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| 0452276721
| 9780452276727
| 0452276721
| 4.09
| 17,739
| 1995
| Nov 01, 1996
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liked it
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The final instalment in the Regeneration Trilogy struck me as a bit unfocused and heavy-handed in its use of symbolism and parallel storylines. Howeve
The final instalment in the Regeneration Trilogy struck me as a bit unfocused and heavy-handed in its use of symbolism and parallel storylines. However, certain scenes were very powerful, and the ending packed a punch. I'm not sure why The Ghost Road rather than Regeneration or The Eye in the Door won the Booker Prize. I can only assume the Booker judges wanted to honour the trilogy somehow and so picked the last book to show their appreciation, much like the Academy showered The Return of the King with Oscars even though The Fellowship of the Ring was a vastly superior film. Personally, I thought The Ghost Road was the weakest of the three books (rated a mere 3.5 stars, as opposed to the 4 and 4.5 stars I gave the other two books), but it didn't mar my overall impression of the trilogy, which is good. A review of the entire trilogy is forthcoming. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2010
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Jan 20, 2010
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Paperback
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| 4.02
| 10,223
| 1993
| Apr 01, 1995
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really liked it
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The second book of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy is every bit as good as the first one, and probably better. While I'm not sure how I feel about t
The second book of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy is every bit as good as the first one, and probably better. While I'm not sure how I feel about the split personality thing, I loved the psychological drama and the period detail. Some fascinating stuff there. I'll post a proper review once I've finished the trilogy.
...more
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1
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not set
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Jan 2010
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Jan 13, 2010
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Paperback
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| 0140236236
| 9780140236231
| 0140236236
| 4.02
| 31,735
| May 30, 1991
| Jan 27, 2011
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really liked it
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Regeneration, the first part of Pat Barker's acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy, centres on Dr W.H.R. Rivers, a real-life army psychiatrist at Craiglockha
Regeneration, the first part of Pat Barker's acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy, centres on Dr W.H.R. Rivers, a real-life army psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital who treated the likes of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen for shell-shock. Well-researched, well-imagined and well-written, it's an interesting mix of fact and fiction that provides a good insight into Great War-era Britain and early-twentieth-century psychiatry. A proper review will follow once I've read the whole trilogy.
...more
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1
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not set
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Jan 2010
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Jan 10, 2010
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Paperback
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| 1841491659
| 9781841491653
| 1841491659
| 4.43
| 164,713
| Nov 07, 2009
| Oct 27, 2009
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really liked it
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Wow. Was this ever a pleasant surprise. I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that Wow. Was this ever a pleasant surprise. I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that I should steer clear of it because it went completely off the rails after about five books and probably wouldn't ever be finished, I gave it a shot, and like so many other readers I got hooked. This was unfortunate, because as I discovered halfway through the series, my friends were right. The Wheel of Time did go off the rails, and badly, with Robert Jordan losing himself in so many insignificant subplots and failing so utterly to bring the story closer to its conclusion that it seemed doubtful that it would ever be finished. Nevertheless I soldiered on, reading each new instalment despite my mounting frustration with them, because hey, I was hooked. So much so that I actually joined a Wheel of Time newsgroup at one point, where I spent many hours discussing theories about characters' double identities and where the series might be headed. That newsgroup probably did more for my love of fantasy literature than The Lord of Rings (my introduction to the genre, which I still love to death) ever did. I miss it quite a bit -- it was fabulous. And then Robert Jordan did something incredible. Something his fans had joked about for years but had never considered a serious possibility. He passed away before he could finish the series, rendering the massive investment his fans had made in it (we are talking about eleven books of about nine hundred pages each) virtually useless, because after all that theorising, after all those looooooooong hours spent discussing the minutiae of the books, no one would ever find out how the story ended. Enter Brandon Sanderson, a lesser-known fantasy author of whom I had never heard before, although with hindsight I probably should have. He was hired by Jordan's wife to finish the series, using her husband's extensive notes, unfinished passages and instructions for support. Like many others, I was sceptical about the enterprise, and not sure I wanted to read the result. But then the prologue to Sanderson's sequel was posted on line, about a month before the book's release date, and to my infinite surprise it was good. And about a week later the first chapter of the sequel was leaked on line, and to my mounting surprise that was good, too -- more focussed than anything Jordan himself had written in a while, except perhaps New Spring, the much-maligned prequel to the series. In just two short chapters, Sanderson had got rid of several characters and plotlines which had irked myself and other fans for ages. It actually looked like he was getting the plot to move forwards, which was such a pleasant surprise that I suddenly found myself really, really looking forward to seeing what else he had done to Jordan's universe. So I bought the book the day it was released, ready to lose myself in Randland once more. So what has Sanderson done to Randland? In a word, he has revived the series. The Gathering Storm is by far the best instalment in the Wheel of Time saga of the last ten years. An action-packed romp which actually takes the story forwards several weeks (gasp), it's a return to the form of the earliest books, before Jordan started introducing every single Aes Sedai in existence, expecting us to care about their minor squabbles. In marked contrast to Jordan's later books, The Gathering Storm actually focuses on the main characters (you know, the original heroes of the series, who got us interested in it in the first place), allowing them to achieve goals which had eluded them for quite some time. It eliminates unnecessary side plots like the Prophet and the Shaido, often swiftly so. It is largely free of padding (although a very critical reader might ask what exactly Mat's storyline is meant to accomplish, other than getting him on his way to the Tower of Ghenjei and showing that the Dark One is touching the world). And best of all, it is faithful to the style of the early Jordan, which is to say without endless descriptions of clothes and characters taking baths, yanking their braids, tapping their feet, etc. Nynaeve actually overcomes her urge to yank her braid every time she gets mad at the beginning of the book, which I'm sure is a development welcomed by any reader of the series. In other words, Sanderson has managed to channel Jordan without all the latter's infuriating obsessions, following Jordan's style without copying its bad aspects. I wouldn't say the transition is seamless (Sanderson's style, featuring many short sentences, is punchier than Jordan's), but it certainly isn't jarring, either. While there is the odd moment where you'll find yourself thinking, 'Hmmm, that didn't sound entirely Jordanesque,' these moments are more than made up for by Sanderson's ability to focus on essentials, in my opinion. It's refreshing, reading Randland stories without all the padding. So what actually happens in The Gathering Storm? (WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD) Well, the Prophet finally dies (about time). Tuon (one of my favourite characters, though less so here than before) finally becomes Empress of Seanchan. The Seanchan finally attack the White Tower, which Egwene has been prophesying for ages. Egwene herself finally becomes Amyrlin Seat, in quite an impressive manner. Rand, who seemed to be going increasingly mad in the last few books, finally finds himself again, in a way which holds promise for the future. Perrin finally accepts his wolf self, while Mat and his cronies finally set out for the Tower of Ghenjei, a subplot anyone with a brain has seen coming for the last seven books or so. For her part, Aviendha is finally accepted as a Wise One, in a manner befitting those strange Aiel customs. Gawyn, who was fighting on the wrong side, finally sees the light (ha!) and joins the rebel Aes Sedai. Siuan Sanche and Gareth Bryne finally become an item, though rather chastely so. Two more Forsaken are taken care of (presumably). And in two of the more brilliant plot twists, a mysterious character from the beginning of the series is revealed to be Black Ajah (a jaw-dropping chapter, very well written and conceived), while Elaida is deposed in a way which had me chuckling out loud. I'm not sure who came up with the idea for Elaida's demise, Jordan or Sanderson, but whoever it was, he has a rich sense of poetic justice. It's just too, too good. Of course, many storylines still remain unresolved, and Sanderson now believes he will need two books to tie them up, not one, as previously planned. I have faith in him, though. I know that these two books of his will really be two books, not seven (as with Jordan). And I have no doubt that they will be good books. Books in which we will finally see Moiraine make a reappearance. Books in which all the prophecies and viewings which have been bandied around for the last twelve books will finally be fulfilled (or not, as the case may be). In which Perrin, Lan, Logain, Mazrim Taim, Slayer, Elayne, Galad, Thom, Birgitte, Olver, the Sea Folk and the Kin will probably get to see more action than they did in The Gathering Storm, and in which the stage is well and truly set for Tarmon Gai’don, the final battle. And I also know that thanks to Sanderson, I am excited about this series again. I will probably spend more time than I care for at Wheel of Time websites over the next few months, looking up old prophecies and comparing theories about where the story is heading. And when it's all over, two books from now, I will in all likelihood look back on the Wheel of Time series with fondness, rather than the bitterness Jordan was increasingly inspiring in me. Thanks for that, Brandon. After all the time I have invested in this series, I need to love it again, rather than despair of it. It now looks like I may, which is great. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Nov 2009
