31

Dec

~jonathon safran foer~ everything is illuminated

eilRead it in: around two weeks

I really quite like all of Jonathon Safran Foer’s works that I’ve read.  In both Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Everything is Illuminated, he takes something that is conventional, something that is already overdone – in the former’s case, September 11, in the latter’s, the Holocaust – and yet he manages to turn it into a piece of writing that stands out completely from all others.

One reason is that he has a very interesting style of writing.  In ELAIC (I’m not going to type the full title every single time) he used pictures as well as words, he put pen-marks on pages, he put text on top of text, in short, the book was full of surprises.  This book was less full of surprises in that sense, but it was his first work after all, and we can’t expect a writer to pull out all stops in their first work.  They have to experiment a little first, after all.

This book was actually created out of Foer’s university thesis, which traced a period of his own family history.  So it seems quite personal to Foer himself, like a private memoir of sorts.  He structures this novel in an interesting fashion as well.  It’s told through many different means and several different perspectives.  There are letters from the protagonist’s translator (in bad English) detailing his day-to-day life and talking about the protagonist’s novel.  There is the narrative of the protagonist’s very early descendent, and then of his later descendents.  There is also the narrative of the protagonist’s journey through Ukraine to find out about his family history.  In short, this is a novel about history and also about the discovery of such history.  It is a memoir in more ways than one.

So, as all of Foer’s books do, this one pokes and prods at those deep and meaningful questions as well.  It does this in a humorous way and it does this in a very tragic way.  He gives us little hypotheses about life as well, small things we never knew about nor would ever think about had we not come across it.  Example:

‘THE BOOK OF REVELATIONS
(for a complete listing of revelations, see APPENDIX Z32. For a complete listing of genesises, see APPENDIX Z33.)
The end of the world has come often, and continues to often come.  Unforgiving, unrelenting, bringing darkness upon darkness, the end of the world is something we have become well acquainted with, habitualized, made into a ritual.  It is our religion to try to forget it in its absence, make peace with it when it is undeniable, and return its embrace when it finally comes for us, as it always does.
There has yet to be a human to survive a span of history without at least one end of the world.  It is the subject of extensive scholarly debate whether stillborn babies are subject to the same revelations – if we could say that they have lived without endings.  This debate, of course, demands a close examination of that more profound question: Was the world first created or ended?  When the Lord our God breathed on the universe, was that a genesis or a revelation?  Should we count those seven days forwards or backwards?  How did that apple taste, Adam?  And the worm you discovered in that sweet and bitter pulp: was that the head or the tail?’ (pg. 210)

I like Foer’s prose, and I like the way he easily strikes at the heart of what it means to be human.  His characters do strange things, inexplicable things, and sometimes you don’t know whether to love them or hate them for what they have done.  But his characters, overall, are incredibly human, and this is quite refreshing in the current literary world.

For a first work, I’d say this has to be a winner.  It’s well-written, an interesting read, full of history, humor and tragedy.

Read it if you: are interested in history, especially Holocaust/Jewish history, like meaty characters, don’t mind experimental literature

While reading listen to: Low Roar The Painter, The Antlers Kettering, The Cinematic Orchestra To Build a Home

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Historical fiction/Last Name F/Literature/Memoir/Postmodern literature

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03

Dec

~jonas jonasson~ the one hundred year old man who climbed out the window and disappeared

tohyomwcotwadRead it in: maybe a little over two weeks

So this was a bit of a random choice, picked up in the bookshop for no apparent reason and waiting to be read so that I could finally add the ‘fiction alphabetical order J’ category to the list.  Also, to tell the truth I haven’t really read a comedy before.  It was an interesting experience.

