Books of 2018 Part 4: 20-11
#FinishingOffSeries #AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed
This is going to seem an odd way to start this writeup, but I feel like
this trilogy conclusion suffers from the main shortcoming I've seen levelled at
The Last Jedi: the storyline here is
really quite thin and flimsy, and it's really just an excuse and a device to finish
off the series and fill in all the gaps in the back story. But, as I was with The Last Jedi, I'm ok with this because
it's otherwise very engaging storytelling. I mean, the scope and the reach of
this trilogy has had diminishing returns in a big way from the explosive impact
of Oryx & Crake; The Year of the Flood felt to me a bit
heavy in the narrative detail and light on the philosophy/social commentary.
This has less to explore on the philosophical details but it weaves them nicely
into the back-filling storyline. I couldn't help but feel though that where the
other two books seemed to span decades in time, and even years in their present
timelines, this feels like a week passes from start to finish and the only new
loose end that gets tied up is the one that was left at the end of the previous
book. But I like Atwood's return to ruminating on writing, and the impact that
the written word can have on the universe. I like where she takes that
rumination too; otherwise this just felt easier to read, possibly because there
was less exposition than The Year of the
Flood or possibly just it's been less time in between books for me. But
this was engaging, a little hollow-feeling yet still meaty and substantial
Atwood.
#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed
This is the best I've read from Rushdie in a while, although it's far
from perfect. Choosing as his - at times Gonzo - narrator an ambitious and
aspiring filmmaker and student of film, this allows him to make all the
pastichey similes and allusions that he wants to the high art of cinema, from
Satyajit Ray to Hitchcock and Louis Malle. But when Rushdie isn't trying to
reframe a story or a mythology, which I found so awkwardly handled in The Enchantress of Florence, his stories
flow far more naturally which is what happens here. At the same time his
imagery is not particularly clear here and it does seem a bit of a hodgepodge
of Roman empire decline, lots of cinematic references, plus
Shakespearean/Sophoclean tragedy, plus comic books. While the story and the
tragedy unfold very fluently and engagingly, the characters are not fully
textured and, in some cases - like the manipulative Vasilisa - a bit shallow
and even archetypally clichéd. Likewise the purpose of setting this against the
backdrop of the Obama presidency, and the broader tragedy with which it ended
in 2016, is unclear in terms of its apposition to the narrative; it feels like
an excuse for Rushdie to get out his own hot take on the 2016 US election.
Still, whatever flaws the book has, Rushdie is above all an imaginative and
entertaining writer and it's worthwhile to get his take on almost anything even
though it’s nothing particularly surprising here.
#ClassicsIShouldRead
I really quite enjoyed this. It's quite nakedly the sort of book a
sci-fi writer creates in the process of trying to make sci-fi more respectable,
or more superficially, to demonstrate that sci-fi writers can be cognisant of
other more canonical literature. And I frame that as an insult just to
denigrate his really clumsily shoehorned Beowulf
references, first of all, but I mean it also as a compliment. The structure of
the narrative is obviously based on the Canterbury
Tales, as a group of 7 pilgrims to a far-off space colony (where death is
almost certainly assured for most of them, just to raise the stakes) tell their
tales of why they are there, one by one. But where Chaucer's work is broadly
scattered, and to me frustratingly incomplete, this draws the tales together in
a way that's quite scintillating at times, as the tales are never unrelated to
each other or the wraparound pilgrimage story. It kind of becomes the complex
interwoven text that Canterbury might have been had Chaucer finished it and had
a twentieth-century view of the need for stories to contribute to something
larger than themselves. It's mildly contrived – in that it's really lucky that
the stories are told in this order, as some of them would REALLY spoil or
preclude others had they come earlier, but it's a great bit of world-building
and then meditating on the themes emerging from that world.
#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed
I've been trying to get my hands on this book for a long time; I just
couldn't bring myself to buy a copy but it was never available in libraries
(despite Cities of the Plain, the
third book in the trilogy, being available). Was it worth the wait? Yes, yes it
was. I find myself wanting to keep McCarthy at arm's length because he is such
a blokey writer, but this is a curious book in its oeuvre because it has a
blend of his usual lawless brutality with a very romantic and humanistic
narrative. Our hero John Brady Cole is an aimless drifter cut off from his
family, who decides to travel down to Mexico with his friend. He wanders
through a series of adventures and misadventures in fairly typical McCarthyite
fashion; corruption, brutality, and murder all rear their ugly heads. But the
central misadventure also involves a heartfelt romance, and throughout he
retains this integrity and humanity that in other novels would likely lead him
into naive exploitation but here just manages to cement his resolve and
varyingly direct his otherwise directionless travels. The central theme of the
book seems to be where humanity can sit amongst a world of corruption.
