I had to sit down after reading this book and seriously think about what the title meant because there aren't any obvious borders in the book.
There are lots of boundaries though, and I suppose a book called Crossing Boundaries would sound too sociological to be a novel, so she chose the word "border" instead. But it made me have to think long and hard about what the title meant.
I liked Barker's Regeneration and The Eye in the Door (still haven't read Ghost Road) but this novel is very different. It has a plot, but it's the kind of plot that doesn't really have any kind of conclusion that makes you feel like things are okay now. It's more like a story that begins in media res and ends the same way. I found myself wondering what was going to happen to one of the characters now that the story is over, and that rarely happens to me. The strength of the story lies in the subject matter ("criminality" and "youth" respectively, though not necessarily "juvenile crime") and the depiction of the characters. It was also a pretty quick read, mostly because it kept me pretty interested.
Monday, February 28, 2005
Friday, February 25, 2005
Kim Rudyard Kipling
Another re-read, but I had forgotten so much of the book, that at times it was barely recognizable and I enjoyed being surprised and reminded about events as they unfolded.
Part of the reason why the book was 'forgettable' wasn't because the book was terribly bad, but just because it is highly episodic. I remembered distinctly the visuality of the scenes (the descriptions are luxuriously complete), but I could not remember what order things happened, since all but a few are indistinguishable in their creation of the character of Kim. He grows up, but the events that are part of the bildungsroman aren't connected - rather, they accumulate so that the Kim at the end of the book is a wiser, but not radically different Kim than the one who began the book.
I kept finding myself comparing this book to Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, partly because both are about spies, but also because both are in some senses about what it means to be "not-English". Each author takes a radically different approach to the second question (and the first I suppose) - Kipling seems to admire imperialism and its possibilities, but recognizes the huge pitfalls. For him, Her Majesty's Secret Service is the epitome of what is good about being English (in part because it allows you to selectively 'go native'), but for Conrad, the spy game is all about misunderstanding, egos, and individual foibles. In Conrad, idealism has a specific role to play (and usually a different role for each participant), but in Kipling, the idealism inherent in spying is the same (mother England), but the methods employed by its practitioners simply vary.
All this talk of comparing the two books makes me think I should now go re-read Conrad. I'm curious how fruitful it might be to pair two books like these (or other pairings... like Slaughterhouse Five and The Wars).
Part of the reason why the book was 'forgettable' wasn't because the book was terribly bad, but just because it is highly episodic. I remembered distinctly the visuality of the scenes (the descriptions are luxuriously complete), but I could not remember what order things happened, since all but a few are indistinguishable in their creation of the character of Kim. He grows up, but the events that are part of the bildungsroman aren't connected - rather, they accumulate so that the Kim at the end of the book is a wiser, but not radically different Kim than the one who began the book.
I kept finding myself comparing this book to Joseph Conrad's The Secret Agent, partly because both are about spies, but also because both are in some senses about what it means to be "not-English". Each author takes a radically different approach to the second question (and the first I suppose) - Kipling seems to admire imperialism and its possibilities, but recognizes the huge pitfalls. For him, Her Majesty's Secret Service is the epitome of what is good about being English (in part because it allows you to selectively 'go native'), but for Conrad, the spy game is all about misunderstanding, egos, and individual foibles. In Conrad, idealism has a specific role to play (and usually a different role for each participant), but in Kipling, the idealism inherent in spying is the same (mother England), but the methods employed by its practitioners simply vary.
All this talk of comparing the two books makes me think I should now go re-read Conrad. I'm curious how fruitful it might be to pair two books like these (or other pairings... like Slaughterhouse Five and The Wars).
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time Mark Haddon
The narrator is by far the most interesting part of this book, as are most narrators who occupy a very different space than the typical reader does.
The book does not feature a spectacular plot (or even a terribly interesting one - the exegesis would run something like: dog is killed, narrator asks questions about dog's death, fights with father, runs away to mother, comes back home). What is interesting is viewing the characters through the perspective of a narrator who is incapable of deciphering the subtle visual and social cues that most of us would pick up on. In this way, he is a bit like Brittany, the narrator of Atonement, who misinterprets her sister's sexual engagement with a man as a victimization.
Here, the book employs first person narration by Christopher John Francis Boone, 15 years old, who doesn't understand much of the world around him. He observes everything, unselective in what he attends to, which overwhelms him sometimes. He is not good at reading emotions other than very basic ones and doesn't understand idioms. When frustrated or touched (he doesn't like to be touched), he screams, or groans, or does math problems (in a kind of trance). He's very good at math because it has a right answer all of the time whereas human relationships don't always have a right answer. He decides whether it will be a good or bad day depending on how many cars of a certain color he sees on the way to school (he likes red but hates yellow and brown).
