The Handmaid's Tale

This is the second novel from Margaret Atwood that I've read and she is quickly becoming one of my favorites. The Blind Assassin was a great book I read earlier this year and I finally got around to following it up with The Handmaid's Tale. And while this novel lacks the plot complexity of the former, the writing is still first class and the story engrossing.

Set in the relatively near future, The Handmaid's Tale is a first person account of the dystopian society the United States has become after the assassination of the President and Congress by a fundamentalist religious group. Subtext informs the reader that fertility has become a major issue and so society has become very strictly ordered, with women not only being stripped of all rights, but becoming subjugates to the will of the ruling order of men. One strata of this new class system is the 'handmaid', women who are still fertile and are given as concubines to influential men ('commanders'). The wives of these commanders naturally resent the handmaids, but are a full part of the ceremony that takes place with the goal of procreation. Our narrator, Offred, slowly unfolds not only the lot she has been reduced to, but also gives a general history of how things came to be this way. A postscript sheds further light, but many Offred's ultimate fate remains somewhat of a mystery.

The novel raises a number of questions that could provide the grist for many meaningful conversations. One could argue that this is a feminist novel while another might argue that Atwood was trying to show a possible extreme reaction to feminism. I have no doubt that this book is a staple in Women's Studies and Women's Literature courses all over the world. I enjoyed this novel very much for its suspense, original plot, and for the way it made me think.

Another issue this book raised with me is the question of what constitutes science fiction. I noted in an earlier post that Atwood does not think of her novels as science fiction, and I think I understand that position with this book. While it is set in the future, does that automatically make a book fall within the 'science fiction' genre?

This novel was made into a film in the mid 90s starring the late Natasha Richardson.

In a Glass Darkly

If you are a fan of Edgar Allen Poe, you will probably enjoy this collection of five short stories and novellas by Sheridan Le Fanu. Tied together by the idea that each of these 'case histories' come from the files of a deceased doctor who specialized in the paranormal, each is capable of giving the reader the creeps.

'Green Tea', 'The Familiar', and 'Mr. Justice Harbottle' all revolve around the idea of paranormal visitation: the main characters are visited by something or someone that others can't necessarily see. And while I enjoyed each of these stories, it was the last two that make me recommend this for fans of horror and the occult.

'The Room in the Dragon Volant' is the longest of the stories and plays out more as a mystery story with supernatural overtones. It would have made the basis for a great Sherlock Holmes story and is truly suspenseful and eerie. While most readers will pick out that a double cross is in store for the narrator, it is hard to tell where it will come from.

'Carmilla' is a frightening tale of vampires that might pre-date Dracula. Le Fanu does an excellent job with description and pacing. Some of the descriptive writing ranks up there with Hawthorne from the same general time period.

The full text of these stories can be found here.

Vile Bodies

I am a fan of British humor. To me, the Brits have mastered the nifty trick of mixing the absurd with the very, very dry. Peter Sellers, Monty Python, and Ricky Gervais all come to mind. Evelyn Waugh, best known for his novel Brideshead Revisited, has also tapped into this reservoir of English comedy in his second novel, Vile Bodies.

Set in the years after the first World War, Vile Bodies centers on the character of Adam, a down on his luck writer who undergoes a series of reversals of fortune. He is in love with Nina, but alternately does and doesn't have the money to marry her. And while their up and down love affair is the focus, the novel is really a sharp lampoon of the 'jet set' of the day and their follies and foibles. Characters such as Mrs. Melrose Ape, the evangelist, Mr. Outrage, the Prime Minister, and the Drunken Major are on hand to act as a canvas for Waugh's broad swipes at British pre-war culture. All of the latest fads and fancies are on hand: zeppelins, motor races, parties, film making, and more parties. The juxtaposition between the old who are still trying to embrace Victorian morals, and the young, who are portrayed as vapid, yet resourceful, is one of the things that makes this novel stand out.

A particularly thoughtful point for me was the ending, which finds Britain at war in Europe, and the various fates of our characters seem fitting for the action that has preceded. Great stuff. The book was adapted into a film by Stephen Fry.

The Last of Mr. Norris

This Christopher Isherwood novel was picked randomly off the list. I was intrigued when I found it on Amazon as they had one used copy in fair condition for $5 and two first editions for over $900! You can probably guess which I bought. I found out later that it can be found fairly readily as part of a two book collection called The Berlin Stories.

The cover of the version I have shows a man sitting on a couch with lots of young people around him engaged in some heavy petting. The blurbs on the cover promise lots of smut, orgies, and S&M, 1930s style. It turns out the book is very tame in regards to titillation. It is actually a pretty light spy/double cross/crime novel set in Berlin in the early 1930s. And while the title character does enjoy a little light bondage, most of the perversions promised on the cover are only hinted at in the text. Our narrator, Bradshaw, an English teacher in Berlin, meets Arthur Norris on a train to Berlin. They become fast friends and Bradshaw becomes intrigued by the effete, shady Norris. Slowly he becomes entangled in some of Norris' scams revolving around the nascent Communist party in Berlin and the rise of the Nazis. More interesting than the novel itself is the fact that this book and his subsequent Berlin stories were the basis for the famous musical and film Cabaret.

As a political thriller, it is fairly second-rate, although it is interesting to read a contemporary account of Berlin in between the wars from the English perspective, especially when the reader knows full well what will happen in a very short time. While this novel wasn't terrible, I'm not really sure how it merited making the list.

Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord

Louis de Bernieres might be best know for Captain Corelli's Violin, a novel that was turned into a film starring Nicolas Cage. I haven't read that book, but it's a sure thing I will after having read Senor Vivo and the Coca Lord. This novel epitomizes the style of magical realism that is often associated with Latin and South American writers. The only catch is that although this book is set in South America, de Bernieres is actually British. One can assume that a teaching stint in Colombia led him to set his first three novels in that location.

Dionisio Vivo is a philosophy professor at a University in an unnamed South American country. He has begun to gain renown for the letters he sends to the local paper decrying the coca trade and its grim byproducts in his country. The local coca lord takes umbrage and makes several attempts on Dionisio's life. Through a series of mishaps, some extremely comical, Dionisio not only survives the attempts but earns a reputation as a godlike figure who is unstoppable. The coca lord lives in mortal fear of him, which only causes him to redouble his efforts to kill Vivo. Throughout all of this, Dionisio is courting a beautiful young woman, Anica, who is the daughter of a shady arms dealer who has kept the coca lord well stocked with weapons throughout his reign of terror. Anica is ultimately faced with a very difficult decision, which has tragic consequences for all involved.

This is my favorite book I have read in quite some time. The story is excellent, but it is the writing that leaves me wanting more. De Bernieres' prose takes the reader through the ecstasy of new love to the depths that lead a major character to attempt suicide. Meanwhile, the whimsical and sometimes magical world he creates is populated with memorable characters such as Ramon, the policeman who protects Dionisio, Lazaro, the tragic leper, and the motley band of women (Las Locas) who create a camp on the edge of town with the sole purpose of bearing Dionisio's children. The novel grows darker in the final third, and the magical elements step fully to the forefront. A very brief epilogue points out the tragedy of coca trade in South America and brings home how difficult the situation is. Laugh out loud funny and startlingly poignant, this one gets a very high recommendation from me.

