16

Dec

~donna tartt~ the secret history

tshRead it in: a week, or thereabouts

This is a possible candidate for Book of the Year.  I can’t believe I didn’t read it before now.  It was one of those rare works that you are actually sorry to finish, because you can’t bear to be cut out of that literary world.

Yes, it was amazing.  It had an interesting plot, and it grabbed you from the start.  It had amazing characters, who were human in so many ways and incredibly interesting.  It talked philosophy, it talked culture, it talked life and love.  It made sense and it made me see everything in a different light.  Ah, to have time to read it again!  I immediately recommended it to my mother (who is the pickiest person I know in the books she reads).

It is about a group of university students who all study Ancient Greek.  This is a selective class that only takes about five students.  Accordingly, the students are a tight bunch and very secretive, literally cut off from the rest of the campus.  Their tutor is Julian, a sort of genius and worshiped by the students.  Together, they commit a murder.

Because it focuses on such a small group of people, the characterisation in this book is amazing.  We get to know every character so well, we feel we could recognise them in real life.  And each personality is so interesting, with all their little flaws, with their nervous habits, their irks and downfalls.  We get to know the main character, Richard Papen, and we grow to love him, to feel his sorrows and his joys.  This is the point of first-person perspective, and Tartt does it so well!

It is the ‘original American campus novel’, but I wish my university life was like this!  It’s the ideal life, and it’s the nightmarish life.  The characters spend their time discussing philosophy, life and death, everything that is important and warrants discussion, but then the things they do are horrible and terrible and you realise, for all their discussion of philosophy and life and death, they don’t really think and appreciate the same things that normal people do.  Their morals are chilling.

This book strikes at the heart of what it means of be human and what it means to be alive.  It talks about freedom, about intelligence, about violence.

But how glorious to release [these destructive passions] in a single burst!  To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal!  These are powerful mysteries. (pg 45)

We hang off the importance of these words and what they mean.  Throughout the book, raucous campus students throw out-of-control parties, but the true enjoyment rests with the group of Ancient Greek students, who search for ways to truly lose control, and who commit horrid acts, then justify them without a qualm.

‘But how,’ said Charles, who was close to tears, ‘how can you possibly justify cold-blooded murder?’
Henry lit a cigarette. ‘I prefer to think of it,’ he had said, ‘as redistribution of matter.’ (pg 339)

It ends but you want it to continue.  You want to follow the characters further.  I think this is one of those novels that people could write sequel and sequel to, imagining the characters meeting again and again in different situations, imagining things forever and ever.  That is the result of true, masterful characterisation.  I don’t really have very much more to say about it.  I’m sort of left speechless.  And, seeing another one of Donna Tartt’s novels in a bookstore, I immediately bought it (even if it was $32.00, oh my poor, empty bank account!).

Read it if you: like any sort of philosophy, Greek literature, ancient history, student life, skewed morals… basically, if you can read.

While reading, listen to: Damien Jurado Maraqopa (I feel this song has something distinctly American about it), Smetana Die Moldau, Chopin Nocturne in C Sharp Minor, Dvorak Violin Concerto Romance

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name T/Literature

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29

Apr

~sonya hartnett~ the midnight zoo

TMZRead it in: maybe a week

Yes, I’m catching up on old books.  This one is so old that it’s classified Young Adult, though I do think it’s a little better than most of those things you pick up in the YA section.  I could consider it almost my transition book from YA to adult fiction (that’s not supposed to sound as if I started reading porn due to this book).

First of all, it’s beautifully written.  It was the first book in which I noticed the prose more than anything.  Before that, it was all about a good, intriguing storyline, interesting characters, action scenes, whatever.  But this story, unlike all those, is unique in its setting, cast of characters and the beautiful descriptions that combine all these things.

It won some sort of a prize – and I treat that as a recommendation more than any of those quotes on the back of the book (Stephen King once recommended Stephanie Meyer to me, and I haven’t looked at him in the same light since).  The storyline was probably the most minimalistic I had ever read at that time in my life.  It consisted of two young boys and their baby sister picking their way through the remains of an unknown (we guess some sort of Eastern European) city during the war (Second World War?  We never find out) who come across a zoo and make friends with the animals.  So the human characters in this book number about three – if you count the baby which never actually has any dialogue.  The setting never ceased to intrigue me.  I based subsequent creative writing pieces on the descriptions of the ruined city in this book.

