(I thought this had been published, but it hadn’t. Ah well. Imagine it’s 23 November, you can do it.)
Can I just say what an unexpected delight The House of the Mosque was. I do feel I’m at one remove from the author’s intentions in a translation, so I hope that the novel in its original Dutch has as light a touch yet as evocative a storytelling style. Stories that outline the horrors of a particular period in history are important but they get a bit same-y after a while. This novel tells the story of the Iranian Revolution and its effects through the eyes of one extended family. The earlier sections did read like a magical fable of sorts, and it’s only when you get to the second half that things get serious. Highly recommended.
Then I remembered that The Yellow Wallpaper was due back at the library this week, so I sped through it. That’s not hard because it’s only 30 pages or so long. It’s essentially a first-person short story of a woman losing it. I’m not sure it’s the literary or feminist masterpiece, but it was pretty good and the author, Charlotte Perkins Gilman sounded like quite the woman. What I found most interesting (in the afterword) was how Gilman attributed her ‘inherited’ personality traits — the emotional ones from her mother, the logical and intellectual from her father. Perhaps she was more a product of her times than she (or her fans) would like to admit!
Now I’m about halfway through my gifted copy of My Dark Places (James Ellroy). It’s pretty riveting reading.