Finally, I finished a book that’s on my list.Now I know why this list built up on my shelf in the first place.Writers keep writing and publishers keep publishing and some books on my shelf just don’t hold my interest.(Sorry, Don Quixote, but once your story deviates from you as the central figure, it tires me.)After many sidetracks, I managed to pick a book of the shelf that’s on the list, and I stuck with it.
I’ve read Calvino before, first If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler (which a friend recommended and I liked so-so, but enough to try another), then Invisible Cities (which I loved far more).
These are two novellas (I’d call them) collected in one volume.The Nonexistent Knight features a crusading armor powered solely by the will that lives within it and the people affected by this will.Fun story.
Favorite quote (because I an relate to it and because it’s good):
One starts off writing with a certain zest, but a time comes when the pen merely grates in dusty ink, and not a drop of life flows, and all life is outside, outside the window, outside oneself, and it seems that never more can one escape into a page one is writing, open out another world, leap the gap.Maybe it’s better so.Maybe the time when one wrote with delight was neither a miracle nor grace but a sin, of idolatry, of pride.
The Cloven Viscount (does not rhyme with “discount” but you knew that) treats a character split in half by cannon fire, one half turning excessively bad, the other (initially thought lost, sorry to spoil a bit of it as much as the back cover spoils it) excessively good.
Neither story was as light as I had hoped, but both are inventive and playfully thought-provoking, so I consider them both winners.
Still, if you’ve never read Calvino, I’d recommend you start with Invisible Cities.
First off, Knut Hamsun's name is fun to say. Go on, try it: Ka-noot. Ka-noot, Ka-noot, Ka-noot. See what I mean?
His novel Hunger, on the other hand, is not so much fun. It's a fantastic piece of work, the kind of brilliant that makes you realize oh, now I see why he won a Nobel Prize. It just isn't a barrel of laughs, is all.
The plot is fairly straightforward: the protagonist is a struggling writer, and he starves for days at a time because his written output doesn't bring in enough money. The real character, though, is the process of starvation itself: the way it pains and gnaws at him, making him lightheaded and giddy and weak as he sobs and rants his way through increasingly desperate attempts to either fill his belly or forget his hunger for a few brief moments.
I've been told by a few people that Modernism really starts with Hamsun. After reading Hunger, I'd say that sounds about right.
What a crazy confluence of influences on this Southern Lady. Between getting molded by her grandmother and hardened by her mother and coaxed along by her dad and floundering among various sexual adventures, Florence King presents an entertaining read.
I had started it before and couldn't get into it the first time because I was looking for a different kind of humor. Not in a degree of funniness or observational power, both of which are present here, but in the presentation. Many of the scenes seem to be a set-up for someone's witty remark at the end as a stinger. Once I'd resigned myself to that, it moved along nicely and turned out to be a fun read.
Here's the first and last sentences of the prologue (which don't giving away too much and yet give away everything).
There are ladies everywhere, but they enjoy generic recognition only in the South. [...] No matter which sex I went to bed with, I never smoked on the street.
While I'm slowly plugging along at Don Quixote, I not only read a few non-list items - the most recommendable of which is The Ask by Sam Lipsyte (great fun) - , but also one of my listed ones.
Das Hasek Lesebuch, a collection of shorter pieces by Jaroslav Hasek (1883-1923).
His great claim to fame is The Good Soldier Svejk, one of my favorite books ever. His shorter stories work along similar lines: the dirty reality of getting along in the world of central Europe in the early 20th Century shows up all the cracks in the official face of things.
The Svejk stories (which survive being taken out of context of the big work and are represented here, too) have the benefit of the delightful character of Svejk himself, who appears a bumbling fool, but is really a survivor of the most divinely inspired sort.
I am still managing to not be dead, which I assume means the surgery went well and I can now get back to writing about the books I've read without first boring everyone with the minutiae of my health problems. But enough of that -- on with the show.
