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The Great Night - Parts 2 - 5/Whole Book Spoilers (Jan 2019)
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The ending, I thought, tied things up nicely, which I tend to like in fiction. If I want untidiness and incomplete endings I can always read history! (Which I do from time to time.) And I liked the cross-connections.What I found less successful was the three main human character's backstories. I just couldn't find them interesting, except when they touched on the magical. It seemed to me, that despite the verbiage spent on them, it didn't really flesh them out, and the remained bunches of quirks in search of a personality. I found myself wanting to skim those sections and get back to the interesting stuff happening in the park. I believe I actually fell asleep when reading Will and Henry's sections at least once each.
As for Puck, the glossary at the back of my copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream defines the word Puck as:
Puck -- a common name for an imp or a devil.
Which, if you think about it, Puck being some sort of demon would explain just how frightened the fairies were by him, and what he was able to do.
The ending pretty tidy but what do you think the squirrel told?I liked the backstories. Henry and Molly seemed to have had some of the author's history woven in -- pediatric oncologist for Henry and divinity student for Molly. Not sure if Will did, as I've seen nothing about the author and trees! I liked the interconnections. I would, though, have liked to know more about the house that each of them had a connection to. And what was Mike's story?
I am somewhat in awe of Chris Adrian's imagination.
Peter wrote: "What I found less successful was the three main human character's backstories. I just couldn't find them interesting, except when they touched on the magical. It seemed to me, that despite the verbiage spent on them, it didn't really flesh them out, and the remained bunches of quirks in search of a personality...."Of the three, Molly seemed the most fleshed out to me - and the story of her childhood in a Christian family band cracked me up. I was a little confused that Puck appeared as Peabo, her temporary foster brother?? I also found it a stretch to see Henry as an oncology pediatrician, although his obsessive compulsive behavior was drawn well. Will was the weakest of the three for me - his links to the story were flimsy, maybe because the characters that were his link, Carolina and Sean, seemed to exist as plot devices.
And public masturbation is just yucky, did we really need that for Henry?
I'm also in awe of Chris Adrian's imagination. It must be hard to write adult whimsy without getting cutesy. Maybe it was the faerie sex that kept it grounded and earthy :) Loved the way he imagined faeries. And Titania was a great character - in all her manifestations. Her romance with Huff was priceless!I think it could have been much better with more editing though - I felt like I was wandering around in the park without much happenning a little too often. I also felt like I was looking at a wall of words on the page - I wish the text could have been broken up with more white space. Maybe shorter chapters would have helped.
Nadine wrote: "I'm also in awe of Chris Adrian's imagination. It must be hard to write adult whimsy without getting cutesy. Maybe it was the faerie sex that kept it grounded and earthy :) "I think Christopher Moore manages it nicely.
Peter, I agree that Christopher Moore is good with adult whimsy but I think of him work more as pure humor. Nadine, what edition did you read? I don’t remember the hardcover as being densely printed. I like you how you explain your reactions to the characters. I thought Molly saw Puck as Peabo because she felt guilty about being responsible for his being sent away. Henry was hard to see as a pediatric oncologist but I think we were only seeing Henry as Henry saw himself and not as others saw him. Will was the weakest for me too.
LindaJ^ wrote: "Nadine, what edition did you read? I don’t remember the hardcover as being densely printed..."
I read the hardcover too. Maybe I've just been reading too many shorter novels with lots of space. So many of these short novels (under 250 pages) have been lean little gems with no excess, so it's made me extra aware of baggy-ness in longer novels.
OK, well, that's over. The early hospital setting was vivid and gripping, and the tension between the parents' reality and the staff's felt true. However, that thread of truth was left dangling in favor of sex-flavored chaos. There was an echo of MND: groups of "rude mechanicals," regular mortals, and faries, with problems for each group.
I'd love to see Christopher Moor's take. He did a Merchant of Venice - themed story already...
Mod
Hugh wrote: "I must admit I found the book a bit of a struggle, and very confusing to follow at times, and much of it, particularly the Shakespearean framework and the Soylent Green references, went over my hea..."I felt the author lost control of his materials at some point. While there were tightly plotted connections between the characters, there was a lot of chaos and confusion that didn't really do very much for the story. It was a bit of a mess by the end.
I have given this book a good go but was overwhelmed by the chaos. I thought the first part was written beautifully and captured my attention and touched me in different ways. I felt outraged that the boy was taken away from his human parents but was touched by how the fairy characters fought for his life and how they got emotionally involved. The introduction to other characters was also interesting but then the chaos started and I could not connect it together, appreciate references to Shakespeare (I am definitely not an expert). I am afraid I did not finish the book. I don’t like giving up but felt precious about my time and wanted more enjoyment out of reading.
