Zina Rohan's Blog, page 4
March 15, 2012
March 2, 2012
What a let-down!
I ordered The Road Home with the usual expectations that one would have for a book by an admired author. But, oh dear. It is unbelievable at so many levels, as well as schematic and sentimental.
There are irritating little mistakes of fact that Rose Tremain shouldn't make: London underground trains running on Christmas Day; a man's mobile is stolen, he gets another and is instantly rung on it, even though of course the sim card will have remained in the stolen phone so no one would know his new number...and so on. But then, take her main character, Lev, who comes from an unnamed Baltic country which has just become an EU accession state: he was latterly a manual worker in a wood mill, until it closed because there were no trees left to process, yet his speech patterns (in his native tongue) veer from the almost stupid to the incredibly wordy; his inner life doesn't seem to belong to a man of his life experience and background.
He falls for a young, plump kitchen worker in an upmarket restaurant where he does the washing up. She speaks of 'emporia'! Really? I doubt she'd know the word, and if she did, she'd say 'emporiums'. There is something astonishingly cloth-eared in the dialogue, as if all the accents and dialect Tremain gives her characters came out of a handbook.
But it's plot more than anything that enrages. One can see every twist and turn coming, down to the gift to Lev of money from a wealthy old woman in a nursing home for whom he has cooked good meals; down to the uncanny physical similarity between a young waitress he meets on his return home to his beloved but deceased wife; down to his keen-eyed observation of the cooking that goes on in the kitchen where he washed up to his own future proficiency as a chef. I closed the book in something approaching fury.
There are irritating little mistakes of fact that Rose Tremain shouldn't make: London underground trains running on Christmas Day; a man's mobile is stolen, he gets another and is instantly rung on it, even though of course the sim card will have remained in the stolen phone so no one would know his new number...and so on. But then, take her main character, Lev, who comes from an unnamed Baltic country which has just become an EU accession state: he was latterly a manual worker in a wood mill, until it closed because there were no trees left to process, yet his speech patterns (in his native tongue) veer from the almost stupid to the incredibly wordy; his inner life doesn't seem to belong to a man of his life experience and background.
He falls for a young, plump kitchen worker in an upmarket restaurant where he does the washing up. She speaks of 'emporia'! Really? I doubt she'd know the word, and if she did, she'd say 'emporiums'. There is something astonishingly cloth-eared in the dialogue, as if all the accents and dialect Tremain gives her characters came out of a handbook.
But it's plot more than anything that enrages. One can see every twist and turn coming, down to the gift to Lev of money from a wealthy old woman in a nursing home for whom he has cooked good meals; down to the uncanny physical similarity between a young waitress he meets on his return home to his beloved but deceased wife; down to his keen-eyed observation of the cooking that goes on in the kitchen where he washed up to his own future proficiency as a chef. I closed the book in something approaching fury.
February 20, 2012
Tomalin on Dickens
Claire Tomalin goes from strength to strength. She has a light touch; she is not overawed by her subject; she is not afraid to be critical of aspects of the books and certainly not of the man: Dickens the people's friend was neither a good father nor a good husband, and sometimes not a very good friend either. But he was a very effective scourge of the authorities for their blithe neglect of public welfare, and fortunately achieved this through his writing rather than through the political career that was on offer to him. Do read this. It is highly informative, witty and sometimes moving. I have learned so much
February 15, 2012
Is It Mention of God?
I entitled my previous blog 'God Help Us' - and within a couple of days there were nine views. Some other posts have had fewer than nine, and quite a few rather more. But I think none has garnered so many so quickly. Is that because the word 'God' was in the title. And if so...why? Please, can someone tell me?
February 14, 2012
God Help Us!
I was on a London bus on Sunday, sitting among three young women. They were talking: I was eavesdropping.
First YW:'I can't remember when I read a book. Not since I left school, I don't think. Do you ever read a book?
Second YW:'Nah. Me neither, not since I left school. I mean, who wants to read a book. It's so boring, innit?'
Third YW:'Yeah, I know. But I got all these essays now. Stuck with 'em for life.'
First YW: 'Nothing but essays now. An' they're all such idiots, in't they? Dunno. Wish I could just dump it!'
Reader, alas. These three were all teachers.
First YW:'I can't remember when I read a book. Not since I left school, I don't think. Do you ever read a book?
Second YW:'Nah. Me neither, not since I left school. I mean, who wants to read a book. It's so boring, innit?'
Third YW:'Yeah, I know. But I got all these essays now. Stuck with 'em for life.'
First YW: 'Nothing but essays now. An' they're all such idiots, in't they? Dunno. Wish I could just dump it!'
Reader, alas. These three were all teachers.
