Author Archives: Cecilia Quirk

About Cecilia Quirk

Cecilia Quirk's ultimate goal in life is to become 'Avatar: The Last Airbender's' Uncle Iroh, or as close a proximation as possible for a redhaired white woman. Or Granny Weatherwax. Or hell, both. She enjoys green tea, long walks, manipulating causality and afternoons at home. She lives in the Magical Kingdom of the Roundabouts and works as a wild gnome herder.
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‘There was a Ship,’ Quoth He

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sea_of_poppiesSEA OF POPPIES
Amitav Ghosh
First published 2008

Let me tell you about buying this book.  After being provided with a review copy of the third in this Ibis trilogy, I sought the first two books.  I initially purchased them from the Book Depository, since despite its purchase by Amazon, it has served me well in the past, and given the size of the books, time was somewhat of the essence. Unfortunately, my order for the second book was cancelled after a few days and I was refunded.  The first book, though, was ostensibly sent in early March.  By the beginning of April, I had not received it.  So I contacted the Book Depository and received a swift refund for that too.  And I turned to Booktopia, which delivered both books promptly, albeit in rather strange jaffle-style packaging.  Surprise, surprise, John Murray is a trading name of Hachette, with whom Amazon and by extention the Book Depository have been having a well-publicised tiff*.

Book finally in my hands, I expected something of a dour book.  Nominated for the Man Booker Prize, Sea of Poppies is firmly targeted at a literary market.  I feared it would be a worthy†, possibly depressing novel about serious issues. But while this book is certainly about the slightly serious issue of the first Opium War, it is neither dour nor worthy. In fact it is frequently hilarious.

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The Waffle Cone of Life

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ice-cream-690403_640

Due to the demands of life outside of books, I am unable to provide you with a review this week.  Instead, have some dramatic back story*.

It may shock you to hear this, but I went to Catholic school.  Religious Education was a compulsory subject, which I was cool with, because in the later years especially the focus was more on spirituality and comparative religion than anything to do with Jesus.  I had some shocking teachers, but one in particular is another story for another day.  Today, we are to learn about Papa Smurf. Continue reading

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Action is the Most Dangerous Thing

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THE QUIET AMERICAN
Graham Greene (William Heinemann, 1955; Vintage, 2004) ISBN: 9780099478393the-quiet-american-vintage

So, ah, have you ever started reading a book you thought was about something completely different than it turned out to be?  Because I was under some kind of misapprehension about The Quiet American before I started it.  All I really knew about it was that it was made into a movie some time in the early to mid 2000s starring Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser.  I only know this because I had a cousin involved in the picture, who at the time called his mother to say, “I’ve just met Michael Caine and you’re the only person I can think of who’ll care.”  Because this was back before we all had decided Michael Caine was cool again when he started being Batman’s butler and that sort of thing.

I think I had the book confused with The English Patient and possibly some other book that doesn’t exist.  Essentially, I knew the plot involved two men in love* with the same woman, but for some reason I believed it involved either a hospital or POWs.  This is what a hazy memory for pop culture does to a person.  I recommend you all study hard on what the Kardashians and real housewives are up to right now, for it may be tested later.

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Be the Best That You Can Be, Best to Your Ability

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CREATING CAPABILITIES: THE HUMAN DEVELOPMENT APPROACH
Martha C. Nussbaum (Belknap Harvard, 2011) ISBN: 9780674050549

I think I may have fallen in love with Martha C. Nussbaum.  Law professor, ethicist, feminist, philosopher, confident teacher and elegant writer, she is a source of inspiration, even if I don’t subscribe wholeheartedly to her political biases.  Creating Capabilities is but one of her numerous contributions to discourse on human rights and starts with a simple proposition: living beings are more important than money.  GDP, which measures the economic wellbeing of a country in purely monetary form, is an at best unhelpful measure of any given nation’s actual prosperity.  In its place, Nussbaum and other proponents, such as the originator of the school, Amartya Sen, nominate the “capabilities approach” to measuring human (and animal) development, suggesting several different benchmarks that should first be aimed for and then improved upon by the world’s nations.  Creating Capabilities forms something of a manifesto for this approach.

