Penguin Books

Autor: Emma Hooper

Year: 2015

Publisher: Fig Tree

Pages: 278

Format: Hardcover

Etta lives in the farmlands of Saskatchewan with her husband Otto. Her greatest unfulfilled dream is to see the sea. At the age of eighty-two, she gets up very early, takes some chocolate, a rifle and her best boots and begins to walk the 2,000 miles to the water.

But she’s starting to forget things, while Otto remembers everything. And even Russell, their neighbour, remembers, but in a different way. And he still loves Etta. As much as he did before she married Otto, fifty years ago.

„I’ve gone. I’ve never seen the water, so I’ve gone there. Don’t worry, I’ve left you the truck. I can walk. I will try to remember to come back.

Yours (always)

Etta

(Page 1)

It is very difficult for me to find the right words and review this book. But I can say, that I think it was magical.

With only bare necessities in her bag, Etta starts to walk to the see. Even though she occasionally suffers from memory loss. Otto waits patiently for her and is confident, that Etta will succeed. But Russell, a very good friend and neighbour, fears that Etta will get lost.

The book is a mixture of Etta and her walk, flashbacks to their childhood, to the beginning of Etta’s and Otto’s and Russell’s love and to the time, Etta had to stay behind, while others went to war. And of letters and recipes, passages about Otto, about Russell and of course Etta, with the coyote James. It is not just a boring walk through canada, but a colorful story and I never knew if what’s just happening is real or imagined.

I loved the vulnerability of the characters and the bond between them all, because they known each other for more than fifty years and share their past, dreams and memories. It is not a book about a walk but about desires, unfulfilled wishes, longing, memories, happiness and love.

I still cannot decided if I like the end or not. It is very open and left to the reader’s interpretation. And mine is, well, sad, so sad and I wish I could read a better, happy ending. And I still cannot decide, if Etta really went for that walk or if it is only a dream. A dream in the last days of her life, while she lays unconscious in a hospital bed. That’s what I love most about Etta and Otto and Russell and James. That it offers so much room for my own interpretation and speculations. It’s a book you cannot take to seriously. I mean, of course it is ridiculous that an 82 year old woman starts walking 2,000 miles without prober sleep or much to eat and drink, with a coyote on her side. It is a book which gives the reader the possibility to look beyond the bare words into the hearts of the characters.

I think Emma Hooper wrote a magical book. I really love her writing and that the story is so unreal but so touching. That it gave me the possibility to have my own interpretations and speculations. A book about desires, unfulfilled dreams, love and longing, about the past and memories and live itself. A book which gave me the possibility to look beyond bare words and which entertained me. But I really hate the ending. It so open and my own head really has some bad thoughts about what happened. That’s why I give four out of five hearts. It was a quick and easy read but also one that will stay in my heart and memory for a long time.

Author:

Emma Hooper, musician and writer, is currently a research lecturer at Bath Spa University, in the Commercial Music Department. She lives in the UK but goes home to Canada as often she can afford. As an author, she has publishes short stories, nonfiction pieces, poetry and libretti, as well as a number of academic papers.

Author: Dave Eggers

Year: 2013

Publisher: Penguin Books

Pages: 491

Format: Paperback

What if one company would run all your internet activity in one easy, safe and visible place? The Circle is now the most powerful and influential company in the world. Mae Holland know’s she made it, when she lands a job at the glittering Campus of the Circle in California. Her ideals and ambitions become more and more aligned with those of the Circle and we’re getting closer to discover the sinister truth at the heart of an organization seeking to remake the world in its image.

Mea started a new job at The Circle, which is a big data company and more or less an amalgamation of Google, Facebook, Appel, Twitter etc. The Circle’s aim is to make life easier and they collect and unify data from many sources. Mea is excited to work for such an influential company and is soon blinded by there motives. She can’t believe that she got the chance to work for them even as her old life beyond the campus grows distant and a strange encounter with a colleague leaves her shaken and even as her life and her role at the Circle becomes more and more public and millions can view all of her life every minute of the day.

The company releases more and more products, which make it possible to document everything about everyone. They put cameras all over the world on public places and then even on people. Because when we are transparent than there are no secrets and we can share our personal experience with the whole world.

I really liked the book and found it creepy at the same time. The writing was very simple and I hate it when a book has no chapters, that disturbed my flow of reading. But the story was gripping, funny, scary and a scenario likely to be possible, which we all should hope never happens.

At the beginning Mae was great and I really liked her. But then she made some decisions and began to believe everything she’s told, abandons her loved ones and passions and principles. All of the other characters where colorless and for me irrelevant. But that made the book for me so special because I think that the message Dave Eggers tries to send with this book ist the most important part and not the characters or the plot itself. The characters are extreme and unbelievable but the story itself is plausible, fast-pace and entertaining. I thought I was trapped in some kind of nightmare mixed with a comedy.

Dave Eggers created interesting situations with a lot of similarities to the world we live in right now. At first I thought some of it ridiculous but when I started thinking about it then some of these scenarios are not so far off from our experiences today. Sometimes the story was predictable but Dave Eggers also includes some turns in the plot which kept me flipping from page to page.

I can give this Book four out of five hearts. The characters don’t have much depth, the writing is simple and I hated the missing chapters. The end was kind of disturbing and I still have lots of questions. But The Circle was also an exciting, disturbing and interesting story to read. Sometimes predictable but also with some twist in the plot which made it gripping.

Author:

Dave Eggers was born in 1970 and is an American writer, editor and publisher. On of his best-selling books is A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. He is the founder of McSweeney’s, the co-founder of the literacy project 826 Valencia and the founder of ScholarMatch. That is a program that matches donors with students needing funds for college.