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Jan 07, 2010
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Hardcover
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| 0451451155
| 9780451451156
| 0451451155
| 4.09
| 49,204
| Aug 1990
| Oct 01, 1991
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really liked it
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There was no way I was not going to love this book. Experience has shown that I love Guy Gavriel Kay and the characters he comes up with. They are, wi
There was no way I was not going to love this book. Experience has shown that I love Guy Gavriel Kay and the characters he comes up with. They are, without exception, passionate people, and I love reading about passionate people, especially when they have a Cause. And boy, do the characters in this book have a cause. Can you say, epic cause? Tigana is the name of one of the countries of the Palm, a peninsula loosely based on Renaissance Italy. Divided and distrustful of one another, and unlikely ever to unite, the countries of the Palm are an easy prey for overseas invaders. When the story proper starts, two sorcerer-kings from abroad, Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior, have carved out the Palm between them, each ruling about half of the peninsula, each greedy for the other half. One of the sorcerers, Brandin, has destroyed the country of Tigana and cursed it so comprehensively that none but its older inhabitants remember its existence. The very name 'Tigana' cannot be written, spoken or heard, except by those Tiganans who were alive when the outrage that provoked Brandin's wrath occurred: the death of his son Stevan at the hands of Prince Valentin of Tigana, a noble man determined to protect his country from the mighty invader. Twenty years later, Valentin's son Alessan, along with a ragtag crew of similarly minded nobles, commoners and wizards, sets out to overthrow Brandin (preferably in a way which will not yield his land to his arch rival Alberico) and restore once-beautiful Tigana to its former glory. And that, in a nutshell, is what Tigana is all about. Except, of course, that it is not all Tigana is about. A big and ambitious book, Tigana is about the things that make people tick, the things that keep them going when all their efforts seem futile. It's about loyalty, justice and politics, about how to be a good and inspiring leader in troubled times, and about how to orchestrate changes if you need them. It's about shared memories and how they bind people together, forging a shared identity. It's about nationalism and how to get people to unite behind a common ideal when being divided isn't working for them. It's about shame and despair and what they will drive us to. It's about all these things and more, and Kay effortlessly weaves them into a coherent story, which somehow manages to be both epic and startlingly intimate. It's a literary tour de force, and then some. Needless to say, though, it's not just about ideas. Central to the book are two very human tales of two very extraordinary humans, Alessan and Dianora. The former is a charismatic leader who tries to look beyond the needs of his own country and work for the greater good of all the people of the Palm, only to be cursed by his proud mother for not focussing enough on poor Tigana and revenge. The latter is a beautiful girl whose family has been wrecked by Brandin and who sets out to kill him, only to fall deeply and devastatingly in love with him and actually save his life when someone else has a go at assassinating him, to her own amazement and mortification. The relationship between Dianora and Brandin has to be one of the most haunting ones I've come across in any type of fiction. There is real internal drama here, and genuine, heart-felt emotionality, and Kay expertly takes you through it all, from Dianora's early anger to her anguished acceptance of her own feelings for Brandin, revealing layer after layer of involvement until the heart-wrenching finale. It's riveting stuff, told by someone who really, really understands the conflicts of the human heart, and it just about broke my own heart. The other characters are less thoroughly fleshed out than Alessan and Dianora, but they do make for an interesting mosaic of personalities and storylines. Due to the constant switches in perspective, some parts of the story have a somewhat jarring quality, but the fast pace and sheer balls of the story more than make up for this. Some plot turns are predictable and a little cheap, but Kay always puts in sufficient pathos to make them interesting. Other plot turns, like the unexpected twist which ends Brandin's storyline, are surprising and quite brilliantly handled. I actually found myself nodding with admiration at the conclusion to the book, something I hardly ever do. And as usual, I just loved Kay's characters, who are so driven that one can't help rooting for them. I don’t think I cared for Tigana's heroes quite as much as I did for The Lions of al-Rassan's, but I cared, and in Dianora's case my heart broke a little at the denouement of her story. I never expected her to live happily ever after (it was obvious that her storyline was headed for tragedy), but to see such promise wasted like that was, well, tragic. Genuinely tragic, as opposed to the overwrought sentimentality that passes for tragedy in many other fantasy novels. Tragedy aside, the real genius of Tigana is, in my opinion, Kay's refusal to make his characters either completely good or completely bad. There are many shades of grey here. The hero of the story, Alessan, is a great guy who justifiably attracts many followers, but he is not without flaws. Nor is the main villain of the piece, Brandin, without redeeming qualities. One of the most surprising things about Tigana is how sorry you feel, towards the end, for Brandin, the powerful sorcerer who may have wrecked a country and an entire generation of people, but did so out of bottomless grief and love. He's a complex villain, is Brandin, and his inevitable demise at the end is not as satisfying as you might expect it to be because you have actually come to care for him a little. It takes a brave author to attempt a conflicted ending like this, but it makes for a rich and rewarding reading experience. If only more fantasy writers were prepared to write stories like this... So why, after all that praise, am I withholding one star? Mostly because I feel the book could have done with better editing. There are sloppily written passages where the punctuation is a little off and where Kay randomly switches tenses, two things to which I'm quite allergic. Furthermore, Kay has a habit of breaking off the action mid-sentence only to continue it in the next paragraph for greater dramatic effect, which tends to annoy me. Finally, and most seriously, I feel Kay is frequently guilty of telling rather showing in Tigana, a flaw any good editor could and should have pointed out to him. However, these are minor quibbles. By and large, I loved the book, and I'd recommend it to any lover of good fantasy fiction. I quite look forward to continuing my acquaintance with Kay. I think I'll tackle A Song for Arbonne next... ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 2009
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Jan 05, 2010
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Mass Market Paperback
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| 3.85
| 254,021
| 1958
| 1993
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really liked it
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Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's
Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's understandable, given how iconic Hepburn's portrayal of Holly Golightly is. In fact, I think Hepburn's Holly may well be my all-time favourite movie heroine. She's a slut, a snob and a gold-digger, and her life is so shallow and vapid that it should be reprehensible to me, but at the same time she is so delightfully charming and eccentric that it is impossible not to fall under her spell and end up madly in love with her. As played by Hepburn, Holly is the ultimate It Girl, witty and beautiful and so stylish it hurts, but vulnerable and conflicted enough for us not to envy her. Capote's Holly is slightly different from Hepburn's. She is tougher and more potty-mouthed than her movie counterpart, with a touch of racism that I don't remember from the film. She also seems a bit more hell-bent on self-destruction, and less inclined to be saved by the well-meaning narrator. For these and other reasons, she should be mildly off-putting, but for some reason she's not. I guess it's because she is immensely alive -- less girlishly and innocently so than in the film, but just as alluring. And she doesn't need Hepburn's charm to come off the page. Capote did a great job imagining Holly and fleshing her out, giving her one good line after the other and endearing quirks galore. It probably isn't fair to him that I (along with millions of other readers, no doubt) kept picturing Audrey Hepburn while reading his descriptions of Holly, to the point where I was shocked to discover Capote imagined her as a blonde (surely not?), but thankfully, my love for the film didn't prevent me from recognising the quality of the writing, which is beyond dispute. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Capote was a master storyteller with a finely developed ear for dialogue and a massive flair for making the unglamorous glamorous. He used both gifts to great effect in Breakfast at Tiffany's, creating a story which, while less romantic and emotionally gratifying than the film adaptation, nevertheless succeeds in making the reader yearn for Holly the same way the narrator does. The prose is effortlessly elegant, even when it refers to ugly things, which it does rather more regularly than George Axelrod and Blake Edwards seem to have cared to replicate in the film. Timeless and evocative, it is a story about friendship valued and lost, about belonging and refusing to belong, and like the film, it stays with you as the perfect blend of cynicism and sentiment, with an added sense of loss. I can't think why I waited so long to read it... The other three stories in the collection, 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory', are almost as strong as Breakfast at Tiffany's. Like the better-known novella which opens the book, 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory' are elegies on broken friendships, on bonds shared and then lost, and like Tiffany’s, they are poignant and evocative, with moments of startling intimacy and many a well-turned phrase and eye-opening observation. 'House of Flowers' (about the romance between the most beautiful prostitute in Port-au-Prince and the peasant who makes an honest woman of her) is less poignant, but just as memorable for its matter-of-fact weirdness and quirkiness (spider bread, anyone?). All three short stories prove that Capote was a master of the genre, equally at home in first-person narratives and third-person ones, with male heroes and female ones, with child protagonists and more mature ones. The four stories contained in Breakfast at Tiffany's all have vastly different points of view, styles and subjects, but in their own ways, they are all interesting and memorable, making it all the more regrettable that Capote only published so few of them. He was obviously quite the short-story teller. Do seek this collection out if you haven't already -- you won't regret it. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Dec 2009