Alright, alright, I’ll give you a sample:

‘If the old bell had been hanging in the steeple it would have rung to announce midnight, twelve solemn iron klongs which would have woken the villagers from their sleep and startled any small creature new to the village and unaccustomed to the noise.  But the bell had fallen from its height weeks ago, and now lay buried in silence beneath the rubble; no small creatures forgaed in corners, because every scrap had already been carried away in beak and mouth and paw; and no woken villagers lay grumbling, for the people, like their bell, were gone.  Their homes stood ruined, their beds broken into pieces, the bedroom walls now slumped across the streets.  Even the steeple, where the bell had hung for centuries, had had its pinnacle torn away, so the tower now stood against the sky like a blunt unfinished question.’ (page 1)

Pretty good for a humble YA novel, right?  No wonder it won an award.  This was the passage that greeted me on the first page – subsequently, I was hooked and bought the book right away even though it was a hardback and therefore cost me more (money spent on books is never wasted, in my opinion) and besides the fact that I could have borrowed it from a library.

So, in a way, this book is like ‘The Road’, but for young adults – without so much death and depression, and with the protagonists as young kids – just the perfect book to get a moping teenager started on a life of Cormac McCarthys, Don DeLillos and endless other existential pieces of literature.

Read it if you: are looking to restore your faith in YA, like nice descriptions mixed in with childish characters, an interesting setting and a tinge of fantasy (talking animals…), like war settings.

While you read it, listen to: Standchen Frederick Schubert, Leave No Man Behind Hans Zimmer, Tristesse Friedrich Chopin

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Last Name H/Young Adult

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12

Apr

~vladimir nabokov~ lolita

LRead it in: two days

Must say, I picked up this book thinking ‘if my mother ever finds out I’m reading this, she’ll chuck a fit’.  I felt like only a bad person would voluntarily read a novel about pedophilia, but I remember looking it up at some stage and making a mental note to read it – obviously it had some sort of outstanding literary merit – and hence, I was anxiously turning the first few pages.

It is about a middle-aged man, Humbert Humbert, who has a great love for what he calls ‘nymphets’, girls between the ages of nine and fourteen.  He soon falls in love with Dolores ‘Lolita’ Haze, the twelve year old daughter of his landlady, and the whole dastardly affair begins.

It’s told from his perspective, reflecting his strange thoughts, his wild imaginings, his scandalous dreams, all in beautiful, beautiful prose.  And it does get better.  While I was cringing at the first half of the book for being so incredibly pedophilic, it was also because, despite my moral compass, I could see his arguments making sense and could perceive where he was coming from.  This understanding, more than anything else, was making me uncomfortable.  Later on, however, things get a little more bearable – well, not really.  Instead you witness his jealous rantings, his schemes, his madman thoughts.

Oh, but the prose is wonderful.  It’s like poetry, and Nabokov even includes some poetry in the course of the novel.  Just look at this, for example:

Small grasshoppers spurted out of the withered roadside weeds.  A very light cloud was opening its arms and moving toward a slightly more substantial one belonging to another, more sluggish, heavenlogged system.  I grew aware of a melodious unity of sounds rising like vapor from a small mining town that lay at my feet, in the fold of the valley.  One could make out the geometry of the streets between blocks of red and grey roofs, and green puffs of trees, and a serpentine stream, and the rich, ore-like glitter of the city dump, and beyond the town, roads crisscrossing the crazy quilt of dark and pale fields, and behind it all, great timbered mountains. (page 350)

It is an interesting character study.  You don’t know whether Mr. Humbert is being truthful in his account, or whether he is simply making himself look good.  You see his fall from a very civilised gentleman to one who appears civilised and acts civilised, but thinks like a madman – or perhaps he was never civilised to begin with.  On the other hand, you cannot see Lolita as a victim.  She is a sly and manipulative child with whom the reader finds it hard to sympathise with.  This novel is full of characters you just can’t trust.

Read it if you: enjoy moral ambiguity, like classics that aren’t like fairy tales, love good prose, love poetry, like a good scandal.

While reading this, listen to: Tristesse (Etude, Opus 10) Frederic Chopin, Nocturne No. 20 in C Sharp Minor Frederic Chopin, Valse Romantique Claude Debussy, Gnossienne No. 1 Erik Satie

11 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Classics/Last Name N

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