Check in / Book Review

First up - How I did with my weekend list:

1) A substantial amount of novel writing - 2000 words written. It's okay, got something done.

2) Attack the ironing pile - Complete

3) The floors - half done. Hoovered, but didn't feel like mopping.

4) Finish my book - It got finished this morning before work.

5) Complete April's Furious Fiction - I got something in for this. I wasn't great. I'll be writing more of it an putting it in the novel

6) Go for some walks - Two walks done - one lap of the Tan (in the rain) and a lap of the Yarra from Anderson Street to Princes Bridge and back. It was just so good to be outside.

7) Find the other half of the couch. Not done. Didn't get to it.

However, it's still not too bad an effort.

On the really good side of things, I got an honorable mention on the daily Writer's Victoria Flash Fiction competition for this gem:

#WVFlashFic20 @Writers_Vic#Hocus-Pocus

‘Three days!’ Eunice growled at the computer, waiting as her grandson worked his hocus-pocus on the mysterious box. It was easy, he said.
‘You need to turn it on, Gran.”

— TrellawneyThom (@TrellawneyThom) April 5, 2020

I love writing these 30 word stories on a daily theme. There is a bit of kudos when you get called out. 

Now, for a quick book review as I want to go to bed now.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummings. 

I haven't been conflicted like this about a book for a long time. 

The premise is fairly simple. Lydia runs a book shop in Acapulco. She is a law abiding citizen. She loves her son, Luca, and her husband. But Lydia's life changes when her husband falls foul of the local cartel and the whole of her family is gunned down.

From here, Lydia will do anything to keep her son and herself safe. Literally anything. The bulk of the book shows Lydia and Luca, on the run from the cartel attempting to get across the border to the United States. 

I have to clarify something. This book is a work of fiction - and needs to be read as such. It's very good popular fiction. The book gathers pace from the first page and you want to know what happens to the characters as fortune, for the most part deserts them. There's a cast of characters you begin to love too - and some you really hate. Everything is explained and all the loose ends a are tied up. It's eminiently readable.

So why am I conflicted? Well, it's a book about the migrant experience in middle/central America. For as much as we all know Mexico is a dire place to be a journalist - more journalists are killed per capita than any other country in the world.

We are all aware that the cartels can be very scary things. Anybody who'd watched Breaking Bad knows about this. 

The controversy lies in the fact that this was written by a Caucasian Woman, but it goes into intimate details about the migrant experience. And I get this. Some have called the book racist. I wouldn't go that far, but I do get where they are coming from. She had done her reseach. She's done an extraordinary amount of research. In the acknowledgements she spoke of wanting to write about the migrant condition - which has changed a lot in the last three years with Trump and his cronies. 

Some have called this The Grapes of Wrath of our time. I wouldn't go that far. 

But for me, when reading it, as long a I remembered this was a work of fiction, I was fine. Things  that happen in the book do happen in real life. I'm just not sure a white, educated woman is the best person to write about this. (And Latinos are VERY proud people - which is where a lot of the noise has come from)

This is a great read. It's not perfect, but it's highly entertaining. 

I just had to keep my reservations at bay and keep telling myself it's fiction. 

Today's song: