My idea of heaven on earth is reading a book while basking on the beach.
I powered through two books while lazing around in Puerto Vallarta last month (oh, there were the eight hours on the plane getting there and back, too — nothing like the excuse of a book to keep a seatmate from bugging you during flight).
While I don’t normally choose fiction, these fictional stories were based on real life and offered intriguing escapes during my trip. Both books were about immigrants and shared complicated plots.
“Little Bee,” lent to me by my friend Barb, is the story of a young Nigerian refugee and an English magazine editor named Sarah. It is the story of how they met and the horror some illegal aliens undergo in trying to escape political unrest.
It’s not as dry as it sounds because the author infuses the characters with enlightening down-to-earth perspectives on common Western traditions (like having tea) and less common African concepts (like tribes and oil wars).
I loved this, from the thoughts of the Nigerian refugee:
“I could not stop talking because now I had started my story, it wanted to be finished. We cannot choose where to start and stop. Our stories are the tellers of us.”
“Little Bee,” told from the perspectives of two women, is written by a man, Chris Cleave. The second book, “The Lacuna,” is the story of a Mexican-American man written by a woman — Barbara Kingsolver.
My sister recommended this book, and it begins with a young Mexican boy learning to swim and make tortillas in the 1920s. I wasn’t impressed, but by Page 29, the intrigue begins. This is a painstakingly researched book that fictionalizes real-life characters such as famous Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and U.S. Rep. Richard Nixon (yes, the guy who later becomes president).
Besides offering historical and political intrigue, Kingsolver writes fabulous dialogue:
“Isn’t it crazy? Rich people in the United States don’t even know how to use money properly.” She peeked at her lunch plates now, inspecting the rellenos. “They don’t mind throwing big parties while people stand outside in the street with nothing. But then they serve puny little foods at the party! And live in houses stacked on top of one another like chicken crates. The women look like turnips. When they dress up, they look like turnips in dresses.”
“You’re right, senora. Mexico is the better place.”
Here is one of my favorite bits of dialogue from the book:
“I thank my lucky stars, Mr. Shepherd, and I thank you. I do. That I’m a person who went somewhere.”
Interestingly, both books use similar metaphors about money. From “The Lacuna”:
This household is like a pocketful of coins that jingled together for a time, but now have been slapped on a counter to pay a price. The pocket empties out, the coins venture back into the infinite circulations of currency, separate, invisible, and untraceable.”
Or this, the first paragraph from “Little Bee”:
Most days I wish I was a British pound coin instead of an African girl. Everyone would be pleased to see me coming. Maybe I would visit with you for the weekend and then suddenly, because I am fickle like that, I would visit with the man from the corner shop instead — but you would not be sad because you would be eating a cinnamon bun, or drinking a cold Coca-Cola from the can, and you would never think of me again. We would be happy, like lovers who met on holiday and forgot each other’s names.”
Both “Little Bee” and “The Lacuna” transported me from the Mexican beach to another place (while I was gone, I got a tan). You might like them, too.
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