room - Emma Donoghue

How bizarre was this book - i mean, not only that it was written from the point of view of Jack, Mr Five, a wee boy that has never seen anything else, lived anywhere else but in 'room'. His all world is room, the objects in it, Ma, and old Nick (nasty Nick ?). Everything else is TV.
And as we know, TV is not real.
But that wasn't the most bizarre. The weirdest thing is to get into his shoes socks, into his head, and look at the world as it would appear if we suddenly encountered it at five, being educated and literate, but totally ignorant, sensorially naive.
The weirdest thing is to feel for that boy, to understand and agree that life in room is so much safer, so less scary, so much more appealing in a way, that being 'scave' [scared and brave], that getting out of your comfort zone day after day is so hard sometimes. Bizarrely, life in the confinement of room doesn't seem so awful after all.
Freedom is scary, freedom hurts, crawling into wardrobe seem like the best option, if best is safest.
So, if Dora had a map to go through life, i guess the 2 first steps would be: safe (room), then scave (escape, encounter the unknown, step out). What comes next is probably... a middle way ? I don't know, i'd need to ask Dora, because since some TV is real after all, maybe she is too !

Note for later: it will be interesting to see whether the narration ages - there is a whole lot of references to current pop culture - how will it feel in 10 years time ?

a town like Alice - Nevil Shute

I've carried this book around for how ever long i can remember. It was in my dad's library when i was a child, and when i left home at 17, i hid this book in my suitcase - together with a few others and an old small family bible. I don't know how many times i have read this book - 5, 6 times ?
But now, for the first time, i've just read it in english. And i still love it just as much. And i've learnt many australian colloquialisms on the way, i sure did !
It's one of those books where so many things happen that you can't remember it all - and that's why every 3 or 4 years, i feel the need to re-read and remember.
It's such a perfect novel; it has everything: adventure, travels, inspiring lives, a touch of feminism (or should i say girl power ?) and a charming crocodile dundee lookalike pouring with testosterone and gentleness.
A proper novel, a classic.
Actually, thinking of it, Joe Harman reminds me of the little house in the prairie's Charles Ingalls. The pioneer with good values, the big-hearted hard-working Man with a big M. This probably taps into a lot of women's fantasy, and it surely does into mine, even if Joe would probably bore me to tears with his cattle talk, and Charles drives me mad with his god-loving streak.
Yet, being in Jean Paget's shoes - or bare feet - has been once again a very enjoyable read.
There are really 2 stories here, the march of those women, prisoners of the Japanese army, all around Malaysia during the 2nd world war, as well as the making of Willstown in Queensland, a town that becomes something bonza, just like Alice Springs was.
I don't know which part i like the best, and i've always wanted to go and see Kuala Lumpur and Alice Springs, just because of this book. Maybe one day i'll do just that, just like i was once in Tuba City, in front of the police station, imagining that i was soon going to catch sight of Joe Leaphorn or Jim Chee. I never made it to Shiprock though, and i'll regret it forever. (i didn't really make it to Grand Canyon either, but i didn't really care).
This is one of these books, the ones that make you want to take the trip, to retrace the steps, to see with your eyes what you've already seen in the text.

Note for later: I don't think i'll ever bore of re-reading this book. It is both entertaining and captivating. To keep high on the list of books to bring to a desert island !

