Category Archives: The ladies who say ooooh

2008,  262p

Right wing commentators have been insidiously successful in characterizing refugees as “illegals”- a term that is both inaccurate and dehumanizing.  The few images we see from detention centres reinforce the characterization of angry, defiant and confronting young men and their ‘demands’ often evoke a bristle of resentment.   It has struck me that the people I know who are most strident in their denunciation of refugees are often those people who would bribe and bully their way to the top of any putative ‘queue’ if their own families were under threat.

This is the first book that I have read about an Australian Afghan refugee, although I suspect that others will follow, just as the life-stories of Vietnamese boat people and Jewish refugees have before them.  The book is written in conjunction with Robert Hillman, whose book,  The Boy in the Green Suit I read recently with my bookgroup ladies- indeed this too, was a bookgroup choice. It was a happy coincidence: having read the two books in close succession I can see why Robert Hillman would have been attracted to his story, but also it reinforced for me that it is indeed Najaf’s voice that we are hearing here.

I suspect (on the basis of no evidence whatsoever!) that Hillman’s contribution came in the structuring of the book, rather than in the words or sentiments uttered.  The language itself is simple, and occasionally captures that shard-like truth that comes because the writer is not a native-speaker: “I did not know that I could feel this much sorrow without a body to bury”.  The book is not a straight chronological narrative- and here, perhaps Hillman’s familiarity with an Australian audience and the Australian publishing market comes into play- because it starts with Woomera which is well known, albeit somewhat uneasily among Australian readers, before returning to Afghanistan and the beginning of his journey.  A rather incongruous outburst of foreshadowing near the start of the book reassures us that there will be a wife and daughter in suburban Melbourne one day in the future, and the draw of the book is to find out how he gets to that happy situation.  His journey through Indonesia and onto the boat does not emerge until close to the end of the book by which time you are won over by his goodness and humanity.   The logistics of the financial transaction with the people smugglers is somewhat glossed over, but the journey on the small, overloaded boat is well described.  Perhaps, too, this is a statement that even though the means by which refugees arrive is a red-hot issue for Australians, it is only a small part of the overall story and by no means its defining feature.

As a reader, I was aware throughout that Mazari was not of my own culture.  His belief of God’s will, his acceptance of mystical explanations and the tenor of  his family and marriage relationships made this plain.  On the other hand, though, people obviously warmed to him as a person and there were small acts of kindness that changed the trajectory of his life.  There were petty cruelties too. I am appalled by the vision of women floating in those perversely ethereal blue burkas, but had not particularly considered the plight of young boys growing into adolescence who would be hoovered up into the politics of warfare.  No-one could be unaware of the civilian deaths, but seeing them played out within one family, over an extended period of time, brought home the drawn-out nature of this ongoing conflict.

You can read more about Najaf Mazari here and it makes me smile to see him there in his rug shop- I feel as if I know him.  I find myself reading about Afghanistan again with more interest and it has put the human back into these reports for me.  Quite an achievement.

2009, over 400 pages but large print.

As I may have mentioned, like nearly every 50 plus, middle class suburban woman, I belong to a book club.  I’m very fond of my Ladies Who Say Ooooh.  That’s my daughter’s name for  the group after listening to us chortling and “oooohing” when the meeting was held at my place once.  We have good discussions.  Although we might go off-topic occasionally, we always answer the questions in the booklet that comes with the book , which yields us a satisfying conversation of  well over an hour.   I always read the book, or re-read it if I’ve read it before and I’ve never once abandoned a book club book. But with this book, I was sure tempted.

We had read A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian previously, and enjoyed it well enough, so I was happy to read this one too.   I couldn’t tell at first if it was a parody of bad writing- it was, after all supposed to be a comedy- but unfortunately, I don’t think that was the case.

I’m not even going to try to describe the plot.  Just a few words, then.   Marriage breakup; sonky teenaged son; batty old lady; the Holocaust; a mystery;  tangled identities; Israel; nefarious real estate agents; old people’s homes; Palestine; apocalypses; cat poo.  Holding all this together is the metaphor of glue, and if you don’t get the metaphor, I’ll tell it to you again because Lewycka sure did.  Glue.

