Happy Wednesday everyone! Woah. How has your year been so far? I hope that it has been great. I also hope and pray that the rest of the year will be brimming with good news, positive energy, and blessings. I also hope that everyone will be happy and healthy, in body, mind, and spirit.

Wednesdays also mean WWW Wednesday updates. WWW Wednesday is a bookish meme hosted originally by SAM@TAKING ON A WORLD OF WORDS. The mechanics for WWW Wednesday are 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?
www-wednesdays
What are you currently reading?

With April halfway done, my foray into the works of female writers is still in full swing. This literary journey, which has taken me to various parts of the world, has now transported me to Turkey. Elif Shafak’s The Architect’s Apprentice is my fifth novel by the Turkish writer. Interestingly, I think this is her first novel set beyond the twentieth century. For this alone, I am riveted. Anyway, the novel charted the fortunes of Jahan who, at the age of twelve, fled from his abusive stepfather. By boat, he arrived in 16th-century Istanbul, the jewel of the Ottoman Empire. Jahan did not arrive in Istanbul alone. Along with him was a white elephant, a gift from Hindustan for the sultan. Jahan became the elephant’s mahout (keeper); he named the elephant Chota which translates to little. Together, they were stationed at the sultan’s palace where Jahan befriended Mihrimah, the sultan’s daughter. I am a hundred pages into the story and it is already getting more interesting. I will be sharing more of my impressions in this week’s First Impression Friday update.

What have you finished reading?

Jodi Picoult was a name I first encountered over a decade ago when I was still in university. Her works were everywhere; she is quite a prolific writer. Before 2024, I already read three of her works, including My Sister’s Keeper which was adapted into a film. One thing is for sure, her novels revolve around family. However, it has been a decade since I last read one of her works. When I encountered Sing You Home through an online seller, I was reluctant to buy it but I eventually relented because it was a long time coming, I mean reading one of Picoult’s works.

Because it was long overdue, I made Sing You Home part of my Women’s Literature Month Part II even though it was without design. At the heart of the novel are the Baxters, Zoe and Max. They have been married for nearly a decade but they never had a child. It was not from lack of trying. They miscarried and Max had infertility issues. As they were in their late thirties, they tried in vitro fertilization which offered a glimpse of hope until it didn’t. Failure ended their marriage. Max felt like he had started playing second fiddle in Zoe’s life which was preoccupied with having a baby. Divorce went smoothly but they forgot one tiny detail: they have not specified who the owner of their last three embryos will be. It would be the crux of the story as Zoe and Max battled it out. Zoe, now married to Vanessa, still wanted to have a child. Max, backed by his church, wanted to get the embryos to avoid giving them to a couple with a “deviant” lifestyle. It was interesting with plot twists toward the end of the novel that caught me by surprise.

From a familiar writer to an unfamiliar one, my reading journey took me from North America to Asia. It was just recently that I came across Li Zi Shu. I came across the Malaysian writer’s novel The Age of Goodbyes during one of my not-so-random trips to the bookstore. I had never heard of Li before but her novel captured my interest. Besides, South East Asian literature is part of the vast literary world that I have to explore more; I think among the Malaysian writers, Tan Twan Eng is the only one whose works I have read previously.

Anyway, The Age of Goodbyes is an unconventional novel, to say the least. The novel starts on page 513 (I thought it was a misprint). Apparently, this is a nod to the deadly race riots that broke out in Malaysia on May 13, 1969. The story then pans out to Du Li An. The daughter of a street vendor, she marries a gangster named Steely Bo following the riots. She established herself as a boss lady. But Du Li An’s story is just one of three threads making up the novel; hers, however, was the most conventional storytelling. The second thread follows the son of a sex worker who lives in an otherworldly brothel called Mayflower. He was also reading about Du Li An’s love affair in the novel titled The Age of Goodbyes. Like the second narrative, the third narrative is framed through second-person narration with the subject a literary critic referred to as the Fourth Person. The critic was preoccupied with the works of Shaozi, the pen name for a woman who is rumored to be named Du Li An. The novel can be disorienting because of its unusual structure; these three narratives were related alternately. Nevertheless, this experimental novel is a compelling read.

What will you read next?