Tag Archives: resilience

May9

The Underground Library by Jennifer Ryan- A Review

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I read this one back in March of this year. It was an ARC from NetGalley and I thank them for the opportunity to read and review this lovely book.

The story was set during the Blitz in London and follows the lives of three young ladies. One, Julie, is a new under-librarian at Bethnel Green Library. She has moved to London from her small village and has big dreams about her work at the library. She is met with resistance from the head of the library, a man. She is also boarding with a woman whose husband is serving in the war. The other tenant of the house is the man her mother wanted her to marry, but she thought he was too much of a ladies man and flirt to be taken seriously as a husband,

The second girl, Katie, is working at the library until she leaves for university. Her family is very conscious of reputation even though her father is a bit of a cad. Her fiance is at the front and she gets devastating news about him. And she is hiding a big secret from everyone.

The third girl, Sofie, a Jewish refugee, came to London to escape the Nazis. She is on a domestic service visa with a horrible man as her sponsor/employer. She misses her family and is worried about their safety. She visits the library down the street in order to find some relief from the hard work and the worry about her kin.

A Nazi bomb hits the library, damaging some books, but many survive. Katie moves some of the salvaged books to the underground station and starts reading to people who are sheltered there. Eventually, she convinces the board of the library to allow the lending to continue from that location.

Many events occur with the lives of these three women, including issues with family, a theft, a trip to the Isle of Man, and some heartbreaking scenes with Katie.

A great book, written in a simple style that would be easy for teens to read. Some of the subject matter is sensitive, but there is nothing here that would take this book to the level that it isn’t appropriate for anyone over the age of fifteen. As well, it is also suitable for older readers. I enjoyed it immensely. Lots of conflict for all three protagonists and the journey of each is well done and believable.

BLURB:

When the Blitz imperils the heart of a London neighborhood, three young women must use their fighting spirit to save the community’s beloved library in this novel based on true events from the author of The Chilbury Ladies’ Choir.

When the new deputy librarian, Juliet Lansdown, finds that Bethnal Green Library isn’t the bustling hub she is expecting, she becomes determined to breathe life back into it. But can she show the men in charge that a woman is up to the task of running the library, especially when a confrontation with her past threatens to derail her?

Katie Upwood is thrilled to be working at the library, although she is only there until she heads off to university in the fall. But after the death of her beau on the front line and amid tumultuous family strife, she finds herself harboring a life-changing secret with no one to turn to for help.

Sofie Baumann, a young Jewish refugee, came to London on a domestic service visa only to find herself working as a maid for a man who treats her abominably. She escapes to the library every chance she can, finding friendship in the literary community and aid in finding her sister, who is still trying to flee occupied Europe.

When a slew of bombs destroys the library, Juliet relocates the stacks to the local Underground station where the city’s residents shelter nightly, determined to lend out stories that will keep spirits up. But tragedy after tragedy threatens to unmoor the women and sever the ties of their community. Will Juliet, Kate, and Sofie be able to overcome their own troubles to save the library? Or will the beating heart of their neighborhood be lost forever?

Feb28

Review -Slow Noodles by Chantha Nguon (with Kim Green)

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This book is a gem of a recipe book/memoir but more importantly, it’s a tale of survival, grit, and integrity. Chantha is from Cambodia. She was the child of a middle class family whose father owned an auto shop and whose mother was a housewife who was a hard worker and an excellent cook. Chantha lived a blessed life until she was nine. She was the youngest child and soft by her own admission. She attended Catholic school and spoke French. Her older sister also worked in the home and took care of the family alongside her mother.

Sadly, when Chantha was nine, horrible changes came to Cambodia with the rise of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s. Her whole life was turned upside down. For many years. Decades even.

She lost her father to a stomach ailment. The family fled to Saigon and lived there for a while. Some went right away and some delayed their trip for a while, until what was left of the family was reunited. Eventually, things fell apart in Saigon as they had in Cambodia. This area of the world was quite volatile in that decade and Chantha was caught in the middle of it.  When Saigon became unsafe, the wandering years began for Chantha.

This memoir is heartbreaking in many ways but is also a tale of one woman’s resilience and how she found her way to success and a happy life. She made harrowing escapes from some situations and almost starved to death on many occasions. But through it all, she kept hope in her heart for the most part—She did have a few moments of despair, but soldiered on. She also made her own way on the world from the pampered young daughter who thought she had no skills to the tough woman who worked as a cook in a brothel, worked as a suture sewer in a refugee camp and worked other occupations to keep herself and her companion alive. She also studied English and worked for Doctors without Borders to help bring relief to the people around her.

In each chapter there are recipes she either recalled from her mother and sister or she created herself with the ingredients to hand in the hard times.

Also in the book she shows the reader the sense of humor she kept throughout her life in some “recipes” that are more like humorous comments about life and her experiences.

Overall, this book is sometimes hard to read due to the privations this lady endured, but it is ultimately a story of one woman’s ability to hold strong and make her way in the world when she was left all on her own by the vagaries of fate.

By the time the reader gets to the end, one can’t help but be proud of this lady and all she has accomplished in life. And the recipes are well worth the price of the book. This is truly a great read that makes the reader think about how much people can endure and still come out on the other side as a whole and fulfilled person.

BLURB:

Take a well-fed nine-year-old with a big family and a fancy education. Fold in 2 revolutions, 2 civil wars, and 1 wholesale extermination. Subtract a reliable source of food, life savings, and family members, until all are gone. Shave down childhood dreams for approximately two decades, until only subsistence remains. In Slow Noodles, Chantha Nguon recounts her life as a Cambodian refugee who loses everything and everyone–her home, her family, her country–all but the remembered tastes and aromas of her mother’s kitchen. She summons the quiet rhythms of 1960s Battambang, her provincial hometown, before the dictator Pol Pot tore her country apart and killed more than a million Cambodians, many of them ethnic Vietnamese like Nguon and her family. Then, as an immigrant in Saigon, Nguon loses her mother, brothers, and sister and eventually flees to a refugee camp in Thailand. For two decades in exile, she survives by cooking in a brothel, serving drinks in a nightclub, making and selling street food, becoming a suture nurse, and weaving silk. Nguon’s irrepressible spirit and determination come through in this lyrical memoir that includes more than twenty family recipes such as sour chicken-lime soup, green papaya pickles, and p t de foie, as well as Khmer curries, stir-fries, and handmade b nh canh noodles. Through it all, re-creating the dishes from her childhood becomes an act of resistance, of reclaiming her place in the world, of upholding the values the Khmer Rouge sought to destroy, and of honoring the memory of her beloved mother, whose “slow noodles” approach to healing and cooking prioritized time and care over expediency. Slow Noodles is an inspiring testament to the power of food to keep alive a refugee’s connection to her past and spark hope for a beautiful life.