Book club choice - but I'm really glad I read this one and if I'd ever had more time for pleasure reading, it would've been on a TBR pile anyway.
The book isn't for the fainthearted. I've been told it's not as bad as The Lovely Bones, at least not the first chapter of that one, but I think it's overall effect is much more disturbing in a long-lasting way. It's a story of betrayal, and the narrator's attempts at restitution for that childhood betrayal echoed a bit thin for me. I wasn't convinced he did enough to make up for his actions, even if he discovered that he wasn't fully responsible for the bad stuff in the book.
I don't care that he got beat within an inch of his life - he wouldn't have been there in the first place if he hadn't betrayed his friend as a child. Deciding to take the beating wasn't heroic, it was simply the wheel coming back around.
Well, as you might be able to tell, I really disliked this narrator, though I enjoyed the book and am glad that I read it. Perhaps that was the point however, to dislike the narrator. And the next book club book is Atonement, another book where I didn't really care for the narrator and didn't think she'd done much to atone for what she'd done wrong.
Friday, July 15, 2005
Treasure Island - Robert Louis Stevenson
I'd never actually read this book before. I think I'd only seen movie versions of the story - which meant that I heard Tim Curry's voice everytime Long John Silver opened his mouth to speak.
Despite this distraction (and yes, I loved the muppet version of the story), I was able to get into the story for its own sake. I found the first person narration by Jim the best part of the book because of the perspective it gave the whole adventure - after all, Jim's in it for the glory, as a boy would be, and not the money that his adult companions obviously hope to make. Jim's view is vindicated in the end as well when all the bad or questionable guys in the book end up blowing their wad, while he and the good guys are 'richer' for the experience.
I enjoyed Jim's narration so much that I was disappointed when the episode in the stockade shifted from his perspective instead of just being told retrospectively. Seeing the action from Jim's point of view also allowed the reader to anticipate Jim's own responses. For example, as an adult reader, the sailors (pirates) "inability" to capture Black Dog after chasing him out of Long John's pub confirms the reader's suspicions about Long John (they'd been aroused earlier, but without substantiation) but Jim, being a child, takes a little longer to realize it. This creates a kind of narrative tension that's thoroughly enjoyable and is obviously what Stevenson wanted to do in choosing to narrate from the boy's perspective.
Fun book - almost as much fun as the muppets!
Despite this distraction (and yes, I loved the muppet version of the story), I was able to get into the story for its own sake. I found the first person narration by Jim the best part of the book because of the perspective it gave the whole adventure - after all, Jim's in it for the glory, as a boy would be, and not the money that his adult companions obviously hope to make. Jim's view is vindicated in the end as well when all the bad or questionable guys in the book end up blowing their wad, while he and the good guys are 'richer' for the experience.
I enjoyed Jim's narration so much that I was disappointed when the episode in the stockade shifted from his perspective instead of just being told retrospectively. Seeing the action from Jim's point of view also allowed the reader to anticipate Jim's own responses. For example, as an adult reader, the sailors (pirates) "inability" to capture Black Dog after chasing him out of Long John's pub confirms the reader's suspicions about Long John (they'd been aroused earlier, but without substantiation) but Jim, being a child, takes a little longer to realize it. This creates a kind of narrative tension that's thoroughly enjoyable and is obviously what Stevenson wanted to do in choosing to narrate from the boy's perspective.
Fun book - almost as much fun as the muppets!
Briefing for a Descent into Hell - Doris Lessing
This is one odd book. I had a real difficult time getting into it, but once I did, it had me hooked.
It's hard to tell exactly what's going on because it's told from the perspective of a mental patient. But just like Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, the reader is invited to imagine that the fantasies of the madman/woman are actually an alternate universe. Except in Lessing's novel, which alternate universe we're referring to is unclear, since there seem to be several of them, or at least, the protagonist has travelled through several of them before the narrative begins.
Very different novel than The Fifth Child, and even than Memoirs of a Survivor, which employs a similar technique of unexplained reality, but to a lesser extent than this novel. Once you figure out what's going on, it gets interesting.
It's hard to tell exactly what's going on because it's told from the perspective of a mental patient. But just like Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time, the reader is invited to imagine that the fantasies of the madman/woman are actually an alternate universe. Except in Lessing's novel, which alternate universe we're referring to is unclear, since there seem to be several of them, or at least, the protagonist has travelled through several of them before the narrative begins.
Very different novel than The Fifth Child, and even than Memoirs of a Survivor, which employs a similar technique of unexplained reality, but to a lesser extent than this novel. Once you figure out what's going on, it gets interesting.
Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
Of course at some point in my childhood, I read this book, and its sequel, but as is often the case with books that you read in childhood, when you read it as an adult, it sounds so much different.
The one thing that I found most striking was the way I paid attention to scenes that I had thought irrelevant, or uninteresting as a child. Probably some of the disinterest stemmed from an inability to interpret the scene from a child's perspective. For example, the scene in the Duchess's kitchen with the pepper in the soup. Remember that one? I didn't from my childhood reading, but then as an adult, I read all kinds of class and gender stuff in that scene that helped in part to explain the text. And the child that turned to a pig?