By 1921, the year Anatole France was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Germany and France had been locked in mutual enmity for three centuries or more1. During the awards ceremony, France found himself standing on stage next to German chemist Walther Nernst, and, well, I'll let NobelPrize.org finish the story:
After Anatole France had received his Prize from the hands of the King, there occurred an incident which left a strong impression on all present. When the venerable had gone up to the rostrum again, he turned to Professor Walther Nernst, Prize winner in Chemistry, and exchanged a long and cordial handshake with him. The Frenchman, the «last classic», and the German, the great scientist and representative of intellectual sobriety, the citizens of two countries which had for a long time been enemies, were united in a handshake - a profoundly symbolic gesture. The audience applauded, feeling that the two nations, which for years had fought against one another, had just met in reconciliation. (source)
This was not new territory for France -- the very backbone of his writing style is his ability to contrast (and sometimes even reconcile) opposites in interesting, insightful ways. In The Gods Will Have Blood, which is set during the Reign of Terror that marked the final blood-frenzied days of the French Revolution, this style manifests itself in several ways, the simplest of which are oxymoronic descriptions like "fanatic patience" and "reasoned dogmatism." The novel also spends a great deal of time contrasting the life-and-death seriousness of the Revolutionary Tribunals and deadly political infighting amongst powerful intellectuals with the largely unaffected daily lives of the French commoners. But the best two examples of this style of opposites in The Gods Will Have Blood are its two main characters, the aging ex-nobleman and epicurean Maurice Brotteaux and the opinionated, highly principled young painter Evariste Gamelin.
Gamelin is a fiercely passionate man who throws himself into everything -- conversations about fine art, defenses of the Revolutionary government's actions, his love affair with Elodie Blaise, etc. -- with equal force. His uncompromising approach to life is by turns admirable and disquieting; it's hard not to admire his resolve and strength of will, but when he is appointed to the Revolutionary Tribunal those same qualities lead him to order the executions of hundreds of his countrymen on the scantest of evidence.
Brotteaux, who lives in the same cramped building as Gamelin, is an unapologetic hedonist who insists that the pursuit of pleasure and beauty is paramount in life. In most authors' hands, a character with beliefs like his would invariably turn out to be a drunken, bug-eyed lech who double-entendres his way through every conversation. Instead, we are introduced to a good, gentle man who finds beauty and pleasure in the simplest of things, an atheist who willingly shelters a priest being hunted by the Revolutionary police, and a thinker who freely expresses his beliefs and ideals while all around him he sees others rounded up and executed for saying far less.
In the introduction included with my copy of the novel, translator Frederick Davies asserts that "Anatole France is one of the very few authors who have successfully portrayed both a very good man and a very wicked man in the same novel." I remember feeling skeptical of that comment at the time2, but after reading the novel I have to say that I agree. I'm also going to have to hunt down a few of Anatole France's other novels.
1The exact timeframe depends on whether one dates the origin of the animosity between the two nations to the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) or to some earlier conflict. If you really wanted to stretch things, an argument could be made for French-German revanchism originating in the Treaty of Verdun which split up the Carolingian Empire in the mid-9th Century. Some folks really know how to hold a grudge.
2I've found that when it comes to praise, introductions tend to err on the side of the sort of effusiveness that would embarrass the most obsequious of yes-men -- doubly so when they're written by translators. Hell, just look at this passage from the translator's note in my copy of The Magic Mountain:
But of the author of The Magic Mountain it can be said in a special sense that he has looked into the seeds of Time. It was indispensable that we should read his book; intolerable that English readers should be barred from a work whose spirit, whatever its vehicle, is universal.
It's enough to make you stick a finger down your throat.
Terry Southern (Nile Southern and Josh Alan Friedman, eds.)
Now Dig This: The Unspeakable Writings of Terry Southern, 1950-1995 (2001)
Most of the things that I found striking about the book are not really repeatable in this forum. Let's just say that drugs, sex, and celebrities play a major role.
The book was recommended to me in several different places, mostly on-line, mostly by comedy writers citing their influences. I can see how this is mind-expanding stuff, and it's well-written, it's just not easy for me to relate to it.
This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as reading should broaden your horizons. And if you're curious about how, for example, William Burroughs, Jean Genet, and Terry Southern eluded the Chicago police during the 1968 "riots," then you're in for a treat. Or if you want to know about some of the behind-the-scenes shenanigans of Dr. Strangelove, or if you want some insightful cultural (literary, musical) reviews, this is for you.
Ah, now I know what's been bugging me about the book all along. He's not very self-critical.
What fun. Between the chorus setting the scenes and Henry whipping his outnumbered army into a frenzy, the play is chock-full of memorable lines, stirring words, emotional nutrients and moral fiber.
As I'm putting this down here, I realize there's a bit of a correlation between the chorus constantly apologizing for having inadequate materials on stage and begging the audience to "piece out our imperfections with your thoughts" and Henry asking his outnumbered army to go "once more into the breach, dear friends, once more."