There are just too many threads in this story and the book cries out for a good edit.  It’s touted as “black humour”- are you supposed to laugh at black humour?  Or is it slapstick?- certainly not a genre I’m fond of.  I kept reading, expecting that at some stage it might all come together and that I’d be overwhelmed by how cleverly the author had disguised her intentions behind this implausible, overburdened storyline.  By page 350 I had resigned myself to the likelihood that it just wasn’t going to happen.

When, at the end of the discussion we awarded our notional stars out of five, I gloomily intoned “ONE”.  The others, to be fair, stretched to three, and one Lady even gave it four.  “You don’t HAVE to finish it, you know, Janine” they said.  Ah, but I do!  It’s a book club book!

No, I’m not the last person in the world to read this book.  I read it for a second time, for my Council of Adult Education bookgroup a.k.a “the ladies who say ooooh”, so named by my daughter for our loud ejaculations and bursts of laughter.

So I already knew that it was the story of two young men, the sons of  so-called ‘intellectuals” who were sent to a remote and primitive Chinese village as part of the process of re-education following the Cultural Revolution. After deviously coming into possession of a suitcase of translations of largely 19th century French novels, they decide to share them with the tailor’s daughter, the Little Seamstress, with whom both boys are in love, as their own form of ‘re-education’.

I’m always a little wary of books written by expatriates: not dismissive by any means, but aware that the act of leaving springs from disillusionment and opportunity, and that the narrative may not be untouched by the need to justify the departure.  But this book, although probably somewhat autobiographical given the history of the author, does not dwell on the hardships of their exile.  The poverty and the grinding labour they are put to is not where their real life is.  Instead it is in their resistance and subversion of the situation in which they are placed.

On re-reading it, I appreciated it anew as a bitter-sweet coming-of-age novel, as all good coming-of-age novels are, and as a variation on the Pygmalion story which, like the the original, does not end as the ‘re-educator’ intends it to end.

I haven’t seen the film, but “the ladies” assure me that it is beautifully done.

When this was distributed as the next month’s read for my CAE bookgroup (a.k.a. “The Ladies Who Say Oooooh”) my heart sank.  “I’ve read this”, I thought.  But as I read further into it, I realised that it was not a clone of  Amy Tan 3-female-generation saga, as I expected it to be.  I had not, in fact, read it and now that I’ve finished I wish I hadn’t anyway.

This is a grubby, self-serving, vindictive book.  The author has left her (now deceased) parents’ names unaltered, along with that of her husband.  She did, however, change the names of her siblings.  I think that the issue of changing or not changing names in an autobiography really highlights the sore spots and anxieties in an author’s telling of their story.

The book is one long howl of wounded dignity and pain.  The author’s mother died after giving birth to her, and her father remarried a young, beautiful French-Chinese woman that the family called ‘Niang’, an alternative form of “mother”. The besotted father is putty in her hands, and betrays his allegiances to the children of his first wife- although admittedly, the relationship between a widowed father and the child whose birth precipitated the mother’s death must always be a fraught one.

This is a toxic family.  Niang certainly does appear a cold, manipulating, scheming woman who sows jealousy and dissesion amongst her children and their half-siblings.  They are all- parents and children- dominated by the love of money, ruthless in their determination to get ahead; remorseless in their own quest for parental approval.  The author, as narrator, portrays herself always as the innocent victim of others’ perfidy- a rather self-serving and perhaps not always accurate assessment.  There is no loyalty to family, and certainly no loyalty to country among the immediate family- they collect and discard nationalities at will in their thrust to get ahead.

Why did she write this book?  One can only think that it is her revenge, served cold and in print.  And wait- there’s more!  Not only did she write this book, but she rehashed her revenge  in her second book Chinese Cinderella which from its description, sounds like the same book fictionalized.

I feel complicit in her vindictiveness by even having read this book.