196 Books: Djibouti

In the United States of Africaby Abdourahman A. Waberi

Here's Djibouti. It's small. 

Here's the summary. The font is small.
In a literary reversal as deadly serious as it is wickedly satiric, this novel by the acclaimed French-speaking African writer Abdourahman A. Waberi turns the fortunes of the world upside down. On this reimagined globe a stream of sorry humanity flows from the West, from the slums of America and the squalor of Europe, to escape poverty and desperation in the prosperous United States of Africa. It is in this world that an African doctor on a humanitarian mission to France adopts a child. Now a young artist, this girl, Malaïka, travels to the troubled land of her birth in hope of finding her mother—and perhaps something of her lost self. Her search, at times funny and strange, is also deeply poignant, reminding us at every moment of the turns of fate we call truth.

Based on the description, I was so excited for this book. I loved the idea of flipping the world this way but, for me, it didn't really work. This was only because it was written really poetically, and I'm just really not in for poetry. It goes way over my head with all the imagery and metaphors. Also he talked about sperm a lot for some reason. No thanks. There was a line that I really loved though; "He is wearing a shirt the same color as his chronic cold..." And it's like, what color do you think a chronic cold would be? I mentioned it to Husband and the color he envisioned was completely different than what I had come up with (I thought of like a dingy tan). 

Eventually the main character decides to go find her birth mother, and this part had less imagery and told more of a story. It was a little odd though; I think she found the mom, and it was kind of...okay, I saw her, that's fine now. Bye. No real description of what it made her feel or anything. Then there's something that happens in this possibly seedy underbelly in what I assume is a third world version of Paris, but I have no idea what actually happened. She hires this guy to help her find her mom, and he takes her to some weird building where she sees something that smells of "garlic and mummy".  She's so horrified by whatever this is that she runs out, throws up, and then decides two things: she's going home, and she's going to send this guy to college in Africa.  
What? And then that was it. She's going to go home and get back together with her fashion designer ex boyfriend. 

For me, I wish it had been written more like a novel and less like a poem, because this is such a great concept. Somebody get on it. 

196 Books: Denmark

The Exception by Christian Jungersen

Here's Denmark:

And here's the summary:
Four women – intimate with the psychology of evil – work together for a small nonprofit that disseminates information on genocide. When two of them receive death threats, they immediately believe the messages come from one of their recently profiled war criminals. As the tensions mount among the women, each discovers that none of the others is exactly the person they seem to be. Their obsession with tracking down the killer turns into a witch hunt: one by one, the women dismiss the idea that the threats were sent from the outside and begin to suspect each other, disclosing the jealousies and contempt that have been simmering just beneath the surface.

A tautly woven philosophical drama with all the trimmings of an electrifying murder mystery, The Exception heralds Christian Jungersen as a gifted storyteller and keen observer of the human psyche.

Holy shit guys. This book was awesome. It had me on the edge of my seat, tensed up, racing through every word. There were so many twists, I thought I had figured out who sent the emails like 5 times. He even had a great wrap up at the end which made me question AGAIN who had done it, but I wasn't even mad about it. Normally I hate a questionable ending; this just kind of made me go "huh."

He also threw in a bunch of genocidal information that was very interesting and seemed really well researched, though thoroughly depressing. 

The only issue I had was that one of the characters has rheumatoid arthritis and it was basically her whole identity. It was completely debilitating after like 6 years of being diagnosed (ok fine, could happen, not everyone has the same "journey" as me). Jungersen said there was no treatment for it (technically true I guess) but she took methotrexate and steroids and still had crazy bad flare ups. She even had some sort of surgery at one point? Which maybe is a real thing, I didn't look into it. Ok, that's really my only complaint. 

Jungersen had me so wrapped up in these relationships and lives, with and without the thriller part of it. I finally got back to a book that really enthralled me, and I'm ramping the challenge back up!