I loved it when I read it, and I loved it when I discovered it again as a PBS mini-series. It is an amazingly optimistic look at our various cultural clashes during the 20th century, after World War II. It is not always a cheerful book--crap happens--but it handles the crap with just the right amount of dark comedy.
Here's a good interview with the author!
I do think we can love one another, and find a way to live with one another on this earth. If we fail, the earth will clean itself up without us, but I hope it doesn't come to that.
And now, left behind and not eaten by zombies, I must manage to eat some breakfast. Backwards as I am, I brushed my teeth first.
I like your little time regression with your teeth and breakfast. I did not know White Teeth was a tv series. I need to experience both book and film series. I did pull an abdominal muscle today and wondered whether we are spiritually hard of hearing. "Not rapture, rupture, my children. Rupture!"
ReplyDeleteI haven't read that, but I think I need to. Are you enjoying post-rapture spring, anyway? We haven't had that many 75 degree days, so I need to get outside and take part.
ReplyDeleteI have indeed been outside much of the last two days, Julie, enjoying it!
ReplyDeleteAnd Ron, oh dear, you don't ever want to see the bad poem I wrote called "The Rupture."
I have this somewhere, I think...? I didn't realize it was an optimistic book, or that that is the takeaway. Very interesting! I do hope to get to it, too.
ReplyDelete"Crap happens" because of religion; that's the main reason for division between people. Even Zadie Smith must have noticed that!
ReplyDeleteYes, she did, Mike.
ReplyDeleteAnd, Mike, I recommend Mary Doria Russell to you. The Sparrow. The author laughs and calls it "Jesuits in space," but it will tear your heart out and eat it. It is cultural anthropology mixed with comparative religion mixed with science fiction. It is a novel that will demand your attention. It explores the crap that happens.
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