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| # | cover | title | author | isbn | isbn13 | asin | num pages | avg rating | num ratings | date pub | date pub (ed.) | rating | my rating | review | notes | recommender | comments | votes | read count | date started | date read |
date
|
date purchased | owned | purchase location | condition | format | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0140285210
| 9780140285215
| 4.06
| 2,281
| 2000
| Apr 26, 2001
|
An excellently quirky, educational, thought-provoking, and often humourous book that avoids being confusing (despite multiple narrators) or off-puttin...more
An excellently quirky, educational, thought-provoking, and often humourous book that avoids being confusing (despite multiple narrators) or off-putting when describing the more shocking aspects of the near extinction of Aborigines in Tasmania and the views of white supremacists. Even the potentially awkward mix of socio-political themes and jolly japes works. PLOT (Not saying more than is on the back cover.) It is set in the 1800s and opens with the crew of Sincerity from the Isle of Man, intent on petty smuggling, but who end up taking some Englishmen to Tasmania, including a priest with a penchant for geology who thinks he will find the Garden of Eden, and a doctor intent on proving the superiority of white races in scientific terms. In Tasmania, relations between white settlers and local Aborigines are deadly and often shocking, whether those settlers be impoverished seal-hunters or rich and powerful soldiers or officials. The general events in Tasmania are broadly true. Events on the boat provide a contrasting degree of levity. A few of the plot twists were annoyingly predictable - but I loved the irony of the ending, plus the final post script, which fully justified the inclusion of some of the more unpleasant aspects in the novel itself. NARRATION I lost track of the number of narrators, but each has a distinct voice, and is explicitly introduced. Some tell one small part of the story, while others recur many times. A difficult trick for a writer to make work, but Kneale manages it. THEMES It opens with a philosophical conundrum that defines the book: "Say a man catches a bullet through his skull in somebody's war, so where's the beginning of that?... the day our hero goes marching off to fight... when he's just turned six and sees soldiers striding down the street... that night when a little baby is born?" By extrapolation, who is to blame for the near extinction of the Tasmanian Aborigines? Conflict and opportunism are at the heart of the book; no one gets on with anyone else (with the general exception of the Manx crew) and everyone is trying to achieve personal success at the expense of others (not generally financial, though). This is often fuelled by self-deceit and the desire to see evidence and patterns where none exists. Class, science, religion, nationalism, colonialism (paternalism, exploitation), evangelism, culture clashes, racial identity and tension, crime and punishment (redemption, reform), murder, revenge, and genocide are the main themes. Smuggling and survival are minor, but pertinent distractions. The book is crawling with hypocrites, including the three, very different, main characters. Some are amusing, like Captain Kewley who justifies smuggling as altruistic capitalism, but others, especially Rev Wilson, have few redeeming features, while Peevay's personal history means he starts off in credit with the reader (and for most, probably remains so). Rev Wilson is the worst, though he is an easy target. His modus operandi is pious prayer that demeans and criticises those he dislikes: he always prays for their improvement, rather than his tolerance, whist stating "I am not one to judge", just as he does so. Captain Kewley does have some redeeming features. In particular, (view spoiler)[he twice saves enemies, at considerable risk to himself. (hide spoiler)] Dr Potter's racist "notions" are troubling to read: "The Chinese posses a unique impulse of delight in bright colours, while among the savages of Africa there was a complete absence of the impulse of civilisation." This is partly because of what they say, partly because they are mentioned at such length but most guiltily because he expresses them so ludicrously that it's often hard not to laugh (mainly when he's comparing the Celts, Saxons and Normans). However, people really did (and do) publish such tracts, and the book thoroughly ridicules and refutes such ideas. Creationists and young Earthers don't come out of this well, so I wouldn't expect them to enjoy it. COLONIAL POWERS Some of the whites genuinely want to help the Aborigines, thinking clothes, crafts, farming and Bible stories will bring salvation, civilisation and happiness. Others want to expunge all trace of Aboriginal life and have less care for the people than for their own animals. The Aborigines are given new names: some are Biblical, others almost heretical, but most are deliberately, and often nastily, chosen for reasons that the bearers do not realise. "The older and more exalted of the natives were rewarded with names of quaint grandeur, such as King Alpha... a girl who was dreamy and sad was now Ophelia.. the monstrous female... became Mary, and while this might seem innocent enough, I had little doubt as to which murderous monarch was in Mr Robinson's mind." One tells an Aborigine "You must speak English now... only English", which is observed by another white as "Thus he displayed... his resolve to bring improvement to the unfortunate creature". A youngster with a newly discovered talent and passion for maths is told "it was neither useful nor practical for him to learn" and is given more Bible instruction instead. It's not all one-way though: some of the Aborigines are determined to survive, whether in a confrontational way, or from within, by learning about European belief and culture. LANGUAGE Kneale clearly thought carefully about the language he used. He includes a glossary of Manx terms, though I never needed to refer to it, because context made the meanings clear. He also has a caveat at the beginning about Peevay's speech, which is how he imagines an Aboriginal of the time might speak English, given the influence of white settlers and preachers. Personally, I thought the intent was pretty clear, and the echoes of biblical language obvious. The real skill with language is the way each of the many narrators has a clear personality and self-justifying way of telling their bit of the story. Examples that caught my eye include: * A Manx way of using "dream" without a preposition; "A few might have dreamed every penny on a new jacket or boots" and "I dreamed my great-grandfather, Juan, who I never met". * "Particular words that must never be spoken aboard a Manx boat when she's out at sea", including rabbit, herring, cat, mouse, wind, sun, moon and pig! If someone slips up, they must "shout 'cold iron' and then touch the ship's cold iron as quick as he can". * On first hearing English, an Aborigine recalls "it never was said properly but was just murmured, like wombat coughing. Now... they hardly are words to me any more but just thinkings that are said". * Learning English swear words has a pleasingly powerful effect: "Once I said these at Smith, just to see their magic, and it was strong, as he hated me for them very much". * Peevay's English has a quaint, simple lyrical and somewhat Biblical style. For example: - "By and by I grew taller and got lustings, so I noticed females in a new way, and their bubbies and fluffs were tidings of joy and filled me with new hungry wanting." - "Mother was transported with lamentation... [his] getting dead made her even worse... she never would speak to me at all, even for hating." OTHER QUOTES * "Publication is a powerful thing. It can bring a man all manner of unlooked-for events, making friends and enemies of perfect strangers." Even truer in the days of the internet. * Suburbs are "houses marooned in fields being an advance colony of ever-spreading London". * "His Majesty's colony of Van Diemen's land is not intended to reform criminals, but simply to store them, like so much rubbish." * "There are few things worse than being forgiven, as you never have a chance of answering back."(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Mar 12, 2013
| Apr 04, 2013
|
Mar 12, 2013
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 034543191X
| 9780345431912
| 3.87
| 2,218
| 1924
| Jul 06, 1999
|
A beautifully-written, Edwardian faerie story for adults - not that there's any "adult" content, and were it published today, it would probably be cla...more
A beautifully-written, Edwardian faerie story for adults - not that there's any "adult" content, and were it published today, it would probably be classed as YA. However, it only gets 3*, as a reflection of my enjoyment of it; I prefer things a little darker, even though the moral is perhaps "Be careful what you wish for". PLOT It is essentially a tale of young love across a cultural chasm (human Alveric and elfin Lirazel), the quest of Orion (not the Greek god), and features a witch, a faerie, elves, trolls, a magical sword, runes, unicorns and many other staples of the genre. LANGUAGE It is written in a florid style, lauding the beauty and harmony of the natural world ("the autumn-smitten garden"), and suggesting the ephemeral, not-quite-there nature of Elfland (the other side of "the rampart of twilight"). The poetic feel is emphasised by some recurring phrases, in particular the contrast between "the fields that we know" (the normal, non-magical world) and places "that may not be told of but in song" (Elfland). Furthermore, the word "glamour" is often used in its archaic sense, to mean casting enchantment over something. I'm less sure what to make of the two references to the King of Elfland's tower having "brazen steps"! Then, about half way through, the magic is suddenly broken when the author addresses the reader directly with comments about real history. It jarred. ELFLAND - (HOW) CAN WE KNOW IT? I liked the ideas of how Elfland is occasionally but unconsciously perceivable by mortals: "now lost to them but for dreams, a song of such memories as lurk and hide along the edges of oblivion, now flashing from beautiful years of glimpse of some golden moment, now passing swiftly out of remembrance again, to go back to the shades of oblivion, and leaving on the mind those faintest traces of little shining feet which when dimly perceived by us are called regrets." Artists of all kinds are most receptive and "have had many a glimpse of that country, so that sometimes in pictures we see a glamour too wonderful for our fields; it is a memory of theirs that intruded from some old glimpse." Similarly, Elfland's "flowers and lawns, seen only by the furthest travelling fancies of poets in deepest sleep". As well as being geographically abstract, Elfland exists, to some extent, outside time: time there passes V E R Y slowly in comparison with here. This is understandably disconcerting for the few who travel between the two realms. Coming to the fields that we know, "even the shadows of houses moved" as part of a "vortex of restlessness" QUOTATIONS * "So strong lay the enchantment... that not only did beasts and men guess each other's meaning well, but there seemed to be an understanding even, that reached from men to trees and from trees to men." * "a hare, who was lying in a comfortable arrangement of grass, in which he had intended to pass the time till he should have things to see to." * "The glamour that brightens much of our lives, especially in the early years, comes from rumours that reach us from Elfland" and "all manner of little memories". * "In a forest wherein it quieted the trembling of myriads of petals of roses, it stilled the pools where the great lilies towered, till they and their reflections slept on in one gorgeous dream. And there below motionless fronds of dream-gripped trees, on the still water dreaming of the still air, where the huge lily-leaves floated green in the calm, was the troll Lurulu, sitting on a leaf." * "Little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happenings that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills." * Spring is "a mild benediction that blessed the very air and sought out all living things." * "The hall that was built of moonlight, dreams, music and mirage." And a dash of humour when a troll tells others about the world of men, "They listened spell-bound... and then, when he told of hats, there ran through the forest a wave of little yelps of laughter".(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Apr 12, 2013
| Apr 24, 2013
|
Feb 28, 2013
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0575076917
| 9780575076914
| unknown
| 3.82
| 2,826
| 2004
| unknown
|
WOW! What a cracking - but crazy - read. I'm still reeling from it. It doesn't get muddled or daft and yet it has everything... really... everything:...more
WOW! What a cracking - but crazy - read. I'm still reeling from it. It doesn't get muddled or daft and yet it has everything... really... everything: time travel, spies, archaeology, cyborgs, a love triangle, wars, wormholes, virtual reality, a quest, death and sacrifice, murder mystery (with all the usual clichés lovingly included), nanotech, code-breaking, genocide, bodysnatching/ swapping, bootleg music, ecological disaster, white-knuckle chases, wraith-like horror characters, alternative history, secret passages, ethics of immortality, terraforming, some steampunk, a nod to Casablanca and an even bigger nod to (view spoiler)[The Truman Show (hide spoiler)], and the weirdest biological weapon I've ever heard of! It even has some strong and significant female characters, which is not exactly the norm in sci-fi. SETTING & PLOT It is primarily a detective drama in a noirish sci-fi setting. Whereas all the other Reynolds' I've read have three threads of story, this has only two: Paris in 1959 and Paris in 2266. The difference between the two versions of the city were enhanced because I read this before and after Mieville's "The City & The City" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), which is also a noirish detective thriller, featuring archaeologists and set in two versions of a city, albeit a very different sort of separation. Floyd is an impoverished private eye in 1959, whose excitement at the prospect of a case echoes my own feelings about the book: he "felt a weird sense of vertigo: a combination of fear and thrill that he knew he would not be able to resist. It would pull him deeper and it would do what it would with him." Similarly, there's a character who doesn't want to be a detective, but gets sucked in - just like the reader. One thread starts off as a slightly odd murder investigation; the other is a slightly odd quest to retrieve historical artifacts (though the most important artefacts turn out to be a rather bigger concept). As with any good thriller, what seem like trivial asides often turn out to be important later. WRITING STYLE As usual, Reynolds' story is told in a very visual way: at times it is almost like watching a film: the chases, the wraiths, and especially a nail-biting scene where someone is looking for a vital bit of paper that is not quite hidden (will they find it or not?). There are a couple of places where the exposition of backstory and science is explained in a slightly heavy-handed way (and a couple of the baddies are not much of a surprise), but those are trivial issues when there is so much good stuff crammed in barely 500 pages. THEMES When you climb off the walls from the relentless excitement, this raises many profound issues: * How do we know what is "real" and what is simulated - and does it matter? Who decides? (view spoiler)[Do simulants have the same rights and feelings as "real" people? How would you cope if you thought you yourself weren't real? (hide spoiler)] * If you could be immortal, or virtually so, would you want to be, and to what lengths would you go? * If you could have the (appearance of) whatever you wanted, whenever you wanted, would you tire of it? What if you could even conjure things we can't imagine: "colours were unfamiliar (and heart-wrenchingly beautiful) , but she could hear them, fell them, smell them"? Four more (view spoiler)[ * Every archaeologist's dream must be to travel back in time to see and experience things first hand. But the risks - ethical, practical, psychological - are high. "As much as she longed for all the time in the world to explore it, she did not want to become its prisoner." * What are the ethics and etiquette of taking over someone else's body?! Once there, would you evict a friendly usurper if it meant they would die? What if they wanted to do something altruistic, but which imperilled you body: "My body was mine to throw away... [but] you just don't do that with someone else's." * If the Nazis had failed to invade France so that Enigma codes were not cracked, how much later would the computer revolution have happened, and with what consequences? * What are the dangers of digital (over physical) storage? Or maybe the past has nothing to teach us, so we can we live in the present and not worry about the past? (hide spoiler)] MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES * "New patterns would begin to emerge from the doughy grey of unstructured cloud... But right now the clouds were bickering. The patterns formed and decayed at an accelerated rate, with lightning of a kind of emphatic punctuation to the dialogue. The clouds fissioned and merged, as if negotiating age-old treaties and alliances." * "Charm was what he excelled at. If anyone sensed his underlying shallowness, they usually mistook it for well-hidden great depth of character, like misinterpreting a radar bounce." * On the dangers of studying maths too deeply (Reynolds was a physicist before turning to writing): "she had studied mathematics so furiously that after an evening manipulating complex bracketed equations, simplifying forms and extracting common terms, her brain had actually started to apply the same rules to spoken language, as if a sentence could be bracketed and simplified like some quadratic formula for radioisotope decay." * "like an electric shock without the pain... a sharp inquisitional light... it lasted an eternity and an instant." * "The trains waited with snorting impatience, pushing quills of white steam up towards the roof... Its red tail light spilled blood on to the polished surfaces of the rails." No technology is omnipotent even if, to quote Arthur C Clarke, it is sufficiently advanced to be indistinguishable from magic: "In the presence of a wizard, she wanted miracles, not excuses." With this book, I felt the story was being told by a wizard with words; no excuses were necessary. WOW!(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Jan 06, 2013
| Feb 13, 2013
|
Jan 06, 2013
| |||||||||||||||
| 3.96
| 46
| unknown
| Sep 1996
|
I read this story in a volume that includes a few others (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). The gist of my review for Boy in Darkness is: A cu...more I read this story in a volume that includes a few others (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). The gist of my review for Boy in Darkness is: A curious allegorical story that starts when Titus runs away on his 14th birthday (part way through volume two, Gormenghast). He escapes the confines of the castle and encounters a pack of hounds but the story only turns to horror when, exhausted, he is found by two human-animal hybrids: Goat and Hyena, both determined to get the credit for delivering him to their evil overlord, a blind sheep living in an opulent disused mine who uses sinister powers to mutate people into the creatures they resemble. The character of a clever sheep, who is very white but very evil, wants sacrifices and is referred to as “The Lamb” (echoing Christian terminology) is certainly counter-cultural and, to some, potentially blasphemous. Whether this story is real (inasmuch as anything in Gormenghast is real) or a dream, let alone what it signifies is left to the reader: a bloodless sacrifice of a lamb; a critique of religion, despots, genetic engineering, power and corruption; something Freudian, or what?. Incidentally, despite Peake’s widow saying in the introduction that “The Boy”, though not named, is Titus, he is actually called that once early on, when he looks out of the window of his room. Furthermore, in her memoirs ("A World Away" http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) she explicitly describes it as "Titus outside the Titus books". Apart from that, the descriptions of him and his home leave no doubt (an earl who is “lord of a towered tract”, “at the beck and call of officials” and “ceremonies the meaning of which had long been forgotten”, leaving “dust-filled rooms of his seemingly endless home”). Perhaps the strangest aspect is that this was initially published in a collection of three short stories (others by John Wyndham and William Golding) that won a sci-fi prize (according to Maeve in "A World Away"). All my Peake/Gormenghast reviews now have their own shelf: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| not set
| not set
|
Nov 01, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||||
| 1844086194
| 9781844086191
| 3.80
| 173
| Jan 01, 1951
| Oct 01, 2009
|
A teenage near-romance has the chance of being rekindled twenty years later. Twenty years too late? (This review gives away no more than is in the boo...more