Also, because it's a(n) historical play, the outcome (I'm guessing) was known to the audience, so the play is really all about the spectacle, and it doesn't fall short.
I guess I'm just not much of a fan of the fantasy world of Arden, and the plot device of romantic partners masquerading as someone else and testing or proving a love. Or, in this case, the Yentl move of cross-dressing and wooing nevertheless.
I also remember not liking A Midsummer Night's Dream that much. But, hey, I still read 'em.
I'd love to get behind some of the stuff and it's probably fun to perform. (The Kenneth Branagh movie, though. Hm.)
Anyway, on a positive note, I'll leave with this, by Celia:
O wonderful, wonderful, and most wonderful wonderful! And yet again wonderful, and after that, out of all whooping!
My health has kept me absent from this blog as of late, and I've got another surgery coming up so I'll be returning to absentia in the near future, but in the meantime I'm going to take care of all the reviews that've been waiting patiently for me to get around to writing them.
Collected Prose (2003) by Paul Auster is just that, a collection of the author's various nonfiction works. Two of the these, The Invention of Solitude and Hand to Mouth, have been published previously as individual books and are still widely available, but the rest of the collection is comprised of shorter works culled from a variety of sources that are harder to find. As in most collections, the works included are of varying quality and the shorter works tend towards essays on French writers and loosely organized lists of stray thoughts and anecdotes, but on the whole I found the collection reasonably interesting and enjoyable.
The Invention of Solitude (1982) focuses on the author's father, then recently deceased. Through a mixture of autobiography, biography, and philosophical rumination, Auster explores how his father's family and past shaped him into the person he became, and how his father's influence in turn shaped the person Auster himself became. The narrative falls apart towards the end as Auster's peregrinations through various abstract lines of thought begin to push everything else to the periphery, but that seems to happen more out of a reluctance to stop writing the work than any loss of focus on his part. As he explains earlier in the text,
In spite of the excuses I have made for myself, I understand what is happening. The closer I come to the end of what I am able to say, the more reluctant I am to say anything. I want to postpone the moment of ending, and in this way delude myself into thinking that I have only just begun, that the better part of my story still lies ahead. No matter how useless these words might seem to be, they have nevertheless stood between me and a silence that continues to terrify me. When I step into this silence, it will mean that my father has vanished forever.
Hand to Mouth (1997) is an account of Auster's early years as a writer and the struggles he endured as a result of his decision to make his living solely through writing. Granted, there are a great many times I found myself wanting to shout GET A DAY JOB YOU DOOF at the page, but aside from that urge I found the work to be an engaging, sobering look at the economic realities of pursuing a career as a professional writer. There's also a brief, hilarious interlude in which he tries unsuccessfully to sell a baseball card game of his own invention to various game manufacturers. (When Hand to Mouth was printed in hardback, several pages in the middle of the book were dedicated to color reproductions of every card for the game, which I suppose was his way of finally getting the damn thing published.)
When I first started reading Lord Berners' autobiography First Childhood (1934) and its sequel A Distant Prospect (1945), I wasn't sure I was going to like it terribly much. Most of the first chapter or so is comprised of descriptions of the opulence of his family and ancestral home, but after he gets done telling the reader just how rich his family is (and then telling the reader again, and again, and...) Berners settles into a fun, light narrative. First Childhood follows his life from birth up through his first four years at a boarding school, and A Distant Prospect picks up from there and follows Berners through his time as a student at Eton where he first began to indulge his interest in the arts and music in particular. I know that probably sounds like thin gruel for one book, let alone two, but the narrative is helped along by Berners' knack for understated humor:
At Eton the method of teaching the Classics was very much the same as it had been at Elmley. That is to say, no effort was spared to make them as uninteresting and unprofitable as possible. It is to be presumed that the school authorities, in making the Classics the principal item of their curriculum, had some edifying purpose in view, but if they thought that the study of pagan modes of thought was going to be useful to young Christians, it looked as if the masters thought otherwise and were bent on diverting the attention of their pupils to questions of syntax. In their hands Homer became tedious, Horace commonplace and Greek Tragedy a grammatical Inferno; and they contrived that the works were studied in so piecemeal a fashion that it was quite impossible to understand what they were about.
And I bet you thought your high school teachers were bad.
In the Book Club Of My Mind, I often play the game of whom I might cast in which role if I were to make a movie of the book I’m reading.*In this case I’m not even sure who’d get top billing, so I checked out imdb and noticed that Sydney Carton seems to get it almost unanimously, save for the odd exception of Dr. Manette.
