http://www.goodreads.com/user/updates_rss/758132 en-US Mon, 26 May 2008 17:05:32 -0700 60 http://www.goodreads.com/ 200 41 http://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/gr_logo.gif 25675164 Mon, 26 May 2008 17:05:32 -0700 Review22832062 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/22832062 to: Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens : Peter and Wendy (Oxford World's Classics) by J. M. Barrie
Barrie says of Peter somewhere: “Oh, he was merry! He was as much merrier than you, for instance, as you are merrier than your father.” With all due respect, he could not have made a worse choice of adjective. Merriment is joy grounded in something solid; Peter is certainly gay, but there is nothing merry about him, nor about his world.

Now, I don’t dislike the world of Peter Pan for being magical; if anything, it is not magical enough. The hallmark of a really magical world is that everything matters. One ring - or one word - or one fox - or one talking spider - is not replaceable by another.

Not so in Peter Pan. The prerequisite to being “gay and innocent and heartless” is a kind of anterograde amnesia. We see this in a touching moment when Peter is dumbfounded by Captain Hook not playing fair because he has forgotten ever having encountered injustice before. We also see it, however, in the fact that the pieces of Peter’s world all seem to be disposable.

The Lost Boys are an obvious example: “The boys on the island vary, of course, in numbers, according as they get killed and so on; and when they seem to be growing up, which is against the rules, Peter thins them out.”
Now, I’m sure we’ve all “thinned out” plenty of imaginary friends when we were kids; but that is exactly what made them imaginary, as opposed to magical.

Wendy, too, is replaceable - by her daughter, and then by her grand-daughter. So is Tinker Bell. “Who is Tinker Bell? There are such a lot of them. I expect she is no more.” Even Captain Hook is soon forgotten. “I forget them after I kill them”. Incidentally, Captain Hook has his faults, but at least he remembers his Eton days!

Nor is Peter the only one who forgets. The children start to forget their parents as soon as they leave London and - most poignantly - when Wendy is grown up we are told in passing that “Mrs. Darling was now dead and forgotten”. Adults forget, too, you see.

All this makes Peter Pan far more like our own vague and, ultimately, dreary memories of childhood fantasies than like a real magical tale. No wonder adults like _Peter Pan_ better than kids do. We like to wallow in our own thoughts; _they_ want the real thing.

That said, as adult self-absorbed fantasies go, this one is superb. The language is perfect, the images delightful and there is much that an adult can relate to. After all, each of us has a ticking crocodile of our own.

The bottom line, I think, is that whoever first marketed _Peter Pan_ as a heart-warming children's story did the book a disservice. It is as chilling as it is good. ]]> 24499844 Wed, 14 May 2008 09:18:04 -0700 Review21918484 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21918484 to: Hot Lights, Cold Steel: Life, Death and Sleepless Nights in a Surgeon's First Years (Paperback) by Michael J. Collins
"I was a counterfeit, an impostor who had infiltrated this society of brilliant surgeons. [...] I would have thrown myself on the floor and asked them to shoot me and put me out of my misery." When I read these lines, I knew that this book was the real thing.

There's something in Collins' self-deprecation and love of his work that reminds me of James Herriot, but the humour of "Hot Lights, Cold Steel" is starker, though no less funny. The laughter is there, of course, but it sounds more like a man joking at the stake than in front of a fireplace.

I wonder if the author has finally gotten some sleep since he finished his residency - then there might be hope for the rest of us!

]]> 24520668 Fri, 09 May 2008 11:07:28 -0700 Review21934501 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/21934501 to: London: A History (Modern Library Chronicles) by A.N. Wilson
Despite its title, this book is far from being a systematic historical account; instead, it peoples London with ghosts of "old, unhappy, far-off things/ And battles long ago".
The style is very clear but scholarly; the book is obviously written by one who knows and loves London and its history and communicates that love to the reader.

On the other hand, Wilson's attempts to reconcile the history of London with its modern self sound as strained as they are well-intentioned. I do wish he had left the odes to multiculturalism to the politicians!