The Brothers Karamazov

I hadn't been in the mood to tackle a long classic for quite some time, but early in August I decided to read Dostoevsky's last novel, The Brothers Karamazov. I've actually owned it for some time, but it has sat on the shelf as I waited for an opportune time to read it. I'm generally a very fast reader, and the book isn't that long (700 some pages), but it took me the better part of a month to get through it. That's not to say I didn't enjoy it however....

The book explores the lives of four brothers and their somewhat repulsive father, Fyodor Pavlovitch. Dmitri, the oldest, is a sensual being who is betrothed to one woman but in love with another. Unfortunately, his father is also smitten with this woman and is actively hoping to steal her away. Ivan is the intellectual, a deep thinker, and remote emotionally. Alexy is a spiritual young man who holds in highest esteem not his own father, but his spiritual father, a monk at the local monastery. Finally there is the servant and cook Smerdyakov, who is probably Fyodor's bastard. While the main plot of the novel centers around the murder of Fyodor Pavlovitch and the investigation into which son killed him, Dostoevsky's epic aims much higher than being a basic crime novel.

Dostoevsky was shooting for nothing less than a dissection of the modern (at the time) Russian man and his uneasy place at the intersection of politics, law, and religion. His use of psychology predates Freud and anticipates many of the Austrian's basic tenets in regards to the relationship between fathers and sons. There are long discourses on duty, responsibility, honor, religion, justice and everything in between interwoven into the main action. And while this causes the book to drag in places, there is no denying Dostoevsky's grand ambition. He clearly meant The Brothers Karamazov to be his crowing glory, and while I didn't enjoy it as much as Crime and Punishment, his reach did not exceed his grasp.

Miss Lonelyhearts/The Day of the Locust

Nathanael West produced only four novels during his short life. The best of the two are Miss Lonelyhearts (really a novella at 58 pages) and The Day of the Locust. I bought them packaged together in one book and read them back to back.

Miss Lonelyhearts is widely regarded as one of the finest works of the twentieth century. Set in early 1930s New York City, Miss Lonelyhearts is a man who writes an agony column for a daily newspaper. The hopelessness and hard luck that crosses his desk every day has begun to wear on him in significant ways. As he drifts through life in an alcohol haze, he vainly tries to find meaning in life, mostly through an attempt to embrace Christianity. His hard case boss Shrike and would be fiancee Betty offer contrasting views for him to latch on to. I had a mild hangover when I read this story, and the descriptions of drunkenness were tough to handle. The action is somewhat surreal, and as a look at the role of Christianity in an increasingly detached world, Miss Lonelyhearts works very well.

I enjoyed The Day of the Locust more of the two, however. What Miss Lonelyhearts did for (or to) New York, The Day of the Locust does in spades for Hollywood. West had moved to Hollywood to work on screenplays shortly before his death, and apparently he had a rich experience in a short time if this book is any indication. This novel captures the desperation, shallowness, and depravity of early Hollywood in all its glory. Tod Hackett is a young set designer with artistic ambitions who is hopelessly smitten by Faye, a wannabe actress. The story revolves around Tod and his fellow suitors (Earle, the cowboy, and Homer, the midwestern transplant) and their relative success in obtaining the unobtainable. In many ways Faye represents Hollywood in all its fatuousness: beautiful to look at, entertaining to be a part of, but ultimately hollow. The scene of mob violence at the end is truly evocative, and the book stands as an indictment as well as a strange celebration of the insanity of the place and era.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler

Sometimes experimental fiction works for me, sometimes it doesn't. I loved Jealousy but disliked Cigarettes. If on a Winter's Night a Traveler falls squarely in between.

Italo Calvino's late 1970s novel is a considered a stone classic by most, but I had a very difficult time engaging with it. It was interesting and I admire his adherence to the conceit of the novel, but that wasn't enough to make me truly enjoy it. It's like a museum exhibit of interesting rocks- kind of nice to look at, but in all honesty, I could care less.

The novel is framed by the relationship between The Reader and the Other Reader and their attempts to finish a novel. Each time they become engaged with a story, a publishing error or some other problem thwarts them and they end up starting another story. And just as that story becomes special...... you get the picture. The ten novels the readers begin are all included here, all in different styles and genres. By the way, YOU are the reader and are addressed as such throughout. It's a bravura performance, but one that ultimately didn't work for me.

Sometimes, I just don't want to work this hard at reading a book.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sherlock Holmes is probably the most famous sleuth in history. While I prefer Hercule Poirot, Nero Wolfe and Perry Mason, Holmes is the template that they are all drawn from. With his skills of inductive reasoning, devoted sidekick, and his character tics, Holmes is the gold standard for whodunnit detectives.

The main issue with 'early' mysteries is that the puzzles are not terribly puzzling. None of the Poe or Arthur Conan Doyle stories can match the complexity and cleverness of Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, or P.D. James, but they are very entertaining nonetheless. In The Hound of the Baskervilles particularly, Doyle is able to set a mood that is gothic and terrifying by letting his plot straddle the border of mystery and supernatural. Had Hawthorne written mysteries, this would be what they would be like.

The plot is fairly well-known. Wealthy family is haunted by a curse in which a hound from hell roams the misty moor that adjoins the family property. Now, Sir Charles Baskerville, a wealthy philanthropist, has been found dead, apparently frightened to death and surrounded by large paw prints. The new lord of the manor is moving over from Canada and Holmes takes it upon himself to unravel the mystery and protect the new Baskerville heir. The action is written in the first person by Watson, who shows his own bravery and cleverness a few times. A very fun read for a rainy weekend.

Disgrace

I had previously read J. M. Coetzee's Elizabeth Costello which I found to be dry and dull- basically a treatise on animal rights and the writing process, both of which are interesting topics, but not when handled in the 'novelesque' form used in that book. Disgrace was much better.

Coetzee, a South African and Nobel prize winner, writes here about David Lurie, a divorced professor whose affair with a student goes spectacularly wrong and who finds himself unemployed and at very loose ends. He decides on an extended stay with his daughter Lucy who lives alone on a relatively remote farm plot which she shares with Petrus, a black man with his own ambitions. Lurie has just begun to re-establish a relationship with Lucy and to understand her choice of lifestyles when the two are brutally attacked by a trio of young men. The heart of the novel lies in the various responses to this event by the main characters.

I really liked this novel because Coetzee is masterful at making the emotional barriers and distance between the father and daughter palpable. It is also an engaging meditation on the complexities of racial interaction in South Africa, post apartheid. The style is descriptive but economical, and Coetzee isn't afraid to feature a protagonist who is, on many levels, unlikable. Compelling.

Siddhartha

On a recent trip to Shakespeare and Co. Bookseller in New York, I picked up several Dover Thrift Editions which averaged about $1.50 each. One of these was Herman Hesse's Siddhartha.

Siddhartha tells the tale of the title character, a young Indian who lived in the time of Buddha. Siddhartha decides to leave his family to become a wandering ascetic and monk. Siddhartha is on a quest for enlightenment, but has a natural skepticism of teachers and teachings. He believes in discovery by the self. He meets a lovely courtesan who teaches him about material possessions and sensual pleasures. After many years, Siddhartha sees the pointlessness of his existence and returns to wandering, not knowing that he has impregnated the courtesan, Kamala.

Siddhartha meets a ferryman who inspires him to 'listen to the river' and Siddhartha begins yet another voyage of self-discovery, which is changed when confronted with his son after Kamala's death.

