16

Dec

~yukio mishima~ death in midsummer and other stories

dimaosRead it in: one day (or maybe two)

I do like Yukio Mishima, and his writing is mandatory reading before I go to Japan in 15 days.  This was a collection of short stories that I picked up from a second hand bookstore for $5 (I can’t resist a bargain, especially if the author is Japanese).  It contains ten stories: Death in Midsummer, Three Million Yen, Thermos Flask, The Priest of Shiga Temple and His Love, The Seven Bridges, Patriotism, Dojoji, Onnagata, The Pearl and Swaddling Clothes.  Some of these stories are longer than others.  Some are terrible and sad, others simply strange snapshots into the daily lives of people.

Mishima is an interesting character, and his stories usually involve the themes of dying Japanese beauty, nationalism and post-war cynicism.  He often approaches these topics in an almost scientific manner, with clear prose, simply describing without emotion.  A sort of numbness, sad and cutting straight to the bone.  This is especially evident in the story ‘Death in Midsummer’, which talks about a woman who loses three loved ones on one fateful summer’s day, and ‘Patriotism’, which talks in a very, very graphic manner, about a husband and wife who commit ritual suicide.

‘Patriotism’ was the story that stood out the most for me.  It was terribly sad, but very graphic and scientific in its description.  We learn from the first paragraph that this husband and wife will commit ritual suicide.  Then we get to know them.  We hear about their last hours together in great, great detail, we know every movement, which makes it all the more tragic.  Like a time bomb waiting to go off, we wait for them to pull the knives out and commit the terrible act.  Japanese ritual suicide is a funny thing.  It is not like suicide, in that it is almost forced by the societal concept of honour.  One is put in a situation where to not commit ritual suicide would be a great shame and something you would have to live with for the rest of your life.  It is a choice, but it is not a choice.  It is so very tragic.  After reading that story, I just sat in shock for a while.  Then I had to take a walk and do something else.  I couldn’t get the images out of my head.  It did shock me, it shocked me to the core.

Do you know what is the most shocking thing about this story?  That Mishima himself, only three years after publishing this collection, committed ritual suicide in exactly the same way.  The story ‘Patriotism’ is terrifying in every way, gut-wrenching and heart-wrenching.  I would never, ever want to do anything akin to hara-kiri after reading that, yet after writing such a thing, Mishima did exactly that.  It’s unbelievable, and I will do a post detailing Mishima and his suicide in more depth, because I think it is so interesting.

Mishima is also a very good one for descriptions, when he wants to be.  You can’t write about some aspects of Japan without description, it’s simply such a beautiful place.  And Mishima manages to incorporate into his descriptions exactly what he wants to say all along: images of death, wilting beauty, the destruction of the traditional.  Yes, I will give you an example:

A forlorn willow that they normally would never have noticed as they sped past it in a car grew from a tiny patch of earth in a break in the concrete.  Its leaves, faithful to tradition, trembled in the river breeze.  Late at night the noisy buildings around it died, and only this willow went on living. (pg 94)

Mishima was one of the key writers in Japanese literature, immensely popular in his time, and in order to understand Japanese culture at a greater level, he is mandatory reading.

Read it if you: intend to go to Japan and understand the culture, are interested in Japanese literature, like snapshots of people’s lives, want to understand ritual suicide and Japanese tradition and that sort of thing.

While reading listen to: Four Tet Unspoken, Schubert Standchen

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name M/Short fiction

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13

Nov

~yukio mishima~ the temple of the golden pavilion

ImageRead it in: around two weeks

Yes, here’s another of my Japan-themed reads.  They are increasing in number, I have to say.  I may as well make them a genre.  This one I picked up at a second hand bookstore on campus, cost me $7 and was something I’d been looking for for a while.  I’d previously seen a couple of videos on youtube, mostly with scenes from the film ‘Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters’, which featured music by Philip Glass, which I’d taken a liking to.

