i waited too long to write my review for this book, and for that i apologize, because my memory of it has become a little jumbled. which, in a way, isi waited too long to write my review for this book, and for that i apologize, because my memory of it has become a little jumbled. which, in a way, is fitting, since this is such a nonlinear and confusing splay of a book following an unnamed slave woman in south africa throughout her life: her horrifying capture and the destruction of her village as a young girl, her various owners and their treatment of her as she is moved around and sold, her rescue by a man she sees as a protector, but calls "the stranger," and her retreat into a baobab tree after she is the sole survivor of an expedition gone terribly wrong, where she ultimately descends into a madness of confusion and fragmented images. also, a death by crocodile.
it's a little embarrassing to admit that i was frequently confused reading this book. i used to be such a good reader. but this book, told in a stream-of-consciousness rush, by a woman who has been psychologically compromised by all that she has seen, doesn't make it easy. it was tricky sometimes to distinguish from what part of her life each scene was relating, and while there were moments of narrative clarity, and instances of beautiful and alternately lyrical and stark prose, at the end of it, i didn't feel like it contributed all that much to the canon of slave narratives. i have read this kind of story before: the horrors of slavery, its alienation and dehumanization, the moments of hope and peace and small reliefs, the cruel owner, the lustful owner, the kind owner, the preferential treatment that makes life easier but breeds jealousy and suspicion among other slaves…
and unfortunately, i was only able to read this in bits and pieces because stupid life got in the way, so that might have contributed to my confusion - this is a book best read in one long gulp. i apologize to you, book, for not reading you in the right way, and please accept my three stars as a token of my regret.
for some reason, i had always equated elizabeth gaskell with well-behaved women in fancy dress sipping fizzy lewhy, elizabeth gaskell, i had no idea….
for some reason, i had always equated elizabeth gaskell with well-behaved women in fancy dress sipping fizzy lemonade in english gardens talking about their suitors or something, but this is a bona fide gothic novella with a little of the old "life's little ironies" -vintage thomas hardy included to kick your heart in.
and it's pretty great, because not only is it doing all this work as a spooky, entertaining supernatural gothic tale of curses and tragedy and revenge, but it is using the gothic style to make some pretty cutting social commentary, which is subtle at first, but explodes into a last-act scenario in which there is no mistaking her message.
and not all the ladies are well-behaved.
it was definitely a nice surprise for me; i love having my illusions shattered, and i am always impressed when something as slim as a novella manages to pack so many layers of meaning into so little space. i admire economy.
but to sum it up as a life lesson for you: do not kill an old lady's dog. not ever....more
this is just a short little work, part of melville house's wonderful "art of the novella" series, but it is machado, sah, machado.
he just never fails.
this is just a short little work, part of melville house's wonderful "art of the novella" series, but it is machado, so you know it is going to be wholly satisfying, despite being only 86 pages.
this one is about... madness. and how you don't want one person in charge of determining who is crazy and who is not. especially not this man:
In his fortieth year Bacamarte married the widow of a circuit judge. Her name was Dona Evarista da Costa e Mascarenhas, and she was neither beautiful nor charming. One of his uncles, an outspoken man, asked him why he had not selected a more attractive woman. The doctor replied that Dona Evarista enjoyed perfect digestion, excellent eyesight, and normal blood pressure; she had had no serious illnesses and her urinalysis was negative. It was likely she would give him healthy, robust children. If, in addition to her physiological accomplishments, Dona Evarista possessed a face composed of features neither individually pretty nor mutually compatible, he thanked God for it, for he would not be tempted to sacrifice his scientific pursuits for the contemplation of his wife's attractions.
because any man who is that clinical and impassive, that removed from ordinary human sentiment, is not the person i want telling me what sanity is. and by the end, you will be wishing he had just married a hotter wife. this is a man who needs distractions.
alas, instead of enjoying marital bliss with a fascinating woman, bacamarte instead sets out to single-mindedly diagnose the citizens of itaguai with their heretofore unrecognized mental disorders, and to open the first asylum in brazil. he has a huge madhouse, and many rooms to fill.
and fill it he shall, using the "i don't know what it is, but i know it when i see it" argument.
machado wrote this in 1881, and the field of psychotherapy still had a ways to go, and i swear this man had some robert johnson thing going on, because his prescience, in all of his works, is so keen. he feels so damn modern, it thrills me.
in his hands, this becomes darkly absurd, and for a tiny little work, there are several reversals and more plot than you would expect, more plot than many authors could have delivered.
to be clear,this book is not about capital-e evil, it is not about taking advantage of position and influence. it is about misguidedness, pure and simple. so it is a more nuanced work than one that is just "this man is abusing his power." when you think of machado's contemporaries like dickens or wilkie collins, and how polarized their good/evil characters are, machado's psychological insights are even more impressive. thomas hardy was probably the only person writing at the same time who wrote emotional and moral ambiguity as well as machado.
and you know how i feel about him.
definitely read machado. i plan on doing some re-reading of him this year myself, and reading some of the ones i have not yet gotten to.
this is the story of a jealous man and a jealous God fighting for the soul of a woman who desperately wants to believe in one of them.
oh, and it's a cthis is the story of a jealous man and a jealous God fighting for the soul of a woman who desperately wants to believe in one of them.
oh, and it's a complicated thing, belief.
the relationshippy parts of this book are divine. a woman in an unfulfilling marriage takes a lover, maurice, and puts all of herself into the relationship. maurice, for his part, should perhaps have been called "marcel," because his involvement in the relationship is pure proust. overanalyzing, obsessing, becoming jealous of every past and possible future lover sarah has had or could have, anticipating the end of the relationship so frequently that he is rarely committed to the moment, loving the idea of sarah without understanding her as a woman until everything is over and unobtainable. it is great stuff; a man mourning a relationship he was never even fully involved in. the fool.
