Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw

Set to be published by Spiegel & Grau in July 2013, Aw’s novel charts the overlapping lives of migrant Malaysian workers as their forge new lives for themselves in the rapidly changing city of Shanghai. Justin is from a family of successful property developers. Phoebe is a factory girl who has come to China brimming with hope, but her dreams are shattered within hours as the job she has come for seems never to have existed.

Gary is a successful pop artist, but his fans and marketing machine disappear after a bar-room brawl. Yinghui has businesses that are going well but must make decisions about her life. And then there is the shadowy billionaire named Walter Chao, ruthless, manipulative, and ultimately alone in the world.

There something so intriguing about these five sad characters that had me turning the pages late into the night. As a reader, you watch these characters climb and fall as Shanghai beats on, relentlessly changing under the feet of those who are desperate for it to remain the same.

Oddly enough, one of the more interesting characters is not a main character. Yanyan begins as a minor character, but she ends up playing such a big role in the story that it is hard to believe no chapter was ever written from her point of view. I use “point of view” loosely because other than the parts written by Walter, the rest of the story is told from a third-person narrator following the characters.

I have never traveled to Shanghai nor have I been to Malaysia, but the motivations and behaviors of the characters ring true despite the difference between myself and the characters. And I was so easily able to slip into their lives and follow along, which I would consider the mark of a wonderful novel.

However, this cynical, downtrodden story might leave a reader disappointed as they turn the last page. I, for one, started out that way, and I remember reaching the end and being surprised that there wasn’t more to the novel. However, the more I considered the novel, the more I thought about its contents, I began to appreciate its starkness and darkness.

Book Mentioned:

• Aw, Tash. Five Star Billionaire. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2013. Print. 379 pgs. ISBN: 9780812994346. Source: Advanced review copy from the publisher.

Book Cover © Spiegel & Grau. Retrieved: June 9, 2013.

Mark of the Grizzly by Scott McMillion

Subtitled “True Stories of Recent Bear Attacks and the Hard Lessons Learned”, this book examines a series of grizzly encounters (I loathe to use the word “attacks”) to provide lessons on how to behave in bear country for visitors and attempts to piece together a more in-depth explanation of bear behavior. Incidentally, however, I was quite happy to be reading this one on the plane away from bear country; I have no idea how I would be able to sleep in a tent or going hiking after reading about maulings in some of the places I have visited!

Despite my understanding that the book is set entirely in Montana, bear attacks from Alaska, Canada, and Wyoming are included as well. And one of the more fascinating parts of the book wasn’t even about a bear encounter. Rather, the book touches upon the problems facing Banff National Park in Canada. The park’s proximity to Calgary, the spectacular growth occurring in Banff, and the TransCanada Highway bisecting the part pose a serious threat to the park’s survival, particularly the genetic variability among the grizzly bear population. Given that the book was published in 1998, I would be curious to learn more about the park and if the problems have become worse or been mitigated somehow.

The bear encounters included in this book are meant to be a cautionary tale. Not to scare people about bears, but rather to educate them about the decision to enter bear country. Some of the encounters are thought to be provoked either by stupidity (McMillion gives the antidote of one man who touches the behind of a grizzly cub while its mother watched) or by natural instinct on the part of the bear. If you startle the bear, get between a mother and her cubs, or it perceives you as trying to take its food source, the bear could respond in a aggressive albeit natural way. The hope is that people would not get themselves into this situations but, if they do, that they know how to properly respond. Running, looking the bear in the eye, or screaming could trigger a bear to charge.

Some of the encounters, however, seem to be unproved. Bears wandering into campsites and attacking people while they sleep or seeing the victim as a food source after protecting their young, for example, will typically be exterminated by the National Park Service. In this discussion, the Canada Parks Service ends up looking like a bunch of bumbling fools — killing bears that were not involved in the attack. But the decision to kill a bear that has hurt or killed a human is not always a clear cut science, and it was interesting to read the different reactions of those who have been mauled by bears.

