The Magic Mountain isn't just a book to me. It's also a beloved destination.
Is it my favorite book (and favorite destination) of all time? Maybe. I juThe Magic Mountain isn't just a book to me. It's also a beloved destination.
Is it my favorite book (and favorite destination) of all time? Maybe. I just spent 6 weeks listening to the glorious new audiobook narrated by David Rintoul and it was maybe the best 37 hours, 27 minutes I've ever spent....more
This novel belongs on a very short shelf of novels written for adults that remind us of what a feral and terriPerfect, but also, perfectly upsetting.
This novel belongs on a very short shelf of novels written for adults that remind us of what a feral and terrifying experience it is to be a child.* I'm very unsettled just now at the power of Stafford's vision. I'm glad I'm not in total agreement with her nihilistic take on family life, because I wouldn't want to live that way. My relative faith in people, when compared with Stafford, doesn't keep me from recognizing this novel as a stunningly artful story, however bleak its view of humanity.
*Other novels I'd put beside this one, for their equally stark and unsentimental view of childhood:
The first image you see is the cover: a drawing of an African man's head with someone's white hands around his throat, choking him. The style of the dThe first image you see is the cover: a drawing of an African man's head with someone's white hands around his throat, choking him. The style of the drawing is rough and disturbing.
Next, open the French flap on the inside front cover: you're confronted with a crude but unmistakable drawing of Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old boy who drowned while fleeing Syria with his family and his body washed up on a Turkish beach. You didn't even know how deeply his small shape has become part of your memory, and then here it is, and the image confronts you at once with the subject of this book: the dehumanizing and desperate outcomes that humans suffer, because of racial and economic inequality.
What follows in this book are seven stories of people trying to survive in a post-colonial, inter-racial, economically unfair world.
The first story, "Love," has no words at all. Only bodies in relation to one another in a powerful series of inter-related poses. I'm not even sure whether "Love" signals hope, or if it is a graphic representation of racial oppression. There is a jittering uneasiness in these drawings. Even though the images in "Love" resolve themselves, panel by panel, into a scene that, in a non-racist world, would be peaceful and loving, we don't live in such a world. Even the most peaceful of images in this graphic novel pulse with more sinister meanings.
I hate to call this work a "graphic novel" because it works on a less linear and more visual plane than any graphic novel I've read. I see that there are many "I didn't get it" comments in the reviews here on Goodreads, and that's fair if you're judging this book as a graphic novel that follows storytelling conventions, which it decidedly does not do. But this book isn't really about the language or story. This book works the way fine art works. The text provides a guide to the images, not the other way around.
Like the best contemporary art, Alagbé's illustrations invite interpretation, rather than telling you what to think. They evoke great meaning and feeling, even at their least representational. The drawings in some panels are nothing more than dark, rough scribbles, and yet they project a loss of order and a sense of human helplessness. They frequently reflect the feelings that his characters feel when confronted with situations beyond their control....more
Wow. The book meanders and teases, and then it grows taut, and then it snaps like a noose. The action is strange and vague for pages on end and then sWow. The book meanders and teases, and then it grows taut, and then it snaps like a noose. The action is strange and vague for pages on end and then suddenly a fog lifts, and everything becomes brilliantly clear for just a moment; and for just a moment a character sees, really sees, what is important to her or him; and then the clarity dissipates again into a fog. Strange repeating motifs take shape at the edges of every scene. Wild animals. Conversations. Paintings. Hot air balloons. Dead brothers. Lost loves. There is a story here, but the book is more of a mood than a story, or maybe it's a couple of moods--a book of dueling feelings--of what Stan feels; of what Stan's wife Millie feels. The dialog is full of yearning, sadness, missed opportunity, and unspoken things. It's a book about greed and death. About mortality and belief. It's far more open-ended and mysterious than Ingalls's Mrs. Caliban. The only thing I'm sure about is that Ingalls loved these characters very much: their flawed humanity shines out. It's a strange book and I loved it....more
Whenever I read a Ballard novel I keep ping-ponging back and forth, as I read, between thinking 'oh gosh this is so over-the-top ridiculous,' and justWhenever I read a Ballard novel I keep ping-ponging back and forth, as I read, between thinking 'oh gosh this is so over-the-top ridiculous,' and just plain 'wow.' Eventually I get lost in the vivid technicolor imaginings of these worlds, and surrender to them, and lose my sense of how to define 'ridiculous'. They are a little psychedelic. You need to surrender any sense of propriety or good taste to enter into them fully.
