Alright book about a secret Centre where you can learn a language fluently in ten days. At 80%, it's a bit predictable and I can't say I'm super taken with the characters, but some of the stuff (the protagonist being called out as being presumptuous and claiming minority while she's from a rich family) is OK.
At first, it sounded like Anna had half a dozen daughters, so varied were the names she used for them. Like Natalya was also frequently called Natasha, as well as Natashinka when she was being praised and Natashka when criticized. Eventually, I figured out that Anna had three daughters. One had three children of her own and Anna was saving money to help her move to England. Another was a shop owner in St Petersburg and the third, a nurse, had moved to the States.
And maybe I was meant to stay in Pakistan, not be transplanted into this harsh and windy place. We're meant to die where we are born, surely? When I first flew to England, my skin became scaly and dry, my tummy uncomfortable and my bladder confused. It took forever for my body to adjust. Someone told me then – I can't remember who, probably Naima – that although our bodies travel by plane, the soul still makes its way on foot.
"Your soul," she said – I'd been in England for maybe six months at the time – "your soul still has months, if not years, of travel ahead. It's probably only reached Afghanistan or Iran by now."
In the West, they. keep it all at a distance. The old, the poor, the dead – outsourced, deported and dismissed, hospitalized and imprisoned, or else bombed via remote control. But here, it's all mixed together in such a way that the rich, in panic, put on their blinkers.