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Only a Shadow Remained of Him

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BURNT SHADOWS
Kamila Shamsie (Bloomsbury, 2009) ISBN: 978 1 4088 0087 4 14

If you’d like to (I’m not your real mom, I can’t make you), this video I’ve attached seems thematically appropriate. The song, a cover of Wishful Thinking’s Hiroshima by German band Puhdys–though it is of course about the wrong city–ran through my head a number of times as I read Burnt Shadows. Because this book is, amongst other things, about a nuclear world, the Cold War, and the constant two minutes to midnight. I’ve provided an original, literal and probably poor translation of the German lyrics, which are themselves a more poetic translation of the original English lyrics, below the video.

Only a shadow remains of him*, in Hiroshima
Silent as fire
But nobody knows, in Hiroshima,
Stone becomes a scream.
And it cries, “Remember well,
Or you will bring the embers** like here.”

Fly, my song, to Hiroshima
Fly to the shadow stones
And promise the man in Hiroshima
That it will never happen again
Because the world remembers*** well —
Or they will bring embers like Hiroshima****.

*This may also be “it”, ie, “the bomb”, which is a feminine noun, but changes in its dative form.
**The original word, “Glut” has a number of possible appropriate meanings, including “blaze”, “glow” or “fervour” as well.
***It’s possible there’s an imperative attached to the word “remember” that I’ve missed.
****The delivery of this line suggests a pun on here/Hiroshima.

Burnt Shadows, by Kamila Shamsie is a story about the world’s unluckiest woman. Hiroko Tanaka is caught up in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. After recovering from her injuries and accepting her grief, she finds her way after the war to an India on the cusp of Independence and Partition. Later, as the blurb reveals–so no spoilers here–she spends some time in Pakistan before managing to be present in New York in time for September 11. Crikey. Yet she survives it all and, truth be told, the story is not at all as melodramatic or contrived as it might sound.

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The Beatings will Continue Until Morale Improves

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DEAR LEADER
Jang Jin-Sung (trans. Shirley Lee; Rider, 2014) ISBN: 9781846044212 Dear Leader

Jang Jin-Sung’s* memoir of his time in and flight from North Korea is a valuable and urgent glimpse into the secret state around the turn of the millenium.  It shines a light on the plight of North Koreans within North Korea, and as refugees living under the threat of forced repatriation in China.  Most interestingly, in my opinion, it provides a glimpse into the daily lives of North Koreans through the eyes of a man who was a true loyalist to the Supreme Leader or “General”, Kim Jong-il.

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Horror Movie, Right There on my TV

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THE NEWS:  A USER’S MANUAL

Alain de Botton (Pantheon, 2014) ISBN: 978-0307379122 The News

The News:  A User’s Manual is pop philosopher and celebrated egghead Alain de Botton’s latest contribution to dinner party conversation*.  It is a meditative, considered musing on why western societies in particular are so obsessed with “the news” and keeping up with it.  As a news junkie myself, passing through an airport bookshop, I was curious to see what de Botton might have concluded about it all.  I have not previously read any of his books, though I did once catch an episode of the documentary series The Architecture of Happiness, so that counts, right?

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If You’re Lost and You Look then You Will Find Me

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IN THE NIGHT OF TIME
Antonio Muñoz Molina (trans. Edith Grossman; Tuskar Rock, 2015) ISBN: 978 1 78125 463 9. RRP $35.99 In the Night of time

Antonio Muñoz Molina is a Spanish literary heavyweight who I, poor ignorant, had never heard of before reviewing this book.  In the Night of Time is his 23rd book, a tome of luscious long paragraphs* and reverie; of love and desire; and of Spain at the outbreak of the devastating civil war of the 1930s.

