It is midweek again! Happy Wednesday everyone. I hope you are all doing well during this time of uncertainties. With the midweek is another WWW Wednesday update. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme originally hosted by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday is quite simple, you just have to answer three questions:

  1. What are you currently reading?
  2. What have you finished reading?
  3. What will you read next?
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What are you currently reading?

I had a bit of a hangover from May’s immersion into Latin American and Caribbean literature, I have decided to extend my journey this June. This journey has led me discovering A House in the Country. It is both literal and imaginative. Perhaps the most renowned of Chilean novelist José Donoso’s works, A House in the Country charts the story of the Ventura and their excursion to their summer home. The Ventura family is a powerful and wealthy one, earning their fortune by exploiting the natives living in the area surrounding their “house in the country”. The novel zeroes in on the events of one vacation day when all the Ventura children were left in the house while their parents went out to pursue their own brand of pastime. The story is actually very dense and disturbing. Cannibalism and cannibals are repeatedly mentioned in the narrative. Explicit and graphic images are abound in the narrative and many of the characters can be very frustrating but the farce is not lost in me. This is certainly a unique experience.

What have you finished reading?

For the nth week in a row, I had a sluggish week; I barely had energy to lift a book. Nevertheless, I am grateful I managed to complete Cherie Jones’ How The One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House. The Barbadian writer’s debut novel, it charts the story of Wilma and Lala, her granddaughter, both living in Baxter Beach, Barbados. The story of the one-armed sister is a cautionary tale about a disobedient daughter related by Wilma to her granddaughter. It is actually one of the 2021 novels that I was looking forward to, especially after it was shortlisted for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction. Maybe it was the fatigue or maybe it was of the mixture of patois but I was not as engaged with the story as I hoped I would be. Yes, the prose was beautiful and it did have have an interesting premise. However, the narrative jumped around a lot and it was a challenge keeping up with it. Moreover, there were one too many voices in the narrative, which resulted into some characters being underdeveloped.

What will you read next?

For my next reads, I am looking at books I recently purchased. The first one is by Brazilian writer Jorge Amado, another unfamiliar name but an author I am nonetheless curious about. I am hoping to get more insights into his craft through his novel Show Down. Interestingly, it is a story about the growth of a Brazilian community in the state of Bahia and is also one of Amado’s latter works. This one does seems daunting but from what I read, it would give me some insights into Brazilian history. Just like Show Down, I recently bought Pierre Clitandre’s Cathedral of the August Heat. Interestingly, the first thing that appealed to me is its subtitle, “A Novel of Haiti”. I am not sure if I have read any works by any Haitian writers before but I am also hoping that this novel would give me better insights into the culture and people of the Central American nation.

Thus concludes another WWW Wednesday update! I hope everyone is having a great midweek! Do keep safe and as always, enjoy reading!

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