Dark Delights

From Tots to Teens, StarMag, 22nd July 2007

MY SWORDHAND IS SINGING
By Marcus Sedgewick
Publisher: Orion, 228 pages
(ISBN: 978-1842555583)

I’VE been trying to remember what it was I used to like about vampires and vampire novels. Of course, I still think Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the best gothic novels ever written, but it’s been a while since I called myself an Anne Rice fan. Was I ever in love with Louis, the central character in her Interview with a Vampire? I think I might have been!

In a recent article about Stephenie Meyer’s vampire trilogy, teenage readers gush about Edward Cullen, the heroine’s vampire boyfriend. There are online forums dedicated to him. One girl, in a review posted on amazon.com, describes him as “one of those male fictional characters like Mr Rochester you can’t help but fall in love with”.

In the article (published on Arizona State University’s website, www.asu.edu/news/stories/200705/20070504_prom.htm), a professor discusses how teenagers are drawn to vampires because they identify with these characters and the conflicts they face.

A vampire is an outcast, an outsider, and teens often feel similarly misunderstood and alienated. Vampires are also often depicted wrestling with their conscience and trying to decide between right and wrong – again, just the way teens are.

Finally, vampires are usually drop-dead gorgeous and most of us (girls, especially) find handsome, mysterious men irresistible. Throw forbidden love into the mix and we’re sold. Until, that is, we grow up and realise that handsome mysterious men (non-fictional ones, anyway) are usually just hiding something (usually a girl friend) and will, invariably, want to borrow large sums of money.

Personally, I’m tired of the recent spate of novels about well dressed, immaculately coiffed teenage vampires. I like vampires to scare me, not make me stress about my mismatched wardrobe. The vampires in Marcus Sedgewick’s My Swordhand is Singing (Orion, 228 pages, ISBN: 978-1842555583) are bloated corpses who tear out their victim’s hearts and couldn’t give a toss about the latest Parisian fashions. They scare me. Silly.

The book is set in a small village at the edge of a vast forest. In the first chapter, a man is being pursued by another through the trees. Through the haze of his fear, he realises that he is being hunted by someone who is dead.

It is winter, a few days before St Andrew’s Eve, which the villagers believe is the start of the dark time of the world, when evil walks freely. The woodcutter Tomas and his son Peter, however, do not share in the old beliefs and superstitions. Tomas is an abusive drunkard with a past he hides, obsessively, from his long-suffering son.

Peter is lonely, raised a cynic but naturally curious. He is in love with Agnes, the daughter of the village draper; her father recently died but, it is whispered, he returns nightly to visit his family.

Unfortunately, Agnes is chosen to be the bride of a recently murdered man (a ritual that was once practised in Transylvania). As the bride of a corpse, she has to spend 40 days in isolation, mourning for her husband. This, of course, makes her easy prey for vampires and forces Peter to consider that the stories he has been raised to scoff at are not entirely a load of poppycock.

As Peter tries to separate fact from myth, sense from superstition, a band of gypsies arrive and reveal the truth behind his father’s past.

In his “author’s note”, Sedgewick describes how he researched his story, even travelling to Eastern Europe to learn more about the region’s superstition and folklore. Apart from the supernatural elements, Swordhand probably comes close to describing the life in a typical 17th century village Transylvanian village.

Although it’s unlikely that vampires ever roamed the forests of that land (Transylvania actually means “land beyond the forest”), belief in them was strong and real. So, while we can read Swordhand knowing all along that it is merely a spooky story, the author so successfully conveys the terror experienced by a community that believes in the possibility of falling prey to the undead that even the most sceptical of us might still experience shivers and goose bumps when reading this book.

And while there are no moody, mysterious and devastatingly handsome vampires in My Swordhand is Singing, Peter’s not to be sniffed at either. These days I prefer my men (even fictional ones) alive and kicking.

Makeup for the Soul

Offering cosmetics and perms to the hungry and oppressed may seem a bit Marie Antoinette-ish but what value can one place on a smile where, before, there wasn’t any?

Review by DAPHNE LEE

KABUL BEAUTY SCHOOL: THE ART OF FRIENDSHIP AND FREEDOM

By Deborah Rodriguez

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton, 275 pages

(ISBN: 978-0340935248)

MANY of us spend our lives marvelling at the good done by others. We read or hear about those who have given their time, resources and talents to the less fortunate and we feel impressed, wistful and incredulous.

