Shannon (Giraffe Days) has
3365 books
(495 selected)
—
compare books
|
stats
Shannon (Giraffe Days)
>
Books:
fiction
(495)
×
controls:
shelf settings: main
views:
covers
table
print
0749391510
9780749391515
3.57
666
Oct 12, 1990
Aug 04, 1997
None
Notes are private!
none
0
1
not set
not set
Sep 27, 2007
Paperback
1864480114
9781864480115
unknown
3.68
392
1992
unknown
None
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
not set
Sep 27, 2007
0679433740
9780679433743
3.69
11,554
Dec 12, 1991
Dec 24, 1997
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Sep 27, 2007
Hardcover
1875847944
9781875847945
unknown
3.48
1,584
1998
unknown
**spoiler alert** After getting a hefty insurance cheque because he wagered his wife would have twins (one is still born), Holland buys an almost tree...more
**spoiler alert** After getting a hefty insurance cheque because he wagered his wife would have twins (one is still born), Holland buys an almost treeless property in western New South Wales. His wife has passed away; he has only his little girl, Ellen.
He's no farmer. He starts planting eucalyptus trees on the farm and it soon turns into a hobby, then an obsession. Holland, son of a baker and a boiled-lolly-maker, becomes a "leading expert in the field", and has managed to get a specimen of all the species, and got them to grow.
As Ellen grows up, she becomes stunningly beautiful, her face "speckled" with freckles, moles, so that the eye wanders all over. She gets more and more attention from the lads in town, until Holland makes a decision. The man who can name every tree on the property will win his daughter's hand in marriage.
So begins an amusing charade of suitors failing to get past the first few trees, up until Mr Cave, who names them all. Meanwhile, an unnamed man courts Ellen amongst the trees with stories woven in and inspired by the names of the different trees, and in doing so names them all before Mr Cave.
This is a book of stories within stories, as well as snippets of information, facts, history, and cultural conundrums. One of my favourite stories is about the green grocer in Carlton who makes pictures out of fruit to attract the attention of a pretty but vain woman.
A lot of the stories have connections to people in the town - some made up, some maybe not - and it's almost like a puzzle to figure them out.
Ellen is a slightly disappointing character, almost as if Bail doesn't know how to write female characters, or doens't understand them enough to really flesh them out. The men were so neatly, perfectly described with some simple brush strokes, the short-comings in Ellen were made noticeable by comparison. The ending, too, was not quite as satisfying as it could have been, though it works and fits with the rest of the book.
It is set some time after the Second World War, I think in the 40s or 50s though it doesn't actually say, and so can get away with the main concept, plus some others. I don't think this story could be transferred so well into our current time.
One of the more provoking scenes is where Ellen, coming upon her only tree, E. Maidenii, she finds a nail driven into the trunk. You can guess her feelings there. Then she hears Mr Cave and her father approaching, and hides, only to see them start pissing against the trunk of her tree. Great imagery and symbolism there!
I love this book, regardless of any flaws. It will forever be one of my utmost favourites. But not everyone gets what I get out of it, so I feel the need for a personal kind of context.
I never truly appreciated my native country until I started studying some of our literature at uni. I did two courses focusing on Australian literature, and by the time I graduated (for the second time, as these things are done there) at the end of 2001, I was in hopelessly, helplessly, head-over-heels in gut-clenching love with the land.
When, the following year, I left and went to Japan to teach English for nearly three years, I would suddenly smell the shearing shed on my parents' farm, in the middle of the supermarket. (My boss tells me, whenever I mention smelling something that "isn't there" that I probably have a brain tumour - I call him an alarmist.) I missed the smell of Australia so much, the smell of the land, where all the trees, the plants, the grass, the soil, has such a distinct smell. In Japan, nothing smelt, which means you can smell 3-day-old exhaust fumes, the grime coating the walls of buildings, the smell of ramen and yakiniku and, strangely, snow - but never the trees or plants, because they didn't smell. My first cherry blossom time, I went up to a tree and sniffed the blossoms, expecting the same sweet scent as my mother's specimen in her big, beautiful garden. Nothing. I was supremely disappointed.
I recommended Eucalyptus to my book club and, almost unanimously, they agreed on it. I hadn't read it in several years, but it all came back as I delved in once more. The trees are my favourite characters. Skimming through the reviews on Amazon, written by Americans mostly, I noticed they all said "yes it uses trees as a tool to construct the stories, but that's not important" and "trees don't interest me, but that's not what this is about." (I'm paraphrasing here, don't hit me.)
I beg to differ. The trees are everything in Eucalyptus. You could almost say it's a book about trees disguised as a fairy tale, but I don't think that's the case either. The trees figure prominently, as characters not as background. All the different species, described not just visually but with personality too. The gum trees are described as selfish, offering little shade, and unsympathetic. After reading that the first time, I saw eucalypts in a whole new way.
In the midlands of Tasmania, which you drive through to get to Hobart from the north where my parents' farm is, you can see a quite unique, oddly disturbing but very memorable scene: round, hilly, very yellow, dry farmland, bare but for the grey skeletons of eucalypts, their silvery arms reaching out like a scarecrow, completely leafless. As a child, this view disturbed me, and I still don't know if the Midlands has always been like that or if it is the resutl of excessive farming, as in so many other places. I suspect the latter. In it's own way, it is stunning, beautiful, the stark colours, the dead trees still standing like grave markers, their branches lined with large crows and magpies and kookaburras. The dusty yellow grass, like a dry carpet, cropped short by sheep.
The book is full of beautiful imagery, using words to tell multiple layers of a story, like bark on a tree. I was so surprised and disappointed to find that the people in the bookclub didn't like it and were confused, thinking that Australia was just desert. They had no idea there were trees, bush (forest) and even grass!
For me, I can smell Australia when I read this book - not just the country, but the suburbs of Sydney and other places. I am transported home by this book.(less)
He's no farmer. He starts planting eucalyptus trees on the farm and it soon turns into a hobby, then an obsession. Holland, son of a baker and a boiled-lolly-maker, becomes a "leading expert in the field", and has managed to get a specimen of all the species, and got them to grow.
As Ellen grows up, she becomes stunningly beautiful, her face "speckled" with freckles, moles, so that the eye wanders all over. She gets more and more attention from the lads in town, until Holland makes a decision. The man who can name every tree on the property will win his daughter's hand in marriage.
So begins an amusing charade of suitors failing to get past the first few trees, up until Mr Cave, who names them all. Meanwhile, an unnamed man courts Ellen amongst the trees with stories woven in and inspired by the names of the different trees, and in doing so names them all before Mr Cave.
This is a book of stories within stories, as well as snippets of information, facts, history, and cultural conundrums. One of my favourite stories is about the green grocer in Carlton who makes pictures out of fruit to attract the attention of a pretty but vain woman.
A lot of the stories have connections to people in the town - some made up, some maybe not - and it's almost like a puzzle to figure them out.
Ellen is a slightly disappointing character, almost as if Bail doesn't know how to write female characters, or doens't understand them enough to really flesh them out. The men were so neatly, perfectly described with some simple brush strokes, the short-comings in Ellen were made noticeable by comparison. The ending, too, was not quite as satisfying as it could have been, though it works and fits with the rest of the book.
It is set some time after the Second World War, I think in the 40s or 50s though it doesn't actually say, and so can get away with the main concept, plus some others. I don't think this story could be transferred so well into our current time.
One of the more provoking scenes is where Ellen, coming upon her only tree, E. Maidenii, she finds a nail driven into the trunk. You can guess her feelings there. Then she hears Mr Cave and her father approaching, and hides, only to see them start pissing against the trunk of her tree. Great imagery and symbolism there!
I love this book, regardless of any flaws. It will forever be one of my utmost favourites. But not everyone gets what I get out of it, so I feel the need for a personal kind of context.
I never truly appreciated my native country until I started studying some of our literature at uni. I did two courses focusing on Australian literature, and by the time I graduated (for the second time, as these things are done there) at the end of 2001, I was in hopelessly, helplessly, head-over-heels in gut-clenching love with the land.
When, the following year, I left and went to Japan to teach English for nearly three years, I would suddenly smell the shearing shed on my parents' farm, in the middle of the supermarket. (My boss tells me, whenever I mention smelling something that "isn't there" that I probably have a brain tumour - I call him an alarmist.) I missed the smell of Australia so much, the smell of the land, where all the trees, the plants, the grass, the soil, has such a distinct smell. In Japan, nothing smelt, which means you can smell 3-day-old exhaust fumes, the grime coating the walls of buildings, the smell of ramen and yakiniku and, strangely, snow - but never the trees or plants, because they didn't smell. My first cherry blossom time, I went up to a tree and sniffed the blossoms, expecting the same sweet scent as my mother's specimen in her big, beautiful garden. Nothing. I was supremely disappointed.
I recommended Eucalyptus to my book club and, almost unanimously, they agreed on it. I hadn't read it in several years, but it all came back as I delved in once more. The trees are my favourite characters. Skimming through the reviews on Amazon, written by Americans mostly, I noticed they all said "yes it uses trees as a tool to construct the stories, but that's not important" and "trees don't interest me, but that's not what this is about." (I'm paraphrasing here, don't hit me.)
I beg to differ. The trees are everything in Eucalyptus. You could almost say it's a book about trees disguised as a fairy tale, but I don't think that's the case either. The trees figure prominently, as characters not as background. All the different species, described not just visually but with personality too. The gum trees are described as selfish, offering little shade, and unsympathetic. After reading that the first time, I saw eucalypts in a whole new way.
In the midlands of Tasmania, which you drive through to get to Hobart from the north where my parents' farm is, you can see a quite unique, oddly disturbing but very memorable scene: round, hilly, very yellow, dry farmland, bare but for the grey skeletons of eucalypts, their silvery arms reaching out like a scarecrow, completely leafless. As a child, this view disturbed me, and I still don't know if the Midlands has always been like that or if it is the resutl of excessive farming, as in so many other places. I suspect the latter. In it's own way, it is stunning, beautiful, the stark colours, the dead trees still standing like grave markers, their branches lined with large crows and magpies and kookaburras. The dusty yellow grass, like a dry carpet, cropped short by sheep.
The book is full of beautiful imagery, using words to tell multiple layers of a story, like bark on a tree. I was so surprised and disappointed to find that the people in the bookclub didn't like it and were confused, thinking that Australia was just desert. They had no idea there were trees, bush (forest) and even grass!
For me, I can smell Australia when I read this book - not just the country, but the suburbs of Sydney and other places. I am transported home by this book.(less)
Notes are private!
none
5
not set
Jan 2006
Oct 27, 2007
0676977111
9780676977110
3.76
144,872
Apr 05, 2005
Jan 31, 2006
It's very important, if you're intending to read this book, that you don't read any reviews or listen to any talk about it first. I had no idea what t...more
It's very important, if you're intending to read this book, that you don't read any reviews or listen to any talk about it first. I had no idea what this book was about before I read it - and the blurb gives you a very different impression, actually - and so I slipped easily into a story that was as engrossing as it was revealing.
If you know something about what to expect, though, I don't think you'll enjoy it nearly as much. It's a bit like an art installation that requires audience participation: you have to do your bit, too, to make it work, so it makes sense, so it tells the story it was meant to tell. Keep yourself in the dark, that's my advice. Because of this, there's no point in writing an actual review.(less)
If you know something about what to expect, though, I don't think you'll enjoy it nearly as much. It's a bit like an art installation that requires audience participation: you have to do your bit, too, to make it work, so it makes sense, so it tells the story it was meant to tell. Keep yourself in the dark, that's my advice. Because of this, there's no point in writing an actual review.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Mar 02, 2008
Jan 23, 2008
Paperback
0679314180
9780679314189
3.64
6,281
Jan 01, 2005
Oct 10, 2006
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Jun 24, 2008
Paperback
0064472795
9780064472791
3.61
24,360
Jul 03, 2000
Mar 21, 2002
While the storyline in this one isn't as fresh and exciting as the first one, it still holds solid and Mae hasn't yet changed much.
It takes place only...more While the storyline in this one isn't as fresh and exciting as the first one, it still holds solid and Mae hasn't yet changed much.
It takes place only days after the end of the previous book - I have a quibble with how fast everything moves, and how soon this could have happened - when Mia learns that her mum is pregnant with her algebra teacher's baby. They decide to get married on Halloween at City Hall and keep it quiet.
It's Mia herself who blurts out the news not just to her dad and Grandmother but millions of other people - on an interview with a tv news program. Her grandmother then embarks on plans for a full scale royal wedding
In her own private life, Mia is getting secret admirer mail from someone at her school, and she hopes it's Michael, Lilly's older brother whom she has a crush on. Meanwhile Lilly keeps disappearing with Mia's hunky cousin Hank, and Mia's feeling a bit peeved at all the secrets.
Princess in the Spotlight has all the trademark Mia quirks and humour, but sometimes she does get a bit repetitive. Background from the previous book is worked in adroitly but if you've just recently read it, like me, then it still feels a bit like being banged on the head with it all. Wouldn't hurt to space these out a bit I'm thinking.
I'm hoping the next book will move on a bit. Considering these books only cover a couple of weeks, and Mia is only 14, there's plenty of room for Cabot to stretch this out, but I hope she doesn't. At least it is moving forward!(less)
It takes place only...more While the storyline in this one isn't as fresh and exciting as the first one, it still holds solid and Mae hasn't yet changed much.
It takes place only days after the end of the previous book - I have a quibble with how fast everything moves, and how soon this could have happened - when Mia learns that her mum is pregnant with her algebra teacher's baby. They decide to get married on Halloween at City Hall and keep it quiet.
It's Mia herself who blurts out the news not just to her dad and Grandmother but millions of other people - on an interview with a tv news program. Her grandmother then embarks on plans for a full scale royal wedding
In her own private life, Mia is getting secret admirer mail from someone at her school, and she hopes it's Michael, Lilly's older brother whom she has a crush on. Meanwhile Lilly keeps disappearing with Mia's hunky cousin Hank, and Mia's feeling a bit peeved at all the secrets.
Princess in the Spotlight has all the trademark Mia quirks and humour, but sometimes she does get a bit repetitive. Background from the previous book is worked in adroitly but if you've just recently read it, like me, then it still feels a bit like being banged on the head with it all. Wouldn't hurt to space these out a bit I'm thinking.
I'm hoping the next book will move on a bit. Considering these books only cover a couple of weeks, and Mia is only 14, there's plenty of room for Cabot to stretch this out, but I hope she doesn't. At least it is moving forward!(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Aug 17, 2008
Aug 16, 2008
Mass Market Paperback
0385665555
9780385665551
3.94
5,037
Feb 12, 2008
Sep 23, 2008
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Nov 24, 2008
Paperback
0143170600
9780143170600
3.22
37
Mar 18, 2003
Feb 10, 2009
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Feb 11, 2009
Paperback
0006475094
9780006475095
unknown
4.02
1,185
2004
unknown
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Sep 10, 2009
0099524287
9780099524281
2.86
113
2008
Aug 06, 2009
Murray Bail's 1998 book, Eucalyptus, is one of my most beloved books. It resonates so strongly with me that I'm always disappointed when other readers...more
Murray Bail's 1998 book, Eucalyptus, is one of my most beloved books. It resonates so strongly with me that I'm always disappointed when other readers don't like it like I do - even though I can understand it, especially if they're not Australian and have never been there. It's a mix of Bail's distinctive writing style and the story itself: it either works for you or it doesn't.
The same is very much true of The Pages, a simple, short novel about two women, psychologists from Sydney, who travel seven hours to a sheep station in rural New South Wales to read a possible philosophic work written by a farmer's son, Wesley Antill, now dead. It was in his will that someone read and evaluate his work with the possibility of publishing it, and Erica is sent by the university to do just that. She takes her friend Sophie with her, who after yet another failed affair with a married man needs a break. Wesley's younger brother and sister, Roger and Lindsey, run the sheep station and are just as curious about Wesley's work. Interwoven with this present-day story is the story of Wesley, leaving home first to live in Sydney and then to travel around Europe.
Perhaps because it's a simpler, more straight-forward story, perhaps because it's quiet and uneventful, but it was definitely not the masterpiece Eucalyptus is. It still has Bail's beautiful, introspective prose - a style I simply do not have the words for, and in my failure I can only let Bail speak for himself:
It's Bail's ability to anthropomorphise the land, or to do the opposite - to render humans and their ways into a kind of landscape, to naturalise them - that I love. However, I felt that his style was limited here, that it wasn't quite appropriate to the story, or didn't go far enough. It certainly doesn't have the same magic as in Eucalyptus - I struggled to find quote-worthy passages and I'm not sure I picked appropriate ones. Bail writes like he truly understands that writing is an artform - and he's still experimenting. It may be a weaker story, and his prose might not be as satisfying as it was in his first book, but it still picks me up and carries me off as if on the wind, all lightness and astute glimpses into people's hearts.
That's the magic of Bail's prose, to enable me to see things in a way I'd never seen them before. It's got nothing to do with adjectives, not really. It's more of an approach, and a perspective. It comes across as a "tell" rather than "show" style because it's very narrative, but actually when you stop to think about it you'll realise how much he's not saying, but subtly revealing, or leaving open to interpretation. Yet, even just looking at these quotes here, I found some of the grammar and structure awkward, and itch to readjust it.
The actual story didn't interest me as much, though I did like it. I liked Erica's story better than Wesley's - Wesley wasn't a convincing character, but an inconclusive one. Not as believable, despite being familiar. He read too fictional, and I felt nothing for him except, I admit, a bit of superiority.
Despite my complaints, I still really liked it, mostly because of how Bail can transport me home, to the country I love best and miss with all my heart and which, I feel, Bail always knows how to bring alive for me - like he's the only one who understands and sees the country the same way I do. I can lose myself in his words. His style isn't for everyone, that I can understand, and this isn't the better book to start with. He has three other novels and a collection of short stories, but I can only speak for Eucalyptus, which makes my veins hum.(less)
The same is very much true of The Pages, a simple, short novel about two women, psychologists from Sydney, who travel seven hours to a sheep station in rural New South Wales to read a possible philosophic work written by a farmer's son, Wesley Antill, now dead. It was in his will that someone read and evaluate his work with the possibility of publishing it, and Erica is sent by the university to do just that. She takes her friend Sophie with her, who after yet another failed affair with a married man needs a break. Wesley's younger brother and sister, Roger and Lindsey, run the sheep station and are just as curious about Wesley's work. Interwoven with this present-day story is the story of Wesley, leaving home first to live in Sydney and then to travel around Europe.
Perhaps because it's a simpler, more straight-forward story, perhaps because it's quiet and uneventful, but it was definitely not the masterpiece Eucalyptus is. It still has Bail's beautiful, introspective prose - a style I simply do not have the words for, and in my failure I can only let Bail speak for himself:
"Erica who was holding onto the door - just his thumb and forefingeer keeping them on track - hand closest often changing down to first - saw how his way of conversing, which had plenty more stops and starts and false trails than actual words, followed the contours of the meandering landscape. Having to negotiate the unevenness on a daily basis had infected his speech. And when coming out with a sentence of more than three words he closed his eyes, the eyelids fluttering slightly as he spoke." (p.87)
"On the train to Bath, a young Frenchman with a violin case on his knees spoke of the conversion of nature into art. Art, being human, is imperfect - hence, its power, smiled the Frenchman. Antill enjoyed the conversation, and thought of seeing more of him, perhaps becoming friends, but when it came to it he couldn't find his address. Women were like small towns: to come upon them, and be surrounded by their neatness, but without the help of directions, before reaching unexpected dead ends; and begin all over again, elsewhere." (p.123)
"It was time for Erica to return to the shed, to submerge herself in the pages. But it was comfortable on the veranda, in the cane chairs with cushions, looking out past the sheds to the brown-purple horizon, tall spreading gum on the left. Lindsey was easy company. The way she allowed, and even encouraged gaps, imitated the landscape." (p.170)
It's Bail's ability to anthropomorphise the land, or to do the opposite - to render humans and their ways into a kind of landscape, to naturalise them - that I love. However, I felt that his style was limited here, that it wasn't quite appropriate to the story, or didn't go far enough. It certainly doesn't have the same magic as in Eucalyptus - I struggled to find quote-worthy passages and I'm not sure I picked appropriate ones. Bail writes like he truly understands that writing is an artform - and he's still experimenting. It may be a weaker story, and his prose might not be as satisfying as it was in his first book, but it still picks me up and carries me off as if on the wind, all lightness and astute glimpses into people's hearts.