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Jan 03, 2010
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Paperback
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| 3.90
| 35,154
| 1951
| Nov 29, 1995
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really liked it
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The Daughter of Time is an unlikely detective story. It's the story of a police inspector who, whilst laid up in bed because of a leg injury, is prese
The Daughter of Time is an unlikely detective story. It's the story of a police inspector who, whilst laid up in bed because of a leg injury, is presented with a portrait of England's King Richard III (reigned 1483-1485) and comes to the conclusion that a man so genteel-looking couldn't possibly be the ruthless murderer Shakespeare made him out to be, because 'villains don't suffer, and that face is full of the most dreadful pain' (judge for yourself here). So with a little help from the nurses and the friends and colleagues who come and visit him in the hospital, he starts digging in fifteenth-century history, only to come up with a few interesting theories of his own, all of which seem to point to history's having given Richard a rotten deal. For in reality, Tey has her bed-ridden hero discover, Richard III had no motive to have half of his family (including his two under-age nephews) murdered, as sixteenth-century historians alleged. He may not have been a hunchback, either. Rather he was the victim of revisionist history as written by the Tudor kings who succeeded him and who had their own reasons for vilifying him. History, lest we forget, is written by the victors, and boy, can they do damage to a guy's reputation if they have a talented playwright on their side. Just ask Macbeth of Scotland, who was by all accounts a fairly good and popular king. I'm not sure how historically accurate the details of Tey's argument are, nor whether her evidence would stand up in a modern court of justice, but the case for Richard is presented in a convincing manner and makes a gripping read, mainly because the protagonist, Inspector Alan Grant, is absolutely convinced of Richard's innocence and hell-bent on finding evidence to support his subjective impression of the man, taking a violent dislike to Richard's most famous biographer, Sir Thomas More, in the process. I love books in which the characters get passionate and even a little obsessive about things, and Tey's Inspector Grant is nothing if not obsessive. His ferocious zeal for his quest (often expressed in violent outbursts to startled nurses) is quite infectious, to the point where you find yourself wishing for a big pile of history books and access to the British Museum to verify Grabt's discoveries for yourself. At least that's what the book did for me. After finishing The Daughter of Time, I spent several hours on line Googling the authors and historians Tey mentions in her book, some historical, others seemingly fictitious. In the course of my research, I came across several Ricardian societies, all working towards a rehabilitation of the last Plantagenet king. Many of their members seem to have joined after reading The Daughter of Time. In short, Tey's book has been influential, and for good reason -- it's a fascinating journey through English history, and a grand tale of high-minded obsession to boot. It had me add several history books to my to-read list. I love books which make me enthusiastic for previously unexplored subjects, so as far as that's concerned, Tey did a great job. Is that to say The Daughter of Time is a faultless book? By no means. While I was impressed with the way in which Tey shared her research and sustained her reader's interest in her detective's quest for the truth, I often found the dialogue in The Daughter of Time lacklustre. Not only do Tey's researchers regularly have unlikely conversations about clues which I suspect would be very hard to dig up five hundred years after the fact (even if one had access to the venerable records held by the British Museum), but to make matters worse they all sound identical, all speaking in the same benignly polite but slightly ironic voice. As portrayed by Tey, middle-aged British police inspector Alan Grant and his much younger American assistant Brent Carradine sound much the same, and there is little to distinguish between the female characters, either. I think the book could have done with slightly more individualised and characteristic dialogue, but really, that's a minor complaint. For the most part, The Daughter of Time succeeds admirably in what it does, which is making and keeping its readers interested in a five hundred-year-old mystery, while making a few interesting observations about the way history is written along the way. I liked the examples of what Inspector Grant refers to as 'Tonypandy' -- legendary historical events which live on in popular consciousness despite the fact that they have been proven to be untrue. If Tey's research is anything to go by, the legend of Richard III falls squarely into the Tonypandy category. Needless to say, that doesn't make Shakespeare's play of the same name any less interesting, but it does add an interesting dimension to the story, doesn't it? For those who wish to read more about the evidence supporting Richard's innocence, here's Horace Walpole's excellent and well-researched defence of the last Plantagenet king, first published in 1786, which seems to have been one of the bases for The Daughter of Time (the other being Clements Markham's later Richard III: His Life and Character Reviewed in the Light of Recent Research). ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 2009
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Oct 05, 2009
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Paperback
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| 4.08
| 472,853
| 1928
| Jan 01, 1996
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it was amazing
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All Quiet on the Western Front (or, to give it its German title, Nothing New in the West) has been hailed as the best war novel ever, and it's easy to
All Quiet on the Western Front (or, to give it its German title, Nothing New in the West) has been hailed as the best war novel ever, and it's easy to see why. World War I is described in such vivid non-glory in its pages that you are sucked into the story straight away and stay there for the next two hundred pages. It is obvious that the author, Erich Maria Remarque, had first-hand experience of the things he writes about; the details are so right and authentic-sounding that they couldn't possibly have been wholly made up. Needless to say, the ring of authenticity adds quite a punch to the reading experience, elevating a good war story into an absolute classic of the genre. All Quiet is a short book, but remarkably complete. All the aspects of trench warfare are there -- the excitement, the tedium, the horror, the pain, the fear, the hunger, the dirt, the loss, the sense of alienation, the awareness that you may die any minute, and last but not least, the realisation of the futility of it all. All Quiet has a pervasive sense of futility, an initially unvoiced but later fully expressed question of 'Just what is this war all about, and why am I putting my life on the line for it? What could be worth such a sacrifice?' The answer is, obviously, nothing, because if this book has one message, it is that war is awful and young men ought not to be forced to fight them. This is not a book which glorifies the war effort, or portrays soldiers as heroes. It is not a book which tries to justify Germany's involvement in World War I. In Remarque's own words, it is 'an attempt to give an account of a generation that was destroyed by the war -- even those of it who survived the shelling'. As such, it is brutal and confronting, but in the best possible way. Anti-war fiction has seldom been this effective, or this memorable for that matter. All Quiet tells the story of Paul Bäumer, a young man who gets talked by an idealistic teacher into joining the German army fighting World War I in Belgium. In short, business-like sentences, Paul tells the reader about his experiences in and around the trenches, plus those of his similarly duped classmates, all of whom end up dead. All Quiet does a brilliant job of evoking the strain of being at the front, providing vivid descriptions of the horrors of night-time shelling, being caught in no man's land, the smell of gangrene in the hospital, etc. Reading the book, you get a good feel for what it must have been like to be a soldier in World War I. Remarque does not spare his reader. He not only tells you what it's like to hide from the shells that are coming your way, but also what it feels like to crawl through a recently dug cemetery where shells have just exposed some body parts, and what it's like to crawl deeper and deeper beneath a coffin so that it will protect you, 'even if Death himself is already in it'. He tells you what it's like to hear friendly voices after having been stuck in no man's land for what seems like an eternity, and what it's like to have an unscratchable itch because there are lice underneath your plaster cast. He tells you what it's like to stare longingly at the picture of a squeaky clean pretty girl when you're absolutely filthy yourself and crawling with lice. He tells you why you need coarse and black humour to deal with the horrors of war, and why you need girls, or at least fantasies about girls. He also tells you what it's like to talk to the parents of a soldier who has died a horrible death. And last but not least, he shows you the aftermath. All Quiet on the Western Front demonstrates quite unequivocally how scarred the soldiers emerged from the trenches, because, as one of Paul's classmates says halfway through the book, 'Two years of rifle fire and hand-grenades -- you can't just take it all off like a pair of socks afterwards.' It shows how alienated the veterans of trench warfare felt from those at home, who could not for the life of them understand what it was like to experience the things they were going through. I guess this was the most powerful part of the book for me -- the part where Paul goes home and finds that he cannot communicate with his family, that he cannot possibly share the horrors of his recent experiences with his loved ones, because (1) they wouldn't understand, and (2) he does not want to upset them any more than their concerns for his well-being have already done. With chilling accuracy, Paul describes how empty his war experiences have made him feel. War, he says, brutalises soldiers, turning them into human animals, to the point where they have nothing to live for, as their former interests, dreams, tenderness and