He comes across his neighbor's dog Wellington stabbed with a garden fork and decides he will solve the mystery of who killed Wellington. He uses itineraries, maps, and logic to determine who might have killed the dog. He even goes door to door though it scares him to talk to strangers. Encouraged by his teacher, Siobhan, he decides to write it as a mystery, but his father finds the book and takes it away. When Christopher goes to look for it, he finds it in a box full of letters from his mother, and decides this is another mystery. Despite solving both mysteries, Christopher's relationship with his family has deteriorated by the end of the book and the final scene has Christopher discovering he got an A on the exam and determining he will write his A levels in physics and go to university when he is done school.
The book does not feature a spectacular plot (or even a terribly interesting one - the exegesis would run something like: dog is killed, narrator asks questions about dog's death, fights with father, runs away to mother, comes back home). What is interesting is viewing the characters through the perspective of a narrator who is incapable of deciphering the subtle visual and social cues that most of us would pick up on. In this way, he is a bit like Brittany, the narrator of Atonement, who misinterprets her sister's sexual engagement with a man as a victimization.
Here, the book employs first person narration by Christopher John Francis Boone, 15 years old, who doesn't understand much of the world around him. He observes everything, unselective in what he attends to, which overwhelms him sometimes. He is not good at reading emotions other than very basic ones and doesn't understand idioms. When frustrated or touched (he doesn't like to be touched), he screams, or groans, or does math problems (in a kind of trance). He's very good at math because it has a right answer all of the time whereas human relationships don't always have a right answer. He decides whether it will be a good or bad day depending on how many cars of a certain color he sees on the way to school (he likes red but hates yellow and brown).
He comes across his neighbor's dog Wellington stabbed with a garden fork and decides he will solve the mystery of who killed Wellington. He uses itineraries, maps, and logic to determine who might have killed the dog. He even goes door to door though it scares him to talk to strangers. Encouraged by his teacher, Siobhan, he decides to write it as a mystery, but his father finds the book and takes it away. When Christopher goes to look for it, he finds it in a box full of letters from his mother, and decides this is another mystery. Despite solving both mysteries, Christopher's relationship with his family has deteriorated by the end of the book and the final scene has Christopher discovering he got an A on the exam and determining he will write his A levels in physics and go to university when he is done school.
Friday, February 18, 2005
Fire and Ice Michael Adams
First non-fiction book to get on the list this year (may be the last too for all I know). The full title is Fire and Ice: The United States Canada and the Myth of Converging Values and its all about what the full title describes.
Written by a social economist, the book is a report of thousands of surveys of both Canadians and Americans over the last decade. The surveys rated respondents on social values scales like violence, religiousity, independence, idealism and survivalism. It is probably the most interesting and well written book of statistics I have ever seen.
Adams doesn't pull any punches when it comes to pointing out the negative values that emerge from the surveys, something that seemed to irritate many of his conservative reviewers, but this book explains in clear language what I have intuitively felt and failed to be able to express since arriving here. His injection of humor into what could be a dry analysis of how Canadians and Americans aren't becoming more alike makes this a very easy to read book.
My favorite quote from the text: “…we Canadians sometimes find our neighbours baffling. Between their rhetoric and our own (the left’s admonitions about the dangers of convergence with the gun-toting free marketers to the south, the right’s insistence that we shed our outdated national differences like garments on a long-awaited wedding night and join our industrious, innovative Yankee friends in an orgy of free trade and economic growth), Americans are reflected in so many funhouse mirrors that it would be remarkable if we saw them, collectively, as anything other than caricatures” (20).
What was really interesting for me, coming from Alberta to New England was the way in which the entire U.S. is far more conservative than the whole of Canada (generally speaking of course). Even liberal New England (the most liberal of the seven 'sections' of the U.S.) was more conservative than Alberta (the most conservative 'section' of Canada).
In some ways, this feels like a vindication of sorts. At least I know I'm not wacko or just overly sensitive, my sense of the difference between these two places follows what these statisticians have found out.
Written by a social economist, the book is a report of thousands of surveys of both Canadians and Americans over the last decade. The surveys rated respondents on social values scales like violence, religiousity, independence, idealism and survivalism. It is probably the most interesting and well written book of statistics I have ever seen.
