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Journalism of Courage
It is an unnamed disease that forces Tim Farnsworth to get up and leave his house,his office or his car,whenever it strikes him. He walks for miles and his devoted wife Jane spends many an hour driving through the city looking for him. He sleeps well when hes lost but the unnamed disease is gradually taking control of his life and with it,everything he has. Joshua Ferris second novel,The Unnamed Rs 350,begins so cryptically that the only reason you want to stay on with it is to know if the damn disease will eventually be named and the ways in which you can get it and if any chicken has to be culled or not. Since that would be too easy and would require Ferris to write a mini-medical thriller,he sticks to the gimmickry that marked the end of his debut novel Then We Came To The End. Ferris does not expand his characters,theyre rather one-dimensional and you might actually feel relieved when Janes devotion finally hits the bottom and the bottle. But its not all that bad,Ferris writes beautiful sentences and describes the loss of control very succinctly,but if youre looking for a pick-me-up,you might want to walk past this one.
There is no way you cannot like Pieter Drinkwaters The German Wedding Rs 450. Con boy Jacob meets rich girl Maria,girl fakes pregnancy to snag boy for marriage,boy is only too happy to get his hands on her mighty inheritance. Families are invited for the biggest wedding of the year. This is exactly what both parties want,but do things go smoothly? Not a chance. In this hilarious wedding comedy,Drinkwater introduces characters who are so bad that they can only be true. The story is set in 1958 in a Dutch seaside town where post-war sentiments ride high and that can only mean so much trouble for the German in-laws who have arrived for the wedding. There are secret Nazi meetings,relatives who are struck by STD,mothers with sex addictions and high-drama among the low lives at the wedding. Youre invited.