"i'd rather be dead or see you dead," i said, "than with another man. i'm not eccentric. that's ordinary human love. ask anybody. they'd all say the same-if they loved at all." i jibed at her. "anyone who loves is jealous."
which is almost intense enough to cover up the fact that he loves her without knowing what she is all about - it is an artist's rendition of love - all movement, no depth.
and poor cuckold henry, loving sarah in his own way, but never giving her the passionate relationship her spirit requires. maurice/marcel sums it up:
and yet he was happier in his unused room simply because it was his: his possession. i thought with bitterness and envy: if one possesses a thing securely, one need never use it.
aagghh. his is a quiet, plodding, consistent love. a loyalty that loves without getting close enough to make a ripple. (and by "ripple," i mean "orgasm," naturally.)
enter God.
who has no business being in a love triangle which eventually becomes a love-octagon, at least. but after promises made in the heat of the moment, and some magical thinking and coincidence He is there and there is no shaking Him, and it gets very complicated.
i am spoiler-tagging this, but it is a quote from the introduction that kills me, and may or may not be a true spoiler: (view spoiler)[ for all the trouble of their relations, the pain of surrendering maurice proves very nearly unendurable: it is as though sarah has punched a hole through her heart, a hole that is both defined by and then filled by god. without the pain she would not need to believe at all, but faith is in greene a form of suffering and sarah has caught it, a disease that somehow gives her the strength she needs not to break her vow. (hide spoiler)]
i feel like i have said too much while saying nothing at all. full disclosure: i wrote a verylong and deeply personal reaction to the book, and then plunked the delete button on purpose for once. and it felt good.
all you need to know is that this book surprised me by being so much better that heart of the matter, and even though i didn't like all the oddly magical bits at the end, i loved the audacity of this book, and the observations he was able to make even hobbled as he was by the unlikeability of his narrator. this book is worth reading for sarah's diary alone.
i love this book. yes, it is a story about vapid and shallow people who live selfish and hedonistic lives and treat other people like playthings, but i love this book. yes, it is a story about vapid and shallow people who live selfish and hedonistic lives and treat other people like playthings, but there is an elegance, a restraint to the prose that manages to discuss, in the same tone, both doomed love and the breakdown of the american dream. and it is masterful. some may say the great american novel.
makes me want to tear my eyes out with my hands and stomp on them forever and ever.
yeah, you thought this was going to be a book review, didn't you? and maybe goodreads will choose to make this a "hidden" review under their new policies, but i don't care, because it makes me so angry that this is happening in this way that i have to scream about it, even if no one hears me, and there isn't enough room in a status update for me to vent my rage, and this is a book community, and i feel like you should all feel and share my outrage...
WHO THOUGHT LEONARDO DICAPRIO WOULD MAKE A GOOD GATSBY?? AND WHY DOES IT LOOK LIKE HE IS IN THE GAP WHEN HE IS FLINGING ALL THOSE CLOTHES AROUND???
it is unbelievable. i haven't read this book in years, but i know that it did not take place in some art deco-themed casino in vegas.
and i assume the commentary on over-the-top consumption is just as relevant to our times as fitzgerald's, and the makes-you-squint way it is shot and the soundtrack (what is that soundtrack all about???) is a modern-day reinterpretation of jazz-age glam; a reversal of the futuristic sci-fi films of the seventies, but it is making me puke and i want to stop puking, please.
this is hardy's most perfectly-constructed novel. there are others that are more appealing, to me, (am i allowed to say that?), but this one is such athis is hardy's most perfectly-constructed novel. there are others that are more appealing, to me, (am i allowed to say that?), but this one is such a perfect cause-and-effect, every-action-has-a-reaction kind of book, that it should really be his most popular and successful, instead of tess, which by comparison, is pure melodrama.
mayor is full of the trappings of melodrama - convenient and inexplicable deaths, characters long out of the picture returning at the least opportune times, overheard conversations and love triangles and deathbed confessions, and yet it is so much more than that - it is the long, drawn-out punishment of a man who makes an impulsive mistake, tries to redeem himself, and finds that when thomas hardy is writing your life, it just isn't going to work out for you, sorry.
this book has more psychological insight than tess, and henchard is a much more complex and nuanced character than any found in tess' world. tess' punishments result from her gender, her innocence, the hypocrisy of society, and a mismanaged letter. henchard is no ingenue.
