Spotlight – September 2019

BOOK REVIEWS

EASY READER

Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-

Man, Batman, Captain America, Wol-

verine, the X-Men and The Flash: super-

heroes have been around for more than

100 years. They began by performing

heroic activities on the pages of com-

ic books, but soon swooped on to the

silver screen. For those of you who en-

joy reading superhero adventures, but

find the English of the originals diffi-

cult, Pearson are publishing stories in

this genre as easy readers. A recent one

is Guardians of the Galaxy. In this story, we

meet Star-Lord Peter Jason Quill, who has found a stone with magic

powers known as the Orb. It is Peter’s job to stop the stone falling

into the hands of evil forces. Guardians of the Galaxy is written at the

B1 level. Pearson Education Limited, €9.90.

NOVEL

As a young man, British-Pakistani writ-

er Mohammed Hanif trained as a pilot.

His fourth novel, Red Birds, tells the sto-

ry of Major Ellie, a US fighter pilot who

crash-lands in the desert in an unnamed

Middle Eastern country. Ellie finds his

way to the camp he was supposed to

bomb. He is taken in by a group of ref-

ugees that includes a dog, a young boy

with capitalist hopes, a sad doctor and

a US aid worker. And then there are red

birds, which come to life whenever a

life is lost in war. Well written, the nov-

el mixes sympathy and distance as it

considers human imperfection. Hanif combines both elements to

create a strange but memorable satire on the stupidity of war and

its potential for tragedy. Bloomsbury Trade, €12.50.

aid worker [(eId )w§:k&r]

, Entwicklungshelfer

crash-land [(krÄS lÄnd]

, bruchlanden

memorable [(memErEb&l]

, unvergesslich

supposed: be ~ to do sth.

[sE(pEUst]

, etw. tun sollen

sympathy [(sImpETi]

, Mitgefühl

silver screen

[sIlvE (skri:n]

, (Kino)Leinwand

swoop [swu:p]

, herabschießen

The other woman, whose name was Sister Margaret,

and who worked at an orphanage in the East End of

London, gave the red shoes to a little girl. The girl was

called Dove, and she was so happy to have the shoes

that she wore them to bed that night and then all day

and every day after that.

One day, Dove was helping Sister Margaret wel-

come new orphans. One of the children, a boy, offered

Dove the last piece of an apple he was eating. The

boy’s hands were filthy and Dove refused to take the

fruit. But Sister Margaret accepted the apple for her,

thanking the boy.

That evening, she told Dove, “I hope you learned

an important lesson today, which is that you are no

better or worse than anybody else. If someone offers

you something, you accept it graciously, and if some-

one asks you for something, you give it if you can. We

cannot afford to refuse kindness from anyone.”

Dove took the lesson to heart. When she grew out

of the red leather shoes, she gave them to another

child, telling their new owner that the shoes should

be passed on once she had outgrown them.

Some years later, an orphan called Lizzie was given

the shoes. By now, they were old and worn, and they

knew they wouldn’t be of much use for very much

longer. Lizzie was out one day with Sister Margaret

collecting money for the orphanage when the shoes

saw their first owner, Nancy, in the street. She was

with a group of young women in smart hats and ex-

pensive coats.

“Could you spare some money for the orphans?”

asked Sister Margaret, as they neared.

“Filthy beggars!” said Nancy, without even looking

at them, and pulling a little closer to her friends as she

walked past.

The shoes didn’t know if they had a heart, but if

they did have one, it broke that day, for the little girl

they had once known, the girl who had wanted to

give away her sweets but had been told that it was

the wrong thing to do, had become just as heartless as

her mother. As they came to the end of their long life,

they realized that if they had seen Nancy from the

shoemaker’s shop window, they would have judged

her to be bad, but that she was bad through no fault

of her own; she had been shaped by her mother, just

as the orphans had been shaped by Sister Margaret,

and the shoes had been shaped into form by the shoe-

maker all those years ago. It had taken them a lifetime

to learn that lesson, but it was a lesson worth living

a lifetime to learn.

beggar [(begE]

, Bettler(in)

filthy [(fIlTi]

, dreckig, schmutzig

graciously [(greISEsli]

, freundlich

judge sb. [dZVdZ]

, jmdn. beurteilen

orphanage [(O:fEnIdZ]

, Waisenhaus

spare [speE]

, erübrigen

SHORT STORY 9/2019 Spotlight 71

Fotos: Photography Firm; iStockphoto/iStock.com