That's the magic of Bail's prose, to enable me to see things in a way I'd never seen them before. It's got nothing to do with adjectives, not really. It's more of an approach, and a perspective. It comes across as a "tell" rather than "show" style because it's very narrative, but actually when you stop to think about it you'll realise how much he's not saying, but subtly revealing, or leaving open to interpretation. Yet, even just looking at these quotes here, I found some of the grammar and structure awkward, and itch to readjust it.
The actual story didn't interest me as much, though I did like it. I liked Erica's story better than Wesley's - Wesley wasn't a convincing character, but an inconclusive one. Not as believable, despite being familiar. He read too fictional, and I felt nothing for him except, I admit, a bit of superiority.
Despite my complaints, I still really liked it, mostly because of how Bail can transport me home, to the country I love best and miss with all my heart and which, I feel, Bail always knows how to bring alive for me - like he's the only one who understands and sees the country the same way I do. I can lose myself in his words. His style isn't for everyone, that I can understand, and this isn't the better book to start with. He has three other novels and a collection of short stories, but I can only speak for Eucalyptus, which makes my veins hum.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Nov 12, 2009
Oct 22, 2009
Paperback
0385722370
9780385722377
2.80
2,605
Jul 01, 2001
Sep 24, 2002
Before you ask, no, I haven't seen the movie version that came out recently. I will, but as of this moment I haven't. I have had several people tellin...more
Before you ask, no, I haven't seen the movie version that came out recently. I will, but as of this moment I haven't. I have had several people telling me about it though, and they made it sound so interesting, like such a clever satire of American corporate life and the emptiness of the modern business world, that I knew I wanted to read it. I was thrilled to find a copy of the pre-movie edition - I'm one of those people who really hates to get a book with a movie-poster cover. I really don't like them.
This is the story of Ryan Bingham. His job title is Career Transition Counselor - or CTC. His job is not to fire people, oh no, he's quick to point out the difference: his job is to help these downsized workers assess their skills, their strengths, figure out their next step and help them get the confidence to find a new job. Or, in other words, to make sure they leave quietly, quickly and hopefully with a smile. He's a kind of consultant, flying around the country to help a whole range of companies get rid of their flotsam. And he hates it.
His one goal is to reach 1 million frequent flyer miles. And he's close, so close he's becoming increasingly obsessed about it. He's timed it to the exact mile. His letter of resignation is sitting on his boss's desk, waiting for said boss to get back from his high-flying golfing trip, by which time he'll have flown his last flight and gained his 1 millionth mile. This final week is mostly personal for Ryan. He wants to think he's being head-hunted by MythTech, one of those ultra-modern companies led by a whiz-kid that doesn't actually produce anything - he's not sure what they do, only that he wants to work there.
He's also written a book, called The Garage, and is trying to pin down an errant publisher who says he's interested in publishing it. If only the guy would stop lying about where he is and stay put in one place long enough for Ryan to meet with him! Plus he has a business proposition for an olddinosaur legend of the corporate world, and he's due to give a seminar in Vegas.
Then there's his family: his younger, screwed-up sister is getting married, again, and now seems to have run away. Plus the wedding gift he sent her isn't the one he picked out, and it's starting to look like someone's using his credit card and even booking flights with his frequent flyer miles.
Ryan used to love Air World, but the polish is starting to come off. This last week, as he tries to escape the depressing fruitlessness of his job, is one scare after another. He just needs to stick to his goals, and get that last frequent flyer mile.
When I started this book, I fell instantly in love. Written in present tense, in Ryan's somewhat jaded, been-there-done-that voice - yet one that nevertheless can still take pleasure in small things - its dry humour and nostalgic wistfulness captivated me. This was a new world for me, a new perspective - as someone who loves visiting (or living in) other countries, I really don't like flying and spending time in airports. Ryan, on the other hand, loves it. He doesn't even have a home. His stuff is in storage and he gets his mail sent to his office: that's how much time he spends flying here there everywhere.
However, after the first third, everything started to get really slow, and my enthusiasm likewise dropped. I was having trouble following Ryan, and it only deteriorated from there. By the last hundred pages, I was struggling. Where is he? What's going on? Who's this again? It became even slower, and I was losing interest in what was happening to Ryan. It was still interesting, but like a long flight I got tired and was just looking forward to getting to the end.
As such, it was really disappointing. What was original writing at the beginning became confusing towards the end, and I was disappointed in the direction that the story took. It just didn't grab me, because there wasn't anything else. Even though the scenes with all the awful corporate businessmen and corporate gurus who, in real life, are disgusting figures of weakness to Ryan, are full of black humour (of the dreariest kind), and as a bleak depiction of the private business and just how many people and companies there are out there that don't do anything is quite excellent, the story became so depressing and full of the sharp stink of failure (as projected by Ryan - personally I don't buy into the whole success vs failure rhetoric that is so prevalent in societies like America), that I couldn't wait for it to end.
There's so much here to love, there really is. And maybe if I didn't have vague expectations based on what people told me about the movie, I would have been more receptive to that last third. This is the story of a man slowly going down the toilet, and letting himself go. After a while of weird things happening, I had to wonder, is he doing stuff in his sleep? Is he having a Fight Club moment, with another Ryan doing stuff without him realising? All his obsession over the head-hunting business, which people kept teasing him with, pretending they got a call from someone asking about him, and Ryan seeing signs and secret signals in everything - you had to wonder at his sanity. Like I said, I started out absolutely loving this book. I thought I would be raving about it. So it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem was, how I came to be so disappointed in it, especially since it's taken me a while to get around to writing this review so my memory's not so fresh.
I think maybe the constant moving around without explaining what was happening got to me (I got especially confused when he talked about flying to Ontario - turns out it's some city or suburb in California. And here I was looking forward to his trip to Canada!). I couldn't keep track or keep up. I was especially lost when he took his sister Julie for a jaunt. No idea what was going on there, truly. And then, I think, it just got so bleak and despairing. Ryan became an object of pity. It was hard to sympathise with him when you're just mentally shaking your head at him in this really sorrowful way.
Now I just want to see the film. Even from the ads I get the impression they shifted the focus somewhat, made it more ... graspable. That's not a word I know, but I'm getting desperate.(less)
This is the story of Ryan Bingham. His job title is Career Transition Counselor - or CTC. His job is not to fire people, oh no, he's quick to point out the difference: his job is to help these downsized workers assess their skills, their strengths, figure out their next step and help them get the confidence to find a new job. Or, in other words, to make sure they leave quietly, quickly and hopefully with a smile. He's a kind of consultant, flying around the country to help a whole range of companies get rid of their flotsam. And he hates it.
His one goal is to reach 1 million frequent flyer miles. And he's close, so close he's becoming increasingly obsessed about it. He's timed it to the exact mile. His letter of resignation is sitting on his boss's desk, waiting for said boss to get back from his high-flying golfing trip, by which time he'll have flown his last flight and gained his 1 millionth mile. This final week is mostly personal for Ryan. He wants to think he's being head-hunted by MythTech, one of those ultra-modern companies led by a whiz-kid that doesn't actually produce anything - he's not sure what they do, only that he wants to work there.
He's also written a book, called The Garage, and is trying to pin down an errant publisher who says he's interested in publishing it. If only the guy would stop lying about where he is and stay put in one place long enough for Ryan to meet with him! Plus he has a business proposition for an old
Then there's his family: his younger, screwed-up sister is getting married, again, and now seems to have run away. Plus the wedding gift he sent her isn't the one he picked out, and it's starting to look like someone's using his credit card and even booking flights with his frequent flyer miles.
Ryan used to love Air World, but the polish is starting to come off. This last week, as he tries to escape the depressing fruitlessness of his job, is one scare after another. He just needs to stick to his goals, and get that last frequent flyer mile.
When I started this book, I fell instantly in love. Written in present tense, in Ryan's somewhat jaded, been-there-done-that voice - yet one that nevertheless can still take pleasure in small things - its dry humour and nostalgic wistfulness captivated me. This was a new world for me, a new perspective - as someone who loves visiting (or living in) other countries, I really don't like flying and spending time in airports. Ryan, on the other hand, loves it. He doesn't even have a home. His stuff is in storage and he gets his mail sent to his office: that's how much time he spends flying here there everywhere.
However, after the first third, everything started to get really slow, and my enthusiasm likewise dropped. I was having trouble following Ryan, and it only deteriorated from there. By the last hundred pages, I was struggling. Where is he? What's going on? Who's this again? It became even slower, and I was losing interest in what was happening to Ryan. It was still interesting, but like a long flight I got tired and was just looking forward to getting to the end.
As such, it was really disappointing. What was original writing at the beginning became confusing towards the end, and I was disappointed in the direction that the story took. It just didn't grab me, because there wasn't anything else. Even though the scenes with all the awful corporate businessmen and corporate gurus who, in real life, are disgusting figures of weakness to Ryan, are full of black humour (of the dreariest kind), and as a bleak depiction of the private business and just how many people and companies there are out there that don't do anything is quite excellent, the story became so depressing and full of the sharp stink of failure (as projected by Ryan - personally I don't buy into the whole success vs failure rhetoric that is so prevalent in societies like America), that I couldn't wait for it to end.
There's so much here to love, there really is. And maybe if I didn't have vague expectations based on what people told me about the movie, I would have been more receptive to that last third. This is the story of a man slowly going down the toilet, and letting himself go. After a while of weird things happening, I had to wonder, is he doing stuff in his sleep? Is he having a Fight Club moment, with another Ryan doing stuff without him realising? All his obsession over the head-hunting business, which people kept teasing him with, pretending they got a call from someone asking about him, and Ryan seeing signs and secret signals in everything - you had to wonder at his sanity. Like I said, I started out absolutely loving this book. I thought I would be raving about it. So it's hard to pinpoint exactly what the problem was, how I came to be so disappointed in it, especially since it's taken me a while to get around to writing this review so my memory's not so fresh.
I think maybe the constant moving around without explaining what was happening got to me (I got especially confused when he talked about flying to Ontario - turns out it's some city or suburb in California. And here I was looking forward to his trip to Canada!). I couldn't keep track or keep up. I was especially lost when he took his sister Julie for a jaunt. No idea what was going on there, truly. And then, I think, it just got so bleak and despairing. Ryan became an object of pity. It was hard to sympathise with him when you're just mentally shaking your head at him in this really sorrowful way.
Now I just want to see the film. Even from the ads I get the impression they shifted the focus somewhat, made it more ... graspable. That's not a word I know, but I'm getting desperate.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Mar 05, 2010
Feb 26, 2010
Paperback
189723161X
9781897231616
3.61
99
1996
Oct 15, 2000
This instantly became one of my absolute favourite reads for the year to date; I just loved it! Don't be put off by the naked woman on the cover - inc...more
This instantly became one of my absolute favourite reads for the year to date; I just loved it! Don't be put off by the naked woman on the cover - incidentally, they're photographs from c.1887, titled "Muybridge Animal Locomotion". I can almost grasp the connection between the cover and the story itself, but it's eluding me, not quite solid.
Eduardo Sosa is an unemployed sociologist, living with his sister Adriana and her husband in an apartment in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. When a homeless, smelly old bum who lives in a yellow Chevrolet parks on the street outside, Eduardo becomes more than curious. He follows the man, Jacinto Bustillo, across the city, and when the right moment presents itself, he steals the man's identity.
Now the yellow Chevrolet is his, and he finds that it's also the home of four venomous snakes. He names them and collectively calls them "the ladies":
The ladies tell him about Don Jacinto, how he lost his job and his wife and daughter when the husband of his secretary discovered she was having an affair with Don Jacinto, how the woman was killed in a mugging which Don Jacinto believed was the husband's doing, and how his own wife had thrown him out. With no planning Eduardo and the ladies begin a day of terror and carnage in San Salvador, all on his way to enact revenge for Don Jacinto - who Eduardo is already beginning to physically resemble.
As the body count mounts, Deputy Commissioner Lito Handel finds himself leading the investigation of one of the worst massacres the city has ever seen. With the help of a journalist, Rita, they begin finding connections and motivations and pondering a political agenda, which seems to contradict the personal vendetta angle that's just as plausible. Why this Don Jacinto should be terrorising the city with four lethal snakes is a mystery, but since it's hard to hide a bright yellow, old American car and four snakes, it's only a matter of time before they catch the man they believe is Jacinto Bustillo.
I don't often feel the urge to use that lovely cliché, "it's a roller-coaster of a novel!" but in this case, that's what popped into my head. It's a crazy, head-on-collision kind of book, absolutely gorgeous, incredibly lively and weird and bizarre: I can't express how much I loved it! It's a short novel that only took me a few hours to read, especially because Moya writes with such clear precision. The pace picks you up and carries you off and you become lost in the events.
It's a spare kind of writing, with few adjectives. It produces an effortless read, one where there isn't a single awkward sentence, no clumsy descriptions, no lines that could just as easily be removed as left in. Every word is there for a reason. It has to be one of the most effortlessly controlled stories I've ever read, completely self-assured and confident, not a twinge of self-consciousness, second-guessing or doubt. Which allows you to invest completely in the actual story, putting your trust in an author who clearly knows what he's doing.
There's matter-of-fact violence in Dance with Snakes; violence and mayhem and snake sex. The ladies are distinct characters, whom Eduardo feels a greater affinity for than any human in his life.
All Eduardo was doing was going to a shopping centre to get some water, and a bloodbath ensues. Actually, not really a "bloodbath", since the snakes' victims become swollen, bloated corpses almost instantly. I don't have a snake phobia; I wouldn't like to cross paths with a snake, but only because I have a healthy respect for them and the danger they represent. But they don't freak me out. Reading these descriptions, perhaps because the snakes have been anthropomorphised and are not an unknown, wild Other, you actually feel a kind of sympathy for them, rather than fear of them.
Eduardo, who narrates the first and fourth sections, literally becomes Don Jacinto, but a different version of the same man. He's living in a kind of fantasy land, and may even be insane. Section two covers the police investigation, and is told in third person; while section three is told from Rita the journalist's perspective in present tense, before the story switches back to Eduardo for the climax. And the ending was great - surreal but great.
The blurb presents an interesting perspective: "The non-stop action raises provocative questions about social exclusion and the role of the media, but this novel ... also evokes the tenderness of relations among those on society's margins." I think that's pretty insightful, and accurate. The novel does indeed have something to say, or offer, towards these points, but not in an obvious way. There's no character that has a line of dialogue that pinpoints this or gets across a philosophy about it. It's more the story itself that plays out a bizarre scenario that works like a kind of - not metaphor, but allegory almost. Yes I think that's the word I'm after.
To some extent it reminded me of the mistaken identity scenario in Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist , the whole wrong-person-at-the-wrong-time thing, but not quite. Eduardo absorbs Bustillo's character, to a degree, and then adds to it. It only takes two days for him to turn into a slovenly bum who stinks of rum and sweat, with a beard and a hoarse voice. There's a comedy element to the story too, not a laugh-out-loud funniness but a dark comedy, an ironic undertone: the events become farcical in their magnitude, and in the theories the police and reporters come up with. There's also funny, subtle little bits of humour slid in, that keep it light. It's not by any means a bleak or oppressive story. It's humorous, and bizarre, but never sobering or morbid or depressing.
This is a book I felt like re-reading as soon as I'd finished; one that I can see myself reading again and delighting in each time. Maybe it seems like a strange book - a book about poisonous snakes attacking people and a madman wrecking havoc, a book that seems to make light of tragedy, death and violence (and yet doesn't) - but all I can say is, it's a marvellous book, a book has to be appreciated for itself and not in comparison to anything else, that's brilliantly written and executed but never feels stiff or too polished for it.
Have I raved enough yet?(less)
Eduardo Sosa is an unemployed sociologist, living with his sister Adriana and her husband in an apartment in San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador. When a homeless, smelly old bum who lives in a yellow Chevrolet parks on the street outside, Eduardo becomes more than curious. He follows the man, Jacinto Bustillo, across the city, and when the right moment presents itself, he steals the man's identity.
Now the yellow Chevrolet is his, and he finds that it's also the home of four venomous snakes. He names them and collectively calls them "the ladies":
The plump one with the cunning eyes would be Beti; the slender one who moved timidly, almost delicately, would be Loli; Valentina exuded sexuality with her iridescent skin; and little Carmela had an air of mystery about her. (p. 25)
The ladies tell him about Don Jacinto, how he lost his job and his wife and daughter when the husband of his secretary discovered she was having an affair with Don Jacinto, how the woman was killed in a mugging which Don Jacinto believed was the husband's doing, and how his own wife had thrown him out. With no planning Eduardo and the ladies begin a day of terror and carnage in San Salvador, all on his way to enact revenge for Don Jacinto - who Eduardo is already beginning to physically resemble.
As the body count mounts, Deputy Commissioner Lito Handel finds himself leading the investigation of one of the worst massacres the city has ever seen. With the help of a journalist, Rita, they begin finding connections and motivations and pondering a political agenda, which seems to contradict the personal vendetta angle that's just as plausible. Why this Don Jacinto should be terrorising the city with four lethal snakes is a mystery, but since it's hard to hide a bright yellow, old American car and four snakes, it's only a matter of time before they catch the man they believe is Jacinto Bustillo.
I don't often feel the urge to use that lovely cliché, "it's a roller-coaster of a novel!" but in this case, that's what popped into my head. It's a crazy, head-on-collision kind of book, absolutely gorgeous, incredibly lively and weird and bizarre: I can't express how much I loved it! It's a short novel that only took me a few hours to read, especially because Moya writes with such clear precision. The pace picks you up and carries you off and you become lost in the events.
It's a spare kind of writing, with few adjectives. It produces an effortless read, one where there isn't a single awkward sentence, no clumsy descriptions, no lines that could just as easily be removed as left in. Every word is there for a reason. It has to be one of the most effortlessly controlled stories I've ever read, completely self-assured and confident, not a twinge of self-consciousness, second-guessing or doubt. Which allows you to invest completely in the actual story, putting your trust in an author who clearly knows what he's doing.
There's matter-of-fact violence in Dance with Snakes; violence and mayhem and snake sex. The ladies are distinct characters, whom Eduardo feels a greater affinity for than any human in his life.
The security guards weren't so composed once they saw that Beti had got out and was slithering towards them, hissing, her flat head raised, her eyes deadlier than ever. Terrified, they took off like a shot. But Carmela had a different nature; she was barely out of the car when she threw herself in the air and wrapped her body around one of [the:] guards' neck. He couldn't even defend himself. The impact and the pressure on his windpipe killed him instantly. (p.27)
All Eduardo was doing was going to a shopping centre to get some water, and a bloodbath ensues. Actually, not really a "bloodbath", since the snakes' victims become swollen, bloated corpses almost instantly. I don't have a snake phobia; I wouldn't like to cross paths with a snake, but only because I have a healthy respect for them and the danger they represent. But they don't freak me out. Reading these descriptions, perhaps because the snakes have been anthropomorphised and are not an unknown, wild Other, you actually feel a kind of sympathy for them, rather than fear of them.
Eduardo, who narrates the first and fourth sections, literally becomes Don Jacinto, but a different version of the same man. He's living in a kind of fantasy land, and may even be insane. Section two covers the police investigation, and is told in third person; while section three is told from Rita the journalist's perspective in present tense, before the story switches back to Eduardo for the climax. And the ending was great - surreal but great.
The blurb presents an interesting perspective: "The non-stop action raises provocative questions about social exclusion and the role of the media, but this novel ... also evokes the tenderness of relations among those on society's margins." I think that's pretty insightful, and accurate. The novel does indeed have something to say, or offer, towards these points, but not in an obvious way. There's no character that has a line of dialogue that pinpoints this or gets across a philosophy about it. It's more the story itself that plays out a bizarre scenario that works like a kind of - not metaphor, but allegory almost. Yes I think that's the word I'm after.