nor is this like jude, where a basically good but misguided man falls victim to circumstances - michael henchard is an unlikeable character through and through. but the fact that he tries to be a better man, and even pulls it off for a while, should be enough, right? even though he is arrogant and hot-tempered, even though he sold his wife and baby in a drunken impulse? is he not even a candidate for redemption? he regrets his mistakes, and even though he continues to make more, his awareness of his character flaws should be enough to avoid his fate, right?
nope. this is hardyland. hardy doesn't take kindly to people trying to rise above their circumstances, nor does he take kindly to people getting off scot-free from their mistakes, good intentions or not. tess and angel pay, jude and sue pay, and michael henchard will pay.
along with the very hardy-esque theme of "stay put and be good," this book is another shining example of hardy's facility with descriptive prose involving pastoral settings, and the idea of progress, and its effect on the working man.
coincidences abound, but always acting as an agent of fate, which was hardy's god. fate is capricious, but determined, and there is no escaping it.
i give a resounding five stars to the first part of this book, and three to the end.
overall, it is a perfect encapsulation of a love experience, fromi give a resounding five stars to the first part of this book, and three to the end.
overall, it is a perfect encapsulation of a love experience, from its initial obsessive beginnings to the eventual resentment and tender suffering for the sake of another's feelings. and then - silly silly melodrama.
it is unfair of me to judge the ending of this book. it is a product of its time and i can't hate on it for giving its audience what they wanted; what they expected. and i can't be a hypocrite and love wuthering heights and be unmoved by this. (although w.h. earned its ending, and this, being so short, has less character-imprinting to assist it)
but as far as a perfect rendition of the arc of a love affair, i have to applaud this. it manages to slow down the hyper-emotive feelings of personal experiences into universal and relatable ones in a way that is breathtaking...at first.
then it gets a little batshit, into overcalculating proust-territory. but for a while, i was alongside of him yelling "yes! yes! yes!"
and no one believes your preface, constant... everyone knows exactly what and whom this is about. nice backpedal, though.
i read this because it tied in with The Late Lord Byron, and knowing the full story, this is kind of an interesting piece of literary history, and madame de stael comes across way better in this than byron ever did in Glenarvon (Everyman's Library, which was his own lunatic ex's take on their relationship. but if any of my former lovers decide to write a book about me, i am stopping that bitch at the press.
i read this book the same day i found out that sparkling ice had introduced two new flavors, pineapple coconut and lemonade.
what does this have to do i read this book the same day i found out that sparkling ice had introduced two new flavors, pineapple coconut and lemonade.
what does this have to do with anything, you ask??
well, sparkling ice is sort of a religion with me, and this book was wonderful, so it was kind of a great day, is all. i don't have a lot of those.
why have i never read willa cather before? i'm not sure. i think i just always associated her with old ladies, and i figured i would read her on my deathbed or something. maybe it was the unavoidable cather/catheter association.i don't know. all i know is that a certain little bird here on goodreads was always going "chirp chirp - willa cather!! chirp!! cather!!!"
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and when someone dumped a bunch of free books by the curb in front of my house, i decided it was a sign to finally give her a chance. i liked it so much, i will pay for my next book of hers! you're welcome, cather estate!
this isn't a novel as much as a loosely gathered collection of stories in which the characters progress through time, grow up, lose their illusions, and make their way in the world; finding themselves in and defining themselves against the vast nothingness of the american prairie.
jim and antonia are children who arrive in black hawk, nebraska on the same train, and the book is an account of their lives both apart and together,through to their adulthood, framed as a series of recollections by jim, as he remembers antonia to a mutual friend and examines what she symbolized for him.
the descriptions of the landscape are phenomenal. the way the characters try to coax a living from the land and the harshness of nature is inspiring, antonia's irrepressible spirit is triumphant, even though she does come across as a headstrong pain in the ass at times.
i just loved it. it reminded me, probably unjustly, of both huck finn and this whole series of books that i loved loved loved when i was little:
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i mean - it's willa cather - everything that needs to be said about her has probably already been said, so all i can contribute is that this book is like the kiwi-strawberry sparkling ice. it is not quite a black raspberry, but it is damn good.
melville! in a melville house edition! crazy, right?
this is a nice taut little thrill-ride of a book. okay, it's got a lot of description of boat-archimelville! in a melville house edition! crazy, right?
this is a nice taut little thrill-ride of a book. okay, it's got a lot of description of boat-architecture, so it isn't a complete thriller - melville does tend to go overboard (GET IT??) with the descriptions sometimes, but regardless, it is more emotionally engaging than, say, that book about the whale. and i haven't read a book more full of seamen since reading Torn.
to a modern reader, the situation is pretty apparent from the get-go, but the build to the reveal is so graceful and tightly written, that it doesn't matter if you see where it is going from the beginning; the story is still excellent. one might even call it "a real book."
love the character of captain delano. it is surprising to me to see such subtlety from melville. i suppose i shouldn't be - there is a lot of shading in bartleby, but this one is even more so. for a tiny little novella, there is a lot happening here behind the words. after i toss down this review, i am going to go do a little research about how this was received when it was written, because i can only assume there was some backlash about what this book has to say about the slave trade and how unsavory even the well-intentioned, naive "good" characters are portrayed.