A teenage near-romance has the chance of being rekindled twenty years later. Twenty years too late? (This review gives away no more than is in the books's blurb, though the quotes section at the end is a little less subtle.) It is poignant and painful, occasionally funny, but never sentimental or saccharine. Beautifully written, and it doesn't take the easy options. However, Taylor often introduces new characters or situations as if the reader knows all about them, only filling in the gaps later. Also, there are a few sections that are rather different in tone from the rest of the book, making it feel a little unfinished. Harriet and Vesey have known each other since childhood, but the book starts between the wars, when they are around 18 and spend much of the summer at the house of his aunt, where Harriet is helping with the children. There is plenty of frisson, but Harriet in particular is naive, and the reader is somewhat in the dark as well. As she remembers a tryst, she reinvents it, whereas Vesey dismisses it because "'we are children.' He did not know that at his age most youths believe that they are men." This summer makes up the first third of the novel, and teenage awkwardness and doubt is painfully authentic, though it's harder to see why Harriet is so attracted to Vesey when he's oafish, self-centred and lacking in empathy. There is also some pop-psychology about them both being only children, Vesey's mother being a poor parent, and Harriet's suffragette mother being disappointed in her daughter's lack of academic success and ambition. It feels a little out of place, though it does deliver some wonderful insights: Vesey's mother "drew attention to him as if he were a beloved marmoset on a chain, somehow enhancing her own originality, decorating her" so he had "no close friends, for he had too much to hide." They drift apart. Harriet finally shows a smidgen of initiative and gets a job in a shop (a very comical section, but more caricatured than the rest of the book). She then marries a pleasant enough man and has a daughter, Betsy. When Betsy is in her teens, Vesey comes back into Harriet's life. Their feelings are clearer, but their course of action less so. This takes its toll on her marriage, and this is the finest section of the book (see some of the quotes). Time drags on, with increasing tension, longing, and doubt all round. The tragic passages are balanced by comedy: in the shop, and then with Harriet's incompetent au pair, "the Dutch girl". In the latter case, the humour is based on misunderstanding, exacerbated by the housekeeper using twee British idioms that she doesn't understand. When wondering why she came, Charles suggests "it's a cheap way of learning how to speak American". Overall, despite its inconsistent style, this is a beautiful book. Miscellaneous quotes * Suffragettes wondering, years later, if it was all worth it or whether "time would not despite them have floated down to them casually what they had almost drowned in struggling to reach." Nearly a wonderful sentence, but actually horribly mangled. * An adult's irritation at young Vesey "was in in reality impatience with another person's youth heightened by nostalgia for his own." * A bucolic bus journey: "In those days, trees laced together above many a road; buses took perilous journeys, with twigs scratching at either side; cars, meeting them, backed up into gateways. The bus conductor was like the conductor of an orchestra. He guided the conversation, drew out the shy or bored or tired, linked the passengers together... and made a whole thing out of an assortment." * When lovers walk, "Time's winged chariot was not a thing that they could hear." * "Departure in the afternoon is depressing to those who are left. The day is so dominated by the one who has gone and, although only half-done, must be got through with that particular shadow lying over it." * "The days shortened, but only technically. The time it took to live them seemed endless." * Virginity a mixed blessing: "She was left with only her self-respect, which did not seem to mean as much to her as she had been led to believe." * "What she had dreaded in suspense and embarrassment, she now fastened to. She embraced him with an erratic but extortionate passion. He was profoundly moved, though shocked, by her desperation... But to her, life seemed all at once simplified." * "The lady of the Manor who looked as if she had been bred in her own stables." * "Far from fearing middle age, one took refuge in it." I'm not sure about that! * Being tormented by a cue for jealousy: "It was as if an unkind hand raked up dead leaves in his heart." * When tension is highest between Harriet and her husband: " Marriage doesn't solve mysteries... It creates and deepens then. The two of them being shut up physically in this dark space, yet locked away for ever from one another, was oppressive." * "Looking back on her married life, it seemed a frayed, tangled thing made by two strangers." * "Beyond their familiarity and nakedness they could now sense their true isolation and were more perfectly strange to one another than people passing in the street." * "Betsy had not so much grown up as unrolled - as if she were all there at the beginning, but that each birthday unrolled more of her, made more visible, though suggesting more." * A lady's companion "had nothing to sell but her own company, which most people would have paid to avoid"! * More teen angst: "Nothing was explicable, even to herself. When she wept, it was from confusion. Her ravelled emotions fatigued her. She was overwrought from uncertainty, more than from any specific cause." * "Dusk, like a sediment, sifted down through bluish sky."(less) | Notes are private!
| none
|
1
| Oct 2012
| Oct 31, 2012
|
Oct 01, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0330519921
| 9780330519922
| 3.95
| 207,198
| Sep 13, 2010
| 2010
|
THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY? This seems to be a real Marmite book (love it or loathe it, with no fence-sitting), so I'm going to mix my metaphors:...more THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY? This seems to be a real Marmite book (love it or loathe it, with no fence-sitting), so I'm going to mix my metaphors: I bit the bullet, to see which way the wind was blowing and was surprised to find myself sitting on the empty fence. I was very undecided about stars, but there are many much better books I've given 3*, so this gets 2*, even though there was, on reflection, more to it than I first thought. The quality of the writing is not sufficient for 3*. Overall, I think it’s poorly written (exacerbated by the way Donoghue tries to use unusual language for specific effect), but it is something of a page-turner, it’s quite a quick read (unless you overempathise, get depressed, and need a break) and it does contain some interesting ideas, especially in the second half about aspects of coping with “freedom” (though I am unsure how many are taken directly from news reports and interviews with former captives, and how many are her own). OVERVIEW The situation is well-known: a twenty six year old woman, “Ma”, is living with her five year old son, Jack, in a tiny locked room. She has been there since she was abducted aged nineteen, and the story is narrated by Jack. They have daily visits from their captor, who brings meagre supplies, though they do have a TV and half a dozen books. Jack thinks reality is everything in their room, and that everything “in TV” is pretend. The first half of the book is set in Room (yes, with a capital letter and no article (“a” or “the”), like most of the few objects in their lives), and the second half is on the outside. It is clearly influenced by the recent news stories of Natasha Kampusch and Jaycee Lee Duggard etc, and that potentially prurient aspect did hold me back from reading this book for a long time. LANGUAGE AND WRITING Right from the start, I found the narration annoying - not because it's by a 5-year old, but because he's such an unconvincing 5-year old. For example, he has a very good vocabulary for his age (fair enough), and yet there are a few really basic words that he seems not to know (instead of "a man" or "the woman" he refers to "a he" and "the she" - except on one occasion when he unaccountably gets it right), and he often gets irregular past tenses and word order wrong, in the way that children younger than five often do (“I winned”, “we knowed”, “I brung”, “why you don’t like” and to a driver, “may you go us please to…”). Furthermore, he repeatedly makes these errors despite his mother's diligence in correcting his grammar and the fact he watches TV. It’s almost as if you can see Donoghue weighing up the need for Jack to be intelligent and insightful enough to tell the story in an engaging way (which, to a large extent, he does) with the need to tick certain boxes to make it clear he is just a small child. Similarly, we’re expected to believe that Jack points out “a dog crossing a road with a human on a rope” and thinks someone lighting up is trying to set himself on fire, even though he’s had TV and a mother who has tried to teach him about the (fictitious) world. The fact Jack is still breastfed is not surprising: it’s comforting for both of them. What is surprising though is that the word itself seems to be taboo (instead, he talks about “having some”, without ever saying what), and yet he’s happy to use the words “penis” and “vagina”, and is open about bathing with his mother. That may sound like nit-picking, but it’s an example of the sort of thing that frustrated me. I just didn’t feel Donoghue had really thought it through thoroughly. If you’re going to play with language to make your point, you need to be able to do so convincingly. PLOT The book is in five sections, though really it falls more naturally into two: inside and outside. The relationship between mother and son is touching and the book opens by establishing the routines and rituals of their restricted life, including the almost liturgical way they say “good night” to all their (few) possessions: “Good night, Room… good night, Rug” etc. The creativity required to raise a child in a confined space with such limited resources are impressive, too (they blow their eggs, so the whole shells can be threaded to make a snake, and do PE using their limited furniture as gym props). Initially, and in some ways, their life doesn’t seem as bad as you might expect, and even the first appearance of their captor (“Old Nick”) is relatively benign. That reflects the way Ma is raising Jack in the most positive way she can. Of course, we know something of the real horrors of the story, and they are discussed, though never in graphic detail, in part because Jack’s comprehension is limited, and in part because of Ma's success in shielding him from the nature of the situation. I thought the escape was badly done, but much better is the when, leading up to it, Ma has to explain to Jack that what he’s seen “in TV” is real. They go through a confusing process of “unlying” as she tries to prepare him for what might follow an escape. Once outside, it’s superficially about the practicalities of adjusting to the real world, but really it’s questioning the nature and price of freedom. I found this part had more interesting ideas, but contained more implausibility of plot (though I’m no expert in such matters) and very flat new characters. In particular, the method and speed with which the police locate Room was absurd, and also some of the logistics, practicalities and oversights of those charged with their care and settlement on the outside were dodgy, such as the first planned trip for these traumatised celebrities being to a museum with an uncle whom Jack had only met once! WHAT IS FREEDOM? The reader roots for Ma and Jack to escape, and they do (no spoiler – the book blurb tells you). Hooray! But of course they soon discover a new form of captivity: medical/psychiatric, hiding from fame, and so on. And this is where it gets interesting and starts to feel more plausible. Jack’s only knowledge of outside is from occasional TV programmes, and Ma’s is from seven years ago, when she was a carefree student, rather than a traumatised mother. Jack has to discover the world, and Ma has to (re)discover a new version of herself; she tells Jack, “I know you need me to be your ma but I’m having to remember how to be me as well”, to which he replies, “But I thought the her and the Ma were the same”. Similarly, having more, can leave one feeling impoverished: Jack is puzzled when Ma cautions him to be careful of something her brother gave to her, “I didn’t know it was hers-not-mine. In Room everything was ours.” Some of the things they struggle to cope with are not ones that would initially have occurred to me (germs, sunburn, stairs), and one effect is to make it almost as if Jack has acquired Asperger’s syndrome: he can’t filter the multiple stimuli of a busy world; doesn’t understand social conventions, etiquette, and privacy; is confused by relationships and pronouns (“The ‘you’ means Ma, not me, I’m getting good at telling”); takes common idioms literally (such as “I’m afraid so” and “get his act together”, but surely some cropped up from Ma and TV?); doesn’t like being touched or having to wear shoes; is borderline agoraphobic; increases his counting-his-teeth stress-relieving tactic; is uncoordinated from poor spatial perception; and feels insecure without routine. Jack asks, “But what’s the rule?”, to which he is told “There is no rule.” That’s a liberating idea to Ma, but scary to Jack. He misses Room and his few possessions because it’s all he’d ever known; Ma, understandably, wants to leave it all behind both literally and in even from conversation and memory. When he has nightmares, the doctor says “Now you’re safe, it’s [the brain] gathering up all those scary thoughts you don’t need any more, and throwing them out”, but Jack disagrees, “actually he’s got it backwards. In Room I was safe and Outside is the scary.” Another aspect is how Ma’s family react. The girl they knew – and thought dead – has been replaced by someone similar, but different, and they have Jack to contend with. Ma loves him unconditionally, despite his parentage, but if you were her mother or father, how would you feel about this constant reminder of what happened? To sum up, this wasn’t as prurient as I feared, and it was very thought-provoking, but it could have been SO much better. (less) | Notes are private!
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| Sep 12, 2012
| Sep 20, 2012
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Sep 12, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0676979459
| 9780676979459
| 3.64
| 458
| 1929
| Mar 06, 2007
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| Sep 05, 2012
| Sep 12, 2012
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Sep 05, 2012
| Paperback
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| 033053419X
| 9780330534192
| 3.89
| 15,021
| 2009
| May 06, 2011
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Mieville is the sort of author I expect and want to like, but I didn't feel the love with "The Scar" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). This...more
Mieville is the sort of author I expect and want to like, but I didn't feel the love with "The Scar" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). This second foray into his works was far more rewarding, and my third, Embassytown, was even more so (there are some interesting parallels, too, which I've outlined in my review: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). I enjoyed the concept, the wordplay, and the impossibility of categorisation: it's a detective story, but it's set in a world that is not exactly dystopian or futuristic or fantastic - but it isn't quite realistic either! One of the characters sums it up nicely, "There's a series of random and implausible crises that make no sense other than if you believe the most dramatic possible shit. And there's a dead girl." It is self-referential in another way: a book called "Between The City and The City" is mentioned several times. Very meta. ;) SETTING The title relates to a divided city that operates as separate cities, but it's not like Berlin, Budapest, Belfast or Jerusalem because (view spoiler)[the two cities (Beszel and Ul Qoma) occupy the same geographical space. Instead, the separation is psychological and sensorial: citizens of each learn to unsee, unhear and even unsmell anything from the other city. If they don't, they invoke the vague but terrifying wrath of Breach. There is also the mythical secret place/power of Orciny. (hide spoiler)] It is this brilliantly weird central premise that makes the book so good. If you don't know about it when you start reading it, the clues are gradually built up, but knowing it, as I did, didn't spoil my enjoyment. Ultimately, the division is maintained by consent, like the Emperor's New Clothes: "It's not just us keeping them apart. It's everyone in Beszel and Ul Qoma... It works because you don't blink. (view spoiler)[That's why unseeing and unsensing are so vital. No one can admit it doesn't work. So if you don't admit it, it does. (hide spoiler)]" Mind you, there is very limited political freedom in either city (UQ is a one-party state and in Besz, dissident groups are monitored - and both cities are under the mysterious power of Breach), so the idea of consent is somewhat moot. MURDER MYSTERY & THEMES This situation creates a variety of intriguing and sometimes amusing complications and paradoxes which hamper police operations. The impetus of the story is the discovery and subsequent investigation of a woman's body, and uncertainty about which domain the crime occurred in. There are disputed zones - shades of Rumsfeld's "known unknowns" and even when authority is agreed, the normal difficulties of solving a crime are compounded by the complexity of the two cities. (view spoiler)[It's difficult to get witness statements from people who are used to unseeing people and things, and who are ever fearful of accidentally seeing what they should not. There are even "Places that no one can see because they think they're in the other city". Chasing criminals without breaching is comical, but crucial. (hide spoiler)] "Smuggling itself is not breach, though most breach is committed in order to smuggle." These issues raise all sorts of questions about the nature and power of the state and its police (one of the cities - maybe both? - allows only one political party), and particularly about the relevance of intent in determining whether something is a crime. "Because you may not see the justice of what we do doesn't mean it's unjust" (neither does it mean it is just). COP DRAMA TROPES I'm not really a follower of detective stories, either on the page or on screen, but Mieville tips a hat to many of the clichés of the genre: good cop (Borlu)/bad cop (various, fluctuating, minor), the sparky relationship between partners (Borlu with Corwi and later with Dhatt), following hunches, breaking the rules for the greater good, messy love life, a few car chases and so on. The chapters are mostly short and punchy, and each ends with a revelation or cliff-hanger (or both). Yet it doesn't feel hackneyed, perhaps because the setting is so startlingly original. In fact, Mieville confronts the risk of cliché head-on, saying of one character "His fidelity to the cliché transcended the necessity to communicate". WORDPLAY AND WRITING STYLE Mieville has fun with neologisms and a few existing but esoteric words. At times he explicitly defines them when context and etymology make that unnecessary (e.g. gudcop and mectec), which is irksome, but nevertheless, some of the words are good. For example: * Grosstopically: (view spoiler)[Two locations, each in a different city, but occupying the same georaphical space in other terms. (hide spoiler)] * Topolganger: (view spoiler)[When grosstopical places look alike. (hide spoiler)] * Alterity: (view spoiler)[Alternative, a grosstopically equivalent place, "A Besz dweller cannot walk a few paces next door into an alter house without breach". (hide spoiler)] * Insiles: Sort of the opposite of exiles. * Glasnostroika: Glasnost + Perestroika, and the cities have echoes of central and eastern Europe. * Gallimaufrians are mentioned: perhaps a nod to Dr Who? * Cleavage: The reason for there being two cities - in both senses of the word: "was it schism or conjoining"... "split or convergence"? * Crosshatching: A whole new meaning to a familiar word. As in The Scar, there are a few awkward or ugly sentences that I had to reread, but far fewer. A couple of examples (for my own reference more than anything else): "He came to UQ, from where he went to B, managed I do not know how to go between the two of them - legally I assure you - several times, and he claimed..." Just adding a single comma would make all the difference. "Unlike for my distance viewing of the night, up close the walls blocked off the site from watchers." There are others that are convoluted in a clever and amusing way, though: "I couldn't help fail to completely unsee"! I think my only quibble with the story-telling is the quantity of rushed explanation and exposition towards the end, rather as Goldfinger or another James Bond baddie would do. FAVOURITE QUOTES * A dead body: "skin smooth that cold morning, unbroken by gooseflesh... like someone playing at dead insect, her limbs crooked, rocking on her spine... Her face was set in a startled strain. She was endlessly surprised by herself." (view spoiler)[* "Architecture broken by alterity... The local buildings are taller... so Besz juts up semi regularly and the roof-scape is almost a machicolation... laced by the shadows of girded towers that would loom over it if they were there." (hide spoiler)] * "Those most dedicated to the perforation of the boundary... had to observe it most carefully." * At an archaeological site, "Security guards, keeping safe these forgotten then remembered memories". * "the explosive percussion of the bullet into the wall... Architecture sprayed." * There is an unreal, almost supernatural quality of Breach (and their forces have a distinctive and intimidating gait): "The soundlessness was enervating... he was a cutout of darkness, a lack... clothes as vague as my own... Their faces were without anything approaching expressions. They looked like people-shaped clay in the moments before God breathed out." And yet it turns out that Breach uses cameras to watch the fringes (shades of Peake's "Titus Alone"), when I was expecting something less tangible. * "Students might stand, scandalously, touching distance from a foreign power, a pornography of separation." * A helicopter is "percussion in the otherwise empty locked-down sky". * "Schroedinger's pedestrian... That gait... rootless and untethered, purposeful and without a country... He.. strode with pathological neutrality." DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE CITIES I didn't get hung up on which real world cities might have inspired this (I doubt there would be a simple answer). However, I was interested in the ways in which they apparently differed, the "intense learning of cues" required of all children (and the few tourists). "We pick up on styles of clothing, permissible colours, ways of walking and holding oneself." Some colours are actually illegal in one city, and one is more diverse (view spoiler)[(UQ has more Asians, Africans and Arabs, and it has spicier food, whereas Beszel has a more potato-based diet) (hide spoiler)]. As a reader, one has to learn these cues very gradually. Even half way through I didn't have a very clear picture of the different appearance, culture or politics, other than that (view spoiler)[UQ was somewhat richer, more technologically advanced and with better archaeological sites (hide spoiler)]. Their languages use different alphabets and it is heretical to say they are the same, and yet they are mutually intelligible. Borlu, the hero and from whose point of view the story is told, is from Beszel, but I would rather live in UQ. MISSED A TRICK The book mentions fracturedcity.org - twice - but it just redirects to http://www.randomhouse.com/! GOOD BOOK TO PAIR THIS WITH I read this in the middle of reading Alistair Reynolds' "Century Rain" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). Neither is typical of the author's works, but both are noirish detective thrillers, featuring archaeologists and set in two versions of a city, albeit a very different sort of separation. Reading one enhances enjoyment of the other. An interesting Q&A with China, here on GR: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5..., including references to TC&TC. (less) | Notes are private!