Adams doesn't pull any punches when it comes to pointing out the negative values that emerge from the surveys, something that seemed to irritate many of his conservative reviewers, but this book explains in clear language what I have intuitively felt and failed to be able to express since arriving here. His injection of humor into what could be a dry analysis of how Canadians and Americans aren't becoming more alike makes this a very easy to read book.
My favorite quote from the text: “…we Canadians sometimes find our neighbours baffling. Between their rhetoric and our own (the left’s admonitions about the dangers of convergence with the gun-toting free marketers to the south, the right’s insistence that we shed our outdated national differences like garments on a long-awaited wedding night and join our industrious, innovative Yankee friends in an orgy of free trade and economic growth), Americans are reflected in so many funhouse mirrors that it would be remarkable if we saw them, collectively, as anything other than caricatures” (20).
What was really interesting for me, coming from Alberta to New England was the way in which the entire U.S. is far more conservative than the whole of Canada (generally speaking of course). Even liberal New England (the most liberal of the seven 'sections' of the U.S.) was more conservative than Alberta (the most conservative 'section' of Canada).
In some ways, this feels like a vindication of sorts. At least I know I'm not wacko or just overly sensitive, my sense of the difference between these two places follows what these statisticians have found out.
Monday, February 14, 2005
Regeneration Pat Barker
A re-read, but well worth it. There were things I picked up on that I hadn't earlier, partly because I was paying more attention to the details, but also because other things I've read since the first read through have influenced my thinking about topics in the book.
The book's setting is Edinburgh during the middle of the "Great War" (1917), a setting which has everything to do with the plot. It's a fictional story, but uses real people - Sigfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, William Rivers - which makes for an interesting effect. My online book club discussed this book recently (which is part of the reason I re-read it, the other part being the neverending comps), and the consensus was that in using real characters, Barker infuses an extra level of vitality in the story that wouldn't have been there without those people. The use of historical characters resonates particularly with the purely fictional characters and gives the whole book a sense of historical accuracy, even if fictionalized, that if would not have had if the characters were purely fictional. It's the mix that gives the book the power it does.
I've also read The Eye in the Door which is the next book in the series, but I have yet to read Ghost Road (the final book and the one that won a Booker). I suppose now would be a good time to do so.
The book's setting is Edinburgh during the middle of the "Great War" (1917), a setting which has everything to do with the plot. It's a fictional story, but uses real people - Sigfried Sassoon, Wilfred Owen, William Rivers - which makes for an interesting effect. My online book club discussed this book recently (which is part of the reason I re-read it, the other part being the neverending comps), and the consensus was that in using real characters, Barker infuses an extra level of vitality in the story that wouldn't have been there without those people. The use of historical characters resonates particularly with the purely fictional characters and gives the whole book a sense of historical accuracy, even if fictionalized, that if would not have had if the characters were purely fictional. It's the mix that gives the book the power it does.
I've also read The Eye in the Door which is the next book in the series, but I have yet to read Ghost Road (the final book and the one that won a Booker). I suppose now would be a good time to do so.
Friday, February 11, 2005
The Ground Beneath Her Feet Salman Rushdie
My third Rushdie book - it's good, but of course different from Midnight's Children or The Satanic Verses.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet in reviews is always touted as the first novel by Rushdie written about America. The book jacket describes it as a "gift" to America. Not to be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I wonder if the blurb writer who wrote that actually ever read the book. I would use the word "critique" rather than "gift". But it's a "critique" that, not surprisingly, was better received than the "gift" of The Satanic Verses to the Muslem world. In other words, there's perhaps a bit less to get insulted about... or perhaps a bit more.
The novel follows the intersecting lives of three characters: two lovers who form a rock band that becomes even bigger than the Beatles or the Stones, and their childhood friend, a photographer who captures not only their images, but also the standard images of the photojournalist covering news (i.e. catastrophes and wars) around the world. The story is about their love story, but it's also about culture, it's about revising history (political, rock & roll, even literary), and also a critique/celebration of the immigrant experience and international politics. It's also about the upheavals in our lives (embodied in the earthquakes of the novel) that forever change our lives.
Told by a photographer, the novel is surprisingly scant in visual trompe d'oeil, or cinematic scenes, though there are a few. His secrets, his involvement in the story, and the history that he describes - similar yet different from our own - make him a highly unreliable narrator, and the ending thus seems just a bit too pat. I found myself wondering what he was hiding.
