Richard Yates was once a speech writer for Senator Robert Kennedy in the 1960s and proclaimed by many of his peers to be the best writer of their geneRichard Yates was once a speech writer for Senator Robert Kennedy in the 1960s and proclaimed by many of his peers to be the best writer of their generation, so I thought it would be remiss of me not to take him for a test drive.
The first page alone was enough to convince me of his writing ability, so I proceeded with a smile on my face, cookie crumbs on my shirt and great joy in my heart.
The story centres on an eye-catching young middle-class couple, Frank and April Wheeler who, to all outward appearances, seem to have it all. But behind closed doors, they present as two extremely complex characters: she, eager to please, yet aloof and ready to self-destruct; him, with a superiority complex but crippled with self-doubt. April is a romantic dreamer trapped in a gilded cage whereas Frank is inherently shallow and dismissive of other people's feelings and opinions. Yates' erudite prose perfectly and creditably captures the zeitgeist of American 1950s middle-class respectability and is firmly set in a time when the white-collar world was heavily reliant on typewriters, filing cabinets and mail rooms.
Together, April and Frank become as high as kites on idealistic notions, privately pouring scorn on their suburban neighbours and railing against the sentimentality of the American dream without seeming to realise that they are the ones with problems.
ARTY FARTY TRIGGER WARNING!
Avert your gaze, dear reader, or be prepared to suffer an occurrence of toe-curling pretentiousness as I try to describe one aspect of Yates' writing methodology. Here it comes… Yates sometimes, very cleverly in my opinion, creates sentences from oblique angles, refracting them as if through a prism (I did warn you!). This allows his readers to evaluate his characters from different perspectives. It's as if the living voice of a person unknown exists in the shadows of these pages.
ARTY-FARTINESS OVER. (Let's all pretend it didn't happen).
In truth, the story is not the star of the show. Yates' keen observations of human quirks are exceptional and his sentences are as neat as fresh laundry. I also liked the explanatory asides that popped up mid-sentence like poppies in a field of straw. Yes, he was overly fond of a semi-colon when the respite of a well-placed full stop would have sufficed, but the fellow's writing was top-notch.
I'm now a fan of his barbed prose. The guy had skill....more
"With a look of anxiety and suffering, Iona's eyes stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street: can he not find"With a look of anxiety and suffering, Iona's eyes stray restlessly among the crowds moving to and fro on both sides of the street: can he not find among those thousands someone who will listen to him?"
This is a very short, yet deeply upsetting, tale in which one man's loneliness and grief is compounded by the insensitivity of others.
Covered in falling snow, Iona Potapov, an impoverished sledge driver in 19th century Saint Petersburg, is aboard his ride, hunched as a heron and white as a ghost. He is beset by a solitary misery that he needs to share but not one of his discourteous passengers is inclined to listen. (view spoiler)[In fact, the only living thing prepared to listen to poor Iona is his bony-legged horse. (hide spoiler)]
One senses that Chekhov, a great humanitarian, must have often witnessed such unforgivable callousness at close quarters. I just wish I could have been there to give poor Iona a big hug before treating him and his horse to a meal.
This sweeping saga won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for its depiction of a dynastic white family in rural Alabama at a time when prejudice and racism liThis sweeping saga won the Pulitzer Prize in 1964 for its depiction of a dynastic white family in rural Alabama at a time when prejudice and racism lived cheek-by-jowl with oppression and hypocrisy.
No sooner had the curtain lifted on the cryptic opening chapter than I was purring at the innovative descriptiveness of Grau's prose. The tale unfolds slowly, like a lazy summer afternoon, the author using alliteration to great effect: Wobbling waddle; blotched brambles; beetles bumbling; wings whizzing; silvery and shining; leaf-littered; the wind whimpers; the sluggish spring; the gentle grey-eyed girl…
The story itself serves as a social commentary hidden within a fascinating family drama that focuses on the frowned-upon relationship between William Howland and his black housekeeper, Margaret Carmichael.
Though impactful and full of purpose, the story does drag at times (it would be too boring for many) and is only saved by the author's evocative writing and the couple's uplifting love for each other. I also winced at Grau's ill-judged habit of apostrophising era denominations (1800’s, 1900’s, 60’s, etc.,). Yes, I know that a lot of people do this, but I'm crankily pedantic to the point that I'm even annoyed with myself for being so pedantic. Shut up, Kevin. You're an idiot! I know I am. So, shut up then! Okay, okay, I will. : )
Nit-picking aside, I'm a sucker for great love affairs and brave storytelling, and I also loved William and Margaret, so I gave this lyrical masterpiece all of the stars!...more
"Reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is comparable to pushing a beautiful grand piano up a very steep hill." —Kevin Ansbro
Why, oh why, in a wor"Reading Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov is comparable to pushing a beautiful grand piano up a very steep hill." —Kevin Ansbro
Why, oh why, in a world filled with endless opportunities to enjoy oneself, did I think it was a good idea to embark on a 19th-century book that's almost the size of an electric toaster? I have friends, I have a wife, I have a life. Heck, I even have one of those home television sets that you so often hear about…
The Brothers Karamazov is by no means a galloping read. It is a whale of a novel that requires the reader to drop anchor and bob about on Fyodor's ocean of esteemed eloquence for as long as it takes. It was a slog at times and I'm ashamed to say that I almost jumped ship on a few occasions.