the future have all 'collapsed in the shelling, the despair and the army brothels'. His sense of desolation and isolation is so exquisitely rendered that by the time his leave is over and he has to return to the front, you find yourself agreeing with his classmate Albert: 'The war has ruined us for everything.' As you can probably tell from the above, I had a strong reaction to All Quiet on the Western Front. From the sparse but effective prose to the expert way in which Remarque builds up the final two deaths, I just loved the book, responding to it unreservedly, jotting down astute observations and sharing passages from it with my boyfriend, who is a World War I buff. I felt like I was experiencing the boys' emotions with them, the good ones as well as the bad ones. I was shocked, horrified and repulsed when Remarque wanted me to be, but also got a few chuckles out of the book, because all the bad stuff really makes the good moments the boys experience stand out. I loved the male camaraderie which occasionally drips off the pages. I loved the descriptions of the little acts of vengeance the boys enact on those who have wronged them, as well as the few moments of genuine happiness they experience at the front, such as when they eat a stolen goose, raid an officers' supply depot or make their way to some girls they are not supposed to visit. These events are drawn so vividly and have such a genuine feel of relief and excitement about them that it's hard not to get drawn in. Mostly, though, I just sympathised with the boys, asking with them why war is necessary, and whether those who wage wars on others have any idea what they're doing to the men who fight the wars for them. I think All Quiet on the Western Front should be compulsory reading for every leader who has ever considered going to war. The fact that the book is eighty years old and deals with events which took place nearly a century ago does not make its message any less valid today. A note on the Vintage English translation: Brian Murdoch's translation is good but a bit sloppy at times, especially in the second half of the book, where he occasionally uses German-sounding grammar and makes a few typos. It also sounds a bit too British for my taste, to the point where I occasionally had to remind myself that I was reading about German soldiers, as they all sounded so terribly English! I would have preferred a slightly less 'placeable' translation, but really, that's a minor complaint. By and large, Murdoch did a good job. Next time round, though, I think I'll read the book in the original German. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Sep 2009
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Oct 02, 2009
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0140180753
| 9780140180756
| 0140180753
| 3.78
| 139,519
| Apr 12, 1934
| 1991
|
liked it
|
How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to
How is one to feel about a protagonist who frequently displays signs of elitism, sexism, bigotry and homophobia, finds himself worryingly attracted to young girls, has no goal in life except to make himself useful to damsels in distress, and drinks away his career and marriage, ending up a mere shadow of his former self? Is one supposed to regard him as a tragic hero? Is one to sympathise with him? And if one does sympathise with him, is that because of the way he was written, or rather because we are aware that he is a thinly veiled version of the author himself, a giant of early-twentieth American literature? Those were some of the questions I pondered after reading Tender Is the Night, F. Scott Fitzgerald's last finished novel, and possibly his most autobiographical one. Set in France and Italy in the 1920s, it tells the story of two wealthy American expats, Dick and Nicole Diver (largely based on the author and his wife Zelda), who seem to others the most glamorous couple ever, 'as fine-looking a couple as could be found in Paris', but are finding their private lives increasingly less glamorous. We first see the couple through the eyes of Rosemary Hoyt, a young and naive American actress holidaying in Europe. Rosemary falls madly in love with suave Dick, but also admires angelic Nicole. After about 130 pages during which Rosemary hangs out with the Divers and nearly embarks on an affair with Dick, the narrative stops and goes back in time to tell the story of Dick and Nicole's marriage, which is considerably more complicated than Rosemary realises. Nicole, it turns out, has a history of mental illness, and Dick is both her husband and the doctor treating her -- a recipe for disaster, obviously. Being a tale of needy people, broken relationships, loss of purpose and wasted potential, Tender Is the Night is quite a depressing read, and one's appreciation of it largely depends on one's tolerance for that kind of thing. If you like your books bleak and tragic, chances are you'll appreciate Tender Is the Night. If not, you might want to steer clear of it. I generally love a good tragedy, but I confess I wasn't overly impressed with Tender Is the Night. For a book which has garnered so many rave reviews, I found it remarkably flawed. Fitzgerald himself seems to have somewhat agreed with me. Despite referring to Tender Is the Night as his masterpiece and being shocked by its lack of critical and commercial success, he began reconstructing it a few years before his death, placing the flashback chapters at the beginning and making all the textual alterations required by this change. However, he died before he could finish the project, or perhaps he abandoned the project as not worth completing (no one seems to know for sure). A friend of his, Malcolm Cowley, then completed the revision, and for years this was the standard edition of the book. However, the Cowley version has fallen into scholarly disfavour (or so Penguin informs me), and several publishers, Penguin included, now use the first edition, the one that Fitzgerald thought needed revision. Apparently, there are no fewer than seventeen versions of the novel extant, which says much about how satisfied Fitzgerald was with his own work. My guess? Not very much. I read a version based on the first edition of the book, and to be honest, I can see why Fitzgerald felt it needed some work. Tender Is the Night felt very disjointed to me. To a certain extent, this was because of the aforementioned non-linear structure, which felt a bit jarring to me. However, as far as I'm concerned, that is not the book's only problem, nor even its biggest one. What most annoyed me was the way in which the perspective keeps shifting. Fitzgerald uses an omniscient narrator in Tender Is the Night, but not consistently so; the story is always written from a certain character's perspective. Sometimes the perspective is Rosemary's, sometimes it's Dick or Nicole's; even the minor characters have stretches of the story told from their perspectives, often on the same page as a main character's perspective. To me, these shifts in point of view often felt haphazard, not to mention a little jarring. I didn't think they were particularly effective, either, as they hardly build on each other and don't provide any information that couldn't be gleaned from a 'regular' omniscient narrator. I may be in a minority here, but I think the book would have benefited from a more consistent approach to perspective. The story itself is a bit haphazard, as well. It occasionally drags, it has little plot, and there are quite a few scenes and storylines which don't really go anywhere. Among several other seemingly unlikely scenes, the book contains a murder, a shooting and a duel, none of which is fully integrated into the story, and none of which is given proper significance. Scenes are introduced and then left so randomly that you have to wonder why Fitzgerald bothered to include them at all. At the risk of being unkind and judgemental, I guess that's what being an alcoholic will do for an author: it gives you wild ideas, but prevents you from carrying them out properly. Which brings me to the characterisation. I'll probably get a lot of flak for this, but I felt that Fitzgerald's vaunted characterisation was a bit 'off' in this novel. Many of the minor characters are sketchily drawn, whereas the main characters are described well (sometimes brilliantly so), but never properly explained. While Fitzgerald does a good (and occasionally excellent) job of sharing his protagonists' feelings, he hardly ever bothers to explain their motivations. This particularly bothered me in the parts written from Dick Diver's point of view, as Dick is supposed to be a psychiatrist. By rights, he should be analysing people actions and motivations all the time, and asking lots of questions. However, Dick hardly ever asks questions. He does not even ask himself questions. He never wonders why he is so drawn to young girls, or what it is in him that causes him to need to be their saviour. He just observes other people in a way of which any intelligent person (trained psychologist or not) would be capable, and then describes their behaviour in a few felicitous phrases. For this and other reasons, I didn't buy Dick Diver as a psychiatrist. Fitzgerald may have read up on psychology (and undoubtedly learned a lot from the doctors who treated his own wife), but I never found his alter ego convincing as a psychiatrist, let alone a brilliant psychiatrist. To me, Dick has 'writer' written all over him. It's a pity I kept finding such flaws, because Tender Is the Night obviously had the potential to be amazing. It has all the right ingredients: interesting (albeit snobbish and bored) characters, powerful themes, evocative (albeit frequently vague) writing, you name it. And the story certainly doesn't lack in pathos. It is quite harrowing to watch Dick Diver, a supposedly brilliant and popular man who never lives up to his potential and is increasingly torn asunder by money, alcoholism and his failed marriage to a mentally ill woman, go to pieces, becoming, in his own words, 'the Black Death' ('I don't seem to bring people happiness any more'). The fact that this was Fitzgerald writing about himself, about his own frustrations and shattered dreams, adds considerable poignancy to the reading experience. Even so, Tender Is the Night ended up leaving me fairly cold, as I simply didn't care for Dick enough to be genuinely moved by his descent into failure. While others may find Dick a swell guy, I myself found his complacency and lack of purpose grating, his alcoholism exasperating, and his brilliance skin-deep. I seem to be alone in this opinion, but I stand by it. In summary, then, I enjoyed and admired aspects of Tender Is the Night, but I don't think they add up to a great whole. While I appreciate Fitzgerald's brutal honesty and the masterful way in which he evokes mutual dependence, isolation and frustration, I can't shake off the feeling that the book could have been much better than it ended up being. And this pains me, as I hate wasted potential as much as Fitzgerald himself seems to have done. As it is, Tender Is the Night is in my opinion not just a book about wasted potential, but an example of wasted potential. It is fitting, I suppose, but no less disappointing for that. 3.5 stars, rounded down to three because I really didn't like it as much as many of the books I have given four stars lately. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Jun 2009
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Sep 29, 2009