The Drowned World is my favorite so far. It feels like a silly mash-up of Heart of Darkness with The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, complete with a lascivious-albino-nihilist-sadist-petty-dictator, a deformed black henchman armed with machetes and knives, and three virtuous White Folk, who are fighting the emergence of their reptile-brain memories while at the same time drinking excellent whiskey, wearing formal evening clothes, and trying to survive the steaming jungle swamps of post-global-warming London.
Both race and gender stereotypes abound but the story is so over-the-top that the novel feels like Ballard is poking fun at me for caring. Or maybe it feels like he is literally poking me. Or slapping me across the face. Or something.
The novel is at its best when Ballard paints a picture of London drowning in silt--no longer a city, but instead a series of lagoons, thick with ooze, and populated by iguanas and crocodiles and giant mosquitos.
The novel is at its hilarious, deeply readable worst whenever any humans come into the picture--here is a sample:
He started to walk towards the curtain when two of the strands parted fractionally, something moved with snake-like speed and a whirling silver blade three feet long cleft the air and spun towards his head like an immense scythe. Wincing with pain, Kerans ducked and felt the blade skim past his right shoulder, tearing a shallow three-inch weal, then impale itself with a steely shudder in the oad paneling behind him. Voice frozen in her throat, Beatrice backed wild-eyed into one of the occasional tables, knocking a chest of jewels across the floor.
Darn those occasional tables! They are always in the way!...more
Wow. This novel is an utterly lush, hyperventilating, humid, and vividly rendered story, of people tearing one another apart. I loved it. It's ridiculWow. This novel is an utterly lush, hyperventilating, humid, and vividly rendered story, of people tearing one another apart. I loved it. It's ridiculously emotional and yet it never tips into the merely melodramatic, because the language is so gorgeous, and because the happenings, well, they just keep happening--one unexpectedly vivid and tumultuous scene after another.
Quite apart from the story, the novel approaches greatness because of the very different voices in which the story reveals itself--in fragments of letters and diaries and accounts, told from the points of view of many characters, each with his or her own prejudices and gaps in knowledge. The voices range from the meticulous and somewhat timid voice of "the pharmacist," to the over-the-top, gothic proclamations of Andre'. Each voice is unique and each adds to the story in unexpected ways....more
I've read a couple of Virginia Woolf's novels so many times now that they have become a place to inhabit rather than a story to be told. I come upon sI've read a couple of Virginia Woolf's novels so many times now that they have become a place to inhabit rather than a story to be told. I come upon sentences like old beloved friends whose gestures and habits I already know and love. It's like music, this novel, and I can listen to it again and again without ever feeling I've heard it entirely. Now I'm trying to imagine the exact music that is this novel and what I come up with is that it's like Berlioz's les nuits d'été, as a matter of fact. okay so here is a link to what I mean--
Waldemar Bonsels' Maya the Bee is full of story and feeling, and it also happens to be beautifully written, with the vocabulary and diction and wonderWaldemar Bonsels' Maya the Bee is full of story and feeling, and it also happens to be beautifully written, with the vocabulary and diction and wonder of other great children's books of this era--this is a book that rivals The Wizard of Oz, or Wind in the Willows.