Dostoevsky threw everything but the kitchen sink at this, his magnum opus. He plucks random details from the alcoves of his mind and scatters them like confetti, and there are more characters here than you could wave a stick at. His imagery is vivid without being overdone, the writing is tight and beautifully paced.
The story focuses on Fyodor Karamazov, a boorish and wicked father, and his three dissimilar sons. Collectively, the eponymous brothers are perhaps designed to represent all of us. Philosophical and theological discussions abound; the existence of God, morality and freedom of choice are the author's themes of choice.
I certainly have no complaints about the writing, which is rich and expressive. Any quibbles I have say more about me as an easily-distracted reader than they do about Dostoevsky's incontestable skill as a writer. I dare say the novel would be a godsend to a bookworm who has chosen to live off-grid for a month. I don't know how long it took Dostoevsky to complete this, but his writing hand must surely have resembled a sloth's claw by the time he'd finished it!
Does The Brothers Karamazov harbour a captivating story to rival the likes of Great Expectations or Les Misérables? I think not.
Is this venerated novel worthy of the widespread admiration it receives? Absolutely....more
When Chekhov wrote this novella in the late 1800s, he fully knew that it would be viewed as subversive and inflammatory by the Russian censors. NevertWhen Chekhov wrote this novella in the late 1800s, he fully knew that it would be viewed as subversive and inflammatory by the Russian censors. Nevertheless, he gave the matter a great deal of thought, held his nerve and decided not to pull the plug. And I'm pleased he stood by his convictions. And isn't it wonderful to be able to invite Anton Chekhov into your home? Without once opening his mouth or asking me to turn the heating down, he kept me entertained while I sat back and enjoyed tea and crumpets.
The story: In Tsarist Russia, Stepan becomes the personal valet to a hedonistic nobleman, Georgy (Orlov) Vanychi. It transpires that Stepan is every bit as educated as his master and is secretly on a mission to get close to Orlov's father, a prominent government official whom he intends to assassinate. Aside from talking supercilious nonsense into the early hours with his brattish friends, Orlov has a mistress – one Zanaida Fyodorovna - who put me in mind of Flaubert's Emma Bovary. One day, an extremely awkward situation presents itself on Orlov's doorstep, upsetting his applecart (I'm speaking metaphorically, of course; Orlov doesn't own an applecart, and in any case is far too rich and lazy to sell apples on his doorstep). It turns out that Orlov, an incorrigible bachelor, might not be the knight in shining armour that Fyodorovna had imagined him to be … quelle surprise! As ever with Chekhov, human traits are exquisitely observed; he paints flawed characters as deftly as Degas painted ballerinas and must have taken great pleasure in ridiculing the self-indulgent lifestyles of the idle rich. As events spiral out of control, Stepan's secret mission begins to unravel, and I found the ensuing melodrama to be highly gratifying indeed.
Alas, the ending was as abrupt and as indeterminate as the annoying endings we see on any number of Netflix movies these days. Grrrr! Sort it out, Netflix! So I docked Mr Chekhov one star for that, but he is still welcome into my home at any time!...more
Prague, 1930s: Hermann Karlovich, a self-aggrandising captain of industry, stumbles across a homeless man in a park. He inanely imagines the vagrant tPrague, 1930s: Hermann Karlovich, a self-aggrandising captain of industry, stumbles across a homeless man in a park. He inanely imagines the vagrant to be his exact doppelgänger and begins to obsess over him. Then he hatches a 'foolproof' plan to murder his lookalike so he can cash in on his own life insurance (I usually only go as far as dropping spare change into their palms). But anyway, I digress…
I did wonder if Hermann Karlovich is secretly Vladimir Nabokov's doppelgänger because they are/were both spiteful narcissists given to petty jealousy. Authors do usually leave a bit of themselves in their books anyway.
Karlovich is himself the unreliable narrator, and his manic commentary leaves the reader second-guessing everything. And there is no doubting Nabokov's genius; this idiosyncratic tale has more layers than a henhouse, and the prose is as rich as it is manipulative.
