Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

In the interest of full disclosure, I only listened to The Art of Hearing Heartbeats for a book group; it isn’t actually my thing. And I might be coming to this review a bit cranky, since I woke up at four prepared to roll over and go back to sleep and then spilled my water, which propelled me into actual wakefulness. (It’s now 5:30 and I’m just going to be tired today.) Even so–meh.

I like fairy tales–I really do. I just prefer a fairy tale to BE a fairy tale, and not a book that declaims “I am deep!” loudly into my ear. Even without the problematic narration, Hearing Heartbeats was just too “I’m sharing deep, mystical truths from the Far East with the unaware American” for me–and yet, the problematic narration is hard to ignore. U Ba is stereotypically poor-but-perfectly-serene-and-wise, and the contrived “I often go days barely speaking so I’m weary and must stop now” first pause in his (incredibly long) narrative is belied by the length of subsequent narrative sessions. (Also, why do male authors think it’s a good idea to describe a parent having sex to his or her child in dialogue? I’m looking at you, too, Robert Waller.)

I can pinpoint when Sendker started to lose me; U Ba is describing how Mi Mi manages to be not only graceful, but clean and neat with unsoiled clothing and uncalloused hands even though she lives in a poor mountain village and has to crawl on her hands and knees daily. His American listener reacts with incredulity–that her father would leave his family for a cripple. Seriously? THAT’S what you can’t accept? By the time Mi Mi starts rolling cheroots (with astonishing speed and skill, no less) that have a special taste because she is so beautiful and full of love…yeah, not so much.

It isn’t just Mi Mi herself that is so special and beautiful, however.* Her love for Tin Win–and his for her–is special and beautiful and magically trusting and true in spite of anything and everything that happens. (On the flip side, the characters that we are meant to dislike are absurdly devoid of likable qualities.) That, of course, is why it’s fairy tale love–it isn’t at all realistic. The problem is that Sendker instead turns it into an ideal he implies is attainable through–what? Enlightenment? Faith? Who knows.

This is turning into a bit more of a rant than I’d intended, and I didn’t hate the book. I just found it, well–cheesy. (I revert to overusing double dashes when I’m tired–did you notice?) One Goodreads reviewer noted that people who like Paulo Coelho will probably like The Art of Hearing Heartbeats, while people who don’t, won’t. Honestly, that’s probably as accurate as anything I can think of. You can take it–or not take it–from there.

*Mrs. Didonato’s voice in my head is not pleased that I didn’t tuck in that ‘however’, but I preferred the way it sounded at the end of that particular sentence. It’s still, however, hard to defy that voice.