Roger is [Rita's:] partner, a Frenchman in love with the tropics, with whom she's lived for six months. A leftist who can cook and fuck wonderfully, but who's stubborn and domineering, qualities he showed again last night when he went to bed angry that she refused to believe that there could be political motives behind the snake attacks. "A destabilizing factor," he called it. Even that's possible now. (p.101)
To some extent it reminded me of the mistaken identity scenario in Richard Flanagan's The Unknown Terrorist , the whole wrong-person-at-the-wrong-time thing, but not quite. Eduardo absorbs Bustillo's character, to a degree, and then adds to it. It only takes two days for him to turn into a slovenly bum who stinks of rum and sweat, with a beard and a hoarse voice. There's a comedy element to the story too, not a laugh-out-loud funniness but a dark comedy, an ironic undertone: the events become farcical in their magnitude, and in the theories the police and reporters come up with. There's also funny, subtle little bits of humour slid in, that keep it light. It's not by any means a bleak or oppressive story. It's humorous, and bizarre, but never sobering or morbid or depressing.
This is a book I felt like re-reading as soon as I'd finished; one that I can see myself reading again and delighting in each time. Maybe it seems like a strange book - a book about poisonous snakes attacking people and a madman wrecking havoc, a book that seems to make light of tragedy, death and violence (and yet doesn't) - but all I can say is, it's a marvellous book, a book has to be appreciated for itself and not in comparison to anything else, that's brilliantly written and executed but never feels stiff or too polished for it.
Have I raved enough yet?(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Jul 11, 2010
Apr 22, 2010
Paperback
0888999038
9780888999030
3.71
146
Aug 05, 2008
Feb 23, 2010
If you needed any more proof that banning - or trying to ban - a book will cause more people to read it than before, I am it. I first heard of this bo...more
If you needed any more proof that banning - or trying to ban - a book will cause more people to read it than before, I am it. I first heard of this book just a few weeks ago, when it became a suddenly controversial issue in the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) and in the news. It is a book promoted by the Canadian Library Association and in grade 7 & 8 curriculum, but came under fire for being biased against Jews. Thankfully, it wasn't banned in the TDSB (or anywhere). But the furore certainly drew me in. I take a great interest in the issue of censorship and banning books (I'm hugely anti), and I have developed a great interest in reading more about the Palestine-Israeli conflict, and the lives of the people who live in the region. It is in the news again this week, regarding the Israeli's stopping - with bloodshed - the arrival of aid to Palestine; and, at home, the banning of the words "Israeli apartheid" in the Toronto Pride Parade this year.
I think to read a book in a non-politicised way is to do it and yourself a disservice. You can, of course, read a topical and contentious book as just a story, but you won't learn anything by it, you won't think critically about the story, its message, or reflect on your own thought processes. Books aren't to be read to tell you what to think, but to think, hopefully critically. Yes, this is the teacher coming out in me, and the academic, as well as the book lover.
It is so important to hear more than one side of any given issue, but more than that, to empathise. And that is what The Shepherd's Granddaughter excels at. Not a manipulation of your emotions, but a voice that reaches out, quietly begs to be heard and felt, and is rewarded because it is trusting and respectful and yearns for something better.
The Shepherd's Granddaughter is the story of a Palestinian girl, Amani, living with her family on their farm, nestled in a valley not far from a village where other family members live and where they go to school. The family has a vineyard, an olive grove, and about a hundred sheep. When Amani is just six she talks her shepherd grandfather ("Seedo") into teaching her, and over the next ten years she is homeschooled so that she can tend to the sheep, taking them up onto Seedo's Peak, which they share with a wolf.
It is not until after Seedo dies that things become really bad. The Israeli's have built for themselves a highway through the land, turning up one day to bulldoze the heart out of their vineyard to make room for the road. Then they make a road up onto Seedo's Peak, fence the hill off and build a settlement there, leaving Amani with nowhere to take her sheep to graze. The settlers fear the Arabs in the valley below, Amani and her family, and feel free to poison Amani's sheep, have their olive grove ripped out (snipers could hide there and shoot at the settlers), and, because the settlers don't want to live so close to any Palestinian "dogs", bulldozers arrive to tear down the three houses of Amani's family.
This is not an "all Jews are bad" story. This is a story about what many Palestinians have endured, being pushed off their land, being persecuted on the flimsiest of accusations, and generally terrorised. It shows how, when pushed so far, people will bite back. We are just another kind of animal, territorial and protective and, when attacked, defensive. We also yearn for a place to call home, for people to love, to be loved, to belong. The Israelis and Palestinians are identical in being human, and in their humanity, are unable to communicate and share.
I read in another book recently, that children care more about justice than truth. I remember believing, as a child, that the two are inseparable, but regardless I think children do care strongly about justice, and see it more clearly than adults. How many times have you heard kids, or did you say yourself as a kid, "That's not fair!" Children are more moral than adults, in this way. We dismiss their outburst as being too simplistic, "You don't understand, it's more complicated than that." But is it? Should it be? Have we just made it so complicated because, worse than children, we don't want to give any ground, we'd rather fight to the grave than share?
In The Shepherd's Granddaughter, Amani befriends a Jewish boy from the settlement, Jonathan, who came to Israel with his father from New York. Jonathan is sympathetic to the Palestinian's situation, and disagrees with what the settlers are doing. The two together are voices for their people, whether rightly or wrongly, to illuminate prejudice and understanding, belief and opinion. No, it is not a simple issue. But reading this book, I empathised so deeply with Amani and her people - disagreed with them at times too, but always empathised. It was a hard book to read, quick (I read it in a day), but hard because it involves your heart and head so much. Your heart rages, your head fills, empties, rethinks, fills again. And at the end of it, I cried. I cried not just for Israel and Palestine, two people who have made a crap situation worse, a situation that will probably never be resolved because it has gone too far into the extreme, into unforgiving territory with both sides wanting only the annihilation of the other, wanting only revenge - but also for every other displaced people in the world.
Empathy is being able to put yourself in someone else's situation, in their very emotions, and feel them too, as if they were your own. It goes much deeper than sympathy, which is more a surface emotion. Empathy is essentially this: as I was reading it, I imagined, with great clarity, another people turning up one morning, destroying my home, ignoring my voice, pointing a gun at me if I tried to so much as move, while they coldly, calmly reshaped my world, my home, they way they wanted and moved other people in there. I felt how very defenceless, useless, ineffective I would be. It is a great fear humans have, I think, being invaded and displaced, considering how often it is reflected in fiction, including alien stories, and how many wars have been fought over this very thing. And yet, what is scary about Palestine, is that there is no one to defend these displaced people. They have no army or police force to fight back for them, no (effective or powerful) government to condemn it. And they have no voice, because no one wants to listen. If this happened to me here, in Toronto, or at home in Tassie, you can bet my and your white-skinned bum the world would hear about it, and come to my aid.
This is what made me cry: that there is no one, or no one who matters, to speak up for the Palestinians. Perhaps this is changing over the last decade, especially as things get worse, but with terrorists on both sides of the conflict, and as our own lands destabilise and become more dangerous, people do not seem interested in getting involved at all, in caring at all.
We have such a long history of doing this to ourselves, time after time, and never learn. Never learn to love our neighbour. Never learn to live with our neighbours. Never learn to appreciate them, to learn from them, to humble ourselves. The Israelis aren't the only displaced people in the world. And the Anglo-Europeans aren't the only displacers in the world, or in history. The Jews in Israel feel defensive because the Islamic countries surrounding them, or many of them, refuse to acknowledge them or grant them the right to land of their own. But their response to it has only inflamed it to the point of no return. We must have such little faith in one another, our fear of the alien Other is so entrenched no matter your background or religion, that we isolate ourselves and look askance at everyone else. Amani and Jonathan are two very different people who stop and listen to each other, who really look at each other until they are no longer aliens. They each extend a hand of friendship and understanding, and discover what they both have in common.
There are many messages in this book, good messages, as well as being a powerful and moving story to read. It is well written, doesn't moralise, isn't self-indulgent. Carter is a librarian who has lived in Israel and was sympathetic only to their side until she met some Palestinians - it was only after learning both sides of the story that she felt she understood better. This is a fictionalised account of the true story, about people she met and talked with many times. You can read an interview with her from the Toronto Star here, reproduced on Did You Know along with background on the controversy. One thing she says that stuck out for me, was that she wrote it "with the Jewish audience in mind": she wrote it for them, because they won't listen to the Palestinians themselves, and so can claim ignorance of what their neighbours are experiencing.
Another book that also gives voice to both sides is Three Wishes by Deborah Ellis, in which children from Israel and Palestine speak.(less)
I think to read a book in a non-politicised way is to do it and yourself a disservice. You can, of course, read a topical and contentious book as just a story, but you won't learn anything by it, you won't think critically about the story, its message, or reflect on your own thought processes. Books aren't to be read to tell you what to think, but to think, hopefully critically. Yes, this is the teacher coming out in me, and the academic, as well as the book lover.
It is so important to hear more than one side of any given issue, but more than that, to empathise. And that is what The Shepherd's Granddaughter excels at. Not a manipulation of your emotions, but a voice that reaches out, quietly begs to be heard and felt, and is rewarded because it is trusting and respectful and yearns for something better.
The Shepherd's Granddaughter is the story of a Palestinian girl, Amani, living with her family on their farm, nestled in a valley not far from a village where other family members live and where they go to school. The family has a vineyard, an olive grove, and about a hundred sheep. When Amani is just six she talks her shepherd grandfather ("Seedo") into teaching her, and over the next ten years she is homeschooled so that she can tend to the sheep, taking them up onto Seedo's Peak, which they share with a wolf.
It is not until after Seedo dies that things become really bad. The Israeli's have built for themselves a highway through the land, turning up one day to bulldoze the heart out of their vineyard to make room for the road. Then they make a road up onto Seedo's Peak, fence the hill off and build a settlement there, leaving Amani with nowhere to take her sheep to graze. The settlers fear the Arabs in the valley below, Amani and her family, and feel free to poison Amani's sheep, have their olive grove ripped out (snipers could hide there and shoot at the settlers), and, because the settlers don't want to live so close to any Palestinian "dogs", bulldozers arrive to tear down the three houses of Amani's family.
This is not an "all Jews are bad" story. This is a story about what many Palestinians have endured, being pushed off their land, being persecuted on the flimsiest of accusations, and generally terrorised. It shows how, when pushed so far, people will bite back. We are just another kind of animal, territorial and protective and, when attacked, defensive. We also yearn for a place to call home, for people to love, to be loved, to belong. The Israelis and Palestinians are identical in being human, and in their humanity, are unable to communicate and share.
I read in another book recently, that children care more about justice than truth. I remember believing, as a child, that the two are inseparable, but regardless I think children do care strongly about justice, and see it more clearly than adults. How many times have you heard kids, or did you say yourself as a kid, "That's not fair!" Children are more moral than adults, in this way. We dismiss their outburst as being too simplistic, "You don't understand, it's more complicated than that." But is it? Should it be? Have we just made it so complicated because, worse than children, we don't want to give any ground, we'd rather fight to the grave than share?
In The Shepherd's Granddaughter, Amani befriends a Jewish boy from the settlement, Jonathan, who came to Israel with his father from New York. Jonathan is sympathetic to the Palestinian's situation, and disagrees with what the settlers are doing. The two together are voices for their people, whether rightly or wrongly, to illuminate prejudice and understanding, belief and opinion. No, it is not a simple issue. But reading this book, I empathised so deeply with Amani and her people - disagreed with them at times too, but always empathised. It was a hard book to read, quick (I read it in a day), but hard because it involves your heart and head so much. Your heart rages, your head fills, empties, rethinks, fills again. And at the end of it, I cried. I cried not just for Israel and Palestine, two people who have made a crap situation worse, a situation that will probably never be resolved because it has gone too far into the extreme, into unforgiving territory with both sides wanting only the annihilation of the other, wanting only revenge - but also for every other displaced people in the world.
Empathy is being able to put yourself in someone else's situation, in their very emotions, and feel them too, as if they were your own. It goes much deeper than sympathy, which is more a surface emotion. Empathy is essentially this: as I was reading it, I imagined, with great clarity, another people turning up one morning, destroying my home, ignoring my voice, pointing a gun at me if I tried to so much as move, while they coldly, calmly reshaped my world, my home, they way they wanted and moved other people in there. I felt how very defenceless, useless, ineffective I would be. It is a great fear humans have, I think, being invaded and displaced, considering how often it is reflected in fiction, including alien stories, and how many wars have been fought over this very thing. And yet, what is scary about Palestine, is that there is no one to defend these displaced people. They have no army or police force to fight back for them, no (effective or powerful) government to condemn it. And they have no voice, because no one wants to listen. If this happened to me here, in Toronto, or at home in Tassie, you can bet my and your white-skinned bum the world would hear about it, and come to my aid.
This is what made me cry: that there is no one, or no one who matters, to speak up for the Palestinians. Perhaps this is changing over the last decade, especially as things get worse, but with terrorists on both sides of the conflict, and as our own lands destabilise and become more dangerous, people do not seem interested in getting involved at all, in caring at all.
We have such a long history of doing this to ourselves, time after time, and never learn. Never learn to love our neighbour. Never learn to live with our neighbours. Never learn to appreciate them, to learn from them, to humble ourselves. The Israelis aren't the only displaced people in the world. And the Anglo-Europeans aren't the only displacers in the world, or in history. The Jews in Israel feel defensive because the Islamic countries surrounding them, or many of them, refuse to acknowledge them or grant them the right to land of their own. But their response to it has only inflamed it to the point of no return. We must have such little faith in one another, our fear of the alien Other is so entrenched no matter your background or religion, that we isolate ourselves and look askance at everyone else. Amani and Jonathan are two very different people who stop and listen to each other, who really look at each other until they are no longer aliens. They each extend a hand of friendship and understanding, and discover what they both have in common.
There are many messages in this book, good messages, as well as being a powerful and moving story to read. It is well written, doesn't moralise, isn't self-indulgent. Carter is a librarian who has lived in Israel and was sympathetic only to their side until she met some Palestinians - it was only after learning both sides of the story that she felt she understood better. This is a fictionalised account of the true story, about people she met and talked with many times. You can read an interview with her from the Toronto Star here, reproduced on Did You Know along with background on the controversy. One thing she says that stuck out for me, was that she wrote it "with the Jewish audience in mind": she wrote it for them, because they won't listen to the Palestinians themselves, and so can claim ignorance of what their neighbours are experiencing.
Another book that also gives voice to both sides is Three Wishes by Deborah Ellis, in which children from Israel and Palestine speak.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
May 30, 2010
Apr 29, 2010
Paperback
0385667647
9780385667647
3.76
32,821
2008
May 18, 2010
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Aug 14, 2010
Paperback
0671532766
9780671532765
3.62
2,463
1993
Mar 01, 1996
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Sep 08, 2010
Paperback
0449911659
9780449911655
3.54
21,752
1960
Aug 27, 1996
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Nov 04, 2010
Paperback
0887842364
9780887842368
3.78
3,400
May 31, 2010
May 31, 2010
In 1968 a small community in Labrador, on the eastern coast of Canada, a baby is born to Jacinta and Treadway Blake. Their close friend and neighbour,...more
In 1968 a small community in Labrador, on the eastern coast of Canada, a baby is born to Jacinta and Treadway Blake. Their close friend and neighbour, Thomasina, catches the baby and sees instantly that there is something unusual about it: the baby has a penis and one testicle, and beneath that, fully formed labia and a vagina. The baby is a fully-formed hermaphrodite. Even before Jacinta takes him to the hospital, a plane ride away, over a week later, Treadway has already decided to name the baby Wayne, after his own father. At the hospital, the doctor measures the baby's penis - depending on the length, they'll decide whether he's more boy, or has a long clitoris.
Growing up, Wayne has no idea about the secret persona he carries within him, but he's not the typical boy Treadway would have wanted - and he's not the girl his mother would have liked to have, either. Only Thomasina wants to be honest with Wayne, but has promised not to tell him anything. Her one small gift is to call him Annabel, after her own little girl who died just days after Wayne was born.
Annabel is the story of Wayne, a little boy who isn't just a little boy, growing up in the wilds of Labrador in the 70s and 80s, yearning for something that he doesn't understand, or even knows exists. It's the story of his parents, each dealing with their secret and the hopes they've built up in their own minds. It's a coming-of-age novel, a story of contrasts and absolutes, between which society allows for no grey.
I've been struggling with this review - struggling to start it, really - for over a week. While reading it, I had so many thoughts, so many things to say, but now I don't even know where to start; afraid, too, of having forgotten the things I wanted to say about this book. I'll just pick a place to start and go from there.
This is the first book I've read that's set in Labrador, as far as I can remember - there's a section set in Newfoundland as well, when Wayne is eighteen. Labrador is a unique place, and Winter has done a superb job of bringing it to life. Not only does it have that patina of a past era - and there are some nicely-placed cultural and historical references, as well as the actual date, that help ground you in a time bygone - but it also has a strong sense of isolation and wilderness. The men spend months, all the long winter months, out on the ice with their skidoos and sleds and dogs, checking their traplines, coming home only once in a while, while their wives stay at home in or around the small town of Croydon Harbour, keeping each other company as well as they can while their kids go to school.
Jacinta socialises with two other women who don't seem to have good marriages; in contrast, Jacinta thinks of herself as lucky to have Treadway - certainly all the other women admire him as a husband. But as Wayne grows older the secret Treadway and Jacinta are keeping - from Wayne and from everyone else - rots their relationship, though on the surface it seems like it's Wayne himself who's causing the problem. Really, it's Treadway's expectations for a son, and Jacinta's silent reproach of them. From the beginning, they approached Wayne's sexuality very differently:
In many ways, this story was painful to read. I can well imagine - and yet not imagine at all - what Jacinta felt, to have such a child. The sheer agony of wanting the best for your child - something all parents feel and desire - yet knowing that everything will be against them. In some ways, this is a more challenging, more frightening threat to mainstream society than those born joined to their twin, because it is hidden, elusive, deceptive. The story is also immensely sad, for Wayne's relationship with his father, for what happens to Wayne's best friend, a girl called Wally (she was named after Wallace Simpson), for the bridge Wayne built with his father, spent most of the summer in with Wally, and which Treadway tears down because he feels insecure about Wayne's behaviour, feeling it's too girly.
But Treadway was yet another sympathetic character. I often felt that this story was about Treadway more than it was about Wayne (and incidentally, the name "Wayne" never matched the character, like he/she had borrowed someone else's name. It's just so absolutely "manly", and it never suited his/her personality.) The irony is that, for as black-and-white as our gender roles are - and the world really has no room for anything in-between (though I applaud recent laws passed in Ontario that affirm the rights of transgender etc. people), Annabel shows exactly how ambiguous and tenuous such gender roles really are, how ridiculous and short-sighted and narrow they are for "ordinary" people, people with just one gender, let alone for hermaphrodites or anyone else. And it shows compassion and understanding towards men like Treadway, who have a straight-forward view of the world and struggle to deal with, let alone comprehend, anything so staggeringly different as his own son is, from that understanding. So I really couldn't hate Treadway. He's a very solid character, and my feelings towards him fluctuated a great deal. I thought I'd never forgive him when he tore down the bridge-fort, but I sort-of did. He's such a living father-figure, and the one character who is more vividly alive than any other.
One of the things I appreciated about this novel, was that neither Treadway nor Jacinta "represented" any facet of society. They were just two people, different people from different places (Jacinta came from St. John's in Newfoundland), who were struggling in different ways to do right by their child. Much of the social message of Annabel is not directly stated, but now and then you get a wonderful passage like this:
The clothes might not be so clear-cut along gender lines anymore (or so we tend to think), but the divide is still there, loud and clear. Have you ever seen a transvestite, on the street? I used to work on Yonge St in Toronto's CBD, which is just one street west of Church, otherwise known as "boystown", so you'd see men dressed in full drag now and then. It catches the eye, you can't help it, because it's slightly off. It's not the same as seeing a man in a skirt, be it a kilt or just another knee-length skirt: they're not trying to look like women (and frankly, they look great. Men can totally carry off skirts when they want to). It's like seeing the one ripple in the pond, the one flaw in the weaving, the one fingerprint on the clay pot. And it's all training, it's all social conditioning.