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Paperback
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| 3.95
| 69,324
| Sep 1988
| Jan 10, 1996
|
really liked it
|
Oh, the little games girls play on each other. They scheme, they gossip and they either ostracise or bully those whom they feel don't belong to their
Oh, the little games girls play on each other. They scheme, they gossip and they either ostracise or bully those whom they feel don't belong to their little circle, inflicting untold damage with their whisperings and indirectness. That, in a nutshell, is the subject of Margaret Atwood's Cat's Eye, as memorable an account of childhood angst and cruelty as any I've read. Cat's Eye is the story of Elaine Risley, a middle-aged artist who returns to the city where she grew up, Toronto, for a retrospective exhibition of her paintings. As she makes her way through the places of her youth, she is visited by memories she has suppressed for years, forcing her to deal with demons from her past. In her case, those demons are her childhood friends Cordelia, Grace and Carol, three fiendishly bourgeois girls who used to undermine her self-esteem by reminding her time and again that she was 'different' and trying to make her conform to their ideals. Elaine, you see, didn't have a conventional early childhood. Far from living in the same house for most of her life, like the other girls, she was always on the road, moving from one place to another with her entomologist father, un-prim-housewife-like mother and decidedly boyish brother. So when she finally did settle down in one place and started attending school, she had no idea how to behave among little girls. Cordelia, Grace and Carol were willing to teach her, but at great cost to herself. They bullied her literally to near-death, and Elaine submitted, because these were her only friends and she was afraid to lose them... Elaine's story really resonated with me, because like Atwood's heroine, I was bullied as a child -- not physically, the way boys tend to bully each other, but in the more subtle ways used by prepubescent girls. For some reason I'm still at a loss to explain, my classmate M (who was neither very bright nor very pretty, but did have a certain cool air about her) got all the girls in our form under her sway, ruling them like a demanding tyrant rules his subjects. If you were in favour with M, you got to pick her up from home and walk to school with her, hang out with her during intervals, and play with her after school. If you were out of favour with M, no girl in the form would dare talk to you, no one would pick you on her team during PE lessons, and no one would invite you to her birthday party, and there would be a lot of malicious gossiping about you -- usually in your presence, so that you would know people were talking about you without being able to hear what they were saying or defend yourself. Being left out was hell, so all the girls in our form did their best to stay on M's good side, pandering to her whims and trying to live up to her expectations of them. This wasn't easy, because M was notoriously unpredictable in her tastes and expectations. Sometimes a girl would be ostracised for not following M's style closely enough; at other times that same girl would be ostracised for being a terrible copycat. Since no one ever knew exactly what would please M, and since she bestowed and revoked her favours so arbitrarily, her followers could never be sure of acceptance, which made us all terribly insecure. Some of us, like myself, eventually outgrew those insecurities and started to live life according to our own rules rather than M's; others never really put the experience behind them and grew into women who feel they are never good enough and are always looking for approval. As far as I can tell, some of my former classmates are still suffering from the bullying they experienced at primary school, and paying for it in ways they probably don't even realise. They are like Atwood's Elaine, who is marked by her childhood experiences without understanding the full impact they have had on her personality -- until she returns to Toronto, that is, and starts analysing her life in the context of her childhood... Atwood does a magnificent job evoking the horrors of childhood bullying. The cruel games Cordelia and the other girls play on Elaine are brought to life in vivid and compelling detail, as are Elaine's nagging insecurities, her growing inferiority complex and her need for acceptance, despite the fact that she recognises that the girls whose acceptance she craves are kind of, well, silly (something I myself never realised until I was twelve). Atwood has much to say about the relationship between bullies and their victims, and about how victims often end up becoming bullies themselves -- a truth brought home in dramatic fashion when the mature Elaine says, 'I'm not afraid of seeing Cordelia. I'm afraid of being Cordelia. Because in some way we changed places, and I've forgotten when.' Atwood shows with ferocious accuracy how children are pressured into conforming to other people's expectations, and just how soul-crushing this pressure can be. However, what she does best of all is show how introverted, artistically inclined loners like Elaine (rendered even lonelier by their childhood experiences) can channel unhappy childhood experiences into creative outlets, expressing their anger and frustration in art. Much of Cat's Eye is about the creation of an artist, about a conflicted person's wish to express herself in ways which have nothing to do with human interaction. Elaine makes a convincing artist. The whole first-person narrative feels as though it was written by a painter; it is full of beautiful, evocative descriptions of images, shapes, colours, textures and impressions, all of which add considerably to the richness of the writing. It's a psychological landscape painted by someone with a great eye for telling detail, and the result is occasionally riveting. The book does have its shortcomings. My main complaint, echoed by many other reviewers, is that the first half, which mostly focuses on Elaine's childhood memories, is considerably stronger than the second half, which mainly deals with Elaine's later life. This is probably because the first half is more autobiographical. Like Elaine's father, Margaret Atwood's own father was an entomologist whose family was on the road for much of the author's childhood. Like Elaine, Atwood did not attend school full time until her early teens. I've never read an Atwood biography (are there any good ones around?), but I suspect the childhood part of Cat's Eye owes much of its strength to the fact that Atwood actually experienced it herself, to some extent. The book also somewhat suffers from the fact that there is no real closure, no satisfying later-life confrontation between Elaine and her main bully, Cordelia. Atwood was to rectify that situation in her next novel, The Robber Bride, which deals with many of the same issues as Cat's Eye (women being haunted by a shadow from the past) but does work its way towards a confrontation. Reading Cat's Eye, I kept expecting a climactic meeting with Cordelia, but none was forthcoming -- which is realistic, I think (life doesn't always provide closure), but not terribly dramatic. In fact, there is hardly any plot or resolution at all. The book just keeps meandering down memory lane and then stops. Granted, it's a beautiful and compelling trip down memory lane, but the final destination was a bit of a letdown for me. In my opinion, Elaine's story lacks a sense of catharsis, of empowerment, which is a pity. Minor quibbles aside, Cat's Eye is an excellent book. The psychology is acute, and the writing crisp and impressive and delightfully intense. It certainly won't appeal to everyone (those who like plot-driven stories would probably be better off giving this one a miss, as there really isn't much of a plot in it), but lovers of good flashback-based psychological drama should gobble it up. 4.5 stars, rounded down to four because of the relatively weak ending. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Sep 2009
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Sep 22, 2009
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 0451531043
| 9780451531049
| B00BG7EVW4
| 3.98
| 116,826
| Nov 01, 1962
| Aug 06, 2008
|
really liked it
|
Perhaps I've been desensitised to horror and suffering because there is so much of each on TV. Perhaps I've simply read a few too many accounts of lif
Perhaps I've been desensitised to horror and suffering because there is so much of each on TV. Perhaps I've simply read a few too many accounts of life in concentration camps, early Australian penal colonies and Chinese laogai for my own good. Whatever the reason, I have to admit that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn's largely autobiographical account of life in the Soviet gulag, didn't impress me much initially. About a quarter into the book, I was experiencing a powerful sense of, 'Is that all? Is this the worst thing that ever happened in the gulag?' You see, the classic status of the book (the fact that it is considered the must-read account of life in the gulag) had led me to believe that One Day in the Life would be a hair-raising story of terror and cruelty, an indictment of human brutality and dehumanisation if ever there was one. Instead, it turned out to be a fairly cheerful and occasionally dull story about a man who optimistically works his way through what turns out be, on the whole, a pretty good day by labour camp standards -- a day on which the guards treat him relatively well, he gets a little more soup than usual, and so on. So I was a little underwhelmed. I'm not proud to admit it, because I know it sounds callous, but there it is. And then a strange thing happened. I started thinking about the book, wondering why Solzhenitsyn had chosen this particular format -- why he had chosen to focus on a good day in the life of Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, rather than a more dramatic bad one. And I came to the conclusion that he had done so precisely to make his readers ask that question, to make them think of what a bad day in a Soviet labour camp would have been like, and then to turn that image over in their minds, realising that that really would have been horrible. Because that kind of involved thought -- the kind where you use your imagination and write a scenario of your own -- is bound to stay with you longer than a catalogue of horrors all spelled out for you. At least, that's how it works for me. By turning the possibility of a worse day than the one described in the book over in my mind, filling in all the gaps and supplying all the details myself (Solzhenitsyn helpfully provided some clues to send my mind in the right direction), I created a more indelible picture of life in the gulag than any gore-riddled account of Solzhenitsyn's could have provided me with, a picture that has stayed with me ever since. I suspect that was Solzhenitsyn's intention, but perhaps he was just being honest and describing things how they really were, because exaggerating them would only have resulted in claims of 'it wasn't really like that', thus invalidating the effect of his story. Anyhow, whatever Solzhenitsyn's motives, I ended up admiring his restraint. I liked that he resisted the urge to write a spectacular and sensationalised account