Q3 Outside Reading #3

Mike is still running away from his home with Sam and Miranda. He is trying to reach Anna and talk about everything that happened before the police find him to bring him home. While on his trip he flashes back to his past again. Chris (Mike) becomes good friends with a guy named Sean. Through a series of events, including drug use, Chris is kicked out of the place he is staying and moves in with Sean. Sean's building doesn't really have permanent residents, people just come and go. Then we find out that Anna is staying there. The goal of everyone in the apartment building is to raise political awareness. "We'd feed a few people and make a political point: it would e an example of practical redistribution, a condemnation of consumer society", Chris recalls (Kunzru 105). Kunzru writes, "A second large antiwar demonstration was planned"(131). 

Chris' personal life was very complicated (we're still in the flashback). He was deeply in love with Anna, but she was involved with two other guys already. Just to spite her he started sleeping with some random girl. Then to add to all this, his past, which he would like to forget, catches up with him. His brother, Brian, shows up at the apartment building, causing disrupt. "At that point Brian almost lost control. I had to step between them"(Kunzru 128). Brian was a well to do man, someone who had enough power to make a political change, but did nothing which is why all of Chris' friends hate him. Brian comes with the news that their mother died. Chris goes to the cremation and is rejected by his father. Right then he turns his back on his brother and his father, leaving behind all that's left of his family.

Q3 Outside Reading #2

We are once again in Mike's past. He goes into more detail about his childhood, his month in prison and what he did after that. Mike grew up with an older brother, a working father and a mentally unstable mother. He grew up during the debate over the atomic bomb that was released on Hiroshima. He joined a group when he was younger (still in high school) called CND. "Soon I was knocking on doors to tell people about the first strikes and secret NATO exercises, fallout and megatonnage..." was how Mike participated (Kunzru 55).When he was accepted to London School of Economics he joined the protesting and was arrested during a protest. After he got out of jail, he is kicked out of LSE and his roomates boot him out of the apartment.

Back in Mike's present, Miles hasn't given up on getting Mike to talk to him. Miles stops by the house one day and starts talking with Sam (Mike's step daughter) who's home from college. Miles starts to spill some of Mike's past, which Mike has refused to talk about. Miranda says, "Mike never talks about any of this. I had no idea he was so involved in that sixties milieu" (Kunzru 92). Miles doesn't tell that the truly bad things Mike has done, but he told enough to convince Mike to talk with him, as long as Miles would stop spilling his secrets.

Q3 Outside Reading #1

I'm reading the book My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru. We start off the book with the main character, Mike, about to turn 50. Even though it should be a festive day, he is worried and preoccupied with something else. "It's already over. All this- the house, my family, this ridiculous party- no longer exists" (Kunzru 2). For awhile we don't know what he's talking about, but it instead focuses on the present. Mike is married to Miranda and a stepfather to Sam, Miranda's daughter. Miranda owns a business and Mike is unemployed. He keeps repeating that it's all over and he has to run for it. Then the flashbacks start. He's remembering the time not that long ago when he went on a trip with his wife and ran into someone from his past.

In a little town in France he runs into Anna Addison. He met her back when he was twenty and protesting the Vietnam War. The only problem is that she is supposed to be dead. Anna doesn't recognize him and he returns home focused on his past. Then one day Miles finds him. Miles is also from his past and recognizes Mike right away- only Miles knows him as Chris Carver. "My name's Michael. You've made a mistake. Come off it Chris. I know we've all changed, but not that much" (Kunzru 28). It once again flashes back to the protest where Mike aka Chris is arrested and put into jail where he meets Miles, a journalist. Back in the present Miles wants to talk about what happened, but Mike refuses. We don't know what happened between them, or with Anna, but all we know is that Mike is afraid of his past.