ATF

A Thousand Farewells is a book written by Nahlah Ayed, a journalist born in Winnipeg, of Palestinian descent.  The book is well written and thought out.  I really enjoyed reading about her travels because they reminded me of my own life abroad.  I was so inspired by the book that during reading week I wrote my own 36 page, single spaced, non-fiction story about the week I spent in Thailand.

It did get confusing at times with all of the characters coming and going.  Early on, the story seemed to lack excitement and drama, and didn't give me anything to draw my mind into the world of the book.  The biggest problem for me was that it did not have any 'character' or 'heart' to it.  After reading it, I have no idea who Nahlah Ayed is.  I know she is a reporter and that she has some good advice for anyone who would want to become a reporter but that is it.  There seems to be nothing dynamic or particularly interesting about the story teller, even if the stories she tells are.

I thought the writing was good because it didn’t try to do too much.  It doesn’t get in the way, it just lets the story unfold.  I also thought the structure of the story was very well thought out and organized.  The story is not always told in the order it happened.  Instead the author works within one thread of the story and tells it from beginning, to middle and end.

It starts off telling the story of her childhood in Winnipeg.  Then we get her childhood growing up in a refugee camp.  

When she becomes a reporter and is sent to the Middle East, she breaks each section up into locations.

The Iraqi story is told from beginning, to middle and end, as is the Syrian story and the Egyptian.  This makes it easier to understand what is happening in each country because the reader is allowed to focus on just one country's story at a time.  By seeing each situation develop from start to finish, the changes that occur in each country, appear more clearly

There were problems at times keeping track of all the names of all the characters, as well as all the different places she traveled to. 

I found the early part of the book which told her childhood story to be very uninteresting.  There just didn’t seem to be any drama or story in it that was able to draw me in.

My biggest problem with the book is that it seems to lack a 'heart' at the centre.  I don’t really get a sense of a person or a personality from reading this.  I can tell that she is a very intelligent person by the way she writes, but this does not make me want to read her.  I just don’t find anything exciting about the way she tells her story.  It doesn’t engage me or give me anything to cling to.  At no point while reading this book did I ever close my eyes and try to picture what she was describing, despite the fact that she goes to some very beautiful places, including the Golan Heights.

I just feel like this book lacks an inner life or any kind of real connection between the author and the reader.  Like a good reporter, she’s removed herself from the story and the storytelling. This might work as journalism, but falls flat in a non-fiction book.

This is an excellent book for anyone who wants to learn how to become a good journalist.  She understands that to tell a people’s story the right way, you have to live in the same place, for years if necessary, in order to understand what they are about.

The Last Boy is a biography of Mickey Mantle, one of the greatest baseball players to ever live, written by Jane Leavy.  Mickey Mantle was a drunk and a playboy who frequently cheated on his wife.  He was a hero with many real human faults.  Reading this book I get a real sense of who he was, even if I don’t like hearing the truth all the time.  I still can’t put this book down and want to read more.  By the end, for better or worse, I really feel like I have a good sense of who Mickey Mantle was.  I wish I had been able to get the same thing out of A Thousand Farewells. 

This book did end up having a very positive effect on me.  It reminded me a lot of my own life as an English teacher living in Korea for 3 years.  It was very easy for me to identify with the title, because I can’t even remember how many people I have had to say goodbye to as an expat living in a foreign country.  It made me want to tell my own story, so I sat down and wrote about my time in Thailand.