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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
The best kind of books leave you speechless. This is one that I can't really say anything about right now. Just... read it.
I was disappointed to not read about a reason for the blue creature who is on the cover. Maybe I missed it?
This is one of the books that I have no recollection about why I put it on my list. It's short, succinct, and made me laugh at times.
And as for "The Aquarium"? As someone who will be starting the long process of having a child I couldn't help but tear up at the ending and hope that I would never have to experience anything like what Aleksandar and Teri went through.
And as for "The Aquarium"? As someone who will be starting the long process of having a child I couldn't help but tear up at the ending and hope that I would never have to experience anything like what Aleksandar and Teri went through.
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
The Book of My Lives is a memoir in essays, revolving largely around the siege of Sarejevo in the 90s.
All of the essays are good, and shed some light on the feeling of displacement felt by immigrants in America.
However, it was the final essay, "The Aquarium," that affected me most. It chronicles the illness of Hemon's youngest daughter. It's a punch in the gut.
The alienation that comes from immigration dominates Aleksander Hemon’s short story memoir. In a single act, you not only enter a foreign landscape, a new world, you are also immediately alienated from your homeland. Roberto Bolano said it best, “To be exiled is not to disappear, but to shrink, to slowly or quickly get smaller and smaller until we reach our real height, the true height of the self.”
Aleksander Hemon’s collective non-fiction writing is turned into memoir. In it, he details how it feels to orient to a new life. He talks about how his family dealt with the culture shock of immigrating to Canada and his own immigration to the U.S. His small Sarajevo was easily navigated as opposed to the large Chicago, but he finds a way to break the city down into smaller pieces, his own neighborhood.
Hemon goes to Chicago as a writer in residence days before war breaks out in Bosnia. He has to watch as his homeland is made unidentifiable. There is even an instance where he is assigned to study photos of wreckage to determine what was there before. He also discusses the cultural reasons for the war and how desperate the situation was before war finally broke out.
It’s the last story that best sums up his situation, though not in obvious ways. His daughter is born with complications that require surgery after surgery. It begins to dominate their lives, becoming surreal. Yet he observes how different things are to everyone else. They are going about their lives, not in constant crisis, not worrying about what is going on with his daughter, never knowing the despair of the crisis. It’s like being in an aquarium. The events are only important to him and no one else. Hemon is brilliant in how he can connect this alienation in his writing. It’s an alienation with which anyone can identify.
Favorite parts:
...not only did he deplore the waste of words, he detested the moral lassitude with which they were wasted. To him, in whose throat the bone of displacement was forever stuck, it was wrong to talk about nothing when there was a perpetual shortage of words for all the horrible things that happened in the world. It was better to be silent than to say what didn't matter. One had to protect from the onslaught of wasted words the silent place deep inside oneself, where all the pieces could be arranged in a logical manner, where the opponents abided by the rules, where even if you ran out of possibilities there might be a way to turn defeat into victory. p. 166
Aleksander Hemon’s collective non-fiction writing is turned into memoir. In it, he details how it feels to orient to a new life. He talks about how his family dealt with the culture shock of immigrating to Canada and his own immigration to the U.S. His small Sarajevo was easily navigated as opposed to the large Chicago, but he finds a way to break the city down into smaller pieces, his own neighborhood.
Hemon goes to Chicago as a writer in residence days before war breaks out in Bosnia. He has to watch as his homeland is made unidentifiable. There is even an instance where he is assigned to study photos of wreckage to determine what was there before. He also discusses the cultural reasons for the war and how desperate the situation was before war finally broke out.
It’s the last story that best sums up his situation, though not in obvious ways. His daughter is born with complications that require surgery after surgery. It begins to dominate their lives, becoming surreal. Yet he observes how different things are to everyone else. They are going about their lives, not in constant crisis, not worrying about what is going on with his daughter, never knowing the despair of the crisis. It’s like being in an aquarium. The events are only important to him and no one else. Hemon is brilliant in how he can connect this alienation in his writing. It’s an alienation with which anyone can identify.
Favorite parts:
...not only did he deplore the waste of words, he detested the moral lassitude with which they were wasted. To him, in whose throat the bone of displacement was forever stuck, it was wrong to talk about nothing when there was a perpetual shortage of words for all the horrible things that happened in the world. It was better to be silent than to say what didn't matter. One had to protect from the onslaught of wasted words the silent place deep inside oneself, where all the pieces could be arranged in a logical manner, where the opponents abided by the rules, where even if you ran out of possibilities there might be a way to turn defeat into victory. p. 166
emotional
funny
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
Remarkably beautiful collection of essays that stitch together a lifetime in a human and heartfelt way. Some chapters are more powerful than others, but I found Hemon’s reflection on the Bosnian war and his following displacement in the US very poignant. An emotive read, filled with lots of laughs and tears.
Wonderful
A wonderful read with a mix of hope and sorrow. Every essay is remarkable and I read it often. The aquarium was heartbreaking but incredibly told.
A wonderful read with a mix of hope and sorrow. Every essay is remarkable and I read it often. The aquarium was heartbreaking but incredibly told.
Interesting collection of essays. As a former Chicagoan, I appreciated his essay on Chicago. As a parent, "The Aquarium" was especially powerful
Didn't enjoy as much as his fiction, but the last essay about his daughter's brain tumor is a stunner.