McCarthy's women are naturally a little shallow; either hardened ice-queens or
liberated unusual beauties, but in the context of this manly, desperado world they
do work and have identity and agency even if they’re still just plot devices. I
don't know, I'm ashamed of how predictable I am for enjoying this work, but it
does feel intricately crafted, and optimistic within an engaging and vividly
illustrative work.
#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed
Mishima definitely has a style. It's otherworldly really; beyond just
being from an oriental standpoint and then translated, his view of the world
seems supernatural and bizarre. He writes with deliberate artistic vision, full
of florid and vivid descriptions and has an authorial voice that is unlike
anyone else I've read. Where with The
Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea (My #3 book of last year) I was
unsure if it was savagely beautiful or just savage, this crystallises it for me
a bit. In this case it's just savage, but it's savage in the way that nature
can be savage, and that in itself is beautiful. But jeez, there's a nihilistic
view propounded here. Set against the backdrop of the end and aftermath of
WWII, this takes the form of a first person narrative told by an unnamed
apprentice Zen priest in the titular temple who suffers from a stutter.
Throughout the book he wanders from misadventure to misadventure, alternately
searching either for beauty in the world or cruelty in the world and often
conflating the two with the help of his acquaintances. The otherworldliness
gives this the air of a parable or metaphor, but for what this is I don't know.
At times it reminded me of Kim Ki-duk’s film Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring with a hope that we'd find
redemption in the end, but knowing it was Mishima, I felt doubtful of such a
resolution. I feel like this is perhaps a bit elusive in its meaning and
consequently in its overall value so even though I'm as beguiled as I was with The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea,
the enigma behind that beguilement doesn't intrinsically equate to value. So I
feel mystified without the mystification itself being seductive. Fascinating
read but also quite baffling.
#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed
I enjoyed this, but I can't help feeling like it's lightweight Eliot. I
mean, it's short first of all but that shortness also results in me not feeling
like I know enough about these characters. What made The Mill on the Floss (My #2 book of last year) so captivating to
me was that Eliot spent such a huge amount of time and effort sketching the
characters in fine detail so by the time I noticed the plot machinations moving
I was deeply and irrevocably invested. In Silas
Marner the whole thing works well as a digestible parable about the value of
honesty as well as a social commentary on the privilege of the idle rich vs the
ethic of the working class, but there are elements of the narrative I felt I
could get to know better. The psychology of the title character, the shrewd but
wretched dishonesty of Godfrey Cass are all a bit sketchily drawn, and the
character of Nancy Lammeter I feel was particularly undercooked as a
well-mannered, beautiful rich girl and little else. It isn't by any stretch a
bad book, but the point is that Eliot is one of those writers who I give free
licence to just keep on writing and writing and writing and draw out the
experience to an absurd extent, because she's so adept at it. As satisfying and
neatly wrapped up (and of course, skilfully crafted) this fable is, it also
left me wanting more.
#Ummmm... #ZeitgeistBooksIShouldRead?
I don’t usually read books in their own milieu and time, so this is a
bit unusual. I came to this after the hype had plateaued a bit, but it was
still fresh, and yeah it's worth the hype. I can definitely see why it's struck
such a chord; not just because it gets to the heart of the issue of race and
the shadow of slavery that still hangs over the states, but because - despite
its uncomfortable subject matter - it is really compulsively readable. The
anachronistic/quasi sci-fi element of it is used basically as a vehicle (no pun
intended) to drive home the immense achievement of the underground movement but
is also a very successful metaphor for how restrictive but intricate is the
network of slave reprieve. Regardless, it helps make it readable and digestible
because the ‘vehicle’ is a familiar and conveniently understood bit of
machinery to act as a conduit into a bygone era. I also feel there's been
enough conventional narratives of people smuggling/hiding/emancipating set in
this era, so this post-modern take on it is quite refreshing. Am I saying that
what sets this apart is that it's very accessible and even populist? That's
certainly part of it, yes. But Whitehead doesn't shy away from discussing death
and racism and property even though he doesn't get pornographic about the
details. It also - despite being written by a PoC - almost trod the line of
being about good heroic white people saving black slaves from torment, but the
people who arguably suffer the most in this book are the good, moral white
people doing the right thing. At least they suffer, in most cases, similar
fates. This is both a worthwhile book and a strangely enjoyable one that
delivers some necessary catharsis.