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Aug 20, 2012
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| 3.82
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| May 17, 2011
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How can a novel about language leave one speechless? In a good way, I hasten to add! This was the third Mieville I’ve read, and they are all very diffe...more How can a novel about language leave one speechless? In a good way, I hasten to add! This was the third Mieville I’ve read, and they are all very different in style, content and my liking (or not). The core idea of this one is language: how minds shape language and how language shapes minds. Wonderful as it was, I can see reasons why some people would hate it, or find it too weird, or just not sci-fi enough. If you don’t delight in polysemy and are not interested in the difference between simile and metaphor, this is unlikely to be the book for you. Because of the tantalising style of storytelling, drip-feeding the reader snippets about things from the trivial to the fundamental, it’s definitely a book worth rereading, and that is especially true on the subject of language, to which I’ve devoted a whole section of this review (which I will doubtless need to rewrite after a reread!). The plot is to some extent secondary, but it is the reminiscences (going back to childhood) of a woman from Embassytown who travels, comes back and becomes enmeshed in the extraordinary Language (capital letter) of the alien Hosts. FIRST IMPRESSIONS The first section left me exhilarated but reeling. It was so vague and yet specific, nearly familiar, yet also strangely different, and in such an enticing way. It hints at all sorts of weirdness that I couldn't quite put my finger on (odd units of time and some odd typography in the pages ahead) and others that I couldn’t even get my head around (what are “alien colours”- related to Douglas Adams’ Hooloovoo, a “super intelligent shade of the colour blue”?). Even the names and numbers of the sections were hard to fathom, making the reader as disoriented as an ambassador in an alien land. This teasing bafflement continues throughout most of the book: Mieville doesn’t pad with early exposition, so the reader is fed occasional snippets about what things mean. Occasionally I wondered if I’d missed something, particularly things that were clearly fundamental to the book (e.g. what was special about the Ambassadors, what the Hosts were like, and what being/performing a simile means) but as I read on, and gradually learned more, I realised that was just part of the style of the book. Having just read Mieville’s The City & The City (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), I was also struck by parallels: there is lots about borders, separation, boundaries, outsiders, the strange duality of the city ("the Host city, where the streets changed their looks... not quite a hard border but was still remarkably abrupt, a gaseous transition.") and one character is "cleaved", when cleavage is a significant aspect of TC&TC. SENSE OF PLACE Embassytown is a trading outpost used by Earth (Terre) in the future. It is on a planet inhabited by the Ariekei, more respectfully known as Hosts. They have a unique Language (view spoiler)[that requires two simultaneous voices from one mind (hide spoiler)], and the Ambassadors are the translators. The Hosts are also experts at biorigging, so many aspects of the city and its technology are appealingly bizarre, giving a very strong sense of place, even though some aspects are left to the reader’s imagination. The immer is more amorphous concept of space or outer space, and Avice’s first experience of it is “impossible to describe”. “There are currents and storm fronts in the immer” as well as borders, but the usual laws of physics, and even direction, don’t apply. For instance, “in the first one [universe]… light was about twice as fast as it is here now” and some places are closer together in the immer than in the everyday. “The immer’s reaches don’t correspond at all to the dimensions of the manchmal, this space where we live. The best we can do is say that the immer underlies or overlies, infuses, is a foundation.” Also, “People get lost in the overlapping sets of knownspace.” NARRATOR Avice is an immerser (traveller of and in the immer). She isn't a fluffy, girly sort of woman, but I would have little interest in reading about her if she was. Even so, she came across as plausibly female to me, which is not something all male writers can achieve. She wasn’t especially endearing, and in the middle of the book she was often faffing around, trying to find out what was going one, but not actually achieving much. In particular, there are some key plot points where she relies on hearsay (“I wasn’t there but that’s how I was told it happened”), which is brave decision on Mieville’s part, though I think he just about retains her credibility. Despite those instances, she is central to the story, mainly in her childhood, and then towards the end of the book. THEMES Given that the Host’s Language is thought and literal truth, the most obvious theme is the nature of truth and lies and the question of whether we make language or language makes us. See the section on Language, below. I don't think we're meant to have a clear idea what the Hosts look like. Mieville drops little clues throughout the book, but it takes a long time to build up a picture, which remains somewhat fuzzy, but utterly alien. I think that's indirectly telling us not to judge by outward appearance. When newly arrived crew stare, unashamedly, at the Hosts, Avice recounts a theory that “no matter how travelled people are… they can’t be insouciant at the first sight of any exot race… our bodies know we should not ever see [them]” (Of course, the vagueness is also a teasing tactic, which entices the reader to keep reading, and avoids distracting from the main force of the story.) Related to that is Ehrsul: an autom who is Avice’s friend, albeit they rely on “all the exaggerated intimacies of our friendship”. Scyle can never quite think of her as human enough to be friends with her, whereas Avice pushes any doubts to the back of her mind. Maybe an autom who is TOO realistic is more unsettling than one that is clearly not human? On the other hand, “She only ever used one corpus, according to some Terrephile sense of politesse or accommodation… having to relate to someone variably physically incarnate would trouble us [humans]” and her apartment is decorated with pictures on the wall, so that visitors feel relaxed and at home. Would Ehrsul pass the Turing Test? The fact she runs on Turingware suggests she would, but perhaps it would depend who tested her, which then questions the whole nature of the test itself. Other aspects of what it is to be human touch more on Brave New World, and Soylent Green. In the latter case, the Hosts’ natural “last incarnation was as a food store for the young.” Having given that up, they “respectfully shepherd the ambulatory corpses until they fall apart”, despite their “dignified mindlessness”. The former (view spoiler)[ relates to the way Ambassadors are bred: identical twins, raised to be able to think, act and, crucially, speak, as one, as that is the only way to be understood by the Hosts (hide spoiler)]. Colonialism and all the socio-political and practical issues around it are central, though not my main area of interest. I saw many echoes of (view spoiler)[the Opium Wars, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_wars) (hide spoiler)] a particularly shameful episode in British colonial history. I suppose the main difference is (view spoiler)[that the Language Ariekei were addicted to (albeit a corrupted form) was something previously regarded as unequivocally good. Does that change the ethics of addiction, drug-pushing, treatment (“they might not be addicted any more but they’re not cured; they’re changed”), and do the means justify the ends? (hide spoiler)] IDEAS ABOUT LANGUAGE This is the heart of the book, but so hard to do justice to, but I’ll attempt it. HOSTS’ LANGUAGE The Hosts’ language (called Language) is the most important to the story, and it is wonderfully strange: it must be spoken simultaneously in two voices by a single mind: “The sounds aren’t where the meaning lies… it needs a mind behind it”. The Hosts themselves have two means of vocal output (cut and turn), but it’s more of a challenge for humans to utter it in a way that the Hosts even register as speech, let alone understand. The other distinctive feature of Language is that it is an utterly concrete and literal language: lies and multiple meanings are not possible: “For Hosts, speech was thought” and “Words don’t signify: they are their referents. How can they be sentient and not have symbolic language?” Side-effects of the strangeness of Language are that the Hosts have no system gestures nor of writing (Mieville accommodates the duality by writing simultaneous words above each other, like fractions). However, it’s not quite so straightforward or static as that sounds… SIMILES The Hosts use similes to express things that are not literally true – the catch being that the similes themselves must be concrete and must continue to be true. (“The man who swims with fishes every week” has to swim with fishes every week. If only the simile had been in the past tense, his life would be much easier.) Avice was a simile (“You speak Language. I am it”), but others were examples and topics, and later, Avice declares, “I don’t want to be a simile any more. I want to be a metaphor”. One puzzle is how the Hosts know they need a simile, let alone define it, before they have it in Language? Similes are the thin end of the wedge where truth is concerned: “Similes start… transgressions. Because we can refer to anything. Even though in Language, everything’s literal… but I can be like… anything… Similes are a way out. A route from reference to signifying.” It’s a relatively small step from “You are like x” to “You are x”. A metaphor is a step further: a lie that is the truth. LIES The Hosts can understand lies, and they also have a Festival of Lies, where they entertain each other by trying to lie. I was reminded Lister, in the comedy sci-fi, Red Dwarf, trying to teach the mechanoid, Kryten, to lie –using fruit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oB-NnV...). There are several tactics to lying; they tend to be incremental and often use similes: collaborative, going slow, going fast. But does lying have a moral cost – does it inevitably lead to evil? And what is “evil” in a non-religious place where some barely have a concept of the word? SAPIR-WHORF The ideas of Sapir-Whorf underlie much of this: “Without language for things that didn’t exist, they could hardly think them”, with “hardly” being the crucial get-out. What about Hosts who lose the power of speech? “If they can’t speak, can they think? Language for Ariekei was speech and thought at once.” Do we make language or does language make us? As the book progresses, some Hosts have a strong desire for the former: “We want to decide what to hear, how to live, what to say, what to speak, how to mean, what to obey. We want Language to put to our use.” Avice realises “Their longtime striving for lies [was] to make Language mean what they wanted”. Another way of looking at it is whether “Language is the continuation of coercion by other means”, as one character claims, or whether it’s cooperation, as another claims. OTHER LANGUAGE-RELATED IDEAS Other odd languages are fleetingly mentioned, such as Homash: “They speak by regurgitation. Pellets embedded with enzymes… which their interlocutors eat”. There is also mention of “Tactile languages, bioluminescent words… Dialects comprehensible only as palimpsests [a favourite word of Mieville’s] of references to everything already said, or in which adjectives are rude and verbs unholy.” The quirks of Language affect the writing of the book. In particular, are Ambassadors singular or plural? The answer is both, even in a single sentence, for example, “Ambassador JasMin was in earshot and I made a point of asking them…”. This makes sense, the more you understand about them. The vagueness of some things, and the neologisms (see below) only added to the appeal for me: maybe I became a little addicted to Language? There is a wonderful passage describing the joy of a Helen Keller moment, when one who lacked the power of communication suddenly “got it”. A trivial surprise was that in a largely non-religious future society Christian-based swearing continues in recognisable form, “Jesus Pharoahtekton Christ”, whereas I’d expect the words to have morphed a little (like “crikey”). Finally, I’m not enough of a linguist to be sure of the truth of this, but it’s thought-provoking: “Sometimes translation stops you understanding.” SOME VOCAB Most of the coinages are thrown at the reader early on, and there is no glossary (this isn’t one either). However, the meanings are usually clear from context and common-sense etymology: Shiftparents, voidcraft, exoterre, biorigged, immerser (versus landstuck), plastone, bookware, newsware, alt reality, sidereal, monthling, basilisking (I love that one), oratee, augmens, datchip Less obviously: Floaking: “the life technique of aggregated skill, luck, laziness and chutzpah”. Trid: This seemed to cover quite a lot of things, but all involved a video player/display. Miab: An acronym (view spoiler)[ Message In A Bottle, i.e. cargo from afar. (hide spoiler)] Floak is my favourite, and I think Mieville is fully aware of its appeal and the perils of overuse: ‘”Did they tell you I can floak?” I said. “I wish I’d never told them that fucking word… they just want the opportunity to say ‘floak’.”’ I also like the fact that "exot", which refers to exo-terre (of or from Earth) conjures strong implications of "exotic". MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES • “Like all children we mapped our hometown carefully, urgently and idiosyncratically.” • “Its surface sheened with the saft that evanesced out from its crystal shielding in threads that degraded to nothing.” • “It was an insinuation at first, composing itself of angles and shadows. It accreted itself from its surrounds, manifesting in the transient. [Things] spilled toward and into the swimming thing, against physics. They substanced it. Houses were unroofed as their slates slipped sideways into a presence growing every moment more physical, more suited to this realness.” • Someone flirting was “using augmens to make his face provocative, according to local aesthetics.” • “the gluttony of the architecture… the frantic eavesdropping of the walls.” • Because the building are biorigged, and thus alive, when demolition happens “construction site like combined slaughterhouses, puppy farms and quarries”! I read this in part because of Betsey's review, focusing on the fact it's about language: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/... An interesting Q&A with China, here on GR: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/5... (less) | Notes are private!