Would I recommend it?  Sure, if you like books written almost entirely in exposition.  An example is called for:

Allan asked Julius if he had any ideas which, unlike previous attempts, would not make The Beauty even angrier.  Julius answered that the only way they could save the situation was by inviting The Beauty to partake in some sort of part ownership of the suitcase.  Allan agreed, although he pointed out that no good would come of telling a new person each day that they had stolen someone’s suitcase, killed that person when he wanted to get it back, and sent the corpse to Africa packed neatly in a steel cylinder. (pg 96-97)

At first it really bothered me.  Really, really bothered me.  I thought maybe it was something funny with the translation (the author is Swedish, after all), but then I realised that it hadn’t been translated.  Was that the problem?  Needless to say, I did get used to it, and the whole book isn’t written in exposition anyway.  Only the vast majority of it.

It follows the strange and intriguing life of Allan Karlsson, who managed to mix him up in just about every important world event of the 20th Century, and is currently, at the age of one-hundred, on the run.  So the book jumps between the past and the present, which got a little confusing towards the end, but was helped by the dates at the top of the chapters.  So Mr. Karlsson goes from Sweden at the beginning of the century to the Spanish Civil War, to Los Alamos in 1945, to China during the revolution, to the Himalayas and Iran, then back to Sweden and then shortly to Soviet Russia, mainly Vladivostok, to North Korea, to Bali and then finally back to Sweden.  Along the way he manages to meet with just about every major policy-maker of the times.  This is the history scholar’s dream, the international relations major’s greatest desire, to see all these factors come together for comment.  Unfortunately for us all, Mr. Karlsson isn’t particularly fond of politics and tends to try to change the subject quickly.  Now, that is unfortunate.

Well, this book was a little crazy, and maybe a little ambitious in that sense.  Mr. Karlsson with his incredible luck but apathy for politics got on the nerves a little, which is unfortunate because the entire thing is narrated from his expositional perspective.  And, though this may be a flaw with the comedy genre as a whole, the entire narrative seemed completely devoid of emotion.  Characters died, that’s right, died, and our protagonist seemed hardly phased, just continued on with his crazy journey.  Incredible things happened that, if given to another author, could have been laden with heart-wrenching descriptions and really milked for all it was worth.  We had labour camps in Vladivostok.  We had bombs going off during the Spanish Civil War.  We had interrogations with the top dog of the Iranian secret police.  In another writer’s hands, I could see this being an emotionally charged adventure novel.  This one, however, seemed to skirt the emotional bits and toddle along with the plot regardless of what the character was experiencing, in the same way, I suppose, that a one-hundred year old man would climb out the window and disappear – slowly but surely with no regard for anyone and no emotion whatsoever.

So it was a little irritating, but blame it on my inability to stand the comedy genre.  DeLillo and Mishima have made me into a cynical and pedantic literary hermit.  I will stay in my depressing genre-niche and reject everything whenever I emerge.

I am trying to broaden my tastes.  My attempts just haven’t been successful yet.

Read it if you: are an experienced adventurer in the comedy genre and know what to expect, are interested in world history, think coincidence and good luck are amusing.

While reading listen to: oh, lord, I don’t know.  Don’t ask me right now, I’m too busy being cynical.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Comedy/Historical fiction/Last Name J

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03

Dec

~patrick suskind~ perfume

per Read it in: three days (it’s holidays again)

I’ve been wanting to read this book for a while.  I know I say this about a lot of books, but this was especially true for this one.  The concept never really appealed to me (a book about perfumes and smell… what on earth? I thought) but in high school English class we once read an excerpt from the first couple of pages which described in incredible detail the streets of Paris during the late 1700s.  It went something like this:

In the period of which we speak, there reigned in the cities a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women.  The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairwells stank of mouldering wood and rat droppings, the kitchens of spoiled cabbage and mutton fat; the unaired parlours stank of stale dust, the bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp featherbeds, and the pungently sweet aroma of chamber-pots.  The stench of sulphur rose from the chimneys, the stench of caustic lyes from the tanneries, and from the slaughterhouses came the stench of congealed blood.  People stank of sweat and unwashed clothes; from their mouths came the stench of rotting teeth, from their bellies that of onions, and from their bodies, if they were no longer very young, came the stench of rancid cheese and sour milk and tumorous disease…  The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the King himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the Queen like an old goat, summer and winter.  For in the eighteenth century there was nothing to hinder bacteria busy at decomposition, and so there was no human activity, either constructive or destructive, no manifestation of germinating or decaying life, that was not accompanied by stench.’ (pg 3-4)

