12 Amazing gripping stories by Jeffrey Archer. I first read the book whilst on a girlie holiday in Thailand (I was waiting for my turn to have a spa massage). I stopped halfway, and didn't want to not know the ending of the first story! So I had to purchase the book when I got home.
Many of the 12 stories here, all of which feature false clues and twist endings, are based on "known" incidents.
"Trial and Error,"- an original but attenuated tale of a wronged man's thirst for revenge, kicks in only with its predictably wry twist.
"Chunnel Vision" offers a classic red herring by which Archer uses a jilted woman's revenge on her lover to divert our attention from the real threat to the lover's happiness.
"Never Stop on the Motorway"- a chilling story, plays on our expectations about an endangered woman's plight.
An original but flaccid is the last story, which features four rather obvious alternative endings that the reader can tack onto an opening gambit about a man picking up a woman at the theater.
Ratings- 10/10
Monday, 8 September 2008
Stoning of Soraya M
by: Freidoune Sahebjam
A chilling, true story of an innocent woman stoned to death for adultery in Iran.
It took me 1 day to finish this book. It was traumatising, yet, I had to finish the book to see what happens to the men she trusted. In the end, I wish the ending had a happy fairytale ending, unfortunately, it as this is one true story, happy ending was not the case. The worse is not the husband stoning her, her 2 sons also aimed her head and cheered while stoning(!!!)
Synopsis:
Soraya M.'s husband, Ghorban-Ali, couldn't afford to marry another woman. Rather than returning Soraya's dowry, as custom required before taking a second wife, he plotted with four friends and a counterfeit mullah to dispose of her. Together, they accused Soraya of adultery. Her only crime was cooking for a friend's widowed husband. Exhausted by a lifetime of abuse and hardship, Soraya said nothing, and the makeshift tribunal took her silence as a confession of guilt. They sentenced her to death by stoning: a punishment prohibited by Islam but widely practiced. Day by day--sometimes minute by minute--Sahebjam deftly recounts these horrendous events, tracing Soraya's life with searing immediacy, from her arranged marriage and the births of her children to her husband's increasing cruelty and her horrifying execution, where, by tradition, her father, husband, and sons hurled the first stones.
Ratings: 10/10
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