Well, as a kid, it was just a bit weird but seemed unconnected to anything else, but as an adult, when you couple that with the Duchess's response to her cook and the summons of the queen, well, it seems that the Duchess's kitchen is a kind of liminal space. It's a place where the Duchess is in charge and she sees her kitchen through a kind of rose-colored glasses. She seems not to notice the pepper, though the stranger who enters, Alice, does. She also lords over the cook, who actually is pretty abusive back, not a good example of Victorian ideals of servant management. And her child is a yelling little brat, but human nonetheless (and her lack of response to the child also follows Victorian homemaking instruction manuals that warned against spoiling children with attention). So when Alice takes the child out of the fantasyland of the kitchen, it becomes a pig, running off to root in the forest.
Okay, so maybe that interpretation's a bit weak - I haven't carefully thought it out. But it was an interesting experience rereading the text.
The one thing that I found most striking was the way I paid attention to scenes that I had thought irrelevant, or uninteresting as a child. Probably some of the disinterest stemmed from an inability to interpret the scene from a child's perspective. For example, the scene in the Duchess's kitchen with the pepper in the soup. Remember that one? I didn't from my childhood reading, but then as an adult, I read all kinds of class and gender stuff in that scene that helped in part to explain the text. And the child that turned to a pig?
Well, as a kid, it was just a bit weird but seemed unconnected to anything else, but as an adult, when you couple that with the Duchess's response to her cook and the summons of the queen, well, it seems that the Duchess's kitchen is a kind of liminal space. It's a place where the Duchess is in charge and she sees her kitchen through a kind of rose-colored glasses. She seems not to notice the pepper, though the stranger who enters, Alice, does. She also lords over the cook, who actually is pretty abusive back, not a good example of Victorian ideals of servant management. And her child is a yelling little brat, but human nonetheless (and her lack of response to the child also follows Victorian homemaking instruction manuals that warned against spoiling children with attention). So when Alice takes the child out of the fantasyland of the kitchen, it becomes a pig, running off to root in the forest.
Okay, so maybe that interpretation's a bit weak - I haven't carefully thought it out. But it was an interesting experience rereading the text.
Cross Channel - Julian Barnes
Short story collection, so a fast read. I enjoyed probably 60% of the stories, and I did like the little things that linked some with others in the collection. But I had problems reading this one - probably because I'm Canadian.
More specifically, probably because I'm not English or French. There were a lot of references to the history of these two countries, many of which were the linchpin for the story, and if you didn't know the history, it took a long time to figure out the story, sometimes not till the end of it. I'm sure as an Englishman/woman, it would have been much more enjoyable, but for someone who doesn't know enough about the two regions, it was a disappointment. Made me want to learn a bit more though, so I suppose that's all good.
More specifically, probably because I'm not English or French. There were a lot of references to the history of these two countries, many of which were the linchpin for the story, and if you didn't know the history, it took a long time to figure out the story, sometimes not till the end of it. I'm sure as an Englishman/woman, it would have been much more enjoyable, but for someone who doesn't know enough about the two regions, it was a disappointment. Made me want to learn a bit more though, so I suppose that's all good.
News from Nowhere - William Morris
I first read this book years ago in a Utopian lit class (really fabulous class with a great teacher), so I remembered some of it, but as usual, my leaky memory meant that a second read through revealed far more stuff than the first time around.
One thing I'd forgotten that I found interesting this time was the construction where the book is very specifically written about 'a friend' and isn't the narrator's experience directly. Since the book takes the form of a dream anyway, I'm not sure why the second distancing effect of the story of a 'friend' was necessary. I suppose it reflects the social position of the Socialists in Victorian England - obviously they weren't too reputable. Perhaps it's akin to writing a book about communism during the McCarthy era.
The premise is a simple one, that socialist reforms of the Victorian age give rise to a kindler, gentler, less polluted, less densely populated England in the future (early twenty-first century). It's an idyllic vision, but as a reader at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a bit hard to swallow sometimes - not the socialism, but the population. In the book, the population of Victorian England is spread out across the country in small communities, which means everyone has lots of room to roam (especially the kids), but given the kind of population growth the Victorians were experiencing, it's hard to imagine why Morris thought it would remain stable (unless this was an unspoken assumption of socialism). With all these little villages too, it makes it difficult to imagine what international relations might be like, since there's no centralized (or even just plain central) place in which trade might take place. But it's a lovely fantasy nonetheless.
One thing I'd forgotten that I found interesting this time was the construction where the book is very specifically written about 'a friend' and isn't the narrator's experience directly. Since the book takes the form of a dream anyway, I'm not sure why the second distancing effect of the story of a 'friend' was necessary. I suppose it reflects the social position of the Socialists in Victorian England - obviously they weren't too reputable. Perhaps it's akin to writing a book about communism during the McCarthy era.
The premise is a simple one, that socialist reforms of the Victorian age give rise to a kindler, gentler, less polluted, less densely populated England in the future (early twenty-first century). It's an idyllic vision, but as a reader at the beginning of the twenty-first century, a bit hard to swallow sometimes - not the socialism, but the population. In the book, the population of Victorian England is spread out across the country in small communities, which means everyone has lots of room to roam (especially the kids), but given the kind of population growth the Victorians were experiencing, it's hard to imagine why Morris thought it would remain stable (unless this was an unspoken assumption of socialism). With all these little villages too, it makes it difficult to imagine what international relations might be like, since there's no centralized (or even just plain central) place in which trade might take place. But it's a lovely fantasy nonetheless.