February 4, 2012
Publishing Doldrums
What is going on in the publishing world? I do understand that there is a fear of the power of Amazon; there is fear increased by the collapse of Borders in the UK and worries about the success of a new model being tried for our other main bookselling chain, Waterstones. I now know that in the UK only really well-known authors, or those books that look as if they might be extremely commercially successful, have any chance of being published at all at the moment. Publishers are scared witless (for want of the word that first came to mind) by the effect on them of e-publishing.
How similar that is to the attitude of US publishing houses I cannot say. But I am really depressed by the news that a writer like Slavenka Drakulic - author of 'S' and 'Frida's Bed' is now being turned down wherever she goes. She has therefore resorted to self-publishing on Amazon Kindle for 'Flesh of her Flesh': an account of having a kidney transplant where the kidney was donated by a total stranger. The book asks what sort of person is prepared to give such a gift. Slavenka Drakulic was told that there would be no commercial interest in this subject. Truly, I find that hard to believe.
How similar that is to the attitude of US publishing houses I cannot say. But I am really depressed by the news that a writer like Slavenka Drakulic - author of 'S' and 'Frida's Bed' is now being turned down wherever she goes. She has therefore resorted to self-publishing on Amazon Kindle for 'Flesh of her Flesh': an account of having a kidney transplant where the kidney was donated by a total stranger. The book asks what sort of person is prepared to give such a gift. Slavenka Drakulic was told that there would be no commercial interest in this subject. Truly, I find that hard to believe.
January 31, 2012
The Barrier of Shared Culture
A friend of mine told me she had just started to read Story Structure Architect: A Writer's Guide to Building Dramatic Situations and Compelling Characters and thought it might be helpful to her, so I took a look.
Apart from the list-making, prescriptive and formulaic approach of this how-to manual, almost all of the examples the author cites are not books at all - but films. What's more, Hollywood films. I ask myself: how can citing Hollywood film be helpful to someone who is setting out to write a book? Film (especially American mainstream film) is unsubtle, lacks interiority - almost by definition, and mostly requires a neat and preferably happy ending. Or at the very least, the dread 'closure'.
Has this author not read anything? When she very occasionally does mention a book she misunderstands the core of it. Mostly though, it's films - even where the film is based on a novel, it's the film (with its necessarily simplified view of the world)that gets the mention. Crazy! No thanks.
Apart from the list-making, prescriptive and formulaic approach of this how-to manual, almost all of the examples the author cites are not books at all - but films. What's more, Hollywood films. I ask myself: how can citing Hollywood film be helpful to someone who is setting out to write a book? Film (especially American mainstream film) is unsubtle, lacks interiority - almost by definition, and mostly requires a neat and preferably happy ending. Or at the very least, the dread 'closure'.
Has this author not read anything? When she very occasionally does mention a book she misunderstands the core of it. Mostly though, it's films - even where the film is based on a novel, it's the film (with its necessarily simplified view of the world)that gets the mention. Crazy! No thanks.
January 15, 2012
Unthrilling thriller:
Snowdrops by A.D. MillerMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Oh dear. How come this made it to the Man-Booker shortlist in 2011? A willfully naive British lawyer in Moscow allows himself to get caught up in a scam that readers can spot coming a mile away. The characters are one-dimensional (narrator included), and the writing is dull. Was its location - a Russia peopled, it would seem, almost entirely by murderers, thugs, prostitutes and fraudsters the factor that got it first published and then recognised? Alas!
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Snowdrops
January 12, 2012
Ethan Frome
This is a short, tight, dark little book, in which Wharton views rural life in winter through male eyes. She brings it off with great conviction,and as with the House of Mirth, infuses it all with skillfully controlled doom. What a delight to know there are many more to go.
But now for something else for a while.
But now for something else for a while.
January 2, 2012
An Anatomy of Pain
Frida's Bed by Slavenka DrakulićMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's astonishing how much Slavenka Drakulic gets into a very short book. In a sense this is a biography of pain, told through the largely third person viewpoint of a dying Frida Kahlo looking back over her life. From childhood polio, through the dreadful consequences of a traffic accident Frida's body assaulted her most of the days of her life. Without her permanent pain she would not have become an artist, chronicling suffering in her pictures; nor would she have met, and married, the Maestro - Diego Rivera; nor might she have joined, left, then re-joined the Communist Party.
Drakulic's writing is as spare as ever - she is never prolix. There is no metaphorical tearing of hair or weeping or breast-beating. But then, that would not have been in Frida's character. From time to time Drakulic herself interrupts with passages in italics assessing individual paintings in the light of the artist's experience and perspective.
I felt I learned more from this slight novel about Rivera, Kahlo and Trotsky than I did from the overlong Lacuna.
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