea of ‘celebrity’ was very strange to me,. Beautiful people in South Korea were adored like our Leader in the North. But the big difference was that in South Korea, people had a choice of whom to adore.”

I had previously read a beautiful, award-winning book of interviews with defectors, so I was familiar with the terrain – but this book takes us right into that world whole, and drags us through it bodily, with, still, grace and a delicate touch somehow. When the author escapes, we escape; when she escapes again (leaving China) we are with her through every icy desert mile. And when she later takes the stage as an activist, we are supporting her with all our hearts.

The phenomenon of dictatorship is a weird one, and I don’t think humans understand it yet. It is so rife: there must be some reason humans keep doing it. But the hideosity and regrettableness are not in doubt, and I think we all need to face up to this so that we can try to evolve a little faster away from such gross ignoration of human sensitivity and worth.

Not Tonight Josephine
A Road-Trip through Small-Town America
by George Mahood

Sometimes sheer silliness is just the right thing. If you’d been outside my bedroom window the last few long evenings you would have heard chortling, cackling, guffawing, and so on, as I read this self-published account of a road trip across the USA and back. Two young Brits buy a piece-of-shit van for 850 dollars in upstate New York and then proceed to wrestle with its expensive breakdowns. They sleep in the back and are harassed by policemen. They eat junk food. One goes home and the other works in a ski resort in Colorado before his girlfriend flies over to join him for the last part of the trip.

This writer just isn’t afraid of ridiculousness, in his prose or his life, and we get the benefit! Too much gravity isn’t good for us, I think, and this book is an antidote. It sits very lightly on our mood, our emotion, our conscience. Because it’s self-published I didn’t even have to worry that it should be great, or well-produced, or come up to much of any standard. Instead I just enjoyed what it was… a lot! There’s the Texan ski-lift operator in Colorado who was fired after 3 days because he thought he saw a friend in the queue, from behind, went out and yanked the man’s pants down. An upset and confused French stranger then complained to the boss. And so on. Told you it was silly!

The Memoir
Part One
by Cher

A hefty (413 pages) memoir of the first half of the singer’s life. She came from backwoods folk who then ended up all over the place – including Hollywood. Her dad was Armenian (her beautiful mom married many times), which accounts for her exotic looks.

The book is straightforward, well-written, and lavish: so much happens to this woman, and so fast, and the happenings were part of the larger scene of the unfolding 60’s and 70’s. Sonny looms large, and in much of the story they are having a great time. But he’s simultaneously cheating on her – with other girls, and by keeping her working and without contractural rights to her own output or the money it makes. The way she emerges from this cocoon of ignorance makes for a bracing story.

The only thing I knew of her was that one song, “I got you, Babe” – because back then it was playing everywhere; one of the songs of the times. And recently I’ve seen her in women’s magazines looking fashionable and serene, with a dishy young man with gold in his teeth next to her. But I’d never seen her TV shows or heard any of the rest of her music. So I got into YouTube… and I really didn’t like any of it at all! She had a beautiful voice but in the shows it seemed untrained and was used very randomly. And she and Sonny sounded strained together, singing. And whatever songs I heard, including newer ones, just weren’t my thing.

But I liked the book a lot. There were quite a few overlaps with my own life – we were at the same concert, or she knew somebody who knew somebody who was a friend of mine. And I enjoyed the drama, the clothes, the love affairs, and the many photos. Cher is a survivor – with a loving family behind her – and she goes on enjoying the creativity of being and dressing and loving and giving. It’s fun to read about her.

My Love Story
The Autobiography
by Tina Turner

Tina Turner – whom we all rightly know as a heroine – has, in her old age, and with the help of two writers – created a very good autobiography – clear, readable, arresting, intelligent. Everyone knows the story about her abusive ex, Ike Turner, and how she finally escaped from him and built her own career – but here we read about the great love who came along in her fifties, and stayed the course – a younger German record executive named Erwin. We read about every step of her career; about her family and friends and travels and houses. And there are lots of great photos.

She had a truly amazing life – she died last year.

And that life included Buddhist practice, which kept her sane through terrible times. She was a staunch and joyful woman, giving her all onstage, and it’s a privilege to eavesdrop on her history. The book could also help people who are struggling in abusive relationships.

I saw her perform in Lucerne, Switzerland, in a large sports stadium. She filled the place – with audience, with sound, and with her enormous, singing and dancing, courageous presence. I felt like she ought to be president, or goddess-in-chief, or something. She could have carried a very large role, or so it seemed that night.