Chéri - Colette

Je n'ai pas aimé ce livre. Euphémisme ou litote, je ne suis pas sure. Sous-estimation, sans doute.
Après 2 pages, je me demandais ce que je venais faire dans cette galère. Vraiment. L'indolence qui se respire à plein nez dans ces dialogues insipides, le jeune con inintéressant et coquet, il n'y avait rien pour me plaire. A part peut-être ce bout de phrase, au tout début: "Léonie Vallon, dite Léa de Lonval" - l'invention du verlan ! En 1920 ! Quelle découverte !
C'est à peu près tout.
Enfin pas tout à fait.
Comme je suis têtue, j'abandonne rarement un livre, même après quelques pages énervantes. D'ailleurs, le seul livre que j'aie jamais arrêté de lire comme ca, tout à coup, en plein milieu, parce que vraiment là non, je préférais encore me faire arracher une dent, c'est "au secours pardon" de Beigbeder. Et pourtant je l'aime, le Fred. Et son tout dernier "un roman français" encore plus que les autres. Mais vraiment, son histoire de poupée russe, je n'ai pas pu.
Bref, Chéri n'a donc pas fait exception à la règle, et j'ai continué jusqu'au bout. J'ai bien fait; j'ai fini par trouver quelques qualités au roman. Comme la dynamique du récit par exemple, la mise en miroir (déformant) des personnages, superficiels à en crever au début, réfléchis et grandis vers la fin, avec au milieu une zone de floue, comme un pont musical, Léa absente, Chéri à la dérive.
Je dois dire que la dernière partie du livre sauve un peu l'ensemble.
C'est peut-être que la relation quasi-incestueuse entre Léa et Chéri me dérange, c'est peut-être qu'elle m'agace voire m'ennuie, c'est peut-être que je préfère les hommes aux garçons. Le Chéri des dernières pages me donne moins envie d'envoyer des baffes. Et curieusement, sa relation avec Léa ne me choquerait plus du tout.
Il semblerait qu'il y ait une suite, "la fin de Chéri". Si quelqu'un me donne un résumé en 2 pages, je suis curieuse. Sinon, tant pis.

Note pour plus tard: ne pas relire. Chéri s'appelle Fred. Fred Peloux. On ne sait jamais, ca pourrait servir dans une soirée Trivial Pursuit.

last night in Twisted River - John Irving

Amazingly, there is a writer, a lot of New England, some larger and older ladies, and even a few bears. Not so much wrestling though, yet a little bit. Who would have thought ?
Thus said, it's like finding old friends, landmarks through a very long and enjoyable read, and i would have missed them if they hadn't appeared. And to be fair, although the elements seem to repeat themselves forever through John Irving's books, the actual narration is a new discovery every time.
I've been engrossed in this book for a bit more than 48 hours - reversing my sleep pattern because i didn't want to stop reading. Besides the storyline, totally addicting per se, the world that was opening before my eyes was for ever moving, for ever more complex, for ever demanding that i'd carry on reading.
Dominic & Daniel Baciagalupo, the kisses of the wolves, and Ketchum, whose name was reminding me of something (but what ?) all the way through (only after i'd finished, when i was trying to remember his name that was slipping away, did i think of ketchup - red, american, food, pioneer, not so bad finally).
I've also been wanting to eat all the way through this book - so much so that i made the boyfriend promise me that we're going to eat italian tomorrow. A fine crust pizza, with some honey in the dough, hopefully. And a green salad. No dessert - they're too french. With maybe something from China.
I do have to admit however that i found the first part a bit long - not so much the life on a river logging community - the roughness and violence of it - that got me quite hooked. But the technicity of the logs descending their way to the sawmills, the logjams, all that vocabulary i'd never heard of, either in french or even less in english - i made use of the dictionary a lot, hurray for the kindle. (to be honest, i made use of the dictionary function all the way through the book - which tells me that i'm far from being totally bilingual, and i've once again realised that there are so much more words with a very precise meaning in english than in french - it did remind me of reading Watership down in that respect).
I remember that at one point, when i was at around 30% of the book (kindle's progress bar, a new way of measuring things), i thought to myself that this book was SO good, i was glad i'd only read about a third of it; i had so much perfect-reading time ahead.
It makes me want to re-read 'the world according to Garp' and 'a prayer for Owen Meany' - i adored those novels as a teenager, and haven't read them since - and have totally forgotten their storyline as well. I had the exact same impulse after i read 'until i find you' - and instead i read 'a widow for one year' that i'd never read and that totally blew me away. But then i realised i had to stop. And so i will keep Twisted River with me for now, and look forward to read another John Irving soon, but not just yet.

Note for later: avoid reading 2 John Irving novels in a row, however tempting it is, as it would (1) be a waste, pleasure needs to be distilled through time, and (2) probably actually spoil the pleasure, as the recurring themes could get annoying and over repetitive instead of feeling like old friends, re-assuring landmarks. Tough, but true. But gosh i enjoyed reading this book.