Obviously a movie has to emphasize individuals and personal relationships.
The novel, however, seems to emphasize the force of History (to be grand) or the Mob (to be bitter) and every character is in relationship to it, as are the two titular cities.
For those of you who have read it, I’ll just remind you of the names.Dr. Manette, Mr. Lorry, Lucie Manette, Sydney Carton, Charles Darnay (Evremonde), Mr. Cruncher, the Defarges, Miss Pross, Stryver, and other more minor characters.Right?None of them carry the action, per se.
Great book, great final scene.Of course much depends on strange coincidences, but who isn’t willing to accept some of these in exchange for the fine writing.
(That said, Dickens isn’t the best subway reading, so I’ve had to spend quite a few end-of-chapter moments standing on the platform after getting off the train just to make sure I got the gist of the chapter I was on.)
My favorite melancholic line is by Mr. Jarvis Lorry, talking about his youth, “when […] my faults were not confirmed in me.”
The quote in context:
Sydney turned his eyes again upon the fire, and, after a silence of a few moments, said:
“I should like to ask you: -- Does your childhood seem far off?Do the days when you sat at your mother’s knee, seem days of very long ago?”
Responding to his softened manner, Mr. Lorry [who admitted to being 78 years old] answered:
“Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no.For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way.My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me.”
* For what it’s worth, my usually jokey suggestion of Keanu Reeves in the main role is not too bad here, since the character needs some otherworldly distance.And that actress who plays Lizzy’s older sister in the newer Pride and Prejudice (I looked it up: Rosamund Pike) would be a good Lucie.Dr. Manette? Peter O’Toole.And my dear Mr. Lorry, not sure yet.Oh: Ed Asner.
You know those books where after you've finished them, you just sit, a little stunned and a lot awed? Yep, this is one of those books.
Of Bees and Mist, despite its front cover commentary and its back cover blurb, is less a story of fairytale and more a psychological exploration of family curses. Meridia is trapped in a household where magic dominates - the mist arrives to carry her father from her mother every day, though Meridia knows not where or to who it leads. When finally a Prince Charming comes along for Meridia, she falls deeply. Her parents, offering little passion for the occasion, but a sizable dowry, release Meridia into the strong and capable arms of her future husband's family. But Meridia soon despairs when she learns her marriage is not an escape from the mist that haunted her childhood, but rather a trading of that mist, for a swarm of unforgiving, ever-droning bees.
This is super-duper fiction - generous with the magical realism, slightly more generous with home truths. From the beginning you'll be happy with the quality of the writing, but it won't be until pages 100-150 that you'll settle further into the corner of your couch, and allow the fierce droning of the bees and the sweetly-perfumed tendrils of the oncoming mist to completely transport you. The setting is exotic but you can't pin it down to a particular culture - the people and places could be from anywhere and any time. But the careful mix of the old and the new keep the place from becoming neither too boringly familiar nor too aesthetically alien.
Similarly, this book could have easily drowned itself in overly lyrical language, but the sentences are, for the most part, surprisingly self-assured. Any minor irritations I had in word choice or length of scene were soothed by the superior quality of the overall work.
So, what about the characters? Brilliantly emotive. In the cultural family hierarchy, it is the men who are the expected head of the household, but there is no doubt that the women of this story are the warrior goddesses exhibiting true strength, determined to win against their opponents, manipulative and selfless in equal measure, the possessors of the greatest love that turns to the darkest hate.
Give me the woman who hasn't balked at a mother-in-law's particular 'suggestion' on how to clean her house, treat her man, raise her children- even if only in the most secret corners of her honest mind - and I won't give her this book to read. She doesn't deserve it - her life is already perfect! But if you've ever been interested how family members can undermine and overpower and twist and turn other family members for their own devices....it's a tasty pot of strong personalities indeed.
And as for the central personality - despite her flaws and miscalculations, a reader's empathy for Meridia never wavers - she is a heroine carrying herself with a clever mind and an elegant dignity all through her big mistakes and her little victories. I'm so amazed at the attention the author gives to the inner workings of the female mind in this story. Meridia is a fascinating character in and of herself, but then again, so is her chillingly-distant mother Ravenna, as is the grotesquely cruel Eva, Meridia's mother-in-law intent on bringing Meridia to her knees. Eva's weapon of choice? Words. In the form of bees. Boasting in the corridors, manipulative whispers and untrue gossip hung on the end of well-intentioned ears, must-be-kept secrets sent buzzing through the corridors and spilling out onto the streets. Wowsers.
