Review: This is Writing, Baby
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 12, 2013
This was a free book, so I didn't expect much, but wow, was I mistaken. Seldom have I read a book so well-crafted. Again and again, the author began a story in the middle, and you're thinking there is no way I'm going to understand what the hell this means, but you keep reading because he is just THAT good. Then, before you know it, you understand the whole sequence of events.I picked it up, like I said, because it was free and also because I wanted to learn just a little bit about another culture. (Some reviews mentioned bride-kidnapping, for instance.) This book delivered in spades. It wove scores of slice-of-life vignettes into a comprehensive tutorial for this former USSR entity called Kyrgyzstan. Not only did I get an idea of the culture, but I also absorbed the feeling of abandonment that came with the "freedom" of their independence.The characters and events are both strange and familiar. There are hoodlums and lunatics, and tattered plain-joe schmucks... Just like in our world, you can't tell who is which until you get to know them. Their life stories, too, are similar to our own: Ideals get compromised, mysteries come to messy, unsatisfying conclusions, and love affairs almost (but maybe not quite) happen.Just read it. It can't hurt, it doesn't bite, and you just might learn something.