My review from 2004 (the first time I started recording reviews on paper)
Stream of consciousness novel - tells stoI hope to revisit this book in 2021
My review from 2004 (the first time I started recording reviews on paper)
Stream of consciousness novel - tells storied of six characters though their thoughts with each character having different patterns and themes to their thoughts.
Some of writing is beautiful, much can be obscure
Reading the book is best done like listening to music or watching opera or ballet, understanding what you can but at other times simply letting the aesthetic pleasure wash over you....more
Story about an old lady Lady Slane – wife of the ex-Prime Minister who on his death discovers her independence much to the surprise and shock of her sStory about an old lady Lady Slane – wife of the ex-Prime Minister who on his death discovers her independence much to the surprise and shock of her six children, and goes to live in a small house in Hampstead where she spends time with Genoux (her lifelong French maid), Mr Bucktrout (who lets the house to her) and Mr Gosheron (an old fashioned painter and carpenter) barely seeing her children and certainly not her grandchildren. She also meets Mr FitzGeorge an eccentric millionaire who had met and loved her in India when she was young and very lovely
She remembers her youth – and in particular how she was forced by society’s convention to give up on her dreams of being a painter to marry and subsume her own wishes and ambitions to those of her children and her husband. Towards the end of her book she meets a grandchild and encourages her in her desire against her parents wishes to become a writer. Presumably this signals the authors hope that women in the 2nd half of the 20th century will be able to live their own lives.
Very well written – lovely descriptive language but at the same time easy to read and with a great characterisation of Lady Slane and her six children and a very interesting meditation on age as well as the role of women (effectively a feminist book).
Character (and one assumes author) seem unaware of the privileges and freedom that riches and station have given her – Genoux for instance is without comment and any seeming irony described as entirely devoted to Lady Slane and her fortunes. Towards the end of that book Lady Slane does comment on this – although even there it seems more to the misfortunes of Genoux’s own circumstances in earlier life than to the general domination of upper class masters over lower class servants.
This seeming lack of awareness – coupled with the fact that Lady Slane says she never laid brush to canvas – makes much of the book appear self-pitying rather than moving....more
Character Olivia Joules is an aspiring features journalist who finds herself caught up in a Al-Queda style terrorist plot including the blowing up of Character Olivia Joules is an aspiring features journalist who finds herself caught up in a Al-Queda style terrorist plot including the blowing up of a liner, a (foiled) plot to attack world bridges and (at the end) the booby trapping of the Oscars. Initially she seems to be imagining things – she is convinced that one of the characters is Osama Bin Laden – but in fact he does turn out to be a notorious terrorist.
Harmless fun but very lightweight and clearly written to be filmed – and (despite what author) thinks the character is effectively Bridget Jones – her thinness and glamorous lifestyle notwithstanding – author seems to think that simply changing name/appearance/circumstances of a character but then using exactly the same writing style and characterisations distinguishes Olivia from Bridget....more
Epic book - set in Victorian times in an alternative history when in medieval times England was a magic kingdom, closely influenced by fairies (who arEpic book - set in Victorian times in an alternative history when in medieval times England was a magic kingdom, closely influenced by fairies (who are dark and capricious) and with the northern half ruled by the mystical Raven King - seemingly a human raised by fairies.
By the time of the book, magic has disappeared from England and is either an academic pursuit more akin to antique book collecting and historical dispute over validity and authenticity of sources or a fraud/confidence trick practiced by charlatans in London. One magician is discovered who to general astonishment can actually perform magic. Clear that magic is actually very practical and mainly consists of reworking old spells. Once Mr Norrell is discovered he sets off for London convinced his magic can be of use in the war with France – which is initially slow but then takes off when he raises someone famous’s wife from the dead.
Norrell is a secretive figure – his main aim is to be the only magician in the country by buying all the books and rubbishing any others who start. He is also a practical magician, unwilling to engage in fanciful but non-useful spells and is also very opposed to any magic involving fairies. He does however summon a powerful fairy to raise the woman from the dead but only in exchange for agreeing the fairy can have “half her life” – he assumes this means her last 30 years (which he considers a fair exchange as she would otherwise be dead) but the fairy tricks him and actually takes her night hours – whisking her to bizarre fairy balls with her footman – a mysterious black man the fairy believes is the true king of England.