I could go on for a fair bit more about this book, exploring its colourful themes and its epic quality... but I think perhaps it might be nicer for the reader to go fossicking and discover Of Bees and Mist's strange beauty all for themselves. Maybe then someone can answer the burning question: i.e. why hasn't this won a literary award yet?!
Though not for absolutely everyone, lovers of magic realism in the tradition of Gabriel Garcia Marquez will appreciate the book's 'exotic' quality, and those who enjoy the 'real-life' drama of spitting words and malicious acts of women protecting their territory will also tear through this family saga. Either way it's a safe bet you've never read a novel quite like this before...
Such a spunky yet elegant, commanding read - I am most suitably impressed, and kind of crushing on your writing right now, Mr Setiawan. Hope you don't mind.
"The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
I so loved this book! I want to move to Guernsey! I have had this book on my TBR list for quite awhile. One of the ladies in my library book club was talking about it and highly recommended it. But every time I went to take it out, it was gone. Very poplar book at our library. I was so hoping this book was about real people. But of course it wasn't, but I can dream about Juliet, Dawsey, Sidney, Isola and all the members of the Society. I started this book at midnight January 1 and read it off and on all day. I finished it this morning. I didn't want it to end, but of course it did. My review is at my book blog, Just Books.
My list has been changing and evolving over this past year. I have taken a few off and added a few. I hope that's OK.
I’m guessing you all know the story and have probably seen it in various adaptations but might not have read it yet.I hadn’t either; good thing we have this list.
Every time I read Dickens, I regret that I don’t have more time to read him more, and I feel bad whenever my attention drifts because, as far as I can tell, all of his passages are rewarding if you only pay attention.
The guy just seems to love to churn our words, but more than merely churn, he makes them bubble and froth.This is from the last part of A Christmas Carol:
He was checked in his transports by the churches ringing out the lustiest peals he had ever heard.Clash, clang, hammer, ding, dong, bell. Bell, dong, ding, hammer, clang, clash!Oh, glorious, glorious!
Running to the window, he opened it, and put out his head.No fog, no mist; clear, bright, jovial, stirring, cold; cold, piping for the blood to dance to; Golden sunlight; Heavenly sky; sweet fresh air; merry bells.Oh, glorious.Glorious!
Recently, my kids and I saw the new animated film version of this story.Though I think that Scrooge was miscast and that the Ghosts ought to have been played/voiced by different people, I was impressed by how creepy the movie was and how much it honored the ghost story as a scary visitation from the beyond and not just as a means for time travel.Thinking about the Present (as a gift as well as a point in time) in its relation to the other times is, after all, the point:
Oh cold, cold, rigid, dreadful Death, set up thine altar here, and dress it with such terrors as thou hast at thy command: for this is thy dominion!But of the loved, revered, and honoured head, thou canst not turn one hair to thy dread purposes, or make one feature odious.It is not that the hand is heavy and will fall down when released; it is not that the heart and pulse are still; but that the hand WAS open, generous, and true; the heart brave, warm, and tender; and the pulse a man’s.Strike, Shadow, strike!And see his good deeds springing from the wound, to sow the world with life immortal!
If I were overly harsh, I'd say that the true crime Oscar Wilde was guilty of wasn't "somdomizing" (as his accuser, the Marquess of Queensberry wrote) a young man (the Marquess' son, Lord Alfred Douglas), but that he couldn't self-edit in gaol ("jail" to us - and Reading is pronounced "redding," but you knew that).
In other words, these two works are a bit unfocused and meandering. It appears that Wilde meant to edit De Profundis for publication, but the ballad is as it stands, a bit odd in its relation of form to content. The ballad is a ballad without real plot - which is, I guess, what prison life was for Wilde. The plot was an internal one of self-forgiveness and learning the redemptive power of tears.
De Profundis puts it better, but it takes a long time to get to the wonderful passages about Sorrow:
Behind Joy and Laughter there may be a temperament, coarse, hard and callous. But behind Sorrow there is always Sorrow.
Pleasure for the beautiful body, but Pain for the beautiful Soul.
and the analysis of Christ as artist:
He realised in the entire sphere of human relations that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of Art is the sole secret of creation.
[...] Christ is the most supreme of Individualists. [...] one only realises one's soul by getting rid of all alien passions, all acquired culture, and all external possessions be they good or evil.