]]> 21534485 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:44:32 -0700 Review19663336 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19663336 to: Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures: Stories (Paperback) by Vincent Lam
Too bad Dr. Vincent Lam decided to write fiction. Real life at the hospital is much more exciting - and more nuanced. ]]> 21533846 Mon, 07 Apr 2008 13:40:46 -0700 Review19662812 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/19662812 to: The Devil Wears Prada (Mass Market Paperback) by Lauren Weisberger
The Devil Wears Prada is one of those books that were meant to be good but somehow didn’t make it. The style is almost lively; the characters are almost believable; the dialogues are almost funny. The story of the country mouse being wiser than the town mouse is none the worse for being one of the “seven original plots”. What, then, is missing?

A quick summary. Andy is a small-town American girl who dreams of writing for the New Yorker. In the meantime, she lands “the job a million girls would die for”: as an assistant to Miranda Priestly, the tyrannical editor of the most prestigious fashion magazine. Eventually, she realizes that her work requires her to betray her friends, her family and her own self - and quits. She then finds her true place as a writer for a youth magazine.

Most obviously, the book would have been better if it had been shorter: the style isn’t good enough to sustain a long novel. The main problem is, though, that its satire is directed at targets that are just too easy: high fashion, workplace tyrants, pampered children and, most of all, the career-first mentality of modern business. Flogging a dead horse can be fun, but it’s hard to do well.




]]> 19414997 Mon, 17 Mar 2008 15:49:56 -0700 Review17966868 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17966868 to: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Great Classics for Children) by Lewis Carroll
]]> 18592800 Sat, 08 Mar 2008 07:46:58 -0800 Review17303728 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/17303728 to: Never Cry Wolf : Amazing True Story of Life Among Arctic Wolves (Paperback) by Farley Mowat
Wonderful book! Fascinating, warm, witty and very funny with that self-deprecating humour that seems common to most people who write about animals (Conrad Lorenz, Gerald Durrell, James Herriot). It seems that after seeing oneself from an animal's point of view one cannot take oneself too seriously.
The book also strikes a note of sadness and alarm over the destruction of wolves by us humans, but somehow contrives to do so without sounding too self-righteous. ]]> 17321233 Sun, 24 Feb 2008 18:11:41 -0800 Review16282014 http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/16282014 to: The Aeneid (Paperback) by Virgil
“Calliope, I pray, and Muses all,
Inspire me as I sing the bloody work,
And tell what men each fighter sent to Orcus…”

Sometimes I wish the Muses were less generous with their gifts. Virgil succeeds admirably in telling “what men each fighter sent to Orcus”, in what order and how:

“Now Caedicus cut Alcathous down,
Sacrator killed Hydaspes, Rapo killed
Parthenius and Orses, man of brawn;
Messapus finished Clonius and Ericetes,
Lycaon’s son…”

This makes the last hundred pages or so a little tedious, and I cannot deny that I breathed a sigh of relief when the spirit of Turnus finally “fled into the gloom below.” Yet there is beauty and suspense even in these chapters, and they are worth plodding through if only for the sake of the rest of the book.

I leafed through a few translations of the Aeneid before settling on Robert Fitzgerald’s, and I am as certain as one who knows no Latin can be that this is the best translation around. At its worst, the style is unobtrusive; at its best, magical:

“…When you reach the town of Cumae,
Avernus’ murmuring forests, haunted lakes,
You’ll see a spellbound prophetess, who sings
In her deep cave of destinies, confiding
Symbols and words to leaves…”

What unrolls before one’s eyes is a primarily a series of pictures that can be interpreted as myth, as allegory, as political flattery or as artistic license, but somehow escape analysis. They seem to contain a summons that speaks to the reader as much as to the hero:

“The morning star
Now rose on Ida’s ridges, bringing day.
Greeks had secured the city gates. No help
Or hope of help existed.
So I resigned myself, picked up my father,
And turned my face toward the mountain range.”

Archetypes, anyone?
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