To continue this tangent for a moment longer, I was watching the three babies I look after today, my own 13 month old son, a 14 month old girl and a 15 month old boy. I was watching the back of the girl's head, with the little curls sticking out, the quite graceful neck, and thinking how feminine, how "girly", she looked. But then I looked at my own baby, next to her, and realised that he has the same neck, the same way of looking down that elongates it, the same smooth, beautiful skin. And it's quickly clear that the only difference is their clothing. The girl was wearing a white top with multi-coloured spots in bright, girly colours (pink, yellow, orange, green) with a cupcake printed on the front, and a pink skirt. My boy was wearing grey overalls over a yellow onesie, with a yellow dinosaur on the side. It immediately altered the way I perceived them (that and the fact that I already knew that one was girl, one a boy). I often take conscious note of things like this, like how I feel uncomfortable by the thought of putting my son in a pink outfit. Pink used to be the colour for boys, a long time ago; it's nothing more than social conditioning. But it's hugely persuasive.
Winter wrote Annabel with one of those extreme omniscient third-person narrators, telling more than showing. Everything we learn and come to understand is essentially handed to us on the page, with limited room for the reader to read actively. But not entirely: the subject-matter, and the characters, ensure that you're constantly thinking and feeling. Still, I'm not keen on this writing style, though there are books that use it that I absolutely love. Every author has a different voice, their own style, so it's more than just the technique they use to tell a story that decides whether it'll connect with you. I find this style to be the most ironic: by telling you everything, by peeling back the characters' skin and pulling out their innermost thoughts, their history and even the things about themselves that they don't understand, it actually creates more distance rather than less. It can be alienating, or merely condescending.
Reading Annabel left me conflicted: I loved the story, the main characters, and the setting. I found it hard to connect with the prose because it told me too much and didn't leave me with anything to do. As a study of human nature as well as social conditioning, it both succeeds and falls short. As a portrait of a young hermaphrodite, it was disappointing in that it never seemed comfortable with Wayne, either. You never really get close to him - not consistently, anyway; instead, the narration looks on him like just another adult, watching, measuring, supporting, but never really understanding or empathising.
I suffer what all humankind suffers: a perverse fascination with things that are vastly different from the "norm". These days we like to pretend we're more "civilised" than that, but it's not true, it's still there inside us (that North American TV channel, TLC, must have as its mandate to satisfy this fascination that lives inside us, judging by the kind of shows it airs). When I compartmentalise that base fascination and put it aside, I am left with admiration for how Winter tackled this subject matter, and the characters. It wasn't predictable, it didn't sink into melodrama, and except for the disappointing epilogue, it maintained a certain degree of polish throughout. I just struggled to connect with the characters, because of how the book is written, and connecting with the characters in a really personal way is key. It has a special rhythm to it, the prose, and there are some beautiful passages, but at the end of the day it crowded out the characters and their subtle yet powerful story, and left me less satisfied than I might have been.
Annabel was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Orange Prize.
(less)
Growing up, Wayne has no idea about the secret persona he carries within him, but he's not the typical boy Treadway would have wanted - and he's not the girl his mother would have liked to have, either. Only Thomasina wants to be honest with Wayne, but has promised not to tell him anything. Her one small gift is to call him Annabel, after her own little girl who died just days after Wayne was born.
Annabel is the story of Wayne, a little boy who isn't just a little boy, growing up in the wilds of Labrador in the 70s and 80s, yearning for something that he doesn't understand, or even knows exists. It's the story of his parents, each dealing with their secret and the hopes they've built up in their own minds. It's a coming-of-age novel, a story of contrasts and absolutes, between which society allows for no grey.
I've been struggling with this review - struggling to start it, really - for over a week. While reading it, I had so many thoughts, so many things to say, but now I don't even know where to start; afraid, too, of having forgotten the things I wanted to say about this book. I'll just pick a place to start and go from there.
This is the first book I've read that's set in Labrador, as far as I can remember - there's a section set in Newfoundland as well, when Wayne is eighteen. Labrador is a unique place, and Winter has done a superb job of bringing it to life. Not only does it have that patina of a past era - and there are some nicely-placed cultural and historical references, as well as the actual date, that help ground you in a time bygone - but it also has a strong sense of isolation and wilderness. The men spend months, all the long winter months, out on the ice with their skidoos and sleds and dogs, checking their traplines, coming home only once in a while, while their wives stay at home in or around the small town of Croydon Harbour, keeping each other company as well as they can while their kids go to school.
Jacinta socialises with two other women who don't seem to have good marriages; in contrast, Jacinta thinks of herself as lucky to have Treadway - certainly all the other women admire him as a husband. But as Wayne grows older the secret Treadway and Jacinta are keeping - from Wayne and from everyone else - rots their relationship, though on the surface it seems like it's Wayne himself who's causing the problem. Really, it's Treadway's expectations for a son, and Jacinta's silent reproach of them. From the beginning, they approached Wayne's sexuality very differently:
Everything Treadway refused to imagine, Jacinta imagined in detail enough for the two of them. Whereas he struck out on his own to decide how to erase the frightening ambiguity of their child, she envisioned living with it as it was. She imagined her daughter beautiful and grown up, in a scarlet satin gown, her male characteristics held secret under the clothing for a time when she might need a warrior's strength and a man's potent aggression. Then she imagined her son as a talented, mythical hunter, his breasts strapped in a concealing vest, his clothes the green of striding forward, his heart the heart of a woman who could secretly direct his path in the ways of intuition and psychological insight. Whenever she imagined her child, grown up without interference from a judgemental world, she imagined its male and female halves as complementing each other, and as being secretly, almost magically powerful. It was the growing up part she did not want to imagine. The social part, the going to school in Labrador part, the jeering part, the what will we tell everyone part, the part that asks how will we give this child so much love it will know no harm from the cruel reactions of people who do not want to understand. [p.28]
In many ways, this story was painful to read. I can well imagine - and yet not imagine at all - what Jacinta felt, to have such a child. The sheer agony of wanting the best for your child - something all parents feel and desire - yet knowing that everything will be against them. In some ways, this is a more challenging, more frightening threat to mainstream society than those born joined to their twin, because it is hidden, elusive, deceptive. The story is also immensely sad, for Wayne's relationship with his father, for what happens to Wayne's best friend, a girl called Wally (she was named after Wallace Simpson), for the bridge Wayne built with his father, spent most of the summer in with Wally, and which Treadway tears down because he feels insecure about Wayne's behaviour, feeling it's too girly.
But Treadway was yet another sympathetic character. I often felt that this story was about Treadway more than it was about Wayne (and incidentally, the name "Wayne" never matched the character, like he/she had borrowed someone else's name. It's just so absolutely "manly", and it never suited his/her personality.) The irony is that, for as black-and-white as our gender roles are - and the world really has no room for anything in-between (though I applaud recent laws passed in Ontario that affirm the rights of transgender etc. people), Annabel shows exactly how ambiguous and tenuous such gender roles really are, how ridiculous and short-sighted and narrow they are for "ordinary" people, people with just one gender, let alone for hermaphrodites or anyone else. And it shows compassion and understanding towards men like Treadway, who have a straight-forward view of the world and struggle to deal with, let alone comprehend, anything so staggeringly different as his own son is, from that understanding. So I really couldn't hate Treadway. He's a very solid character, and my feelings towards him fluctuated a great deal. I thought I'd never forgive him when he tore down the bridge-fort, but I sort-of did. He's such a living father-figure, and the one character who is more vividly alive than any other.
One of the things I appreciated about this novel, was that neither Treadway nor Jacinta "represented" any facet of society. They were just two people, different people from different places (Jacinta came from St. John's in Newfoundland), who were struggling in different ways to do right by their child. Much of the social message of Annabel is not directly stated, but now and then you get a wonderful passage like this:
The street smelled like cigarettes, perfume, and coffee, and Wayne saw that the faces, bodies, clothes, and shoes of the men and women who passed him had been divided and thinned. The male or female in them had been both diluted and exaggerated. They were one, extremely so, or they were the other. The women trailed tapered gloves behind them and walked in ludicrous heels, while the men, with their fuzzy sideburns and brown briefcases, looked boring as little beagles out for the same rabbit. You define a tree and you do not see what it is; it becomes its name. It is the same with woman and man. Everywhere Wayne looked there was one or the other, male or female, abandoned by the other. The loneliness of this cracked the street in half. Could the two halves of the street bear to see Wayne walk the fissure and not name him a beast? [p.350]
The clothes might not be so clear-cut along gender lines anymore (or so we tend to think), but the divide is still there, loud and clear. Have you ever seen a transvestite, on the street? I used to work on Yonge St in Toronto's CBD, which is just one street west of Church, otherwise known as "boystown", so you'd see men dressed in full drag now and then. It catches the eye, you can't help it, because it's slightly off. It's not the same as seeing a man in a skirt, be it a kilt or just another knee-length skirt: they're not trying to look like women (and frankly, they look great. Men can totally carry off skirts when they want to). It's like seeing the one ripple in the pond, the one flaw in the weaving, the one fingerprint on the clay pot. And it's all training, it's all social conditioning.
To continue this tangent for a moment longer, I was watching the three babies I look after today, my own 13 month old son, a 14 month old girl and a 15 month old boy. I was watching the back of the girl's head, with the little curls sticking out, the quite graceful neck, and thinking how feminine, how "girly", she looked. But then I looked at my own baby, next to her, and realised that he has the same neck, the same way of looking down that elongates it, the same smooth, beautiful skin. And it's quickly clear that the only difference is their clothing. The girl was wearing a white top with multi-coloured spots in bright, girly colours (pink, yellow, orange, green) with a cupcake printed on the front, and a pink skirt. My boy was wearing grey overalls over a yellow onesie, with a yellow dinosaur on the side. It immediately altered the way I perceived them (that and the fact that I already knew that one was girl, one a boy). I often take conscious note of things like this, like how I feel uncomfortable by the thought of putting my son in a pink outfit. Pink used to be the colour for boys, a long time ago; it's nothing more than social conditioning. But it's hugely persuasive.
Winter wrote Annabel with one of those extreme omniscient third-person narrators, telling more than showing. Everything we learn and come to understand is essentially handed to us on the page, with limited room for the reader to read actively. But not entirely: the subject-matter, and the characters, ensure that you're constantly thinking and feeling. Still, I'm not keen on this writing style, though there are books that use it that I absolutely love. Every author has a different voice, their own style, so it's more than just the technique they use to tell a story that decides whether it'll connect with you. I find this style to be the most ironic: by telling you everything, by peeling back the characters' skin and pulling out their innermost thoughts, their history and even the things about themselves that they don't understand, it actually creates more distance rather than less. It can be alienating, or merely condescending.
Reading Annabel left me conflicted: I loved the story, the main characters, and the setting. I found it hard to connect with the prose because it told me too much and didn't leave me with anything to do. As a study of human nature as well as social conditioning, it both succeeds and falls short. As a portrait of a young hermaphrodite, it was disappointing in that it never seemed comfortable with Wayne, either. You never really get close to him - not consistently, anyway; instead, the narration looks on him like just another adult, watching, measuring, supporting, but never really understanding or empathising.
By grade eight his sequined bathing suit was far too small; its straps cut his shoulders and the crotch was tight, and the time had passed in which he had enough innocence to wear it, but he left it crumpled in its box under his bed. He missed Wally, and he wondered what would happen if he could tell her they were both girls, at least in part. He wished he could ask Wally to call him Annabel. They could be best friends like Carol Rich and Ashley Chalk, who passed battleships-and-cruisers paper to each other in Mr Wigglesworth's class and ate hickory sticks on the fire escape. Wally and Annabel.
But Annabel ran away.
Where did she go? She was inside his body but she escaped him. Maybe she gets out through my eyes, he thought, when I open them. Or my ears. He lay in bed and waited. Annabel was close enough to touch; she was himself, yet unattainable. [p.252]
I suffer what all humankind suffers: a perverse fascination with things that are vastly different from the "norm". These days we like to pretend we're more "civilised" than that, but it's not true, it's still there inside us (that North American TV channel, TLC, must have as its mandate to satisfy this fascination that lives inside us, judging by the kind of shows it airs). When I compartmentalise that base fascination and put it aside, I am left with admiration for how Winter tackled this subject matter, and the characters. It wasn't predictable, it didn't sink into melodrama, and except for the disappointing epilogue, it maintained a certain degree of polish throughout. I just struggled to connect with the characters, because of how the book is written, and connecting with the characters in a really personal way is key. It has a special rhythm to it, the prose, and there are some beautiful passages, but at the end of the day it crowded out the characters and their subtle yet powerful story, and left me less satisfied than I might have been.
Annabel was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Orange Prize.
(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Aug 25, 2012
Dec 16, 2010
Hardcover
0771008678
9780771008672
3.60
4,582
2006
Mar 31, 2009
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Feb 19, 2011
Paperback
1443404063
9781443404068
3.82
66,419
Jun 14, 2011
Jun 14, 2011
Every day Christine wakes up not knowing where she is or, really, who she is. Sometimes she wakes thinking she's a little girl, sometimes that she's a...more
Every day Christine wakes up not knowing where she is or, really, who she is. Sometimes she wakes thinking she's a little girl, sometimes that she's a single twenty-something. Never does she wake up knowing the truth: that she's forty-seven, is married to a man called Ben, and suffers from amnesia. She doesn't recognise the man sleeping in the bed beside her. In the bathroom are photos taped up and labelled, to give her some context. Every morning Ben goes through the same routine, more or less: explaining who she is, explaining who he is, showing her around the house, and making breakfast before he goes off to work - a high school teacher, he says he is. Christine has no way of knowing if any of it is true, but then there are the photos. Not many - Ben tells her there was a fire and many of them were destroyed. She can't remember it, of course.
But today is different - supposedly. Today she meets a doctor, Dr Nash, who tells her she has been seeing him in secret for weeks, working on a new treatment that her husband doesn't know about, that she keeps a journal hidden in the closet upstairs, and that they have an appointment to meet later that day (in fact, on this day Dr Nash has her journal and the appointment is to give it back to her). She meets with him, he explains a little more, and gives her her journal back. On the inside she's written, at some point, DON'T TRUST BEN. She spends the rest of the day reading about her life, about another Christine on another day who, using the journal as a way to build a picture, an understanding, of her life, is learning more and discovering more and piecing things together.
As Christine reads, she learns many truths about herself, about what she's been through. The accident that was no accident. The child. The best friend, Claire. The years of having a memory only minutes long, of lashing out in a panic at those who love her, the years of being locked up, in care. And her interactions with her husband, Ben. And as the days of recording her life and her discoveries add up, the story that she's told about her life starts to look less and less real. But what is truth? And will she ever get her memory back, and remember who she is when she wakes?
Set aside a day or two of no distractions to read this: you'll need it and want it, first because it's a hard book to put down, and also because if you can keep the momentum and the flow going, it'll be much easier to keep track of the little details - what's not said as much as what is.
It was a bit odd, reading this straight after reading the YA novel, Forgotten by Cat Patrick, but the two don't have a lot in common. What they do have in common is what all stories about amnesiacs have in common: fear, uncertainty, distrust. It would be terrifying, waking up and thinking you are one thing, only to find out that years have gone by that you can't remember, and nothing is as you do remember it. Or waking up and having no memory, of anything at all. Christine is now "stable" and calm - almost too calm really, she comes across as rather apathetic, like she's in a perpetual state of shell-shock. Like she's recovering from a stroke and relearning how to walk and talk and how to think. It makes her seem wooden and slow but really she's paralysed by fear, uncertainty, caution.
Other readers have found her hard to connect with but I found her hesitancy, her uncertainty, rang true for her situation. I tried to think, how would I react if I woke up one morning and didn't recognise the man in bed with me - and then didn't recognise my own face when I looked in the mirror? Or rather, finding that I was some twenty-odd years older and having no recollection of how I got there. I'd scream, first of all. You would wouldn't you, the shock would be huge. And the stranger in the bed? A voice of reason, of calm, of answers, as thinly supplied as they might be. Torn between needing someone to trust and rely on to give you context and firm ground to stand on, and feeling nothing toward them, none of the emotions you would expect to feel towards the man you married, regardless of the state of your memories.
I don't try hard to figure a mystery out, I like to sink into a book and let everything play out - if it's well written and absorbing, of course I start thinking, trying to piece things together and get at the truth. I came pretty close with this one, too. It was my first gut instinct, though I kept switching between possibilities (such is the fun of a psychological thriller!). I started thinking about Ben from the perspective of being married to someone who couldn't remember who you were, who woke up terrified every morning and who had to be treated something like a child, every day. Someone you loved and married and yet couldn't have a normal relationship with, couldn't even touch them really. How hard that must be. I felt sympathy for him. Truth is a slippery, or maybe "ephemeral" is a better word, in this story, and the characters wear many different faces.
And that's the thing about this book, what makes it so psychologically thrilling, so mysterious for all its day-to-day mundanity, what makes you think and think again: there are so many layers, and possibilities, and all of them plausible. Christine remains mostly calm and tentative throughout it all - it's either that or go a bit mad I think. Keeping your emotions at the forefront of your day would be exhausting. The majority of us like, and seek, a sense of normalcy, routine, structure - for security and peace of mind, and to minimise stress. So the sense of distance you feel between Christine and the world in which she lives, makes a lot of sense.
There were some things in this book that made me cry - that alone indicates how strongly I got emotionally invested in this. In particular, the issue of a baby for Christine and Ben. Having a baby of my own, ten months old at the time I read this, her feelings were ones I felt keenly. Some readers found that a female narrator was a stretch for this new male author, but actually I found him to be pretty spot-on most of the time - nothing really stuck out at me as odd or disjointed in the way she was rendered. Same with her book, the novel she had written. And everything else that comes out in the course of the story (plus, I'm a person who doesn't believe in there being only a prescribed way of being. There is such a thing as a person different from yourself!). If Christine doesn't feel real to you, you'll have trouble investing in the story and caring enough to get through it - the same is true of any book I'd say.
Like Emma Donoghue's Room , when I finished this I just had to sit quietly for a bit, feeling somewhat shell-shocked myself. The ending is a bit of a let-down from the slow build-up of tension and mystery and unlocking the puzzle: it was overly dramatic and had the feel of a cheap telly-movie. [What's next is a bit spoilery] Not only that, but it didn't seem at all realistic that her attacker should die in the fire in that small room, while she - tied up and immobile - should survive basically unscathed (from the fire, at least). Also, why on earth did he keep the pages he'd cut out of her journal? In an envelope marked "confidential"? I didn't get it and so it seemed a weak way for her to find out the truth. [/spoiler] It needed a big ending I think, it was all building up to it, but it wasn't unpredictable in the slightest once you got close enough to see the truth, and it lacked ... realism? Sincerity? Plausibility? Not the reason for the attack, but the way it was carried out. The things said.
Ugh, sometimes I wish I were one of those people who like to give everything away, just so I could speak clearly about the things that made an impact on me, but I do believe in everyone having the chance to read a book with the fresh, uncluttered eyes that I had, not with a lot of noise, expectations and pre-conceived ideas buzzing in your ears.
While it is written in present tense, for the present-day sections, the journal itself is written in past tense. Not an uncommon use of tenses. And most of the time, Watson has a steady hold on the present tense - it's a difficult tense to write in and a lot of writers just don't know how to use it properly, "accurately" or to good effect. There was one little slip at the end that was like someone banging a cymbal in my ear - it may have been a little line but it was so off it completely upset the rhythm of the scene: "Later, I will think how I should have hit him again." [p.342] Ah, no. Not in present tense my dear. You can't have a reflective thought like that in the heat of the moment. That's the downside of using present tense: it's very limiting, very constricting. You can't move outside of the present. That's the whole point.