In addition to its lush diction--0ne beautifully written sentence after another--this novel is different from modern children's books in the way it neither shirks from nor exploits violent happenings. Characters are mostly insects; throughout the book some die, or are subject to grave danger. Bad things happen and those who survive carry on. It's a look at life when the young deaths of innocents wasn't terribly uncommon. Before penicillin or cures for childhood diseases were discovered. I read this first as a child, a copy in my grandmother's house, and reading again this time I remembered so vividly the scenes when insect lives are cut short. They didn't scare me as a child--they did make me feel wiser and more ready for this business of growing up, though.
The German version is lovely. The English translation is also out of copyright and it is very good, too, available for free online. There are even illustrated versions on the Gutenberg project. You owe it to yourself to read it, and then, to read it with your children....more
Two days after having read The Man Who Loved Children and I'm finally settling down. I don't think I've ever changed a 1 star review to a 5 star revieTwo days after having read The Man Who Loved Children and I'm finally settling down. I don't think I've ever changed a 1 star review to a 5 star review before, but there it is. I've moved from feeling "this is a brilliant book, but I hate it" to feeling: "I may hate this book, but it's brilliant."
This novel made me feel dreadfully insecure about my role as a parent. I've decided that is interesting and amazing rather than something to blame it for. The parents in this novel are dreadful in all the ways I dread being, I suppose.
I was so unsettled by Stead's portrayal of a father who tries to be a friend to his children but ends up doing so in all the most damaging ways, smothering them, obliterating their individuality, so that they become supports for his ego and nothing more. Sam Pollitt is a dreadful father, and yet he thrives on the attention of his children, and his children adore him, even when he is his most self-centered and cruel. Only Louisa, the eldest child, begins to see through her father. Her journey and her growing insight become the redemptive arc in this otherwise bleak story.
Henrietta Pollitt is the kind of mother who not only resents her children but also freely shares with them every resentment she feels toward them; who tells them openly how they have ruined her life; who plays with the notion of suicide in their presence; who barely acknowledges her obligations toward them. I have to confess that I am -not- one of those parents who have never wondered, however much I love my children, what it might have been like to have lived a life without them--what I might have achieved or enjoyed if I didn't have the obligation to love them and to care for them. Just having ever had that skinny daydream in my head of what my life may have been without children made me vulnerable to the horror novel that this novel is at its heart.
I applaud Stead for taking my parental insecurities to the farthest darkest place in this novel. The story is extreme, but it is accurate and educative, and true in the way only a great, classic tragedy can be.
My original 1-star review, below the line. ============================= What it does, it does extremely well.
Imagine "To Kill a Mockingbird" where every character is like Bob Ewell. "Harry Potter" where every character is like Draco Malfoy. "Picture of Dorian Grey" where every character is like Dorian Grey. That's what it felt like to read The Man Who Loved Children.
There is no doubt that this is an exquisitely written novel. Every sentence is masterful. Open any page and you'll find a sentence that amazes.
And there is also something amazing and uncanny about Christina Stead--that she could have such a pure approach, such laser-like genius of dialog and scene and setting; that she could bring to brilliant three-dimensional life these greasy, selfish, repulsive, narcissistic people.
The relentlessness of Stead's take on humanity overwhelmed me, though. If it had been a shorter book I'd probably be praising it. But eventually its meanness overcame its art for me, and my final feeling after having read the novel was one of nausea and despair....more
This is a perfect novel in the same way The Great Gatsby is a perfect novel. Not in the sense of "best" novel--but, in that it perfectly executes its This is a perfect novel in the same way The Great Gatsby is a perfect novel. Not in the sense of "best" novel--but, in that it perfectly executes its intention, its reason to exist as a novel.
Instead of a traditional protagonist-antagonist relationship there are two antagonists of equal and opposing strength at the heart of this novel. The only characteristic the two women share is the utter isolation each endures in daily life. While part of a community, they are set apart from that community, the object of speculation and hostility from others, rather than of friendship and belonging. To survive in their isolation, each of the women has developed a highly idiosyncratic way of coping with the world. The choices each makes are so mutually incomprehensible that their clash is inevitable, and when it happens, it's heartbreaking.
