Tuesday, May 27, 2008

One more time ...

... Reprise. (Hat tip, Lee Lowe.)

This does sound interesting, though while I was reading it, I kept thinking of the novel I just finished last night and am now about to review. It's called The Gift of Rain and it's by someone called Tan Twan Eng. It was long-listed for the Booker last year. A good bit of it takes place during the Japanese occupation of Malaya during World War II. Genuinely horrible things happen and the characters are faced with truly ghastly choices. The cause and source of their suffering is overwhelmingly palpable. In comparison I have lived a soft and privileged life, as have most of us, as have, I would gather, the characters in Reprise. " ... this is what it feels like to be alive, the movie says." I've not seen the film - though this post makes me want to - but I don't think I need a film - or a book, for that matter - in order to learn what it feels like to be alive. But The Gift of Rain gave me an uncomfortable insight into life's terrifying mix of the fragile and the brutal.

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