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3.82 AVERAGE
3.82 AVERAGE
This book was slow going for me for the most part, but when the perspective switched to the boy instead of the mum I found myself much more invested in it. I’m not sure the style is for me, but it’s a beautiful story about a horrible and difficult thing. The ending of the book - the reunion of the boy and girl with their parents, and the fact that the two little girls were dead - was both lovely and devastating. It felt like a book of lots of juxtapositions - loving someone but not being able to stay with them, the way different people are treated in the same scenarios, real life and imagination.
Fyf for en utrolig dårlig skrevet bok. Bare klarte ikke like NOEN AV KARAKTERENE og andre halvdel som ble skrevet fra en 10 årings perspektiv. Men 10åringens perspektiv var så utrolig "dumma ned" at det føltes feil ut.
morskarakteren hadde bare gitt opp, og det var bare DRITT hele greia. Konseptet var veldig bra, bare fyf kommer ikke over hvor lite jeg likte denne boka.
morskarakteren hadde bare gitt opp, og det var bare DRITT hele greia. Konseptet var veldig bra, bare fyf kommer ikke over hvor lite jeg likte denne boka.
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
I was disappointed in this book because of the message it ended with. I also found the mom character very frustrating due to her hopeless attitude.
‘Our mothers teach us to speak, and the world teaches us to shut up.’
This novel begins with a departure. A family road trip from New York City to rural Arizona for a husband and wife, together with his 10-year-old son and her 5-year-old daughter from previous relationships. We never learn their given names. The couple meet four years earlier: they were members of a team tasked with inventorying the sounds of the city, recording the hundreds of minority languages spoken across homes and workplaces.
The husband has a new work project, which he accepted without consulting his wife. Will the family unit survive this relocation which is also a dislocation? The wife is unsure. As they prepare for their departure from New York, the wife befriends an undocumented migrant, Manuela, whose two daughters (aged 8 and 10) have crossed the southern border and reportedly are being held in a US detention centre. On the long drive to Arizona, the wife thinks of these two girls who were sent across the border with only a telephone number written on the collar of their dresses. The wife thinks of a project of her own, to document the experiences of ‘lost children’ – those who undertake dangerous (but ultimately unsuccessful) journeys to be reunited with families in the US. The boy has a new Polaroid camera to try out on the journey.
It’s a long trip. There are occasional detours, including one towards the end where the family arrives at a New Mexico air strip just in time to witness a group of children being directed onto a plane to take them out of the country.
And then the boy and the girl go missing.
‘But can anyone really prepare? Can anyone tackle effects before detecting causes?’
The narrative is structured as an archive. It is divided into four parts with chapters reflecting the seven archive boxes that accompany the family on their journey. The husband has four archive boxes, the wife and the children have one each. Each section starts with an inventory listing the contents of one of the archive boxes, and at the end there are a series of Polaroid photographs. The first half of the book is narrated by the mother, the second half by the son. This change in narration provides a change in perspective. Events and conversations are revisited, the boy’s interpretations add a different dimension to the mother’s narration.
‘Whenever the boy and girl talk about child refugees, I realize now, they call them “the lost children”.’
And while I read, wondering about the different groups of lost children, I am reminded (as the mother has told the boy) that collecting information can never provide a complete picture of the past. We choose what to include and what to discard from the fragments available. Language can illuminate or obfuscate:
‘Euphemisms hide, erase, coat. Euphemisms lead us to tolerate the unacceptable. And, eventually, to forget.’
I kept reading. I wondered why the husband and wife did not apply this selective assessment of fragments to their own situation, why their obsession with historical reconstruction and the lives of others blinded them to their present situation.
I finished the novel two months ago, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. So many lost children, even those with parents ‘present’. So many children lost, trying to find safety. There is more than one lost children archive.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
This novel begins with a departure. A family road trip from New York City to rural Arizona for a husband and wife, together with his 10-year-old son and her 5-year-old daughter from previous relationships. We never learn their given names. The couple meet four years earlier: they were members of a team tasked with inventorying the sounds of the city, recording the hundreds of minority languages spoken across homes and workplaces.
The husband has a new work project, which he accepted without consulting his wife. Will the family unit survive this relocation which is also a dislocation? The wife is unsure. As they prepare for their departure from New York, the wife befriends an undocumented migrant, Manuela, whose two daughters (aged 8 and 10) have crossed the southern border and reportedly are being held in a US detention centre. On the long drive to Arizona, the wife thinks of these two girls who were sent across the border with only a telephone number written on the collar of their dresses. The wife thinks of a project of her own, to document the experiences of ‘lost children’ – those who undertake dangerous (but ultimately unsuccessful) journeys to be reunited with families in the US. The boy has a new Polaroid camera to try out on the journey.
It’s a long trip. There are occasional detours, including one towards the end where the family arrives at a New Mexico air strip just in time to witness a group of children being directed onto a plane to take them out of the country.
And then the boy and the girl go missing.
‘But can anyone really prepare? Can anyone tackle effects before detecting causes?’
The narrative is structured as an archive. It is divided into four parts with chapters reflecting the seven archive boxes that accompany the family on their journey. The husband has four archive boxes, the wife and the children have one each. Each section starts with an inventory listing the contents of one of the archive boxes, and at the end there are a series of Polaroid photographs. The first half of the book is narrated by the mother, the second half by the son. This change in narration provides a change in perspective. Events and conversations are revisited, the boy’s interpretations add a different dimension to the mother’s narration.
‘Whenever the boy and girl talk about child refugees, I realize now, they call them “the lost children”.’