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| Feb 13, 2013
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Aug 20, 2012
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| 0330483242
| 9780330483247
| 3.27
| 4,278
| 2011
| Jul 04, 2011
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This tells a riveting and complex saga with profound insight, plenty of intrigue and dashes of wit. From the first dozen pages, even the first few sen...more
This tells a riveting and complex saga with profound insight, plenty of intrigue and dashes of wit. From the first dozen pages, even the first few sentences, I was drawn into a love affair with the writing of this book. I read large chunks more than once because the writing is breathtaking, but leisurely: I wanted to capture the craft and jot down many quotes (see the end of this for a long selection). Having finished, I still love it, even though the quality was not quite maintained. It is a story told in five parts and spanning a century. The first two parts are superb (and have echoes of Waugh's "Brideshead Revisited" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) and Byatt's "The Children's Book" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...)); the third is good, and the last two are too different to fit well with what’s gone before, and the ending is unsatisfyingly abrupt. It's not so much that the later sections are bad as the fact they just didn't "fit" the rest of the book and suffer in comparison with what precedes them. It almost felt as if they were there to bang home the themes of truth, memories, aging, changing mores etc, just in case we didn't notice them in the earlier sections. It's another way in which it resembles "The Children's Book": the best aspects are stunning, but it is also very flawed Although Hollinghurst is well known as a gay writer (both himself, and his books), and this does feature gay relationships and illustrate how attitudes have changed over the last hundred years, it felt like a family saga, rather than a gay book. PLOT The key character appears to be a budding poet, Cecil Valence. He enters the story in 1913 as the wealthy university friend of middle class George Sawle. All the characters in the coming hundred years and 500+ pages have some sort of connection with him, but really it is George’s sister Daphne who is the pivot of the tangled stories. And they are tangled: there is a web of relationships, with lies, suppressed longings, and secrets, so one is often unsure who fancies who and who knows what about whom. Subsequent sections are in the mid 1920s, mid 1960s, around 1990 and the present day (2011/12). The first two sections have a strong sense of place: the Sawle’s suburban home, Two Acres, and then the Valence’s enormous Victorian estate, Corley Court. These sections have strong echoes of “Brideshead”, yet don’t feel plagiarised. In later sections, the characters and plot are rather more adrift. I enjoyed the deliberate obfuscation of the sudden time jumps at the start of each section, e.g. not being immediately sure who labels such as "husband" and "dead brother" applied to, or who “Mrs Jacobs” was (not always the most obvious one). I just didn't enjoy the characters, style and milieu of the later parts quite as much. CHARACTERS The Valences and Sawles are the main characters – along with their respective homes (again, like Brideshead). A new wife “felt she wouldn’t have chosen it, felt it had in a way chosen her”. The changing zeitgeist and the aging and maturing of the characters are generally very good: insightful, amusing and plausible. The opening word (“she”) refers to Daphne, a central character throughout, though not always the most important. As she says of herself in old age, “I never pretended to be a wonderful writer, but I have known some very interesting people.” The contrasts between what people say, feel, mean and are thought to mean by others are clearly but delicately marked, especially in the first section, when Daphne is juggling sibling rivalry with the first stirrings of attraction, whilst still very naïve about such things. Other characters have things to hide (relationships, drink, money problems). Daphne often “felt again she was missing something, but was carried along by the excitement of making [adult] conversation”. THEMES CLASS Class difference, deference, aspiration and the consequences of social mobility (up and down) are obvious themes that affect all the characters. Is “unthinking social confidence” the same as being a snob? One woman had “a slight bewildered totter among the grandeur that her daughter now had to pretend to take for granted” (so much summed up in that pithy sentence) and another “hadn’t been born into [X’s] world, even though she now wore its lacquered carapace”. At the other end of the spectrum, a humble bank clerk feels socially awkward from knowing, via people’s financial circumstances, that they may not be all that they seem. TRUTH and WRITING More importantly, several characters write (poetry, biography, memoirs, criticism). Questions of “what is the truth?”, “who knows what?” and the way we edit our own and other people’s histories weave through the book and are pertinent to all the main characters, especially those burdened with secrets (whether their own or those of others). Memoirs are “not fiction… but a sort of poetical reconstruction”. Are such edits usually unconscious, and if not, are they justifiable? They certainly make it hard for biographers, one of whom complains, “People wouldn’t tell you things, and they then blamed you for not knowing them.” Then he realised “The writer of a life didn’t only write about the past, and that the secrets he dealt in might have all kinds of consequences in other lives, in years to come” – and this aspect is perhaps the dominant theme of the book, creating a Russian-doll like structure of nested histories. SECRECY The subtle dynamics of covert relationships are carefully drawn, especially early on, managing to create a degree of ambiguity and at the same time, giving the reader the feeling of being “in the know”. Later on, there is additional dramatic tension from the characters’ own doubts about some things, and even the reader’s doubts about which characters know what: George was “amused by its [a poem] having a secret and sadly reassured by the fact it could never be told.” HOMOSEXUALITY I feel as if this ought to be a major theme, and possibly Hollinghurst would like it to be, but it never felt like a big deal to me. Yes, several characters are gay or bisexual, and some are secretive about their desires, but the desire and the secrecy seemed more pertinent than the sex of the people they were attracted to. Having sections set in different periods does illustrate how society has become more accepting, but maybe that's just society growing up? AGING and MATURITY The main characters span a variety of ages, which presents a challenge that Hollinghurst rises to. In particular, the Edwardian Daphne’s teenage desires and anxieties are wonderfully done. When offered a cigar, “She really didn’t want the cigar, but she was worried by the thought of missing a chance at it. It was something none of her friends had done, she was pretty sure of that.” So she took it “with a feeling of shame and duty and regret”. Whether it was a cigar or something else, I’m sure we can all empathise with Daphne’s mixed emotions. Similarly, being in on (partial) adult knowledge isn’t always what one wants or expects, “the joy of discovery was shadowed by the sense of being left behind”. Pondering her first kiss, she “savoured the shock of it properly… With each retelling, the story… made her heart race a fraction less… and her reasonable relief at this gradual change was coloured with a tinge of indignation”. DRINK Several characters drink too much, though some are more aware of it than others: “the tray of bottles, some friendly, some over-familiar, one or two to be avoided”. WRITING STYLE The opening chapter is particularly entrancing: it captures the anticipation of the forthcoming evening, coupled with the evening light, in a series of subtly beautiful images about relationships, awkwardness, and ease, presaging all that is to come. There are wonderful images and great insight throughout. It might be thought to be overwritten, but I enjoyed the detail. THE TITLE Who is the eponymous "stranger's child"? For a while that question niggled (it's a phrase from Tennyson), and there are one or two candidates, but later I felt it didn't really matter, and was perhaps just a metaphor for each child's uniqueness, and, in some respects, their unknowability. QUOTATIONS • “Something of the time of day held her, with its hint of a mystery she had so far overlooked… It was the long still moment when the hedges and borders turned dusky and vague, but anything she looked at closely… seemed to give itself back to the day with a secret throb of colour.” • “The slight asperity that gave even her nicest remarks an air of sarcasm.” • Jonah was only 15, had never acted as a valet (or even observed one) and was told to “unpack… and arrange the contents ‘convincingly’. This was the word, enormous but elusive, that Jonah had had on his mind all day… gripping him again with a subtle horror.” Later, he had “The strange feeling of being intimate with someone who was simultaneously unaware of him.” • Even the legitimate offspring of a respectable dead father can feel it a social handicap in Edwardian times: “He felt a twinge of shame and regret at having no father, and for ever having to make do.” • Outrageous letters were like “Pompeiian obscenities, hiding just out of view behind the curtains and in the shadows of the inglenook.” • “Records were indeed marvels, but they were only tiny helpings of the ocean of music.” • A 16-year old “picked up her glass and drained it with a complicated feeling of sadness and satisfaction that was thoroughly endorsed by Wagner’s restless ballad.” • For some reason, this tickled me, “… said Daphne experimentally”. • A couple had “their little myth of origins, its artificiality part of its erotic charm”. • “The remark [a compliment] seemed to have curved in the air, to have set out towards some more obvious and perhaps deserving target, and then swooped wonderfully home.” • “His feelings absorbed him so completely that he seemed to float towards them, weak with excitement, across a purely symbolic landscape.” • A woodland pond was “a loose ellipse of water”. • He had “a very particular way of looking at her… of holding her eye at moments in their talk, so that another unspoken conversation seemed also to be going on… She felt a certain thrilled complacency at the choice he had secretly made.” • “moaning with a lover’s pangs, as well as with a certain sulky relief at this tragic postponement.” • “spread some butter on her toast, though really her smothered anxiety had squeezed up her appetite to nothing.” • Of a somewhat back-handed compliment: “her involuntary German air of meaning rather more.” • She “held back, with a thin fixed smile, in which various doubts and questions were tightly hidden.” • A dining room “with its gaudy décor, its mirrors and gilding” was “like some funereal fairground”! • People who had loved and feuded came together to share memories of someone who had died, “submissively clutching their contributions. A dispiriting odour of false piety and dutiful suppression seemed to rise from the table and hang like cabbage-smells in the jelly-mould domes of the ceiling”. • Tact required a “courteous saunter around an unmentionable truth” and “a mist of delicacy had obscured the subject”. • “The dark oak door of the chapel loomed, seemed to summon and dishearten the visitor with the same black stare… Chapel silence, with its faint penumbra of excluded sounds.” • They “looked more like colleagues than a couple” because “their hands seemed somehow locked away from any mutual use”. • “Bland evasiveness had slowly assumed the appearance of natural forgiveness.” • He “turned to her with that unstable mixture of indulgence and polite bewilderment and mocking distaste that she had come to know and dread and furiously resent.” • After one character’s boorish outburst at a children’s party “a collective effort at repair had been made”, one couple “having an ideally boring conversation about shooting to show that things were under control”! • After dinner, there was “talk of a game. Those who were keen half smothered their interest, and those who weren’t pretended blandly that they didn’t mind.” • “It was the most unapproachable room in the house… dark with prohibitions. His father’s anger… had withdrawn into it, like a dragon to its lair.” • “His features seemed rather small and provisional.” • “The front door was wide open, as though the house had surrendered itself to the sunny day.” • “At this indefinable time of day… The time, like the light, seemed somehow viscous.” • A lodger’s room: “Nothing went with anything else. They had the air of things not wanted elsewhere in the house… the brown wool rug made by Mr Marsh himself at what must have been a low moment.” • The PE teacher “dressed in sports kit at improbable times of day, he was adored by many of the boys, and instinctively avoided by others.” • “In the deepening shadows between pools of candlelight, the guests… conversations stretching and breaking, in an amiable jostle… like a flickering frieze, unknowable faces all bending willingly to something perhaps none of them individually would have chosen to do.” • “eagerness struggling with some entrenched habit of disappointment.” • Daphne’s copious bag had “the family trait of being shapelessly bulky – too bulky, really, to count as a handbag. It admitted as much in its helpless slump.” • “The upstairs windows seemed to ponder blankly on the reflections of clouds.” • “The perfect but impersonal dentures that gave their own helpless eagerness to an old man’s face” – the same man with “the eagerness and charm, the smile confidently friendly but not hilarious, the note of respect with a hint of conspiracy.” • “Her sense of humour is really no more than an irritable suspicion that someone else might find something funny.” • A house heaving with clutter creates “a worrying sense of the temporary grown permanent” (a lesson for me). • “The air of mildly offended blankness, which is the default expression of any congregation.” • “X and his computer lived together in intense co-dependency, as if they shared a brain, his arcane undiscriminating memory backed up on the machine and perpetually enlarged by it.”(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jul 31, 2012
| Aug 11, 2012
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Jul 31, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| B005QJT50Q
| unknown
| 4.05
| 40
| Sep 01, 2011
| unknown
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So disappointing, and so bad, I'm struggling for anything to say. The first page has the ominous sentence, "It was a summer to remember so far". Sadly...more
So disappointing, and so bad, I'm struggling for anything to say. The first page has the ominous sentence, "It was a summer to remember so far". Sadly, the book is not one to remember. The story takes place over seven days, and I read two of them (to page 159 of 534), so I gave it a fair crack. It is set in a Sussex village in July 2010 and follows various couples and families with particular issues (fear of commitment, how to care for an aging parent, unemployment, troublesome teens, rabbit invasion - yes, really). I often like unsympathetic protagonists, and there are plenty to choose from here, but they were too dead for me to dislike them enough to enjoy it. It's all told in the present tense, each chapter from the viewpoint of one character, and it's desperate to make the reader conscious of it being 2010, so there are LOTS of clunky references to very specific people, events and fashions that will make the book age badly. In many cases, it is pure padding that adds nothing but irritation. For example, "She navigated her laptop [her laptop?] through the BBC website", there's mention of a specific Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall cookbook, Raoul Moat, Nick Griffin of the BNP being invited to a royal garden party and... meh. Even when it's not banging on about the date, it spells things out with a sledgehammer, talking about "the elephant in the room" and then defining it, even though the context makes it clear for anyone who is unfamiliar with term (which can't be many). I am shocked at how bad it was. Can it really be the same author who wrote the beautiful, original and imaginative "Wind and Fire" YA trilogy? I read them in parallel with my son several years ago, so thought I'd try one of his adult novels that had rave reviews in the newspapers. Unlike the others I read, it's not fantasy-ish, and I realised only after I bought it that although it's a standalone story, it is, to some extent, the end of a trilogy. I hate giving up on a book, but life's too short to waste on such tripe. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jun 24, 2012
| Jun 27, 2012
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Jun 24, 2012
| Kindle Edition
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| 0375754903
| 9780375754906
| 3.80
| 1,132
| 1908
| Nov 01, 1999
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A simple concept of parallels and contrasts in the lives of sisters, carefully told with gentle irony. It starts in 1864 when Constance and Sophia are...more