of life in the gulag, cramming ten years' worth of misery into one day in an inmate's life for greater dramatic effect. I also ended up appreciating his hero, Shukhov, who refuses to give in to despair and plods along in the knowledge that his only chance of survival lies in adapting to his circumstances. Shukhov works hard at his survival, scheming and planning and providing for himself in all the right ways. Such is his will to survive that I came away from the book with a powerful sense of admiration for this hardy character, who may or may not be Solzhenitsyn himself. I also found myself wondering on several occasions what I would do in Shukhov's position -- whether I would succumb to the harshness of my situation, like certain fellow prisoners of Shukhov's, whether I'd fight those in power at the risk of being broken by them, or whether I'd 'growl and submit', like Shukhov, licking arse and abandoning some of my principles while hanging on to others, purely with an eye to survival. As far as I'm concerned, any book which makes me assess my own values, principles and attitude towards life is a good one, so yes, from that point of view (as well as a few others) I would consider One Day in the Life a success. That is not to say, however, that I think it's a brilliant book. I don't. While I admire Solzhenitsyn's ability to share a situation with his readers and convey willpower and resourcefulness in the person of his eminently practical protagonist, I'm not overly fond of his writing style, mostly because he has an annoying trick of inserting his protagonist's thoughts -- unidentified as such -- into an otherwise impersonal and objective third-person narrative. Take this paragraph, for instance: In a corner near the door an orderly sat lazing on a stool. Beyond him, like a bent pole, stooped Shkuropatenko -- B219. That fathead -- staring out of the window, trying to see, even now, whether anyone was pinching some of his precious prefabs! You didn't spot us that time, you snoop! Clearly, the 'You didn't spot us that time, you snoop!' is a Shukhov thought, as is the preceding sentence. I have no trouble recognising them as such, but I do find the way they are inserted into the mostly third-person narrative jarring. Solzhenitsyn does this a lot. He constantly switches from the first person to the third person, occasionally going from 'he' to 'we' to 'they' to 'I' in the space of mere paragraphs. Towards the end of the book, his use of alternating points of view became so muddled that it actually made me groan. So you can imagine I was a little surprised when I read in the introduction to the book that Solzhenitsyn was regarded a great stylist by his Russian peers. Personally, I beg to differ on that score, but not without admitting that, yes, One Day in the Life is an impressive book, as well as an important one. It may not be as spectacular as I expected it to be, but its remarkable optimism and life-affirming quality make it worthy of its reputation. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Jul 2009
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Sep 19, 2009
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1857987225
| 9781857987225
| 1857987225
| 3.84
| 5,875
| 1991
| 2001
|
really liked it
|
About 100 pages into Beauty I wasn't sure whether I was really going to like the book, as it kept moving from subject to subject without staying long
About 100 pages into Beauty I wasn't sure whether I was really going to like the book, as it kept moving from subject to subject without staying long enough with each one to make it work. About 200 pages in, I was convinced the author had far too many ideas for her own good, and no idea of how to weave them together into a cohesive story. Despite my misgivings, though, I stuck with the book, and I'm glad I did, because the second half more than made up for the flaws of the first. I ended up enjoying the hell out of Beauty, so much so that I considered giving it five stars. Not bad for a book which initially struck me as trying too hard and failing. So what is Beauty about? It's hard to summarise the story as it is so terribly convoluted, but in a nutshell, it's about a fourteenth-century princess (half human, half fairy) named Beauty who escapes a terrible, fairy-tale-like fate and magically ends up in the twenty-first century, which is a distinctly unpleasant place bereft of all beauty. From this dystopian future she makes her way back to a very recognisable twentieth century which clearly carries the germs of the wave of destruction which is about to follow, and from there the story weaves in and out of different ages and worlds (reality, Faerie, even Hell) where Beauty gets to deal with love, rape and rejection, among many other things. She also discovers that she carries something important within her, something essential to the survival of Things Which Matter. And so the reader is taken on a rollercoaster ride through time and space, which is further enlivened by the many well-known fairy-tale characters Beauty meets on her way. I don't want to give away too much here, but Beauty somehow ends up giving birth to Cinderella and also counts Sleeping Beauty and the Frog Prince among her descendants. These well-known characters are among the most inspired elements of the book, mainly because they are so different from the way they are portrayed elsewhere. Take Cinderella, for instance. In Tepper's vision, she is not the sweet and innocent girl of Perrault's tale, but rather an outrageous slut who must have her prince because she can't wait to shag his brains out. For her part, Sleeping Beauty, while insanely beautiful, is also insanely stupid, and as for the seven dwarfs who guard her while she is asleep, well, let's just say they are not as innocent as Disney made them out to be. I had a ball with Tepper's take on these classic characters, frequently laughing out loud at the way she perverted old tales and wove them into her own story. There is some very clever pastiche going on here, and to me, it just about made the book. What lets Beauty down somewhat is the didacticism of its tone. Tepper is a fine writer, but she is not very subtle; she makes her points very heavy-handedly, sometimes cringe-inducingly so. In Beauty, she tackles the loss of nature, beauty and magic in an increasingly less romantic world. As a fellow romantic with a yearning for the sublime, I found myself in sympathy with Tepper's message, but I do wish she hadn't forced it down my throat the way she did. I also somewhat objected to the overt feminism of the book, which mainly manifested itself in some truly despicable male characters. Apart from the heavy-handed environmentalism and feminism, though, Beauty is a fine book with some good, honest writing and some truly inspired ideas, mostly in the second half. If you can get over the disjointedness of the first half and the author's tendency to introduce cool ideas without really working them out, you'll find an imaginative and frequently entertaining (albeit depressing) fantasy story with some familiar, refreshingly un-Disney-like characters. It's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it's better than most fantasy books out there, and I have no trouble recommending it to those who like their fairy tales dark and bleak. ...more |
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1
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not set
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Jul 2009
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Sep 13, 2009
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0099487829
| 9780099487821
| 0099487829
| 4.16
| 860,088
| 2006
| Jan 01, 2007
|
it was ok
|
I wanted to like this book. I really did. After all, how can one fail to be drawn in by a story about a German boy, the son of a high-ranking Nazi off
I wanted to like this book. I really did. After all, how can one fail to be drawn in by a story about a German boy, the son of a high-ranking Nazi officer, who makes friends with a Jewish boy at Auschwitz, only to fail to understand his new friend's situation and meet a gruesome end with him? It's a great premise with plenty of scope for drama. A writer looking to fictionalise ignorance of the Holocaust would be hard-pressed to come up with a better idea. Sadly, I found myself rather underwhelmed by The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, for several reasons. Firstly, I didn't care for the main character, who is meant to pass for young and naive but really is rather selfish and obnoxious. Secondly, I found the faux-child-like tone of the book cloying and unconvincing, and thirdly, I was annoyed by the plot holes which kept popping up with alarming regularity. So while I admit the book is a page-turner and that I was keen to finish it to find out how it ended, I can't in good conscience give it more than two stars. To give it more than two stars would be an insult to better written books. I'll start with the plot holes. There are so many of those in The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas that I hardly know where to begin. For starters, it beggars belief that a nine-year-old German boy from a prominent Nazi family should never have heard the word 'Jews', nor be aware of what the Nazis think of Jews. Even if his parents tried to shield him from the nastier aspects of war, which Bruno's parents certainly seem to do, he would have been indoctrinated with Nazi propaganda from a young age onwards and would have been quite familiar with the main tenets of National Socialism and its leader, Adolf Hitler. Thus Bruno's complete ignorance of the Führer and the fact that Germany is at war is hard to buy. Similarly, it beggars belief that our young 'hero' could have near-daily conversations with a Jewish friend at Auschwitz for a year without having the faintest idea of what is going on in the camp. After over three hundred conversations with an obviously hungry and filthy friend, you'd think that even a self-centred boy like Bruno would realise that the camp is an unpleasant place where people starve, disappear and die, right? After all that time, it would also have to be blatantly obvious to him that the camp guards aren't very nice people. I know children aren't the most astute observers, but I refuse to believe that a nine-year-old boy who sees prisoners cower before guards, obviously scared, and then hears gunshots, would be surprised at the people on the ground not getting up, having to be carried away instead. Even in the 1940s, when children weren't exposed to action flicks to the extent they are now, boys surrounded by soldiers on a daily basis would have known what a gun was and what it did to the person it was pointed at. So the part of the book where Bruno watches Jewish prisoners being killed and thinks they are 'rehearsing a play' rang completely untrue to me. Quite frankly, I found it a little insulting to be expected to buy that kind of abject ignorance. Other plot holes? Well, I refuse to believe that a Jewish boy at Auschwitz could meet up with his friend outside the fence nearly every day for a year without ever being detected, or that there could be a hole in the fence big enough for a boy to slip through without any or indeed many of the other Jewish prisoners trying to escape through it. There is simply no way that could have happened in real life, and I scratch my head at Boyne's asking us to believe it. I also scratch my head at some of the less prominent