What saved this book from being too inward looking to bear is Hesse's very lyrical writing style. It reads like an ancient fable, but was actually first published in the 1920s. I'm glad I read this book when I was in my 40s. The themes of searching, of life as a cycle, and of the relationships between fathers and sons is something I feel I can truly appreciate at this time of life. For a book that I didn't enter into reading with any particular gusto, this was excellent.

The Great Gatsby

I first read The Great Gatsby when I was 11 or 12. I remember seeing it on my teacher's desk and asking her if I could borrow it, probably trying to be precocious. I read it, but it may as well have been the Rosetta Stone. A young kid from eastern Washington had no conception of the New York locale (an essential part of the novel) or of the historical context it stood in. So of course, I hated the book and made sure that I kept that opinion for the next 30 years.

Embarking on the List, I knew there would be a few books that I'd need to reread in order to 'count' them, and this was one of them. I'm glad I gave it a second appraisal.

The novel is set in 1920s New York and Long Island and concerns the experiences of Nick Carroway, our narrator, over the course of a year he spends attempting to become a bonds trader. Nick's second cousin Daisy and her husband Tom live just across the bay from him and he strikes up a romance with their house guest, a female professional golfer. Nick's next door neighbor is the enigmatic Jay Gatsby, a man with a taste for incredibly opulent and frequent parties and a mysterious past. Over the course of the novel, his love for Daisy is revealed and his obsession with winning her from her two-timing husband leads to tragic consequences.

As most people know, The Great Gatsby concerns the American dream, or, more accurately, the artifice of the American dream. It can definitely stake a claim as the Great American Novel. The character of Gatsby is both the realization of the American dream and the representation of its hollow and tenuous promise. The same can be argued for Daisy and Tom who have succeeded, but have done so through very little effort on their own parts. Gatsby is self made, but not in a way that will ever be respected by the likes of Tom, or, to a lesser extent, Nick.

I was interested to learn in my research that F. Scott Fitzgerald was considered somewhat of a failure during his life. After a huge success with his first novel, Gatsby sold only 25,000 copies while Fitzgerald lived, and he wasn't appreciated fully until after his death when his work was reappraised and began to become a standard piece of high school and college curriculum. Fitzgerald, a member of the 'Lost Generation', died very young as a result of his alcoholism. His wife Zelda died in a fire in Asheville, NC just a few years later.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Another classic children's tale I never bothered to read as a child. In fact, although I must have seen the classic Disney animation at some point in my life, I have no recollection of it. I was on the Alice ride at Disneyland when it broke down one time, but that's another story.

Much of my knowledge of Lewis Carroll comes from John Lennon's admiration of him and the inspiration it gave him in his writing and music. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this for the clever use of language and the whimsy of the story. However, nothing much really happens in the story. There isn't a plot arc to speak of as much as a series of indelible character sketches: the White Rabbit, the Doremouse, the Mock Turtle, the Queen of Hearts, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, the Gryphon, etc. have all become part of western popular consciousness.

Carroll's personal life has been a matter of speculation, with dueling academics debating whether or not he was a pedophile and wondering why there are missing pages from his otherwise well-maintained diaries. Carroll (a pseudonym for Charles Dodgson) was also a brilliant mathematician and led by all accounts an interesting life.

I plan to read Through the Looking Glass soon for the further adventures of Alice.

The Bell Jar

I honestly had no idea what to expect of The Bell Jar. I knew who Sylvia Plath was and how she died, but I know of her as a poet and was actually unaware that she had published any novels. In all honesty, I thought The Bell Jar would be a collection of poetry. Instead, it is a novel that seems to be from the Holden Caulfield school of narrators who have disengaged from life after seeing the pointlessness of the whole thing.

Esther Greenwood is a young woman who has regularly achieved academic excellence and at the beginning of the novel is on a month long internship for a New York based magazine. In the first half of the novel, Esther relates her adventures in New York, some comic, some sad. She feels separate from other people, but not in a way that is particularly different than what most people go through from time to time. However, once she returns home to find that she did not get accepted into a writing program as she had anticipated, things take a terrible turn and she attempts suicide. The second half of the novel is a harrowing first person description of a nervous breakdown in action. While the novel ends on a hopeful note, the subsequent tragedy of Plath's life leaves the reader feeling that the hopefulness will be short lived.

After reading and researching, I now understand that The Bell Jar is largely autobiographical. Virtually everything and everyone in the story mirror real events and people in Plath's life. In fact, before she died, Plath insisted the novel not be published in the United States and was only published in the UK under a pseudonym. One feels slightly uncomfortable reading the novel knowing that it is a relatively true account, especially when one knows the rest of the story and the relief that the narrator has survived her ordeal is undercut by the knowledge of her ultimate fate.

Farewell, My Lovely

"I got up on my feet and went over to the bowl in the corner and threw cold water on my face. After a little while I felt a little better, but very little. I needed a drink, I needed a lot of life insurance, I needed a vacation, I needed a home in the country. What I had was a coat, a hat, and a gun. I put them on and went out of the room."

Farewell, My Lovely is entirely built of this type of prose, lyrical and purple at the same time. I discussed earlier how difficult it is to read a hard boiled detective tale because of the constant satirizing and diminishing returns of the genre. Still, after Dashiell Hammett and Sam Spade, the quintessential L.A. hard case has got to be Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe. When a character is portrayed in film by people like Robert Mitchum and Humphrey Bogart, you know he's tough.

Farewell, My Lovely was the second of Chandler's Marlowe novels. It follows a case of gambling, drugs, and murder in 1930s Los Angeles and environs. Along the way there are dames, psychics, disreputable cops and doctors, and a double cross or two for good measure. Chandler is particularly good at description and Marlowe in his first person narration is the conduit for these descriptions. Marlowe becomes enmeshed in the action by simple coincidence, but is able to play just the right moves in order to crack the case. Chandler hints at Marlowe's alcoholism without dwelling on it and also shows him to have racist tendencies. In fact, some of the racism is shocking to a modern reader, but is somehow different than that of the Tarzan novel. Here, the racist remarks are in keeping with the character, as opposed to being a simple premise that the action is based upon.

As with much of the genre, the mystery itself is no great shakes, but Chandler's writing is evocative and I'll look forward to reading more.

Brighton Rock

Graham Greene is yet another prominent twentieth century novelist that I have been aware of but had not read. Brighton Rock is his 1938 novel about seaside thugs and their struggle for power over Brighton and its horse track.

Pinkie is a seventeen year old whose world stretches no further than the beachfront and horse track in Brighton. He has inherited control of a gang after its leader was killed. Despite his young age, Pinkie's ruthlessness and quick mind make him a natural for succession. The far wealthier Mr. Colleoni has his own ideas on who should handle the action in Brighton, and a struggle for control ensues. Against all this is Pinkie's relationship with Rose, a naive waitress who has information that might link Pinkie and his gang to a murder. Unfortunately for Rose, she has no idea what the information really means and is 'romanced' by Pinkie who has aims at marrying her simply so she cannot be forced to testify against him.

The real interest in this novel for me was the character of Pinkie, who must have been relatively unique for his time. Like Tom Ripley, here we have a central character who is pure evil. Pinkie's abhorrence of carnality and twisted puritanism make him an interesting example of 'Catholicism gone wrong'. He and Rose's actions grow out of a belief that once they have committed mortal sin, all is lost- so what's the point in redemption? This novel is really a meditation on Catholicism and the many ways its adherents can interpret what it all really stands for.

A good novel, but it never particularly engaged me as a story. More interesting was the subtext. Brighton Rock was also made into a film starring Richard Attenborough.