Overall, it was a powerful novel for all its minor flaws, especially considering this is a debut for Watson. It's a deceptively quiet, quietly stirring story of a woman lost in her world and in herself, struggling to find her identity as much as her memories - for without the memories of her life to build a person on, who the hell is she? It's a story about motherhood, about loss and about facing hard truths. It's a story that'll get you thinking and empathising, and it'll probably creep you out too. Like with most books that were overhyped on release, it suffers from too much attention and a guarded, highly critical readership - it's nice when you can shut all the hype out and read a book because you want to, not because it's suddenly all everyone's talking about. In a way, that's why I waited nearly a year (a full year? not sure) before reading this, and I'm mighty glad I did. I'm already looking forward to whatever he writes next.(less)
But today is different - supposedly. Today she meets a doctor, Dr Nash, who tells her she has been seeing him in secret for weeks, working on a new treatment that her husband doesn't know about, that she keeps a journal hidden in the closet upstairs, and that they have an appointment to meet later that day (in fact, on this day Dr Nash has her journal and the appointment is to give it back to her). She meets with him, he explains a little more, and gives her her journal back. On the inside she's written, at some point, DON'T TRUST BEN. She spends the rest of the day reading about her life, about another Christine on another day who, using the journal as a way to build a picture, an understanding, of her life, is learning more and discovering more and piecing things together.
As Christine reads, she learns many truths about herself, about what she's been through. The accident that was no accident. The child. The best friend, Claire. The years of having a memory only minutes long, of lashing out in a panic at those who love her, the years of being locked up, in care. And her interactions with her husband, Ben. And as the days of recording her life and her discoveries add up, the story that she's told about her life starts to look less and less real. But what is truth? And will she ever get her memory back, and remember who she is when she wakes?
Set aside a day or two of no distractions to read this: you'll need it and want it, first because it's a hard book to put down, and also because if you can keep the momentum and the flow going, it'll be much easier to keep track of the little details - what's not said as much as what is.
It was a bit odd, reading this straight after reading the YA novel, Forgotten by Cat Patrick, but the two don't have a lot in common. What they do have in common is what all stories about amnesiacs have in common: fear, uncertainty, distrust. It would be terrifying, waking up and thinking you are one thing, only to find out that years have gone by that you can't remember, and nothing is as you do remember it. Or waking up and having no memory, of anything at all. Christine is now "stable" and calm - almost too calm really, she comes across as rather apathetic, like she's in a perpetual state of shell-shock. Like she's recovering from a stroke and relearning how to walk and talk and how to think. It makes her seem wooden and slow but really she's paralysed by fear, uncertainty, caution.
Other readers have found her hard to connect with but I found her hesitancy, her uncertainty, rang true for her situation. I tried to think, how would I react if I woke up one morning and didn't recognise the man in bed with me - and then didn't recognise my own face when I looked in the mirror? Or rather, finding that I was some twenty-odd years older and having no recollection of how I got there. I'd scream, first of all. You would wouldn't you, the shock would be huge. And the stranger in the bed? A voice of reason, of calm, of answers, as thinly supplied as they might be. Torn between needing someone to trust and rely on to give you context and firm ground to stand on, and feeling nothing toward them, none of the emotions you would expect to feel towards the man you married, regardless of the state of your memories.
I don't try hard to figure a mystery out, I like to sink into a book and let everything play out - if it's well written and absorbing, of course I start thinking, trying to piece things together and get at the truth. I came pretty close with this one, too. It was my first gut instinct, though I kept switching between possibilities (such is the fun of a psychological thriller!). I started thinking about Ben from the perspective of being married to someone who couldn't remember who you were, who woke up terrified every morning and who had to be treated something like a child, every day. Someone you loved and married and yet couldn't have a normal relationship with, couldn't even touch them really. How hard that must be. I felt sympathy for him. Truth is a slippery, or maybe "ephemeral" is a better word, in this story, and the characters wear many different faces.
He hesitated, and again I sensed a calculation, an adjustment. I realized that, of course, Ben knows what will upset me. He has had years to learn what I will find acceptable and what is dangerous ground to treat. After all, this is not the first time he has had this conversation. He has had the opportunity to practice, to learn how to navigate routes that will not rip through the landscape of my life and send me tumbling somewhere else. [pp. 121-2]
And that's the thing about this book, what makes it so psychologically thrilling, so mysterious for all its day-to-day mundanity, what makes you think and think again: there are so many layers, and possibilities, and all of them plausible. Christine remains mostly calm and tentative throughout it all - it's either that or go a bit mad I think. Keeping your emotions at the forefront of your day would be exhausting. The majority of us like, and seek, a sense of normalcy, routine, structure - for security and peace of mind, and to minimise stress. So the sense of distance you feel between Christine and the world in which she lives, makes a lot of sense.
There were some things in this book that made me cry - that alone indicates how strongly I got emotionally invested in this. In particular, the issue of a baby for Christine and Ben. Having a baby of my own, ten months old at the time I read this, her feelings were ones I felt keenly. Some readers found that a female narrator was a stretch for this new male author, but actually I found him to be pretty spot-on most of the time - nothing really stuck out at me as odd or disjointed in the way she was rendered. Same with her book, the novel she had written. And everything else that comes out in the course of the story (plus, I'm a person who doesn't believe in there being only a prescribed way of being. There is such a thing as a person different from yourself!). If Christine doesn't feel real to you, you'll have trouble investing in the story and caring enough to get through it - the same is true of any book I'd say.
Like Emma Donoghue's Room , when I finished this I just had to sit quietly for a bit, feeling somewhat shell-shocked myself. The ending is a bit of a let-down from the slow build-up of tension and mystery and unlocking the puzzle: it was overly dramatic and had the feel of a cheap telly-movie. [What's next is a bit spoilery] Not only that, but it didn't seem at all realistic that her attacker should die in the fire in that small room, while she - tied up and immobile - should survive basically unscathed (from the fire, at least). Also, why on earth did he keep the pages he'd cut out of her journal? In an envelope marked "confidential"? I didn't get it and so it seemed a weak way for her to find out the truth. [/spoiler] It needed a big ending I think, it was all building up to it, but it wasn't unpredictable in the slightest once you got close enough to see the truth, and it lacked ... realism? Sincerity? Plausibility? Not the reason for the attack, but the way it was carried out. The things said.
Ugh, sometimes I wish I were one of those people who like to give everything away, just so I could speak clearly about the things that made an impact on me, but I do believe in everyone having the chance to read a book with the fresh, uncluttered eyes that I had, not with a lot of noise, expectations and pre-conceived ideas buzzing in your ears.
While it is written in present tense, for the present-day sections, the journal itself is written in past tense. Not an uncommon use of tenses. And most of the time, Watson has a steady hold on the present tense - it's a difficult tense to write in and a lot of writers just don't know how to use it properly, "accurately" or to good effect. There was one little slip at the end that was like someone banging a cymbal in my ear - it may have been a little line but it was so off it completely upset the rhythm of the scene: "Later, I will think how I should have hit him again." [p.342] Ah, no. Not in present tense my dear. You can't have a reflective thought like that in the heat of the moment. That's the downside of using present tense: it's very limiting, very constricting. You can't move outside of the present. That's the whole point.
Overall, it was a powerful novel for all its minor flaws, especially considering this is a debut for Watson. It's a deceptively quiet, quietly stirring story of a woman lost in her world and in herself, struggling to find her identity as much as her memories - for without the memories of her life to build a person on, who the hell is she? It's a story about motherhood, about loss and about facing hard truths. It's a story that'll get you thinking and empathising, and it'll probably creep you out too. Like with most books that were overhyped on release, it suffers from too much attention and a guarded, highly critical readership - it's nice when you can shut all the hype out and read a book because you want to, not because it's suddenly all everyone's talking about. In a way, that's why I waited nearly a year (a full year? not sure) before reading this, and I'm mighty glad I did. I'm already looking forward to whatever he writes next.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Jun 02, 2012
Sep 22, 2011
Paperback
184854572X
9781848545724
3.58
1,706
Aug 30, 2011
Jan 03, 2012
I don't think I can give my usual summary of this novel. I tried, and it just sounds so trite and dull. (In fact, this review was really hard to write...more
I don't think I can give my usual summary of this novel. I tried, and it just sounds so trite and dull. (In fact, this review was really hard to write, I've been trying for over a week and it's a mess, I apologise.) I will offer what I can and go from there, for context if nothing else. This is basically the story of a teacher and a student who have an affair - if we were to break the book down to its base plot - but I didn't know anything else, going on, and I'm not always sure I should give more to others than I started with, but, if I don't, I won't be able to talk about it. So here's some more detail:
Will Silver left America - and his wife - for France after the tragic deaths of his parents; he's been teaching English at the International School of France in Paris for the last three years. His seminar class for older students (sorry, I find the whole "freshman" "senior" etc. thing really confusing so I'm not sure what grade it is exactly) is a small group, apparently not the standard classroom set-up for American schools (the school should probably be called "American School in Paris", as one of the characters considers it [quick note: I found out after writing this that that is exactly the name of the real school where Maksik taught! I'm good, aren't I? Or not...), where they discuss philosophy and the meaning of life, religion and choice through Sartre, Camus and other French-speaking and American writers.
Popular with his students, Will comes across, at the beginning, as a bit creepy, a bit too close and friendly. I'm unsure why we're given this impression to start with, though how much of it is my pre-conceived ideas about this teacher who will have an affair with a student, is hard to separate. And then there was my other knowledge, that Maksik himself was a teacher at a school just like this (and the gossip that he had an affair with a student and this story is based on that - but I don't want to get off track), which made me feel like Mr Silver is Maksik, and Mr Silver is, at first, just a bit too Wonderful, y'know? At the beginning of the novel, for example, he's greeted by his students for the last class of the year like this:
(Okay, quick disclaimer here: I am a teacher, an English teacher, though I'm not currently teaching. Just had to put that in as it did affect my reading, too.)
Throughout the novel, Mr Silver is the object of girls' crushes and boys' hero-worshipping. Now, perhaps it was coy, blushing Julia, or perhaps it was oozing smarmy Steven, or one of the several other students who come and say much the same thing to "Mr S", but I found this all rather cloying and wishful thinking. Because so many teachers, if not all, on some level want to be that teacher who changes the lives of their students. Granted, Will is conscious of this:
Combine that with the pre-knowledge that he's going to have a sexual relationship with a student, and I didn't get the best introduction to Will. My perception of him did actually improve as the novel went on, strangely enough, probably because of his classes and the conversations they have and that he sticks up for the students' right to be challenged at school. Which, considering what he's up to outside the school, presents something of a Humbert Humbert character, where you like someone even when you're disgusted, angry etc. over their actions (and what their actions mean about them as a person). It's confronting and challenging, which I like, though You Deserve Nothing lacks the oomph and power of Lolita.
Moving on from that verbose introduction to Will, we also have two students narrating: Gilad Fisher and Marie de Cléry. The novel is structured into chapters told from the three different perspectives, from when they were older. Will's chapters have a more natural prose while Gilad and Marie narrate as if they're telling a story for a documentary. It's a bit weird. I also found the tense use strange and muddled. It flits between present and past tense seemingly randomly, and I found it very distracting. For example, Will's first chapter - and this is all in the characters' pasts, just to reiterate - begins on the last day of the school year, the previous school year, before he has an affair, and it is told in present tense. Then somewhere, around page 75, he starts to reminisce and tells the rest of his side of the story in past tense, often with that same reflective, "are the cameras rolling?" tone. I'm not a big fan of this experimental use of tenses; it too often just seems amateurish and wanky, or at the very least clumsy.
Gilad and Marie. Gilad, one of Mr Silver's students, was my favourite character, and I felt I could really relate to him (as an aside, for the first few chapters I thought, or assumed, he was a girl! I had to completely change the way I read him when I at last encountered a pronoun). Marie - I'm not sure that we're meant to like her at all, she's too realistic in many ways and alienating and off-putting in others. Or put it this way, like her plastic friend Ariel, anyone who doesn't get Mr Silver's English class isn't someone I'd get along with in real life. Because I did love his classes, which are included in the narrative because of the questions they raise about life, love and religion, which are in their way, themes of the book; and because of the dynamics between the students, and the students and their teacher, Will. You can learn a lot about existentialism, for example, but more to the point, the conversations and topics begin to reflect Will's state of mind as he becomes, dare I say it, a bit unhinged. Gilad notices it too - Mr Silver is his hero - but he is the last kid in school to learn about what's going on between Will and Marie.
Where Maksik wrote well was the shifting narrative voices of his three main characters - I can't really call them protagonists, perhaps because of that real life, documentary feel to the story (there are lots of good reviews, like this one on Shelf Love, that discuss the morals and ethics of using a possibly true story for fiction and, thus, profit, but I'd prefer to stick to discussing the book on its own where possible). You will get the same scene repeated but from a different character's perspective, so you get a different view of what happened. This is particularly true of Marie, who comes across as a slutty sixteen year old in Will's chapters, an experienced slutty sixteen year old who seduces him. In Marie's chapters, we get to meet a shy, insecure, self-conscious girl whose mother is constantly disappointed with her appearance, who has no real friends, and whose previous experience is one boy, Collin, who physically forced her to give him a blowjob on a bus. At some point, we learn that she is vulnerable and lacking a strong, loving, nurturing adult in her life, and yearns for a caring, tender boyfriend. Will, as an experienced adult, has that tenderness as well as the skill. You can't really blame her, not considering the stupid things we do as kids, and her maturity over the course of the novel is subtle but true. She grows up, and learns to stand on her own feet, more so than before anyway. Gilad, too, grows stronger because of Will's indirect and direct influence, and stands up to his wife-beating father.
On the other hand, Will, who took advantage of a young girl's lust and insecurities, is somewhat reduced by the end of the story. The events change him too, but there's no deep, moral, introspective navel-gazing going on here - and for that I thank Maksik, I can't stand that kind of self-indulgent writing or character. And there are a lot of them around. Instead, we're left with a kind of limbo, left with Will's abrupt departure and absence and like Marie and Gilad, have to go on with our lives as independent adults. It's a coming-of-age story for Gilad and Marie, but what is it exactly for Will? Did he return to the States and possibly his wife, to face what he'd been running from? Or did he hide away in Paris a bit longer, or somewhere else, in denial of what he'd done? It's a more effective story for leaving us lots to ponder.
The long and the short of it is, I'm conflicted. There was much to love here, and in writing this slip-shod review, the love has come out. But while I started off feeling decidedly "meh" about it, and came to like it more and more as the story progressed, I was still left feeling strangely disappointed at the end. Not with the ending per se, but with the book as a whole. If anything, it says "good first novel, his second will probably be stronger." Maybe it was the setting, which was too often skimmed over, or crowded with Americans and other foreigners. Maybe it was the structure and the pretentious use of two tenses that didn't work for me. Maybe it's that I kept waiting, waiting, for something to happen, something to lift it up and into the realm of real excellence. And maybe it was that it was too realistic, and to grossly paraphrase Northrop Frye, we find realism in fiction to be unrealistic. Or alienating. Or uncomfortable. Or dull.
Which brings us full circle back to the issue of this book as fact disguised as fiction, and what that means, to us the readers, to the story, to the ethics of publishing it even. Personally, at this point, I'm not too bothered, but it does make you read the book with a different degree of alertness, and a different reaction to scenes and characters. It definitely colours the way you read.
The rambling nature of this review just shows you how unsure I am about this book. There's a lot more going on than I've discussed, and yet I've put the emphasis on Will's sexual relationship with Marie - while I was reading this, I kept having the feeling like that relationship wasn't the point of the novel, was a red herring even, but now I think I'm just reading too much into it. It is at times too obvious a book, and at others quite nicely subtle. The obvious overshadowed the subtle, for me, and lowered my appreciation of what is otherwise a good, solid debut.(less)
Will Silver left America - and his wife - for France after the tragic deaths of his parents; he's been teaching English at the International School of France in Paris for the last three years. His seminar class for older students (sorry, I find the whole "freshman" "senior" etc. thing really confusing so I'm not sure what grade it is exactly) is a small group, apparently not the standard classroom set-up for American schools (the school should probably be called "American School in Paris", as one of the characters considers it [quick note: I found out after writing this that that is exactly the name of the real school where Maksik taught! I'm good, aren't I? Or not...), where they discuss philosophy and the meaning of life, religion and choice through Sartre, Camus and other French-speaking and American writers.
Popular with his students, Will comes across, at the beginning, as a bit creepy, a bit too close and friendly. I'm unsure why we're given this impression to start with, though how much of it is my pre-conceived ideas about this teacher who will have an affair with a student, is hard to separate. And then there was my other knowledge, that Maksik himself was a teacher at a school just like this (and the gossip that he had an affair with a student and this story is based on that - but I don't want to get off track), which made me feel like Mr Silver is Maksik, and Mr Silver is, at first, just a bit too Wonderful, y'know? At the beginning of the novel, for example, he's greeted by his students for the last class of the year like this:
"So, listen Mr. S. I'm going to miss you this summer and I want you to know that I really loved your class and that I think you're a great teacher." She blushes. "So, thank you for everything. You kind of changed my life this year."
"Thank you, Julia. I've loved having you as a student."
She looks at the floor.
Steven Connor struts into the classroom, short and bluff and pushing his chest out.
"Mr S!" He [sic] says, extending his hand, a little businessman. "How you doing, Mr. S. You now I'm going to miss this class, dude. Why don't you teach juniors? You suck. What the hell am I going to do next year?" [p.9]
(Okay, quick disclaimer here: I am a teacher, an English teacher, though I'm not currently teaching. Just had to put that in as it did affect my reading, too.)
Throughout the novel, Mr Silver is the object of girls' crushes and boys' hero-worshipping. Now, perhaps it was coy, blushing Julia, or perhaps it was oozing smarmy Steven, or one of the several other students who come and say much the same thing to "Mr S", but I found this all rather cloying and wishful thinking. Because so many teachers, if not all, on some level want to be that teacher who changes the lives of their students. Granted, Will is conscious of this:
All that attention, it's hard to resist. And if you're honest you acknowledge that before you ever became a teacher you imagined your students' reverence, your ability to seduce, the stories you'd tell, the wisdom you'd impart. You know that teaching is the combination of theater and love, ego and belief. You know that the subject you teach isn't as important as how you use it. [p.76]
Combine that with the pre-knowledge that he's going to have a sexual relationship with a student, and I didn't get the best introduction to Will. My perception of him did actually improve as the novel went on, strangely enough, probably because of his classes and the conversations they have and that he sticks up for the students' right to be challenged at school. Which, considering what he's up to outside the school, presents something of a Humbert Humbert character, where you like someone even when you're disgusted, angry etc. over their actions (and what their actions mean about them as a person). It's confronting and challenging, which I like, though You Deserve Nothing lacks the oomph and power of Lolita.
Moving on from that verbose introduction to Will, we also have two students narrating: Gilad Fisher and Marie de Cléry. The novel is structured into chapters told from the three different perspectives, from when they were older. Will's chapters have a more natural prose while Gilad and Marie narrate as if they're telling a story for a documentary. It's a bit weird. I also found the tense use strange and muddled. It flits between present and past tense seemingly randomly, and I found it very distracting. For example, Will's first chapter - and this is all in the characters' pasts, just to reiterate - begins on the last day of the school year, the previous school year, before he has an affair, and it is told in present tense. Then somewhere, around page 75, he starts to reminisce and tells the rest of his side of the story in past tense, often with that same reflective, "are the cameras rolling?" tone. I'm not a big fan of this experimental use of tenses; it too often just seems amateurish and wanky, or at the very least clumsy.
Gilad and Marie. Gilad, one of Mr Silver's students, was my favourite character, and I felt I could really relate to him (as an aside, for the first few chapters I thought, or assumed, he was a girl! I had to completely change the way I read him when I at last encountered a pronoun). Marie - I'm not sure that we're meant to like her at all, she's too realistic in many ways and alienating and off-putting in others. Or put it this way, like her plastic friend Ariel, anyone who doesn't get Mr Silver's English class isn't someone I'd get along with in real life. Because I did love his classes, which are included in the narrative because of the questions they raise about life, love and religion, which are in their way, themes of the book; and because of the dynamics between the students, and the students and their teacher, Will. You can learn a lot about existentialism, for example, but more to the point, the conversations and topics begin to reflect Will's state of mind as he becomes, dare I say it, a bit unhinged. Gilad notices it too - Mr Silver is his hero - but he is the last kid in school to learn about what's going on between Will and Marie.
