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Summary: Romance amidst the horror of Rwanda. Great story!
Review: Recently translated into English, this novel by a French Canadian journalist brings the Rwandan holocaust to life in all its excruciating horror. It's also a love story as well as a history lesson. It immediately set me right down in the midst of it all, introducing heroes and villains, as well as the vast majority of people who simply wanted to lead their lives in peace. There's the inept United Nations peacekeepers led by a Canadian general whose presence was one of inaction. There's the raging AIDS epidemic that is spreading at an alarming rate. There's the swimming pool at the luxury hotel where we meet expatriates, aid workers, prostitutes, hotel employees and guests. But most of all, we are engaged in a romance between French journalist Bernard Valcourt and the beautiful waitress Gentille.The politics of the Hutu-led massacre of the Tutsis was just beginning, supported by the police and militias. The weapon of choice was the machete and the murders were cruel. People were dying and nothing was being done. Everyone lived in fear. Against this backdrop, the couple planned their wedding. I felt real emotion for all the characters. And, by being introduced to individuals, I am beginning to understand the forces that led up to the horror. This makes the stories all the more awful. And yet, life goes on, and eventually the fighting stops. The book is simply written with a beautiful use of language and it is clear that the author loves and respects the Rwandan people. It is not for everyone, however. Many readers will not want to have their emotions churned so dramatically. But for those who are willing to delve into this very human story and round out their understanding of this shameful event in recent history, I give "A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali" an extremely high recommendation.
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Summary: Searing Indictment of UN and the West for Tutsi Genocide!
Review: Rwanda 1994. Genocide: every Tutsi man, woman and child targeted for murder. In the collective imagination, Rwanda's Hutu-Tutsi conflict conjures up images of cruel barbarity: the crunch of machete into bone; the smash of hammer and club through human skull; the putrefying bodies piled along the roadside; bloated corpses floating down rivers; grenades tossed into jam-packed churches; victims tossed alive onto piles of burning tires lining mass open pits. The mass of Rwandan Hutus were conditioned for the genocide to come by the Hutu Power radio station that functioned as a propaganda tool of incitement to Tutsi extermination. ("The grave is only half-full. Who will help us fill it?") The Hutu Power leaders used the broadcasts to coerce every Hutu into complicity in the genocide ("kill or be killed"), the object being that every pair of Hutu hands be steeped in the blood of the Tutsi enemy. Spurred on by Hutu Power broadcasts and led by examples of Hutu militia massacres at countless roadblocks, the Hutu people of Rwanda - with machetes, knives, hammers, spears, clubs studded with nails and any other murderous weapon that came to hand - rose to the call to execute their friends, neighbours and workmates. Churches, where thousands of Tutsis fled for sanctuary, became the largest slaughterhouses. Set in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, in the days preceding the genocide, "A Sunday at the Pool in Kigali" is a searing indictment of the West - the finger of accusation pointing at the Belgians and French - turning a blind eye to the appalling massacre of the helpless Tutsi minority population who were abandoned to certain annihilation. The novel is a stylishly written blend of fact and fiction, a combination of love story and powerful political reportage giving a terrifying and convincing portrayal of Rwanda in turmoil. Gil Courtemanche confronts the present day tragedy of Aids and the genocide that ravaged Rwanda in a bloodbath of extermination that snuffed out 800,000 Tutsi lives - and those moderate Hutus who refused to murder Tutsis - over a period of a hundred hellish days as the western world stood around twiddling its thumbs while the genocide happened right under its nose. The scathing moral voice of Courtemanche denounces the hatred, ignorance, poverty, sexual culture, powerlust and global apathy that brought Rwanda to its knees and a blinkered media that portrayed the extermination of the Tutsi minority to the outside world as little more than senseless inter-tribal Hutu-Tutsi conflict. Based in the upmarket Hotel Des Milles Collines in Kigali, a house of refuge for many wealthy-connected Tutsis targeted for murder by Hutu death squads, Bernard Valcourt, a Canadian journalist on assignment in Rwanda to produce a film documenting the Aids epidemic, falls in love with Gentille, a Hutu waitress at the hotel, often taken for a Tutsi. There is a sense of impending disaster in the air, pressure building, as Valcourt and the hotel's clientele of international officials, aid workers, expatriates, prostitutes, UN soldiers and a group of middle-class Rwandan residents play out the days prior to the genocide around the hotel swimming pool in a Kigali on the brink of becoming a mass Tutsi killing ground. Valcourt is aware that doom is fast approaching and his razor-sharp sword of truth exposes government corruption, police cover-ups, UN officicialdom that blocked the seizure of massive arms cachements that would later be used in the slaughter, inaction by impotent UN forces, and a heedless western media. Recommended! For deeper insight, read Philip Gourevitche's heart-wrenching, stomach-churning classic account of the Genocide,"We wish to inform you that to-morrow we will be killed with our families: stories from Rwanda".
