The Help - Kathryn Stockett

5/5 stars

The Help is a magnificent book recounting the lives of African-American maids and their white employers in Jackson, Mississippi, at the beginning of the 1960’s through 3 narrators. Skitter is 22 years old, just graduated from college, wants to be a journalist in New York, and is back home in Mississippi. Aibileen is a 50 year old maid working for Elizabeth and practically raising Elizabeth’s children. Finally, Minni is another maid and has a hard time finding a job because of her big mouth. The focus of the book is simple: all three women are united in an undercover and dangerous endeavor –which I am not going to reveal so as not so spoil half of the book.

The author succeeds in writing in all three voices, including the two maids’ voices, with their grammatical errors and approximations, with such love and understanding for her characters that you cannot but love them and root for them as well. My emotions ran high while reading this book: anger at the white women, ignorant, intolerant, and happy in their status quo; tenderness at the way the maids raise kids who are not their own, while neglecting their own; hope in the project the 3 women undertake; mainly, a sense of wonder at how people lived then.

This book is a work of fiction, but almost feels like a sociological study of the lives of the South in the 1960’s. The reader is thrown in a world where love and anger, despair and expectations cohabit daily, where manners and social status are more important than feelings and true friendships. I adore this book. It is courageous and beautiful, like its protagonists.

An Expensive Education - Nick McDonell

4 out of 5 stars.

I loved this book! This has to do with the fact that it takes place in an elite grad school, that it deals with Africa and politics, and that the main character is really witty and smart. I might not have liked it so much had it not had all the ingredients of my dream life -you are now warned!

Susan Lowell -who will remind most readers of Samantha Powell, award-winning author and Harvard professor- just received a Pulitzer price for her book on Hatashil, a Somali rebel leader. Meanwhile, Michael Teak, a 25-year old Harvard graduate, goes into a village to meet the Somali leader, and unknowingly sets up a series of events that will turn his life, and the lives of all those involved, amock. The village gets bombed -and the US blames Hatashi for this. Lowell, who described Hatashil as a peaceful leader, might see her Pulitzer price pulled. Teak has to figure out what happened and who was behind the bombing. Other characters are David Ayan, Lowell's Somali student, Razi, Lowell's friend and journalist, or Jane, David's girlfriend and journalist for the Crimson, Harvard's newspaper. All these lives are intertwined and linked somehow.

I read this book in an afternoon. I found it clever both in its description of the politics of Harvard or the US toward Africa but also in its characters' development -though I wish Nick McDonell had spent more time on his character. When I finished the book, I felt that it went too fast. All the facts were presented but I wanted more out of the characters. At the same time, I also felt that this lack of development was perfect the way it was, since everything (from facts to people) seemed to be so superficial, almost on the surface. I really enjoyed this book. Again, people who do not share my interests in education and African politics might not enjoy it as much.

Every Man Dies Alone - Hans Fallada

5 out of 5 stars

What a pleasure it was to read this book! The characters are wonderfully developed and the storylines enthralling.

Otto and Anna Quangel's son dies at war, prompting the two normally discreet parents to start a resistance movement of sorts, writing and leaving postscards against the Hitler regime in various public places in Berlin. We follow these two in their attempt to change Berliners' minds while being pursued by the Gestapo. We encounter other characters, all interesting in their own ways. The narrator chose to be omniscient, allowing us to know what everyone is thinking at all times -which makes this story more touching and, at times, disturbing.

Hans fallada was incarcerated in a psychiatric hospital during the war because of his alcoholism. He wrote this book in 24 days only and killed himself soon after. I wonder whether the story was edited. Often, the author swithces from past to present tenses, which unsettled me a little, but apart from that, I found this story well written and beautiful. Some interrogation scenes are quite disturbing.

This book shows us that not all Germans were in favor of Hitler. The change of heart Otto and Anna go through was revealing and sudden. The other characters -from neighbors to Gestapo officers- help us get a better picture of what it was like for Germans to live through these difficult years of dictatorship. I highly recommend this book for its storyline, its characters, and for its devastating reality.

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

4 1/2 out of 5 stars

I loved this book so much that I didn't trust myself to review it properly, so I present you with the best review I could find : “Traditional without seeming stale, and romantic without being naive” (San Francisco Chronicle), this epistolary novel, based on Mary Ann Shaffer’s painstaking, lifelong research, is a homage to book lovers and a nostalgic portrayal of an era. As her quirky, lovable characters cite the works of Shakespeare, Austen, and the Brontës, Shaffer subtly weaves those writers’ themes into her own narrative. However, it is the tragic stories of life under Nazi occupation that animate the novel and give it its urgency; furthermore, the novel explores the darker side of human nature without becoming maudlin. The Rocky Mountain News criticized the novel’s lighthearted tone and characterizations, but most critics agreed that, with its humor and optimism, Guernsey “affirms the power of books to nourish people during hard times” (Washington Post).Copyright 2008 Bookmarks Publishing LLC

This book is so beautifully written, romantically written, that it was such a pleasure to read. I often felt as though I was reading someones personal letters. Admittedly, the style was a bit hard for me to embrace initially but it didn't take long before I was hooked. Who would the next letter be from? What information would be divulged? And so on. By all accounts, do yourself a favor and read this book.

I'm So Happy For You: A novel about friendship by Lucinda Rosenfeld

3 out of 5 stars

Lucinda Rosenfelds depiction of friendship is venomous. Main character Wendy and her so-called BFF Daphne have been friends since college. Daphne the beautiful unstable one and Wendy the shoulder to cry on. Flash forward 15 years. Wendy works as a low paid editor for a left wing magazine, she's now married to a slacker husband and is unsuccessfully trying for a baby. Wendy's world comes crashing down when Daphne's life comes together. Within a few months Daphne is married to a handsome rich man, living in a newly renovated brownstone and pregnant.


Initially I sought this book out because of the many great reviews that portrayed this to be an honest , if even dark, account of modern friendship. Dark it is! With friends like these, you certainly don't need enemies. Wendy is pathetic. I often found myself reading on just to see what she'd do next, knowing that at each turn she would dive deeper in the hole she was digging. Eventually, pushing away her slacker husband and ruining her questionable friendship. This book portrays women's relationships that don't pass high school level.


I was hoping to find a book that had a little more depth and insight into the complexities of the female friendship. Instead, I found a book whose characters were shallow, insecure, jealous and often malicious.

It's Our Turn To Eat - Michela Wrong

4/5 stars

Michela Wrong's account of John Githongo's attempt to end corruption in Kenya is compelling. John Githongo got a job as the anti-corruption guru in the newly elected government of Mwai Kibaki, who took over after Daniel Arap Moi. Kibaki represented the renaissance of Kenya, a new way to conduct politics, but soon enough it appeared that he was as corrupt as his predecessor, as John Githongo would find out and try to mediatize.

Wrong shows that tribal ties is a huge issue in Kenyan politics. Kikuyus will always vote for and support their leaders, just as Luos will support theirs. Wrong compares this to a mafia, where family ties are more important than ethics. Githongo, by taping conversations with corrupt ministers, and later by divulging these to the media, was dubbed a traitor to his tribe.

Michela Wrong is adept at making the stories she writes about deeply personal and filled with comprehensive details about the context she describes. I recommend this book for anyone who wants to know more about politics and corruption in Kenya as well as for anyone wanting to understand the issues and implications of tribal dependencies in this country -and elsewhere in Africa.