Murder Must Advertise

Growing up, I was a huge fan of Agatha Christie and Rex Stout. I'd mix things up a little with the occasional Ngaio Marsh, Ruth Rendell, or Erle Stanley Gardner mystery, but I never looked into Dorothy L. Sayers until recently. Sayers was a contemporary of Christie's and was one of the first women ever to earn a degree from Oxford. Later in her life she became a noted Christian scholar, but most of her literary fame derives from her detective stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. Wimsey was atypical of the sleuths of fiction from the time period. He didn't bask in his eccentricities like Poirot or Nero Wolfe. Instead, he was a wealthy aristocrat with excellent social connections and a real talent for sport.

Murder Must Advertise, published in 1933, is set at the firm of Pym's Publicity. Sayers worked in an advertising firm and her behind-the-scenes knowledge is well evident. In this story, Wimsey goes undercover at Pym's to discover who pushed one of the associates down a spiral staircase and what London's thriving drug trade has to do with Pym's. While not as ingenious a plotter as Christie, Sayers writing is breezy and lighthearted. There is a great deal of humor in the characters and the dialog and contains some broad and affectionate swipes at English class hangups and character.

If you're an English mystery fan, you'll enjoy this book. Next on my list from Sayers is Five Red Herrings, which most mystery enthusiasts claim as her best.

The Collector

The Collector is an engrossing psychological thriller from John Fowles. The plot is simple enough, but the sophistication inherent in some of the themes this novel presents make it an incredible first novel.

Frederick Clegg is a socially awkward young man who collects butterflies and lives with an aunt and cousin after the deaths of his parents. He fantasizes a life with a local girl, Miranda Grey, who is far out of his league. By chance, Frederick wins the pools and no longer need worry about income. He buys a secluded country house, packs the aunt and cousin off to Australia, and puts into play a plan to realize his fantasy of a life with Miranda by kidnapping her off of a London street.

The first half of the novel is written from Frederick's point of view. His even, almost emotionless tone and awkward formality and Victorian sense of virtue make's one forget from time to time that he is a psychopath. He makes much of the fact that he does not violate Miranda sexually, and believes that this makes him a good person.

The second half is told from Miranda's point of view. The incidents are the same, but her explanations (in a hastily scrawled journal) show the motivations behind her interactions with Frederick. She longs, of course, for freedom, but she also analyzes her relationship with the much older artist G.P. and comes to a series of conclusions regarding art, beauty, and those who do and do not understand them.

The theme of imprisonment runs throughout the book. There is Frederick's physical imprisonment of Miranda as well as the fact that he is imprisoned by his set way of thinking. Miranda is imprisoned by her social and artistic elitism; she is a snob in the worst way. She not only disdains those of lower social status, but those 'new people' with their middle class wealth who do not and cannot properly appreciate art and culture the way that she and her high-minded friends can. The story is a journey for her as well as for Frederick, although the results for both are unexpected.

A creepy novel with a provocative ending for the early 1960s. A film version with Terence Stamp was also made.

A Confederacy of Dunces

An all time classic comic novel, A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole is also a New Orleans classic. I read this book before I ever imagined living in New Orleans, and it painted an amazingly vivid picture of a place I became determined to visit someday.

The novel concerns the comic exploits of Ignatius J. Reilly, indelible resident of Uptown New Orleans and sufferer of chronic 'valve' problems. Ignatius still lives with his mother although he is thirty and spends his days writing in his journal about the shortcomings of the rest of humanity. Ignatius is a man out of time; a lover of geometry and theology, a hater of popular culture. He attends movies in order to make fun of them. In other words, he wallows in the very material he finds so offensive. He is agoraphobic, a slob, and has delusions of grandeur.

The book is more of an extended character study of Ignatius and New Orleans than it is a traditional plot arc. We meet the denizens of New Orleans, Myrna (Reilly's sometime girlfriend), the long suffering mother, and a bevy of oddball characters. Having lived in New Orleans for over ten years, I have to say that its depictions are incredibly accurate in all their hilarity. Ignatius' attempts at gainful employment (as a hot dog vendor and in a pants factory amongst others) are hilarious enough to sustain the novel.

One of the amazing things about this novel is the route it took to publication. Toole was a young New Orleanian who committed suicide in 1969. His mother found the smeared carbon copied manuscript amongst his effects and in the later 1970s sought out noted author Walker Percy and badgered him into reading a novel by her dead son. Percy did so reluctantly, but found himself more and more entranced as he read on. Using his connections and influences, the book was finally published in 1980 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Literature the following year.

I have purchased and give this novel away at least a half dozen times. I have not read it for several years but plan to reread it for the 4th or 5th time this summer. Simply brilliant, and a top ten favorite for me.

Ignatius J. Reilly is such a part of New Orleans culture, you can visit his bronze image on Canal Street:

The Vicar of Wakefield

Oliver Goldsmith's The Vicar of Wakefield is about as representative of the English 18th century novel as you can get. It's all here: the picaresque setting, the hidden identities, the misunderstandings, the villain's comeuppance, and the tidy, happy ending. The novel was a favorite in Britain for several generations, and is name checked in works by Dickens and Austen, among others.

The titular character is Dr. Primrose, who serves as vicar in an idyllic country parish. He and his wife Deborah have six wonderful children and have the love and respect of their parishioners. However, a financial setback sets the family on the road to hard times and increasing poverty. They are aided by a variety of characters, including Squire Thornhill, the local land magnate. They are also befriended by Mr. Burchell, who becomes a close family friend. Thornhill takes an interest in the Vicar's daughters and eventually kidnaps one of them. It seems the Squire is a serial 'marry 'em, disgrace 'em and leave 'em' type. Misfortune continues to fall as the Vicar's home burns down, but just as the situation seems irredeemable, all is not only set straight, but the virtuous are rewarded.

I enjoyed the novel for the reason that I am fascinated by contemporary accounts of life in past times. This definitely wouldn't be for everyone's taste, but if you like Dickens, Austen, Shelley, or their contemporaries, it is worth a look to see where their inspiration came from.

Everything Is Illuminated

If it seems like I'm reading at an incredible pace with all of these posts, I'm not- I'm just catching up by blogging about some of the books I read over the past several months but didn't have a chance to post about.

I don't know why it took me so long to tackle Everything is Illuminated. I read Jonathan Safran Foer's second book, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close a few years ago and absolutely loved it. That book was one of the first that used September 11 as a background for the plot and it was a beautiful book.

Everything is Illuminated concerns a young Jewish man (also named Jonathan Safran Foer) who travels to Ukraine in order to learn about his family's heritage and specifically to look for a woman credited in family lore with saving his grandfather during World War II. Arriving in Ukraine, he is met by Alex, a young Ukranian, and Alex's grandfather who will serve as his guides, translators, and chaffeurs. Also along for the ride is Sammy Davis Jr., Jr., the family dog, whom Alex lovingly refers to as a "deranged seeing eye bitch".

The story is told through Alex's narrative and letters to Safran Foer, as well as through a book in progress that Safran Foer is writing regarding his family's history in the semi-fictional village of Trachimbrod. These elements are skillfully woven together, although the device feels a bit self-conscious at times.

One of the major charms of the novel comes in the character of Alex, or more specifically, Alex's broken English and syntax. His writing reminds me of how some of my students will use 'big' words that are synonyms for his intended meaning, and yet somehow miss the mark. Once you capture Alex's cadence, you are in for some laugh out loud moments. This is actually quite a funny novel, but one that also reminds us of the atrocities of the second World War and the lasting damages that resulted from it.