historical plot holes in the book, such as the fact that Hitler and Eva Braun apparently visited people's homes without bodyguards (really?), or that the Germans apparently didn't check their officers' family backgrounds before putting them in charge of their largest concentration camps. Yeah, right. Like that would have happened. The book doesn't just contain historical inaccuracies, though. Another thing that put me off was the linguistic inaccuracies. For example, Bruno keeps calling Auschwitz 'Out-With' and the Führer 'the Fury', ad nauseam, despite being corrected several times. These are mistakes no German child in his right mind (least of all the child of a high-ranking Nazi officer) would make, and they seriously got in the way of my appreciation of the story, as linguistic inaccuracies tend to do. To make matters worse, Boyne seems to expect us to believe that Shmuel, a nine-year-old boy from the Jewish ghetto in Cracow, Poland, is fluent in German, which is unlikely, even if his mother is a language teacher. In my opinion, such mistakes are inexcusable, even in works of fiction. I can't believe Boyne's editors didn't pick up on these things and make the necessary corrections. I didn't overly care for Boyne's style of writing, either. While I will (again) admit that I couldn't put The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas down (the premise is good and the tension is ramped up quite adequately), I disliked the pseudo-childish tone of the writing, which felt contrived and unnecessarily cutesy to me, and occasionally made me groan. Furthermore, I found the occasional excursions into Gretel and Shmuel's minds jarring; a more unified point of view (to wit, Bruno's) would have been preferable, in my opinion. Finally, I thought the final chapter felt rather tacked on, and several plot lines weren't tied up well enough for my liking. What was the point of Maria, for instance? What was her background, and what was her role in the story? I'm not sure I understand. I also think much more could have been made of several of the male characters -- Pavel and Bruno's father come to mind, or the eponymous boy in the striped pyjamas. As they are, they are cardboard cut-outs with no personality of their own. To be sure, this is partly because they are described from the point of view of a sensationally unimaginative nine-year-old, but still, I think Boyne could have done a better job infusing his characters with some personality. It would have made a flawed reading experience a bit more memorable. Finally, like other reviewers I'm having a hard time figuring out the point of the book. What are we supposed to take away from this story? That people can be staggeringly blind to evil, even when it is perpetrated right in front of them? Er, OK. Point taken. It could have been made in a less cloying and mistake-riddled manner, though. Way to ruin a promising premise, Mr Boyne. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Sep 2009
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Sep 13, 2009
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.14
| 2,114,119
| 1985
| Jul 05, 2007
|
really liked it
|
The scariest thing about Atwood's dystopian fantasy, first published in 1985, is how prophetic it seems. There were references in the book which sent
The scariest thing about Atwood's dystopian fantasy, first published in 1985, is how prophetic it seems. There were references in the book which sent a chill of recognition down my spine. A right-wing government which blames Islamic fundamentalists for terrorist attacks and begins to suspend certain human rights, claiming it is doing so to protect the people from heathen bastards? I daresay it will sound familiar to any left-wing American who has ever looked with a wary eye at the country's increasingly influential religious right. Nuclear disasters which affect health and fertility? I know some Ukrainian women who could tell a few nasty stories about that. And of course the suppression of women which is the main subject of The Handmaid's Tale is only too real in places like Iran and Afghanistan, where many women are probably worse off than Atwood's protagonist, Offred. So, yes, the novel rang true to me. I've read reviews by people who said their appreciation of the book was significantly undermined by the unlikeliness of the premise, but it didn't seem that far-fetched to me. I don't think a society like the one Atwood describes in The Handmaid's Tale would necessarily exist for a long time, but then regimes don't have to last long to cause untold damage. Just look at the havoc Nazi Germany wreaked in just over a decade, or Mao's Red Guards in Cultural Revolution-era China... I found The Handmaid's Tale a compelling book, and not just for its powerful vision of a dystopian future. Sure, it has a cold, impersonal tone, but that is appropriate, given the subject matter. What stayed with me most, other than the disturbing descriptions of chants and punishments, was Offred's boredom, the sense of loss that pervades the book. Bereft of her job and the right to read books or own anything, Offred has no distractions from her own thoughts, which she refers to as 'attacks of the past'. She frequently dwells on people and things she has lost -- people and things she used to take for granted, and now will never see again. Furthermore, she endlessly analyses her own thoughts, feelings and actions, simply because she has nothing else to do. Atwood does a great job describing Offred's crushing boredom and her desire for distraction, for something to give her life a little meaning. At the same time, she shows how indoctrination and forced inertia can wear an otherwise intelligent and engaged person down. Atwood's Offred is no heroine, no rebel. She sometimes has rebellious thoughts, but she never actively goes out there and makes things happen. Instead, she waits for others to give her cues, showing little initiative of her own. As a modern heroine, then, she is flawed; she is too passive really to appeal. However, as an illustration of how fear and oppression can beat an intelligent woman down and paralyse her into near-submission, she is near perfect. Those readers who complain about her passivity and lack of active engagement obviously missed the point. As far as I'm concerned, The Handmaid's Tale has only one real flaw, which is its ending. It felt rushed to me. I didn't necessarily crave more closure; I just felt the story deserved a less abrupt ending. As for the epilogue with its almost flippant tone, I didn't really care for that either, but I can see why Atwood felt the need to include it; it definitely answered a few questions, and offered a message of hope, as well. I can see how some readers might appreciate a message of hope after such a depressing read. Personally, though, I think the book would have been even more memorable if Atwood had remained true to the style and tone of the rest of the book. It would have made a chilling read just a tad more compelling. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Apr 2009
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Apr 16, 2009
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Paperback
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| 0143113372
| 9780143113379
| 0143113372
| 3.16
| 2,521
| 1997
| Sep 25, 2007
|
really liked it
|
Elizabeth Gilbert's Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on Goodreads -- mainly, I think, because it is so diffe
Elizabeth Gilbert's Pilgrims (first published in 1997) has come in for a fair bit of criticism on Goodreads -- mainly, I think, because it is so different from her humongous bestseller Eat, Pray, Love. I get the impression many readers go into this collection of short stories expecting it to be a re-tread of themes discussed in Eat, Pray, Love, only to be fiercely disappointed and unforgiving when they find out it isn't. It's a pity many readers can't judge the book on its own merits, for Pilgrims is an accomplished collection of short stories. In my opinion, it showcases Elizabeth Gilbert's gifts as a writer better than does Eat, Pray, Love, but I guess it doesn't contain enough soul-searching and navel-gazing for the average fan of that book. The twelve stories contained in Pilgrims are refreshingly diverse and unsentimental. They are set all over the USA, and feature a wide range of characters: directionless fifteen-year-old boys, brilliant and less brilliant magicians, brassy cowgirls, shy artists, incestuous bar owners, punch-happy protective older brothers, overambitious porters, pretentious students who like to pretend they're British aristocrats, and so on. The situations in which Gilbert puts these characters are equally diverse, but they do have a few things in common. For one thing, many stories revolve around characters learning important things about themselves, frequently finding things they did not even know they were looking for. For another thing, they all share a certain sympathy and compassion. No matter how silly or downright stupid some of Gilbert's characters are, the author never stoops to judge them, treating them instead with a tolerance that borders on respect. I like that, just like I like the fact that Gilbert never feels compelled to tell her characters' whole histories. The twelve stories in Pilgrims are not miniature novels; instead they are slices of life that start in medias res and end there. They capture a moment in time rather than a story, and as far as I'm concerned, they capture it well -- no need for more background or closure. The best thing about Pilgrims is Elizabeth Gilbert's fabulous ear for dialogue. Readers familiar with Eat, Pray, Love will know that Gilbert excels at writing lively and witty dialogue. In Pilgrims she does an even better job of it, sketching complete (and again, very diverse) characters by means of short, frequently absurd exchanges. Many of her dialogues are quirky as hell, but they suit the characters and situations so well that they always feel genuine and right. As a beginning novelist, I quite envy Gilbert for the ease with which she gives all her characters a voice of their own, but I digress... As I was saying, Pilgrims may not appeal to the millions of navel-gazing self-seekers who ate up Eat, Pray, Love , but those who like original and unsentimental slices of life with good characterisation and vivid dialogue should appreciate it a lot. I know I did! ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2009
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Feb 03, 2009
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Paperback
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| 3.72
| 12,580
| May 10, 1990
| 2005
|
really liked it
|
