Categories: uncategorized
Date: 06 February 2006 21:48:40
Last night (at 12.30pm) I finished 'Checkmate', the last book in Malorie Blackman's Noughts and Crosses series. And it was amazing. I was gripped all the way through - it was practically impossible to put down! One of the main reasons why it was so good, was the way she raised so many relevant, difficult issues. Intricately weaven all the way through was love, prejudice, terrorism, anger, politics and personal struggles. The whole series was set in a world with many similairities to our real world, except that black people were called Crosses and white people called Noughts. The Crosses had the definate power and control in the society. The books tell the complicated love story of a Cross girl and a Nought boy who fall in love. But it is so much more than a love story.
What struck me was there was so much you could take from it. So much you could learn from the book. It showed me the impact that not informing a child about their roots and explaining their past to them, can have on their development and emotional status. It reminded me how important it is to fight for justice in a peaceful way. We cannot just accept the way things are, and sit at home doing nothing about it. We have to stand up for what we believe in and challenge the goverment.
Many of the situations and feelings which the individuals expressed, I felt I could empathise with. Sentences like "And if I said it enough times maybe I'd start to believe it" definately rang bells in my head. As did "It was as if I was in the middle of a really confusing film and was desperately trying to catch up." But it reminded me the importance of talking issues and problems through with the individuals involved. If you avoid the issue forever, then its only going to get worse. Much worse. Talking about the issue may not be easy, but as long as its done sensitively and carefully, it will often improve the situation.
God and issues of faith did not play a major part in the book, but they did feature. At one point one character stated that "... faith is so easy to hold onto when you don't need it. And so hard to find when you do need it." I thought that was very insightful and probably true in many cases.
Overall the book was definately worth reading and I would recommend it.