Often, we are encouraged by others’ generosity to ask ourselves how we can contribute to our fellowman.

The truth is that everyone has something to offer others. Unfortunately, most of us just think about it and talk about it. Very rarely do we take time to actually do it.

Deborah Rodriguez just did it. When she decided to open a beauty school in Kabul, Afghanistan, she didn’t worry about practicalities, logistics or what people would say.

A beauty school in Kabul sounds like a frivolous plan for a war-torn country whose people are hungry and homeless, but a project like that is about so much more than highlights and lipstick.

Recalling a visit to an “undercover” beauty salon (run by local women) in Kabul, Rodriguez writes:

“There were women’s voices, women’s laughter – and that feeling of women relaxing with one another, laying hands on one another, telling one another the details of their lives and news of the lives around them.”

The salon, like salons the world over, was a female enclave, a place where women gathered, free from male scrutiny, criticism and control, and Rodriguez wonders if the real reason the Taliban is so against beauty salons is that they give “women their own space”.

A beauty school, thus, makes sense in Afghanistan, and on many levels. It’s a place where women can gather and support each other emotionally. It’s also a place where women can have fun, a pursuit many of us take for granted, but is rare in a place like Afghanistan.

In the short term, it offers a measure of respite from the grey and grim realities of life. And in the long term, the skills learnt at a beauty school arm women with the means of making an independent living, which boosts confidence and self-esteem, and, often, provides an escape route from a life of abuse.

Rodriguez first went to Kabul as part of a Christian aid mission, but found that she couldn’t contribute much as part of the team.

Back in her hometown of Holland, Michigan, Rodriguez was practically raised in her mum’s beauty salon and became a professional stylist herself.

During her first visit to Kabul, while her aid colleagues were out in the field, treating the sick, Rodriguez was given the task of sitting in the hotel and praying for them.

Instead, she ventured out to the town with her new Afghan friends. She trimmed their hair and one of them, Roshanna, became a fast friend and one of the first students at the beauty school that Rodriguez later helped to establish.

Roshanna is also one of the many Afghan women whom Rodriguez bonded with and whose stories help make Kabul Beauty School more than just a tale of shampoo, perms and hair removal .

Reading about what the average Afghan woman has to bear makes me feel very ashamed of the whinging I do every so often about really inconsequential stuff.

What are traffic jams, the lack of parking in KL and apathetic bank clerks compared with constant beatings, forced marriages and rape?

In Afghanistan, the rape victim is also considered to have committed a crime and is imprisoned. In a case described by Rodriguez, the rape victim’s father kills the rapist and is given a much shorter sentence than his daughter!

Rodriguez is appalled by the suffering she encounters and she tries to help by improving lives through employment and training.

The need to love and be loved obviously plays a big part in Rodriguez’s decision to move to Afghanistan. Twice married and divorced, she left two teenage sons in the States to live among strangers in a strange land.

Describing the moment when she left her abusive second husband, she adds, “I flew to Afghanistan, where my heart would soon fill with new people to love.”

Some might call her spontaneous and brave, while others might say she was simply self-indulgent and foolhardy. Rodriguez strikes me as a free-spirited risk taker with her heart in the right place.

I liked Rodriguez’s straightforward and matter-of-fact storytelling style.

She doesn’t dwell on the depressing aspects of her new life, but she does not avoid them either.

Not one to mince her words or gloss over the harrowing details, she spits them out with a fair bit of anger, directed at the guilty, and doesn’t bother to hide her own anguish and despair.

It’s comforting to know that there is someone who is trying to make a difference and it helps to be able to cry along with her. It’s a start anyway. Tomorrow is when you, and I, can do something, too.

Swedish Meatballs Optional

How many pieces of Ikea furniture do you own?

Review by DAPHNE LEE

Great Ikea: A Brand for all the People
Author: Elen Lewis
Publisher: Cyan Books, 192 pages

ALMOST my entire book collection sits in Ikea bookcases, more specifically Billy bookcases in white foil. The Billy that contains my extremely precious out-of-print books have a glass door that I installed myself. My two younger children sleep on Ikea beds and I have an Ikea armchair, sofa bed, stool, rugs and bathroom trolley, plus various Ikea odds and ends like coasters, plastic clips, electrical two-pin adapters and photo frames. Sometimes I flip through the Ikea catalogue and imagine my house fully kitted out with stuff from the Swedish furniture company.

