cardamami's review
4.0
It's giving magical realism <3 At first I was a bit overwhelmed by the extent of detail in Cuoto's flowery and metaphorical writing, but I grew to really love his style. I also appreciated how the translator created certain words to more accurately reflect the original language. My favorite stories were Ninety-Three (cry), High-Heel Shoes, and Jorojao's Cradle of Memories (funny).
showthisbooksomelove's review against another edition
4.0
Mia Couto has written many books of fiction, poetry, and essays. This is a new collection of short fiction, and I mean very short. Many of the pieces were between 1 and 3 pages. I haven't read any of his other works, although I have one of his more famous books, Confessions of a Lioness, on my shelf at home.
It's hard for me to put my finger on why I liked Couto's writing so much. He's neither flowery nor simplistic, but some perfect medium in between. Every other sentence had me pausing with emotion due to his easy yet powerful statements about the way the world works. I found his writing very striking. For example, "Nothing in this world comes about all of a sudden." It's a relatively simple statement, but cast in the light of the story Couto is telling, this line filled me with wonder about the truth of it.
There were several themes through Couto's stories. Through looking at blindness, Couto talked about the ways in which we see and hear the world. Some of his stories were rather grotesque, but many question the way we interact with our world. How do we interact with others? Couto wrote a story about an old man on his birthday, called Ninety-Three. As you may imagine, he's turning ninety-three, and he feels as though his family could care more about him and less about partying. He feels unnoticed and underappreciated. Only three lines into the story, Couto writes, "There was no other day throughout the year when they remembered him." I felt overcome with sorrow over the way we treat others, how we put them into boxes based on their age, or their disability, or their socio-economic class. Everyone finds someone to other based on something about themselves we do not wish to understand, or feel as though we already understand completely.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
It's hard for me to put my finger on why I liked Couto's writing so much. He's neither flowery nor simplistic, but some perfect medium in between. Every other sentence had me pausing with emotion due to his easy yet powerful statements about the way the world works. I found his writing very striking. For example, "Nothing in this world comes about all of a sudden." It's a relatively simple statement, but cast in the light of the story Couto is telling, this line filled me with wonder about the truth of it.
There were several themes through Couto's stories. Through looking at blindness, Couto talked about the ways in which we see and hear the world. Some of his stories were rather grotesque, but many question the way we interact with our world. How do we interact with others? Couto wrote a story about an old man on his birthday, called Ninety-Three. As you may imagine, he's turning ninety-three, and he feels as though his family could care more about him and less about partying. He feels unnoticed and underappreciated. Only three lines into the story, Couto writes, "There was no other day throughout the year when they remembered him." I felt overcome with sorrow over the way we treat others, how we put them into boxes based on their age, or their disability, or their socio-economic class. Everyone finds someone to other based on something about themselves we do not wish to understand, or feel as though we already understand completely.
I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
serendipitysbooks's review
medium-paced
3.0
Rain is a short story collection set in the aftermath of Mozambique’s civil war. I appreciated many of the themes- the legacy of colonialism, racism, the impact of war - and the beauty of the writing but struggled to fully connect, possibly because of the brevity of each story.
allison_reads's review against another edition
3.0
The short story format led me to feel very neutral towards this book and didn’t encourage me to push to the end. I would love to see Couto’s writing in a longer format
More...