Short Story September: The Headstrong Historian by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

This story can be found here in The New Yorker which has a great selection of short stories.

Nwamgba is looking back over her life, she remembers her fierce stubbonness and determination to marry Obierika despite all the rumours about the infertility which ran through his ancestors. When they marry she suffers many miscarriages, being forced to make sacrifices until her son is born.

Shortly after this birth, her husband dies, Nwamgba decides to send her son to an English school, a decision which leaves her proud but practically cuts her out of her sons life. Her son is renamed Micheal, the Christian Missionary school teaches her nudity is wrong, that sacrifices and the rites performed by African tribes are heathen and should be avoided. This education that he recieves which was supposed to help him, creates a divide between his communities beliefs and his.

When he marries and has children, his Mother wishes that she recieves a grandchild, who is the reincarnation of her husband. This new child Grace, can experience the African world and its beliefs, as well as experience and benefit from the British education system.

Another good read for Short Story September

Booking Through Thursday: Seasons

Autumn is starting (here in the US, anyway), and kids are heading back to school–does the changing season change your reading habits? Less time? More? Are you just in the mood for different kinds of books than you were over the summer? - BTT

As a teacher I had a gorgeous six weeks off of school, and as I have no kids, husband etc and most of my friends aren't teachers I have countless hours to myself to read, read, read. Now I'm back at school and have started a course at home my reading time is less. But they'll be a weeks holiday in 4 weeks or so, so I guess I can't whinge. Also they seem to put better shows on the telly in the winter, so that also inflicts on my time.
As to whether my reading choices change, I don't think it has a huge affect. I like to read something spooky near haloween, and some kids book over Christmas but thats it really. Either way I love reading in the winter in hot baths and under blankets, in the summer I always believe I can read outside (on those days the sun shines) but once out there I remember that the neighbour has an annoying screaming kid and the sun is glaring in my eyes.

Short Story September: King Rat by Karen Joy Fowler

A Copy of this story can be found here

This short story is focused around a young girl, who is fascinated with the fairy-tales in a book given to her by a student of her father's. However, she is completely disturbed by the story of the Pied Piper of Hamlin. Children follow the Pied Piper off into a castle of eternal happiness, yet she cannot accept that these children would be happy as they are seperated from their parents. As she tells this story we discover that the student who had given her the book, has a grown son now, who has gone missing and is never likely to be seen again, enforcing her emphasis on the seperation of parent and child.
This story is told in a lovely solemn tone, and is very moving in the final paragraphs

Short Story September: Closing Time by Neil Gaiman (and a wee nod to some bloggers BBAW style).

I think I love Neil Gaiman more and more everytime I read him. I just read this fantastic story while lolling in the bath and had to come and say a few words about it.

Closing time is another of Neil Gaiman's stories within a story. He starts out talking about an old club in London, one damp and misty night, 3 men are sitting in the bar recounting ghost stories, when the narrator announces he has a story of his own to tell:
"I'll tell you a true story, if you like. It's a story I've never told a living soul. It's true - it happened to me, not to a friend of mine - but I don't know if it's a ghost story. It probably isn't."

The story is about his childhood, and a meeting with a group of boys, possibly brothers, who seem out to spoil his innocent childhood. They show his naked pictures, tell him dirty jokes and teach him how to swear. Then one day they take him to the gardens of an abandoned, but very neatly kept, old house. In the garden there is a mock tudor playhouse. Its this playhouse that becomes the place of mystery and suspense, a dare leads to an unexplainable event, one the narrator fears he will never know the answer to.
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BBAW kicks off with an opportunity to let everyone know what your favorite blogs are and why. I'm going to name 3, all three contain great reviews of books that I'm interested in, interesting comments and they seem to make great challenge participants. I often visit these blogs looking for reviews and recommendations as they seem to be spot on, and match my taste. They are
A Striped Armchair
An Adventure in Reading
B&b ex libris

Short Story September: The Bear Came Over the Mountain

A copy of this story can be found here.

This short story is about life living with a relative with Altzimer's Disease. Fiona, is gradually losing her memory, forgetting the the names of objects and places, her husbands decides it would be best for her to move into a home to recieve care. Fiona is very positive about the home she is going to, saying:
“I guess I’ll be dressed up all the time,” she said. “Or semi-dressed up. It’ll be sort of like in a hotel.”
For the first month he is not allowed to visit her, as a way to help her settle in, but in that month she loses her recollection of who he is. She has met another man to look after and care about.
The story shows Fiona's demise, but also the way it causes the husband to look back at his own life, particaurly the affairs that he has had in the past.
A moving story.

[TSS] My Thoughts: The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier

I didn't expect to get this finished at all today, but I sat down to a few chapters and the last 150 pages suddenly whirled past.

"She was called Isabelle, and when she was a small girl her hair changed colour in the time it takes a bird to call to its mate."

The story starts with Isabelle, a young girl with copper hair living in the 16th Century. When her hair first changes to the same colour as the Virgin Mary's she is given the nickname La Rousse, but as time passes and Catholicism and the Virgin Mary are shunned the name starts to become something of a plague. Isabelle soon becomes associated with witchcraft along with her mother, the local midwife.

Isabelle marries a local tyrant, moving in with a Christian family, who shun her because her past, and the red hair she constantly tries to cover. As time moves on the Tournier family are forced from their house moving away to Switzerland. Isabelle's marriage has become one of fear and violence, she lives with a mother-in-law and a son who despise her, always mistrusting her, constantly on the look out for signs of witchcraft. Her only sanctuary is her daughter, who is starting to find copper colour stands in her hair, and shares her mother's passion for the deep blue of Mary's robes.

In the alternate chapters we are introduced to Ella Turner/Tournier, she has moved to France with her husband, and feeling lost she decides to dig through the family history to try and help herself fell like she belongs. Soon her nightmares of the bright blue colour and a pray in French become entwined with her search for her family.

As her marriage breaks down, Ella comes to discover more about her heritage, and to feel like she belongs in this foreign country.

Chevalier manages to make the characters from both the 16th Century and the 20th feel alive and well rounded. I would have quite happily have read another 100 odd pages of this book.

Challenges

2nds Challenge Book 1 of 4

20th Century Project 1997

Other reader's thoughts:

A Self Proclamation

The Readaholic

If you have read this add a link to your review and I'll add you in

The Sunday Salon: An unproductive week...

I just seem to be accumulating books rather than reading many this week. In terms of reading I mannaged 1 kids book, a short story and a novel which I have no idea how to write up! The novel was The Valkyries by Paulo Coelho, an author I always enjoy. This was a strange read, I was never sucked into it but the style is easy so I got through it in a few hours. The searching for your angel part and the fact that it was based on his real life just never felt real, and never grabbed me. Anyone else read this?

As for today, I'm off to the library and for a very late breakfast/lunch in a place where the food is all gorgeous and fresh so I don't feel like I'm ruining the second day of the diet. I have some studying to do later, but then I'm hoping to sit down and read some more Maus and The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier, a book that I'm absolutely loving.

For the Olympic Challenge, which I'm taking part in over at Bookcrossing.com, I'm looking for reads for each of the various countries in Africa to start with. If anyone has any recommendations, partucuarly for the harder coutries like: Burundi, Chad, Gabon and Libiya just to name a few, I'd be grateful to hear them, the author just has to have been born there.