Adrian Firculescu > Recent Status Updates

Sam looked at me soft. And she hugged me. And I closed my eyes because I wanted to know nothing but her arms. And she kissed my cheek and whispered so nobody could hear.
"I love you."
I knew she meant it in a friend way, but I didn't care (...)

Finishing reading the Part 1 of the novel, made me a lot more interested than I initially was. It's about Charlie, a fifteen years old boy growing up in the early 90's as a shy and unpopular individual. The narrative is in the first-person prose, addressed directly to the reader in letter-kind format.

Further into the novel, the reader finds Bernard's fairness overcomes his desires making him one of the most unselfish character I have ever read about. Also, David Lodge, apparently has a way of mixing certain type of characters into one place and the reader gets familiarized with a few more secondary stories regarding different types of couples and people.

With less than 100 pages left to read, Paradise News presents the metamorphosis of a former young catholic priest that finds himself forced to travel with his father to Hawaii, to visit his cancer dying aunt. Troubled by reluctant impulses he discovers this trip can help him understand and overcome his past experiences that continue to grind him.

Ten years after his mother's execution, Shin finds himself in a sewing factory, repairing broken sewing machines. At one point, he loses one finger, as a punishment from dropping and destroying one of the sewing machines that he had to fix. After meeting with a new prisoner named Park, Shin starts to learn that, outside the camp's fences, there is a different world, a world that was unknown for him.

Turning his mother in didn't make things better for Shin, but also, it didn't make him feel wrong about doing it. Born and raised in the camp, he thought that what he was doing is appropriate, and his mother and brother deserve to be executed, and the tortures that he's being put up happen because of his mother's plot to escape. Witnessing his mother's execution, he feels no grief or remorse.

This book is about Shin Dong-hyuk the only known person to have escaped Camp 14, the worst camp for political prisoners in North Korea. Being born in the camp, a child of a marriage arranged by guards, he has never eaten a legal meal other than gruel made from corn. The first chapter covers a very disturbing story where he turns his mother into the authorities because he overhears her talking about escaping.