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Summary: Should Have been Non Fiction
Review: The author does himself and his subject a disservice by immersing this incredible human tragedy in a saccharine, vapid love story. The characters are all two dimensional. The author's expertise is obviously in the area of journalism. He offers clear descriptions of a country slowly descending into hell. However, too often the unfortunately wriiten love story gets in the way of the real story.
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Summary: disturbing
Review: The first time I read this book was in French back in 2003. Reading it in English still has a chilling effect on me. I still feel haunted. It is one of the most beautiful and disturbing books I have read. And Courtemanche did a wonderful job bringing the genocide in Rwanda and the atmosphere leading up to it to close to the grasp of the average reader. His characters are real and the setting is real, which makes the story all the more disturbing. However, despite all the horrors, the writer allowed us to see the light and magnificent beauty of Rwanda and its people, and in portraying these, the writer made us see hope which is the prerequisite for healing, recovery and progress for a new Rwanda. This book is a must read if you want to understand what happened in Rwanda and get a clue to the other massacres that happened and/or are still happening in the continent. In the horrible violence that took place in Rwanda, that happened two decades back in Cameroon, Congo and Algeria and that is happening today in Sudan , one can not avoid asking this question: where was and where is the international community ? Also recommended: DISCIPLES OF FORTUNE
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Summary: Why We Miss Graham Greene
Review: The legacy of the 1994 Rwanda genocide still needs to find its fictional counterpoint to Philip Gourevitch's masterpiece "We Wish to Inform You . . ." This novel, however, is not it. It is weighed down with terrible dialogue and schmaltzy prose: ex: "Gentille let a few salty little pearls run down her satiny cheeks." The characters are all good or all bad and there is no depth to their mental struggles. Courtemanche gets credit for resisting the trap of letting savages take care of savages, and he does point fingers in the right direction (France, Belgium). But in the end, he has saddled this story with a shallow, falsely-poetic protagonist, and I was left wondering what Greene would have done had he lived long enough into the 1990s to serve as witness to the horrible Rwandan genocide.
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Summary: A Gross Travesty
Review: This oversexed fiction is just so hideous - - in fact, a direct insult to the Rwandan nation, it's culture, it's people, and most of all, it's history. The love between Valcourt (a Canadian "paratrooper") and Gentille (a rather unassertive Rwandan girl) was unconvincing and lacking, the characters were underdeveloped and downright boring.
This book portrays Rwanda as the master nation of black misogynist lechers and insatiable hussies ever ready to satisfy the sexual needs of the whole French-speaking expatriate white world. It's shocking that Courtemanche chose the famous Hotel Mille-Collines as the setting for this book, and yet failed to mention (or create) characters like Paul Resesabagina (the hero to which the newly released movie, "Hotel Rwanda" extols), who saved hundreds of people at this very hotel. Although Rwanda does have it's problems, this book depressingly goes overboard by painting it as some dark, uncivilized, AIDS-infested hovel in constant chaos and corruption.
Courtemanche's book gives the reader no background as to the politics and long history behind 1994. I expected better from a journalist. This book is just overly poor, I'm surprised anyone even bothered or volunteered to translate it. It's not consistent with the true history, it will give (uninformed) people a wrong impression of the genocide, how it happened, and the forces that were behind it.
This is the shallowest book I have ever read. It's not worth a single penny! This Gil Courtemanche guy should take some good advice and stick to journalism!
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