One person demanded on their way to the hospital that the bear involved in their mauling not be killed. Another purposefully went out with his father and brother to try and kill the bear himself. I, personally, don’t believe the first reaction should be to kill a bear, but I do understand the other side of the argument, which may be why I found these parts of the story to be one of the more interesting sections.

There does not seem to be a clear idea of what one should do if they are charged by a bear. Some people fought back and survived. Others did not. The importance of this book comes from heightening people’s awareness and making them more bear aware, more conscientiousness of their activities and actions in bear country.

Book Mentioned:

• McMillion, Scott. Mark of the Grizzly: True Stories of Recent Bear Attacks and the Hard Lessons Learned. Helena, MT: Falcon Publishing, 1998. Print. 252 pgs. ISBN: 1560446366. Source: Borrowed from my mother.

Book Cover © Falcon Publishing. Retrieved: June 4, 2013.

We All Wore Stars by Theo Coster

Those who have read Anne Frank’s diary might remember that Anne made references to her friends and classmates from the Jewish lycssm in the text. Some references are to boys who are clearly in love with her and some are long passages about her best friends. And then there is Hannah Gosler, who is shown in one of the many film adaptations trying to help her friend and the Holocaust’s most famous victim, Anne, when she needed her the most by tossing a Red Cross care package over the fence at Bergen-Belsen.

Coster — known by Anne as Maurice just as she was known as Annelies by him — survived the Holocaust in hiding by posing in another city as the respected principal’s nephew. Some sixty years later, he decides to return to Amsterdam from Tel Aviv and meet with those classmates of his and Anne’s who also survived. Fifty percent of students from the Jewish lyceum survived the war, which is astonishing considering 80 percent of all Jews in the Netherlands parished. The group shares their stories, travels to their old school, and visit the Secret Annex, and their trip together was documented in a film. This book was born out that documentary; a companion guide, if you will.

Their insights into Anne were quite interesting. As I said before, some knew her intimately while to others, like Coster, she was simply a classmate. (Although, Anne wrote in her diary that he was one of her admirers. Coster, for his part, says he was twelve/thirteen and can’t imagine that he was actually interested in her.) Their recollections of her have faded with time yet most seem to remember Anne’s birthday party and seeing her with the now famous diary with the checkered fabric. None expected her to be such an astonishing writer, but they do all seem to agree that Anne would love the attention her diary receives around the world. She was, according to them, constantly trying to be at the center of attention in their classroom.

But I think the true strength of the novel comes from how the classmates’ individual stories are shared. Coster begins with his and then as he meets his classmates to organize and carryout this trip, he learns about how they survived the Holocaust. The book is more like an interview with each person, and the ways in which they survived are astonishing.

Some like Coster went into hiding, and one women spent years living in the forest with other Jews and downed British and American pilots. Others, through luck and circumstance and quick thinking parents, managed to have the “J” for Jew stripped from their passport or were placed on a list of those with ties from Palestine, which separated them from their compatriots in another camp for exchange with German prisoners of war (POWs). The wide breathe of stories reflects the wide breathe of experiences of Jewish people during the Holocaust, a fact that I was surprised to find in such a slim, little book.

Book Mentioned:

• Coster, Theo. We All Wore Stars: Memories of Anne Frank from Her Classmates. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. Translated from Dutch. Print. 202 pgs. ISBN: 9780230342125. Source: Review copy.

Book Cover © Palgrave Macmillan. Retrieved: June 4, 2013.

Half the Sky by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn

Subtitled “Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide”, Kristof and WuDunn introduce readers to the women of Asia and Africa who have been raised in oppressive environments, subjected to physical and sexual abuse, and managed not only to survive but turn their experiences into opportunities to educate and help others. The purpose of this book, however, is not just to inform readers about the ways women are advocating changes in their circumstances but to engage readers with the problem and encourage them to take action now.