Where Maksik wrote well was the shifting narrative voices of his three main characters - I can't really call them protagonists, perhaps because of that real life, documentary feel to the story (there are lots of good reviews, like this one on Shelf Love, that discuss the morals and ethics of using a possibly true story for fiction and, thus, profit, but I'd prefer to stick to discussing the book on its own where possible). You will get the same scene repeated but from a different character's perspective, so you get a different view of what happened. This is particularly true of Marie, who comes across as a slutty sixteen year old in Will's chapters, an experienced slutty sixteen year old who seduces him. In Marie's chapters, we get to meet a shy, insecure, self-conscious girl whose mother is constantly disappointed with her appearance, who has no real friends, and whose previous experience is one boy, Collin, who physically forced her to give him a blowjob on a bus. At some point, we learn that she is vulnerable and lacking a strong, loving, nurturing adult in her life, and yearns for a caring, tender boyfriend. Will, as an experienced adult, has that tenderness as well as the skill. You can't really blame her, not considering the stupid things we do as kids, and her maturity over the course of the novel is subtle but true. She grows up, and learns to stand on her own feet, more so than before anyway. Gilad, too, grows stronger because of Will's indirect and direct influence, and stands up to his wife-beating father.
On the other hand, Will, who took advantage of a young girl's lust and insecurities, is somewhat reduced by the end of the story. The events change him too, but there's no deep, moral, introspective navel-gazing going on here - and for that I thank Maksik, I can't stand that kind of self-indulgent writing or character. And there are a lot of them around. Instead, we're left with a kind of limbo, left with Will's abrupt departure and absence and like Marie and Gilad, have to go on with our lives as independent adults. It's a coming-of-age story for Gilad and Marie, but what is it exactly for Will? Did he return to the States and possibly his wife, to face what he'd been running from? Or did he hide away in Paris a bit longer, or somewhere else, in denial of what he'd done? It's a more effective story for leaving us lots to ponder.
The long and the short of it is, I'm conflicted. There was much to love here, and in writing this slip-shod review, the love has come out. But while I started off feeling decidedly "meh" about it, and came to like it more and more as the story progressed, I was still left feeling strangely disappointed at the end. Not with the ending per se, but with the book as a whole. If anything, it says "good first novel, his second will probably be stronger." Maybe it was the setting, which was too often skimmed over, or crowded with Americans and other foreigners. Maybe it was the structure and the pretentious use of two tenses that didn't work for me. Maybe it's that I kept waiting, waiting, for something to happen, something to lift it up and into the realm of real excellence. And maybe it was that it was too realistic, and to grossly paraphrase Northrop Frye, we find realism in fiction to be unrealistic. Or alienating. Or uncomfortable. Or dull.
Which brings us full circle back to the issue of this book as fact disguised as fiction, and what that means, to us the readers, to the story, to the ethics of publishing it even. Personally, at this point, I'm not too bothered, but it does make you read the book with a different degree of alertness, and a different reaction to scenes and characters. It definitely colours the way you read.
The rambling nature of this review just shows you how unsure I am about this book. There's a lot more going on than I've discussed, and yet I've put the emphasis on Will's sexual relationship with Marie - while I was reading this, I kept having the feeling like that relationship wasn't the point of the novel, was a red herring even, but now I think I'm just reading too much into it. It is at times too obvious a book, and at others quite nicely subtle. The obvious overshadowed the subtle, for me, and lowered my appreciation of what is otherwise a good, solid debut.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Jan 26, 2012
Jan 03, 2012
Paperback
9780062135797
4.28
10,335
Jan 17, 2012
2012
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Mar 08, 2012
Paperback
0609807900
9780609807903
3.99
18,804
Aug 28, 2001
Aug 28, 2001
It's New Year's Day and fifteen-going-on-sixteen year old Jessica Darling is starting a journal to chronicle her year, beginning with Hope, her best f...more
It's New Year's Day and fifteen-going-on-sixteen year old Jessica Darling is starting a journal to chronicle her year, beginning with Hope, her best friend, moving away to Tennessee and leaving Jessica feeling essentially friendless. She hangs out with a group of girls at her high school that she and Hope had christened the Clueless Crew - for good reason. With no one to talk to and share in her sense of humour, she feels doomed to a year of mindless adolescence.
But a few freak and random interactions with the school's resident druggie (or "Dreg"), Marcus Flutie, has her head in a whirl. And when he returns in September, the start of the new school year, apparently drug-free, cleaned up and studying hard, she's burning with curiosity. But it's when Marcus pursues a friendship with Jess that she really starts to feel like she's found someone who understands her, like Hope does. But Marcus was once friends with Hope's older brother Heath - before Heath died of a drug overdose. Telling Hope that she's now friends with a boy who was part of Heath's self-destructive lifestyle isn't something she feels she can do, and she certainly can't tell the Clueless Crew. And what if Jess wants more than just friendship? It's a year of change, in more ways than one, for intelligent, articulate and funny Jessica Darling.
This book was first published in 2001 and, reading it in 2012, it's amazing how much it feels a bit like reading a book set in the 80s - as in, things have changed more than we realise. While some of the cultural references were over my head, we get enough American TV, music and movies in Australia that I wasn't completely lost, but I did stumble at the beginning. And with the references to things like the Y2K bug and Palm Pilots (whatever happened to those?!), it has an almost quaint feel to it - hence that feeling of reading a book set in a different era.
But Palm Pilots aside, this story of life for a middle class American teen will take much longer to feel at all dated. For a start, Jessica's interactions and growing friendship with Marcus felt eerily familiar, and disconcertingly - but enjoyably - realistic. That is exactly how it goes! Though I still think that all these thoughtful, sensitive and loving boys in YA fiction aren't really representative, but that's beside the point.
Once you get on board with the fact that Jessica Darling sounds like an Aaron Sorkin character, her witty and clever voice is one to love. She even got me to laugh, and I had no trouble connecting with her emotionally. So much so that when the book ended I had to go online and order the next three! (The fifth can come later.) Her observations cut right to the heart of adolescent life (give or take a few cultural differences):
It says something that my biggest disappointment about this book was Jessica's casual reference to flushing tampons down the toilet (incidentally, I recently read Fifty Shades of Grey which also included a flushed tampon - I was surprised at how instant and strong my anger was). Jessica's a wonderful character, with a strong and distinct voice, and Marcus is someone I eagerly want to get to know better. I spent a lot of the novel feeling pissed off at Jessica's parents - made me feel like a teenager! - but there's such a glaring disconnect between them and their daughter, it made me sad, doubly so because they're also presented as pretty normal parents.
If you're looking for something fun, funny, intelligent and emotionally engaging, this is definitely the book for you. (less)
But a few freak and random interactions with the school's resident druggie (or "Dreg"), Marcus Flutie, has her head in a whirl. And when he returns in September, the start of the new school year, apparently drug-free, cleaned up and studying hard, she's burning with curiosity. But it's when Marcus pursues a friendship with Jess that she really starts to feel like she's found someone who understands her, like Hope does. But Marcus was once friends with Hope's older brother Heath - before Heath died of a drug overdose. Telling Hope that she's now friends with a boy who was part of Heath's self-destructive lifestyle isn't something she feels she can do, and she certainly can't tell the Clueless Crew. And what if Jess wants more than just friendship? It's a year of change, in more ways than one, for intelligent, articulate and funny Jessica Darling.
This book was first published in 2001 and, reading it in 2012, it's amazing how much it feels a bit like reading a book set in the 80s - as in, things have changed more than we realise. While some of the cultural references were over my head, we get enough American TV, music and movies in Australia that I wasn't completely lost, but I did stumble at the beginning. And with the references to things like the Y2K bug and Palm Pilots (whatever happened to those?!), it has an almost quaint feel to it - hence that feeling of reading a book set in a different era.
But Palm Pilots aside, this story of life for a middle class American teen will take much longer to feel at all dated. For a start, Jessica's interactions and growing friendship with Marcus felt eerily familiar, and disconcertingly - but enjoyably - realistic. That is exactly how it goes! Though I still think that all these thoughtful, sensitive and loving boys in YA fiction aren't really representative, but that's beside the point.
Once you get on board with the fact that Jessica Darling sounds like an Aaron Sorkin character, her witty and clever voice is one to love. She even got me to laugh, and I had no trouble connecting with her emotionally. So much so that when the book ended I had to go online and order the next three! (The fifth can come later.) Her observations cut right to the heart of adolescent life (give or take a few cultural differences):
After work [...], Burke drove us over to the stretch of beach where the festivities were taking place. We got there around midnight. The fiesta was clearly in its early stages, as there was an even one-to-one ratio of people to beer cans scattered on the sand. Plus, the sexes had yet to mingle. Giggly girls clung in clumps, clutching plastic cups and beer cans kindly provided by members of the opposite sex who wanted to get in their pants. Packs of guys pounded each other in the arm, pointing out the girls whose pants they wanted to get into. We may be in high school, but until everyone is wasted these shindigs are as boy-girl segregated as a kindergarten birthday party. When the sexes interface, that's when you know things are getting really messy. [p.154]
It says something that my biggest disappointment about this book was Jessica's casual reference to flushing tampons down the toilet (incidentally, I recently read Fifty Shades of Grey which also included a flushed tampon - I was surprised at how instant and strong my anger was). Jessica's a wonderful character, with a strong and distinct voice, and Marcus is someone I eagerly want to get to know better. I spent a lot of the novel feeling pissed off at Jessica's parents - made me feel like a teenager! - but there's such a glaring disconnect between them and their daughter, it made me sad, doubly so because they're also presented as pretty normal parents.
If you're looking for something fun, funny, intelligent and emotionally engaging, this is definitely the book for you. (less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Apr 20, 2012
Apr 17, 2012
Paperback
0864926561
9780864926562
3.95
41
Jan 01, 2012
Apr 06, 2012
In an alternate present-day, an unnamed young man begins to carve out a subsistence living on a plot of land abandoned by loggers in the forested moun...more
In an alternate present-day, an unnamed young man begins to carve out a subsistence living on a plot of land abandoned by loggers in the forested mountains of Nova Scotia. While food supplies dwindle because of plastic-eating bacteria unleashed in the world, devastating everything from medical equipment to debit cards to the plastic waste clogging the earth, he works the thin soil, plants food and sleeps in a tent.
Not completely isolated, he meets an oldish man called Art whose wife, Louise, lives in a retirement home because she has Alzheimer's. At Art's house he meets young, beautiful Lena, who comes to live with him on his mountain and names his land Forest Garden. To Art, and then Lena, he tells the story of Benny, a young woman living in New York who worked on the plastic-eating bacteria for her Ph.D thesis.
And at night he remembers, remembers growing up as a kid in Maine, going for camping trips in summer with his dad, and learning to skate on the ice rink his father created in the backyard. He recalls his mother leaving them and never returning, of his father slowly slipping into solitude and alcoholism until the day he died - accident or suicide? He is haunted by the ghost of his father and the unanswered questions of his life.
What do all these tales have in common? Where do they connect? It is in Fotheringham's beautiful, subtle prose that the threads are slowly woven together, creating a vivid world of survival, hope and young love. My one regret is that I didn't note any pages for quotes, but I will try to find the passages that spoke to me.
The story begins quietly and unobtrusively, just like the main character, our narrator. Throughout the novel, the peace and tranquility, the sounds and smells, of the untamed natural world are juxtaposed against the epitome of humankind's cleverness, our cities and inventions and drive to conquer. Benny's story in particular is a stark contrast to the present-day narrative, switching from growing potatoes and listening to the rain on the tent canvas to the noise, smog and frantic bustle of New York City, to Benny's life holed up in a research lab avoiding her chauvinistic and patronising boss, Leach. Yes, apt name isn't it?
As someone who loved reading the Silver Brumby books and other works of fiction that had such wealth of detail in the natural world and the day-to-day living in it, the details of the narrator's life weren't dull at all: they were both tranquil and energising, and absolutely fascinating. I come from a farm where we grew our own veg, and I'd like to live in the country again so I could do that once more. I was quite engrossed, learning what it would be like to live in a tent for more than a long weekend, eating what you grow along with some rice from the neighbours, and having to contend with no plumbing and wild animals. It is not only the natural world he is exploring and discovering, but that of people at their most elemental as well.
I actually would have liked more detail rather than less, but considering not everyone would be as interested as me, it was a nicely achieved balance. And in the background are little snippets of what is happening in the world because of the plastic-eating bacteria - a bacteria that certainly solves the problem of what to do with our billions of tonnes of plastic waste that will never break down, but causes more problems than it solves by rapidly reproducing and being easily transferable from one plastic to another, so that the IV drip in your arm melts, your pace-maker dies, your shoes dissolve. The interesting thing is that, while Benny is obsessed with getting rid of the world's plastic, her environmentalism isn't really what the story is about, but her humanity.
While it did take me a while to get into it, and I did find it hard to get a reading rhythm going (excellent prose has a rhythm to it, have you noticed?) due to some awkward sentences here and there, the story is cleverly, patiently crafted and by the time you get to the revelation, towards which the whole story has been gradually building (with a slow-burning tension edged with a hint of creepiness), you should be as thoroughly hooked as I was. There are clues throughout, making this a literary mystery novel of the kind that will keep you thinking, and while I figured it out in one way (or at least, it was one of my theories, despite the red herring), I would never have guessed at the truth because the story's so cleverly told - and for reasons of language. I would love to share my thoughts on this aspect of the novel, but even mentioning it would act like a big fat spoiler so I can't, in good conscience. I'm all about letting others experience a story as I did.
The other thing about this novel that made it slow at first was the characters: they are hard to get to know, no matter how many personal and intimate thoughts they share. But without even realising it, the narrator and Benny, in particular, came to be very real, and very ... necessary. It speaks to Fotheringham's subtlety that you start thinking of them - and treating them - as real people without even realising it. But perhaps because so much is withheld about the narrator - or some important points, anyway - some of his thoughts, actions and reactions can be irritatingly confusing. Later these details become clear, but because I wasn't expecting there to be any kind of mystery or secret, I didn't know these things were clues and hints. On a second reading, the story would be much more about the power of language and our propensity for - ugh, I can't say the word I really want to use, so I'll say "stereotyping" instead. That'll have to do.
The Rest is Silence is about many things essential to life and living: love, hatred, fear, hope, resilience, loyalty, perseverance and finding your place in the world. It's also about our place in the world in a larger context, an Us vs. Nature context. It's not a moralising story, and it's not a lecturing one. Through the medium of speculative fiction it presents a What If... scenario, and follows it through to a disturbing conclusion. Possibly, for some readers, the narrator's personal journey and revelation won't seem to connect much with the over-arching themes of the story and its environmental activism angle, but to me it's quite clear.
My thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book.(less)
Not completely isolated, he meets an oldish man called Art whose wife, Louise, lives in a retirement home because she has Alzheimer's. At Art's house he meets young, beautiful Lena, who comes to live with him on his mountain and names his land Forest Garden. To Art, and then Lena, he tells the story of Benny, a young woman living in New York who worked on the plastic-eating bacteria for her Ph.D thesis.
And at night he remembers, remembers growing up as a kid in Maine, going for camping trips in summer with his dad, and learning to skate on the ice rink his father created in the backyard. He recalls his mother leaving them and never returning, of his father slowly slipping into solitude and alcoholism until the day he died - accident or suicide? He is haunted by the ghost of his father and the unanswered questions of his life.
What do all these tales have in common? Where do they connect? It is in Fotheringham's beautiful, subtle prose that the threads are slowly woven together, creating a vivid world of survival, hope and young love. My one regret is that I didn't note any pages for quotes, but I will try to find the passages that spoke to me.
The story begins quietly and unobtrusively, just like the main character, our narrator. Throughout the novel, the peace and tranquility, the sounds and smells, of the untamed natural world are juxtaposed against the epitome of humankind's cleverness, our cities and inventions and drive to conquer. Benny's story in particular is a stark contrast to the present-day narrative, switching from growing potatoes and listening to the rain on the tent canvas to the noise, smog and frantic bustle of New York City, to Benny's life holed up in a research lab avoiding her chauvinistic and patronising boss, Leach. Yes, apt name isn't it?
As someone who loved reading the Silver Brumby books and other works of fiction that had such wealth of detail in the natural world and the day-to-day living in it, the details of the narrator's life weren't dull at all: they were both tranquil and energising, and absolutely fascinating. I come from a farm where we grew our own veg, and I'd like to live in the country again so I could do that once more. I was quite engrossed, learning what it would be like to live in a tent for more than a long weekend, eating what you grow along with some rice from the neighbours, and having to contend with no plumbing and wild animals. It is not only the natural world he is exploring and discovering, but that of people at their most elemental as well.
I actually would have liked more detail rather than less, but considering not everyone would be as interested as me, it was a nicely achieved balance. And in the background are little snippets of what is happening in the world because of the plastic-eating bacteria - a bacteria that certainly solves the problem of what to do with our billions of tonnes of plastic waste that will never break down, but causes more problems than it solves by rapidly reproducing and being easily transferable from one plastic to another, so that the IV drip in your arm melts, your pace-maker dies, your shoes dissolve. The interesting thing is that, while Benny is obsessed with getting rid of the world's plastic, her environmentalism isn't really what the story is about, but her humanity.
While it did take me a while to get into it, and I did find it hard to get a reading rhythm going (excellent prose has a rhythm to it, have you noticed?) due to some awkward sentences here and there, the story is cleverly, patiently crafted and by the time you get to the revelation, towards which the whole story has been gradually building (with a slow-burning tension edged with a hint of creepiness), you should be as thoroughly hooked as I was. There are clues throughout, making this a literary mystery novel of the kind that will keep you thinking, and while I figured it out in one way (or at least, it was one of my theories, despite the red herring), I would never have guessed at the truth because the story's so cleverly told - and for reasons of language. I would love to share my thoughts on this aspect of the novel, but even mentioning it would act like a big fat spoiler so I can't, in good conscience. I'm all about letting others experience a story as I did.
The other thing about this novel that made it slow at first was the characters: they are hard to get to know, no matter how many personal and intimate thoughts they share. But without even realising it, the narrator and Benny, in particular, came to be very real, and very ... necessary. It speaks to Fotheringham's subtlety that you start thinking of them - and treating them - as real people without even realising it. But perhaps because so much is withheld about the narrator - or some important points, anyway - some of his thoughts, actions and reactions can be irritatingly confusing. Later these details become clear, but because I wasn't expecting there to be any kind of mystery or secret, I didn't know these things were clues and hints. On a second reading, the story would be much more about the power of language and our propensity for - ugh, I can't say the word I really want to use, so I'll say "stereotyping" instead. That'll have to do.
The Rest is Silence is about many things essential to life and living: love, hatred, fear, hope, resilience, loyalty, perseverance and finding your place in the world. It's also about our place in the world in a larger context, an Us vs. Nature context. It's not a moralising story, and it's not a lecturing one. Through the medium of speculative fiction it presents a What If... scenario, and follows it through to a disturbing conclusion. Possibly, for some readers, the narrator's personal journey and revelation won't seem to connect much with the over-arching themes of the story and its environmental activism angle, but to me it's quite clear.
My thanks to the publisher for a copy of this book.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
May 21, 2012
Apr 27, 2012
Hardcover
030734651X
9780307346513
3.63
6,455
Aug 07, 2007
Sep 09, 2008
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
May 02, 2012
Paperback
030740112X
9780307401120
4.14
3,425
1997
Aug 24, 2010
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Jul 23, 2012
Paperback
140870420X
9781408704202
3.27
73,103
Jan 01, 2012
Sep 27, 2012
The Casual Vacancy has a large cast of characters and is surprisingly complex considering its simple premise, so let me introduce you to the main peop...more
The Casual Vacancy has a large cast of characters and is surprisingly complex considering its simple premise, so let me introduce you to the main people involved and what's going on in the picturesque village of Pagford.
It all begins with the death of Barry Fairbrother. A healthy, active man in his 40s with a wife and four children, Barry was the bank manager in the small, quaint old town of Pagford; he put together and coached a girls' eight rowing team at Winterdown Comprehensive, a large school on the outskirts of Yarvil (a nearby, larger town); and he had a seat on the local Parish Council, where he was fighting with all his charm, wit and charisma to keep the Fields, a cheaply-built, low-income housing development constructed decades ago by Yarvil, in the Pagford town limits. Barry himself grew up in the Fields, and is one of its few success stories, all because he was able to go to Pagford's St Thomas's primary school.