also - squeee - there is a nice tie-in to cloud atlas, which is cool because that book is still fresh in my mind, and it was good to have it still in my brain-piece as i was reading the melville.
really glad i decided to snatch this up the other day. it was everything i had hoped it would be.
behold: an uncharacteristic digression!
why didn't i like moby dick? people i like like moby dick. is it because i had to read it in a mandatory american-lit survey course my freshman year at NYU? when i was distracted with "i live in new york" fever?? should i give it another shot? because i have liked both this book and bartleby, but i haaaated that whale. does it deserve a more thoughtful and older-karen revisit?
the twin brothers (eeeek!!) in this story are so closely entwined that they have that heightened twin-telepathy we all know is true. they are so deeply connected: the world is their new womb. but only one of them is scared of the dark. and the story is basically the one twin trying to get out of having to go to this party where there is going to be hide-and-seek in the dark, to no avail, and the party, and the result.
did you know that i am also scared of the dark? well, i am. and so the idea of going to a party and playing hide-and-seek in the dark is very shuddery to me. and then add twins on top of it? you can see that for me, this would be the scariest story ever.
and it's great - greene does an excellent build here. i have only read heart of the matter before, and it was nothing like this. more writers should try their hand at horror, because who knows who has an actual knack for it? i wouldn't have suspected it of graham greene...
and it ends on such an
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moment.
the idea of facing your fears is unhealthy. it is better to avoid them at all costs. much better.
seriously - any of you people try to force me into playing hide-and-seek in the dark, i'm taking you down with me. and if you are twins, you better watch out twice.
who knew turgenev did the supernatural?? well he did. cuz this is. and yet it is still a "real book" despite the presence of haints, although david wowho knew turgenev did the supernatural?? well he did. cuz this is. and yet it is still a "real book" despite the presence of haints, although david would most likely be among turgenev's detractors for this.
from the introduction:
This led to a degree of criticism from those of his contemporaries who insisted on the pre-eminence of realism in literature, but such disapproval might be countered with the argument that here the supernatural should actually be interpreted not literally, but psychologically, as the projection of the characters' troubled feelings about their situation.
so - phew - still "real literature" and not some early russian paranormal romance. consider yourself countered!!
this book contains two novellas, which is the usual format for hesperus books (and if you don't know them, you should check out their list, because they are great, and strangely - they seem to do a lot of books that involve supernatural elements from authors who don't usually do the supernatural, which is interesting. interesting to me, anyway.)
this is somewhat similar to turn of the screw with all its spooky ambiguity, but without all that tortured prose. yeah, i said it: henry james is a drag, man.
not a "drag man."
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that we know of.
so, faust. this is about the dangers of literature upon the fragile human psyche, and the transportive power of words. it details the a story of the relationship that develops between a man and a woman with whom he was enamored in his youth. despite being married now, with children of her own, she still obeys the commands of her now-deceased overbearing mother to avoid fiction and poetry at all costs, with their deleterious effects on the mind. our "hero" is having none of that, and determines to expose her to his great love of literature, and insists on reading to her, and her pesky husband, from faust. in german. which her husband is shitty at. score one for our narrator.
so anyway, she is naturally overwhelmed by it, (what's hotter than faust after all, am i right, ladies?) and this does indeed give rise to powerful emotions. and then horrible things happen, as they will in russian literature.
it is occasionally a little overblown for my tastes. i generally have little patience for (view spoiler)[ powerful emotions resulting in physical illness (hide spoiler)], but there are occasional lines like these:
You're like ice: until you melt, you're as strong as stone, but when you melt, not even a trace of you will be left.
and
"I know how to do only one thing," she said, "Remain silent until the last moment."
yum, right?
the second novella, yakov pasynkov, is more like hardy where everyone falls prey to unhappy and unfulfilled passions and the threads get all tangled and hopeless. he loves her who loves him who is duty-bound to her and then everyone dies. not really, but no one is happy at the end and everyone is nursing their frustrated passions forever. not a spoiler, because - again - russian lit. everyone is gloomy until the bitter end. sigh.
so for my first turgenev, it was definitely satisfying, and i really liked the introductory material. (which, incidentally, was written not by smug-boy simon cowell,
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as i initially thought, but by simon callow,
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which makes more sense)
and now i have fulfilled my "real book" reading and can return to the tripe i generally go for, right? bring on the james patterson.
hopefully this attempt at a review will not get deleted by my stupid-assed fingers, as the first one i wrote for this book did. which was probably the best review ever, i will have you know.
this book was a perfect book to read directly after prayer for the dying. when i was reading the o'nan, i kept thinking "this is like an even sadder wthis book was a perfect book to read directly after prayer for the dying. when i was reading the o'nan, i kept thinking "this is like an even sadder winesburg, ohio", even though that was a poor comparison. but i still feel that way. this one is closer to what an even more depressing winesburg would be, because it is also funny, which is an element not to be found in the o'nan.
but funny in the way that, as you are laughing, you are horrified.