I think a great many Malaysians (those who live in the Klang Valley anyway) feel the same way. Most of my close friends love Ikea products and the store itself. My kids like the playroom and the restaurant. I like the free coffee (with my Ikea Friends card) and the money-back policy for goods returned within 30 days.

No, I’m not going to continue singing Ikea’s praises for a further eight paragraphs. However, I did want to review this book partly because I am a fan of the furniture retailer and wanted to know more about the company, its history and policies.

Great Ikea is one of the Great Brand Stories books. Other top brands featured in the series include Guinness, Starbucks, Adidas and (coming soon) Banyan Tree. The cover blurb says that the books “focus on brands that have not only reaped huge profits ... but also established themselves as icons of contemporary society.”

The books should be of interest to those in the fields of business, marketing and advertising, but I daresay consumers (certainly, regular users of any of these brands) would also enjoy them.

I said I was a fan of Ikea but I think I would be more accurately described as having a love-hate relationship with the store. Here’s what I dislike about it: it “tricks” me into thinking I need stuff that I really have no use for; very often, when I have tried to assemble furniture myself, I end up with something rickety and lopsided; in the showroom, walls are built around furniture and accessories - just try making everything fit in your hovel in Kelana Jaya; the chipboard shelves that suffer from worse sag than even women whose bra size is 38DD; and seven out of 10 times, what I want is out of stock.

One of the things I learnt from reading this book is that I am not alone in my ambivalent feelings about Ikea. In most European countries, things are even worse for Ikea customers. The stores over there are usually situated in the middle of nowhere, whereas it takes me just 10 minutes to get to the store in Mutiara Damansara, Selangor. Also, in Europe, customers have no choice but to lug their flatpacks home and assemble the furniture themselves. Unlike in Malaysia, there is no delivery or assembly service. We are one of the few markets (including Singapore, China and Japan) where these services are available for an extra charge.

The whole idea of self-service is to keep prices down. Saving money is what Ikea is all about. The man who started it all, Ingvar Kamprad (his initials are the I and K in Ikea, while E and A stand for Elmtaryd and Agunnard, the farm Kamprad grew up on and his hometown respectively), is famous/infamous/notorious/admired for his frugality. Managers have tiny expense accounts. When they travel, they fly economy class. And they stay at budget motels.

At the Ikea HQ in Almhult, Sweden, the carpark is filled with its employees’ decidedly unflashy cars. Rumour has it, however, that this is because Ikea staff are smart enough to leave their Porsches at home!

I really enjoyed this book and it’s made me curious about the other titles in the series. What you get here is an in-depth look at the retail giant and the people behind it, encompassing the brand’s history, philosophy and culture. You learn what makes Ikea tick, why it’s a success and why that success is often a long time coming and certainly not guaranteed.

There is lots of trivia, anecdotes and gossip. And Elen Lewis’s writing is totally accessible – it’s like she’s chatting to you over a plate of Swedish meatballs. But this is not an ad in book’s clothing. Although, much of Ikea’s story will impress, there is quite a bit that is dodgy too. Nazism, child labour accusations, eco-unfriendly materials, not to mention furniture that you’re supposed to self-assemble but comes with incomprehensible instructions are just some of the black marks against the store.

In Malaysia, it’s not even as if the furniture is so cheap that it helps us overlook Ikea’s faults. Dollar for dollar, I reckon Malaysians pay more for Ikea furniture than the rest of the world. For example, Ikea’s Mammut three-legged plastic stool costs US$6.99 (RM23) in the States, S$5.90 (RM13) in Singapore and ... wait for it ... RM19.90 in Malaysia. Dollar for dollar, Malaysians pay the most for the stool and, even considering the exchange rate, it’s cheaper for Malaysians to buy the stool in Singapore. It’s the same with other pieces of furniture, small and large. If anything, reading this book has made me think longer and harder before making a purchase at Ikea. I’m still buying though.

Interestingly, Elen Lewis reveals, in her foreword, that although Ikea agreed to co-operate in the writing of this book, it later changed its mind. I wonder if the company would answer my burning question about the cost (in Malaysia) of the Mammut stool.