Now, suddenly, Barry is dead of a brain aneurysm, and his abrupt absence affects the lives of many people in Pagford. His wife Mary is distraught, and still harbours a resentment that he spent his last day alive - their anniversary - writing an article for the local paper about the Fields and one of its infamous tenants, Krystal Weedon. He leaves a vacant seat on the Pagford Parish Council, and everyone with an interest in the fight over the Fields has to move quickly to put up a candidate. Howard Mollison, Chair of the council and First Citizen of Pagford, who wants the low income residents of the Fields forever separated from Pagford and included in the Yarvil town limits, where they belong, and close Bellchapel addiction clinic, which runs a methadone program mostly catering to Fields' residents, puts up his pompous but genial son Miles.
On the other side of the fight is local GP, Parminder Jawanda, who lacks Barry's ability to turn people to his side with his words and his sense of humour; when Barry's friend Colin Wall, deputy principle at Winterdown, decides to run for Barry's seat, she has no better option than to support him, though they both know they're not the best people to carry on Barry's fight.
At Hilltop House, an isolated house overlooking Pagford, abusive and slightly crooked husband Simon decides to run for Barry's seat too, after he's told Barry was taking bribes from contractors. His eldest son Andrew, who is best friends with Stuart "Fats" Wall, son of Colin and Tessa, the school's guidance councillor, has a major crush on the new girl, Gaia, whose social worker mother, Kay, moved them from London because she thinks she has a chance at a real relationship with Gavin, who works with Miles Mollison at the town's only solicitor's. Gavin, meanwhile, is horrified Kay moved to Pagford, and even more afraid of breaking up with her now and seeing her everywhere in the small town.
Parminder's youngest daughter, Sukhvinder, is her parents' disappointment, the only Jawanda child not doing superbly at school, the "ugly" one. With a slight moustache, she is constantly bullied by Fats Wall, whose biting tongue reduces her to tears and self-mutilation. And Krystal, who knew Barry through the girls' rowing team, finds herself without an ally in the world now that Barry's gone. Her mother, Teri, is a heroin user, and Krystal takes care of her three-year-old brother, Robbie, whom she loves dearly.
That introduces you to most - not all - of the characters, and the general starting point of the plot. The plot itself is about small town life as much as it is about small town politics - the politics being the framework, the structure and the forward momentum for the story. I like the description in the book's blurb: this is a town at war. Very apt. The novel is a finely woven tapestry of conflict, regret, friendship, tragedy, love, resentment and betrayal. It seems like a messy sprawl of characters and story-lines, but Rowling takes her time to tease out each strand, connecting them to each other and bringing them together for a grand finale. The depth of detail is impressive, the realism is raw and honest, and the rich sense of irony complements the harsher, sadder elements. It reminded me of many British (and even some Australian) TV series, with the eclectic cast of small town characters and the tone. It reminded me somewhat of Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew Lives for a Day - there are some distinct similarities, but Rowling succeeded where Simonson fell dismally flat. It also brought to mind other stories that also delve deep into the heart of their characters, telling an "everyday, everyman" sort of story, in an equally dense "tell" rather than "show" style, but which fail for me based mostly on whether I can connect with the characters. I had no trouble connecting with Rowling's characters, who are stripped back to their secrets, their raw materials. The novel is littered with profound little insights into how people behave, how we think, how contrary we can be.
With The Casual Vacancy, I felt like I was a voyeur - again, that feeling of watching a television show: the characters all felt familiar, real, and I could empathise or sympathise or at the very least, understand, them all. This is Rowling's remarkable skill at work: her ability to understand people, to bring them to life. Without a doubt, her strength lies with children, teenagers. The adolescent characters in this novel - Andrew, Fats, Gaia, Sukhvinder, Krystal - were so realistic it was almost heartbreaking. She especially excelled at writing Andrew, the awkward, acne-riddled, average student whose one claim to distinction is his friendship with Fats. Fats, an original and complex character, is also finely drawn. The girls were perhaps more subtly depicted, with more room for the reader to infer and understand between the lines. In contrast to the troubled, depressed, anguished teens, the adults came across as shallow and mean - as they were meant to.
Yet no one is a black-and-white character, not even perpetually tanned, big-boobed Samantha, Miles' wife, or Shirley, Howard's wife, who is so skilled at making those little demeaning comments that aren't noticeably rude to most of her targets. Rowling's skill at capturing people and personalities, body language and our shifting thoughts, is paramount.
But let's be clear: this isn't a pretty story. I said before it was raw, stark and honest. Many of the characters are people you wouldn't want to know, but you probably know plenty of them. Simon is, beyond a doubt, the scariest: physically and verbally abusive to his wife and sons, he's a small-minded man, not very bright, who must belittle those closest to him in order to feel big.
Many of the characters have no redeeming features at all, but still have the love and support of family and friends. It's an in-depth character study not just of individuals, but of the connections between people. Imagine the novel as a maze, or a spider-web. An old town with narrow, winding, convoluted streets, easy to get lost in and yet, because it's a small town, you don't.
But The Casual Vacancy isn't just a complex character-study. It's also a novel that delves into some hard-hitting and current social issues: classism, drug addiction, bullying, parental neglect and abuse, and racism, to name the key ones. The bullying, especially, was hard to read - isn't it always? Between finishing the book and writing this review, the news of the tragic suicide death of fifteen-year-old Amanda Todd after years of bullying, at school and online through social media, hit the news. Which makes Fats' relentless taunting of Sukhvinder via Facebook, as well as in person, especially upsetting. And I'm not even sure how I feel about three of the teens' method for getting back at their parents.
And then there is Krystal and her sprawling family of low-class Weedons. Rowling shows no mercy in putting together Teri's story of childhood abuse at the hands of her father, her mother's abandonment, her own drug abuse and prostitution. Everyone in the Fields is a degree of low educated, low income (often welfare), low morals (in the eyes of Pagford's finest), and downright skanky. Krystal and her mother use the F-word liberally, among others, but Krystal has more heart than anyone at the school or elsewhere realises: it shows in how she cares for her three year old brother, Robbie. The fight on the parish council to close the addiction clinic has real repercussions for the Weedon's, and Barry's legacy, his arguments for keeping the Fields within Pagford parish, his determination to help other low socio-economic families rise up out of their demographic like he did, is a topic that will be familiar to us all.
Oddly, I must have forgotten how often Rowling made me cry in the Harry Potter series, how tough and unrelenting she can be on her characters, because I wasn't expecting a story like this. For some reason, I was expecting something lighter. Ha, I would have been disappointed if that was all I got! Instead, Rowling delivered a hard-hitting novel that was compelling and engrossing to read, one that made me very sad and reduced me to tears at the end. But I never once thought of Harry as I was reading this. There are going to be plenty of people who won't like this, won't like the amount of swearing or the drug use, the rape and sex scenes - who might accuse Rowling of going overboard on the adult content, as if it was only put in the book to distinguish it as an adult novel. It's absolutely ridiculous to compare this to Harry Potter, or to be disappointed because it isn't like Harry Potter. Read it for its own merits, its own aims, please.
It should be quite clear by now, if you've read this far, that I loved The Casual Vacancy. I've always been a fan of Rowling's writing, and the fact that this is a different story and style from the Harry Potter series doesn't detract from Rowling's skill with words. She brought these people, the town and the conflicts to life, they breathed on my skin as I read, and I came to care deeply for them. The ending may seem abrupt: Rowling chose to conclude the story-lines related to the troubled, struggling teens rather than the politics, Parminder's predicament or even some of the family drama, which wasn't entirely satisfying but works for the novel. It's going to go on my top ten books of the year list, that's for sure.
(less)
It all begins with the death of Barry Fairbrother. A healthy, active man in his 40s with a wife and four children, Barry was the bank manager in the small, quaint old town of Pagford; he put together and coached a girls' eight rowing team at Winterdown Comprehensive, a large school on the outskirts of Yarvil (a nearby, larger town); and he had a seat on the local Parish Council, where he was fighting with all his charm, wit and charisma to keep the Fields, a cheaply-built, low-income housing development constructed decades ago by Yarvil, in the Pagford town limits. Barry himself grew up in the Fields, and is one of its few success stories, all because he was able to go to Pagford's St Thomas's primary school.
Now, suddenly, Barry is dead of a brain aneurysm, and his abrupt absence affects the lives of many people in Pagford. His wife Mary is distraught, and still harbours a resentment that he spent his last day alive - their anniversary - writing an article for the local paper about the Fields and one of its infamous tenants, Krystal Weedon. He leaves a vacant seat on the Pagford Parish Council, and everyone with an interest in the fight over the Fields has to move quickly to put up a candidate. Howard Mollison, Chair of the council and First Citizen of Pagford, who wants the low income residents of the Fields forever separated from Pagford and included in the Yarvil town limits, where they belong, and close Bellchapel addiction clinic, which runs a methadone program mostly catering to Fields' residents, puts up his pompous but genial son Miles.
On the other side of the fight is local GP, Parminder Jawanda, who lacks Barry's ability to turn people to his side with his words and his sense of humour; when Barry's friend Colin Wall, deputy principle at Winterdown, decides to run for Barry's seat, she has no better option than to support him, though they both know they're not the best people to carry on Barry's fight.
At Hilltop House, an isolated house overlooking Pagford, abusive and slightly crooked husband Simon decides to run for Barry's seat too, after he's told Barry was taking bribes from contractors. His eldest son Andrew, who is best friends with Stuart "Fats" Wall, son of Colin and Tessa, the school's guidance councillor, has a major crush on the new girl, Gaia, whose social worker mother, Kay, moved them from London because she thinks she has a chance at a real relationship with Gavin, who works with Miles Mollison at the town's only solicitor's. Gavin, meanwhile, is horrified Kay moved to Pagford, and even more afraid of breaking up with her now and seeing her everywhere in the small town.
Parminder's youngest daughter, Sukhvinder, is her parents' disappointment, the only Jawanda child not doing superbly at school, the "ugly" one. With a slight moustache, she is constantly bullied by Fats Wall, whose biting tongue reduces her to tears and self-mutilation. And Krystal, who knew Barry through the girls' rowing team, finds herself without an ally in the world now that Barry's gone. Her mother, Teri, is a heroin user, and Krystal takes care of her three-year-old brother, Robbie, whom she loves dearly.
That introduces you to most - not all - of the characters, and the general starting point of the plot. The plot itself is about small town life as much as it is about small town politics - the politics being the framework, the structure and the forward momentum for the story. I like the description in the book's blurb: this is a town at war. Very apt. The novel is a finely woven tapestry of conflict, regret, friendship, tragedy, love, resentment and betrayal. It seems like a messy sprawl of characters and story-lines, but Rowling takes her time to tease out each strand, connecting them to each other and bringing them together for a grand finale. The depth of detail is impressive, the realism is raw and honest, and the rich sense of irony complements the harsher, sadder elements. It reminded me of many British (and even some Australian) TV series, with the eclectic cast of small town characters and the tone. It reminded me somewhat of Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew Lives for a Day - there are some distinct similarities, but Rowling succeeded where Simonson fell dismally flat. It also brought to mind other stories that also delve deep into the heart of their characters, telling an "everyday, everyman" sort of story, in an equally dense "tell" rather than "show" style, but which fail for me based mostly on whether I can connect with the characters. I had no trouble connecting with Rowling's characters, who are stripped back to their secrets, their raw materials. The novel is littered with profound little insights into how people behave, how we think, how contrary we can be.
"I always thought he seemed a bit unreliable," said Colin's voice.
"Really?" said Tessa, from the depths of her voluntary darkness.
"Yes. Remember when he said he'd come and referee for that game against Paxton High? And he cancelled with about half an hour's notice and Bateman had to do it instead?"
Tessa fought down an impulse to snap. Colin had a habit of making sweeping judgements based on first impressions, on single actions. He never seemed to grasp the immense mutability of human nature, nor to appreciate that behind every nondescript face lay a wild and unique hinterland like his own. [p.99]
With The Casual Vacancy, I felt like I was a voyeur - again, that feeling of watching a television show: the characters all felt familiar, real, and I could empathise or sympathise or at the very least, understand, them all. This is Rowling's remarkable skill at work: her ability to understand people, to bring them to life. Without a doubt, her strength lies with children, teenagers. The adolescent characters in this novel - Andrew, Fats, Gaia, Sukhvinder, Krystal - were so realistic it was almost heartbreaking. She especially excelled at writing Andrew, the awkward, acne-riddled, average student whose one claim to distinction is his friendship with Fats. Fats, an original and complex character, is also finely drawn. The girls were perhaps more subtly depicted, with more room for the reader to infer and understand between the lines. In contrast to the troubled, depressed, anguished teens, the adults came across as shallow and mean - as they were meant to.
Yet no one is a black-and-white character, not even perpetually tanned, big-boobed Samantha, Miles' wife, or Shirley, Howard's wife, who is so skilled at making those little demeaning comments that aren't noticeably rude to most of her targets. Rowling's skill at capturing people and personalities, body language and our shifting thoughts, is paramount.
Near identical expressions of complacent amusement touched the candlelit faces of the three women around the table. If nothing else, they had in common a slightly perverse interest in Miles' stringy young business partner [Gavin]. In Maureen's case, this was merely a manifestation of her inexhaustible appetite for all the gossip of Pagford, and the goings-on of a young bachelor were prime meat. Shirley took a particular pleasure in hearing all about Gavin's inferiorities and insecurities, because these threw into delicious contrast the achievements and self-assertion of the twin gods of her life, Howard and Miles. But in the case of Samantha, Gavin's passivity and caution awoke a feline cruelty; she had a powerful desire to see him slapped awake, pulled into line or otherwise mauled by a feminine surrogate. She bullied him a little in person whenever they met, taking pleasure in the conviction that he found her overwhelming, hard to handle. [p.94]
But let's be clear: this isn't a pretty story. I said before it was raw, stark and honest. Many of the characters are people you wouldn't want to know, but you probably know plenty of them. Simon is, beyond a doubt, the scariest: physically and verbally abusive to his wife and sons, he's a small-minded man, not very bright, who must belittle those closest to him in order to feel big.
Andrew went to assist [his younger brother] Paul as he lifted the hard drive.
"He can do it, he's not that much of a pussy!" snapped Simon.
By a miracle, Paul, his arms trembling, set it down on the stand without mishap, then waited with his arms dangling limply at his sides, blocking Simon's access to the machine.
"Get out of my way, you stupid little prick," Simon shouted. Paul scurried off to watch from behind the sofa.
[...]
His tongue down between his lower teeth and his lip, so that his chin bulged out stupidly, Simon made an exaggerated over-fiddling business of inserting the batteries. He always pulled this mad, brutish face as a warning that he was reaching the end of his tether, descending into the place where he could not be held accountable for his actions. Andrew imagined walking out and leaving his father to it, depriving him of the audience he preferred when working himself up; he could almost feel the mouse hitting him behind the ear as, in his imagination, he turned his back. [pp.136-7]
Many of the characters have no redeeming features at all, but still have the love and support of family and friends. It's an in-depth character study not just of individuals, but of the connections between people. Imagine the novel as a maze, or a spider-web. An old town with narrow, winding, convoluted streets, easy to get lost in and yet, because it's a small town, you don't.
But The Casual Vacancy isn't just a complex character-study. It's also a novel that delves into some hard-hitting and current social issues: classism, drug addiction, bullying, parental neglect and abuse, and racism, to name the key ones. The bullying, especially, was hard to read - isn't it always? Between finishing the book and writing this review, the news of the tragic suicide death of fifteen-year-old Amanda Todd after years of bullying, at school and online through social media, hit the news. Which makes Fats' relentless taunting of Sukhvinder via Facebook, as well as in person, especially upsetting. And I'm not even sure how I feel about three of the teens' method for getting back at their parents.
And then there is Krystal and her sprawling family of low-class Weedons. Rowling shows no mercy in putting together Teri's story of childhood abuse at the hands of her father, her mother's abandonment, her own drug abuse and prostitution. Everyone in the Fields is a degree of low educated, low income (often welfare), low morals (in the eyes of Pagford's finest), and downright skanky. Krystal and her mother use the F-word liberally, among others, but Krystal has more heart than anyone at the school or elsewhere realises: it shows in how she cares for her three year old brother, Robbie. The fight on the parish council to close the addiction clinic has real repercussions for the Weedon's, and Barry's legacy, his arguments for keeping the Fields within Pagford parish, his determination to help other low socio-economic families rise up out of their demographic like he did, is a topic that will be familiar to us all.
Oddly, I must have forgotten how often Rowling made me cry in the Harry Potter series, how tough and unrelenting she can be on her characters, because I wasn't expecting a story like this. For some reason, I was expecting something lighter. Ha, I would have been disappointed if that was all I got! Instead, Rowling delivered a hard-hitting novel that was compelling and engrossing to read, one that made me very sad and reduced me to tears at the end. But I never once thought of Harry as I was reading this. There are going to be plenty of people who won't like this, won't like the amount of swearing or the drug use, the rape and sex scenes - who might accuse Rowling of going overboard on the adult content, as if it was only put in the book to distinguish it as an adult novel. It's absolutely ridiculous to compare this to Harry Potter, or to be disappointed because it isn't like Harry Potter. Read it for its own merits, its own aims, please.
It should be quite clear by now, if you've read this far, that I loved The Casual Vacancy. I've always been a fan of Rowling's writing, and the fact that this is a different story and style from the Harry Potter series doesn't detract from Rowling's skill with words. She brought these people, the town and the conflicts to life, they breathed on my skin as I read, and I came to care deeply for them. The ending may seem abrupt: Rowling chose to conclude the story-lines related to the troubled, struggling teens rather than the politics, Parminder's predicament or even some of the family drama, which wasn't entirely satisfying but works for the novel. It's going to go on my top ten books of the year list, that's for sure.
(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Oct 12, 2012
Oct 09, 2012
Hardcover
1475267045
9781475267044
4.20
5
May 17, 2012
May 17, 2012
None
Notes are private!
none
0
not set
not set
Oct 14, 2012
Paperback
0676975313
9780676975314
3.49
39
Aug 28, 2001
Aug 13, 2002
Brilliantly bringing together two stories of travel, adventure and family secrets that bring our heroine and her ancestor to the South Pacific Islands...more
Brilliantly bringing together two stories of travel, adventure and family secrets that bring our heroine and her ancestor to the South Pacific Islands, Ronald Wright delivers a truly believable tale told in two distinct voices that will hold your interest right to the end.
Olivia's world has narrowed to the inside of the Arue Women's Prison on the South Pacific island of Tahiti. It is 1990, and her search for her father, a pilot who went missing in action during the Korean War, has brought her here, to a place she believes he travelled to after deserting, but her voyage led to the discovery of a drowned girl in the ocean and now she and the three people who were on the yacht with her are being held under suspicion of murder.
Olivia spends her time working on a long letter to her daughter and only child, a woman she's never met as she gave her up for adoption when she had her as a teenager. This unknown daughter has finally reached out to Olivia, who replies by telling her everything: about her childhood and how she came to have a baby so young, about the girl's father, about her father's disappearance and her mother's certainty that he would return. And she includes transcribed pages from the secret diary of a long-gone relative, Frank Henderson.
Henderson was not a direct ancestor - his only child died during the second world war - but he was an uncle of sorts and Olivia's family lived in his house, which still displays random objects from the previous century and Henderson's travels. Above the fireplace mantel was a ceremonial spear, the length of two men, made from a single piece of polished wood. Olivia and her sister Lottie grew up being told by their mother that Frank Henderson had acquired it in Africa, during a disastrous military mission that lost him an eye. But when, after their mother's death, Olivia uncovers Henderson's papers, she learns the true story of the spear, and what happened when Henderson was a young lieutenant on a royal naval ship along with two grandsons of Queen Victoria, sailing through the South Pacific.
Henderson's account and Olivia's own story converge to an enlightening truth that will link them together in a new and surprising way.