A simple concept of parallels and contrasts in the lives of sisters, carefully told with gentle irony. It starts in 1864 when Constance and Sophia are 16 and 15 respectively and follows them to the end of their lives. Book 1 covers their teenage years together above and in a draper’s shop in a small town in the Staffordshire Potteries (central England). Book 2 is in the same location, but focuses on Constance. Book 3 is set in Paris during great political upheaval and war, and is about Sophia. In book 4, the two threads come together again. Bennett modelled it on the great realistic French novels of the time (Balzac, Flaubert et al); in some ways it is very mundane, and yet the attention to detail is extraordinary and compelling. As an elderly Sophia muses, “My life has been so queer – and yet every part of it separately seemed ordinary enough.” It opens with a description of the bucolic countryside, observing “But though Constance and Sophia were in it they were not of it” because “no person who lives in the district… ever thinks about the county”, even though it’s so much pleasanter than the busy, dirty town. They are the only children of a bedridden but successful and respected draper whose hatred of “puffing” meant he refused to replace the fallen shop sign lest he “condone, yea, to participate in, the modern craze for unscrupulous self-advertisement”. The draper’s shop and home is their world, and yet their lives end up taking very different paths. Sometimes the contrasts are more parallel than they first seem, and I think this is an aspect that bears further thought and eventual rereading. Constance spends her whole life in the town, living a traditional life as dutiful daughter, wife, mother and widow, whereas Sophia spends many years in France, surviving the Siege of Paris and building independent success. Their lives seem so different, and for Sophia, there is an aspect of missing England when she’s in France and vice versa. However, despite the apparent exoticism of her life, she comes to realise that her “life, in its way, had been as narrow as Constance’s. Though her experience of humanity was wide… she had been utterly absorbed in doing one single thing.” I think the only weak point was some aspects of the ending, but in such a long and wonderful book, it's only a minor issue. SISTERHOOD The sisters are deliberately treated equally: their workboxes “were different but one was not more magnificent than the other. Indeed, a rigid equality was the rule” and yet “in some subtle way, Constance had a standing with her parents which was more confidential than Sofia’s”. This is clear when Mrs Baines confides in Constance about her problems with Sophia: “her tone was peculiar, charged with import, confidential, and therefore very flattering to Constance.” They are close, though they have very different temperaments, with Sophia being the more mischievous and “a prey ripe for the evil one”. She is clever, proud, shrewd with money, independent and obstinate; she would rather suffer than beg or ask for forgiveness. Constance is… suited to her name, like the continuity and familiarity in her life. She is more dutiful and happy to assume she will go into the shop, but Sophia “had always hated the shop. She did not understand how her mother and Constance could bring themselves to be deferential and flattering to every customer that entered”. Their teenage banter, mild naughtiness (trying on mother’s new dress) and sneering at a servant from afar could easily be transplanted to teenage sisters anywhere or when. Curiously, their adult relationship seems more like something from a historical novel than their childhood one. IS BLINDNESS THE PRICE OF LOVE? A recurring theme is the wilful blindness of love, be that of a parent, spouse or even another relative. All the main characters suffer for it in different ways, though one finally acknowledges the truth to herself, if not to others, and “her affection was unimpaired”. Can a child of less than five be bad? Is it “hidden sullenness or mere callous indifference, or a perfect unconsciousness of sin?” And is it misguided to say “If we can be happy only when I give way to him, I must give way to him”? However, that is hard to maintain: “She lived for nothing but to please him; he was, however, exceedingly difficult to please, not in the least because he was hypocritical and exacting, but because he was indifferent… whereas he was the whole of her universe, she was merely a dim figure in the background of his.” MODERNITY AND FEMININE INSIGHT? The book has a curiously modern feeling in some ways. In particular, Sophia’s teenage rebellion doesn’t feel like something from a Victorian novel (though this was written in Edwardian times), either in terms of what she says, or what she does. When defiant, she is sullen and evasive, exhibits a “diffident boldness”, plays the fairness card (“Oh, of course Constance is always right”), answers back with excessive logic (“You tell me not to answer back, and they you say you’re waiting”) and declares “You all want to make me miserable… Put me in prison if you like! I know you’d be glad if I was dead!”. One confrontation end when, “with a brusque precipitation of herself, vanished upstairs”. I’m sure most modern readers have been involved in such conversations. Although written by a man, all the main characters are women, but they are convincingly and insightfully rendered. For example, Constance’s feelings after her honeymoon are delicately but touchingly described: “She sat there full of new knowledge and new importance, brimming with experience and strange, unexpected aspirations, purposes, yes - and cunnings!...You could see the timid thing [old, virginal Constance] peeping wistfully out of the eyes of the married woman.” And the all-encompassing love of a new mother for her baby, she “dived into the recesses of the perambulator and extricated from its cocoon the centre of the universe, and scrutinised him with quiet passion.” The awkwardness of breastfeeding in front of others, and the stresses of controlled crying (not that it’s called that) are also discussed. At a more trivial level, problems with builders promises, timescales and workmanship are timeless, and the etiquette of all-you-can-eat fare troubled even Edwardians, apparently: the delicate dilemma of “fixed price per day for as much as they can consume while observing the rules of the game… in an instant decided how much they could decently take, and to what extent they could practise the theoretical liberty of choice… they had the right to seize all that was present under their noses, like genteel tigers; and they had the right to refuse; that was all.” (In contrast, it is very Victorian in the way that women can be laid low by severe shock or a bit of a chill.) SYMPATHY In the Preface, Bennett says “it is an absolute rule that the principal characters of a novel must not be unsympathetic”. I don’t necessarily agree, but he stuck to his principle in this, and the others of his that I have read, which is not to say that his characters are flat or saccharine. And he has no such qualms where some of the minor male characters are concerned. MISCELLANEOUS QUOTES: • “It is to be remembered that in those days Providence was still busying himself [yes, him] with everybody’s affairs.” • The wakes (regional festival) were “an orgiastic carnival, gross in all its manifestations of joy. The whole centre of the town was given over to the furious pleasures of the people… displaying all the delights of the horrible.” • “She was athirst for sympathy in the task of scorning everything local.” • Typical Bennett: “One of Maggie’s deepest instincts, always held in check by the dominance of Mrs Baines, was to leave pails prominent on the main routes of the house: and now, divining what was at hand, it flamed into insurrection.” • Dr Harrop was “common sense in breeches”. • When Mr Scales mentioned his fox-terrier bitch, he “had no suspicion that he was transgressing a convention by virtue of which dogs have no sex” (and I wonder if any Edwardian readers would have balked at Bennett’s use of the word “sex”). • Be careful what may be overheard by servants, “A clumsy question might enlighten a member of the class which ought ever be enlightened about one’s private affairs”. • “The era of good old-fashioned Christmases, so agreeably picturesque for the poor, was not yet at an end.” • “The remarkable notion that twelve thousand pounds represents the infinity of wealth, that this sum possessed special magical properties which rendered it insensible to the process of subtraction.” • “Good clothes, when put to the test, survive a change in fortune, as a Roman arch survives the luxury of departed empire.” • “The irrational obstinacy of a physically weak man who sticks to it that he can defy the laws of nature.” • Bennett loves writing about hotels, and says “critically examining newcomers was one of the amusements of the occupants of the lounge.” • “The patched and senile drabness of the [hotel] bedroom.” • You can tell respectable hotel guests because “their clothes… did not flatter the lust of the eye”. • “The respectability of a luxury private hotel makes proper every act that passes within its walls.” (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jun 18, 2012
| Jun 24, 2012
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Jun 18, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0099521342
| 9780099521341
| 3.94
| 8,050
| 2003
| Apr 01, 2010
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A light but enjoyable read that scatters numbers and facts about the brain rather like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (http://www.g...more
A light but enjoyable read that scatters numbers and facts about the brain rather like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). However, in other respects, it's very different, being set in Japan and being primarily about friendship. The eponymous housekeeper is a young single mother (herself the only child of a single mother) with a ten-year-old son. She becomes daily housekeeper to a former maths professor whose head injury in 1975 means he only remembers the most recent 80 minutes, plus things before 1975, nearly 20 years before the story is set (~1992). Numbers are now the professor's life; he works on problems for magazine competitions, and he comes alive when he spots numbers or patterns to explain to his increasingly interested housekeeper. When he discovers she has a son, he is adamant that he must come to the house after school and in the holidays: he adores children, and thinks their needs (or his exaggerated perception of them) trump everything else. Thus a relationship is built between the prof and the boy (nicknamed Root), based on numbers and baseball statistics. His short memory span makes him an incredibly patient teacher. The practicalities and humour of coping with the prof's condition are well portrayed, and the relationships are very touching. And yet, despite the efforts of the housekeeper and her son, the professor's capacity for joy is literally limited. Is there much point having any sort of friendship with or giving happiness to someone who will not remember it? The housekeeper and her son learn so much from the professor, but does he get anything meaningful in return? Despite all the notes, he has to start each day, each situation, anew. (The hire and fire nature of a housekeeping agency has parallels.) Some of the maths may be a little obscure for some readers, but not fully understanding it shouldn't impair enjoyment of the book. The prof's message is not about right answers, but listening to and feeling numbers, and there are times when the passion borders on religious, "I needed this eternal truth... I needed the sense that this invisible world was somehow propped up by the visible one... Somehow this line would help me find peace." (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jun 08, 2012
| Jun 09, 2012
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May 30, 2012
| Paperback
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| 3453130790
| 9783453130791
| 3.93
| 215,755
| 1962
| Jan 31, 1997
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How to review an infamous book about which so much has already been said? By avoiding reading others’ thoughts until I’ve written mine. There are horro...more How to review an infamous book about which so much has already been said? By avoiding reading others’ thoughts until I’ve written mine. There are horrors in this book, but there is beauty too, and so much to think about. The ends of the book justify the means of its execution, even if the same is not true of what happens in the story. BOOK vs FILM I saw the film first, and read the book shortly afterwards. Usually a bad idea, but in this case, being familiar with the plot and the Nadsat slang made it easier to relax (if that's an appropriate word, given some of the horrors to come) into the book. The film is less hypnotic and far more shocking than the book, because it is more visual and because it ignores the final chapter. PLOT AND STRUCTURE It is a short novel, comprising three sections of seven chapters, told by “your humble narrator”, Alex. In the first section, Alex and his teenage gang indulge in “ultra-violence” (including sexual assault of young girls); in the middle section, Alex is in prison and then undergoes a horrific new treatment (a sort of aversion therapy); the final section follows him back in the real world, rejected by his parents, now the puppet of opposing political factions. The whole thing is set in a slightly dystopian, very near future and explores issues of original sin, punishment and revenge, free will, and the nature of evil. One awful incident involves breaking in to a writer’s house and gang raping his wife, who later dies. A similar incident happened to Burgess’ first wife (though he wasn’t there at the time). Writing a fictionalised account from the point of view of the perpetrator is extraordinary: charitable, cathartic, or a more complex mixture? THEMES Why is Alex as he is? “What I do I do because I like to do”, and perhaps there is no more that can be said. As Alex ponders, “this biting of their toe-nails over what is the CAUSE of badness is what turns me into a fine laughing malchick. They don’t go into the cause of GOODNESS… badness is of the self… and that self is made by old Bog or God and is his great pride and radosty”. So, can people like Alex be cured, and if so, how? Imprisonment, police brutality, fire and brimstone don’t work. Enter the Ludovico Technique, whereby Alex is injected with emetics before being strapped, with his eyelids held open, to watch videos of extreme physical and sexual violence. He becomes conditioned to be unable to commit such acts, or even to watch or think about them. This raises more questions than it solves. The prison governor prefers the old “eye for an eye”, but has to give in to the new idea of making bad people good. “The question is whether such a technique can really make a man good. Goodness comes from within… Goodness is something chosen. When a man cannot choose he ceases to be a man.” The chaplain has doubts, too, “Is a man who chooses the bad perhaps in some way better than a man who has the good imposed upon him?” On the other hand, by consenting to the treatment, Alex is, in an indirect way, choosing to be good. The technique (or torture) is promoted as making Alex “sane” and “healthy” so that he can be “a free man”, but although he is released from prison, he remains imprisoned by the power of the technique, even to the extent that the music he loves now makes him sick (because it was playing in the background) and his inability to defend himself means he becomes a victim. But do the ends justify the means? Dr Brodsky thinks so: “We are not concerned with motive, with the higher ethics. We are only concerned with cutting down crime.” However, if it wears off, it will all have been for nothing. The final chapter (omitted from the film and many US editions of the book) feels incongruously optimistic in some ways, but by suggesting the true answer as to what will cure delinquency is… maturity, it might be thought the most pessimistic chapter. Is teen violence an inevitable cycle: something people grow into, and then out of when they start to see their place in the bigger picture? And if so, is that acceptable to society? The possibility of redemption is a common thread, reaching its peak in this final chapter. Burgess was raised as a Catholic, educated in Catholic schools, but lost his faith aged sixteen. He continued to have profound interest in religious ideas, though, as explained here: http://www.anthonyburgess.org/burgess.... LANGUAGE – AND NADSAT SLANG A distinctive feature of the book is the Nadsat slang that Alex and his droogs use (“nadsat” is the Russian suffix for “teen” – see http://blog.oxforddictionaries.com/20...). Burgess invented it from Russian with a bit of Cockney rhyming slang and Malay, because real teen slang is so ephemeral, the book would quickly seem dated otherwise. He wanted the book published without a glossary, and it is written so carefully, that the meaning is usually clear, and becomes progressively so, as you become accustomed to it: “a bottle of beer frothing its gulliver off and a horrorshow rookerful of like plum cake” and “There’s only one veshch I require… having my malenky bit of fun with real droogs”. Where an English word is used literally and metaphorically, the Nadsat one is too; for example, “viddy” is used to see with one’s eyes and to understand someone’s point. The skill of carefully used context makes Russian-based Nadsat much easier to follow than the dialect of Riddley Walker (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), even though the latter is based on mishearings of English. (To be fair, the whole of Riddley Walker is written in dialect, whereas in Clockwork Orange, it's conventional English with a generous smattering of slang.) Where the meaning isn't immediately obvious or is merely vague, you go with the flow until it seeps into your consciousness (much as would happen if you were dropped into an environment where you had no language in common with anyone else). It's another way of sucking the reader into Alex's world and his gang. Nadsat lends a mesmerising and poetic aspect to the text that is in sharp contrast to the revulsion invoked by some of the things Alex does: tolchocking a starry veck doesn’t sound nearly as bad as beating an old man into a pulp - Nadsat acts as a protective veil. In the film, this effect is somewhat diluted because you SEE these acts. The book was like published in 1962 and Alex frequently uses “like” as an interjection as I did earlier in this sentence – something that has become quite a common feature of youth speak in recent times. What happened in between, I wonder? Other than that, much of what Alex says has echoes of Shakespeare and the King James Bible: “Come, gloopy bastard thou art. Think thou not on them” and “If fear thou hast in thy heart, o brother, pray banish it forthwith” and “Fear not. He canst taketh care of himself, verily”. There is always the painful contrast of beautiful language describing unpleasant and horrific things. Similarly, the repetition of a few phrases is almost liturgical. Alex addresses his readers as “oh my brothers”, which is unsettling: if I’m one of his brothers, am I in some way complicit, or at least condoning, what he does? Another recurring phrase is, “What’s it going to be then, eh?” It is the opening phrase of each section and used several times in the first chapter of each section. MUSIC Burgess was a composer, as well as a writer, and Alex has a passion for classical music, especially “Ludwig van”. This may be partly a ploy to make the book more ageless than if he loved, for example, Buddy Holly, but more importantly, it’s another way of creating dissonance: a deep appreciation of great art is not “supposed” to coexist with mindless delinquency. Alex has lots of small speakers around his room, so “I was like netted and meshed in the orchestra”, and the music is his deepest joy: “Oh bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling… sloshing the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh.” The treatment destroys this pleasure- with dramatic results. Yes, there are horrors in this book, but there is beauty too, and so much to think about. The ends of the book justify the means of its execution, even if the same is not true of what happens in the story. Brilliant.(less) | Notes are private!