Jonathan Strange initially becomes a magician for want of anything practical to do, but is rapidly successful and starts as Norrell’s apprentice. Unlike Norrell he is extravagant, open with his magic (which he attempts to publish only to be thwarted by Norrell), popular (especially after he goes to the war front). The two soon enter into open dispute. His wife (who he has mainly platonic feelings for) seems to die but is in fact taken by the fairy, and Strange increasingly turns to the darker side of magic to try and retrieve her. As he does so he casts spells, which begin to restore magic to its full extent.
Another main character is the chief of the street charlatans who confronts Norrell, Strange and Stephen (the servant) with a prophecy of the Raven King concerning their part in the restoration of magic to England.
Research is brilliant - book is littered with fictional footnotes.
Story is very compelling but loses much of its drive late on particularly as Strange increasingly inhabits a fantastical world.
Style of book is very reminiscent of Jane Austen/Charles Dickens....more
Very much a zeitgeist book (for 20005 when I read it) more than sci-fi, attempts to capture such elements as worlds without borders (the increasing coVery much a zeitgeist book (for 20005 when I read it) more than sci-fi, attempts to capture such elements as worlds without borders (the increasing convergence but still other worldness - or mirror worldness for UK and US - of other countries), the rise of the Russian oligarchs and the associated mafia, the message board culture, international branding and advertising - as one review says a post everything world.
Heroine Cayce Pollard has a pathological sensitivity to brands with a beneficial side effect that she can immediately judge the impact of a new logo, which is an accompaniment to her work as a cool hunter. Her associates include an avant-garde filmmaker, an artist collecting zx81s for an industrial scale exhibition, a hacker, the world’s most powerful branding agency and her fellow members of a bulletin board. The bb is dedicated to following “the footage” some individual slices of film apparently part of a bigger whole, shot seemingly by an individual and left on the net to be found but produced with massive professional resources. She is employed by the agency to find the maker but more dangerous Russian based forces seem to be trying to stop her. She eventually via Camden and Tokyo finds they are encrypted and hunts them to the source in Moscow. Source is mentally crippled (as result of bomb) niece of oligarch who simultaneously gives niece resources but seeks to protect her identity. 9/11 link as CP's dad disappeared there.
Story is extremely unbelievable - author may have been better to stick to sci-fi medium.
Characters are nothings - caricatures but unrecognisable ones.
For the bb members this may well be a deliberate allusion to the fluidity of identity on the net - you are who you say you are - but there seems no excuse for other characters.
Further book is brand obsessed which is clearly its central conceit but is still very wearing and will further mean that book will look very dated in only a few years....more
Story of naïve US notary in the Pacific Islands who doesn’t realise his best friend is poisoning him;
Story of swindlNovel written as a “Russian doll”
Story of naïve US notary in the Pacific Islands who doesn’t realise his best friend is poisoning him;
Story of swindler/composer who ends up as muse to another composer and seduces his wife and daughter;
Story of high investigative journalist investigating nuclear power station story;
Story of publisher fleeing gangland creditors who ends up in old people’s home and story of his escape;
Story of a genetically modified server who ends up getting sentient intelligence and leading a rebellion;
Story of pacific islander after “the fall” and his adventures with one of the last races of “wise” humans.
Each story starts and then stops and the other takes up then when the last is finished they start again in reverse order.
There are fairly explicit links between the stories – generally one character (in turn) reads the diary, reads letters, reads seemingly fictional novel, watches film of adventures, watches filmed testimony by the preceding one (which in many cases are what we actually read ourselves).
Book has a “Godel Escher Bach” trick where the composer writes a Cloud Atlas sextet with the same structure.
Generally a story about power and its abuse, compared to those striving for a better way – lots of musings on this. Characters alternately naïve and cynical.
Book actually begins with same situation as in Jared Diamonds “Guns, Germs and Steel” – the Maori tribes of New Zealand enslaving the Moriori of Chatham with an implication that the Maori are imply more warlike people compared to the noble if idealistic Moriori. There is also at the end (p508) an explicit conversation about why the white men ended up with guns but makes the assertion that it is to do with their natural greed (rather than Diamond’s assertion that both can be entirely explained by environmental factors).
All stories are individually compelling (even unlike “Ghostwritten” the futuristic ones), overall is excellent and the structure makes you keen to carry reading to see how each unravels.
Reading book in one sitting makes meta-narrative much plainer and reveals more links between the stories.