I'd never read anything by Ronald Wright before and I didn't quite know what to expect, but even had I known what a great writer he was I still would have been deeply impressed by this book. The character of Frank Henderson was actually modelled on Wright's own ancestor, a cousin, of the same name, especially his account of being captured by the Sofas in 1897, but the rest is all fiction. [Edit: Actually I have read one of his books before, how could I have forgotten? It was What is America? A Short History of the New World Order and it was AWESOME!]
The chapters that Henderson wrote in the late 1890s, as a kind of security against his suspicion that someone might seek to make him "disappear" for what he knows about the queen's grandson and heir, were told in Henderson's distinct voice, noticeably different from Olivia's and with the inflections and phrasing familiar to the period in which he lived, and yet they never jarred with Olivia's. Somehow Wright achieved that most sought-after skill: creating two clear, strong voices, one female the other male, speaking from two different time periods, which manage to complement and work together rather than butting heads or alienating the reader. It was one of the elements of the novel that most impressed me.
Olivia is not a woman I have much in common with, and yet I found her sympathetic, interesting, and I cared about her greatly. She grew up in England, always aware of how drastically different to her beautiful older sister, Lottie, she looked, and suffering from a bit of a complex because of it. Which may go part way to explaining how she was seduced by an older man. Later she moved to Canada and worked in Montreal's film industry, then relocated to Vancouver where she now lives and directs documentaries. This is how she meets a professor from the university, a married older man whom she has an affair with. She tells all this to her daughter, whom she's never met. Her need to find out what happened to her father was entirely believable and understandable, and the mystery - never overplayed - becomes more and more interesting the farther you get into the story.
Olivia and Henderson are two very different people, and their stories are not told in chronological order, but you won't have any difficulty in keeping track. Henderson recounts first his more recent mission to Africa, in which he was captured by the Sofas and was only saved from being killed by them in front of their leader by falling asleep; and then he goes back farther in time to the HMS Bacchante, which sailed with the royal navy from 1879 to 1882 with the two princes on board. The ships tour the eastern coastline of South America and South Africa, then eventually make their way to the South Pacific Islands, where the heart of the matter lies. All three stories - Henderson's, Olivia's father's, and Olivia's own - converge there, and connect.
The islands of Tahiti and its neighbours are brought vividly to life in these pages, and you learn a lot about the tribes that in habit them as well. The contrast between Olivia's more contemporary trip (1990 is not that long ago!) and Henderson's 19th century one is clearly apparent. Tahiti does not come across as an island paradise in Olivia's account; instead it seems an unfriendly place where everyone bemoans how much it's changed in the last twenty years - something they say every year. Olivia's troubles with the authorities there rob the islands of their appearance of relaxation and peacefulness, of well-off white people indulging themselves at the expense of the locals. This is not that place. But even in Henderson's account, these islands are dangerous territories (this is complemented by another book I read after this one, John Boyne's Mutiny on the Bounty). Politics and an on-going colonialism play a big part, and both Henderson and Olivia shed light, in different ways, on conditions there - Henderson recounts something that a Mr Thurston, a kind of translator for the king of Fiji, says to them:
Seeing the passage of time wrought on the islands brings them into stark relief; as Olivia observes:
The Bacchante also travels to the colony of Australia, first, to Melbourne and Hobart. I loved reading the small part about hunting Tasmanian Tigers in Tasmania [pages 198-201] - so close upon the heels of reading Into That Forest by Louis Nowra, too - because it's where I'm from and really brought the story "home" so to speak. The other thing I'll note, for myself more than anything, is how Olivia's discussions with her professor, whom she refers to as "Bob", about the classic novel Moby Dick, makes me want to read that book for the first time in my life. I've never felt any interest in reading Melville's epic tome before, but Bob has made it sound so interesting!
Wright's story is cleverly structured, thoughtfully and skilfully told, and quite beautiful to read. It did not feel like I was reading a novel; rather, Olivia could have been someone I learned about in a well-made Canadian documentary (and seriously, Canada excels at documentary film-making), Henderson a person who comes to life within the pages of a true memoir. Yet none of this realism takes away from the tension and thrill of discovery as the pieces come together. Weaving together the secrets of both family and state, this story of love, loss, and the mistakes we make - and their consequences - is highly readable, beautifully told and deeply moving.(less)
Olivia's world has narrowed to the inside of the Arue Women's Prison on the South Pacific island of Tahiti. It is 1990, and her search for her father, a pilot who went missing in action during the Korean War, has brought her here, to a place she believes he travelled to after deserting, but her voyage led to the discovery of a drowned girl in the ocean and now she and the three people who were on the yacht with her are being held under suspicion of murder.
Olivia spends her time working on a long letter to her daughter and only child, a woman she's never met as she gave her up for adoption when she had her as a teenager. This unknown daughter has finally reached out to Olivia, who replies by telling her everything: about her childhood and how she came to have a baby so young, about the girl's father, about her father's disappearance and her mother's certainty that he would return. And she includes transcribed pages from the secret diary of a long-gone relative, Frank Henderson.
Henderson was not a direct ancestor - his only child died during the second world war - but he was an uncle of sorts and Olivia's family lived in his house, which still displays random objects from the previous century and Henderson's travels. Above the fireplace mantel was a ceremonial spear, the length of two men, made from a single piece of polished wood. Olivia and her sister Lottie grew up being told by their mother that Frank Henderson had acquired it in Africa, during a disastrous military mission that lost him an eye. But when, after their mother's death, Olivia uncovers Henderson's papers, she learns the true story of the spear, and what happened when Henderson was a young lieutenant on a royal naval ship along with two grandsons of Queen Victoria, sailing through the South Pacific.
Henderson's account and Olivia's own story converge to an enlightening truth that will link them together in a new and surprising way.
I'd never read anything by Ronald Wright before and I didn't quite know what to expect, but even had I known what a great writer he was I still would have been deeply impressed by this book. The character of Frank Henderson was actually modelled on Wright's own ancestor, a cousin, of the same name, especially his account of being captured by the Sofas in 1897, but the rest is all fiction. [Edit: Actually I have read one of his books before, how could I have forgotten? It was What is America? A Short History of the New World Order and it was AWESOME!]
The chapters that Henderson wrote in the late 1890s, as a kind of security against his suspicion that someone might seek to make him "disappear" for what he knows about the queen's grandson and heir, were told in Henderson's distinct voice, noticeably different from Olivia's and with the inflections and phrasing familiar to the period in which he lived, and yet they never jarred with Olivia's. Somehow Wright achieved that most sought-after skill: creating two clear, strong voices, one female the other male, speaking from two different time periods, which manage to complement and work together rather than butting heads or alienating the reader. It was one of the elements of the novel that most impressed me.
Olivia is not a woman I have much in common with, and yet I found her sympathetic, interesting, and I cared about her greatly. She grew up in England, always aware of how drastically different to her beautiful older sister, Lottie, she looked, and suffering from a bit of a complex because of it. Which may go part way to explaining how she was seduced by an older man. Later she moved to Canada and worked in Montreal's film industry, then relocated to Vancouver where she now lives and directs documentaries. This is how she meets a professor from the university, a married older man whom she has an affair with. She tells all this to her daughter, whom she's never met. Her need to find out what happened to her father was entirely believable and understandable, and the mystery - never overplayed - becomes more and more interesting the farther you get into the story.
Olivia and Henderson are two very different people, and their stories are not told in chronological order, but you won't have any difficulty in keeping track. Henderson recounts first his more recent mission to Africa, in which he was captured by the Sofas and was only saved from being killed by them in front of their leader by falling asleep; and then he goes back farther in time to the HMS Bacchante, which sailed with the royal navy from 1879 to 1882 with the two princes on board. The ships tour the eastern coastline of South America and South Africa, then eventually make their way to the South Pacific Islands, where the heart of the matter lies. All three stories - Henderson's, Olivia's father's, and Olivia's own - converge there, and connect.
The islands of Tahiti and its neighbours are brought vividly to life in these pages, and you learn a lot about the tribes that in habit them as well. The contrast between Olivia's more contemporary trip (1990 is not that long ago!) and Henderson's 19th century one is clearly apparent. Tahiti does not come across as an island paradise in Olivia's account; instead it seems an unfriendly place where everyone bemoans how much it's changed in the last twenty years - something they say every year. Olivia's troubles with the authorities there rob the islands of their appearance of relaxation and peacefulness, of well-off white people indulging themselves at the expense of the locals. This is not that place. But even in Henderson's account, these islands are dangerous territories (this is complemented by another book I read after this one, John Boyne's Mutiny on the Bounty). Politics and an on-going colonialism play a big part, and both Henderson and Olivia shed light, in different ways, on conditions there - Henderson recounts something that a Mr Thurston, a kind of translator for the king of Fiji, says to them:
"Justice for the Fijians is of greater consequence than cotton growing. Or even empire building." He shot a fraught look at [princes] Eddy and George. "I hope Mother England will remember that. God help us if she doesn't. The Fijian is the finest friend you can ever make - and the fiercest, most tenacious foe. You don't want another New Zealand on your hands. Ten million pounds wasted in campaigns, hundreds of settlers slaughtered, half the Maori race destroyed, and no hope of lasting peace except by destroying the rest. Or, at the eleventh hour, admitting them to government. Which is what they should have done from the start." [p.250]
Seeing the passage of time wrought on the islands brings them into stark relief; as Olivia observes:
This high wilderness had been a no man's land in ancient times, avoided by the Marquesan tribes except when they swarmed up here to make war in clearings strewn with bones and broken weapons. Again it struck me how Balkanized these islands had become, as if the history of whole continents had had to be repeated here in miniature. The people might know themselves to be descended from a single fleet, yet still they divided and fought - as in human enmity must always fill the space allowed it, whether an island or a world. [pp.318-9]
The Bacchante also travels to the colony of Australia, first, to Melbourne and Hobart. I loved reading the small part about hunting Tasmanian Tigers in Tasmania [pages 198-201] - so close upon the heels of reading Into That Forest by Louis Nowra, too - because it's where I'm from and really brought the story "home" so to speak. The other thing I'll note, for myself more than anything, is how Olivia's discussions with her professor, whom she refers to as "Bob", about the classic novel Moby Dick, makes me want to read that book for the first time in my life. I've never felt any interest in reading Melville's epic tome before, but Bob has made it sound so interesting!
Wright's story is cleverly structured, thoughtfully and skilfully told, and quite beautiful to read. It did not feel like I was reading a novel; rather, Olivia could have been someone I learned about in a well-made Canadian documentary (and seriously, Canada excels at documentary film-making), Henderson a person who comes to life within the pages of a true memoir. Yet none of this realism takes away from the tension and thrill of discovery as the pieces come together. Weaving together the secrets of both family and state, this story of love, loss, and the mistakes we make - and their consequences - is highly readable, beautifully told and deeply moving.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Apr 27, 2013
Dec 12, 2012
Paperback
0547577311
9780547577319
4.20
3,363
Nov 15, 2010
Oct 04, 2011
This review contains spoilers.
In 1985, the civil war being fought between the northern, Muslim government in the north of Sudan and the non-Muslim sou...more This review contains spoilers.
In 1985, the civil war being fought between the northern, Muslim government in the north of Sudan and the non-Muslim south came to the village where eleven-year-old Salva Dut was at school. With the sound of gunfire in their ears, the entire village and the school children who come from the surrounding villages all ran into the forest, fleeing the violence but with nowhere to go. Salva is alone - all of his family members are at his village which is in the direction of the fighting. Falling in with a group of people who let him tag along, they are held up by some rebel soldiers who take the men and older boys but tell Salva he's too young. Staying with the remnants of the group he first fled with, he wakes up one morning in a barn to find himself completely alone: they have left him behind, no doubt feeling that he is too young to keep up.
After a few days of helping the woman who lives nearby in exchange for some food, a small group of people from his own tribe, the Dinka - though not his village - come along the road and grudgingly agree to take him with them. As they progress, the group grows larger, and one day Salva is excited to find his uncle with them. Armed with a gun and experience as a soldier, Uncle becomes their unofficial leader and with his help and encouragement, Salva manages to keep up with the adults as the cross the Nile and then desert, walking ever onwards to the Ethiopian border and the refugee camp there. But arriving is not the end of his story.
Salva's true story, as told to author Linda Sue Park, is juxtaposed against the story of eleven-year-old Nya from the Nuer tribe, a rival tribe to the Dinka, who must go several times a day on a long walk to the pond to collect water for her family. It is her main job and keeps her occupied, but it's a very hard job. The only reprieve is when the tribe moves to camp by the big lake, but they can't live there all the time because of the fighting with the Dinka, who also come to the lake during the dry months. Everything changes though, the day some strange men come in a jeep and show them where they will dig for water.
The two stories of Salva and Nya don't fully connect until the end, when we see the fruit of Salva's life journey and the task he has set himself: to return to Sudan as the leader of an aid organisation that provides wells for villages like Nya's. Salva was one of thousands and thousands of "Lost Boys", boys who walked through the desert to reach refugee camps. After years in the Ethiopian refugee camp, there was a change of government and it was suddenly, and violently, closed. Salva ended up leading a group of several thousand lost boys to another refugee camp, this time in Kenya. Displaced and orphaned, many of them died on the journey, and life in the refugee camps was merely bearable. With no home to go back to, and their own complex tribal histories preventing them from simply moving somewhere else, only the healthiest were granted asylum in places like the United States, where Salva eventually finds himself, taken in by a couple and their four children in Rochester, in the state of New York - his first experience of snow and real cold.
Nya is a composite character: not someone based on one individual, but a character based on the lives of many girls just like her who are sent to fetch water every day, a long and perilous trek. The task also means they never receive an education, and the contaminated water means many children and sickly adults die from parasites. A well with a pump in her village means big changes for Nya and everyone else. Freeing so many children from carrying water all the time means they can go to school - and can even enable a village to concentrate their resources and build a school. We take our clean and cheap water supply for granted, but elsewhere it is appreciated as the precious resource it really is.
Told in a simple style accessible to children as well as teens, Park provides some basic, comprehensive background to the conflict - a completely separate one from the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The Civil War started in 1983 and continued for a couple of decades, as the south - where the people are from different tribes with their own beliefs - fought against the government which wanted the whole country to be Muslim. It's a simple overview but by its very simplicity makes it accessible to young readers. There are signs, scenes, which show that both sides were equally vicious - it's never a matter of south=good, north=bad. But the focus is on Salva's personal story of survival, not the political and religious agenda causing the conflict. Coming from a position of pretty much complete ignorance (I hadn't even realised there were two separate, unrelated "wars" in Sudan), this was a good starting point for me and gives me a solid foundation upon which to learn more.
The simplicity of the narration didn't detract from the truly tragic and horrifying situation Salva and so many others found themselves in. The only other book I've read that was similar was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, which is set in Sierra Leone. The sad fact is, Salva's story is almost a common one in Africa. So many countries being torn apart by tribal, religious or ethnic conflict, often motivated or exacerbated by the plundering of resources. It doesn't help that the countries like Sudan are merely colonial, or European, constructs, often forcing warring groups within the same border. Reading about an individual like Salva really helps to personalise and humanise what otherwise can seem confusing, overwhelming and utterly alien to us in the West.
For such a short book, it packed quite the emotional wallop and certainly did not leave me dry-eyed. I loved how the title refers not just to Nya's endless walk to water but also to Salva's own walk to water: his long walk to safety which was little more than a mirage; and his life's journey to find a way to help his people by returning to establish water wells. A great introduction to the Lost Boys and the civil conflict in Sudan for children, and one I recommend to readers of all ages as well.(less)
In 1985, the civil war being fought between the northern, Muslim government in the north of Sudan and the non-Muslim sou...more This review contains spoilers.
In 1985, the civil war being fought between the northern, Muslim government in the north of Sudan and the non-Muslim south came to the village where eleven-year-old Salva Dut was at school. With the sound of gunfire in their ears, the entire village and the school children who come from the surrounding villages all ran into the forest, fleeing the violence but with nowhere to go. Salva is alone - all of his family members are at his village which is in the direction of the fighting. Falling in with a group of people who let him tag along, they are held up by some rebel soldiers who take the men and older boys but tell Salva he's too young. Staying with the remnants of the group he first fled with, he wakes up one morning in a barn to find himself completely alone: they have left him behind, no doubt feeling that he is too young to keep up.
After a few days of helping the woman who lives nearby in exchange for some food, a small group of people from his own tribe, the Dinka - though not his village - come along the road and grudgingly agree to take him with them. As they progress, the group grows larger, and one day Salva is excited to find his uncle with them. Armed with a gun and experience as a soldier, Uncle becomes their unofficial leader and with his help and encouragement, Salva manages to keep up with the adults as the cross the Nile and then desert, walking ever onwards to the Ethiopian border and the refugee camp there. But arriving is not the end of his story.
Salva's true story, as told to author Linda Sue Park, is juxtaposed against the story of eleven-year-old Nya from the Nuer tribe, a rival tribe to the Dinka, who must go several times a day on a long walk to the pond to collect water for her family. It is her main job and keeps her occupied, but it's a very hard job. The only reprieve is when the tribe moves to camp by the big lake, but they can't live there all the time because of the fighting with the Dinka, who also come to the lake during the dry months. Everything changes though, the day some strange men come in a jeep and show them where they will dig for water.
The two stories of Salva and Nya don't fully connect until the end, when we see the fruit of Salva's life journey and the task he has set himself: to return to Sudan as the leader of an aid organisation that provides wells for villages like Nya's. Salva was one of thousands and thousands of "Lost Boys", boys who walked through the desert to reach refugee camps. After years in the Ethiopian refugee camp, there was a change of government and it was suddenly, and violently, closed. Salva ended up leading a group of several thousand lost boys to another refugee camp, this time in Kenya. Displaced and orphaned, many of them died on the journey, and life in the refugee camps was merely bearable. With no home to go back to, and their own complex tribal histories preventing them from simply moving somewhere else, only the healthiest were granted asylum in places like the United States, where Salva eventually finds himself, taken in by a couple and their four children in Rochester, in the state of New York - his first experience of snow and real cold.
Nya is a composite character: not someone based on one individual, but a character based on the lives of many girls just like her who are sent to fetch water every day, a long and perilous trek. The task also means they never receive an education, and the contaminated water means many children and sickly adults die from parasites. A well with a pump in her village means big changes for Nya and everyone else. Freeing so many children from carrying water all the time means they can go to school - and can even enable a village to concentrate their resources and build a school. We take our clean and cheap water supply for granted, but elsewhere it is appreciated as the precious resource it really is.
Told in a simple style accessible to children as well as teens, Park provides some basic, comprehensive background to the conflict - a completely separate one from the ongoing genocide in Darfur. The Civil War started in 1983 and continued for a couple of decades, as the south - where the people are from different tribes with their own beliefs - fought against the government which wanted the whole country to be Muslim. It's a simple overview but by its very simplicity makes it accessible to young readers. There are signs, scenes, which show that both sides were equally vicious - it's never a matter of south=good, north=bad. But the focus is on Salva's personal story of survival, not the political and religious agenda causing the conflict. Coming from a position of pretty much complete ignorance (I hadn't even realised there were two separate, unrelated "wars" in Sudan), this was a good starting point for me and gives me a solid foundation upon which to learn more.
The simplicity of the narration didn't detract from the truly tragic and horrifying situation Salva and so many others found themselves in. The only other book I've read that was similar was A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, which is set in Sierra Leone. The sad fact is, Salva's story is almost a common one in Africa. So many countries being torn apart by tribal, religious or ethnic conflict, often motivated or exacerbated by the plundering of resources. It doesn't help that the countries like Sudan are merely colonial, or European, constructs, often forcing warring groups within the same border. Reading about an individual like Salva really helps to personalise and humanise what otherwise can seem confusing, overwhelming and utterly alien to us in the West.
For such a short book, it packed quite the emotional wallop and certainly did not leave me dry-eyed. I loved how the title refers not just to Nya's endless walk to water but also to Salva's own walk to water: his long walk to safety which was little more than a mirage; and his life's journey to find a way to help his people by returning to establish water wells. A great introduction to the Lost Boys and the civil conflict in Sudan for children, and one I recommend to readers of all ages as well.(less)
Notes are private!
none
1
not set
Feb 05, 2013
Dec 31, 2012
Paperback





























Loading...