I liked this book, although I liked the follow up novel more. Safran Foer is clearly a very talented writer, but some of this was too clever by half. The novel was turned into a film with Elijah Wood and also won a Jewish Book Award for Fiction.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

For a kid who remembers (and was a full participant in) the Star Wars insanity of the late 1970s and early 1980s, I am surprised I never developed a taste for science fiction. One of the many benefits I've derived from following the List is it gives me the opportunity to delve into some genres I've neglected.

Most people are familiar with the early 80s feature film Blade Runner which starred Harrison Ford fresh from his Star Wars gig as Han Solo. The film, based on this novel, has become something of a cult classic and has been reedited and recut several times in the ensuing years.

The novel, by Philip K. Dick, is really a detective novel set in the future on an earth that has been depopulated. Most citizens have joined a colony on Mars, leaving a decrepit and decaying society behind. Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who hunts incredibly life-like androids who have sneaked off of Mars and infiltrated Earth societies. There are certain tests that will allow Deckard to detect whether or not the 'person' he is pursuing is actually an android. Deckard wants to do an excellent job, make some money, and replace his electric sheep with a real live animal (most of whom seem to have died off). The main part of the action revolves around Deckard's pursuit of four or five extremely high quality androids and he begins to wonder how human he is himself.

There's a great sense of paranoia about the novel, as well as the usual themes of identity and ethics that seem to be present in a lot of sci fi. I enjoyed the book; it was a quick read and had some nice action sequences. It didn't make me turn the corner to becoming a full-fledged sci fi fan, but it didn't push me further away either.

Tarzan of the Apes

After unexpectedly enjoying Treasure Island, I decided to try another 'classic' adventure novel and found Tarzan of the Apes amongst the titles in my school's lending library.

I don't have much to say about this. I didn't mind suspending my belief to accept that Tarzan, orphaned as an infant and raised by an ape, could teach himself to read and write from an assortment of picture books. I believed that he could learn to speak fluent French and English in a relatively short period of time. What I couldn't believe was how racially offensive this book is. I'm a sophisticated enough reader to be able to view film and literature in the context of the time it was created, but there's nothing else going on here that really mertis the inclusion of this book on the List of 1001 novels you should read. It's hard to find anything ground breaking or truly original. The prose is average, the dialogue stilted, and the descriptions are nothing special. There is a fair amount of action, but I found myself ready to finish after about fifty pages.

Predictably, all whites are viewed as heroic and virtuous, with nobility on full display (or barely below the surface) of even one raised in the jungle by an ape. The black natives are cannibals, superstitious and crazed. The African American maid from Baltimore is hysterical and stupid. Yuck.

Edgar Rice Burroughs never set foot in Africa, but he cranked out a couple dozen Tarzan stories as well as the John Carter from Mars series.

Cutter and Bone

Newton Thornburg is a bit of an anomoly in the modern age. One of the few authors with books on the List who doesn't have a Wikipedia entry, Thornburg is best known as the author of Cutter and Bone, which was adapted into a successful film known as Cutter's Way starring Jeff Bridges and John Heard.

The novel is a fantastic representation of post-Vietnam malaise in America. The protaganists are Bone, a part-time gigolo who chucked a family and executive position in the Midwest out of a sense of the meaninglessness of middle class existence, and Cutter, a disabled Vietnam vet, living in squalor with Mo, the mother of his child. Cutter's intense cynicism is underlay with a real affection for Bone who often crashes on his couch when he is in between 'positions'.

One night Bone happens to see a man pull into an alley and stuff what he thinks are a set of golf clubs into a trash bin. The next day, after reading the paper, he realizes he witnessed a body drop. Further, he sees a picture of a wealthy conglomerate head and becomes convinced that he is the man who was dumping the body.
Cutter and Bone hatch a plan, along with the deceased girl's sister, to try to turn this coincidence into some cash.

Cutter and Bone is a great rollicking crime caper in the vein of Elmore Leonard. However, the books is much more than just a crime novel. Published in 1976, it does a surprisingly good job of capturing the mood of the United States during that time. This is a neat trick for something that was contemporary and show an author with a real sensitivity for the times going on around him. For fans of films like Taxi Driver, Straight Time, or Coming Home, the novel reads like a great 70s film looked.

Thornburg has fallen on some pretty hard times. His wife of thirty plus years passed away, his son died of alcoholism, and Thornburg suffered a debilitating stroke that paralyzed his left side. Although he may not have the accolades of some writers of his genre and era, he left us a great one with this novel.

Of Human Bondage

After knocking through four or five short books, I was anxious to tackle something a little longer. I hadn't read any of W. Somerset Maugham's work and decided to try Of Human Bondage, if for no other reason than the classic sounding title.

700 pages later, I have to say it was worth the effort. Sometimes this novel annoyed the hell out of me. I wanted to knock the protaganist upside the head a few times as he walked into the same predicament over and over. Then I realized that Maugham had sucked me into caring about what was happening- annoyance with a character can show as large an emotional investment as admiration or hatred.

The novel tells the story of Philip Carey, a young man who is orphaned at an early age and goes to live with his Uncle and Aunt. The Uncle is a small town Vicar and life in the household is strict and joyless for young Philip. Born with a club foot, his awkwardness and shyness follows him to the school he attends with the intention of taking religious orders. While at the school, Philip goes through all manner of emotions regarding jealousy and self-loathing. Each time he seems to find a little confidence, something happens to set him back.

Disaffected by school, he opts to move to Germany against his Uncle's wishes in order to study at Heidleberg. From there he moves on to Paris to study art and ultimately ends up back in England to study medicine, his dead father's field. Through these years, Philip is heavily influenced by the thoughts and philosophies of his motley collection of friends and casts about searching for his own guiding credo.

Once he is back in London, he embarks on a disastrous and one-sided affair with Mildred, a woman who returns to Philip time and again when she is in dire straits. Philip welcomes her back time after time, spending what little money he has on her comforts and needs. This is where my annoyance with Philip threatened to override my affection for the novel. Still, the story of Philip's eventual release and experience with poverty is so well written that I was able to get past it.

Of Human Bondage is evidently somewhat autobiographical; Maugham substitutes his own stuttering problem for Philip's club foot, but otherwise the early part of his history is the same. There are long expository passages on art, philosophy, natural beauty, and jealousy, but they are scattered enough so as not to interfere with the forward drive of the narrative. Although this book appeared only 40 or 50 years after Dickens, and the sweeping nature of the novel is similar to those of the former, Philip Carey's ennui, fatalism, and existential musings are far from any protaganist in the Dickens oeuvre. Here was a modern man who existed outside of caricature.

Great book, leave yourself some time to read.

Treasure Island

For some reason I have had an aversion to 'children's classics'. Thus, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, and their ilk remain unread by me. However, I do like pirates, and so I decided to bite the bullet and check out Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson and I'm glad I did.

There's not much to say about the plot or the characterization. Most of the narrative is breathless action and vivid description surrounding a hunt for hidden treasure on a remote island. What made this so enjoyable for me is that I had no idea how much of our modern pirate image and idiom came from this tale. It's all here: Long John Silver, parrots on the shoulder, peg legs, the Jolly Roger, Davy Jones locker, Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Rum...... I can only imagine what a rollicking adventure this was for a young reader near the turn of the century and it's easy to see how this has stood the test of time.

