15 Japan – Autobiography of a geisha – Sayo Masuda – September 2014 (Score 7.83)

 At the  start of the book Sayo is a very young girl looking after even younger children. She has been badly treated, starved and beaten. Then she is collected by her uncle and taken to start training as a geisha – at 12 years old. These are what are known as “country geisha”.

She is sent to an okiya (geisha house) called Takenoya (House of Bamboo). She gave herself the name Tsuru (crane – the bird). On page 24, a “koku” is the annual quantity of rice given by a lord to a samurai to feed himself and his family. The okiya is in the province of Suwa, near Lake Suwa which is a particularly beautiful area.

In chapter 2, the words “okaasan” and “otoosan” are the honorific words for Mother and father respectively. The doubling of the vowels in English transcription signifies a doubling of the length of the vowel sound. This is important in the Japanese language. The “o” is an honorific, as is the “san”.

On page 118 Sayo’s acceptance of, and friendship with the Koreans is interesting. In Japan Koreans, even several generations after arrival in the country, tend to be a despised minority. They, and other minorities, are extremely unlikely to be able to marry into a Japanese family because of the “suitability searches” conducted as part of the marriage process...

On page 119 we have another example of the beautiful ways in which Japanese names are frequently put together. “Inohanayama” means “The mountain of the well of flowers” literally translated as “well of flowers mountain. My Japanese teacher was called Inoue Mikkiko “Above the well Third little girl tree”.

On page 141 there is discussion of “a six-mat room”. In Japan, room sizes a given in the number of tatami, or reed mats.

This book gave me a great insight into sections of Japanese life and culture which I had not come across in my reading of Japan related things. In particular it makes clear that, at least in the geisha houses in Suwa, to be a geisha meant to be a slightly higher grade prostitute, especially when it could mean the difference between eating and starving.

I scored the book at 8.0.

14 Norway – The cold song – Linn Ullmann - August 2014 (Score 6.5)

Jenny   Brodal is a reformed alcoholic. She is on the point of backsliding when the book opens, and does so within minutes. She is 75. Jenny is Siri’s mother and Jon Dreyer’s mother-in-law. Jenny had a son, younger than Siri, who drowned at an early age.

Milla, a girl who has been missing for two years, is found buried. The finders are Simen, Gunnar Mandl and Christian, who were trying to find a “Treasure Trove” which they had buried in the woods some time before.

Siri and Jon’s children are Alma and Liv. Milla was employed for the summer to look after Liv, and to keep an eye on Alma who is older. They are on holiday. Things aren’t going well between Siri and Jon. He is an author with writer’s block at the start of the third volume of a trilogy, the first two volumes of which were highly successful. He has almost exhausted his rather large advance on the third book, and has written nothing after more than two years.

Siri is a restaurant owner, overworked and stressed. We feel that she may even have mental health problems.

We seem to be getting introduced to suspects for the presumed murder of Milla. Judging by the way Siri and Jon are thinking and behaving, both of them are possibilities. The boys who found her body were suspects. We know very quickly, however, that a boy known as KB has been charged with the murder. This is not, therefore, a murder mystery.

It is, rather, the well-written and compelling story of a family in trouble, who were on holiday when a girl disappeared, and again when her body was found.

We go back and find out how Milla came into the story, and more about the family. We learn that Simen is the son of the nearest neighbours when Siri and Jon go to their holiday home. We discover that Jon is having an affair with Karoline, a married woman who holidays with her husband near Jon and Siri.

The writing is very poetic, particularly when describing the various aspects of nature which impinge on the story.

Suddenly, in the middle of the description of Jenny’s birthday party, we are right there with Milla being raped by KB. Crucially, at this juncture, there is no mention of her being killed. Are we being led toward the murder having been committed by someone else? The author shows us an incident which may make Simen a prime suspect. Milla rescues him and takes him home to his parents when she finds him crying on his crashed bike, and suffering grit burns. He seems to develop a crush on her.

On page 158 there is a literary cross reference to a great work of early twentieth century fiction. Can you find it?

On page 173 we reprise the rape scene, but this time we get more information. Young Alma seems to be feeling guilty about Milla’s death. Something happened when her Grandmother Jenny took her on a mad drunken drive through the woods on her, Jenny’s, birthday, and it has affected her behaviour seriously. I will give you no more information on that one since it may spoil the story for you if I do.

To me the real mystery is whether the police have arrested the right person, and I think there are clues to suggest that they may not have. For example, from page 318, what is the purpose of the accidental meeting between Jon and one of the young boys who found Milla’s body? This could be to point to the boy being involved - “I knew we were cycling in the wrong place” and “Irma wasn’t a very nice person … she glowed in the dark”.

I score the book at 8.0.

13 Sierra  Leone – The memory of love – Aminatta Forna, July 2014 (Score 8.25)

This story, or rather these stories are interlocking, being set in two time periods with continuity of some of the characters between the periods. As it opens, Elias Cole is telling his story while Adrian Lockheart is listening to him. Elias is in a psychiatric ward. Adrian is a psychologist.

Most of the events occur in and around Freetown before, during and after episodes of the ongoing civil war and rebellion.

Vanessa is/was the mistress of Elias Cole. He is clearly taking her for granted, only using her for sexual gratification. Husband and wife couple Julius and Saffia are major characters in the earlier time, though both reverberate into the later.

On page 71 we find Elias and the Dean of his faculty drinking from the mouth of soft drink bottles. They are putting themselves seriously at risk from contacting the deadly Weil’s disease. This is caused by the constant dribbling of rats and mice. As medics they should know better, particularly living where rats are endemic.

Elias wants to start a relationship with Saffia, and engineers a number of “accidental” meetings. He is chancing his arm. It is, though, difficult to be sure if Julius suspects.

Kai, a colleague of Adrian, is an excellent surgeon, but eventually applies for a visa for the United States. That clearly means that, one day, his skills will no longer be available for the benefit of the people in Sierra Leone who really need them. This is a major dilemma throughout the world when skilled people migrate to improve their own lives, skills, opportunities and safety.

The intermingling of the main strands, and the subsidiary strands with the main story and their own, provides us with a complex, fascinating story. I won’t say any more about the events other than to say that I hope the young child at the end of the story is Mamakay’s daughter. You will have to read the book to find out who Mamakay is, and who the father might be.

I scored the book at 8.5.