I do love a bit of description.  I love it a lot.  And I did love this book quite a bit.  The only thing that irritated me slightly per2was the cover.  Actually, this irritated me a lot.  The cover I’ve chosen to put up the top here is not the cover of the book that I read.  Rather, this one right here is.  Look at it.  It is a romance novel cover.  The person who designed this cover was a romance cover designer who couldn’t think of anything else to put on a book about fragrance and perfume.  Try some perfume bottles next time or, like the cover above, somebody’s nose.  Yes, the book includes some very important red-headed girls, however in no part of the book are they lying around under bedsheets looking like back-alley whores.  In fact, strange as it may see with a cover like this, this book is not about sex.  For most of this book, there is no sex, and when there is sex the main character is not involved… as such.  But, for reasons unknown to me, I had to brave public transport for three days reading a book that looked like this and trying not to be judged by people.  Oh the shame!

Alright, now that I’ve got that off my chest, I may as well talk about what is beyond the cover.  You can’t judge a book by it’s cover, after all, though I certainly would have if I was riding public transport with myself during this time.  Okay, that’s enough now.  This book is about a young man, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, who has this superhuman sense of smell, meaning that he can pick up the scents of things that we wouldn’t usually consider having a scent.  Like rocks.  He can smell rocks.  And red-headed virgins.  He can smell red-headed virgins from miles away.  He meanders his way through life in various classes of society; he goes from an orphan to a lowly tanner’s assistant to a perfumer’s assistant, to a cave-man-esque hermit, to a man of high standing within his village, to the self-professed ‘Grenouille the Great’.  We see his entire life unfold, right from his birth until his death.  It is quite a momentous work, especially given that it’s able to fit all that into less than three hundred pages without skipping over the years in an irritating manner.  It even includes vast tracts of philosophical thought on life, giving the reader a map of the brain de la Grenouille.

One of the interesting things about this book is that the main character is almost an anti-hero, and in some ways he isn’t the main character at all.  There were definitely parts of the book where we detached from him and our omniscient narrator told us about the activities of other characters in a way that excluded our protagonist completely.  It felt as if I was hearing the story from a witness of certain events who did not know the truth behind them and the way that they secretly involved our main character.  It was interesting, I have to tell you that.

I’m not even sure I liked Grenouille, to tell the truth.  And that makes for an interesting read.  Although I didn’t necessarily like him, his exploits were definitely interesting, yet it was the detachment from emotion at his triumphs and failures that surprised me.  I wouldn’t have cheered for him, if I’d met him in real life I definitely would have avoided him, and the fact that he was the protagonist didn’t stop me from being a little disgusted by some of the things he did (if not all the things that he did).  It’s not a book that you read because the characters are likeable.  You read it because the characters are intriguing and they carry the plot.

There is also, now that I think about it, a sense of inevitability, of fate, in this book.  Perhaps it is the way that it starts right from the very beginning, from Grenouille’s birth, leading to the assumption that it will lead on until his death.  Or perhaps it was the setting – the unforgivable eighteenth century in which nobody really lived very long at all.  Maybe it was his exploits, which you knew would reap some sort of a consequence in the end, which you were just waiting for throughout the whole novel, knowing that things could not go on as they were forever.

In this way, the final scene didn’t surprise me, but then it did.  It was horrible, but unassumingly horrible.  A writer with the sort of descriptive tools that had been used throughout the book didn’t pull them out in this final scene, but left it as is.  In some ways, it’s more shocking that way.  But you will have to read it and tell me what you think.  I won’t say anymore.