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| Jun 28, 2012
| Jul 06, 2012
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May 24, 2012
| Paperback
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| 1853813737
| 9781853813733
| 3.41
| 46
| Jan 01, 1970
| May 01, 2012
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Written and set in the early 1970s, this is ostensibly about Toby, who is expelled from his private school for taking pot, shortly before his 18th bir...more
Written and set in the early 1970s, this is ostensibly about Toby, who is expelled from his private school for taking pot, shortly before his 18th birthday and Oxford exams. However, all the most important relationships in the book are between mothers and daughters; the men are generally less astute and more passive. The prologue has no immediately obvious relevance to the story outlined on the cover and above, and the rest of the book switches viewpoints and style quite often: a common technique nowadays, and one I'm familiar with, but I did find it slightly confusing at times in this book, partly because it wasn't always clear who was speaking or what their relationship with other characters was. The family ticks along in a middle class way until Toby's expulsion exposes how troubled and dysfunctional they really are. The over-anxious Islington-type parents are desperate to understand, and their attempts at analysis give the story depth and complexity, but their relationships with their own parents and siblings impair their efforts. They (and all their friends) live vicariously through their children, project their own ambitions on them, then pathologise any discrepancies. Even a psychiatrist friend has demons of his own, makings his wife take tranquilizers "so HE can be bad-tempered with impunity." Blame does not always lie where it first seems: there are secrets and skeletons, and those who know about them often pretend they don't. At times it feels as if almost everyone is trying to analyse everyone else, whilst hiding things about themselves - and getting it wrong. Which narrators can the reader trust? A pivotal character is 12 year old Lucy, the middle child. Many sections are told by her, but she is inconsistently naive and knowing. She feels the pain and frustration of wanting to understand and help (whilst also being afraid of the truth), but being left out and ignored. Yet other types of awkwardness are well described: teenage party encounters; first fumblings; fear that anything one says to a psychiatrist may be misinterpreted; in a disco/dance, "the young swayed separately; shut off from each other like autistic children"; meeting old school friends who only talk about (and live through) their children when you don't want to talk about yours. I have no experience of drug taking, drug takers or nervous breakdowns, so I have no idea how plausible that aspect is; it seems a little melodramatic in places, but that may be a feature of the era as much as the chemicals and condition. But who can not be moved by the pain of "It was rather as if we had had a photograph of our son and it had suddenly been replaced by the negative: thin and transparent. And slightly blurred." If this story were retold in the twenty-teens, it would be a little different, but I think the essential message would remain. Toby's father, Charlie, sums it up well: "All generations face, on the surface, much the same problems; each knows its situation to be unique. Ours, for example. Children before the war, emerged through it into parenthood, Freud in one hand, Spock in the other, into a world where truth is relative, uncertainty a virtue, nothing known... Except guilt, possibly. That is our hall-mark. Out parents did their duty, knew what was right; our sins were original, no fault of theirs." The final wish (curse?) is perhaps impossible: "Be well, be happy".(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| May 19, 2012
| May 30, 2012
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May 19, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0099540096
| 9780099540090
| unknown
| 3.58
| 561
| 1986
| Oct 01, 2009
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Julian Barnes has certainly improved a bit in the last 25 years. I recently read his wonderful latest book, The Sense of an Ending (review here: http:...more
Julian Barnes has certainly improved a bit in the last 25 years. I recently read his wonderful latest book, The Sense of an Ending (review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), and for my second Barnes, turned to this, one of his earliest, from 1986. Both books document a long life, but the style is very different. There is a promising novel struggling to reveal itself here, but this isn't it. It is the story of Jean, told in three parts: as a late teen on the cusp of marriage at the end of WW2, in middle age, and then approaching her 100th birthday in 2020. The first two are conventional enough, but the third is too concerned with theology (15 different arguments for and against the existence of God/gods), radical feminism, euthanasia and elderly care, philosophy, "big brother" and futurology. The points of debate echo issues in earlier sections, but it just doesn't work as a coherent narrative and the character development didn't ring true. Jean is naive and not especially intelligent or well-educated, and as the story is told from her point of view, the first section in particular is told in a rather abrupt and simple style that I didn't find very enticing. Somehow, by the middle section, she is taking expensive long-haul holidays on her own - and with her teenage son's blessing. The coverage of sex is both poignant (reminiscent of McEwan's On Chesil Beach (review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...)) and comical - especially the excerpts of a coy sex manual and appointments with a family planning doctor who merely baffles Jean. The descriptions of loneliness are well-done, too: "He had girlfriends, but he found, when he was with them, that he never felt quite what he was expected to feel: the inaccessibility of group pleasure, he discovered, could even extend to gatherings of two. Sex didn't make him feel lonely; but it didn't... make him feel particularly accompanied. As for male camaraderie, there often seemed something false about it. Groups of men got together because they feared complications.... they wanted certainty; they wanted definite rules. Look at monasteries. Look at pubs." The final section was written almost before the internet, but spends a lot of time describing a cross between Wikipedia and Google, and people's relationship with it ("Sessions might turn you from a serious enquirer into a mere gape-mouthed browser."). It's cleverly prescient, though not totally accurate, which exacerbates the contrast between the this section and the more realistic earlier sections. The recurring themes are fear and bravery: fear of flying, death, sex (McEwan), state snooping, and God, but they are light in the first part and overindulged in the final section. Related to that, there's a fair amount of running away, both literal and metaphorical. Despite my criticisms, there are flashes of the wordsmith to come: * "The word 'prostitute' sidled into her mind like a vamp through a door." * "Phrases dropped from the page and stuck like burrs to her winceyette nightdress." * "What puzzled her was how closely you could live beside someone without any sense of intimacy." * "Market towns - the sort of places with a bus garage but no cathedral." * "The hurricane, excreting the black smoke of its own obituary." * "The presence of this forceful girl rendering him almost translucent." * "The night's clouds oozed drizzle onto the car." * "Anyway I don't think you're a... lesbian... her pause disinfecting the word, making it sound distant and theoretical." * "a very old Electrolux shaver... so old-fashioned in design that it looked like something else, perhaps a sexual appliance of unpopular function."!(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| not set
| May 08, 2012
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May 08, 2012
| Paperback
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| 184408308X
| 9781844083084
| 3.78
| 117
| 1976
| Apr 01, 2006
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A simple, poignant story that focuses on obligation, guilt and blame, rather than characters or plot - though it's not as depressing as it sounds. It i...more A simple, poignant story that focuses on obligation, guilt and blame, rather than characters or plot - though it's not as depressing as it sounds. It is set around the time of publication (mid '70s), though at times it could easily be a decade or two earlier (except that the name Amy feels very incongruous). Amy and Nick are a late middle-aged, middle-class couple on a Mediterranean cruise, as he recuperates from a major illness. A younger, American author called Martha attaches herself to them as the only other English speakers, and when Nick suddenly dies, she helps Martha with the arrangements. The book is mainly about the relationship between Amy and Martha: Amy feels obligated to Martha, but has little in common with her, and finds her needy and annoying ("She did all that for me and I never want to see her again, she thought in shame"). Her visits, when they cannot be prevented, become a way to pass time, "rather taken for granted than welcome". At one point, her son James warns, "Don't for heaven's sake punish her because you owe her gratitude." Is Amy too cold, selfish and ungrateful, or is she just a shocked and grieving widow? "No one cares for reminders that gratitude is due." In addition, Amy's relationship with James is tinged with all sorts of guilt, exacerbated by his wife Maggie ("in spite of lack of warmth, their relationship was exemplary"), and their children Dora and Imogen. Worst of all, are the guilty feelings that arise when someone dies: what should one have done differently? The only two people who never blame are Amy's housekeeper Ernie and widowed doctor friend Gareth, but even so, their competence sometimes makes her ashamed of her own helplessness, which she tries to hide. The social niceties and incongruities are acutely observed. This is the first Taylor I've read, but I can see why she's likened to Bowen, Austen and Pym (whom I have read). There is even a painfully funny scene where James and Maggie discuss his mother's widowhood, starting, "We must do all we can for her", diluting their suggestions the more they discuss it, so the scene ends "So nothing was done" (Shades of "Sense and Sensibility"). The children provide plenty of humour, individually and in their sibling rivalry: Dora (the elder) is the more sympathetic character, but very knowing, and capable of being quite manipulative, albeit in a charming way, whereas Isobel is horridly selfish, rude and spoilt (fun to read about, but not to meet!). I hope that Taylor didn't see too much of herself in Martha, in whose books "objects took the place of characters" and who uses vague research as an excuse for unwanted nosiness. When she visits, Amy realises she is "like a tiresome child... but unlike a child she can't be reprimanded". Despite her inquisitiveness, at other times she is strangely and frustratingly indifferent to people and social norms - yet has the audacity to accuse Amy of being uninterested in people. She also has a knack of expecting things and tacitly making other people feel guilty for not anticipating this, though to what extent this is deliberate is not clear. The other link between Martha and the children is how they see themselves in the mind of others. Isobel "was disturbed, as many children and all egoists are... by the idea of a non-existence at any time with relation to the present" and Martha has similar concerns that when she goes away, she'll be able to picture Amy's life, but that Amy "won't be able to imagine ME, or my life. That makes me feel unreal". By the end of the book, Amy is blaming herself for some aspect of everyone's life, including her own, with a smidgen or respite when "she was relieved... to be able to say that there was blame lying elsewhere". The final questions is "What else could I have done?", and I'm not sure I have a satisfactory answer to that, because I'm not sure that anything else would necessarily have led to a happier outcome. (less) | Notes are private!
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| not set
| Apr 28, 2012
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Apr 28, 2012
| Paperback
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| 0224094157
| 9780224094153
| 3.69
| 49,999
| Aug 04, 2011
| Aug 04, 2011
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This is an exploration of memory, exquisitely written as the thoughts of an old man, looking back on his life. It opens with six images (an unexpected...more This is an exploration of memory, exquisitely written as the thoughts of an old man, looking back on his life. It opens with six images (an unexpected word in several of them makes them more vivid), each of which form part of the story: “I remember, in no particular order: - a shiny inner wrist; - steam rising from a wet sink as a frying pan is laughingly tossed into it; - gouts of sperm circling a plughole, before being sluiced down the full length of a tall house; - a river rushing nonsensically upstream, its wave and wash lit by half a dozen chasing torch beams; - another river, broad and grey, the direction of its flow disguised by a stiff wind exciting the surface; - bath water long gone cold behind a locked door.” Tony and his three friends were somewhat pretentious teenagers, from moderately privileged backgrounds (“one of those suburbs which has stopped concreting over nature at the very last minute, and ever since, smugly claimed rural status”), on the cusp of university. As they go their separate ways, they stay in touch to greater or lesser extents, but events of their youth echo across the years, and as he approaches retirement, Tony tries to draw the threads together and make sense of his life. Very self-absorbed (and not especially likeable), but if anything, I think that makes the book more interesting. In particular, there are two rather unbalanced relationships that left their mark: with Adrian (who joined school later than the others) and his first proper girlfriend, Veronica. He suffers “pre-guilt: the expectation that she was going to say something that would make me feel properly guilty”. Despite this, and a couple of shocking incidents, Tony is not unhappy, though he is not entirely happy either. His reference to the “small pleasures and large dullnesses of home” is apt. Although he was at university in the sixties, “Most people didn’t experience the sixties until the seventies”, though he experienced a confusing mix of the two. Nostalgia doesn’t help, “the powerful recollection of strong emotions – and regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives”. Can you reverse remorse to guilt and forgiveness? The recurring theme is the accuracy, or inaccuracy, of memory, coupled with the effects of time. Tony is forever musing on memory, history and truth. Revelations prompt further re-evaluation and interpretation. Maybe none of this is true (some elements of the plot and the behaviour of key characters are implausible, or at least, not adequately explained), but does it matter anyway? Surely that is the point Barnes is making. Tony is honest about his dishonesty as a narrator (except that he constantly says his relationship with his daughter is closer than it seems from what he describes), and constantly ponders on it: * “What you end up remembering isn’t always the same as what you witnessed.” * “If I can’t be sure of the actual events any more, I can at least be true to the impression those facts left.” * It gets harder with age: “As the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been”, and “memory becomes a thing of shreds and patches”. * “When we are young we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.” * “The history that happens underneath our noses ought to be the clearest, and yet it’s the most deliquescent.” * “History is that certainty produce at the point where the imperfection of memory meets the inadequacy of documentation.” * “Mental states can be inferred from actions… Whereas in the private life, I think the converse is true: that you can infer past actions from current mental states.” Similarly, X “thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us… do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it”. * “It takes only the smallest pleasure or pain to teach us time’s malleability.” In the end, the meaning of life is “to reconcile us to its eventual loss by wearing us down, by proving, however long it takes, that life isn’t all it’s cracked up to be”! Some people dislike Tony so much that that it taints their enjoyment of the entire book, but to some extent Tony is everyman and we are all Tony, which leads me to wonder if the dislikers are TOO like Tony for their own comfort! This is SO much better than another of his multi-decade life stories, dating from 25 years earlier, Staring at the Sun (review here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...).(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Apr 09, 2012
| Apr 20, 2012
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Apr 09, 2012
| Hardcover
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| 3.87
| 24,947
| 1988
| 2009
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"We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to on another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something." The power of abusive friendships and...more
"We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to on another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something." The power of abusive friendships and relationships is the theme of this book, though not all the relationships are tainted, so it's not depressing and at times it's quite amusing (e.g. discerning the mysteries of puberty). There is also a fair bit about art and artists, with a dash of early feminism. Elaine is an artist in her late fifties/early sixties revisiting Toronto for the opening of a retrospective of her work. This brings back vivid memories of her childhood, teens and twenties. The sections set in the past are told chronologically, and interspersed by the contemporary story of a few days in Toronto. Gradually all the threads tie up, particularly near then end when contrasting a curator’s descriptions of Elaine’s works with her own explanations, many of which arise from incidents described earlier in the book. However, “I can no longer control these paintings, or tell them what to mean. Whatever energy they have came out of me. I’m what’s left over.” Her early years were peripatetic but not unhappy: the family travel with her entomologist father. When she is seven, he takes a university post and they settle in the Toronto suburbs, but her family is rather eccentric, and she doesn't quite fit in, exacerbated by her being a tomboy and the fact she’s never really had the opportunity to make friends before, so doesn’t know the unspoken rules. Perhaps inevitably, Elaine becomes the victim of bullying, and the first overt instance is very cruel, although it involves no physical pain or nasty words. There is nothing to tell. “I have no black eyes, no bloody noses to report: C does nothing physical.” I’ve never really been bullied, but the thoughts and self-analysis sound plausible. Like so many victims, Elaine feels drawn to the bully: she “is my friend. She likes me. She wants to help me, they all do. They are my friends… I have never had any before and I’m terrified of losing them. I want to please. Hatred would have been easier… I would have known what to do. Hatred is clear, metallic, one-handed, unwavering; unlike love.” She reasons, “I will have to do better. But better at what?... I think they [bully’s older sisters] would be my allies if only they knew. Knew what? Even to myself I am mute.” She even gives things to her tormentors because “in the moment just before giving, I am loved” even though she has no doubt about the love of her own family. Elaine develops various coping strategies. She self-harms in a minor way (“the pain gave me something definite to think about”), adopts a talisman (the eponymous cat’s eye marble and the luck of a royal visit to the city) and in some ways, victimhood builds strength and also empathy. “I can sniff out hidden misery in others now.” She also escapes through art, especially of foreign places and discovers that “Fainting is like stepping sideways, out of your own body, out of your own time or into another time. When you wake up it’s later. Time has gone on without you.” The most important question is only occasionally made explicit: how should parents handle things? When Elaine’s mother realises something of what’s going on, she tells her daughter to toughen up, in part because she doesn’t know what else to suggest. The church-going mother of the main bully has a far more alarming attitude, based on the fact that Elaine is a heathen. Eventually Elaine finds the inner strength to walk away, “I can hear the hatred but also the need. They need me for this and I no longer need them.” Nevertheless, although they sometimes go for years without contact, the connection continues, though balance of their relationship alters at different times. I don’t know if all victims have the potential to become bullies, but Elaine occasionally has flashes of it in adulthood, “It disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.” She is always more relaxed around boys (she has an older brother), “boys are my secret allies”. Conversely, “I enjoy pestering the girls in this minor, trivial way: it shows I am not like them” and in a bar with boys from the university art class, “I expect nothing from them. In truth I expect a lot. I expect to be accepted.” As an adult, Elaine is moderately happy and successful, yet her past taints all her relationships to some extent. She also fears passing on her anxieties to her own daughters, “I felt I had to protect them from certain things about myself… But they didn’t seem to need that protection.” As a teenager, she didn’t want to know too much family history, even about apparently trivial things, “All this is known, but unimaginable. I also wish I did not know it. I want my father to be just my father, the way he has always been, not a separate person with an earlier, mythological life of his own. Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.” Lines I liked: * ”Clothes lines are strung with… a display of soiled intimacy, which they [mothers] have washed and rinsed, plunging their hands into the grey curdled water." * About knowing about her brother’s secret girlfriend, “Knowing this secret… makes me feel important in a way. But it’s a negative importance. I can know because I don’t count.” * “What they call a shopping complex, as if shopping were a psychic disease.” * In a department store, “the air is saturated with the stink of perfumes at war”. * “All fathers except mine are invisible in day time; day time is ruled by mothers. But fathers come out at night. Darkness brings home the fathers, with their real, unspeakable power. There is more to them than meets the eye.” * On the difference between faith and knowledge: Elaine thought she had a vision, but next morning was less certain, “I’m not sure now, that it really was the Virgin Mary. I believe it but I no longer know it.” * “Art is what you can get away with said somebody or other, which makes it sound like shop-lifting… A hijacking of the visual.” * “My name has solidified around me, with time. I think of it as tough but pliable now, like a well-worn glove.” * “Somehow the war never ended after all, it just broke up into pieces and got scattered, it gets in everywhere, you can’t shut it out.” * On giving money to a beggar, “It’s obscene to have such power; also to feel so powerless.” * “Craziness was considered funny, like all other things that were in reality frightening and profoundly shameful.” * An antique shop has “one-time throwouts, recycled as money”. * The angry sex of a disintegrating relationship: “We make love, if that is any longer the term for it. It’s not shaped like love, not coloured like it, but harsh, war-coloured, metallic. Things are being proved. Or repudiated.” (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Apr 03, 2012
