April Reads - More French shorts and ...

B read aloud more French/English shorts -

The Fashionable Tiger - Jean Ferry.  Can't even explain this one.  Was the tiger real?  A person in a suit?  An allegory?  Don't known.  Ain't gonna lie.

The Offensive - Henri Thomas.  A man leaves.  A soldier returns.  A vivid tale of his experience and feelings amid a horrible battle versus the story he tells once home.

Cuckolded, Hanged, and Happy - Marcel Jouhandeau.  While a husband is away at war a wife takes a lover.  A useless and abusive man.  On the husband's return, however, the wife joins her lover in a failed attempt to hang her husband.  The lover flees, but the husband insists he still loves his wife and wants to put the past behind them; to rebuild the happy life they once had.  Despite derision from the village for both their actions - the wife for being unfaithful, the husband for taking her back - they gradually become known as a loving couple. The wife clearly adores her husband.  When the wife develops a mysterious illness, the husband spares no expense to have her evaluated by specialists.  He was adoring and attentive until her strange end. ????????

The Trojan Horse - Raymond Queneau.  A couple has a mundane conversation while a literal horse drinks at a bar.  Don't even know what that was about!

The Little Square - Pierre Gascar.  A story told mostly through the eyes of a boy about the life going on in his town square.  Where the strange blacksmith's son, recently returned from the war, watches the baker's wife as she runs to and fro carrying out her duties while she is ridiculed for same by her husband and the people of the town.  Through a chance encounter, the blacksmith's son and the baker's wife meet.  The young man is calmed and they begin to meet secretly - eventually running off together. Their departure is witnessed by the boy who is shushed by the smithy's son as the baker's wife hides under a tarp in a wagon.   It ends ~ "A long time afterwards we heard that the blacksmith's son and the baker's wife were living in a big town close to the sea.  Some said they were happy, others said that they were not. The greengrocer was among the latter.  Sometimes he gave me a peach.  Depending on the day, it was good or without flavor....."  Yep.  Peaches - and life - are like that.

The Island of Sea Women - Lisa See.  Goodness.  This book touched my soul.  I researched the real lives of Korean and Japanese Women Divers.  That alone was a lot!  Then there was reading of what these islanders endured during an invasion (World War II and the Korean War) while seeing the atrocities that are ongoing in Ukraine.  I will never understand man's capacity for cruelty against others.  To top all of that was the main character's realization - that "she always knew her".  Yes, we can sometimes convince ourselves that those we love are different than we really know them to be.  It is most painful when you realize you were fooled...or fooled yourself.  Yet, we survive.

I couldn't read anything for a bit after the Sea Women.  It's a story that stays with you.  So, just to lighten things up! B, read me The Education of Little Tree - Forrest Carter.  I know it is criticized for turning American Indian life into easy clichés.  I know the Asa vs Forrest Carter controversy.  Still, there are many worthy and heartwarming things that are real and resonate within this small book.  And, whoever the writer really was - he didn't care a damn for 'politicians'!  

Based on some recommendations I'd seen I jumped into Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie series - Case Histories, One Good Turn, When Will There be Good News?, Started Early, Took my Dog.  Quick, fairly entertaining reads.  The storytelling can be a bit tedious, but the characters are well drawn and make you care.  Easy to read when your heart is already full and you are rocking a little one.

Read chaotically! ~ les