One of the most interesting things that attracted me to this book was the life of the author himself.  It’s not often that I know about authors before I read their works, sometimes I never know about authors at all.  I’m not usually interested in it, I have to say.  However, Mishima’s life was something else.  The thing that surprised me most was that he committed seppuku or ritual suicide after a failed coup d’etat at the military headquarters where he was serving.  I won’t go on about this too much now, as I do intend to do a post on authors with incredibly interesting lives where I will talk about this in more detail.kinkakuji

The novel is about an incident that happened in 1950, where a young student of Zen Buddhism burned down the famous Temple of the Golden Pavilion (kinkakuji in Japanese).  If you’ve ever gone to Kyoto, you’ll have seen this incredible place.  They rebuilt it surely after it was burned, so you can still see how beautiful it is, the outside of it done up in gold leaf, surrounded by a serene Japanese garden.  Here’s a picture of it during winter, which I think is probably one of the most beautiful times to see it:

Aaaaand, here’s a picture of it burning:

It’s strange to think that something as beautiful as this should be burned, especially by a student of Zen Buddhism.  And that’s what this book is about.  It’s very philosophical, talking about beauty and ugliness, meaning and Zen riddles.  You see into the mind of this troubled student, go through his life with him and make the same discoveries as he does.  HerImagee’s a little quote about beauty:

Yet how strange a thing is the beauty of music!  The brief beauty that the player brings into being transforms a given period of time into pure continuance; it is certain never to be repeated; like the existence of dayflies and other such short-lived creatures, beauty is a perfect abstraction and creation of life itself.  Nothing is so similar to life as music; yet, although the Golden Temple shared the same type of beauty, nothing could have been farther from the world and more scornful of it than the beauty of this building.  As soon as Kashiwagi had finished playing the ‘Palace Carriage’, music – that imaginary life – expired, and nothing was left there but his ugly body with its gloomy thoughts, all unscathed and unaltered. (p 116)

One of the most incredible things about this book is that it is based on a true story.  The man who burned down Kinkakuji didn’t succeed in killing himself, as he had planned to, either, and was tried for his act.  It was from his answers in court and the observations of his friends and family that Mishima built this utterly three-dimensional and intriguing, though not overly lovable, character. 

Read it if you: have ever been to Kinkakuji in Kyoto, are interested in Japan and the Japanese mindset, are curious about Zen Buddhism and the life of monks, like a good bit of philosophy

While reading listen to: these songs from the soundtrack to ‘Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters’ (it’s done by Philip Glass, so it’s good), Opening, Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kyoko’s House

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name M/Literature

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07

Nov

~george r.r. martin~ a storm of swords

asosRead it in: both books?  Two months, probably.  One to two months.

Sorry all you non-game of thrones people out there.  Thought I’d do a bit of the series while I’m at it.  I did spend probably about half of the year reading these massive tomes, so it has to count for something.  But hey, I’m being good.  I’m doing two books in one here.  I could have tried to up the post count by doing them separately, but no, I’m not!

Anyway.  So I’ve already told you that George likes to start of slow and build up and up and up until you literally can’t put the thing down (unless you’ve already read all the spoilers on wikipedia, like I had).  This one (or two) is at the height of the series, in my opinion.  Things are really getting crazy.  There are wars – several wars going on at once – and all our favourite characters are scattered all over the place in all sorts of crazy situations.  Our favourite characters are changing (or dying) and everything seems so uncertain and exciting.

I would say this book/books is the best of the series.  It’s at the height of reader expectation.  We’re still into it, still hooked, haven’t had to wrestle our way through five books to get to it (only two) and all our favourite characters are still alive… for the time being.  The storyline isn’t overly confusing yet!  It’s still recognisable from when it first started, which I think is one of the main things.  There haven’t been too many really, really, really drastic changes (they’re yet to come).  So we’re still on familiar ground and I think that’s important.

Plus the series hasn’t quite gotten up to the end of this book yet.  We’re still around halfway through, so readers will be excited by the prospect of reading ahead of the series and seeing the exciting developments that result!

Anyway, that’s probably enough from me about this one.  Honestly, this entire has sort of been mashed together in my head so I can’t really say ‘oh, yes, A Storm of Swords, I remember exactly how I found that book’, it’s sort of mixed up with the other five, or six, or seven or however many books I read while I was into this series.  So please forgive me.  I’ll do something non-GOT next I promise.