Read it if you: are interested in the historical setting, like descriptive passages, like reading the cognitive musings of characters

While reading listen to: Lucia Popp Depuis le jour, Dvorak New World Symphony Movement I, Ravel Gaspard de la Nuit

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Historical fiction/Last Name S

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13

May

~jiang rong~ wolf totem

WTRead it in: close to two months

I read this on the recommendation of one of my relatives, who always gives me a stack of books to take away every time I visit her house so much so that I am worried I will have to pay more for overweight baggage on the flight home.  Needless to say, I tried to finish this one while I was still staying with her, but the whole 800 pages thing somewhat delayed me.

As my rule is that every book I start I must finish, taking on something 800 pages long is something I have to consider for a long time before starting.  Will it be worth it?  One hundred pages through, will I regret I ever opened it?  Will it haunt my bedside table for months and months before I can make the time to finish it?  It was the same with this one.  I’d never read anything like it and hadn’t even come to it myself, at that, but had had it passed onto me by someone who (I thought) didn’t know my reading tastes.  (Now from latter experience I know that she knows my reading tastes absolutely and will trust her on every recommendation)

Anyway, one of the contributing factors to beginning this one was that it had won the Man Asian Prize.  Any panel of judges who decide to take on a book of 800 pages, manage to read it to the end and after that decide to award it a significant prize must have thought it was pretty amazing.  I have to say that I understood why they thought so after I finished it.

So the story is about a young Chinese man who goes to live for a couple of months in the Mongolian plains, sampling the lifestyle.  At the same time it is about the shepherds of the Mongolian plains and their struggle to survive, in particular, the threat of the wolves to the survival of their sheep, also their livelihoods.  But on a larger scale it is about the diminishing lifestyle on the Mongolian plains which is being subjected to the Chinese cultural revolution, increasing industrialisation and the view that traditionalism equals backwardness.

The book is full of metaphors for one thing or another.  Through what the characters experience you can really get a sense that it means something else on a deeper level.  It is a beautiful book, yet it is also tragic, violent in parts, cruel and incredible.  The images depicted, especially the scenery passages, are written just beautifully.

When I first started reading it, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  Reading the language, I sometimes felt as if I was reading a non-fiction novel, what with all the descriptions of the behaviour of the wolves, the lifestyle of the Mongolian shepherds.  But it turned out this was for the best.  Not only did I become used to this style of prose, but I also gained a complex understanding of what life was like for these people.  You knew what was going to happen because you could already understand the cycle of cause and effect that dictated these people’s lifestyles.

One more thing, and that is that although 800 pages is a significant trek, I often come out with the feeling that long books always trump small books.  You journey along with the characters, you live months and months with the regularity of picking up the same book every day, diving into the same world, the same characters, getting to know what it’s like.  You know everything there is to know about that world, all the information has been bequeathed to you and you understand it in the same way that you understand what you are learning in university or what your tasks are at work.  When I turned the final page, I felt like I had been shut out of that world, that the world had ended, even more so because the ending is such that you know that the events of the book can never be again, that it has all changed since now and those times can never reoccur.

It’s sad and long, but please read it.

Read it if you: are interested in the nomadic life of Mongolian shepherds, like nature-oriented literature, are interested in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, like wolves… or maybe not…, enjoy antagonism between human and animal with both sides having an equal chance of victory.

While reading, listen to: Varðeldur Sigur Ros

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Historical fiction/Last Name R/Literature

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10

May

~toni morrison~ beloved

BRead it in: two weeks

I read this book for an English literature course, and this is another one of those books that, had it not been required, I probably wouldn’t have read.  I knew absolutely nothing about this book to begin with – so much so that I thought the author was a man.  But as I read through it, I found it to be an amazing and haunting tale.