She loved going to psychics, and when she was still quite young, in the throes of her chains to Ike, a psychic predicted her future, the way it did then come about.

In later life she went through health challenges and catastrophes – and she tells us all about that too. I find such things fascinating, though sometimes I learn more than my hypochondriacal self really wants to know about some ailment or other. But it’s good that she tells us all her story – if often streamlined to give a sense of the fabulous multiplicity of concerts she’s given in her life, without having to describe every one!

The Minor Adjustment
Beauty Salon
by Alexander McCall Smith

Another charming bit of fun in a long series. Mma Makutsi has a baby, and Mma Ramotswe has to run the detective agency alone. There are a couple of cases she’s working on. Mr J L B Matekoni attends an evening class called How to be a Modern Husband (this is very funny, as are the author’s observations on men and women generally). I don’t know anything about Botswana, but in these books it seems a lovely place, with innocence and honesty in it. There are 14 of these books altogether, and I’ve read 5 or 6. Nice to know there are more!

The Slow Road to Deadhorse
An Englishman’s Discoveries and Reflections on the Backroads of North America
by James Anthony

An English businessman living in Florida sells his company and embarks on a road trip – from the southernmost point of the USA, in Key West, to the northernmost, in Alaska; all on back roads. He has an absolutely wonderful time – I think almost every English person I’ve ever met feels very romantic about America (it’s the space! The space! …which is one of the things I don’t like about it! I think too much empty flatness and size makes lots of people kind of crazy! Just my opinion!)

So, we get an enjoyable tour with someone who’s very happy to be travelling along, and has a sense of the droll, and really loves his wife back home, so that he never misbehaves very badly.

Here’s what was both challenging and funny about this book for me: it’s self-published (the very-professional cover gives no hint of this), and it suffers to a comical degree with the problems that beset such a thing, all too (very) often: I have never seen anything like so many dangling participles. There are run-on and awkward sentences, peculiar punctuation, wrong spellings, and bad grammar. And yet I would not say that the book is badly written – it’s engaging, detailed, empathic (he gives a lot of space and heart to the plight of African Americans, and bows down to certain musical greats). I enjoyed it a lot despite the ungrammatical mess on every page. I couldn’t be cross with the author – I think it’s wonderful and necessary for people to tell their stories in whatever way those stories come forth. It’s the editors and proofreaders, if any, who should catch this stuff!

He doesn’t mention a proofreader in the acknowledgments – perhaps there wasn’t one. A single editor is mentioned plus various pre-pub readers. At any rate, the finished product is a strange mixture of professional-seeming and utterly inept.

Examples:

“On walking through the vast oak door, the cool air jolted.”

“The Bible Belt is a term used to describe the people of the south’s statistically high religious fervour.”

“The sheer scale and brutality of the war was terrifying. That fellow American countrymen could indiscriminately slaughter each other on such a scale highlighted the fragility of democracy and the ability of man to be drawn into combat.”

“His body, along with the 250 other defendants, was covered in oil and burnt under a nearby tree the night he was killed, March 6, 1836.”

“I took a plastic seat at a plastic table, by the window, quickly greeted by a waitress who managed to eke out a smile, handing me a fraying plastic menu.”

“I headed for the surety of downtown, easily spotted by heading towards St Louis’s most famous structure, jutting above the skyline.”

“After ten minutes’ queuing, a disinterested member of staff appeared.”

“I found the Rustic Charm lodge, which despite knocking and ringing, didn’t appear open.”

“And there she was, the American Queen, the glorious paddle steamer I’d seen the previous evening, now moored up, disembarking its guests.”

“And herein lied Mr Graves’ quandary: he had time for either lunch or a nap. But not both.”

“It made for the rather uncomfortable scenario for a single traveller whereby the main viewing field was an inhospitable spread of picnic circles, none of which I was invited to, and thus left me hunkering for a spot on the environs where I could stand without blocking a view or looking out of place.”

“A few resilient shrubs cover the land, just sufficient for only the hardiest of animals to eke out an existence in four months of the year.”

He also throws in a few goodies though, such as when he says his car “thuddered over the rails.”

Manic
A woman in pain – A life in chaos – The courage to fight a sacred madness
by Terri Cheney

A startling, intense, and beautifully-written memoir about manic depression. A high-powered entertainment lawyer in LA tries to keep her illness secret, but her extremes of behaviour are shockingly self-destructive. We travel with her through seductions, relationships, suicide attempts, mental hospitals, doctors’ offices, shopping sprees, trips to Big Sur – and lots and lots of consumption of pharmaceuticals. This all sounds awful – and it is – but the writing is so good – the author so brilliant – that I was pulled in on the first page, and went on a wild ride.

