alobear | Pleasant Lands and Ocean Planets

Today I finished This Green and Pleasant Land by Ayisha Malik, which is about the conflicts that ensue when a Pakistani family propose building a mosque in an English country village. I had a bit of trouble getting a handle on this book. It's well-written, I like the range of characters, it has a lot of interesting things to say about human nature, it's a quick and fun read. But it also deal with very heavy themes, like teen suicide, racism and the loneliness that comes from not feeling wanted. And the tone overall is almost one of farce in places. So, it felt like there was a disconnect between the tone and content in parts, and also as if the lightness of the narrative diluted the impact of the story it was telling. Still, I was very impressed by the way Malik presents all sides of the various conflicts, so that the reader can at least understand the motivations of all the characters. And my favourite thing was the inclusion of a single extra 'l' when the other villagers referred to the main character. His name is Bilal, but they all call him Bill. And, in adding that extra 'l', it demonstrates that they aren't affectionately shortening his given name (which would presumably be Bil) but anglicising it, which is a subtle but very effective way of showing their attitude towards him and his family.

Last night, I went to a stage version of Solaris, which was fascinating and mostly very well done. But I'm going to talk about that in a lot more depth in an upcoming episode of the podcast so I'm not going to go into details here.