there are several elements that, bizarrely, occur in both the o'nan and the comyns, causing me to have to pause and think, "okay, did the horse hit his head on the tree in this one or the other??" etc. (it was in the o'nan, in case you are consumed with curiosity):
1) disease tearing through a town killing nearly everybody compounded by an aggressive act of nature (in this case, a flood precedes, but does not cause, the disease) 2) many animal deaths/many human deaths 3)(view spoiler)[ someone burned alive in a house. (hide spoiler)]
but there are vast chasms of difference between the two books.
this is not a quietly haunting piece meditating on man's place in God's world, this third-person piece is closer in tone to a book narrated by a child or forrest gump or a god. there is an emotional disconnect between what is happening and the overall tone; it is entirely dispassionate. even the humor is less written than perceived; extracted from the reader themselves.and it is always undercut by the gross, the tainted - ants in the sandwiches, slugs in the water-pump, the corpses of peacocks floating by, the beds full of blood, the slit throat like a smile...but i am not imagining the humor, for all of this.
what's the plot, karen? well, that's the tricky part, innit? this book reads like someone spun a reel of film and picked two arbitrary points at which to cut, and called it a day. the opening scene comes directly after a flood, where the willoweed family and their help are sorting out the living from the dead animals, and setting the house in order. it ends after something major happens that is very briefly touched upon, and then all is summed-up in an 80's movie-style "this person did this and this person became that and this person went "weeee weee weee" all the way home."
in between, all is madness. literally - madness. disease takes over the inhabitants of the town, as one after the other succumbs, goes mad, and frequently kills themselves.did i mention this was funny? it is a sour kind of funny - not madcap or dry or satirical, but genuinely funny, when it's not all madness and death. trust me.
the last chapter seems compressed somehow, which is the only reason this didn't get five stars. i was left a little bewildered at the end of it all. after so much detail to this point, to be left hurriedly, without enough closure or answers... i felt cheapened.
now is the time in the review when we laboriously type out passages from the book. they are at the end so you can read them or not - no matter. i am just offering them here because they give examples of what i have been ineffectually trying to describe.
this is my favorite passage in the book:
when the girls tired of rowing they tied to boat up under a willow tree. it seemed as if they were in a green tent. they sat there for a little time; but the bottom of the boat smelt of fish, so they climbed out and lay on the river bank in the sun. the river breeze rustled the rushes and made a whispering sound. after a time emma opened the picnic basket and they ate honey sandwiches with ants on them and drank the queer tea that always comes from a thermos. when there was no more picnic fare left they lay in the sun again in a straight line, and became very warm and watched dragon-flies. some were light blue, small and elegant; others were a shining green; and there were enormous stripey ones that took large bites out of the water-lily leaves.
as dennis lay in the sun, he thought how pleasant it was having a picnic with emma in charge. he remembered other afternoons when his father had forced him to bathe from the boat, and, when he had clutched at the sides with terrified hands, his father had bashed his fingers with a paddle and laughed and yelled at his struggles in the water. when at last he was allowed to climb back, his teeth used to chatter. that seemed to make his father laugh even more. he used to lie at the bottom of the boat while his father laughed and emma dried him, grumbling at their father as she rubbed him with a towel.so far this year there had not been any of those dreadful bathes.
i was going to type out another passage, until i realized it would amount to typing out nearly two full pages, and you people don't want to read that much, do you? you have holiday cookies to bake me and all. you may as well just go read the book. just know that pages 1-4 (and it is a small book, not typical trade-paper dimensions, so that is indeed roughly 2 pages) are amaaaazing. they are a perfect example of what i was babbling on about before - with the tone and the darkness and the sad fates of the animals.
don't get me wrong, it is insanely sad, but for most of the book, it is sad in the way it is sad when you are still oh, my god. what a fantastic book.
don't get me wrong, it is insanely sad, but for most of the book, it is sad in the way it is sad when you are still desperately in love with someone who has lost interest in you and moved on- there is a masochistic pleasure in the depths of your misery as you tail-wag your way around them, trying to rekindle the love you know is still in there.it is sad and desperate and demeaning, but there is a spark of hope that makes it all worthwhile.
for a lot of the book, this is ruslan. this is a "he's just not that into you" story that takes place between a dog and a prison guard after one of stalin's gulags has been dismantled, and in a genius move the dogs, trained to guard, corral, and attack prisoners when the need arose, were set free into the woods and the town, still trained with highly specific skills and loyal to one master.
and ruslan wants his master back.
(incidentally - stalin was a serious dick. i don't know if you know that, but man... what an asshole)
torn between his duty and loyalty, and the most basic struggles for survival, he remains true to his training, despite seeing other former prison dogs eventually succumb to the comforts of food and shelter and civilian life. but for ruslan, the camp and its strictures is his entire life. duty is everything.
he moves through the town, translating everything he sees through the filter of his training, wondering when the guards are going to come back and whip all these "prisoners" into shape for their transgressions.
it is a killer novel. there are so many scenes that are powerful and shocking, and i don't even want to talk about it because it is so short, and this neversink series is 2/2 for me, and i want you all to go out and get them all and be wowed.