Under the Skin

I had no idea what to expect when I picked up Michel Faber's Under the Skin. This was a book on the list that I randomly selected when picking out some new books. I expected a detective story or perhaps a psychological thriller based on the title and cover alone.

Under the Skin is a hybrid: thriller, science fiction, mystery, and an animal rights polemic all rolled into one. The novel introduces us to Isserly, a young female who drives the relatively deserted roads of the Scottish Highlands looking for male hitchhikers, specifically those who are robust or well-muscled. Through a series of encounters with these hitchhikers, and the aftermaths of their rides with Isserly, we are slowly exposed to the truth of her identity, motivation, and mission. I won't go any deeper into the plot than that so potential readers can pick up on events on their own. Much of the pleasure in this novel lies in the way the reader is slowly lead into the details of what is actually happening, with new layers added all the time.

This book is creepy. Over the course of reading it, I actually had a couple of mild nightmares based around the events in the book. There is something about Faber's prose that gets, well, under your skin and stays there. I highly recommend this one to anyone who enjoys science fiction, especially the pulpy novels of the sixties and seventies.

What really sets this one apart, however, is the effect it will have on most meat eaters. Our assumptions about identity, souls, and the relative hierarchy of life on this planet are challenged in a variety of ways. Prepare to squirm.

The Black Prince

Don't let the cover fool you- there is nothing medieval about the prince in this story. Published in 1973,The Black Prince is the first novel I've read by acclaimed author Iris Murdoch.

Bradley Pearson is an aging writer and retired tax worker in England. From his first person narrative, we learn of his friendship and rivalry with the far more successful novelist Arnold Baffin and his wife, Rachel. Bradley seems to be experiencing an extended bout of writer's block and plans to summer at a remote cabin near the English seaside. However, before he can escape London, he is accosted by a number of friends, relations, and an ex-wife who bring a variety of problems and situations for Arnold to deal with. In the midst of all this, he discovers he has fallen in love with the very young daughter of Arnold and Rachel, a girl he has known her entire life. This situation leads to a series of events that call into question nearly every event and assumption the reader has made before the ending.

The main body of the narrative is book-ended by an introduction from a 'publisher' and a series of post-scripts from some of the main characters which cast the events in an entirely different light.

I really enjoyed this novel for Murdoch's skill with prose and for the overall story. While the plot was compelling, the narrator's ruminations on topics such as education, art, writing, friendship, love, etc. made it drag a little for me. These diversions are ultimately essential for understanding the nature of his character, but still brought things to a standstill occasionally. Here and there, I found myself skimming, something I don't often do when reading a novel.

Still, I look forward to reading more of Murdoch's work and plan to check out the feature film made about her lifelong romance with John Bayley and her decline from Alzheimer's.

On Beauty

This is the second novel of Zadie Smith's I've read. Smith is a pretty amazing and refreshing talent, but this one didn't hit me with quite the impact that White Teeth did. In fact, this one feels more like a first novel than that one did. One of the things I really marvelled at in White Teeth is the amazing dialog, no small feat considering she had several characters with all types of ethnic, gender, and age backgrounds. The dialog in On Beauty is stilted feeling. Perhaps this is due to the fact that most of the speakers are from academia. Still, few, if any, professors I know speak like they write: stuffy with a verbosity that borders on logghoria.

On Beauty concerns the trials and travails of two diametrically opposed families: The Belseys, an interracial couple with three kids who are the embodiment of liberalism and godlessness, and the Kipps from Trinidad with two 'perfect' children who espouse an extremely conservative, Christian, and anti-affirmative action viewpoint. The families become intertwined through the Christian conversion of Jerome, eldest son of the liberal clan, and his subsequent short lived affair with the daughter, Victoria, of the conservative counterparts. The action centers around Wellington, a fictional Ivy League school near Boston. There is a great deal of talk regarding beauty, the inherent value of art, racial identity, and gender politics, but the core of On Beauty to me is the idea of identity in general. All people, Smith seems to be pointing out, have a public self and a private self. Expectations are based on the public self but every person is different than what the world perceives. Thus we have the 'thug' who is an accomplished poet and budding archivist, the privileged multi-racial child who yearns for black identity, the bastion of conservative thought who is not above adultery, and the reserved virginal girl who is actually a voracious seducer of men.

While this book didn't measure up to the aforementioned debut, it was still an enjoyable story. I look forward to reading just about anything Smith publishes in the future.

The Fall of the House of Usher; The Pit and the Pendulum; The Purloined Letter

I read all three of these stories on my lunch hour today. It is amazing what a body of work Edgar Allan Poe left behind, and how accessible it is. Poe, who died at 40, left a legacy that is still being built upon today in the detective and horror genres.

The thing that I love about The Fall of the House of Usher and The Pit and the Pendulum is how relentless the horror is that Poe establishes in just 13 or 14 pages in each story. His descriptions of the decrepit mansion and the horrible Inquisition pit are enough to turn the stomach and get under the skin. His contemporary Hawthorne was great at this as well- describing inanimate objects and places and making the reader feel as if they can feel, smell, and hear the horror. I was reading these stories in a brightly lit faculty lounge and I swear my skin grew clammy. I love stories like this that are grotesque without being gross.

The Purloined Letter is another matter entirely. It is a very early detective story, featuring the same protagonist Poe used for The Murders in the Rue Morgue (arguably the first whodunnit in literature). The puzzle, while comparatively rudimentary by today's standards, is still a ground-breaker in terms of the use of criminal psychology in a fictional piece. The logic exercised by the detective would become the basis for Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Peter Wimsey, and countless other sleuths of 20th century literature. All in all, a great way to spend a lunch hour!

Jealousy

'Post modern' novels can fall into a couple of different categories: self-indulgent claptrap or winning and interesting experiments. Alain Robbe-Grillet's brief novel Jealousy falls squarely into the latter for me.

This brief novel is an experiment in first person narrative that is fantastically interesting, and to me, successful. The novel's brevity is essential- the conceit would be unsustainable for a longer, more involved work.

The action centers around an unnamed narrator who lives on a banana plantation with his wife, A. The story is told from the first person, but Robbe-Grillet never uses the first person pronoun 'I'. The narrator clearly has deep concerns about his wife and the owner of a neighboring plantation, Franck. Although we are never privy to his internal monologue or his interpretations or thoughts about the situation, the narrator obsessively and in great detail describes not only his physical surroundings but a series of encounters between his wife and Franck that can be seen as evidence of an affair, or.....as nothing at all. Incidents are described several times in increasing details, cleverly mimicking the way an obsessed and jealous person will replay trivial events over and over in his or her mind.

The real trick of this novel is that in using flat, unemotional detailed descriptions, one of the most turbulent and passionate emotions is ultimately described. Jealousy is passion; obsession is detailed analysis, and the author neatly shows the two to be one and the same.

This is another book that is probably best read in one sitting. Not to everyone's tastes, but a great change of pace for me.

The Crying of Lot 49

Thomas Pynchon's The Crying of Lot 49 is a trip, in many senses of the word. It feels like an acid trip, contains a number of actual journeys, and throws the reader off balance constantly as if he or she has stumbled on a buckle in the sidewalk. Thanks to Lurker Mike for encouraging me to read this remarkable book.