And that is why I ultimately struggled to love this book. The stories told in her are moving and inspiring, but for every story of a Middle Eastern girl working to educate the girls in her village, there is an Ethiopian woman who suffered devastating injuries in childbirth and can only be “saved” by a white person. The book is a glaring example of what one of my professors would term the “white savior complex”, perpetrating the idea that (white) Westerns must band together and save our poor brethren in the Third World.

For a book that is supposed to be about women, the book is sexist and ethnocentric and paternalistic, and certain chapters are so permeated by these beliefs that I had to take a break from the book in places. Perhaps the most disturbing example of this occurs on page 47 where Kristof and WuDunn begin their chapter by saying not the blame the victims only to write one sentence later:

“But the reality is that as long as women and girls allow themselves to be prostituted and beaten, the abuse will continue.” (pg. 47)

No, no, no! What a disturbing way to write about the survivors of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse, particularly given how the authors discuss how these women are often times drugged with methamphetamine and heroin to make them compliant. By using the word “allow”, the authors participate in what is known as “victim blaming”, and I cannot endorse such a book.

Compared to this, my second complaint may seem mundane, but I did not enjoy the way in which the authors referred to themselves. The book is written from WuDunn’s point of view; Kristof is always referred to as Nick in the text. Yet, I cannot remember a time where WuDunn referred to herself as “I”. Everything was “Nick said” or “we did”, and I found that to be a very odd way to write a book, especially considering Kristof’s name comes first. (I imagine because he is the more well-known of the two.)

Book Mentioned:

• Kristof, Nicholas D. and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. New York: Knopf, 2008. Print. 294 pgs. ISBN: 9780307267146. Source: Library.

Book Cover © Knopf. Retrieved: June 3, 2013.

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Four years after losing her mother to cancer, watching her family scatter to the winds, losing her marriage to a man she still loves, and losing herself to drugs and liaisons with a series of inappropriate men, Strayed decides she has nothing more to lose and finds herself drawn to the idea of hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs from the California-Mexico border to the Washington-Canada border.

Strayed has little training in hiking, although she believes her years growing up on a farm in the northern wilds of Minnesota will help her. Yet she makes some of the worst back country camping decisions one can make — too small boots, too heavy of pack, going it alone (which is a bad idea regardless of ones gender) — and the book opens with her throwing her boot over a cliff to join the one she dropped. It’s almost enough to make me think that I could hike the PCT and have little problems.

But I don’t have the determination of Strayed or (I hope) the empty void Strayed needed to fulfill on this journey, and that journey is actually the focus of this memoir, which wasn’t entirely what I was expecting when I picked this book off the library shelves. And I certainly would hope that people would not use this as a guidebook to hiking the PCT because while Strayed does not seem to recognize that she could have died (by the elements, not the murders/rapists she keeps going on about), her attitude towards hiking could have easily gotten her seriously hurt or killed.

The death of her mother is covered in detail in the first eighty pages, and I found myself trying not to cry as I read them. Her mother sounds like an incredible woman, and her eternal optimism is contrasted by Strayed’s eternal pessimism. She’s always had her mother, and the PCT becomes the therapist to this loss, the one that tells her it is okay to be alone. Her personal baggage is just as heavy as the backpack she carries through this hike, and any reader will need patience to deal with this unburdening.

There are aspects of this novel are incredibly moving, filled with those moments of self-realization and understanding that you cheer the author on for having and tuck away for your own self-examination. But the rest of the novel is a lot like hiking on a treacherous trail — forced to focus on getting through the difficult, uphill stretched, the magnificent views and the reason why you started the trail in the first place are lost.

Others’ Thoughts:

• Avid Reader’s Musings
• Love, Laughter, and Touch of Insanity

Book Cover:

• Strayed, Cheryl. Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. New York: Thorndike Press, 2013. Originally published 2012. Large Print. 623 pgs. ISBN: 9781410457196. Source: Library.

Book Cover © Thornedike Press. Retrieved: May 26, 2013.