Inner Beauty Friday - Book Club!

Hello!

It's Friday and time for Book Club!



This week I read "In the Shadow of the Banyan" by Vaddey Ratner



Here is the synopsis from goodreads.com:
"For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus.

Over the next four years, as she endures the deaths of family members, starvation, and brutal forced labor, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of childhood—the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival."

My thoughts: This is loosely based on the author's life.  (I never know what loosely based means, like one thing actually happened?...) But even if it was just a little bit of this, it was a harrowing experience to live through.  The language is very poetic, which considering it is "narrated" by an 8 year old seems improbable at times (No 8 year old has that kind of running commentary - no 30 year old that isn't a writer has it either).  But the topic is so interesting and something that needs to be understood that I can get over it :)

Jasmine