Here's another book that "everyone" else loved and I found to be just OK. Well, really, some parts of it were just lovely, beautifully written. What I had trouble with was the rent collector herself, and the almost immediate change in her personality when she moved from rent collector to teacher. There were just a few too many plot twists that were just too "neat" to make it feel plausible, and I grew weary of the long retelling of Cambodian folklore. As I prepare for my trip to Cambodia, I did grow a bit in my understanding of the Pol Pot years and it's effect on the teachers, artists and other intellectuals of the time. This is a novel that takes place in the years after the genocide, but themes from those years are woven throughout. I liked the book, I didn't love it. This novel (based on truth) took me to a place I had never been, nor did I know existed, a municipal dump in Cambodia. The dump is surrounded by makeshift tarp shacks, the residents are "pickers" who scour garbage piles daily to find enough "scrap" to turn in for enough money to allow them to eat another day's worth of rice. The poverty is horrifying. The "rent collector" is a gruff, feared and mocked woman.........until it is learned that she is literate and was in fact a professor before the 1975 Khmer Rouge devastation. What happens when an illiterate young mother in the dump asks to be taught to read is transformative in ways that continue to unfold throughout this beautifully written book. This book found a home in my heart because we have dear friends who have shared with us the heartbreaking story of their escape from Vietnam as the war years ended. And theirs, too, is a story I will never forget.
What do You think about Rent Collector (2012)?
Best book I have read in as long as I can remember. This will inspire you to keep reading each day.
—Ashleyrabbit34
I really liked it! Some of it was hard to take living where we do, butjust keep reading. . .
—Pebbles69
January 2015 Book Club - Loved it - saving comments for book club
—Kynahcordova
Why did I wait so long to read this beautiful story?
—Lishao