Interestingly each individually has a happy ending (except the penultimate one) even though each stories when they break seem depressing. In some ways this lifts tone of book and makes one optimistic about future – e.g. in end of last story the character refuses to accept a pessimistic view of humanity and resolves to do his small bit for a better future by fighting the evil of slavery. However, because of the way the stories are interleaved this is of course actually the first story and we have already seen a view of the future in which man’s striving for power firstly carries on and in fact leads eventually to the destruction of civilisation.
A book about an Indian boy born to a life of riches who is found to be half white and illegitimate and thrown out to a life of begging and then sold tA book about an Indian boy born to a life of riches who is found to be half white and illegitimate and thrown out to a life of begging and then sold to prostitution and then a eunuch. He reinvents himself as a fix-it man in the red light district, then an Englishman and then assumes someone else's identity going to public school then England. He falls in love with an anthropologists daughter and joins a trip to Africa only to find the daughter falls for a Parisian Negro as he has more soul and he is too boring and English. With this and his trip to Africa when he is firmly on the other side of the colonial divide his sense of belief and identity crumble. A book about colonialism, gradations of colour and about most of all identity and how an impressionist is nothing...more
Main heroes: Arjun Mehta (an Indian programmer who goes to America but then is frustrated as his dreams meet reality and unleashes a virus based on hiMain heroes: Arjun Mehta (an Indian programmer who goes to America but then is frustrated as his dreams meet reality and unleashes a virus based on his idol Leela); Leela Zahir (a Bollywood actress, almost prostituted by her mother); Guy Swift, head of a futuristic brand consultancy (who certainly realises the future may have no place for him).
Lots of ideas of transmission (main Indian hero to US, his sister working in outsourced Australian call centre, Indian actress in Scotland filming, transmission of brand ideals, idea of EU border police which Guy is pitching to but then is in turn arrested by, transmission of American and Western beliefs, values and culture) as well as information theory (and in particular the idea of noise and interference). This is captured not just in the virus (which in itself was Arjun’s misguided attempt to save his own job) but in people’s purposes frustrated, none of the main characters is happy (see above) and the minor characters – Yves (VC), Rajiv (male co-star), Gabrielle (Guy’s girlfriend), Leela’s Mum – are also living frustrated lives which are not working out they way they intended.
As with Impressionist the book suffers from feeling lightweight – it doesn’t really leave much of an impression behind.
With Impressionist this fitted theme of book, here could argue (I guess!) that his message is lost in the noise of the book.
However, the author suffers from having lots of ideas and themes but not caricatures rather than characters and very wide ranging plot (particularly here where there is a section at the end summarising everything although with no real resolution of what happened – again though this could be argued that the ending is lost in noise)....more
I don’t believe for an instant that what’s going on out there is what You meant
I re-read this book after many years following the controversial an
I don’t believe for an instant that what’s going on out there is what You meant
I re-read this book after many years following the controversial announcement that the follow-up “The Testaments” was part of the longlist for the 2019 Booker Prize.
I had predicted it’s longlisting - one of the judges (Liz Calder) published Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize winning book; and the two were close over many years (see this Guardian article https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.th...).
I also predicted the controversy the choice will cause - the book’s publication date was scheduled for after the shortlist announcement and given the worldwide activities already planned around its launch that date was never going to be moved.
So for now we are left simply to look back on the first book. It’s very hard to add anything to what has already been said about it - but this is a book that thoroughly deserves to be the modern classic that it has undoubtedly become.
It is a book which is relevant to today’s world even if some aspects look less relevant - for example the book assumes a stand-off between the superpowers in the “Spheres of Influence accord” despite being written only 5 years before the fall of the Berlin Wall.
I would argue it remains at least as prescient as “1984”.
It does seem to me the book is often misunderstood though - for example as a book about the dangers of religion, rather than how misogynistic totalitarian regimes (as well as less extreme ones) and their adherents will co-opt and distort prevailing religious systems and scientific theories to justify their aims and methods.
In the final historical notes the late 22nd century Cambridge professor comments on Offred’s account which forms the main party of the book "many gaps remain. Some of them could have been filled by our anonymous author, had she a different turn of mind. She could have told us much about the workings of the Gileadean empire, had she the instincts of a reporter or a spy”.
Atwood has commented when announcing the sequel ”Dear Readers .. Everything you’ve ever asked me about Gilead and its inner workings is the inspiration for this book. Well, almost everything! The other inspiration is the world we’ve been living in.”
Gumble's Yard - Golden Reviewer
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Books:
2004
(9)
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