I think this is a very valuable book. The author herself understands her condition very well, and so we get an understanding too – which might come in handy if there’s someone in our lives who has it.

My mother had a morbid horror of mental illnesses in general and manic depression in particular; something must have happened when she was young to bring this about – and the house was often full of her dire warnings, predictions, and off-the-cuff diagnoses: “So-and-so is BIPOLAR!” – said with a superstitious flash of the eyes. I found it very interesting to read the story of an actual sufferer. I’ve read also that many people in history we hail as great authors, musicians, artists, thinkers – all sorts of creative people – had it. Quite a percentage, in fact.

The book will make your brain fizz in empathy.

Powder Wars
The Supergrass Who Brought Down Britain’s Biggest Drug Dealers
by Graham Johnson

I would normally avoid a book about organised crime. But I had a look in here and was captivated by the Liverpool underworld dialect! So for the sake of linguistic enjoyment I kept reading, even though everybody in the place seemed to be in the grip of a furiously-paced toxic masculinity! Even the women! So we meet lots and lots of assholes doing terrible things freely and lucratively. They are teaming up, fighting, splitting, taking revenge on each other, betraying, sneaking, battering, bragging… etc etc. It’s quite dizzying. And we feel for the victims of these manic despoilers.

The first half of the book sets the scene – characters, businesses, families, loyalties or not; demographics, economics, world affairs. (The book was published in 2004 but the plot starts way back in the 60’s.) The narration alternates between the author (an investigative reporter) and then the career criminal the story focuses on – he’s from a totally-criminal family, and he has multiple extremely successful enterprises going. A very cool cucumber indeed, if we believe what he so colourfully says.

But drugs entered the economy there in the 70’s, and the dealing of them replaced a lot of traditional enterprises like robbing warehouses, trucks, banks, houses, construction sites, roadworks, post offices, train tracks (!) and what-have-you.

Our hero – for lack of a better word – doesn’t approve of drugs. Then his adored son, a promising naval recruit who seems set for a straight life – becomes addicted to heroin. He overdoses, and our hero turns on all that he has known, and becomes an informant for Customs and Excise.

It’s actually a fascinating true story. I learned much more than I wanted to know about some things, but the whole tale makes a gripping, very coherent, and extremely colourful read.

Dialect examples:

“First they’d nick the Mr Bigs. Then they’d nick me. And then they’d nick Snowball and his firm of gobshites. To Snowball, the beaut, it would look like I was a pure stand-up guy, knowmean?”

“When they came for me I was sitting in the Jag on my new phone. It was one of those big, fuck-off prehistoric NEC porties they had in old days. There was about three or four officers. I was just sat there on my cream doe-hide leather seats waiting for them.”

“Fairplay to the nugget, he just started laughing at me and said don’t worry about it. ‘I’ll give you a ring later on,’ he said, as cool as a fucking salad he was.”

“One day a gang of teenage scallies were harassing an old biddy who lived in the same block as him. He’d told them to fuck off, but you know what kids are like these days. Hard-faced schoolie birds chewy-swinging and giving it loads and that back.”

Sea Room
the story of one man, three islands and half a million puffins
by Adam Nicolson

An English writer, who lives in London, inherits 3 lonely islands, the Shiants, off the coast of Lewis in the Hebrides. This book is his rhapsodic love letter to those islands. It is also an investigation of the history of the place – way back into antiquity – and a look at the wildlife, weather, and plants – all of this in luxuriant, unhurried detail. The writing is exquisite, philosophical, tender, and factual, and somehow very centred – in equal measure. Of course, I was longing to rest and recharge my soul in such a place!

I highly recommend this book if you like nature writing, anthropology, poetry; or memoirs in general. I found it soothing, enriching, and touching.

Blessed Everest
by Brian Blessed

I thoroughly enjoyed this. I read it bit by bit over weeks while having dinner – I think it would have been daunting to attempt it all at once – it’s huge! Full of gorgeous photos, and the text is extremely enthusiastic – even slightly purple – but enjoyable nonetheless.

I’d never heard of the guy who wrote it, but he’s apparently well-known in the UK. The story is couched in a form as if the reader were invited to climb Everest, and what happens on the expedition. Since I love mountaineering books, I just kind of coasted along in a mountain-y enjoyment.

These reviews were first posted on Facebook by the author
Featured image by Lacie Slezak via unsplash.com

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