Review: "Push" by Sapphire

Precious Jones is 12 years old when she goes to hospital. Her mother has beaten her up (with an iron skillet), punched and kick her. Because Precious was having contractions. In the hospital, the battered, obese pre-teen girl gives birth to a daughter and when the nurses ask the name of the father, she replies "Carl Kenwood Jones". The nurses flinch. Why? Because that is also the name of Precious' own father. This scene gives you a very good idea about Precious and the trouble she goes through. Growing up in poverty in 1980's Harlem, Precious' life revolves around being verbally abused by her mother and physically abused by her father. When she is 16, she is thrown out of school for being pregnant  - again, and again the father is man who also calls himself Precious' father.
Precious is a big girl. Not round or chubby but fat as in critically obese and this is how she hides the second pregnancy, knowing well that her mother will blame her for the circumstances. However, a teacher takes pity on Precious who is actually quite a devoted student and helps her get a place at Each One Teach One, a school for illiterate teens and adults. Because even though Precious loves her classes, she also cannot read to save her life. At Each One Teach One Precious for the first time in her life meets compassion, friendliness and care and she meets girls and women who have suffered through some of the same things as herself. In the classroom she learns not only how to read (Alice Walker's The Colour Purple) but she also learns about independence and ambition and about taking life in her own hands.

"Push" by Sapphire is a different book, a special book. It is written in Precious' own words and dialect making it rather difficult to read if you are not into Harlem street slang but I found it easy enough to get into actually. And it does give Precious her own voice, making the story more authentic than if it was written in perfect New England English.

I found the story very emotional to read because Precious is such a lovely, clever girl with such a low self-esteem. She continually wishes that she has been born as a skinny white girl with not a care in the world. Being a mother-of-two at sixteen as well as an incest and battery survivor with a reading disability and no place to live can't be easy - and it certainly isn't for Precious. And that is actually what makes it difficult to read because it is a lot of trouble to take in. I mean, nothing is really good in Precious' life. It is all very grim and even when it gets better, it is still pretty awful.

However, as much as it was over the top, it was also a good read because it engaged me on a very emotional level. It reminded me of "Lucky" by Alice Sebold because it is written with the same blunt honesty and deals with extremely difficult topics in a very matter-of-fact manner.

Ooh and by the way - it has been made into a movie "Precious" that I am definitely going to have to see! When it came out it got great reviews and I can't wait to see how it treats the story of Precious.

Read it if: You want to face the ugly sides of life. Want to motivate yourself to do more charity work.

Review: "Lucky" by Alice Sebold

Some books are so honest, so open and so real that it affects me in an almost physical way to read them. Do you know that feeling? Where you are so immersed in a book that you tense up and end up with your shoulders right under your ears and you spine is hurting from the tension? Fairly few non-fiction books get me to this stage... actually very very few. "Lucky" by Alice Sebold is one of these very few.

You have probably heard of Alice Sebold before. She is the author of "The Lovely Bones", the highly acclaimed novel that was made into a movie. I haven't read that one but I stumbled over "Lucky" and thought I could give it a go. The topic is a difficult one. This is the non-fiction, truer than true story of how young Alice was raped when she was on her way through and crossed through dark part of a park.

This is the story of what has happened to so many girls and women. It is the story of a woman being robbed of something that she can never have back and of having to fight for her right to a normal life afterwards. Because the rape is just the first part of the story, then comes the trial and having to go through the process of being a victim and dealing with the way that people are now treating her differently.

On the back of the book it says something really profound: "You save yourself or you remain unsaved." Alice Sebold figured this out the hard way as she fought to save herself from the role that society and people pressed upon her and as she fought for what she believed was her right - a normal right.

As a book it is in a league way above most of the other "my true story" tales. It is so well-written that you almost (almost) forget that this is a real story, not just a very vivid narrator. It is an incredibly powerful book that will probably be an emotional read for most people but it is also a courageous work at art that confronts a taboo that few of us dare to discuss. Some people might be offended by the violence in the book and by the way that Sebold handles (or doesn't handle) the emotional and mental consequences of her experiences. I didn't thought - what I felt most was admiration for her honesty and her will to tell this story and encourage others to tell their stories and face the taboos.

For other bloggers' thoughts on "Lucky" by Alice Sebold try:

Amy Reads

My Dear Trash

The Mad Bibliophile

Review: "Purge"

Finding Finnish author Sofi Oksanen's novel "Purge" in a second-hand bookshop for a few pounds was a real find! It's been on my TBR ever since I read a review of it in the Sunday paper and when I bought it, I couldn't keep myself from reading it immediately because I was so curious about the story.

This is a dark novel on several levels with two stories intertwining, both very dark tales of women whose lives have not been easy. Aliide Truu is an elderly lady living in an old farmhouse in the Estonian countryside. She lives in a rather old-fashioned way and is largely self-sufficient and withdrawn from the world. So one day when Aliide finds a young woman outside her house, a woman in strange Westernized clothes who behaves really strangely, she is obviously suspicious. There is something about the woman though, that means that Aliide can't just leave her to her destiny so she takes her in, feeds her and chats with her while trying to figure out what has happened to this young woman, Zara, to leave her in such a difficult situation.
Aliide's and Zara's stories are very dissimilar. One is the story of living in a country where communism pervades everything. Where husbands spy on wives and village men rape girls to torture their parents. It is such a strong, emotional story of lives being torn apart, love having to give up when faced with such strong adversity, it is raw and painful to read, yet impossible to put down. And this is something that Aliide's story shares with Zara's story. Zara's story is about being a trafficking victim, about a naive, young girl who has always been deprived of the Western luxury who jumps on the chance for a new start in the West and ends up losing everything except her life. It is as painful and raw as Aliide's story even though the two stories are very different. It almost physically hurts to read it.

The strengths of "Purge" are many. It is not sugarcoated, everything is exposed, all human flaws are there in plain view and even the main characters that as a reader, I sympathized with, are full of flaws. Another strength is the historical aspect. As a historical story, it works really well because it envokes an Estonia of the past (luckily) that is so different from modern-day Estonia, yet gives you a better chance of understanding Estonia and the other countries that suffered during the dark days of communism and Stalin. It is truly a scary read on so many levels, from the explicit violence and the vulnerability of the women in this story to the political environment and the men that will do anything for money, power, status or a casino.

A quote to give you a taste of "Purge":
"too many people had dirty flour in their bags, and people with filthy fingers are hardly enthusiastic about digging up the past . . . those who poke around in the past will get a stick in the eye."

This is one of the best novels I have read in 2011 and I will definitely re-read it and buy it as a present for many of my friends.

Read it if: You enjoyed the movie "The Lives of the Others" or if you love your books to leave you with a lot to think about.