Of the many wonders in this novel, what shines most bright for me is what happens when the women are forced to recognize, and to adapt to, the needs and flaws of the other. It's mysterious and untidy. Wonderful....more
I just finished reading this remarkable novel and I'm filled with that ecstatic, airy joy that comes once in a great while, at the end of a perfect reI just finished reading this remarkable novel and I'm filled with that ecstatic, airy joy that comes once in a great while, at the end of a perfect read. Maybe not perfect for you. I can't say. It's a very different story. It's not even supposed to be Salih's 'masterpiece;' Season of Migration to the North is that. All I can say for sure is that I felt the presence of an author who was in complete command of the story he wanted to tell, and that it's like no other story I've read before.
Zein, the titular character, is the village idiot, more a tolerated outsider than a fully integrated member of the village. The story is as much about community as it is the story of Zein and his upcoming, surprising marriage. The community can't believe that any woman would want to marry this odd character--that any woman would consider it. Their bafflement and their ultimate acceptance of this outcome is the narrative that drives the story. Each person in the village, one by one, and finally the group as a whole must come to terms with Zein's humanity. At the wedding feast itself the people finally allow Zein to enter fully into a community of his peers; indeed he becomes the focal point of their shared humanity.
This is a story about acceptance of others. Its theme is that no matter how unusual or impaired a person is, he has a place where he belongs. While I know that Salih spent most of his life as an expatriate in London, this novel feels full of his love for his home country, and full of nostalgia for a way of living where communities are more like extended families, instead of the Western model of communities being more like groups of individuals who happen to live in anonymous proximity to one another. ...more
There is no interior monologue in this novel. It's all on the outside. And even so when I think how to describe my feeling about this book, the words There is no interior monologue in this novel. It's all on the outside. And even so when I think how to describe my feeling about this book, the words that come to mind are "what a lark! what a plunge!" The prose is one fresh breeze of a story after another. I loved it the way I loved Star Wars circa 1977: it allowed me to enter a world completely unlike the one I'm living in, and to know with confidence that there was going to be a happy ending....more
The discursive narrative style is a blend of artfulness and artlessness that disarmed me with its power. All of the harrowing, deadly, tender, and memThe discursive narrative style is a blend of artfulness and artlessness that disarmed me with its power. All of the harrowing, deadly, tender, and memorable events in Szymek Pietruszka’s life are revealed to the reader, with many digressions along the way. Some events are sharply told in a single paragraph. Others reveal themselves in small increments that build throughout the novel, as if some memories are too painful to tell all at once. Szymek is irreverent and explosive. He's a drunk, a lout. And yet he loves his family deeply, and usually he acts selflessly when faced with people or even animals in need. What a compelling character. I'm very glad to have come across this novel....more
I loved it when I first read it June 2015, loved it more this time. I laughed so loudly as I read it that my family kept thinking I'd broken my toe orI loved it when I first read it June 2015, loved it more this time. I laughed so loudly as I read it that my family kept thinking I'd broken my toe or something. Not just a great book. It's one of a kind....more
Edgy and nearly perfect fiction about what it's like to raise a sociopath. Until the last pages where the book got a bit preachy and deterministic I fEdgy and nearly perfect fiction about what it's like to raise a sociopath. Until the last pages where the book got a bit preachy and deterministic I felt that Lessing left me jittering unpleasantly between thinking that Ben, the "fifth child," was born this way, irredeemable, vs. that he was the victim of bad parenting and lack of love and even of abuse...which is of course the same duality any parent (in particular, mother) is judged by when raising a child who doesn't seem quite normal; who doesn't seem quite moral. Disturbing in the best possible way. ...more