#BookerPrizeWinners
This is an enjoyable read. Set in and around a crumbling, fading hotel
in Ireland after the end of World War I, it focuses on the character of Major
Brendan Archer, who finds himself entangled in the family who own the Hotel
Majestic by having ‘accidentally’ gotten engaged to the eldest daughter. When
his fiancée dies early in the book (minor spoiler yes, but really it’s just the
inciting incident), he sticks around the hotel in a way that acts as a metaphor
for both dispossessed armed forces after war but predominantly the lingering
stages of British colonialism sticking around where it no longer serves a
purpose. The whole book and the Hotel Majestic are a metaphor for the fading
British empire; a metaphor that is really so explicit that any criticism of its
lack of subtlety is misguided, because Farrell as much as tells us "the
hotel is a metaphor" by peppering the narrative action with little
(fabricated or otherwise) parallel vox
pops and newspaper clippings dispatched from all corners of the empire
about growing troubles in India, South Africa and, of course, Ireland. I'm not
sure that this has the sharpness of wit or pathos that Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall or Brideshead Revisited have, but it's definitely in the same
category: nostalgically celebrating British unity while at the same time
savagely lampooning the British hubris and ambition to make the world its
servant. The Major and Edward, the owner of the hotel, play off each other in
this sort of byplay between two different British sides, the pomp and ceremony
and tradition side (Edward) and the reasonable but impassioned side (the
Major). While the metaphor is unsubtle, it's rich with plenty of depths and
branches to explore, from the fiery Irish Catholic figure of Sarah (with whom
our two protagonists are in love) to the upstart Cambridge students touring
Ireland in order to study British imperialism, and the old lady residents of
the hotel who simply don't know how to let go of the old days. My favourite
joke is the fact – alluded to twice in the book – that in the face of all this
strife and upheaval, what really gets the characters riled up is the news that
England is losing the cricket in Australia. Just that whole bubble of English
tradition and rule being popped in such a trivial way, it's really marvellous,
enjoyable stuff.
#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed #AtLeastSomewhat
I feel like this is the first time I've properly 'got' a Jasper Fforde
book. I've enjoyed everything I've read from him in the past, but I've always
been at a bit of a distance because of how chaotic and convoluted his
narratives are and wanting all the plot points to be tied up at the end (which
they never are to my satisfaction). You do kind of need to go with the flow
though and allow all the abrupt left turns and absurdities to just happen
rather than expecting them to make sense straight away. In this case I feel I
went in with my disbelief suspended enough in advance that I could do that,
properly. It also maybe helps that I'm more familiar with the source material
he's lampooning here, namely nursery rhymes and kid’s tales, than I was with Jane Eyre as a critical plot device in
the two Thursday Next novels I've read (I’ve now, as you know from my 40-31
post, read Jane Eyre finally). This
book, regardless of my mindset, was just completely whack, with a dozen absurd
over-the-top plot threads involving giant cucumbers, self-repairing cars, a
community of bears with sanctioned porridge rationing, and a psychopathic gingerbread
man. Within the chaos there was a lot of Fforde's very dry ironic humour and a
surprising amount of heart as well. I feel like all the previous works of his
I've read had all these things as well but this is the first time I've fully
embraced them all and as such it's my favourite. One sidenote: this was the
second book I read this year, and the second in a row in fact (more on the
other still to come) where the title is kind of a spoiler. The concept of a
fourth bear isn't even introduced until about page 300 of a 370-page novel and
becomes the crucial figure in solving the mystery. So while he could have
called this about a hundred different things given all the plot machinations,
this one felt irrelevant for most of the book but I was unconsciously asking
“what’s the fourth bear?” throughout so it was obviously the big twist when
finally introduced.
#AuthorsIvePreviouslyEnjoyed
This feels bizarrely to be one of McEwan’s more disturbing novels, and
yet nobody gets horribly betrayed, tortured or murdered in it. The fact that it’s
a first person narrative is largely part of its unsettling nature, since the
narrator has an uncomfortably warped and distorted view of the way the world
works. This is necessary due to his age but also the circumstances he finds
himself in. Beyond the unusual eyes through which we view these events, the
disturbing nature of the narrative is due also to the strangeness that the
narrator layers into his tale in such a nonchalant way. There’s an uncanny
sense to this being trotted out as normal, as routine; like there’s nothing
wrong with what’s going on and it almost pulls a con off in making me feel that
it was normal, or at least that there was nothing especially sinister
happening. That is indeed the point though, and the subtle ‘resistance against
the establishment’ attitude, too, helps to deliver the creepy underdog vibes
that help the subterfuge of the narrative. Ultimately I’m a bit unclear at what
was really at stake beyond McEwan delivering this intriguing thought exercise
and unsettling provocation and in spite of being detached by necessity from the
strangeness, it haunted me for a while. And yes I’m being obtuse and elusive with
spoilers, because frankly to reveal any plot points – as the blurb of the book
does – is to spoil the impact.
So just on the verge of entering my top ten, I am of course now going to take a backwards leap for tomorrow's post and write up my bottom 7 books of the year, to leave you hanging an extra day for the top ten.
posted by Sean's Beard at 2:50 PM
2 Comments:
But at least one of today's lot has gone into my ' to read' list (guess which).
Ummm. Underground Railroad maybe? I don't know what you haven't read though.
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