And while I read, wondering about the different groups of lost children, I am reminded (as the mother has told the boy) that collecting information can never provide a complete picture of the past. We choose what to include and what to discard from the fragments available. Language can illuminate or obfuscate:
‘Euphemisms hide, erase, coat. Euphemisms lead us to tolerate the unacceptable. And, eventually, to forget.’
I kept reading. I wondered why the husband and wife did not apply this selective assessment of fragments to their own situation, why their obsession with historical reconstruction and the lives of others blinded them to their present situation.
I finished the novel two months ago, but I haven’t stopped thinking about it. So many lost children, even those with parents ‘present’. So many children lost, trying to find safety. There is more than one lost children archive.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
adventurous
challenging
tense
slow-paced
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
This book started out interesting to me - a (unnamed) woman with a daughter and an (unnamed) man with a son, meet while recording a sound project for nyc - what different languages and sounds exist in the city. They eventually leave NYC after their project is finished. The father wants to create an "inventory of echoes" in the legendary land of the Apaches while the mother (of Mexican descent, like the author) wants to help a Mexican woman she met in NYC and translated for - to find her children, who escaped into the United States but were captured by the border and are in custody waiting to go back across the border. They begin a road trip across the country, staying at cheap inns and re-reading the same books, while both growing further apart.
I felt like the book read like literary / contemporary fiction until about half way when it got to New Mexico, then it was not just unpleasant, but difficult to read. Not just because the content was difficult, but the older child tells some of the story (without paragraphs and adult writing). It’s quite the journey, which I’m glad to be through.
“Whenever the boy and the girl talk about child refugees, I realize now, they call them ‘the lost children.’ I suppose the word ‘refuge’ is more difficult to remember. And even if the term ‘lost’ is not precise, … the refugees become known to us as ‘the lost children.’ And in a way, I guess, they are lost children. They are children who have lost the right to a childhood.” P75
“Generosity in marriage, real and sustained generosity, is hard. It implies accepting that our partner needs to move one step father away from us, maybe even thousands of miles away, it’s almost impossible.” P82
“Unhappiness grows slowly. It lingers inside you, silently, surreptitiously. You nourish it, feeding it scraps of yourself every day - it is the dog kept locked away in the back patio that will bite your hand off if you let it. Unhappiness takes time, but eventually, it takes over completely. And then happiness - that word - arrives only sometimes, and always like a sudden change of weather.” P 104
“Everything that was there between Arkansas and Oklahoma was not there: Geronimo, Hrabal, Stanford, names on tombstones, our future, the lost children, the two missing girls.
All I see in hindsight is the chaos of history repeated, over and over, re-enacted, reinterpreted… And in the middle of it all, tribes, families, people, all beautiful things falling apart, debris, dust, erasure.
But finally, there is something. … The story I have to record is not the story of children who arrive… The story I need to document is not that of the children in immigration courts.. but the story I need to tell is the one of the children who are missing, those whose voices can no longer be heard because they are, possibly forever, lost.” P146
“The only thing that parents can really give their children are little knowledges… Ans what children give their parents, in return, is something less tangible but at the same time larger and more lasting, something like a drive to embrace life fully and understand it, on their behalf, so they can try to explain it to them… Children force parents to go out looking for a specific pulse, a gaze, a rhythm, the right way of telling the story, knowing that stories don’t fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful. Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight. p185
“I wanted to remind her that even though those children were lost, we were not lost, we were there, right next to her.” P208
I felt like the book read like literary / contemporary fiction until about half way when it got to New Mexico, then it was not just unpleasant, but difficult to read. Not just because the content was difficult, but the older child tells some of the story (without paragraphs and adult writing). It’s quite the journey, which I’m glad to be through.
“Whenever the boy and the girl talk about child refugees, I realize now, they call them ‘the lost children.’ I suppose the word ‘refuge’ is more difficult to remember. And even if the term ‘lost’ is not precise, … the refugees become known to us as ‘the lost children.’ And in a way, I guess, they are lost children. They are children who have lost the right to a childhood.” P75
“Generosity in marriage, real and sustained generosity, is hard. It implies accepting that our partner needs to move one step father away from us, maybe even thousands of miles away, it’s almost impossible.” P82
“Unhappiness grows slowly. It lingers inside you, silently, surreptitiously. You nourish it, feeding it scraps of yourself every day - it is the dog kept locked away in the back patio that will bite your hand off if you let it. Unhappiness takes time, but eventually, it takes over completely. And then happiness - that word - arrives only sometimes, and always like a sudden change of weather.” P 104
“Everything that was there between Arkansas and Oklahoma was not there: Geronimo, Hrabal, Stanford, names on tombstones, our future, the lost children, the two missing girls.
All I see in hindsight is the chaos of history repeated, over and over, re-enacted, reinterpreted… And in the middle of it all, tribes, families, people, all beautiful things falling apart, debris, dust, erasure.
But finally, there is something. … The story I have to record is not the story of children who arrive… The story I need to document is not that of the children in immigration courts.. but the story I need to tell is the one of the children who are missing, those whose voices can no longer be heard because they are, possibly forever, lost.” P146
“The only thing that parents can really give their children are little knowledges… Ans what children give their parents, in return, is something less tangible but at the same time larger and more lasting, something like a drive to embrace life fully and understand it, on their behalf, so they can try to explain it to them… Children force parents to go out looking for a specific pulse, a gaze, a rhythm, the right way of telling the story, knowing that stories don’t fix anything or save anyone but maybe make the world more complex and more tolerable. And sometimes, just sometimes, more beautiful. Stories are a way of subtracting the future from the past, the only way of finding clarity in hindsight. p185
“I wanted to remind her that even though those children were lost, we were not lost, we were there, right next to her.” P208
dark
emotional
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
emotional
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No