My familiarity with Spanish literature, it must be said, is virtually non-existent.  I’m also not particularly well-apprised of the history of Spain, with my familiarity of any kind ending with the reign of of Ferdinand and Isabella.  That’s a good 650-odd years of history there.  Shame on me.  But the point of all this is to say that I can’t really comment on a number of matters regarding Molina’s novel.  Is it historically accurate?  It… seems to be.  Where does it fit in terms of Spanish-language literary trends?  It kind of seems vaguely similar to some of the South American books I’ve read in the past?  So for that I apologise, guys.

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As a Woman, My Country is the Whole World

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HALF THE SKY: TURNING OPPRESSION INTO OPPORTUNITY FOR WOMEN WORLDWIDE

Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn (Vintage Books, 2009) ISBN: 978-307-38709-7 Half the sky

So a couple months ago, giddy with having my first full-time job, but already feeling intellectually understimulated from the lack of university work to avoid doing, I stumbled into that great bookshop on Bourke Street.  Near Parliament House with the very aesthetic black and white sign, and crammed full of various works in a style reminiscent of a secondhand bookshop, but where everything is quite new.  Difficult to navigate, but a joy to lose yourself in.  In my highly suggestible state, one of an armful of books I took home with me was Nicholas D. Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn’s Half the Sky.  I hesitated over it for some time, worrying that the book might have a white saviour complex and would thus turn out to be a disappointment[*].  In the end, though, I decided it was easy to read and so if I hated it, it would at least be quickly dealt with.

Half the Sky is what will hopefully be a portrait of humanity at the beginning of the 21st century.  Of the world’s people, women are still overwhelmingly more likely to be under-educated, under- or completely unpaid for their work, and face discrimination on every front.  In many parts of the world, girls are less likely to be born in the first place[†], and from the moment of their birth are provided less nutrition and less healthcare than boys.

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Diligence and Frugality

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THE FOUR BOOKS

Yan Lianke (Text, 2015) ISBN: 9781922184487, RRP AU$29.99 The Four books

It’s been a while since I read a book that left me with the single thought, “what the fuck?”  Strange as it might sound, I don’t mean this in a negative way.  It’s good when a book provokes thought about what just happened and what it all means — to an extent.  The Four Books is one such book.  Set in a re-educational camp along the banks of the Yellow River during China’s Cultural Revolution, it certainly inspires the questions, “what did I just read?  What did the author want me to get from this?” in ways that benefit it.  I like the book more now than I did when I finished it, simply by virtue of having given it some consideration.

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My Kingdom For A Plumbing License

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ECONOMICS: THE USER’S GUIDE

Ha-Joon Chang (Bloomsbury, 2014) ISBN: 978-1620408124 Economics the users guide

Like many people, I have spent rather a while feeling incapable of arguing economics, because I believed economics was a complicated and maths-related science.  I had opinions, of course, on economic issues, but never realised they were economic.  And I knew that I disliked neoliberal politics — that I, rather, favoured the Keynesian approach, if not out-and-out democratic socialism.  But I didn’t feel I knew enough about the issues to discuss them in any meaningful way.  Thus, when I came across Ha-Joon Chang’s accessible, introductory reader on economics, I was very excited.  It should surprise no one that I am an unmitigated nerd.

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Squeeze As Lovers Should — O Kiss

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A STERKARM KISS

Susan Price (Scholastic, 2003) ISBN: 0 439 96865 8 A Sterkarm kiss

The memories I had of A Sterkarm Kiss, sequel to The Sterkarm Handshake, were hazy and unpleasant, rather like memories of a good night out tainted by a hangover.  Upon rereading, I have discovered that it is indeed an interesting but horrible book.  While just as well-written and more complexly plotted than its predecessor, this novel was rather unpleasant to read.  It is one of the most morally — uh, let’s say “grey” – – books I’ve read.  Yes, that includes the entire Song of Ice and Fire series.

 

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