Pynchon's style is a barrage of imagery and sensation, rarely pausing for the reader to catch up. There is a tremendous forward momentum to the book, which makes me recommend that it be read in one sitting. I can't imagine having to throw my mind back into this narrative after leaving it.

The story revolves around Oedipa Maas, a woman who has been named executor of her dead ex-lover's will. In carrying out her duties, she is caught up in the quest to find out if a secret mail-carrying society exists or not. Doesn't sound like much, but Pynchon's prose is dense and, at times, laborious. Just when you think his grasp of sentence structure and language has gone too far, he uses a quick plot point to pull you back into the general flow of the plot. His characters have whimsical names (Ghengis Cohen, etc.) and the puns are plentiful and absurd. The long description of a play within the story (which sets the stage for the second half of the story) is reminiscent of Hamlet's 'The Mousetrap' device. Pynchon's apparent knowledge of a variety of topics had me scrambling to Wikipedia time and again to see what was fact and what was fiction.

This book (published in 1966) seems to take the piss out of the 1960s counterculture and wallow in it at the same time. Oedipa's paranoia and the situations she finds herself in reflect the times very well, especially for a novel that was contemporary to the events depicted. Pynchon riffs on the Beatles, Nabokov, Elvis Presley, and various lifestyle choices in California during this time.

Most aficionados of Pynchon say that this book is the best entry point. It is short and relatively easy to follow once you get the hang of it. It does make me both anxious and nervous to tackle his longer works.

I can't imagine reading a book like this very often, but I have no doubt I'll return to this one over the years. Pynchon's work has a wiki devoted to it, which may be helpful when tackling his novels.

Watchmen

I was a rabid comic book fan in the late 70s and early 80s. I contracted pneumonia when I was in the 4th or 5th grade and was bedridden for a couple of weeks. My mom started bringing me comic books to help me pass the time. I became addicted.

I was partial to Marvel superhero titles like the Fantastic Four, the Avengers, Iron Man, Spider Man, and the rest. After my recovery I began to spend every cent I had on comics. I subscribed to 8 or 10 titles and bought several more from the drug store or comic shop every month. I harbored fantasies of becoming a comic book artist and spent countless hours sketching my favorites into a stack of notebooks.

As I entered my early teens, two things happened that resulted in my waning interest in comics. The price went up, and titles I'd been paying 35 cents for were suddenly 75 cents or even a dollar. I also discovered a new passion: rock and roll. The end result was the comics being boxed up and largely forgotten as of 1982 or 83.

After having read Watchmen, I wish I would have hung in there a little longer. Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' 12 part series was released over 1986 and 1987 and it is a genre-defying/genre-defining masterpiece.

I am very late to the party here, so I will eschew a long plot analysis. Suffice it to say that the series revolves around a group of masked adventurers who have been outlawed by the authorities. The murder of one of them (The Comedian) leads to a suspicion by another (Rorschach) that the 'masks' are being targeted by a party unknown. This sets into motion an amazing tale that encompasses 40 plus years of alternate U.S. and world history. Set against the backdrop of the Cold War and the escalating tensions between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., Watchmen dares to suggest what extreme measures may have been needed had things not gone as they did.

The graphic novel set the standard for the comics form and (along with other works by Moore and by Frank Miller) elevated it to an art that was worthy of discussion beyond the playground. The flaws of the heroes were a culmination of the character flaws that Stan Lee built into his classic Marvel characters of the 1960s, but took them to an entirely new level. Each of the main protagonists in Watchmen helps to flesh out contrasting worldviews, from the black and white certainties of Rorschach to the right wing jingoism of the Comedian to the Utopian liberalism of Ozymandias. None of this views are left unskewered by Moore in his tight story telling. And, in an already incredibly rich and detailed narrative, he and Gibbons add in a parallel tale from a fiction pirate comic to help underscore and illustrate the issues faced by many of the main characters. At the end of the majority of the issues there was also supplemental prose, often in the form of articles or letters, that helped to flesh out the back stories of many of the characters. Moore's ability to write about everything from ornithology to quantum physics is amazing.

The artwork is nuanced and incredibly sympathetic to the tale being told. How Gibbons was able to pack so much detail into 9 frames a page is beyond me. While I am partial to the more realistic styles of Frank Miller or Jim Starlin, I can't picture anyone doing a better job here than Gibbons.

I saw the film version of Watchmen first, and I'm not sure how that impacted my enjoyment of this novel. I can say that the film was perfectly cast for the most part, and I am now really excited for the release on DVD so I can watch it again.

The Stranger

Camus' The Stranger is a classic of existential lit and has no doubt been read by just about everyone who has ever been an undergraduate at any university in the world.

For anyone who hasn't read it, The Stranger is a compact tale about a young French-Algerian, Meursault, who serves as narrator and the literary embodiment of existential philosophy (although Camus never considered himself to be an existentialist). At the outset of the novel, Meuersault's mother has died and he travels to the nursing home she lived in to see to her funeral. Afterward, he returns to his normal life, normal job, and normal pursuits. He strikes up a relationship with a young woman and befriends a shady man who invites him to the beach. During this trip, a seemingly random encounter with some Arab men leads to murder, and Meursault finds himself in jail awaiting trial.

The crux of the novel is Meursault's realization of the absurdity of life and his belief that the end is the end and nothing that happens really matters. His belief system and seeming lack of remorse or concern about his own fate paints him in an unflattering light before the members of the judicial system. Still, it is not the crime he has committed that condemns him in society's eyes; rather it is his ambivalence towards the death of his mother that society cannot understand or allow to go unpunished.

The version of The Stranger I read is not the classic English translation from Gilbert, but an American translation from Matthew Ward that appeared in 1988. Camus had written that he had intended The Stranger to be written in the 'American' style of James Cain or Dashiell Hammett with short compact sentences and an overtone of though guy swagger. Ward's translation attempts to capture this style, and for me, is successful.

The Stranger is a quick read for a rainy day. I'd also recommend The Plague by Camus.

Fingersmith

Sarah Waters' Fingersmith is about as engrossing as a novel can get for me. It is set in the Victorian Era, features a terrific mystery, and has plot twists that actually caused me to gasp out loud once or twice.

Our initial narrator, Sue, is an orphan who lives with a group of thieves in London. Mrs. Sucksby has raised her from infancy after her mother was condemned as a murderess and hung. The dashing ne'er-do-well Gentleman convinces Sue to help him run an elaborate con. Maud Lilly is a young heiress and orphan who will come into wealth once she marries. She is isolated at her strange uncle's house in the country and Gentleman has found a way to weasel himself into the household. Sue is to take a commission as Maud's maid in order to help convince Maud to marry Gentleman. Once the marriage is complete, they will arrange for Maud to be committed to a madhouse and share her fortune.

I won't discuss the plot in any more detail than this as the surprise elements are important to the enjoyment of the novel. There are enough twists and turns to satisfy any fan of the genre. The depictions of the squalor of London and the icy country house are top notch and the plot is riveting. Definitely plan on devoting some uninterrupted time to this one if you choose to read it.

Highly recommended for those who enjoy a good twisted mystery. This novel was shortlisted for several major awards.

The Lambs of London

The Lambs of London is a slim novel based somewhat on historical fact. The author, Peter Ackroyd, is an author noted for not only his fiction but his biographies of Dickens, Blake, Shakespeare and others. Here Ackroyd blends fact and fiction as he utilizes the stories of real people Charles and Mary Lamb and William Henry Ireland.