The novel tells the story of an African American woman, Sethe, of her daughter Denver, of her friend Paul D and of her dead child, known as Beloved.  But at the same time the novel gives a glimpse into the much wider world of Sethe’s past, the past of Paul D and the struggle of African Americans in 19th Century America.

I usually tend to avoid books on slavery in the same way that I avoid books about September 11 – it’s been done, and I feel I know enough about it already.  Yet a book such as this (and also Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close on September 11) really opens my eyes to how I don’t actually know as much as I think I do, and how the issues at hand are so much deeper and more intricate than I thought at first.

Morrison explains the experience of slavery incredibly.  The images she evoked still remain in my head.  They are powerful, terrible, frightening and yet beautiful at the same time.  Morrison’s mastery over words is unrivaled.

In parts the book is entirely realistic, and in others it is entirely unrealistic.  We deal with the supernatural in the form of Sethe’s dead child, Beloved, who comes back in the form of a young girl (the same age as Beloved would have been had she lived) to haunt her mother and reveal the mysteries of Sethe’s past.  She acts very strange and, having had to analyse this, caused me a lot of grief in my effort to explain her actions.  For example, here is a part that is narrated by Beloved herself:

I am Beloved and she is mine.  I see her take flowers away from leaves    she puts them in a round basket    the leaves are not for her   she fills the basket    she opens the grass    I would help her but the clouds are in the way    how can I say things that are pictures    I am not separate from her there is no place where I stop    her face is my own and I want to be there in the place where her face is and to be looking at it too    a hot thing

All of it is now    it is always now    there will never be a time when I am not crouching and watching others who are crouching too    I am always crouching    the man on my face is dead    his face is not mind    his mouth smells sweet but his eyes are locked (page 248)

It is a confusing story, in parts, and it goes quickly between different times in history, so much so that at times it is hard to know where you are or when.  But it is a book well worth reading.  It will not leave your mind long after you have finished it.

Read it if you: like Cormac McCarthy and his style of prose, enjoy reading historical fiction (especially involving slavery in America), don’t know much about this topic, love reading beautiful prose, love heartbreaking and powerful and beautiful novels

While reading, listen to: Strange Fruit Billie Holiday, Moonlight Django Reinhardt

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Historical fiction/Literature

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30

Apr

~jack kersh~ hotel sarajevo

HSRead it in: one week

There was a time in my life when I came to feel as if there had only ever been pictures of war-torn countries on the TV that were Middle Eastern.  The footage hardly ever portrayed European blood being spilled.  It was strange.  But as I looked through my history books, I realised that not even that long ago there was conflict in a European country that was prolonged and extremely bloody.  I couldn’t even remember it, let alone imagine it.

This book helped me to understand what it was like.  Well, I’ve never really been able to understand all of the politics involved in the wars, who were the belligerents and so on.  But more than anything, I am able to understand how this war, in particular the Siege of Sarajevo, effected the day to day lives of people, and this is the most inteHS1resting part, in my opinion.

So, the Siege of Sarajevo lasted from 1992 to 1996 and was the longest siege in modern warfare.  Snipers shot down at civilians from the hills, shells were blasted into apartment blocks, buildings ruined, supplies cut off, basically they were trying to kill the entire population of the city.  In this setting, we meet our main character, Alma, who while trying to locate her parents and survive the siege, is experiencing love, sorrow and all those others icky teenager-y emotions.

(–> picture: a man collects firewood on the street)

The historical setting is what really intrigued me about this book.  As I said, I could never imagine a European city to be in such a state of decay and violence.  Naive as I was, I then realised that a European country had been host to a monstrous genocide.  But the day to day struggle of these people to survive really inspired me, and I’ve now written more than a few short stories with Sarajevo as the setting.

This book is a harsh but realistic introduction to this.  It’s about kids in a situation where no kids should be.  They live in an abandoned hotel, they ration their food, they raid and steal forTHE SIEGE OF SARAJEVO provisions, some die and the others bury them, they experiment with love and loss and life and death with no constant adult presence to guide them through.  It’s an amazing story and all the more amazing because it’s based on fact.