I found the first hundred or so pages a bit rough going... and was unimpressed with the ending, but in between, the skill of a the writer and his play with cultural referents and how we use them to make meaning are absolutely delightful. They are so plentiful that no one will get them all, but that's okay, it's clear the writer is playing and when you're reading it's easy to be convinced to go along for the ride.
The Ground Beneath Her Feet in reviews is always touted as the first novel by Rushdie written about America. The book jacket describes it as a "gift" to America. Not to be one to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I wonder if the blurb writer who wrote that actually ever read the book. I would use the word "critique" rather than "gift". But it's a "critique" that, not surprisingly, was better received than the "gift" of The Satanic Verses to the Muslem world. In other words, there's perhaps a bit less to get insulted about... or perhaps a bit more.
The novel follows the intersecting lives of three characters: two lovers who form a rock band that becomes even bigger than the Beatles or the Stones, and their childhood friend, a photographer who captures not only their images, but also the standard images of the photojournalist covering news (i.e. catastrophes and wars) around the world. The story is about their love story, but it's also about culture, it's about revising history (political, rock & roll, even literary), and also a critique/celebration of the immigrant experience and international politics. It's also about the upheavals in our lives (embodied in the earthquakes of the novel) that forever change our lives.
Told by a photographer, the novel is surprisingly scant in visual trompe d'oeil, or cinematic scenes, though there are a few. His secrets, his involvement in the story, and the history that he describes - similar yet different from our own - make him a highly unreliable narrator, and the ending thus seems just a bit too pat. I found myself wondering what he was hiding.
I found the first hundred or so pages a bit rough going... and was unimpressed with the ending, but in between, the skill of a the writer and his play with cultural referents and how we use them to make meaning are absolutely delightful. They are so plentiful that no one will get them all, but that's okay, it's clear the writer is playing and when you're reading it's easy to be convinced to go along for the ride.
Thursday, February 03, 2005
The Afterlife of George Cartwright John Steffler
Unlike the previous book, I did not get around to reading this one until over a decade after its publication (even though I owned it for the greater part of that time). Another very interesting book in many ways - traditional and postmodern (to use those terms loosely) at the same time.
The author's note at the end of the novel explains best what the story attempts to do - he was trying to capture the flavor and sense of exploration and adventure available during the eighteenth and nineteenth century as the northern part of the Americas were colonised. To do this, he tried to balance actual exerpts from George Cartwright's journal (yes, he really lived) with a narrative that filled in the blanks and made for a good story. I think he succeeded.
The novel is structed as a combination of three types of narration. Third person 'objective' narration of events (both in the 'present' and the past), George's journal entries after his death (observations of the contemporary world when he encounters it as well as recollections of his earlier life), and George's 'original' journal entries from when he was alive. The last of these would seem to be the most objective since they are descriptions of his actions as he undertakes them, but as we discover near the end of the novel, he published these journal entries. While he claims he was scrupulous in not changing them, he also reveals that he made up almost half of the journal entries that he originally published. He returned to London from Labrador in 1779 but in his published journal, he has Labrador entires dating till a 'retirement' in 1786.
The concept and construction are novel and interesting, but the writing also is as well. At times it reads drily like a journal, but the jumping from narrative form to form and the simple adventure of following George are enough to keep you interested and reading, even though George as a character is not necessarily very interesting.
The author's note at the end of the novel explains best what the story attempts to do - he was trying to capture the flavor and sense of exploration and adventure available during the eighteenth and nineteenth century as the northern part of the Americas were colonised. To do this, he tried to balance actual exerpts from George Cartwright's journal (yes, he really lived) with a narrative that filled in the blanks and made for a good story. I think he succeeded.
The novel is structed as a combination of three types of narration. Third person 'objective' narration of events (both in the 'present' and the past), George's journal entries after his death (observations of the contemporary world when he encounters it as well as recollections of his earlier life), and George's 'original' journal entries from when he was alive. The last of these would seem to be the most objective since they are descriptions of his actions as he undertakes them, but as we discover near the end of the novel, he published these journal entries. While he claims he was scrupulous in not changing them, he also reveals that he made up almost half of the journal entries that he originally published. He returned to London from Labrador in 1779 but in his published journal, he has Labrador entires dating till a 'retirement' in 1786.
The concept and construction are novel and interesting, but the writing also is as well. At times it reads drily like a journal, but the jumping from narrative form to form and the simple adventure of following George are enough to keep you interested and reading, even though George as a character is not necessarily very interesting.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke
This is one of those rare times that I actually have read a book when it first comes out...and I'm really glad I read this one. It appealed to me on many levels.
