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.