(–> picture: the ruins of Sarajevo)

Very, very tragic though, but I would have been annoyed at Mr. Kersh if he tried to make it into a happy-ending-fairytale-esque story when, for so many people, it wasn’t like that at all.  It is shocking at every turn, but also surprisingly beautiful in parts.  The emotions of the characters, who seem too young to experience real, adult feelings, are surprisingly deep.  The storyline catches you with its unpredictability, highlighting the very unpredictability of life in Sarajevo at that time – at any moment you could be blown up or shot down or die of hunger or illness.

Read it if you: are interested in the Bosnian conflict, think Europe is beyond genocidal wars (it will surprise you), like war and survival stories, don’t mind a bit of tragedy (okay, a lot).

While you read it listen to: Miss Sarajevo U2, From the Ground Up Sleeping At Last

11 years ago Short URL 3 Comments

Historical fiction/Last Name K

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25

Apr

~hilary mantel~ a place of greater safety

APOGSRead it in: just over a month

I have always been a great lover of the French Revolution.  Something about that time in history, all the coups and factions and blood and revenge and jealousy and madness, just plain madness, eternally keeps me interested.  A couple of years ago, I was just obsessed with the FR, reading all the books, watching all the movies, I could recite who played Robespierre and Danton in the French version of the 1970something film of something to do with something French Revolution.  I knew it all.  If you got me started, I would never stop talking.  I almost crashed the car once when somebody casually asked me to explain what exactly it was while driving them home one night.

So of course I have read all the fiction (well, most of it).  ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’ was an old favourite, ‘City of Darkness, City of Light’ was fun, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ was wonderful, but ‘A Place of Greater Safety’, I think, tops them all (well, perhaps not Dickens, but we’ll see about that).

This book covers years and years and years of history.  Of course, I knew everything that was going on due to extended and obsessive wikipedia research and google image searching, but the best part about this book was that you actually didn’t have to know what was going on to enjoy the story.  The story was good anyway!

The characters are interesting – well, they always were, even in history – but Mantel gives them new facets, injects a little humour into the altogether sombre events of the Reign of Terror etc. and makes it a thoroughly readable, though informative, piece of history.  I even laughed.  I even laughed many times.  I almost cried.  I had to tag pages so that I wouldn’t forget their existence and I had to make my friend give it back when I lent it to her because I missed its presence in my bookcase so much.

Alright, so I have to give you an example of Mantel’s work.  This is one of my favourite scenes, and one of the only ones I can convey to you without ruinin some aspect of the plot:

‘”Put your head out of the window,” Marat said.  “See if you can hear what Danton is saying.  I’d put my own head out, but somebody might shoot it off.”

“He is saying, where is that fucking battalion commander.”

“I wrote to Mirabeau and Barnave.” Marat turned to Camille his tired, gold-flecked eyes.  “I thought they needed enlightenment.”

“I expect they didn’t reply.”

“No.” he thought. “I renounce moderation,” he said.

“Moderation renounces you.”

“That’s all right.”

…

“So here are the clothes, Dr Marat,” Francois Robert said.  “Monsieur Danton hopes they fit.”

“Well, I don’t know.” Marat said.  “I was hoping to make my escape by balloon.  I’ve wanted for such a long time to ascend in a balloon.”

“We couldn’t get one.  Not in the time we had.”

“I bet you didn’t try,” Marat said.

After he had washed, shaved, dressed in a frock-coat, combed his hair, Francois Robert said, “Amazing.”

“One was always well-dressed,” Marat said, “in one’s days in high society.”

“What happened?”

Marat glowered. “I became the People’s Friend.”

“But you could still dress normally, couldn’t you?  For instance, you mention Deputy Robespierre as a patriot, and he is always wonderfully turned-out.”