The novel focuses first on Charles, a young man who lives with his family and works for the East India company. Charles is an aspiring writer, a lover of Shakespeare, and quite often, a drunk. His older sister Mary is socially awkward but is also infatuated with the 15th and 16th century dramatists. They live with their parents: their mother, a somewhat bitter woman, and their father who has been mentally incapacitated following some kind of a stroke years previously.

Into their lives comes Ireland, a very young man who operates a bookstore with his father. Ireland has met a mysterious benefactor who allows him to go through her departed husband's extensive collection of papers. Ireland recovers a will and other legal documents that are verified to be Shakespeare's. Scholars and enthusiasts are excited, but nothing prepares them for the day Ireland shows up with the draft of an unknown play. Again, experts verify it as Shakespeare's, although there are some who disagree. Ireland decides to mount the play, and his burgeoning romance with Mary Lamb seems to make his life complete. However, Mary's shaky mental health, William's relationship with his opportunist father, and questions about his benefactor and the veracity of the play begin to cause everything to fall apart.

As a novel, I found this to be somewhat anti-climactic. While it is well-written, it never fully engaged me. Much more interesting are the actual histories of these characters. All of them were real people, but there is no evidence that any of their paths actually crossed. Charles and Mary Lamb wrote a well-known book of Shakespeare for children, battled against mental health issues, and experienced family tragedy. You can look at the story of William Henry Ireland here, but I won't go into detail as it would act as a plot spoiler.

Ackroyd did a great job in coming up with the premise of this historical fiction, but the execution leaves it a little flat. Still, this would hold interest for any Shakespeare enthusiast.

The Blind Assassin

Margaret Atwood was another author I'd heard a lot about but I hadn't gotten around to reading one of her books until I picked up The Blind Assassin. Apparently, Atwood has been labeled as a science fiction writer, a label she bristles at. I remember one of her books, The Handmaid's Tale, was made into a well-received movie a few years ago.

The Blind Assassin is a story within a story within a story. If that puts you off, don't let it. Although there are parts of this story that unwrap mysteriously, it is the author's intent and not just a confusing structure to the novel. It contains elements of mystery, tragedy, drama, and, yes, science fiction.

The novel (which won the Booker Prize 8 or 9 years ago) centers around Iris Chase Griffin, a Canadian woman whose family were once preeminent manufacturers of gloves and other garments until the depression and hard times caused a slow slide from wealth. Iris and her sister Laura are left to be raised by their father and servants after their mother's untimely death. As the narrative of the sisters' lives unfolds, we are introduced to a story within the story, a tale of two lovers meeting in clandestine locations, the man in the relationship improvising a science fiction story that has kept the woman enthralled for months.

Iris' sister Laura dies in a car accident and shortly afterward, her husband is found dead in a sail boat. Are the two incidents related? And who are the lovers in the story 'The Blind Assassin' (revealed to be a posthumous work of Laura's)?

Atwood is a brilliant writer. The plot was well-planned out and engrossing. She is able to skillfully weave the narratives from the 1930s and 40s into the present day as well as including the cut-aways to the story within the story. A tale of identity, secrets, trust, and family, I had a hard time putting this down. This novel was deeply satisfying, deserving of its accolades, and an excellent way to while away a couple of afternoons.

Love in the Time of Cholera

One of the things I like about following 'The List' is that it encourages me to finally read books by authors whose work I am familiar with, but have not read. Toni Morrison was one such author and Gabriel Garcia Marquez is another. I read his non-fiction News of a Kidnapping several years ago and enjoyed it very much, but this was my first foray into his fiction.

Love in the Time of Cholera is one of Marquez's best known works. It has been an Oprah choice, a major motion picture, and is the book people seem to mention most often in relation to this Colombian writer. The story literally covers the lifetime span of the major characters, the lovesick Florentino Ariza and his fifty year obsession with Fermina Daza. The book takes place in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in an unnamed city on the Mediterranean. Florentino Ariza was the youthful suitor of Fermina Daza who took great pleasure in clandestine correspondence and hopeful talk of the future with Florentino. However, maturity and events lead her instead to marry Dr. Juvenal Urbino, a well-connected local doctor and philanthropist. Florentino Ariza decides to 'wait' for Fermina Daza, hoping that someday, should the good doctor die, she will eventually be his. Florentino has 600 'temporary' flings while waiting for her and leads what appears to be a conventional life to the outside world. However, his entire existence is based around waiting. And waiting. And waiting for Fermina Daza.

The book is a beautiful but challenging read. There is almost no dialogue and the detailed descriptions can be off-putting for some readers. I found that as long as I had a solid chunk of time to devote to it, the novel was great to read. This is definitely not one to pick up in dribs and drabs.

The best thing about this book for me was the subtext. On the surface, it is a relatively straight-forward meditation on the power and endurance of love. Still, I feel that there is a lot more happening than that. The character of Florentino Ariza inspires our sympathy, but when his actions are looked at objectively, he comes off more like a deranged stalker and terrible user of women- not the romantic figure he cuts on a surface reading. The book also tackles some of the enduring questions about old age and the many different faces of love. Definitely worthwhile to read, and one I've spent a lot of time thinking about since I put it down.

2008 Roundup

By my calculations, I read 26 books from 'The List' this year, plus another half dozen or more that were not on the list. Not bad considering I didn't get started in earnest until late spring. This year I'll need to make up for some lost ground. I'm most of the way through 'Love in the Time of Cholera' right now and received several more books for Christmas.

I am working from the first edition list of 1001 Books You Should Read Before You Die. There was an updated version this year that changed several of the books, but I figure I'll stick with the one I started with.

It has been a great year of reading and I'm looking forward to seeing what new authors I'll discover this year.

Song of Solomon

Toni Morrison is another lion of modern literature. Although her output is modest compared to some others of her generation, the quality of that output was high enough for her to earn just about every literary award there is, including the Nobel Prize in Literature. Still, as with many other authors of her caliber, I had yet to read any of her work until this year.

Song of Solomon is an amazing book and I'm glad it was the first Toni Morrison novel I read. The book is really about identity, especially identity for African Americans who are only able to trace their lineage back so far. The dedication reads, "The fathers may soar And the children may know their names".

The story concerns the Dead family: Macon, his wife, his son, and his two daughters in addition to his sister and her daughter and granddaughter. The main character is son 'Milkman' Dead (so named because of the fact that he breastfed until he could stand on his own feet). The story follows Milkman throughout his life from his younger days as a constant source of disappointment to his father through his joining and maintaining the family business and finally through his search for his grandfather's true identity. Along the way we meet an amazing cast of characters: First Corinthians and Magdalene called Lena, Milkman's sisters; Pilate, his semi-divine aunt; her daughter Ruth and her granddaughter Hagar who falls hopelessly and dangerously in love with Milkman.

Milkman's best friend Guitar offers a contrast to Milkman in both mission and temperament. While Milkman spends the majority of the book thinking of his own needs and trying to get ahead, Guitar has been led to a different path. Guitar belongs to a group that is trying to level the playing field between whites and blacks, with a surprising way of how to accomplish that.

The ending is somewhat ambiguous, but very satisfying. Milkman, facing Guitar down, learns to truly embrace the legacy of his grandfather's people as he learns to fly.

The story of this novel is excellent, but it is Morrison's prose that makes it so fantastic to read. It takes a couple dozen pages to fall into her cadence, but once you do, the story flows by like a river. I read a lot of books this year, but this one will definitely stand out in my mind for many years to come.