An Inspiring Story, Poorly Told

Last night I finally finished reading Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortensen and David Oliver Relin. I already knew the entire story—Mortensen's "Pennies for Peace" initiative is front and center in both our elementary school and our temple this year—and it's a truly moving one. Mortensen, an avid mountain-climber, injures himself trying to scale K2. While he recovers in a tiny village in remotest Pakistan, he comes to love and admire the people there and promises them that he will somehow figure out a way to come back and build a school for the children there. Although penniless and without any connections, he manages to do just that. And more—to date, Mortensen's Central Asia Institute has received millions in donations and has already established 78 schools in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There were few schools in these countries anyhow, and those that existed did not allow girls. Mortensen had to fight against strong opposition from religious and political leaders; he agreed to build schools only if girls would be permitted to attend.

The subtitle of the book is "One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time," and that is really what Greg Mortensen is all about. Through a mixture of perseverence and dedication and some uncanny luck, he has changed thousands of lives—and perhaps the world. It's his conviction that the way to stop fundamentalist terrorism in its tracks is to give young people another option: an education. His schools do not try to foist western or Christian ways on these Muslim communities, he just rightly believes that every child deserves the chance to go to school—and will then go on to make different, better life choices.

The problem with this book—and it's a big one—is the horrible, overblown, melodramatic writing. It's written entirely by Relin but it's all about Mortensen, so it's told in the third person, which never really felt right to me. This sort of faux-journalistic style detracted so much from the story that I ended up skimming the last third or so of the book, which I rarely do. And the writing itself is eye-rollingly bombastic; it's filled with descriptions and turns of phrases that to me came off sounding like someone was working way too hard to seem poetic. The metaphors were often laughable, like “the rising sun iced the hanging glaciers of Masherbrum pale pink, like a gargantuan pastry dangling above them at breakfast time.” Gah!

So, it's a wonderful, inspiring story, but the telling of it nearly did me in. If you haven't read the book yet, you'd be better served to just visit the very informative CAI web page than to slog through those 368 pages. I found myself fervently wishing I had instead picked up the Parade magazine article mentioned in the book.

Comments

[Mark]

Mmm...gargantuan pastry...

[kate]

I totallyl agree. I'm not sorry I read it, but I had to skim the end too. "Gah" sums it up.

[nancy]

loved the message - the book made me crazy.

[Margaret]

I haven't read it, even though it's our Pierce County reads selection for the public library; I could meet the author! (last year it was Alexander McCall Smith and I did go to that) I had heard from a friend that the book was poorly written--call me a snob, but I would rather read a blah but beautifully written book.

[Stephanie]

I got so caught up in the story I think I didn't really notice how poorly written it was. I was moved.

[MorethanMommy]

I'm having a hard time with it. I appreciate some of the history and background of the area, but sometimes he goes off on such a tangent that I've lost the connection with the story at hand. And the language is, indeed, over the top. I think a bit of simplicity would have served this story well. It's inspiring enough without having to wax poetic over the landscape.

[Di]

Thank you! I knew this was appearing on too many people's lists of favorites for me to like it. I couldn't ignore it, but now I can!

[Karen]

I listened to the audiobook version and that was the way to go. It was awesome.