“There is perhaps a strain of frivolity in Monsieur Robespierre.” Marat said drily.  “Now,” he said, “I am going to walk outside, through the cordon, and through Lafayette’s troops.  I am going to smile, which I admit you do not often see, and affecting a jaunty air I am going to swing this elegant walking-cane with which Monsieur Danton has so thoughtfully provided me.  It’s like a story-book, isn’t it?”

…

When there was a knock at the door I didn’t know what to do.  But it was only little Louise from upstairs.  “I went out, Madame Danton.”

“Oh, Louise, you shouldn’t have done that.”

“I’m not frightened.  Besides – it’s all over.  The troops are dispersing.  Lafayette has lost his nerve.  And I’ll tell you a secret, Madame Danton.  Marat isn’t even in there any  more.  He got out an hour ago, disguised as a human being.” (page 281-283)

Mantel writes in a very interesting manner.  There are snippets from everything; play-like dialogue from meetings, letters written from one character to another, diary entries, speeches, and all very interesting and relevant.  We see all characters from many different angles, from the perspectives of their wives and husbands, their children, their parents, their friends.  It gives a broad and extremely deep view of the events, and I saw them like I had never seen them before.

Read it if you: are interested in the French Revolution, are uninterested in the French Revolution but still love a good story, deep, interesting characters, questionable morals, fantastic twists and turns of plot (most of which are based on fact), humour, history, intrigue, just read it.

While reading, listen to: go on, put on the French national anthem.  It was created during the FR anyway (here I go again…), and it will fill you with that wonderful spirit of nationalism and revolutionary hope.  Also, Ca Ira! is a good one.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Historical fiction/Last Name M

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18

Apr

~sebastian barry~ on canaan’s side

OCSRead it in: one day

Sorry again, I have no idea what the dates were for this one either.  All I do know is that I read it in one day, during a week-long period in which, with very little else to do, I literally read one book a day.  That’s not to say I can read fast, but that I spent many, many hours of the day with my head in a book.

I did enjoy this read.  I first came across it because I heard Barry do a reading of it on the radio and, I don’t know, with that beautiful Irish accent shaping the words, I put it on my must-read list.  It was very interesting, very tragic (unfortunately for me, the part I had heard on the radio spoiled one of the most tragic scenes, so I knew it was going to happen all along) and quite memorable in many ways.

Barry’s descriptions are nice, and they vary as well.  The characters travel from Ireland to New York and Barry describes the stark differences between these two beautifully.  The plot follows a young woman whose family becomes involved with The Troubles and who subsequently has to flee Ireland for the other side of the world.  As she wanders through the unfamiliar city of New York, she is all the while anxious that she is being followed by enemies seeking her from her time back in Ireland.  She runs into these enemies a few times, her life changes rapidly as she moves from place to place and tries to find a stable life for herself.

The end reveals plot twists and sheds light on the beginning.  I love the way the storyline unfolds, how no events are forgotten and the past always catches up with her somewhere.  Even if I did read it in one day, it stayed in my mind for a long time.

Read it if you: enjoy beautiful descriptions, like travel narratives, are interested in Irish/American history throughout the 20th Century, like a bit of suspense and action, enjoy interesting and morally ambiguous characters.

While you read it, listen to: Riverside Agnes Obel, Lonely The Middle East, Premiere Rhapsodie Claude Debussy, Mad Rush Philip Glass.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Historical fiction/Last Name B

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14

Apr

~michael ondaatje~ the english patient

TEPRead it in: two days

I picked up this book on the recommendation of my auntie, who said that the film was fantastic.  In fact, so did everyone else who looked over my shoulder in those subsequent two days to see what I was reading.  By far, the film seemed more famous than the book.  I can’t work out why though.

The book is quite fantastic.  What drew me in from the very beginning (apart from the intriguing blurb on the back cover) was the style of prose.  The descriptions of the house, the landscape, the people, the emotions are just brilliant.  I am a sucker for good prose, I wouldn’t have cared if the storyline was romantic and soppy, I was just there for the prose.  But, as a matter of fact, the storyline was good as well.