Read it if you: are reading the series.  Otherwise, don’t bother.  Because why would you start from the middle of the series anyway?  (Seriously!)

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Fantasy/Last Name M

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04

Nov

~david mitchell~ ghostwritten

gwRead it in: around two weeks

This was my second David Mitchell, the first being Cloud Atlas, which I thoroughly enjoyed.  The main thing that drew me to this one was that it was partially set in Japan.  I am leaving in just under two months for my six month trip to the country and thought I should get some background reading done.  And I thought, because Cloud Atlas was so good, that this would be equally as good.

I must say, Ghostwritten reads almost as the prequel to Cloud Atlas.  If I remember correctly, it was his first novel, so Cloud Atlas definitely came after it.  But having read CA first, I could pick up little hints as to where some of the ideas came from.  I love seeing how authors play with ideas in one book that then go on to completely shape another work later on.

Ghostwritten is also really similar to Cloud Atlas in structure, as if Mitchell was experimenting with that sort of thing for the first time here.  It takes the form of nine different parts, all about completely different people on different corners of the earth, whose destinies go on to intertwine as the story develops.  In Cloud Atlas, Mitchell does this starting out with halves of the story that go in order… Look, I’m going to have to draw a diagram because words fail me:

CW: The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing –> Letters from Zedelghem –> Half Lives: the first Luisa Rey mystery –> The Ghastly Ordeal of Timoth Cavendish –>An Orison of Sonmi 451 –> Sloosha’s Crossin’ An’ Ev’rythin’ After –> An Orison of Sonmi 451 –> The Ghastly Ordeal of Timothy Cavendish –> The First Luisa Rey Mystery –> Letters from Zedelghem –> The Pacific Journal of Adam Ewing

GW: Okinawa –> Tokyo –> Hong Kong –> Holy Mountain –> Mongolia –> Petersburg –> London –> Clear Island –> Night Train

So as you can see, the format of CW starts off by introducing the characters and then going back to them again at the end.  I sort of expected this as I read Ghostwritten, but as you can see, it doesn’t happen there.  I was a little disappointed because I wanted so much to learn about the characters more!  So things were left unanswered, but I don’t think that’s too much of a big issue when it comes to David Mitchell.

And it all ties together in the end, but in unexpected ways.  Most of the time the protagonists of sections never actually meet each other, at least not in person.  They hear of one another, they sometimes see one another from a distance and usually they suffer the full extent of the consequences of the actions of another person.  Mitchell ties this story into one particular theme that isn’t really noticeable until the end.  It becomes more and more relevant until finally we realise why things that seemed utterly strange in the first part of the book are actually conceivable in the second part.

If you’re asking what it’s about, it’s about lots of things.  It’s about a frightened terrorist in Okinawa, a couple falling in love in Tokyo, a middle-aged and troubled man in Hong Kong, an old woman living an unchanging life on a changing mountain in China, a non-corporeal species living in the minds of different people in Mongolia, an art thief in Petersburg, a young man living in chaotic London, a leading physicist seeking refuge in a remote island off the British isles, a late night radio show in Brooklyn, NY.  It encompasses just about every corner of the globe and every walk of life that there is.  It’s about life, and non-life as well.  Reading it is like taking a voyage.  You step off and you think ‘where have I just been?’, or ‘where have I NOT just been?’.

It’s one of those books that you digest for a while after you read.

Read it if you: are interested in travel and different places and different people, if you’re interested in China or Japan, or Mongolia, or I suppose in Russia or America or England or Ireland, if you would have ever liked to see ‘The Host’ by Stephenie Meyer rewritten by someone who is actually competent, if you read Cloud Atlas.

While reading listen to: Low Roar The Painter, Bon Iver Calgary (this version in particular), The Irrepressibles In This Shirt

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Fantasy/Last Name M/Literature

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01

Nov

~george r.r. martin~ a clash of kings

acokRead it in: probably around three weeks

It’s an obligation to review these kinds of books, even though I have a hunch that people reading this blog are either saying A) “YES MY FAVOURITE SERIES IN THE WORLD DEATH TO LANNISTERS AND LONG LIVE THE STARKS” or whatever or B) “tch, how can you read this sort of serialized rubbish that appeals to the public through sex and violence?”  Well, my answer is that I read these books, and if I read it has to be on here, because I can’t afford to skip books that I don’t feel I should review because otherwise I will run out of books to review and that will be awkward.  So if you’re not a fan, please skip this post and continue on to the next post-modern, experimental and incredibly depressing book review.