But all this is wrapped in long diatribes on the sins of the addressee of the eighty-plus-tightly-written-page letter, Lord Alfred Douglas. All I can say after having read about all of this kid's selfish and nasty behaviour is, Dang, he must have been really hot.
(To sum up: I'm glad I read them, but I only recommend the middle part of De Profundis. You're better off with the Happy Prince stories, the plays, or The Picture of Dorian Gray, which I will probably reread soon even though it's not on my list, making me fall even further behind.)
Okay, so maybe Pelham Grenville wasn’t on top of his game anymore at ninety years of age (P.G. lived from 1881 to 1975).But Jeeves is f. no matter what the circs.
If you haven’t read a Wodehouse yet I recommend you begin with Right Ho, Jeeves (1934), though I’m sure whoever does the recommending will recommend the first Wodehouse he or she read.His humor is of a somewhat formulaic type – but the formulae are original to him and executed exquisitely.You won’t regret picking one up.
(For those of you who have read Wodehouse, here are some characters to bring smiles to your faces: Aunt Dahlia, Anatole, Stinker Pinker, Madeline Bassett, Market Snodsbury, the Junior Ganymede Society.Old friends all, no?)
Isis is a book I received for review. In the instant I saw the cover and Douglas Clegg's website I was overcome by book lust, but I didn't realise that the book was a novella until it arrived in the mail. I mistakenly wrote the work off straight away as a poorly marketed children's picture book, but I was wrong. So very wrong.
Isis is the story of Iris Catherine Villiers, a girl growing up in a large, dark house atop rocky cliffs, with a governess who seems cold beneath her beauty, a set of older brother twins (one good, one bad) and a mother who has given up her dreams of the stage to play house while the children's father is at war. In a moment of furious will, Iris causes an event which alters her heart, her spirit, her very existence. But it is how Iris chooses to deal with this grief that carries the momentum of this book, along with the dark consequences that result from Iris' poisonous choice.
Strangely didactic in execution, Isis is a storytelling with the same black undertones as those existing in nursery rhymes and traditional Brothers Grimm fairytales. As the title Isis directs, the book draws its central nature from the Ancient Egyptian myth of the Queen Isis, who loses her husband, Osiris, to murder by a jealous enemy. Osiris as husband (who also happens to be Isis' brother!) is cut into parts by the enemy's wish and strewn all over the land. Rather than leave Osiris to rest in pieces, Isis' grief spurs her on to hunt for each piece and reassemble Osiris in the hope that he will be transformed to her living, breathing lover once more. As it turns out, the new Osiris cannot exist in the land of the living, but in Egyptian tradition where once you're royalty, you're always royalty, Osiris finds his new place as King, this time as the Lord of the Dead.
The writing in Clegg's Isis is Gothic in style, and sparse, with a preference for a strong and clear story without clogged detail. The author (wisely, I believe) draws all the characters sketchily, differentiating between them with a few carefully chosen sensory descriptions. For example, Iris' twin brothers can be told apart as "Spence smelled, in the summer, distinctly of dirt and pond water, while Harvey had a fragrance as if he'd rolled in lavender." There is nothing original about the story's characters unfortunately - you have the groundskeeper who enjoys regaling Iris with local ghost stories, the debaucherous nanny and the good and evil twin in a sprawling Victorian ancestral mansion with pulsing family tombs situated nearby. But it is the twist on the legend of Isis and Osiris that makes this black fable so refreshing. While Isis in the Egyptian myth is treated as a heroine, Clegg has treated his protagonist differently- Iris makes her choices out of the selfishness of longing and loss, and she is held at arm's length for the reader to see her actions as dark folly rather than heroic in nature.
Strangely, the novella is marketed as a horror, as evidenced by the book trailer:
To my mind, however, those in search of a mysterious horror will be disappointed. There are some slightly horrible moments, but when it boils down to it Isis is a sad, wispy tale of love and the selfishness of loss and longing. In all truthfulness, this is not a book that promises to excite and delight and set the heart to hammering - its beauty is the more shy, retiring type.
Despite enjoying the generally creepy atmosphere, the slightly-cliched characters, the symbolism and the pretty writing, what truly makes this precious novella covetable is the gorgeous illustrations. Done in a style reminiscent of the original Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the spindly artworks are melancholy sweetness and ghostly sorrow in equal measure. The illustrations are clever as well as beautiful - the pictures twist and turn - you may glimpse an eerie face on the normalcy of a tree trunk, and then blink and the face is gone. You'll be wondering whether you're seeing things, but really - that's half the fun, innit?!
