ablondebooknerd's review
4.0
Thank you @mindbuckmediapub, @univnebpress and @sukrungruang for the [gifted] ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This Jade World is a collection of Ira Sukrungruang’s reflections on his 12 year marriage that ended in divorce and the path he took to healing and rediscovering himself.
You can tell that he is a creative writing professor as his prose is lyrical and gorgeous. This Jade World is a collection of vignettes that are woven masterfully together. He switches between the past and his current annual trip to Thailand to visit his family. His writing is raw and emotional.
I loved the scenes with his mother and his Aunty Sue who were both deeply caring but offered comic relief at times. And his descriptions of food left my stomach growling.
This Jade World is out now!
This Jade World is a collection of Ira Sukrungruang’s reflections on his 12 year marriage that ended in divorce and the path he took to healing and rediscovering himself.
You can tell that he is a creative writing professor as his prose is lyrical and gorgeous. This Jade World is a collection of vignettes that are woven masterfully together. He switches between the past and his current annual trip to Thailand to visit his family. His writing is raw and emotional.
I loved the scenes with his mother and his Aunty Sue who were both deeply caring but offered comic relief at times. And his descriptions of food left my stomach growling.
This Jade World is out now!
ramonamead's review
4.0
This is a powerful memoir about marriage, divorce, and finding yourself again afterward.
It might not be PC to say this, but I found the writing surprising coming from a man. It's emotional and vulnerable. Ira is painfully honest at times, about things he said and did, even when he's not proud of them.
The narrative moves back and forth from the past to his present on his annual trip to Thailand to visit his family. The switches in time are a little jarring but I got used to them. I appreciate how he was comparing and contrasting the way he felt about his marriage/ex-wife in the past and how that evolved with time.
This is also a story about the sacrifices we make in relationships of all kinds. It's also about learning to believe you are worthy of love and speaking up for what you want. Although I'm a woman, and my previous marriage/divorce was very different from Ira's, there was a lot about this book that resonated with me. He perfectly captures the roller coaster of an experience. It brought up a lot of memories for me that I hadn't thought of in years (both painful and happy.)
I highly recommend this one for readers of memoir.
It might not be PC to say this, but I found the writing surprising coming from a man. It's emotional and vulnerable. Ira is painfully honest at times, about things he said and did, even when he's not proud of them.
The narrative moves back and forth from the past to his present on his annual trip to Thailand to visit his family. The switches in time are a little jarring but I got used to them. I appreciate how he was comparing and contrasting the way he felt about his marriage/ex-wife in the past and how that evolved with time.
This is also a story about the sacrifices we make in relationships of all kinds. It's also about learning to believe you are worthy of love and speaking up for what you want. Although I'm a woman, and my previous marriage/divorce was very different from Ira's, there was a lot about this book that resonated with me. He perfectly captures the roller coaster of an experience. It brought up a lot of memories for me that I hadn't thought of in years (both painful and happy.)
I highly recommend this one for readers of memoir.
onceuponatime's review
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
4.0
This Jade World follows the author as he visits Thailand and his family a year after his divorce with his first wife, Katie. The chapters are short and polished, jumping from moment to moment, weaving the story of Ira through his life, with a focus especially on his mental state in the last year.
We see the effect his body, through race and fatness, had on him growing up as a Thai boy in America, and we see how much the relationship and divorce of his own parents affected him. We also see his fight with the idea of love and how he tackles with the fact he's similar to his father. We meet a lot of his family, getting to know more of how Ira became Ira, and inadvertently, Thailand as the author himself sees it.
I don't usually read biographies or memoirs, and I kept forgetting this isn't a work of fiction too. I enjoyed getting to know Ira's life through well crafted and poetic chapters, and seeing the catharsis he finally received.
We see the effect his body, through race and fatness, had on him growing up as a Thai boy in America, and we see how much the relationship and divorce of his own parents affected him. We also see his fight with the idea of love and how he tackles with the fact he's similar to his father. We meet a lot of his family, getting to know more of how Ira became Ira, and inadvertently, Thailand as the author himself sees it.
I don't usually read biographies or memoirs, and I kept forgetting this isn't a work of fiction too. I enjoyed getting to know Ira's life through well crafted and poetic chapters, and seeing the catharsis he finally received.
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