So, GoT.  I have to say that I watched the series before I read this, so I already knew most of what was going to happen.  Not only that, but I looked up the spoilers on wikipedia.  “Why?” you ask me, “Whyyyyy?!”  Because I never thought I was going to read these books.  I’m not usually a fantasy fan.  I’m not into dragons.  I’m not into long-winded fantastical names of places and people.  I’m not into stereotypical damsels in distress and unsmiling, handsome heroes.  And I suppose that’s why I got into this.

It’s not what you expect.  It’s like they put the government of a small underdeveloped nation into a fantasy world and said, “here, sort things out.”  And hence corruption, murder and dirty politics ensued.  Dirty politics with dragons, which makes it slightly more interesting, though sometimes I fail to see the point of these dragons.

The premise is normal.  You pick up the book and read the blurb and, unlike other books, you don’t stand there in the bookshop going “why didn’t I think of this idea?  This is the idea of the century!”  You’re just thinking that this is another fantasy.

Things that make this series different from other fantasies:

1. You can pronounce the names (for the most part)

2. The good guys never win

3. You think you’ve seen it all and then GRRM shocks you again

4. What kills people isn’t dragons or white walkers but good ol’ stabbings, beheadings and etc.

5. The theme song has a cat video on youtube

Anyway, so the second installment isn’t a disappointment, not really.  We’re racing into it because, due to GRRM’s fantastic ability to cliffhang, all our favourite characters are in some sort of dire situation.  Unfortunately for readers, GRRM also has this irritating habit of starting off books in a very slow manner, giving you tricky glimpses of your favourite characters, words here and there, but never anything of any substance, so that you’re hanging on by a fingernail, waiting, waiting to know what happened.  Unfortunately as well, he’s a very slow writer.  So anyway, we start out slowly, waiting, waiting, waiting.  At around page 600, 700-ish, things start to pick up.  And when things pick up, they do so very quickly and before you know it you’re gripping the book in your fingers and the sweat’s trickling down your face and you’ve ignored friends and family for five days now just to find out who wins the Battle of the Blackwater.

It can get a bit obsessive.

The fandom is incredible.  You get memes on facebook and everything.  Unfortunately for new readers, this means you can’t really avoid spoilers at all, unless you hole yourself up in a room, turn off the computer, unplug the internet and don’t listen to the television or the other readers pounding at your door saying “Z$00@#0 $7@&% looks nice without a head!”  Dare I continue?  No.

But, fandom, sexy TV series, memes on facebook and youtube cat videos aside, you ought to read this series if you ever want to be a good fantasy writer that publishes colossal amounts of books.  GRRM does a fantastic job keeping up the reader-base, although the books start off slow and your favourite characters all get killed in increasingly violent ways.  It’s like reading Jodi Picoult in order to work out how you can make readers cry, or reading Stephen King so you can find out how he has readers hiding under their beds at night.  It’s a learning experience, really.  I sort of treated it like that, but at the same time…  LONG LIVE THE STARKS!

Alright, I’ll stop now.

Read it if you: ever hope to write fantasy that sells millions and millions of copies, like fantasy, like dirty politics, like interesting characters and books jam-packed full of sex scenes.

I don’t have music for this one.  Listen to the theme song.  Listen to the theme song sung by a cat.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Fantasy/Last Name M

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30

Oct

~haruki murakami~ kafka on the shore

kotsRead it in: around a week and a half, I think

I quite like Murakami, and not just because he’s Japanese and because his work is set there, but also because his stories are always strange, but strangely poetic in a sense.  When you pick up a Murakami, you’re guaranteed an interesting read, that’s for sure.

This book is no exception.  There are fish falling from the sky and ghost girls and hordes of school children fainting all at once.  No stranger than the two moons in the sky of 1Q84, I suppose.