| Apr 09, 2012
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Apr 03, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 014000176X
| 9780140001761
| 3.41
| 102
| 1902
| May 27, 1976
|
A delightful “lark”: a humorous Edwardian mystery, told in short chapters, each ending on a cliff-hanger or surprising revelation (written for seriali...more
A delightful “lark”: a humorous Edwardian mystery, told in short chapters, each ending on a cliff-hanger or surprising revelation (written for serialisation). It sounds clichéd, but is so well done, that it merely adds to the charm. Theodore Racksole is an American millionaire “who owned one thousand miles of railway, several towns, and sixty votes in Congress”. He and his daughter, Nella, visit The Grand Babylon Hotel in London, which he buys on a whim because the head waiter refuses to serve steak with a bottle of Bass. After this extravagant fit of pique, Racksole decides he rather likes the idea of actually running the place, frequented as it is by European royalty and other curious characters, but there is more intrigue than he first realises, which he and Nella are soon uncovering and trying to solve. Racksole is rich, but money does not make him as omnipotent in London, where he is unknown, as it did in the US. There is death, disappointment, disguise, political scheming, minor royals, kidnap, assassination, message drops, secret passages, secret passwords, foreign travel, chases, assignations, love, rejection, and anything else you might expect from the genre, all crammed into just over 200 beautifully written pages. Plausibility isn’t its strong suit, and I wonder about Nella’s motivation in particular, but it’s a tribute to Bennett’s writing that it mattered not a jot to me. I kept turning the pages with joy and anticipation. My only regret is that it wasn’t longer. At times, it has a feel of Oscar Wilde: * “That air of profound importance of which only really first class waiters have the secret.” * “The calculated insolence of the words was cleverly masked beneath an accent of humble submission.” * “An amiable scorn blended with an evident desire to propitiate and please.” * “The functions of a head waiter are generally more ornamental, spectacular, and morally impressive than useful.” * “His indifference was so superb, so gorgeous, that Racksole instantly divined that it was assumed for the occasion.” * “The difficult task of retaining one’s own dignity while not interfering with that of other people.” * “The clever and calculated insolence of his tone cut her like a lash as she lay bound in the chair.” * “It is astonishing how well a secret can be kept when the possessors of the secret are handled with the proper mixture of firmness and persuasion.” * “A prince is never seriously ill until he is dead. Such is statecraft.” Others are more Wodehousian: * “Like all people who have lived easy and joyous lives in those fair regions where gold smoothes every crease and law keeps a tight hand on disorder, she found it hard to realise that there were other regions where gold was useless and law without power.” * “She stood like a statue of scorn.” * “The deck was as white and smooth as her own hand… All the brass-work, from the band round the slender funnel to the concave surface of the binnacle, shone like gold. The tapered masts stretched upwards at a rakish angle… The rays of sun fell on her caressingly, like a restorative. All around the water was changing from wonderful greys and dark blues to still more wonderful pinks and translucent unearthly greens; the magic kaleidoscope of dawn was going forward in its accustomed way, regardless of the vicissitudes of mortals.” (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Mar 05, 2012
| Apr 03, 2012
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Mar 05, 2012
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0753827409
| 9780753827406
| 3.36
| 46,385
| Mar 08, 2011
| Jun 23, 2011
|
A tricky book to categorise, with SO many threads (and this review will do likewise): Natalia recounts her memories of two periods in her life: childh...more
A tricky book to categorise, with SO many threads (and this review will do likewise): Natalia recounts her memories of two periods in her life: childhood and a journey she makes as a young doctor in the aftermath of the breakup of Yugoslavia. These are mingled with magical-realistic stories of a generation or two earlier, and references to Shere Khan in Kipling’s “The Jungle Book”. There are also longish diversions into the backstory of other characters (Luka, the husband of "the Tiger’s Wife", and Darisa the Bear), which may or may not be apocryphal. This does make it disjointed and creates a little confusion at times: I wasn't always immediately certain what was meant to be true and what was allegorical, or if and how the different strands related to each other. THEMES and CONTEXT In addition to the obvious themes of life, death, belief, and war, the issues of sexuality, disability, and whether people should know they are going to die are explored. There is a LOT going on in this book; I almost wonder if it would be better as a set of novellas. I also felt rather hampered by my lack of knowledge of the region or its recent history, but that is my failing, not Obreht's (adding more background information would have spoiled the book). Nevertheless, the book drew me in, although by half to two-thirds of the way in, I was enjoying it rather less, but I did finish it, and I’m glad I did so. PLOTS It opens with Natalia being taken to see a tiger at the zoo by her grandfather, who tells her the story of the Tiger’s Wife, which is threaded through the book. She explains, “Because I am little and my love of tigers comes from him, I believe he is talking about me, offering me a fairy tale in which I can imagine myself”. Her deep love for her grandfather endured, but “By the time I was thirteen, the ritual of [seeing] the tigers had become an annoyance… I was the prisoner of a rite I no longer felt necessary. I didn't know at the time that the rite wasn't solely for my benefit.” The other crucial story is that of the Deathless Man, and this too, is woven through the contemporary story. I wonder how differently would I have read the book if this had been its title. The two stories are key to understanding the grandfather. His roles in them are part of what made him the man he is, and yet telling them takes him back to childhood. They also highlight the apparent contradiction of a man of science (a doctor) not just retaining traditional superstitions, but continuing to invest them with so much meaning and to pass them on. WAR The experience and aftermath of war is well described (fighting, shortages, betrayal, interrogation, suspicion, and also bizarre fun, such as vigils at the zoo during bombing raids – dressed as animals), but I wished I could see it more vividly: instead, it conjured images of WW2 France, because that is more familiar (albeit from films). After the war, and having lost his job, grandfather has “an overwhelming desire to revisit lost places, to re-establish unmaintained rituals. The zoo was one of these”. This explains his final journey, but also those of some of the other characters. The effect of war also demonstrates people’s desire to believe: “when confounded by the extremes of life – whether good or bad – people would turn first to superstition to find meaning, to stitch together unconnected events… No matter how great the secret, how imperative absolute silence, someone would always feel the urge to confess, and an unleashed secret was a terrible force.” DEATH There is a LOT of death, much of it strange: the Deathless Man, Luka dead/missing, exhuming a body in a vineyard, the mystery of grandfather's death, Darisa's taxidermy and (separately!) his epileptic sister. Darisa uses taxidermy to pre-empt Death and “flush him from his hiding places”, where he “hovered in the spaces between things… If he kept Death there, invited and preoccupied… it would not wander the house.” NAMES Names are given power, and it is surely significant that no one knows the name of the Tiger’s Wife – not even her husband. A name assigns identity (personal, ethnic, religious - crucial during civil war) and allegory. This means they can’t truly be changed, “his old name, and what it meant, would follow him.” NARRATION Natalia seems like an omniscient narrator, yet she frequently acknowledges that information comes second-hand, and even from those who were born after the events they described. This contradiction niggled a little (which is odd, because other strands are clearly not the literal truth). OVERALL I think this is a good book, but just not especially to my taste. I feel that I missed a lot of the depth it probably has (either that, or it’s pretentious twaddle, and its fans are like the crowd admiring the clothes of the naked emperor!). QUOTES that made me think: • “There was something determined about the way the blue paint clung to the shutters and the door.” • During the war, “They [government] were going for structure, control, for panic that produced submission – what they got instead was social looseness and lunacy… the kind of celebration that happens when people, without acknowledging it, stand on the brink of disaster.” • A Walkman was “the angry wheels of my contraband spinning through the plastic window.” • “The pattern into which we had fallen as a family over the years, the tendency to lie about each other’s physical condition and whereabouts to spare one another’s feelings and fears.” • “The tiger had no destination, only the constant tug of self-preservation in the pit of his stomach.” And later, “Necessity drew him slowly out of his domesticated clumsiness.” • The apothecary’s shop had “swollen bottles of remedies” and he would “revel in their calm, controlled promise of wellness… things that signified another plane of reality.” • Orphans being vaccinated were “oblivious to pain, unmoved in practice by the things that kids at home reacted against on principle.” • “The dead are celebrated. The dead are loved. They give something to the living.” • “The tracks were heavy with hesitation here… he was choking on his own fear.”(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Feb 20, 2012
| Apr 03, 2012
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Feb 20, 2012
| Paperback
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| unknown
| 3.55
| 8,603
| 1978
| unknown
|
A profoundly disturbing, but very well written book. Had I realised the true nature of it, I doubt I would have read it, and somehow the fact it is to...more
A profoundly disturbing, but very well written book. Had I realised the true nature of it, I doubt I would have read it, and somehow the fact it is told in such an unjudgemental way almost makes it worse. "I did not kill by father, but I sometimes think I helped him on his way", is the opening sentence. It is set in a hot summer in late '70s England. Four children live a rather isolated life in a very insular and not entirely happy family. Their father dies, and not long after, so does their mother (this much is mentioned in the blurb), leaving them to fend for themselves and each other. Tom is 5 or 6, Sue 12, Jack (the narrator) turns 15 and Julie about 16 or 17. Bereaved, fearful, lonely, unprepared, bored (school holidays), directionless, coupled with puberty and sibling squabbles. Each tries different coping strategies, none of which really work: shy Julie (previously with a reputation for "disruptive, intimidating quietness") takes charge, Sue reads and also writes a diary, Tom regresses (a cot delivers "an enveloping pleasure in being tenderly imprisoned"), and Jack... retreats and masturbates. But those behaviours are trivial in comparison to other actions. They lose sense of time, self and not just right and wrong, but what the rest of the world would judge as right and wrong: "Nor could I think whether what we had done was an ordinary thing to do, understandable even if it had been a mistake, or something so strange that if it was ever found out it would be the headline of every newspaper in the country... every thought I had dissolved into nothing." I found the story gripping and oddly credible, and yet I was appalled by it too - a little like Lolita.(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| not set
| Feb 19, 2012
|
Feb 19, 2012
| Paperback
| ||||||||||||||||
| 142192546X
| 9781421925462
| 3.65
| 37
| 1908
| Oct 10, 2005
|
This delightful book is far too short, though according to the Preface of "The Old Wives' Tale" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), it "was re...more
This delightful book is far too short, though according to the Preface of "The Old Wives' Tale" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), it "was received with majestic indifference by the British public"! Note 1: Comments that may look like spoilers actually tell you less than the blurb on the back of the book. Note 2: The title is entirely metaphorical; this is not a book for lovers of the macabre. It is a tragi-comic satire about identity, inhibition, love, the meaning and value of art, and the institutions of state, church, media and courts. It is whimsical, but not merely that; there is a decent plot as well. Priam Farll is a wealthy, successful Edwardian artist (shortly before WW1) who is cripplingly shy. He lives the life of a recluse, mainly in Europe, with his valet, Henry Leek. He is not, initially, a sympathetic character, but he rapidly became one. The story opens quixotically, "The peculiar angle of the earth's axis to the plan of the ecliptic - that angle which is chiefly responsible for our geography and therefore our history - had caused the phenomenon known in London as summer." The power of destiny is reinforced by other astronomical analogies, including, "Up in the corners of the ceiling, obscure in the eclipse of the cardboard shade, was a complicated system of cobwebs." Priam accidentally takes on the identity of Leek, and finds that although he gains some liberation, there are problems too (some unpleasant, and others comic). "He had wanted to be free, and free he was... But it appeared to him very remarkable that so much could happen, in so short a time, as the result of a momentary impulsive prevarication". Shyness is painful, "There were moments with him when he could not speak lest his should should come out of his mouth and flit irrevocably away", but not simple: "Like all shy people he had fits of amazing audacity", but not necessarily when he most needs them, and his audacious side can create situations that his shy side then struggles to overcome. Nevertheless, love, anonymity and ordinary middle class common sense come to his rescue. When things get tricky, he catches "a disconcerting glimpse of the depths of utter unscrupulousness that sometimes disclose themselves in the mind of a good and loving woman". Priam's art is distinctive, but what is the value of the art itself, or is it the name of the artist that creates the value? Does it even matter, and if so, to whom? And can a great artist cease to create or else change their style to an unrecognisable degree? "An imitation that no one can distinguish from the original is naturally as good as the original" - or is it? One assumes Priam's true identity will be revealed, and there are several ways it could happen. Even when it becomes a cause celebre in court, it is not clear what will be believed. Bennett has fun with this stage of the story, combining grand theatricality with raw economics. Cases drag on because "actors engaged at a hundred a day for the run of the piece do not crack whips behind experts engaged at ten or twenty a day". Only one person is immune to intimidation of the occasion (and it's not Priam). "All that he [Priam] demanded from the world was peace and quietness, and the world would not grant him these inexpensive commodities". But there is always art. "He could neither talk well nor read well... He could only express himself at the end of a brush... In minor ways he may have been, upon occasion, a fool. But he was never a fool on canvass... Why expect more of him? One does not expect a wire-walker to play fine billiards." I would love to take him under my wing, nourish his genius, and protect him from the world - except that I wouldn't manage to overthrow the indomitable Alice. Lines that captured my imagination: * A house of "perfect inconvenience" with lights that "were silently proving that man's ingenuity can outwit Nature" (i.e. night). * The down of a dressing gown was "warm as the smile of a kind heart". * The role of a doctor is "curing imaginary ailments by means of medicine and suggestion, and leaving real ailments to nature aided by coloured water". * "A magnificent woman whose youth was slipping off her polished shoulders like a cloak." "She was a woman who, as it were, ran out to meet you when you started to cross the dangerous roadway which separated the two sexes." * There are wonderful descriptions of Priam's first encounter with the Underground (metro) and its lifts (elevators): "another cage rose into the tunnel... vomited its captives, and descended quickly... and threw him [Priam] and the rest out into a white mine consisting of numberless galleries. He ran about these interminable galleries... at the bidding of painted hands... and occasionally magic trains without engines swept across his vision." * "Waiters who were trying to force them to depart by means of thought transference and uneasy hovering around their table." * "The room was ugly in a pleasant Putneyish way... a too realistic wallpaper... a carpet with the characteristics of a retired governess who has taken to drink." * Smart trousers had a crease "which seemed more than mortal". * "He said this with a very agreeable mingling of sincerity, deference, and mercantile directness." * Shades of Wilde: "To cultivate and nourish a grievance when you have five hundred pounds in your pocket, in cash, is the most difficult thing in the world." * "It nettled him [lawyer], too, merely to see a witness standing in the box just as if she were standing in her kitchen talking to a tradesman at the door." (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Feb 07, 2012
| Feb 09, 2012
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Feb 07, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1847670644
| 9781847670649
| 3.52
| 1,301
| 2011
| Sep 08, 2011
|
This is a remarkably good book, that I somehow failed to enjoy as much as I wanted or expected, but I think the failing is mine, rather than Byatt's....more
This is a remarkably good book, that I somehow failed to enjoy as much as I wanted or expected, but I think the failing is mine, rather than Byatt's. "The thin child in wartime" (Byatt herself) is given a book of Norse legends, that she treasures. Those stories are retold through her eyes and thoughts, interspersed with snippets about her own life, told in a similar epic, mythical, Silmarillionish style, weaving occasional lines of liturgy and hymns into the prose (as myths weave into each other and ourselves). It dips in and out of myth, but somehow I didn't feel a narrative pull. She is a thoughtful child, with a vivid imagination and an analytical questioning mind, comparing the gods of legend with the Christian one she learns about at school and church. "In the story told in the stone church a grandfatherly figure who resented presumption had spend six delectable days making things." She notices that characters come in threes, that there are two ways to win battles ("to be surprisingly strong, or to be a gallant forlorn hope"), and rules in stories exist to be broken. She treats all myths, including Christianity, like fairy stories, "these offered the pleasure to the mind that the unreal offers when it is briefly more real than the visible world can ever be." The only thing alive in the church is the English language. The war brings intellectual conflict, as well as more visceral fears, especially for her fighting father: "She asked herself who were the good and wise Germans who had written 'Asgard and the Gods'" and wondered how she could trust "the storytelling voice that gripped her imagination, and tactfully suggest explanations." If young Byatt really thought as the thin child does, it's no wonder she became a storyteller. "Part of the delight and mystery of this book was that everything was told several times, in different orders and in different tones of voice... It is told in the present tense, a prophetic vision of the future, seen as though it was Now. The think child became an onlooker in the death of the world... It felt different from Christian accounts of the end of things... Here the gods themselves were judged and found wanting." And to show her erudition as well as her empathy, there is an essay about mythology at the back of the book. She has fun with the gods' quirks, especially Loki's mischievousness: "Chaos pleased him... He would provoke turbulence to please himself and tried to understand it in order to make more of it. He was in burning columns of smoke in battlefields. He was in the fury of rivers bursting their banks, or the waterwalls of high tides throwing themselves over flood defences, bringing down ships and houses." The language is is rich, vivid and beautiful, especially when describing plants, animals and water ("The flung snake fell through the firmament in shifting shapes... her mane of fresh-fronds streaming back from her sharp skull, her fangs glinting."), but I expect that from Byatt. It is bound, printed and laid out with a strong eye for aesthetics. There are a few lovely pen and ink drawings to add to the images she conjures in the reader's mind. The parallels between the thin child's life and what she reads are clear (Ragnarok is the end of the world, and WW2 seemed as if it would be too), but mostly subtle. I can't fault it at any level, other than that it disappointed me, or perhaps that my reaction disappointed me. Perhaps I shouldn't try: "This is how myths work. They are things, creatures, stories, inhabiting the mind. They cannot be explained and do not explain; they are neither creeds nor allegories." (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Jan 22, 2012