i mean, it is a dog POV, which can turn some people off, but it's a dog with a highly intelligent mind and a narrow worldview:
many times ruslan had noticed that humans often did things that they didn't like, and without any compulsion - something that no animal would ever do. it was significant that in ruslan's hierarchy the highest rank was held by the masters, who always knew what was good and what was bad; next in order were dogs, while prisoners came last of all. although they were bipeds, they were still not quite people. none of them, for instance, would dare give orders to a dog, yet their lives were partly controlled by dogs. in any case, how could they give sensible orders when they were all so stupid? they were obviously stupid because they kept on thinking that there was some sort of better life far away from the camp and beyond the forests - a piece of nonsense that would never enter the head of a guard dog. as if to prove their stupidity, they would run away and wander alone for months, perishing with hunger, instead of staying in camp and eating their favorite food - prison gruel, for a bowl of which they were prepared to slit each others' throats. and when they did return, looking abashed, they would still go on thinking up new ways to escape. poor fools! they were never, never happy, wherever they were.
this is a perfect example of a wild intelligence marred by a pinpoint perspective, which in a human, could be termed "propaganda", but in a dog, is just rigorous training.
and there's this part... nah, better not.
but i can talk about it graphically. this is a beautiful cover, but a little misleading.the whole time i was reading, i was picturing ruslan as some kind of german shepherd dog. after i read the book, i did a little GIS-ing, and this is what ruslan's breed looks like:
in other words, the biggest dog in the entire world. oh my god, can you imagine being herded by a group of dogs like that? i like dogs, and i am terrified of how big that dog is. i would be the best prisoner ever to avoid being tackled by a dog like that.
janet flanner, in the new yorker claims that her writing has a "shine like crystal." and that's probably true, inope. i do not like marguerite duras.
janet flanner, in the new yorker claims that her writing has a "shine like crystal." and that's probably true, if one is observing that it is as pointy and depthless as crystal, as chill and remote, as something that refracts emptily. ooooh duras BURN!!
if this is a literary bodice ripper, i gotta say i prefer the crappy contemporary ones. this one isn't even intense with the taut tingling of repression, which also has its place and is something i can appreciate - it doesn't all have to be desperate passions and rending of garments, but this zombie vacuity does nothing for me - nothing nothing nothing. there is nothing at stake here, just people blinking emptily at each other, speaking words with no momentum behind them, frequently non sequiturs so it seems as though they are involved in separate conversations. lack of quotation marks so that when one character will reluctantly, languidly plop out a sentence, you sometimes don't even know which one is speaking, unless there is a back-and-forth, and then you can use context or whatever. but the one isolated word or phrase in a scene when two people are just sitting around existing, who knows who is speaking? who cares?
and i am not just pouting because no one but me wanted to read zola for the literary smut portion of our rippings, i swear. i did not like The Lover when i read it, but i had hope nonetheless. this one sounded like it could be interesting. but the french have this habit of creating highly stylized works of art that leave me cold. why do they do that? very infuriating, frenchies...
i know all the other rippers will have informed and intelligent things to say about this, and my frazzled and sweaty frustration will be coolly counteracted by more reasonable ladies (and a dude or two) with elegant and refined responses examining the psychology of characters such as these, and what duras is trying to accomplish by portraying them in this way, but i am a monster and i bust down the door and say "boring boring boring boring!!!"
this is my second dip in the zweig pool, and i'm pretty much sold. i do wish someone would publish a volume of his collected works so i don't ZWEIG!!!
this is my second dip in the zweig pool, and i'm pretty much sold. i do wish someone would publish a volume of his collected works so i don't have to keep buying these tiny, albeit beautiful, pushkin press editions. they can be read in the time it takes to eat a box of crackers. and then you are left with no crackers and no more book. and that is a heavy-souled feeling.
ya know what is also a heavy-souled feeling?? the guilt of infidelity. a seamless transition into the book by ms. brissette (2 points). bored by a "perfect" life into an equally boring affair, and then blackmailed by the ex-lover of her current lover, irene experiences fear. seamless name-drop of title (4 points). what follows is 100 pages of slow psychological breakdown as she pays off her blackmailer and fears exposure. overcome by angst (mention of the german title: 5 points), she contemplates suicide (naturally; it is zweig, after all) and homicide as she tries to find a way out of the hole she has dug herself into.
there is the usual poking at the bourgeoisie, and an ending that i half-expected, but it was completely satisfying. zweig does character so well - all the false starts and crazy notions and deliberations of this woman are crystallized into impressive and taut prose that makes the story more of a thriller than you would expect considering that it is mostly hand-wringing consciousness of her burning secret (name drop of another zweig book: 5 points), and not the big explosions of a more modern thriller.
i have earned many points here tonight. my work is done.
the members have spoken: Three Men in a Boat will be our first group read. if it goes well, we can read other books together and see what we la taste:
the members have spoken: Three Men in a Boat will be our first group read. if it goes well, we can read other books together and see what we learn.
so, again, the point of our reading a book together is so we can all learn how to extract appeal factors from a text, and learn how to discuss books in a way that is relevant to a readers' advisory scenario.
the deadline for finishing the book is june 1st. i will be posting some information on here from NoveList, which will be useful to glance over before starting the book, just to help get a sense of what kinds of things to be on the lookout for.
are we excited?
