day three ...

No, not three french hens although i did think about it but couldn't come up with a fixed idea. So instead today i will give you three lady writers - authors; Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise, Amy Tan, The Bonesetter's Daughter and Sarah Winman, When God was a rabbit.

I have written a post about Alice Ozma already this year so this is just a little recap. It's autobiographical and based upon a reading challenge she began with her Father when she was 9 years old and continued until the very day she left home for college at 18. The challenge was this, they would read for at least 10 minutes a day, no matter what and she shares some of the challenges they faced and the way they overcame them, which were very amusing. She lists all the books they read over the years at the back of the book, which is a good thing so you don't have to keep going backwards and forwards through the book to find them. It did get me to read 'The Wizard of Oz' by L. Frank Blume which was very different film but i enjoyed it immensely and also Matilda by Roald Dahl which because i have previously watched the film was a bit of a disappointment. 

The second book 'The Bonesetter's Daughter' by Amy Tan was a book group read but also one of those books i was meaning to read but then something else always, yes always got in the way. It is beautifully written and heart breaking in places and the pages just carry you along through the life's of mother and then daughter and then back to the mother. It shows how we often have little or nor control over many of the things that happen in our life and we have only two choices to continue to live or to let go and die. So although it begins in modern America it takes you to a very different place and time. I keep meaning to read some of the others books Amy Tan has written but i don't think i want to spoil the magic.

The last book 'When God was a Rabbit' by Sarah Winman is another one of the books that i have been meaning to read all year. I have been trying not to buy books due to the lack of funds and however no matter how many times i tried to retrieve this book from the library i was unable to do so and in the end it was on offer for next to nothing and so i allowed myself a treat. It wasn't what i was expecting, yes there was a rabbit and he was called God but mainly it's about love in all its guises. From the simple love of child to pet and that of brother and sister to the more complicated love of adults and the letting go we have to do when someone dies and the heartbreak that loving someone always seems to cause us. But love is always worth it.

So today i give you the Gift of Reading.

Perfume

No, not the smelly stuff but the book, written by Patrick Suskind, it was the book choice of the book group I attend and wouldn’t have picked it myself.

So what’s it about? 

It is set in France. A baby is born behind a fisher woman’s stall in the market. She had given birth to several babies already, giving birth in the same way and then wrapping them up and leaving them to die then throwing them into the rubbish afterwards. However this day it was different. The baby didn’t die, it cried and those passing by heard the baby’s cry. The mother is arrested and is hanged for her crime.

The baby is passed from one person to another because no one actually wants Jean-Baptiste Grenouille’s; they say he doesn’t smell like a baby but that he appeared to be smelling them instead. The baby grows up and as he grew he realised how he has this unique ability to be able to determine any smell, no matter how far away or how embroiled one scent was with another. In time he becomes a great perfumer. He also realises that the only way he can be accepted in society was to create an almost human perfume he could use on himself, then he realises that we all smell different depending on what we have been doing or who we are and he then creates various perfumes of natural human smell which he uses to be able to fit in. This leads him to create the ultimate scent.

However there is one smell Grenouille wants more than anything else and finding and creating this smell becomes his undoing in the end. He becomes a murderer without remorse.  Grenouille’s need to be desired becomes all consuming, quite literally, in the end. Can’t tell you the end though – can I?

The parts of the books that tell Grenouille’s story were really good but the filling is sometimes boring and I did found myself skipping bits and pieces, but it has a good ending an unexpected one.