The second book from Jonasson is not an easy read

The second book I'm talking about has a mouthful title, which is kind of like a signature of Jonas Jonasson: The Girl Who Saved The King of Sweden.

I have to admit, aside from the fact that it took me more than a month to finish it, it's still a witty and delightful book I will recommend for book lovers out there. 

Let me try to sum up the story in short:

It's about an African girl named Nombeko Mayeki, who, despite never receiving any formal education, is very bright and brilliant with numbers. Through one less fortunate event, she has to work for a drunk engineer in a nuclear research facility in South Africa. Many things happen, until she somehow ends up in Sweden, and in a possession of a deadly bomb enough to destroy the whole country. Thus, her adventure and whimsical life continues on, even after she manages to break free from her so-called life prison in South Africa. It's clearly stated in the title that Nombeko, as invisible as she might be from the outside world, is the one who ends up saving Sweden, and its king.

The story is set in several places, mainly in South Africa and Sweden, with the author goes back and forth telling the life events of each significant character. Very similar to Jonasson's first best selling book, The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window and Disappear, his second book also mixes some real historical milestones in regards to the characters' involvement in them. It's very neat and everything is told in great details with lengthy sentences, which is also Jonasson's style of writing. 

However, that great emphasis he puts on tangling real events with fiction really makes it hard for me to engage in the story as a whole. I'm not the best when it comes to world history, so it's pretty challenging for me to read and furthermore to finish it. I lost track of time in the book frequently, confused with what year or decade I was in, or even as simple as how old the characters were. The recount of history didn't help to amuse me, which is why, unlike in Jonasson's debut, the humors slipped in the story often times failed to crack me up. 

Worry not, I'm still pretty much impressed with this book, and I love how the story unfold, the luck and the twisted fate our heroine has, and basically the life she lives, which, when you think of it, is out of this world. It's enthralling, full of twists and turns, and, borrowing the words from the back cover, somehow uproariously funny. It's still overly ambitious, in my opinion, for Jonasson to think that all of his readers will remember the real life history he put in the book. My history teacher will very much appreciate it, I believe. But me? Not as much. I'd rather have the writer making up an entirely new world history so that I didn't have to think really hard while reading it, pretending like I know what he's talking about, when in fact, I didn't. Believe me, if you are a history enthusiast, you'll fall in love with every bit of the book. If you aren't, you'll also be smitten by the book. 

At the end of the day, I don't regret the choice I made to pick this book up, I'll also be waiting for another extra ordinary writing from Jonasson. I hope his next book title will be less mouthful and obvious, not that it's an entirely awful thing to do. Finger crossed. 

PS: It's funny how I said in my previous post that I was in a hiatus, yet the next day I wrote a review. I'm still in a hiatus, I must say, meaning I will most definitely not post anything else after this, unless I have another book I want to tell you. Psst... It's another book by my #1 author, Paulo Coelho. I just started reading it though, so you can't expect a new review until, perhaps, next month or so.