I felt I had been neglecting my World Books project, so yesterday morning, I pulled out every book I owned from a country I had not read and stacked them on my dining table. I then reorganized them in various ways, ending up sorting them by continent/region. Africa turned out to be the biggest stack, mainly because I have six South African novels vying for my selection. (The Africa stack also included a Senegalese, a Sudanese, and a Guinean book.) The Europe stack included two novels by Tove Jansson (Finland) - this one and Fair Play, which I picked up together at a thrift store near my office, a Portuguese novel, and a Bosnian novel. The Americas stack included two books by Jean Rhys and To Sir, With Love. The Asia stack consisted of just one book: a Nepalese collection of short stories, which I decided to save for my busy travel season this fall. I had originally intended to read the Bosnian book (The Fortress by Meša Selimović), but it was the longest of the books and I thought I should pick something shorter because I also have to read a book club book this month. It came down to a choice between Jansson and the Sudanese book (Season of Migration to the North), and I chose The True Deceiver after reading the first paragraph of all my options. (This is the normal final step in my book selection routine.) When I decided to read a small book, I didn't expect to finish it in a day, but between three commutes, reading on my lunch break, and some final reading at home yesterday evening, I got right through it, so here we are:
This book was small and intense and strange. It's a story about two women, one of whom (Katri) insinuates herself into the other's (Anna) life, and the bizarre, tense, frenmity that forms between them. As a woman who lives primarily alone, but frequently has her home invaded by guests, I could really relate to Anna. The presence of another person makes you self-conscious about your habits and routines; you perform normalcy for the strangers in your home. The way Anna's world falls apart, while nothing about her life actually changes, felt true and a little bit scary. Are the worlds we create for ourselves so fragile? I suspect they are.