The novel is about Kafka Tamura, who runs away from home and stays in a small town on the island of Shikoku.  At the same time, the story focuses on an old man named Nakata, who is a finder of lost cats.  Both Nakata and Kafka, though they are completely separated, become implicated in a murder and must alter their lives around this.  Kafka, in particular, must go into hiding to escape the police.  Nakata also embarks on his own journey and both of these characters end up in Shikoku.

What strikes me about this novel – and about most of Murakami’s novels – is that they contain this sense of isolation in the characters.  Japan is a place with many, many people, yet I feel that a lot of Japanese literature contains themes of loneliness and isolation from society.  (Actually, this seems to be a common theme in all the books that I read…  this probably says something about my reading tastes.)

Reading Murakami, in particular, this work of his, you find yourself asking a lot of questions about the meaning of certain events.  I have a feeling that an English literature tutor I once had could run a whole course, if not several, on works like this, and still have more to talk about.  In fact, ‘Kafka on the Shore’ triggered over 8,000 questions from Murakami’s readers to his website (and he personally answered 1,200 of them – what a champ!).  He said this about ‘Kafka’:

Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren’t any solutions provided. Instead several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It’s hard to explain, but that’s the kind of novel I set out to write.

(From the Random House website)

Reading ‘Kafka’ is like entering a dream world, where nothing really makes sense in the way you think it does.  Strangely enough (that’s sarcastic, by the way), it reminds me of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’.  As you can probably guess, Murakami is a great fan of Kafka’s work, and you can see some of the influence creeping in here.  The rules are not the same to what we know.  It’s like there’s some strange, spiritual world beyond our own that you don’t know about until it creeps into your life, as it does for the characters in ‘Kafka’.

Well worth a read.

Read it if you: haven’t read any Murakami before, it’d be a nice start, like things set in Japan, think isolated characters are interesting, are willing to suspend your disbelief

While reading, listen to: Fourtet Unspoken, Fourtet And They All Look Broken Hearted

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name M/Postmodern literature

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16

May

~cormac mccarthy~ the crossing

TCRead it in: around 3 weeks

So, you already know how much I love Cormac McCarthy.  He’s fantastic, his prose is brilliant, I always fall in love with his books as soon as I open them.  This was my second McCarthy and also the second book in the Border Trilogy, not that you have to really read them in order (but you should probably read the third one last).  Therefore, like ‘All the Pretty Horses‘ this story takes place around the United States-Mexican border.

It is the story of Billy Parham who crosses the Mexican border to return a pregnant female wolf to her home in the mountains, yet this is only one of the many quests Billy takes up, along the way his journey varies, he aims for different things, travels with and meets different people and, obviously, changes as a person quite a bit.

I read this one straight after I read ‘The Road‘, on the recommendation of another McCarthy lover.  Of course, I found it quite different to ‘The Road‘, however similar themes are there – the endless traveling, loneliness, a sense of being overpowered by nature.

Alright, I’ll give you a quote.  It’s an obligatory part of any McCarthy review.  I just love his prose so much.

He looked to the east to see if there were any traces of dawn graying over the country but there was only the darkness and the stars.  He prodded the ashes with a stick.  The few red coals that turned up in the fire’s black heart seemed secret and improbable.  Like the eyes of things disturbed that had best been left alone.  He rose and walked down to the lake with the serape about his shoulders and he looked at the stars in the lake.  The wind had died and the water lay black and still.  It lay like a hole in that high desert world down into which the stars were drowning. (page 325)

In some senses, this book had very little plot.  Comparing it to ‘All The Pretty Horses‘, which, although the main characters’ ambitions were unknown to both us and them, had a steady love interest and clear antagonists to keep the plot moving forward, I feel that the characters’ ambitions constantly changed and they kept moving solely for the purpose of not having to go back.

This book really surprised me.  You get into a plotline and you think it will carry the novel, only to have it come to an abrupt end.  This happens probably twice in the novel.  It’s an uncomfortable feeling, a jarring sensation almost, and you have reconsider what you think the novel is actually about.

