'The Constant Gardener' by John Le Carre

The Constant Gardener, John Le Carre (4.0)

I enjoy the detail in Le Carre’s writing. While it requires closer reading, the stories feel real and complex, like life. In this story, he moves away from his usual spy fare, though the British government bureaucracy that frustrates his MI6 characters looms large here. It centers on a British foreign serviceman stationed in Kenya. At the beginning his wife has been murdered while working with an NGO doctor to uncover a potential pharma scandal. He tries to sift through the gossip by the media and obfuscation by his office as he learns how deeply his wife was engaged in discovering the truth. Like his other books, here the main character’s feelings are deep while he shows little in typical English fashion. I also watched the movie and found it to lack the emotion of the book, though had moving scenes of Africa.

'The Warmth of Other Suns' by Isabel Wilkerson

The Warmth of Other Suns: the Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, Isabel Wilkerson (3.5)

The book spans the migration of African Americans from the Jim Crow south to the north from the early 1910’s to the 1990’s. This was a difficult book to read. Not only long but reading through the details of the many years of racism made one so disappointed in our history. That said, it was worth reading to acquaint oneself with the details of the three representative people who moved from the South LA, Chicago and NYC. Getting to know these people made their stories that much more real. Humans can distance themselves from generic groups, it is much harder from actual people. Ms. Wilkerson did a very good job of attempting to get empathy from her readers, if possible, sympathy at a minimum. She also addresses many fallacies attributed to the new migrants in their northern homes (such as negative things they brought with them).  I wasn’t thrilled with the degree of repetition and had to stop at times as my disappointment with people, in general, was overwhelming.