'To innocence. And to Anglo-German co-operation.' This is what Leonard, a stuffy English engineer who has been sent to post-war, pre-wall Berlin to ass 'To innocence. And to Anglo-German co-operation.' This is what Leonard, a stuffy English engineer who has been sent to post-war, pre-wall Berlin to assist in an attempt to tap Soviet landlines, and Maria, a mysterious German divorcee who initiates him in the art of love, say to each other at their engagement party. Just a few pages later, they lose their innocence in the most gruesome fashion imaginable, after which Anglo-German co-operation takes a back seat and confusion and paranoia take over. What ensues is one of the most filmic and vivid descriptions of a descent into nightmare in all of English literature -- eighty pages of wall-to-wall gore, horror and fatigue-induced bad decisions and betrayals, all the way to the surprise ending. It is these eighty pages which elevate what could have been a dullish spy novel into an Ian McEwan masterpiece. For make no mistake about it, The Innocent (first published in 1990) is a McEwan masterpiece. It may stand out in his oeuvre for being a spy novel (or at least an attempt at one), but it bears all the hallmarks of the McEwan classic: a dark and twisted love story, a sexual encounter with far-reaching consequences, tremendous psychological insight, great descriptive power and a powerful sense of impending doom. Right from the get-go, one has the sense that something is going to go horribly wrong, and when it finally does around page 130 or so, the effect is startling and spell-binding. Such is the hypnotic quality of the writing in the second half of the book that I stayed up late at night to be able to finish it despite some pretty hefty jet lag. I just had to know how the story ended, and I can't think of a greater compliment to an author than that. As a spy novel, The Innocent may disappoint fans of the genre. While there is definitely some second-guessing of the characters' identities (Maria, for instance, remains a shady character right until the last few pages), the book doesn't feature any gadgets, spectacular chases or double crosses, or other things we have come to associate with the spy novel. And while the Berlin setting and the Cold War atmosphere are well drawn (at times the mood is reminiscent of The Third Man, which is a good thing in my book), the book is less about political games and intrigue than it is about first love, the joys and hardships of making love in a cold house, sexual awakening, obsession, possessiveness and jealousy. It's a tale of love found and lost, and of innocence lost and found again (to some extent), and as such it's quite brilliant -- up there with McEwan's more famous works. If it hadn't been for the somewhat slow start and the rather pat ending, I would have given it five stars. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Jan 2009
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Feb 02, 2009
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Paperback
| |||||||||||||||||
| 1416509631
| 9781416509639
| 1416509631
| 4.04
| 52,487
| Jun 20, 1990
| Nov 23, 2004
|
liked it
|
Tehanu is the fourth entry in the Earthsea Cycle. It was written years after the original trilogy, and it shows: It is markedly different from the oth
Tehanu is the fourth entry in the Earthsea Cycle. It was written years after the original trilogy, and it shows: It is markedly different from the other books, both in style and in substance. Sadly, it is also inferior to the earlier books. Le Guin had picked up a strident feminism in between The Farthest Shore and Tehanu, and it shows in Tehanu in the worst way possible. Literally every female character in the book is worthy (even dirty, crazy Aunty Moss), whereas all the men in the book are weak and ineffective at best and downright obnoxious at worst. There are so many scathing remarks about men in the book that it made me groan at times. (And I'm not even male. I can only imagine how a male reader must feel about this book.) It's a pity Le Guin had to ruin her book like this, for the story itself, about the former High Priestess of Atuan who adopts a special girl and finds she is very special indeed, is interesting. It successfully weaves together loose threads from the previous books and sets up a new series, which, alas, I haven't read yet. I look forward to reading more about Tehanu in The Other Wind, which I hear is much better than Tehanu. But still. What a sub-par book. Three stars because I like the characters and the story, two stars for the writing. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 2005
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Sep 13, 2008
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 141650964X
| 9781416509646
| 141650964X
| 4.13
| 116,839
| Sep 1972
| Nov 23, 2004
|
really liked it
|
In the third book of the Earthsea Cycle, Earthsea suffers a potentially disastrous epidemic. People all over the world are having their joy sucked out
In the third book of the Earthsea Cycle, Earthsea suffers a potentially disastrous epidemic. People all over the world are having their joy sucked out of them, getting into a semi-vegetative state and dying. After some thorough research, Ged, now Archmage of Earthsea, finds that they are being lured into the kingdom of the dead, from which they cannot return to life. And so Ged and Arren, a young prince and descendant of Earthsea's most legendary hero, set out to find a way into the kingdom of the dead and challenge the person responsible for the 'epidemic'. But who is he, where can he be found, and how can they stop something as fundamental as death taking over life? After a long quest, they meet their villain, and a spectacular finale ensues. The problem with The Farthest Shore is that it takes Ged and Arren a very long time to get to the kingdom of the dead. Of course, this is understandable; I wouldn't know how to get there either, short of jumping in front of a train (an approach which wouldn't have helped Ged much, if they had had trains in Earthsea). And yes, I'm aware that in this kind of story, it's usually about the journey rather than the destination, but somehow the journey doesn't really work for me here. Sure, it's nice to see more of Earthsea and get better acquainted with its inhabitants, and it's interesting to watch Ged (the teacher) and Arren (his pupil) interact, but it doesn't really propel the story forwards. As a result, the book has a meandering feel that is not entirely made up for by the excellent final chapters. So I'm giving the book three and a half stars, generously rounded up to four because I do like the mood of the story and the ending. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
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Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1416509623
| 9781416509622
| 1416509623
| 4.13
| 121,944
| Sep 10, 1971
| Nov 16, 2004
|
it was amazing
|
The second book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off in a slightly baffling way -- not with Ged, the central character of the series, but rather with Arha
The second book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off in a slightly baffling way -- not with Ged, the central character of the series, but rather with Arha, a young girl who has been chosen to become the next High Priestess of the Tombs of Atuan and spends her life performing rituals in which no one really seems to believe any more. We follow Arha around her daily tasks, and just when we're wondering where the hell Ged is, he makes an appearance, and a fascinating sparring match between the wizard and the young priestess ensues, in which Ged has to try and survive and the young girl learns the truth about those she serves and those who serve her. It's an interesting meditation on power, devotion, trust and loyalty, with the best setting of any fantasy book I've ever read*: A dark-as-night underground labyrinth which gives the book a superbly atmospheric and claustrophobic feel, not to mention a nice and ominous sense of impending doom. The best book in the series, worth a full five stars. * with the possible exception of Neil Gaiman’s London Below, which is superb if you know London and are familiar with its underground system. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
|
Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 4.01
| 326,822
| Jan 01, 1968
| Jan 26, 1971
|
really liked it
|
The first book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off much as you'd expect. A young boy, Sparrowhawk, discovers that he has special powers, is sent to a wiz
The first book of the Earthsea Cycle starts off much as you'd expect. A young boy, Sparrowhawk, discovers that he has special powers, is sent to a wizards' school where he is hailed as the next big thing, and gets a bit too proud for his own good. So far, so clichéd. What is original is that in his eagerness to show off, Sparrowhawk (now called Ged) unleashes an evil shadow that kills people and haunts him. Can he hide from this shadow, or does he have go on the offensive? He tries both, unsuccessfully at first. And so a long journey ensues in which Ged sees far-flung corners of the world, learns the true nature of things and eventually overcomes his fear of that which he has unleashed, which gets an interesting philosophical twist at the end. With its distant and detached but nevertheless pleasant tone, A Wizard of Earthsea adroitly sets the tone for the rest of the Earthsea series, which has a more old-fashioned and mythological feel to it than most other fantasy series. It's not a perfect book; the story feels a bit disjointed at times, and it would have been nice if Le Guin had gone into a bit more detail on occasion, rather than staying on the surface. Still, it's an interesting and exciting story, featuring some nifty Taoist ideas on balance (here called 'the equilibrium') and a lot of Le Guin's trademark name magic. A well-deserved four stars -- closer to four and a half stars, actually. ...more |
Notes are private!
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1
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not set
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Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
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Paperback
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|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 4.09
|
liked it
|
Jan 2010
|
Jan 20, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 4.02
|
really liked it
|
Jan 2010
|
Jan 13, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 4.02
|
really liked it
|
Jan 2010
|
Jan 10, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 4.43
|
really liked it
|
Nov 2009
|
Jan 07, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 4.09
|
really liked it
|
Dec 2009
|
Jan 05, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 3.85
|
really liked it
|
Dec 2009
|
Jan 03, 2010
|
|||||
|
| 3.90
|
really liked it
|
Oct 2009
|
Oct 05, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.08
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 2009
|
Oct 02, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.78
|
liked it
|
Jun 2009
|
Sep 29, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.95
|
really liked it
|
Sep 2009
|
Sep 22, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.98
|
really liked it
|
Jul 2009
|
Sep 19, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.84
|
really liked it
|
Jul 2009
|
Sep 13, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.16
|
it was ok
|
Sep 2009
|
Sep 13, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.14
|
really liked it
|
Apr 2009
|
Apr 16, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.16
|
really liked it
|
Jan 2009
|
Feb 03, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 3.72
|
really liked it
|
Jan 2009
|
Feb 02, 2009
|
|||||
|
| 4.04
|
liked it
|
Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.13
|
really liked it
|
Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.13
|
it was amazing
|
Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
|
|||||
|
| 4.01
|
really liked it
|
Oct 2005
|
Sep 13, 2008
|
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