So we find our characters in a derelict villa in Tuscany – the young nurse who is mentally war-torn, the Italian thief who has lost both thumbs, the sapper whose specialty is defusing bombs and the English patient, burned all and deprived of almost all bodily function, except the ability to talk.  Over the course of the book, all these characters’ pasts are revealed in great depth, especially that of the English patient, and as important questions begin to rise, so do tensions.

Quite a lot of this novel is told in the flashback form, but not how we would usually imagine it.  The author uses a lot of present tense as well as past tense, which is interesting, though I’m not quite sure why he couldn’t just stick to the one tense all the way through (it’s not a case of flashbacks in past and current events in the present; the quote below is from a flashback).  If anyone has any suggestions why he might do this, please feel free to comment!

Here’s a little snippet of the beautiful prose that I thoroughly enjoyed:

He feels everything is missing from his body, feels he contains smoke.  All that is alive is the knowledge of future desire and want.  What he would say he cannot say to this woman whose openness is like a wound, whose youth is not mortal yet.  He cannot altar what he loves most in her, her lack of compromise, where the romance of the poems she loves still sits with ease in the real world.  Outside these qualities he knows there is no order in the world. (page 157)

Read this if you: have an interest in war stories (WW2), love beautiful prose, are interested in the desert, are Indian, need a relaxing break from fast-paced thrillers.

While reading this, listen to: Serenade (for piano) Franz Schubert, Glassworks (opening) Philip Glass, Premiere Rhapsodie (for clarinet and piano) Claude Debussy, Fjögur Píanó Sigur Ros

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Historical fiction/Last Name O

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10

Apr

~david mitchell~ cloud atlas

CARead it in: nine days

Perpetual notes to myself have been written about the pitfalls of comparing films and books.  In my opinion, they must be savoured as entirely different entities that have their own artistic value for different reasons and should not be compared devoutly.  Nevertheless, sometimes it simply cannot be avoided.

I saw the film ‘Cloud Atlas’ and was amazed/intrigued/inspired (circle one).  All of the above.  I loved the idea of our savage, post-apocalyptic future, I adored Ben Whishaw in (most of) his roles (save the overly feminine ones) and was intrigued by a brand of science fiction that I may actually enjoy (I have been waging a mental war against science fiction for a very, very long time).  Hence, after the film finished, I directed myself to the bookshop and immediately bought this book.

It’s very good.  Just don’t compare it to the movie.  Somehow they differ enormously.  Therefore, I expected every twist and turn of the plotline that had so enraptured me in the cinemas, only it didn’t happen that way.  It surprised me immensely.  And, as always, I know I would have enjoyed it much better had I not seen the movie and known what it was all about beforehand.

The plotline is a little too complicated to explain in 25 words or less.  But I’ll try.  There are six inter-connected lives: an American on a voyage through the Pacific islands sometime in the 1800s, a young musician in the 1930s, a keen journalist involved with a dangerous corporation in the 1970s, an old, befuddled man trapped in a nursing home in modern times, a clone trapped in the surreal world of Neo Soul in the future and a man braving mystery and superstition in post-apocalyptic Hawaii.  As these stories move along, we realise they are all subtly connected.

Read it if you: like historical fiction, play a musical instrument, appreciate long words and clever plays on the English language, enjoy clever and philosophical science fiction, are not deterred by words mangled in attempts to portray different speaking patterns of post-apocalyptic humans, believe in fate/reincarnation/things like that, like exciting thriller stories, appreciate good literature.

While reading this, listen to: Transatlanticism Death Cab for Cutie, Lonely The Middle East, Set Fire to the Third Bar Snow Patrol, Her Disappearing Theme Broken Social Scene

11 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Fantasy/Historical fiction/Last Name M/Literature

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