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okay - they changed my schedule this week, so i have to go in earlier than planned, but i will be able to pop in periodically to contribute the discussion.
so it's not about whether we liked it or not - for our own personal selves, that's great, but the questions that we should focus on are more: what are the appeal factors? what are the features of this book? to whom would we suggest this book? to whom would we absolutely not suggest this book? i posted some stuff in the thread directly below this if you are looking for some appropriate keywords/starting points.
and i will be back on ASAP...
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i would not recommend it to anyone looking for a prolonged narrative; it is definitely more a collection of episodic happenings.
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ummmmm no, i think it is very fast-paced. they are always bopping off to one thing or the other. there are sections where it slows down a little, when nature is described, but those sections are not very numerous
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you're not at all horrible!! this is how we are learning! and since it's just you and me there's no pressure!
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but it is a convenient frame to show off these characters in their laziness and quirkiness.
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i still think it is character-driven because it is the way these characters view their surroundings that drives the plot, and their innumerable asides...
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yeah, it's definitely a very specific type of humor. that's why RA is so difficult when it comes to humor because everyone's got their own ideas about what that means. so many people just don't respond to british humor.
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i think there are enough silly episodes for it to escape the highbrow label. "there's a man in my bed!!" "what shall we put in the stew!!" "oh nooooo what is happening??"
ooh, and we forgot about writing style, which i think would be conversational, witty, and engaging
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see what a genius you are!! i didn't even remember your list (i am at work so a little distracted), i just went to the page. JEEEENIUS!
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well, there were parts of it that were slower; when i get home i will have my copy and will show examples. but slow-paced books tend to have a lot of description, and long passages where there is just no actual action happening. something can be fast-paced and not be riveting if you are just not into the story....
i will try to be clearer when i get home...
or someone with the book there can do it if they understand what i am trying to say...
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no, you are absolutely right. this book is something of an anomaly because the tone of it is so breezy and the sections are rather brief. maybe i am wrong though, this could be a whole discussion if anyone's game.
there's not really any cause-and-effect beyond each individual section, either, so i think it makes it seem more like tiny little stories stitched together. but this is just my impression
confused?? come hang out in my amazing RA group!! help me get better at leading discussions!!
when i was thirteen, i had a journal. and i would lie on my tummy and kick my feet in the air and record my tiny thoughts.
when i was fifteen, i had a journal. and i would smoke a joint and lie on my tummy and record my huge earthshattering thoughts.
when i was nineteen, i had a journal. and - well, let's save something for the biopic, shall we?
i don't have a journal anymore. and you know why?
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because i write huge purple monsters of sentences and only end up making myself small and shy when i come across them years later.
this book suffers from many of these sentences.
i should have known from the first page:
I am standing on a corner in Monterey, waiting for the bus to come in, and all the muscles of my will are holding my terror to face the moment I most desire.
ugh. i can feel raymond carver hurling an empty bottle of booze at this sentence in disgust, and for once, i am with him.
there is a way to be evocative and complicated and beautiful all at once, "the smile on your face was the deadest thing alive enough to have the strength to die," anyone??
this?? this ain't that. and as an opening sentence it just stuck in my craw and tainted the rest of the book.
i like crisp prose, clean lines, smart phrasings. this seemed too self-indulgent - too emotionally bloated.too much "why use one word when you can use ten and still say nothing??" going on.
Not God, but bats and a spider who is weaving my guilt, keep the rendezvous with me, and shame copulates with every September housefly. My room echoes with the screams she never uttered, and under my floor the vines of remorse get ready to push up through the damp. The cricket drips remembrance unceasingly into my ear, lest I mislay any items of cruelty's fiendish inventory.
oh, yeah?? is that what shame does?? it copulates with houseflies, does it?? gosh, i hope the maggot gets shame's eyes...i have no patience for this sort of thing.
Fear will be a terrible fox at my vitals under my tunic of behaviour.
i say no thank you.
brigid brophy's introduction is excellent. i read it last, of course, and it made me appreciate the book so much more in retrospect, and it also reminded me of the several parts i did enjoy. but i have to give it two stars, because i really didn't enjoy reading it. there were moments of great beauty, but too many parts where i was just gagging on her prose. i am all for pain and howling emotions,but isn't it the responsibility of the writer to marry the vulnerable raw nerves with craft?? it is true there were many moments where i was totally on-board with her writing, but when it was bad, it was very very bad.
and, oh, what's this?? someone has come to interrupt my ravings...it's me - a week later!
okay, so i have been really sad for a couple of days now. and i have reread great swathes of this book under the influence of my own ragged emotions.and i am ashamed to admit that i like it more now. i have to keep the two-stars for that is how i felt when i really read it, but might i suggest reading this when you are in the throes of some sort of emotional tidal wave?? it was not meant for happy eyes. although there still isn't any shame copulating with any houseflies here at my place.
i should have known i was in trouble right from the get-go. this is the first story, in its entirety:
the charmer
i say nothing, i think nothing, dr. pii should have known i was in trouble right from the get-go. this is the first story, in its entirety:
the charmer
i say nothing, i think nothing, dr. pi repeated to himself, without moving his lips, as he crossed the street. a blue deer and a helicopter briefly drew his attention. he took out his umbrella and said finally in a very low voice: "it was necessary." a woman, plump and middle-aged, warned him: "careful, your shoelaces have come undone." pi thanked her for the warning and tied his shoes. then he walked confidently toward the snake charmer. she held out her arms to him and abandoned her stand at the fairgrounds. "only for a few moments," said the charmer. "there is nothing but moments. a few small moments," said pi.
