reviews of the art of hearing heartbeats

The book also asks some interesting questions – on whether we really know who our parents or partners are and whether we are comfortable in getting acquainted with their pasts. I will be reading those beautiful passages again. I loved the beautiful thoughts in it and the fairytale love story. So, did I like ‘The Art of Hearing Heartbeats’? Yes, I did. You would have guessed that, of course, this being a novel about Burma and all. And, of course, there is a main character called Su Kyi.

In some ways the whole book was a fairytale too. The novel uses a fairytale frame to present the whole story which was quite interesting too. I don’t know whether Burma is the same today as it is depicted in the book, but it was an insightful window into a new culture for me. The depiction of Burmese culture of a particular era is fascinating. But also, there are beautiful passages throughout the book – beautiful thoughts which make us re-read those passages again. Sendker’s prose is simple and so the pages fly. The story flows smoothly without any unnecessary pauses and there are some real surprises in the end. What is not to like in that? That is the kind of story that has appealed to us humans for centuries. So, what do I think of the book? The story is a beautiful, touching love story. How U Ba knows so much about her and her family is another thing which is revealed in the end. What follow next is Julia’s father’s story, her reaction to it, and some surprising revelations in the end. U Ba tells her that he knew her father and his story and proceeds to tell Julia about her father’s initial years. There in a teahouse, she meets an old man called U Ba. She tracks her father to a small Burmese town called Kalaw. Julia thinks of trying to find that out to see if it would help her find her father again. No one in the family knows what her father did in the first twenty years of his life before he came to America. Julia’s father is of Burmese origin, while her mother is American. But Julia is not able to forget her father and four years after his disappearance, she goes on a quest in search of him. After being shocked and heartbroken, the family puts their life back together and move on.

Then the next day her father says that he is going on a business trip and never comes back. When she graduated from law school her whole family – her father, mother and brother – celebrate it. The story told in ‘The Art of Hearing Heartbeats’ is the story of a quest. Now, when German Literature Month arrived, I thought it should be the first book that I should read. And when I got it as a present sometime back, I was really excited. One of my favourite friends told me about ‘The Art of Hearing Heartbeats’ last year.

Reviews of the art of hearing heartbeats