Review & Preview

The Devil and Miss Prym

If you thought that you could get away with it, with no one ever being the wiser, would you:

Lie about your age?
Cheat on your diet, an exam in school or your taxes?
Help yourself to a snack from the bulk bin?
Turn the annoyingly loud ringer down on your work colleague’s cell phone?
Cheat on your partner or spouse?
Pocket money dropped in the street by a passerby?
Fudge the credentials on your resumé?
Repeat juicy and devastatingly embarrassing gossip about the breakdown of a competitor’s marriage?
Cash in a winning lottery ticket that does not belong to you?

What if you thought that your actions were for a greater good? Given the same circumstances, could you:

Kidnap an abused dog from a neighbour’s yard?
Move your loved one’s name to the top of a transplant list?
Have killed Hitler?

Temptation. At times easy to resist, sometimes achingly alluring. Some temptations give you pause, make you wonder “what if”, some are deftly rebuffed. Regardless of the enticement, it usually boils down to a matter of morality. A moral person can find the strength to resist evil in its many forms, where an immoral person cannot. Right? Or is it that simple? The struggle of humankind to be good or evil is the topic of Paulo Coelho’s book, The Devil and Miss Prym. This thought provoking, even if at times somewhat obvious tale was a reasonably enjoyable read. Coelho has written a series of books, each with a particular theme – wisdom, virtue, temptation and so on. While I am usually interested in philosophizing over the responsibility of choice, the impact of fate and importance of perspective in one’s life, something about the simplicity with which this story was told made it less compelling a read. Predictable is the word that comes to mind. Predictable, and not all that tempting.



Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

Next on my list is Dai Sijie’s bestseller, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress. This is a book that was tailor made for my list. The whole point of this year’s project was to find time to read books which I have been missing out on. I bought this book a few years ago and it has been gathering dust on my shelves for a while. Much anticipated at the time and yet passed over for other volumes, I am hoping to enjoy this week’s book a lot. Balzac is the story of two city boys exiled to a mountain village during China’s Cultural Revolution. There in the remote setting, they meet the daughter of the local tailor and come into a treasure – a set of Chinese translations of forbidden western classic literature. A book about the pleasure and adventures of books, this is my kind of story!