But one of the things I really appreciate about McCarthy is the way he, like Don DeLillo, is able to incorporate philosophical conversations into the novel so seamlessly, so easily.  It was so interesting, so valuable the things that were discussed that, yes, I do have to put another quote in:

And the priest?  A man of broad principles.  Of liberal sentiments.  Even a generous man.  Something of a philosopher.  Yet one might say that his way through the world was so broad it scarcely made a path at all.  He carried within himself a great reverence for the world, this priest.  He heard the voices of the Deity in the murmur of the wind in the trees.  Even the stones were sacred.  He was a reasonable man and he believed that there was love in his heart.

There was not.  Nor does God whisper through the trees.  His voice is not to be mistaken.  When men hear it they fall to their knees and their souls are risen and they cry out to Him and there is no fear in them but only that wildness of heart that springs from such longing and they cry out to stay his presence for they know at once that while godless men may live well enough in their exile those to whom He has spoken can contemplate no life without Him but only darkness and despair.  Trees and stones are no part of it.  So.  The priest in the very generosity of his spirit stood in mortal peril and knew it not.  (page 152)

In conclusion, this novel was confusing but interesting, beautiful but dark.  I like to think McCarthy’s novels are more realistic because they seem to retell events as they happened and not mold them into fairytales, or make them more meaningful or action-packed.  They are human stories of human beings.

Read it if you: like McCarthy, like horses, appreciate good prose and interesting philosophical musings, like scenic novels, don’t mind if they’re meaningless, have a fair bit of time on your hands.

While reading, listen to: Creature Fear/Team Bon Iver, Flume Bon Iver, The Wolves Bon Iver, I know I’ve recommended these songs before, but really whenever you read a Cormac McCarthy you should grab a copy of ‘For Emma, Forever Ago’ and just listen to it on repeat.

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name M/Literature

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27

Apr

~cormac mccarthy~ the road

TRRead it in: one day

There was a period almost this time last year where I read one book a day.  It was a fantastic, relaxing time.  There are some situations in which I wish I hadn’t tried to finish one whole book in such a short time period, and some where I am glad that I did.  ‘The Road’ was one book that I was glad to finish in one day.  Not because it was bad, of course – this is Cormac McCarthy, how could I find it bad?

However, I once read somewhere that this book was meant to be read without stopping, and this is easy to see.  We have no chapters, as such.  There are just scenes, one after the other, some vividly frightening, some incredibly sad, some happier than others.

For a brief synopsis, it’s about a father and son in a post-apocalyptic American setting, walking constantly to get to the sea, though they are not sure what they are going to do when they get there.  They are looking for civilisation, though the brief encounters they have with other humans are never very close to any definition of ‘civilisation’.

I haven’t seen the film of ‘The Road’, the most I’ve seen is the trailer.  But I think the book is probably better, simply because I don’t know how a film can trump this masterpiece.  Watching the trailer, I thought perhaps the film emphasised more of the horror aspects of the novel – there are some scary scenes – and not the overall feel of it.  But I’m probably wrong, having not seen the film, only the trailer.  What I want to say is that I don’t think this novel is horror in the way we classify horror to usually be.  It’s frightening and it’s one of those ones you can’t stop thinking about for hours/days/months after you’ve finished it.

It was frightening for me not only because there were parts in which they were trapped with no way of getting out, but because there was the overall intense feeling of loneliness, solitude and vanished hope.  It was incredible.  After each situation in which they were in danger, there wasn’t a feeling that, now that they had gotten themselves out, they were safe.  They were never safe and they never would be because there is nowhere to go.  It feels as if there is no one left except themselves; the other people they meet are only shadows of what humanity was like long ago.

We are able to sense this loneliness in a deeper sense because of the occasional moments of relief we are given – memories from the father of the time before the disaster, and also this wonderful scene in which they find a bunker full of things with which they can live their life comfortably – that are followed by the sheer inevitability that these cannot last, that life back in reality, walking the desolate road, will always have to resume.

