I couldn’t even finish it. I kept reading and reading and waiting for it to get better, and it just didn’t. Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin reads like a rough draft written by a school kid. It’s TERRIBLE. The story is good, uplifting even, if you’re into that sort of thing (personally, I’d rather that do-gooders do their good right here in the good ol’ U S of A before they go overseas, but that’s neither here nor there as far as this blog topic is concerned), but the editing is just sad. Comma use is atrocious and confusing. There are commas where there shouldn’t be more often than not–and no commas where there should be almost always–making it difficult to read and follow what’s going on.
What’s going on is that Greg Mortenson (Mortenson, Mortenson, Mortenson…we know his name, for goodness’ sake! Sometimes, though, the villagers call him “Dr. Greg,” which he isn’t) is building schools in Pakistan and other ‘stans in the shadows of K2. He’s building bridges and vocational centers for women. He’s taking his wife and baby daughter (whose life he seems to be absent from about half the time) over to what seems to be dangerous territory so he can help educate people. That’s very noble, and I’m all about education, but there are kids in this country, dammit, who could use a hand up, towns and cities in this country who could use help with school funding, teachers in inner cities and country villages who could use training.
Did I mention that I HATED this book? I really wanted to like it. I tried to like it. Here’s an example that shows the poor writing and organization of this book:
One hundred kilometers south of the city they passed into Waziristan, the most untamed of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Provinces, fierce tribal territories that formed a buffer zone between Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Wazir were a people apart, and as such, they had captured Mortenson’s imagination. “Part of what drew me to the Balti, I guess, was they were such obvious underdogs,” Mortenson says. “Their resources and talents were exploited by Pakistani government, who gave them very little in return, and didn’t even allow them to vote. (158 )
Okay, there’s one comma error there but more distracting than that, at this point in the book, is that that’s how the entire book is set up–there’s some sort of anecdote telling what Mortenson did that is followed by a quote from Mortenson. This would be okay if used in moderation, but it’s not used in moderation. Story, quote. Story, quote. It gets old. And the adjectives? Mercy, the adjectives.
Thirty-five years later, the Balti still lived with the same lack of modern conveniences, but after even a few days in the village, Mortenson began to see that Korphe was far from the prelapsarian [WordPress doesn't even recognize this word as it's underlined it in red to bring it to my attention] paradise of Western fantasy. In every home, at least one family member suffered from goiters or cataracts. The children, whose ginger hair he had admired, owed their coloring to a form of malnutrition called kwashiorkor. And he learned from his talks with Twaha, after the nurmadhar’s son returned from evening prayer at the village mosque, that the nearest doctor was a week’s walk away in Skardu, and one out of every three Korphe children died before reaching their first birthday. (30)
Prelapsarian? Huh? It means “occurring before the Fall [of Adam and Eve]” or “any innocent or carefree period.” Why not just say that? Oh, because there wouldn’t be the alliteration with “paradise” that way. Get over yourself.
I also hated that the story was told in third-person. I guess it had to be, though; otherwise, how could he have written “Mortenson” said this, “Mortenson” said that, “Mortenson” did this, “Mortenson” is a saint. This story would have been much more powerful in a first-person account. That way, the author could have foregone the need to give an anecdote and follow it up with a quote.
Don’t buy this book. It’s not worth it. I don’t feel that way about too many books that I read, but this one was just bad. It’s not often I can’t finish a book (the last one I didn’t finish was Life of Pi), but this one didn’t deserve to be plowed through. It just went on and on. Like a long, slow, winding, vertiginous road.
