From Amazon:

"When the spoilt and haughty Dona Constanza tries to divert a river to fill her swimming pool, she starts a running battle with the locals. The skirmishes are so severe that the Government dispatches a squadron of soldiers led by the fat, brutal and stupid Figueras to deal with them. Despite visiting plagues of laughing fits and giant cats upon the troops, the villagers know that to escape the cruel and unusual tortures planned for them, they must run. Thus they plan to head for the mountains and start a new and convivial civilisation"

Hmmm... I can see this book being controversial. The story is exhausting to follow, full of political comment, full of stereotypes, and makes extremely light work of subjects like rape, genocide and torture. But I thought it was really good.

The way I saw this was De Bernieres highlighting western tendancies to brush over atrocities in foreign countries as being 'too far away to worry about' by deliberatly writing about the subject in a very light-hearted, detached fashion. It was very effective, but also made the book very funny (sometimes uncomfortably so) to read. The passages involving illiterate villages using the receipts left to them for goods 'requisitioned' by the guerillas as a form of currency made me laugh out loud.

There was a lot of fun, and a lot of wisdom in this novel. It challenged me as a reader, but I think that was probably a very good thing.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

To be released at meetup

Awww poor book. Left behind at meetup so I'm going to set it up as a bookring.

This is one of the things I love about BookCrossing – I Picked this up at the Edinburgh BookCrossers Meet-up tonight planning to take it to the next Aberdeen BookCrossers Meet-up and then I read LittleSuz’s review and light dawned. I had attempted to read this years ago and disliked intensely, that lightness on traumatic subjects like rape, genocide and torture. Eventually I gave up the struggle with it but was left feeling small for missing something important, as others were raving about it. But now LittleSuz’s review, for which I say thanks, reveals that something, was going on at an extremely satirical angle, that I just did not perceive. Ah, ha!

So, on to Aberdeen where the BookCrossers always hold their meet-ups on the third Thursday of the month.

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

Planning releasing this at the Aberdeen Bookcrossers Meet-up, next Thursday, the 20th. Where if it’s not picked up immediately I’ll leave it on official BookCrossing Zone bookshelf there in the Belmont Cinema Café.

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Congratulations on finding a Bookcrossing book and Happy Reading!!

obcz 20.11.08

4,3,09

WILD RELEASE NOTES:

picked up