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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29

Oct

~leo tolstoy~ anna karenina

AKRead it in: around two months

My first Tolstoy!  I’m so proud.  Of course, probably like many others, I was inspired to read this by the film that came out at the start of this year.  A lot of people are saying “oh yes, Keira Knightley, could do better, blah blah”, but really, to me that film was a masterpiece.  And it had Aaron Taylor-Johnson in it, which is is one tall, dark and very handsome reason to see it.

I also felt quite attracted to Tolstoy’s way of thinking.  I was really into simplistic living, in the sense that working hard and living only on what was needed was the way to achieve happiness.  Hence I was very interested in the portion of the book focusing on Levin, who was supposed to be a mirror for Tolstoy himself.

Anyway, so I’m not sure there’s much point detailing the plot, but I will anyway.  Just the bare bones.  Anna has a nice life with her husband, who is a very important statesman in Russia.  Then she falls in love unexpectedly with this handsome young thing, Vronsky.  Their affair shocks the nation completely and drives all three of them – husband, wife and lover – to despair.  Meanwhile, there is the story of Levin who lives in the countryside managing his land and falling hopelessly in love with young, pretty ladies named Kitty.  One story has a happy ending, the other doesn’t.  Ten points for whoever can guess which one.

So, I’m a sucker for descriptions, and Tolstoy gave it to me.  I mean, Levin farming his land during the spring, that’s bound to have a nice description or two… or twenty.  It was great.  Here’s one (not of the farming):

It was already quite dark, and in the south, where he was looking, there were no clouds.  The clouds stood on the opposite side.  From there came flashes of lightning and the roll of distant thunder.  Levin listened to the drops monotonously dripping from the lindens in the garden and looked at the familiar triangle of stars and the branching Milky Way passing through it.  At each flash of lightning, not only the Milky Way but the bright stars also disappeared, but as soon as the lightning died out they reappeared in the same places, as if thrown by some unerring hand (page 815).

And then, the other thing I love, the degradation of the human soul.  Plenty of that too.  Just look at this fantastic sentence describing Karenin (Anna’s husband):

He felt that he could not maintain himself against the general pressure of contempt and callousness that he saw clearly in the face of this assistance, and of Kornei, and of everyone without exception that he had met in those two days.  He felt that he could not divert people’s hatred from himself, because the reason for that hatred was not that he was bad (then he could have tried to be better), but that he was shamefully and repulsively unhappy.  For that … they would be merciless towards him; people would destroy him, as dogs kill a wounded dog howling with pain (page 506).

It was long, very long (800 pages), which is why it took me around two months to finish, but I did enjoy it immensely.  Like many long books, reading it was a journey, and finishing it was like being outcast from an entire world.  I missed the busy streets of Moscow and the beauty of the countryside, I missed Russia even though I’d never been there.

Read it if you: want to go to Russia, are interested in the society of the time and the way that it works, like tales of a person’s social standing being completely destroyed, are interested in reading Tolstoy.

While reading, listen to: Piano Concerto No. 2 Rachmaninoff (yes, that’s right, the whole thing, right to the end), The Golden Spinning Wheel Antonin Dvorak

11 years ago Short URL Comments

Classics/Last Name T

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