Perhaps I shouldn't comment as I didn't read the book. Here's why. In 2006, as a member of McSweeny's book club, I received The Children's Hospital. Reading it (400 of the 600+ pages) was very like falling in love. And falling out of love when the HUH?! moment hit. Where are we? What's going on? I still have a soft spot in my heart for Chris Adrian. Wow can that guy hook you. It's not you, Chris. It's me. I just can't do that again💔
I loved The Children's Hospital and liked this book but it is very hard to articulate why. Both books do things, such as the overabundance of unnecessary sex, that would normally turn me off. But in this book and The Children's Hospital I just skimmed through them and got sucked into the magic and the soul searching that some of the characters were doing.
I'm feeling terribly inadequate with the limited discussion we are having here -- where are the rest of the people who voted for the book? It is a book that has engendered a lot of diverse reactions. We've touched on some of the reasons.
Aga, thanks for letting us know you gave it a go! It is chaotic. I am intrigued by your outrage at Titania and Oberon taking the Boy from his human parents. That is not an uncommon thing for gods to do in myths and was done in the Shakespeare play that the author used, in part, as a template for this novel. So my question is whether you are a myth reader, and if so, whether there was something different in this novel that triggered outrage?
I've always gotten the impression that if you listen to the old ballads (which I suspect is Shakespeare's source for them), the Faerie are nasty bunch of jerks that consider humans little more than playthings. Of course, when you're immortal and magical, we may seem awfully temporary and breakable... I think Adrian got that part right.
I haven’t joined in because I don’t really know what to say about this book. I loved The Children’s Hospital and A Midsummer Nights Dream. I usually enjoy books about fairies especially if they’re interacting with the modern world. This book failed to engage me though. I felt like the author had two different books and smushed them together. The results were not satisfying to me
Thanks Drew. Your perception that the book felt like two books smushed together is a very understandable position. The opening story about the Boy in the hospital is quite different from the rest of the book. While I liked the book, I struggled to find a connection other than to set the stage as to why Titania was depressed. Do you think it would have made more sense for the story of the humans to start with Henry being chosen by Puck and then thrown out by Titania?
Peter, exactly jerks. Another on their level is Tom Bombadil, as connected to human life as a stone is and living his own path beyond the human. Then Titania is pulled from that level by love. If I had stopped there, it would have been enough.My dream part 2 would show how love like that can be ruined by death AND still allow its sufferers to move foreward toward new chapters. I didn't see any of that in #2.
Okay Mark. Now you have to explain why Tom Bombadil is a jerk. I had to google him to discover he was a creation of J.R. Tolkien but was too lazy to read the poem or anything else and Wikipedia's description doesn't make him sound like a jerk.
I have not joined the discussion, because it took me extraordinarily long to finish the novel. I admit, I did not like it and had to force myself through the last 200 pages. I cannot really explain why, the language is beautifully written and the setting of the book is unique. But, and now here comes my big but, I was overwhemled by the plot, to say it nicely. May it is, because I am not familiar with Shakespeare's Midsummers Dream or Soylent Green, but I felt very much detached from the characters and it was hard for me to keep them apart. More, towards the end, I grew quite annoyed with all the references to Soylent Green and I felt like disappointing the author for a) not knowing the film and b) therefore not getting any references at all. However, I liked how everything came together in the end, but before, for me it was pure chaos and I was not sure, what was imagined by the characters and what was actually happend. Maybe this is because sometimes I just skimmed to get ahead but maybe this was also on purpose by Adrian?
From all the characters, I think, I liked Henry the most. What were your impressions on Mike? Has he also been a changeling and how did he started "collecting" the boys (why were there only boys), who were left out of the hill?
Good questions about Mike. I think he had been a changeling but I did not get more than a sense that he collected them so he could help them adapt to their return to the real world before finding their families. Your question about why only boys were changelings caused me to do a bit of research. Wikipedia notes: The reality behind many changeling legends was often the birth of deformed or developmentally disabled children. Among the diseases or disabilities with symptoms that match the description of changelings in various legends are spina bifida, cystic fibrosis, PKU, progeria, Down syndrome, homocystinuria, Williams syndrome, Hurler syndrome, Hunter syndrome, regressive autism, Prader-Willi Syndrome, and cerebral palsy. The greater incidence of birth defects in boys correlates to the belief that male infants were more likely to be taken.
Below are a few questions that occur to me. Make use of them, or ask your own or just comment on the book. I look forward to hearing everyone's reactions to this book.
Which of the three major human characters was your favorite or most disliked? What do you think about the connections between the characters that we as readers learn but that the characters are clueless about, even at the end?
What do you think about Puck - leased or unleased. What does Puck represent? How would Puck have appeared to you?
And thanks to the influence of Peter's comment in the Part I thread, what do you think about the Author's use of the five homeless people? What purpose do they serve? Why the use of Soylent Green? (I had never heard of Soylent Green but now may have to watch the movie.)
Which brings us to Part 5. What did you think of this ending? Does in effectively tie the story of part I together with the stories of Parts 2, 3, & 4?