This was my first Cormac McCarthy, picked up for all of five dollars at a book sale, and I was simply astounded by the prose.  I had never read anything like it in my life.  I felt that no book could compare to it, and it seemed for a long time that all other books simply paled in comparison.  Here is a little snippet of prose for you (this was the first time I found myself having to stop to write prose passages down, they were too good to forget):

‘The soft black talc blew through the streets like squid ink uncoiling along a sea floor and the cold crept down and the dark came early and the scavengers passing down the steep canyons with their torches trod silky holes in the drifted ash that closed behind them silently as eyes.  Out on the roads the pilgrims sank down and fell over and died and the bleak and shrouded earth went trundling past the sun and returned again as trackless and unremarked as the path of any nameless sisterworld in the ancient dark beyond.’ (page 192-3)

I love the way this passage gives us such a sense that the experiences of the characters are a part of something so much bigger than themselves, but at the same time we experience a sense of complete hopelessness and we know that there is no civilisation out there, that the entire earth is like this and that, no matter how long the pair travel along the road, they will never find what they are looking for.

I also love McCarthy’s use of long, long sentences endlessly connected by ‘and’.  Read my ‘All The Pretty Horses‘ review for some more samples and discussion of this.

At the end is a twist, however, that did indeed almost (or perhaps it did…) make me cry.

Read it if you: would like to experience something completely alien to what you’ve ever felt, want to be astounded by prose, want to be depressed, feel like you’re taking your world for granted, want to read a simply beautiful modern masterpiece, feel as if you have no faith in modern literature (this will restore your faith).

While reading, listen to: Facades Philip Glass, The Road Soundtrack Oleg Ivanov (inspired by the novel), Valtari Sigur Ros, Roslyn Bon Iver

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name M/Literature

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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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22

Apr

~cormac mccarthy~ all the pretty horses

ATPHRead it in: a week

I love Cormac McCarthy.  There is something breathtaking about his prose, something that makes me need to dog-ear pages and write particular descriptions down so that I won’t forget them.  He is able to invoke such loneliness in his passages, such a feeling of raw and natural beauty. 

This is the third McCarthy book that I have read.  The other two were ‘The Road’ and ‘The Crossing’, which I will do reviews of shortly, I promise.  ‘All the Pretty Horses’ is the first book of the Border Trilogy, of which ‘The Crossing’ is the second book, but I don’t see why you should read them in order.  All of the books in this trilogy take place around the Mexican/US border, about the divides between the two countries, the contrasts therein, the different predicaments that characters face on either side of that border.

In ‘All the Pretty Horses’, John Grady Cole and his friend cross this border on a journey of discovery and longing for something that they don’t even know they long for yet.  They make new friends, new enemies, suffer heartaches and tragedies, acts of kindness and acts of revenge and greed.  John Grady falls in love, both boys fall into the hands of the Mexican police, their friend falls into a vicious cycle of revenge, all characters undergo significant change and can never go back to the life they once lived.

All through this novel are glimpses of the countryside that surrounds and dictates the events the boys experience.  This is not a book wherein you can read and read and still have no idea what country you’re in or what time period or what the surroundings look like.  McCarthy expends a lot of time talking about the scenery, but not just talking about it, describing it beautifully and in an intrinsically detailed manner.  I have to give you a sample:

When the truck finally pulled out and they saw him still standing they offered their bundles for him to sit on and he did so and he nodded and dozed to the hum of the tires on the blacktop and the rain stopped and the night cleared and the moon that was already risen raced among the high wires by the highway side like a single silver music note burning in the constant and lavish dark and the passing fields were rich from the rain with the smell of earth and grain and peppers and the sometime smell of horses. (page 225)

So this is just one sentence.  McCarthy allows himself one sentence in a whole section of narrative to describe the surroundings, a seemingly short allowance, except that his sentences go on and on.  I don’t think that’s a bad thing, personally.  I’ve even started to imitate it in my own writing.  It gives a definite sense of a particular moment in time, we can feel the hours that John Grady spends dozing in that truck, even though it is only one sentence.  We can feel the constancy of the moon and the fields, that sort of never-changing aspect that always stays exactly the same no matter how much the characters or their lives may change beyond recognition.

Read it if you: enjoy beautiful, beautiful prose, are interested in the life of (well, cowboys…) on the Mexican/US border, like horses, want something to savour, don’t mind a bit of tragedy, like a bit of philosophical musing.

While reading this, listen to: Re: stacks Bon Iver, The Darkest Side The Middle East, Flume Bon Iver, Brackett, WI Bon Iver

11 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Last Name M/Literature

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