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Stories Around the World
Sanyat
Sattar
Rules
For a Pretty Woman
Suzette Francis
Avon; September 2003
ISBN: 0060535423
Dr. Lenita Mae Faulkner has come a long way from her dirt-poor
beginnings in Madoosa County. All she's missing is a family.
And with her nine-year live-in lover Ralph seemingly about
to pop the question, it looks like she's about to get her
wish -- a good thing, too, since Lenny's biological clock
is ticking rapidly toward thirty-five. But instead of proposing,
Ralph skips out, empties their joint bank account, and runs
off with another woman. And on top of that, a true family
catastrophe is calling her back to tiny Madoosa -- the last
place Lenny wants to be. Home again at the lowest point
of her once-charmed life, Lenny is blasted by a forgotten
piece of her past: a diary she kept in the fifth grade containing
a list of rules she had created to live by. And in their
simple, fervent honesty is the impetus for her to get out
and start living again.
Battle
Royale
Koushun Takami
Viz Communications; February 2003
ISBN: 156931778X
Battle
Royale, a high-octane thriller about senseless youth
violence, is one of Japan's best-selling and most controversial
novels. As part of a ruthless programme by the totalitarian
government, ninth-grade students are taken to a small isolated
island with a map, food, and various weapons. Forced to
wear special collars that explode when they break a rule,
they must fight each other for three days until only one
"winner" remains. The elimination contest becomes
the ultimate in must-see reality television. A Japanese
pulp classic available in English for the first time, Battle
Royale is a potent allegory of what it means to be young
and survive in today's dog-eat-dog world. The first novel
by small-town journalist Koushun Takami, it went on to become
an even more notorious film by 70-year-old gangster director
Kinji Fukusaku.
Brick
Lane
Monica Ali
Scribner; September 2003
ISBN: 0743243307
Wildly
embraced by critics, readers, and contest judges (who put
it on the short-list for the 2003 Man Booker Prize), Brick
Lane is indeed a rare find: a book that lives up to
its hype. Monica Ali's debut novel chronicles the life of
Nazneen, a Bangladeshi girl so sickly at birth that the
midwife at first declares her stillborn. At 18 her parents
arrange a marriage to Chanu, a Bangali immigrant, living
in England. Although Chanu--who's twice Nazneen's age--turns
out to be a foolish blowhard who "had a face like a
frog," Nazneen accepts her fate, which seems to be
the main life lesson taught by the women in her family.
"If God wanted us to ask questions," her mother
tells her, "…he would have made us men." Over
the next decade-and-a-half Nazneen grows into a strong,
confident woman who doesn't defy fate so much as bend it
to her will. The great delight to be had in Brick Lane
lies with Ali's characters, from Chanu the kindly fool to
Mrs. Islam the elderly loan shark to Karim the political
rabble-rouser, all living in a hothouse of Bangali immigrants.
Brick Lane combines the wide scope of a social
novel about the struggles of Muslim immigrants in England
with the intimate story of Nazneen, one of the more memorable
heroines to come along in a long time. If Dickens or Trollope
were loosed upon contemporary London, this is exactly the
sort of novel they would cook up.
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