What an extraordinary novel! It's difficult to believe such a short work can contain so much. First there is the story itself, which includes among otWhat an extraordinary novel! It's difficult to believe such a short work can contain so much. First there is the story itself, which includes among other things a detailed and colorful explanation of the Cakewalk, the story of the rise of Ragtime, the beauty of the music of the Fisk Jubilee Singers, a rigorous defense of Gospel singing as culturally significant, an explanation of the inner workings of a cigar factory, a celebration of Uncle Remus stories before they were sullied by Walt Disney, and scenes describing gambling, fetishization of blacks by whites, and what it's like to travel overnight in the laundry closet of a Pullman car...amazing. Interlaced throughout the liveliness of the tale are ruminations about race that feel contemporary. By making his protagonist able to 'pass' for white Johnson creates a character who can move into and out of black or white culture at will. Johnson thus gives the character the perception and insight of an outsider, someone who observes and records without feeling compelled to judge. The ending is wrenching, when the protagonist realizes he has sacrificed his dreams and his ambitions and his talents, by choosing the safety and prosperity of living as a white man: "I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."...more
I'm going to be thinking about this novel for a long time. I don't understand its power. I'm not sure how it works. The same actions and perceptions, I'm going to be thinking about this novel for a long time. I don't understand its power. I'm not sure how it works. The same actions and perceptions, throughout the novel, can be taken as signs of mental illness, or signs of mental clarity. Time sequence is broken over and over again in the novel, and yet the movement of the story from beginning to end feels as propulsive and climactic as any linear story. The language feels simple and declarative at first, until I realize that it's highly elevated, to the extent that it resembles poetry--and then it becomes actual poetry on the page. Characters seem simultaneously real and mythological. There are no sharp edges between the characters, either--rather than having any sense of autonomous 'self' they are defined instead by their relationship to one another. What is real and not-real is likewise not sharply defined. Dream bleeds into memory into a fictive reality and back into dream. I didn't feel this novel was written to explain something to me. I felt instead that Silko wrote exactly and uniquely to her purpose. She wrote something entirely new. I've never read anything like it....more
Every once in a while a book comes along that is so unexpectedly perfect that it feels as if I just learned how to read. I'm grateful that this novel Every once in a while a book comes along that is so unexpectedly perfect that it feels as if I just learned how to read. I'm grateful that this novel exists, that Hurston wrote it, that Alice Walker rediscovered it. I'm so grateful to have read it. There is something so exuberant and strong about Janie, about her refusal to be a victim or to be cautious or to be told what to do and feel. She is so unexpectedly modern which of course reminds me that we humans really don't change that much from generation to generation--we just forget and need to re-remember.
I love the book for so many things. The conversations feel real. The people feel real. The way Janie first discovers she is black and therefore different--from looking at a photograph and seeing her difference from the rest of the children in the photo for the first time--feels real. I also love that the main setting of the novel is a self-built, self-sustaining community of African Americans--it captures the reality of segregation but also the resilience of the people who lived it. I love and am disturbed by the conversation Mrs. Turner has with Janie, a conversation full of self-hatred and brimming with the unrecognized racism that Mrs. Turner feels toward her own people, because this too feels real, how systemic discrimination can seep into one's self-identity and poison it--and Hurston was brave to have written it.
Quite frequently when I read something I try to think of other experiences with books or other media that have felt related. In the case of this novel I was strongly reminded of Spike Lee's film "She's Gotta Have It," more than I was reminded of other novels by African American women--a similar exuberant, strong, sensual woman at the core of the story, one who loved men, but who didn't allow men to define her....more
Mailer's writing here takes my breath away, the audacity of it, the scene building, the way in this book it mirrors the fight it describes--a few wildMailer's writing here takes my breath away, the audacity of it, the scene building, the way in this book it mirrors the fight it describes--a few wild swings of sentences, sure, but so many magnificent punches landed. Wonderful....more
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