Hillary Rodham Clinton’s latest book, What Happened, could not have been an easy book to write. To put it mildly…..because what it really is, is a 500 page balancing act. 

To criticize your opponent (even if he is Donald Trump) in such a way that you make sure you don’t come across as a sore loser (despite winning the popular vote), not easy. To temper your need to explain the role of others in your defeat with a willingness to take responsibility for your own mistakes, not easy.

These are pitfalls that Mrs Clinton is acutely aware of and while the reader is left with no doubt as to where she feels the blame should be placed for the fact that she didn’t win and that we now have someone she believes to be a menace to society and the world in The White House, it is obvious that the former Secretary of State, Senator and First Lady has done some soul searching to try to understand how this could have happened. 

The best parts of the book are perhaps the ones where she describes her own personal experience of running for president of the United States as the female nominee of a major party, - a first in American history. In a race where personality plays such an enormous role, Hillary Clinton has had to struggle with an image of insincerity, that people didn’t ever believe she was being genuine, that they didn’t feel like they really knew her to the point that she was treated as someone incapable of emotion and immune to insult. Her response to this in the book and the descriptions of what it all felt like before, during and after the election are perhaps the most poignant.

Hillary Clinton is also angry, not just on her own behalf, but also on behalf of her supporters, her staff, her party and her country. She is sincerely concerned about the way the election turned out, the key players who she feels orchestrated it, the people who allowed it to happen and, of course, the man who won thanks to an electoral college system she fervently opposes and criticizes. There is plenty of blame to go around, but the bulk of it is placed squarely on the shoulders of FBI Director Comey and the Russian involvement / hacking of the election process. 

What Happened also tries to reconcile her role as someone who is so clearly part of the establishment, someone almost doomed to win right up until the moment she lost, with the role of the outsider, the woman destined against all odds to shatter the ultimate glass ceiling on behalf of women everywhere. She makes it very clear that much of her strength comes from the women she has met throughout her life; the ones who raised her, literally and metaphorically, the ones she studied, learned from, tried to emulate and tried to educate throughout her life. Indeed, some of the most heartfelt, defiant passages of the book relate to women, the women’s movement, the role and struggle of women in politics and public life.

In What Happened Hillary Rodham Clinton tries to explain, understand and move on. Yes, she is angry, yes she is hurt, yes, she is at times biased and yes, taking responsibility and letting go of grudges don’t come easy to her, but after all that has happened and especially given where we are today #imstillwithher

Happy reading!

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Mohsin Hamid’s beautiful novel Exit West, recently shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2017, strikes an extraordinary balance between depicting life in a country ravaged by war and a city swollen by refugees and the beauty of a love story between two young people and the choices they make to better their lives.

Saeed and Nadia meet as friends in an unnamed city in an unnamed country, although one cannot help but picture Syria, Afghanistan or Irak of today and decades past.

“Neighbourhoods fell to the militants in startlingly quick succession, so that Saeed’s mother’s mental map of the place where she had spent her entire life now resembled an old quilt, with patches of government land and patches of militant land. The frayed seams between the patches were the most deadly spaces, and to be avoided at all costs.”

It seems unimaginable to those of us fortunate enough to live in peace, but as the number of refugees from other towns, cities and villages increases and the bombings draw nearer, Nadia and Saeed go on with their lives at work, at university, because what else can you do?

Meanwhile, they start hearing of mysterious black doors appearing. Lines form outside closets and doorways allowing residents to step through to other countries and better lives, promising peace and a hopeful future. 

Our young couple decides, after agonizing about what is left behind and whether what is promised is worth more than what is lost, to open first one then multiple doors which take them in turn to faraway places such as Mykonos, Vienna, London and Mill Valley, California. 

This allows not only for a lovely fable-like quality to the writing, but also for Hamid to broach many of the issues brought on by the multiple crisis of today, such as the pro- and anti refugee movements across Europe and the promise of a better life in an America increasingly marked by inequality. 