I liked how the book was structured.
I liked the narration.
I liked the writing.
I liked the concept (historical revisioninsm)
I know some people who read it hated the footnotes, but I loved them. They weren't disconcerting because I'm very used to dealing with footnotes and deciding when to read them and when not to. It helped that they were actual footnotes and not endnotes, otherwise I'm sure I would've read much fewer of them, even if in being footnotes, there were places where the narration was suspended for pages just to make room for the footnotes.
Not only did I not mind the footnotes, I found myself fascinated by their function in the book. At one point, the story makes reference to Merlin the magician (who we all know from King Arthur) and the footnote attached to that reference is a sentence explaining how Nimue (sorceress apprentice to Merlin) trapped him in a tree with his own magic. It's a story that anyone who's read Arthurian lit might know.
A few pages later, there is reference to a story of a magic ring. This story is not one imported from out culture like the Arthurian one, so the story of the ring (no, it's a different ring...) is footnoted in great detail - the entire note takes several pages to tell this piece of folklore. In one way, it's a bit like all the extra mythology that Tolkien created around his basic story. I found it delightful.
I also was impressed with the care Ms. Clarke took in creating the manuscript, and her understanding of the ways that we gather knowledge about societies that have gone before us. In literary studies, the lives of authors long dead (especially those who didn't have biographers when they were alive), are frequently reconstructed through the letters they wrote and received. [Possession also played with this epistolary-biography assembly]. In one footnote, the source for the information is given as a letter written by Strange to Segundus - it's the kind of footnote one might see in a biography or a historiographic analysis. Thing is, there is no mention in the story, no scene, where Strange writes a letter to Segundus. It takes place behind the scenes, but in including that reference in a footnote, Clarke draws attention to the artificiality of our 'reconstructions' of someone's life through their letters. At the time, the letters weren't worthy of note - years later, they become the cornerstone of our understanding (in some cases at least) of what a writer's life was like.
Even if that last paragraph made no sense, what I'm trying to say is that this book appealed to me as a lover of fantasy fiction, it appealed to me as a lover of a good story (as a reader, you might say) as well as appealing to me as an academic. What more could I ever want from a single book? If you read for any or all of these reasons, you might just love this book as much as I do.
I liked how the book was structured.
I liked the narration.
I liked the writing.
I liked the concept (historical revisioninsm)
I know some people who read it hated the footnotes, but I loved them. They weren't disconcerting because I'm very used to dealing with footnotes and deciding when to read them and when not to. It helped that they were actual footnotes and not endnotes, otherwise I'm sure I would've read much fewer of them, even if in being footnotes, there were places where the narration was suspended for pages just to make room for the footnotes.
Not only did I not mind the footnotes, I found myself fascinated by their function in the book. At one point, the story makes reference to Merlin the magician (who we all know from King Arthur) and the footnote attached to that reference is a sentence explaining how Nimue (sorceress apprentice to Merlin) trapped him in a tree with his own magic. It's a story that anyone who's read Arthurian lit might know.
A few pages later, there is reference to a story of a magic ring. This story is not one imported from out culture like the Arthurian one, so the story of the ring (no, it's a different ring...) is footnoted in great detail - the entire note takes several pages to tell this piece of folklore. In one way, it's a bit like all the extra mythology that Tolkien created around his basic story. I found it delightful.
I also was impressed with the care Ms. Clarke took in creating the manuscript, and her understanding of the ways that we gather knowledge about societies that have gone before us. In literary studies, the lives of authors long dead (especially those who didn't have biographers when they were alive), are frequently reconstructed through the letters they wrote and received. [Possession also played with this epistolary-biography assembly]. In one footnote, the source for the information is given as a letter written by Strange to Segundus - it's the kind of footnote one might see in a biography or a historiographic analysis. Thing is, there is no mention in the story, no scene, where Strange writes a letter to Segundus. It takes place behind the scenes, but in including that reference in a footnote, Clarke draws attention to the artificiality of our 'reconstructions' of someone's life through their letters. At the time, the letters weren't worthy of note - years later, they become the cornerstone of our understanding (in some cases at least) of what a writer's life was like.
Even if that last paragraph made no sense, what I'm trying to say is that this book appealed to me as a lover of fantasy fiction, it appealed to me as a lover of a good story (as a reader, you might say) as well as appealing to me as an academic. What more could I ever want from a single book? If you read for any or all of these reasons, you might just love this book as much as I do.