{"id":6541,"date":"2017-04-19T06:45:21","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T10:45:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6541"},"modified":"2017-04-19T06:45:21","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T10:45:21","slug":"the-art-of-hearing-heartbeats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6541","title":{"rendered":"***The Art of Hearing Heartbeats"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"market,

photo: Eustaqulo Santimano, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Jan-Philipp Sendker, translated from the German by Kevin Wiliarty \u2013 I guess this \u201cinternational best seller\u201d was just not to my taste. While the premise was intriguing, as was the exotic Burmese setting, the author never went deep enough to engage me.<\/p>\n

One day Julia Win\u2019s father leaves his wife and grown children and disappears out of his life as a prominent Manhattan attorney. The authorities lose his trail in Bangkok. A new lawyer herself, after a few years, Julia determines to find him and is drawn to a remote village in Burma named Kalaw, based on the only clue she has, an unmailed love-letter addressed to a villager named Mi Mi.<\/p>\n

With more than a little trepidation, Julia travels there to find out who Mi Mi is and whether she can tell her where her father has gone.<\/p>\n

Before even settling in, she\u2019s approached by an \u201cold man\u201d who seems to know who she is and who her father is. \u201cYou must be asking yourself how on earth I know your name when we have never met before, and this is your first visit to our country.\u201d It seems she\u2019s followed the correct path, all right, but the man, whose name is U Ba, won\u2019t reveal more about her father\u2019s whereabouts until she listens to his story, which makes up most of the rest of the book.<\/p>\n

That set-up strongly reminds me of the beginning of Yann Martel\u2019s The Life of Pi<\/em>. Just as Martel\u2019s narrator meets an elderly man who says his story will \u201cmake you believe in God,\u201d U Ba at the outset asks Julia, \u201cDo you believe in love?\u201d It\u2019s clear that Sendker\u2019s tale is intended to make sure that she\u2014and the reader\u2014do.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re looking for a sweet read, one that skates across the surface of relationships and emotions, perhaps something for the beach this summer, you can order it through the affiliate link below.
\n<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jan-Philipp Sendker, translated from the German by Kevin Wiliarty \u2013 I guess this \u201cinternational best seller\u201d was just not to my taste. While the premise was intriguing, as was the exotic Burmese setting, the author never went deep enough … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"***The Art of Hearing Heartbeats - A tale of perfect love","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40,126,359,394],"tags":[967,968],"class_list":["post-6541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-review","category-romance","tag-burma","tag-jan-philipp-sendker"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1Hv","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6541"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6543,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6541\/revisions\/6543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}