“Perhaps they had grasped that the doors could not be closed, and new doors would continue to open, and they had understood that the denial of co-existence would have required one party to cease to exist, and the extinguishing party too would have been transformed in the process, and too many native parents would not after have been able to look their children in the eye, to speak with head held high of what their generation had done.”

But Exit West is much more than a gifted novelist depicting the urgency of our times. The black doors are also there for forgotten lovers, for dreamers of all kinds, of all ages and all nationalities to move forward or return for a second chance at what life had once promised but they had perhaps squandered.

“…..and both would also wonder if this meant that they had made a mistake, that if they had but waited and watched their relationship would have flowered again, and so their memories took on potential, which is of course how our greatest nostalgia are born”.

War and the politics of displacement are indeed serious topics that could so easily have resulted in a heavy book and while the sense of the surreal evoked by the black doors can sound daunting, Exit West is far from heavy and the black doors quickly become completely plausible and even natural.

Exit West has a lightness and a beautiful poetic quality that makes you feel like you are traveling - almost floating - alongside Nadia and Saeed through the doors, across continents, that you live with them on the beaches of Mykonos, while they take refuge in designated apartment buildings in London and as their relationship takes a quiet turn in the green hillside communities of Marin County. You feel as though you are right there marching alongside Nadia as she protests violence against migrants and that you are seated beside Saeed and the other young men as they grapple with the idea of violence, arms and terrorism.

Exit West starts in one corner of the globe and with engaging and artful prose makes its way across countries and expands to encompass a world of emotions, experiences and encounters.

I highly recommend going along for the ride.

Happy reading!

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'Facts: One for Every Day of the Year' by Tracey Turner and illustrated by Fatti Burke

This beautifully illustrated book is perfect for all those fact loving kids (and adults )out there. There is a fact for every day of the year; funny, shocking, astonishing, surprising, mind-blowing, scary facts. The layout and brief descriptions also make the book the perfect starting point for lots of interesting conversations and quizzing!

Did you know, for example, that during an average lifetime, your heart will beat about 2.21 billion times and you’ll take around 672 million breaths? Or that cash money isn’t always made of metal or paper. That pepper was used in Europe as money, while Dogs’ teeth were used as currency in New Guinea. 

Or did you know that not all blood is red? That lots of creatures have yellow or green blood and that cockroaches have white blood!

There is something in here for everyone - Facts! promises to be the gift that keeps on giving!

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Rebel of the Sands by Alwyn Hamilton, reviewed by Natalie Kelly-Haigh. Thanks Natalie!

Meet Amani, the Blue Eyed Bandit. Her life seems to be closing in on her, trapping her into the hell she has always been planning to escape. Having only what she thought were her blue eyes from her father that she never knew, her mother was the only one she had. Her mother told her stories of a city, full of freedom and opportunities for them. A place where they could go and find Amani’s aunt. Instead her mother is killed when Amani is young, and Amani confides in teaching herself the skills in firing a gun up on the far and hidden sand dunes that surround her only reach of life. Only to come back later to the only place she has to call home; to the sexist, traditional and close minded people she hates.   

Her desperate tries to get money to leave to the city her mother described, lead her to an arena with a gun and a scarf to mask the girl behind it. While shooting for money, her unusual blue eyes call on the title of the Blue Eyed Bandit. When all hope of leaving seems lost, the mysterious foreigner she shot with in the arena and hid in her shop, saves her. After brutally sacrificing a friend, she seizes her only chance at freedom, and rides across the empty sand dunes on a godly creature with a broken compass to guide the way. 

When the last piece of hope she thought she knew turns out to be a lie, she follows her connection with the foreigner, running from pursuers and chasing a goal. However Amani doesn’t actually know, what that goal is… 

The Rebel of the Sands is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read, the story so well told that it blesses those that read it. If you’re looking for a good book, this story has it all. 

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