yeah, i hate that story. i hate it. maybe to some people, this broad surrealism warms all their cockles, but i am left utterly cold. i love this cover, and i ordered it into the store after seeing it at mcnally jackson, thinking it would be better to use my discount rather than paying full price for such a short book. today, realizing i didn't have enough book left to get me home on the subway, i thought it was so short that it would be best to not pay for it at all, and it would be best to read the entire thing on my lunch break. ugh. i am so glad i didn't shell any money out for this one. this book is most emphatically not for me. and i wonder if it is translation's fault. because i am reading the afterword, and it goes on about "bayley's dexterous handling of language, and its materiality" and how he was "engaged foremost by language's potency and plasticity"...that he is full of "linguistic quirks and eloquence" and i am not getting anything like that from the book i have just read.
surely i am missing something.
but i can't complain too much, because i actually managed to finish it in 45 minutes, and return to the floor early enough to catch michael k. williams in the store and help him get a copy of steppenwolf, although i am deeply disappointed in myself because i always said if he ever came in i would totally dry hump his leg, and i didn't. i just got him his book, gazed at him hungrily, and said "thank you". it was all so unexpected! i was in a bad-book daze.
elizabeth, this book reminds me of virginia woolf, both in structure and prose. i think. it has been a long time since i have read ms. woolf, and my felizabeth, this book reminds me of virginia woolf, both in structure and prose. i think. it has been a long time since i have read ms. woolf, and my fear is that since i recommended this to you, you will one day read this and tell me what a nincompoop i am. but until that day comes, i will be 96% confident that this is pretty darn woolf-y!!
it begins at the ending, where a woman buys an isolated house of edenic simplicity to sort through her grief and make sense of what is left of her life. and after that, the plot meanders through the past and the present; through the lives of various characters and how they affect and enrich each other, interspersed with bedtime stories which try to keep the melancholy realities at bay.
My house is as close to the sea as a house can get before becoming a boat. As close to the sea as a boat is when it fails as a boat - by which I mean, when it is stranded. At times I command the landscape from my house. At times I see nothing at all. In my inner life, this inside of the outside, I exist only as something intangible.
this book is a perfect example of the heights women's fiction can reach. and not just "books by women," but women's fiction as such. all of the relationships of women are explored: mothers and sisters and lovers and daughters and deepening friendships and echoing solitude. the sorrowful motherhood, a life full of moments - the way women involve themselves in each other's lives, the blurring of boundaries; the richness of these strands woven into this effortlessly looping and knotted storyline...
My God, how long a birth takes, thinks Nuccia, who prefers to remain standing, pacing up and down, crouching sometimes but refusing to sit down, leaning against the wall with all her strength, shouldering Teresa away, pressing her forehead against the wall, hitting her head against the wall, trying to bite it. Gisele groans from the bottom of her throat, eyelids shut between contractions, escaping to a place known only to her, a place of repair; every time the contractions resume, her eyes open abruptly with a look of alarm, helplessness, supplication, like the disbelieving look of a child who doesn't understand why she is being punished. Suzanne counts the seconds, her eyes riveted on her watch; the obstetrician can't get over it - really, what self-control; Suzanne latches on to the seconds, thinking, This can't last forever, it just can't, latching on to the watch hand swinging like a compass in the middle of the desert, like a buoy in the middle of a shipwreck, like a syringe in the middle of going cold turkey. Aurore sings, she sings with all her might, her volatile, rambling song, her deformed, haunted, abdominal song that frightens the midwife, who nonetheless encourages her to sing louder, to squeeze the cushions against her chest, to submerse herself in warm water. The pain of one is the pain of the other, a borderless pain making unthinkable the wars prosecuted by men against the labour of women, unthinkable the blasphemy of murder when compared with the belly that incubates, with the belly that separates.
Women give birth, and everywhere, always, their pain eludes the many designations of familiar pains but belongs to the root of all pains, the raving litany of mammals, the blood of people contributing, a birth at a time, to the slow destiny of all. The great commotion of limbs couples up to the train of generations, the train of survival running along a chasm into which it is in constant danger of plunging, and women, everywhere, always, whisper inaudible words to themselves, grasping presences, women call out to the other woman, the one who survived at all costs and come what may, they call out to the female of everywhere and always, the one they are in the process of becoming through capsizing into each other, through pushing new bodies into the world. Bite the wall, count the seconds, sing their heads off. Nestle against the vertigo of an improbable sky.
and i think that is lovely, although it may be too close to purple for our elizabeth. this scene, this montage of births, is the only scene in which all the women come together, on the page; it is their one shared experience amidst the scattered episodes of their lives.
yes, elizabeth, this is a fairly sad book about strength and sacrifice and the deep dark pain of motherhood but i swear it is not all bleakness.
also, i will buy it for you, if we can ever get it into the store - i've been trying for a week now.