| Feb 07, 2012
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Jan 22, 2012
| Hardcover
| |||||||||||||||
| 1841954314
| 9781841954318
| 3.78
| 15,898
| 2002
| Sep 11, 2003
|
"Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them." From that captivating opening (echoed several times later on), you are a voyeur, on a...more
"Watch your step. Keep your wits about you; you will need them." From that captivating opening (echoed several times later on), you are a voyeur, on an extraordinarily vivid journey. I was enthralled from the start, raced through the 800+ pages at every opportunity, and remain in awe of the way the story is told. Regularly addressing the reader in conspiratorial tones, lends an air of intimacy that suits the subject. CHARACTERS The central character is Sugar, a young prostitute who is uncommonly intelligent and well-read, but not conventionally attractive (she has psoriasis and doesn't really hide it), though she will famously do anything. During the dramatic turns of the story, we learn much about her, and yet she remains something of an enigma: once out of the brothel and engaged as a (somewhat unconventional) governess, her motives are often unclear, creating a growing sense of doubt that echoes those that others have about her. However, in many ways, six-year-old Sophie is at least as important, partly because her existence is barely acknowledged for much of the time. She is a very sorry figure with "the air of a domestic pet bought for a child who has since died" and "the defeated look of an impounded animal". A tatty rag doll is one of her few toys, and "Sophie handles him tenderly, with a hint of sadness, as if conceding he's ever-so-slightly less alive than she'd like to think he is". Nevertheless, Sophie's vulnerability and trust has a powerful effect, "Sugar feels something she would never have guessed she could feel: the thrill of flesh against unfamiliar flesh, She who has been fingered by a thousand strangers." Ultimately, this is the key relationship in the book. I think the only weakness is, later on, when Sophie's thoughts are implausibly adult and perceptive for one so inexperienced in life and with people. The main male character is William Rackham, who runs a perfumery and soap business. This is in sharp contrast to the dirtier aspects of the book (literal and metaphorical), though the analogy is never laboured. More powerful is Sugar's hatred of cut flowers, "The flowers she can tolerate... die firmly on their stems, in one piece to the last". RELIGION Being set in the 1870s, religion is relevant theme, along with how and if to help the poor and fallen. Drama and humour comes from three very different Christian characters: Agnes is a superstitious Roman Catholic, dabbling in other supernatural areas; Henry is traditional, idealistic, upstanding and uptight C of E, and Mrs Fox is pragmatic and radical - putting needs before doctrine, "a dissenter within a wider certainty", and not afraid to give her opinion (e.g. not believing the virgin birth!). Mrs Fox and Henry try, in very different ways, to help the destitute, but Sugar's intentions to do likewise come to naught. "When Sugar was poor, she always fancied that if she ever became rich, she'd help all the poor women in her profession, or at least all those she knew personally", but she doesn't, not even through her writing. "The stench of charity is as real as the horse-shit on her shoes." When visiting an old friend, she is uncomfortably aware that "Nothing I say comes from my heart" and she is "ashamed this time of feeling ashamed". She feels powerless to help. THE DESIRE TO WRITE An ultimately futile passion for writing is a key experience for many of the characters (William, Agnes, Sugar, Bodley and Ashwell, even perhaps, Sophie). Sugar's motives are strong and honourable, thinking of prostitutes, she ponders, "I am their voice... Who understands and cares more?". None of the writers change anything, yet somehow, the book is exciting more than depressing (though there is plenty of cause for misery). DICKENSIAN? Describing this as "dirty Dickens" sounds pejorative, but I think it encapsulates it rather well. There are many echoes of Dickens in some of the names, the milieu and the exposition of social ills (and something about Mrs Castaway's obsessive scrapbooking reminds me of Madame Defarge); you could link to Jane Eyre (mad wife and husband in claiming to be love with the governess, though it's not certain whether he really is), though that is more tenuous. ABRUPT ENDING The last quarter of the book is a little flabby, but it's not bad, and what has gone before is so strong, that I forgive it that. It ends abruptly, leaving the reader with many questions: * If Agnes had stayed in her room, could William and Sugar have been happy? * Is Sugar's concern for Agnes genuine, and if so, is she right to help her in the way she does? * Can Sugar's final action be justified? (Is William really that monstrous?) * Why doesn't Sugar do more to help those less fortunate - and is she wrong not to do so? * Does the bond between Sophie and Sugar convince, and is it strong enough? Don't be tempted to read "The Apple" (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...) for answers; there will be a few, but they're most unsatisfying. The original incompleteness works better. On the other hand, a completely separate collection of short stories, "Some Rain Must Fall", shows this novel isn't a one-off in terms of his writing (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...). QUOTATIONS Random quotes: * "She slipped out of the room, like a pretty moth emerging from a husk of dried slime." * "The stagnant contraceptive bouillon... the germs of another man's offspring." * Even shops can be sexualised "having unlocked the chastity of shutters and doors, they can't see the point of maintaining any shred of modesty." * "It was they [husband and son] who used to make her life a story... Nowadays her life is more like a newspaper: aimless, up-to-date, full of meaningless events." * Shops "have expanded in celebration of the crinoline's demise. The modern woman has been streamlined to permit her to spend freely." * "Superstitious atheist christian... believes in a God who, while he may no longer be responsible for the sun rising, the saving of the Queen or the provision of daily bread, is still the prime suspect when anything goes wrong." * A breakfast laden with awkward silence, "small morsels of time are consumed, with an indigestible eternity remaining." * "Letty greets them so avidly, as if a fresh coat of obsequiousness has just been applied to her." * "The sepulchral stillness of suburbia." * "That peculiar mixture of feline resentment and canine respect" when workers see a lady. * "She's so weary of stealth... she wishes only to be a member of the family... cosily welcome, forever."(less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Dec 21, 2011
| Jan 03, 2012
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Dec 21, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0099277085
| 9780099277088
| 3.40
| 4,191
| 1992
| 1998
|
Very disappointing, and yet not a dreadful book either (I've read five other McEwan's, all 4* or 5*). The narrator is preparing the memoirs of his dyin...more Very disappointing, and yet not a dreadful book either (I've read five other McEwan's, all 4* or 5*). The narrator is preparing the memoirs of his dying mother-in-law and particularly wanting details of a terrifying encounter with black dogs more than 40 years ago that changed the direction of her life, and therefore that of her husband and children. Jeremy describes his own childhood, contrasting it with that of his wife, and tells of trips to the care home to talk to his mother-in-law, recounting snippets of her life. As the book progressed, I became increasingly annoyed about this big secret and heavy-handed metaphor that would, presumably, be revealed at the end, thinking it would probably be an anticlimax. And it was. Other than that, the main theme is honesty - to oneself and to others. June and Bernard (Jeremy's parents-in-law) joined the Communist party at the end of the war. For me, the most effective passages were those that looked at how people twist or ignore the truth to maintain their faith in something, and the tensions between scientific rationalism and more instinctive spiritual aspects. McEwan points out that "Laboratory work teaches you better than anything how easy it is to bend a result to fit a theory", acknowledging that "rationalism is blind faith". Jean and Bernard were very different, except "their capacity, their appetite, for belief never diminished", though not necessarily in the same things. I was also stunned and delighted at the idea of "The Socialist Cycling Club of Amersham". Perhaps related to that, Jeremy is very conscious of one generation repeating the faults of a previous one, though he sometimes uses that as a convenient excuse. For example, almost losing touch with a young relative because "I could not bear to undergo another parting from X. The thought that I was inflicting on her the very loss I had suffered myself intensified my loneliness". One obvious topic that is never really addressed is depression, which is odd, given the title: the book even mentions that "the black dog" was how Churchill personified his depressive episodes. There are snippets where McEwan's perceptive writing shines though; it's the book as a whole that doesn't work for me. To end with the good writing: * "The companionable love-making that is the privilege and compromise of married life." * A terminally ill person was "buried in a sleep that had itself been smothered in an illness" so on waking, "she had to reconstruct her whole existence, who and where she was." * The liturgy at a funeral was "a succession of brilliant phrases, book titles, dying cadences that breathed life, pure alertness, along the spine". * An unhappy family entering a restaurant was "a luminous envelope of familial intensity". (less) | Notes are private!
| none
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1
| Oct 16, 2011
| Oct 25, 2011
|
Oct 16, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 057122413X
| 9780571224135
| 3.76
| 144,791
| Apr 05, 2005
| Mar 02, 2006
|
Very disappointing, despite a promising opening. It is a ridiculous story that is increasingly badly told. The narration is very conversational (which...more Very disappointing, despite a promising opening. It is a ridiculous story that is increasingly badly told. The narration is very conversational (which is fine) and is initially set in a co-educational English boarding school, in a country house. There are the usual friendships and fallings out, and it has children as young as 5 (maybe younger), but in many ways it seems quite idyllic. However, there is an understated menace from the outset, and the school is oddly obsessed with creativity. The pupils' vagueness about their eventual fate perhaps shadows that of the reader. Mention is made early on about carers and donors and they are told of "people who shudder at the very thought of you - of how you were brought into the world and why", but it's only towards the end that the details are made explicit. Unfortunately the blurb on the back cover gave away the main detail of the plot; I think I might have enjoyed the book more if I'd had to work it out for myself. The middle section is set in "the cottages" where the leavers go to live for a couple of years or so, and the story narrows to be more specifically about Kathy (the narrator), Ruth and Tommy. This exaggerates the contrast of the first part: they can indulge their hobbies (reading and sex, mostly), living comfortably without the need to work, but they are increasingly aware that soon things will change. The final section follows the three of them when they leave, and this is where the book completely lost any trace of believability for me. The underlying story is too full of holes, even within its own dystopian world. I just do not believe anyone would have the means to go to such extraordinary lengths when there are far simpler solutions. Also, why have carers travelling round the country to be with different donors, rather than each carer being based in one location? That is implausible and not even necessary for the story! Finally, it goes from bad to worse, with the cheap James Bond/Blofeld trick of having one character near the end explaining everything in a rush.(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Oct 02, 2011
| Oct 04, 2011
|
Oct 02, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 0099455358
| 9780099455356
| 3.79
| 5,396
| 1991
| Aug 13, 2003
|
A short book that is one long gimmick: clever as a writing exercise, but not worth publishing or reading. Once the novelty of a backwards story has wo...more
A short book that is one long gimmick: clever as a writing exercise, but not worth publishing or reading. Once the novelty of a backwards story has worn off, there is little point to it and I lost interest (though I did finish it). It opens with painfully vivid descriptions of a life-and death emergency. It turns out to be the story of one man's life, told backwards by a consciousness/conscience inhabiting his body, but with no memory of what is to come (i.e. what has already happened). It feels his emotions, but can't control them or his actions. He is a doctor, so in this world, he assaults people, "money... all comes down to the quality of your trash" and "all sustenance, all meaning" comes from the loo! At one point the narrator says "I have noticed... that most conversations would make much better sense if you ran them backwards. But with this man-woman stuff, you could run them any way you liked - and still get no further forward." There are duly several scenes where it is quite intriguing to read the dialog forwards then backwards, and the fact it works is clever, but... so what? I can't work out if it would be better or worse as a film: backwards footage of walking and eating is passé, but some other things would work well, e.g. "The ship's route is clearly delineated on the surface of the water and is violently consumed by our advance. Thus we leave no mark on the ocean, as if we were covering our tracks." There are some other ideas where running them backwards gives an intriguing or awkwardly funny slant, but they don't add up to a decent novel, and some of them are so gratuitous and irrelevant to the plot (e.g. buying teeth from the tooth fairy) that I can't help thinking Amis had a list of backward things he wanted to incorporate. The slightly more interesting ones include the "meticulous vandalism" of gardening and "uglify the home" instead of DIY, birth being a long, painful goodbye, "a wounded finger healed and sealed by the knife's blade", hippies going to Vietnam and returning sane, middle age resurgence of interest in sex being like puberty, breaking up reading like a slushy reconciliation, and bottling the gook from one's hair and selling it. But ultimately, they're a series of gimmicks. (less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Sep 12, 2011
| Oct 02, 2011
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Sep 12, 2011
| Paperback
| |||||||||||||||
| 1905147651
| 9781905147656
| unknown
| 3.72
| 480
| 2004
| unknown
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Very strange novella, and I don't know why it won the awards and plaudits that it did. Am I the boy declaring the emperor has no clothes, or have I mi...more
Very strange novella, and I don't know why it won the awards and plaudits that it did. Am I the boy declaring the emperor has no clothes, or have I missed the point? Either way, I wouldn't recommend spending your own money on it. This should probably be either 1* or 4*, but as I don't know which, I'm compromising on 2*. It is about truth and lies, dreams and reality, memory, predestination, fitting in, and the difference between having a dream and making one, but it's more superficial than that makes it sound. It's set in Angola, and is about, Felix, an albino bibliophile with mild OCD whose business is to "Guarantee your children a better past... I invent dreams for people, I am not a forger." Some chapters (they are typically only a page or two) tell of José Buchmann acquiring a new past, and others are "dreams". Felix says his job is "an advanced kind of literature... I create plots, I invent characters, but rather than keeping them trapped in a book I give them life, launching them into reality". Felix isn't the only one changing the past and creating new futures: his teacher was "moved by the helplessness of certain words. He saw them as down on their luck, abandoned in some desolate place in the language, and he sought to recover them", while his client, Buchmann, comes to believe in his new past more than Felix thought possible and is told, "You invented him... and now he's begun to invent himself". There are some nice images ("It was as though it were raining night... as though falling from the sky were the thick fragments of that sleepy black ocean through which the stars navigate their course."), and quirky ideas (a castle which had crenelations added to make it look authentic and soon the locals swore it had always had them. "If it were authentic, no one would believe in it."), but the plot meanders until suddenly, the penultimate chapter ties up everything in a mad rush. Very unsatisfying. For no very obvious reason, much of this story is told by a gecko, rather than an eponymous chameleon. Granted, there are parallels with people living chameleon-like lives, but if that's the point, why not have a chameleon narrator (maybe it's because "Geckos are unique among lizards in their vocalizations", according to Wikipedia?)? Lies are OK because they are common in nature, "What is camouflage, for instance, but a lie?" (Back to chameleons, rather than geckos.)(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Sep 10, 2011
| Sep 13, 2011
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Sep 10, 2011
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| B0051UPLG2
| 3.22
| 92
| 1972
| Jun 13, 2011
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NB I read this on paper, but the review is tied to the MP3 because that has the right cover (which I find helpful when skimming my shelves). Peake's wi...more NB I read this on paper, but the review is tied to the MP3 because that has the right cover (which I find helpful when skimming my shelves). Peake's widow wrote this Titus story, based on a few short pages and a few very brief notes, initially as a homage to him, rather than with the intention of publishing it. It has the distinct air of making peace and laying ghosts. I hadn't expected (or wanted) to like this, but I read it for completeness. But joy of joys, and to my great surprise, it is wonderful, and it made me appreciate "Titus Alone" more than I had previously: it brings things together rather well, and unexpectedly. Although it opens with Gertrude back at Gormenghast, it feels like a very natural continuation of Titus Alone, and ultimately, a natural end. "There was an aura of something he knew: something from the past; something that surrounded his whole being. Was it a caul or a shroud?" (birth or death?). Gormenghast and its characters still loom large ("The withdrawn magnitude of his mother who he could not love, but whose mental elegance chastened him" and Flay who "wore faithfulness like a garment"): no matter where he goes, as his mother previously told him in the second book, “There is nowhere else... you will only tread a circle... everything comes to Gormenghast.” Whereas Gormenghast is all about structure, ritual and meaning, those elements are now absent from Titus' life. The descriptions are still very visual and Titus is still a vagrant, relying on the kindness of strangers and very rudimentary survival skills. He is disoriented (suffering "haunted sleep"), wandering aimlessly, surviving dangers and friendships along the way, emphasising the themes of isolation, reinforced by incomprehension and inability to communicate. He is lonely, but doesn't want attachments: "I want other company and when it comes I shall want it to go. I shall want to flee from it. I am no longer, or perhaps never was, a part of the human race". Yet even when he lives in a small hamlet for nearly a year, he never learns the language - or is that purely a metaphor for his isolation and incomprehension? "Am I an onlooker or am I a catalyst?" He is searching, for he knows not what; "I must not live in the past, but how else can I live?". There is constant uncertainty about whether people are friend or foe: if the former, he is in their debt, and if the latter, he is in danger. In the later parts of the book, the echoes of Peake's own life become more obvious: when Ruth Saxon explains her love of painting and how it brings serenity; Herbert's very physical, balletic way of applying paint to paper; the descriptions of life in a unit for the mentally ill where "Each man was an island. Each island was too remote to link with any other."; the frustration of being physically unable to draw when "drawings were the sustenance of life" Fittingly, this book ends with a paraphrase of Gertrude's earlier message, "There's not a road, not a track, but will lead him home." Miscellaneous quotes: * "The bells continued to plague him, making sounds he should understand, but could not." * "There was an echo of something familiar, but it was hidden beneath the layers of memory as delicately poised as mille-feuilles." * Of his sister, Fuchsia, "I'll never know again the ardour of a love that knows no physical desire." * "He ploughed into life, as though was water, diving and coming up again into the air, breathing life, new and rare." * "There is always a hope, hidden subterraneaously. Hope keeps man alive amidst all horrors." But what does Titus hope for? * "Let him sleep away the past and present, until his stirring would lead him into a future." * Regarding girls who cover their breasts, "What he had always thought of as a coy and provocative gesture in then was actually a wish to belong to themselves until they succumbed to a sensation of which they were no longer mistress." * "A dizziness both spiritual and temporal... a supernatural ice immobilized Titus." * "Titus has a strong feeling that he would forever be an onlooker in life and death." * "He gathered experiences as a child might pick daisies, yet his daisy-chain was destined for no one's necklace or crown" People who knew him concluded "he was not there... In whatever company he found himself, he adapted to it, but he was no chameleon, and he remained an outsider." All my Peake/Gormenghast reviews now have their own shelf: http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...(less) | Notes are private!
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1
| Jul 04, 2011
| Jul 12, 2011
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Jul 04, 2011
| Kindle Edition
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