I could attempt to criticise Mr Clegg's sophisticated offering by wishing it to have been a novel rather than novella, but on second thoughts any extra length would completely ruin its prettily poetic nature.
All in all, this book was such a pleasant surprise, and I'll be reading more of Douglas Clegg's works having so enjoyed this latest one.
But if you're still wondering whether YOU will enjoy it, I can only give the following guidance: if you're the type of person that holds their breath going past graveyards for fear of inciting bad luck (or worse, raising the dead), this book might make your fears a little worse. But if you're not too afraid of such things, and you can appreciate for a few moments the delicate beauty of, say a spiderweb's intricate threadings, before brushing it out of your path, then read Isis - it's enchantingly dark, sorrowful and only slightly dangerous.
What is that, you say? A book that can be described as Alice in Wonderland meets Harry Potter? YES PLEASE!
Random Magic by Sasha Soren is a firecracker box crammed full of crayon-colourful, whizz-happy tricks. I was so excited to be accepted as part of the somewhat extensive blog tour for this book I almost wet my pants. Figuratively, of course. And the care package I received upon acceptance into the tour did little to quash my anticipation - there were chocolates, rubber duckies and a symbolic (but very real) blue feather that suddenly floats gently down into your lap as if out of nowhere, when you reach the very middle of the book... Obviously, the author and her marketing team care very much about spraying the right ambience to surround and envelop the story, and that's what struck me most about this novel: The Atmosphere. Well, that and the fact that upon finishing this book you'll want to sit down, put your legs up, nurse your poor frazzled head and sip some cool water, as if you've run a marathon.
But first, the story itself. Henry Witherspoon is an educated, upper-class boy who is thrown almost absentmindedly into adventure - when Alice goes missing from the beloved classic Alice In Wonderland, Henry must kick himself into action before Alice, and Wonderland itself spontaneously combusts. He unwittingly enlists the help of the self-proclaimed "doodlewitch" Winnie, and together they prepare themselves for an Alice-hunt. Leaping from book to book looking for the girl with hair the colour and consistency of cream, Henry and Winnie must battle a myriad of mythical beings and be assaulted by Labyrinth-style puzzles in order to solve the mystery of the little girl lost. Can Henry and Winnie "save the world by tea time"? I sure hope so. I thought at this point I'd also include the book trailer, so here it is:
Random Magic is such a glorious idea. It's as if Ms Soren was on an extreme sugar high during the "lightbulb moment". It's full of whimsy and teacups - you really have to suspend a helluva lot of disbelief to go with the flow of the story, but if you do, the magic carpet'll lift right off the ground and take you with it, whether you're ready or not. And to be perfectly truthful, I wasn't really ready to be carried along for about three or four chapters. I resisted it - the story launches straight into the adventure and there are an incredible amount of characters to keep track of all in an instant. But after a bit of time and some calming breaths you'll settle into the rhythm. This is the perfect book for chillun who are interested in learning about the foundations of classical myth, and thrive on what I like to call "instant-noodle" adventure - two minutes and the adventure's ready to gobble up.
Almost completely dialogue-driven and jammed with halting sentences, concentration is a must for positive readings of Random Magic. At points I got rather annoyed at Henry's intrusions and repetitive questions on Winnie's pearls of wisdom, and wished he would just sit down and be a good boy and listen to what the wacky witch had to say, dognamit! I do have a short attention-span though, so perhaps I'd be in the minority on this one. You might find Henry's curiosity appealing and idiosyncratic in a GOOD way, *wink*.
This is a cracker of a book to read to some young "advanced readers" just before bedtime. Girls and boys will be dreamily exhausted after running an absolute gauntlet of crazy monsters, and so will you. Kiddies will also appreciate the rapid bursts of onomatopoeia and the general witty commentary from Winnie zipping and zagging through each page. Don't get me wrong though, teens and older ones can enjoy this style of book too - there's some more mature humour that thankfully can go over the younger heads, but generally those who love the adventures of Alice in Wonderland will find something familiar to love in Random Magic, too.
Interestingly, in the Advanced Copy version I received, there's a "deleted scene" at the end of the novel which Ms Soren, along with her editing team, decided to cut away because it didn't fit well with the rest of the story. And I totally understand what she means. The deleted scene is a backstory about one of the characters which lends itself more to the "evil clown" side of the Carnival fair rather than the "ferris wheel" feel of the rest of the book, if you catch my drift. Strangely though, I think I prefer it - I do love me some tales of dark whimsy - the blacker, the better. Again, it might just be personal preference - just the way I prefer Alice's Adventures Through The Looking Glass to the flossier (and more well-known) companion (see that review, here). I can only hope that Ms Soren might choose to write a sequel in the vein of the deleted story...I'll cross my fingers for it. And toes.
Actually, this book reminds me a lot of a young Australian author, Alexandra Adornetto, who at 14 wrote a book called The Shadow Thief and spouting the writing style of Enid Blyton... on crack. Fortunately, Alexandra won the lottery in cover art for her book (see cover here), whereas Random Magic's cover...well, let's be nice and say I have a bone to pick with it. I mean, CLEARLY, this cover is Nicole Kidman's face. Post-too-many-botox-and-collagen-injections. With red pigtails. It ain't the most original picture by any book's standards. And nor is it the right style for this particular book, in my humble opinion. Now I know that this is not the author's fault in any way, but I do hope that perhaps there might be a new cover of the book printed soon. Something that better depicts the quirky, youthful and left-of-centredness of the book, like a tea party scene with Henry as the Mad Hatter, for example, rather than the face of a mainstream 42 year old celebrity painted in somewhat garish shading. But, eh, it's a small bone to pick! And maybe no one agrees with me anyway, hehe.
All in all, Random Magic might be a bit too quirky for some, but it's a strangely lovable creature. Kind of like that eccentric neighbour three doors down who recites poetry to her flowers, and throws the newspaper back at the postman. AND has about a thousand cats popping out of each nook and cranny around the yard, including the evil spitting one that you have to cross the road in order to avoid on the way to school. But all is forgiven because that same strange neighbour bakes the most delicious cupcakes - and always offers you the biggest one.
This is exactly what Random Magic is like. Try a bite, and see if it's to YOUR taste.
Rating: 3.5 candy-coloured stars for Random Magic.
P.S. Since it's on tour, why not see what other people have to say about Random Magic? I'm lucky enough to be one of the first blog stops - see the rest of the bloggers boarding the Random Magic train HERE. Toot toot!
I finished Blood Meridian (1985) a few days ago, but I needed a few days to digest what I'd read before posting anything. The novel follows The Kid, a teenager from Tennessee who joins a group of outlaws in Mexico and helps them murder, rape, and steal their way across the countryside. McCarthy doesn't gloss over any of the nasty parts, either -- the violence in the book is graphic, unsettling, and abundant. Even so, I don't want to give the impression that the violence in the book is needlessly gratuitous. I mean, it is absolutely gratuitous, excessive even, but never needlessly so. Every last bit of it is central to the several themes of the novel.
On one level, Blood Meridian is a blunt de-mythologizing of the Wild West. Hollywood's cattle rustlers whose bullets never hit their target and strangely honorable duel-at-high-noon bad guys have been replaced with the actual wanted men, cavalry soldiers, and Indian warriors who terrified populaces across the West and Southwest in all their psychopathic, nigh-feral grotesqueness. Men are disemboweled and mutilated, babies are dashed against rocks, women are scalped and raped as they lay dying. It's damned tough to romanticize anything about this part of North American history after you understand the sorts of things that really went on back then.
The violence also serves as an exploration of the depravities in which humans are capable of indulging, and some of those explorations take the form of ad hoc discourses by Judge Holden, the outlaw gang's second in command and one of the most remarkably complex characters I've come across in recent memory (he's a sort of Death/Old Testament/Satan figure, among other things).
The dark subject matter makes the book uncomfortable to read in places, but hopefully that won't stop someone from reading it themselves. A large part of its impact on the reader lies in the stark power of its unflinching depictions of human cruelty, and the book absolutely deserves every bit of the praise that's been heaped upon it over the years. Just expect to come out of the experience a bit drained.
Rarely do I feel that a book is written precisely for me. But, then again, rarely do I pass by an opportunity to read something by Nicholson Baker, so obviously my taste tends in his direction.
Anyway, I happen to write silly little poems for a radio show and this book is a kind of apologia for poems that rhyme.
And it's very intelligently written and has nicely intertwined stories of what narrator thinks and does and says and what happens to him. Ah, the book is a delight.
And, to top it all off, the reader gets lots of lovely inspirations to read more poetry, which is what I've been doing since The Anthologist came out in September.
I'll be getting back to my list soon. But first I'm encouraging you to read some Nicholson Baker. Always a treat.