I've only read one other of his books at college (yes, that one), and am given to understand that this isn't his best. It is still very good though....more
"Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remo"Of course this chattering diary is a facade, the literary equivalent of the everyday smiling face which hides the inward ravages of jealousy, remorse, fear and the consciousness of irretrievable moral failure." —Charles Arrowby, The Sea, the Sea
Charles Arrowby, a self-absorbed theatre director, retires to a shabby cottage by the sea to pen his memoirs. Like James Caan's character in the movie Misery, he eschews all modern comforts and settles down to write. Unlike James Caan's character, he's a misogynistic, bumptious individual – someone you would love to eavesdrop on for your own entertainment but wouldn't want to be stuck with at a cocktail party. And so Charles, redolent of Ebenezer Scrooge, lives in bleak solitude until he's visited by a succession of past lovers, theatre luvvies, and one mystical cousin – the ghosts of his immoderate past. And, as was the case with Scrooge, Charles has no one to blame for his mismanaged life, other than himself.
It goes without saying that Iris Murdoch was an accomplished writer. Here, she perfectly captures the vagaries of human frailties with mellifluous prose, fashioning an intimate tale of one man's obsessions and delusions. Arrowby is skilfully depicted as being both Machiavellian and vulnerable - not an easy trick to pull off. There are harebrained schemes aplenty and much of the story has the feel of a stage production as each character hams it up before exiting stage left. And I loved the wilful ridiculousness of it all. The author must have had a great deal of fun purposely amalgamating farce and improbability with high culture.
While Charles takes leave of his senses and continues to tilt at windmills, the antagonistic sea taunts him, just as Moby Dick taunted Captain Ahab. It serves as an omnipresent literary device, immortal and phantasmic, haunting him - even endangering him.
Was the book hard going at times? Truthfully, yes. But Murdoch's writing is too good to ignore and here she conjures up a philosophical tour de force with a heterogeneous cast contrived to cover all bases. And she even throws in a few unexpected surprises for good measure!
There are fewer fish in the sea than there are adjectives needed to define this inscrutable read, so a deserved five stars from me!...more
"The devil went down to Georgia Moscow, he was looking for a soul to steal." —Primus
Phew! I needed a margarita after finishing The Master and Ma "The devil went down to Georgia Moscow, he was looking for a soul to steal." —Primus
Phew! I needed a margarita after finishing The Master and Margarita! What a magnificent, turbulent read! This extravagant Russian allegory is an adult 'Alice in Wonderland' bursting at the seams with mischief, darkness and rambunctiousness. The ghosts of Faust and Dante must have sat on the author's shoulders as he worked tirelessly on this masterpiece. In short, this book was made for me! Come down from the heavens, Mikhail Bulgakov, and give me a hug, my brother from another мамочка. I'm so glad we found each other!
The Devil and his motley crew breeze into 1930s Moscow and begin to wreak havoc by reading people's minds, decapitating citizens and throwing an astonishing stage show that scandalises the local glitterati. To give you some inkling of what we're dealing with here, one of Satan's sidekicks is a talking cat the size of a pig, who is always in the thick of things (Bulgakov was evidently writing magical realism before Gabriel García Márquez was even born). The humour is riotous and the badinage so hilarious that I was holding my ribs, kicking my legs and Cossack dancing around the room!
In tandem with all of this magic and mayhem (please bear with me, dear reader) is a travel back in time to the trial and eventual crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth. These subplot scenes are written in a completely different hist-fic style and are amazingly cinematic. The author's juxtaposition of the supernatural and the real is a constant stratagem throughout. It would take me all day to discuss the symbolism that underpins this incredible book, so I won't bore you with every detail. Suffice to say that Bulgakov sets out to satirise the Stalinist regime he was oppressed by (was Orwell's Animal Farm inspired by this novel?) and the Devil is on hand to mete out an extreme brand of either punishment or reward to whoever displeases or pleases him (human cowardice is what really gets his goat). The underlying parable jumps about all over the place – and sometimes out of windows on a broomstick! Heck, there is even a Magritte-style talking suit! I'd be lying if I said I'd grasped the significance of all of the author's philosophical analogies, but I certainly had a lot of fun trying.
I loved this book; really loved it. And it's incredible to think that The Master and Margarita was fashioned in the 1920s. It was years ahead of its time and is like no other novel I've ever read.
Clearly, this book wouldn't be for everyone, but if you like your literature dark, magical, intellectual, thought-provoking and absurd, then you should find room for it on your shelves.
This was a buddy read with my wonderful magical realism friend, Kimber Silver.
"Mother love stamps the foreheads of boys with a stigma that repels the friendship of buddies." —Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere
From the day he wa"Mother love stamps the foreheads of boys with a stigma that repels the friendship of buddies." —Milan Kundera, Life is Elsewhere
From the day he was born, Czechoslovakian baby, Jaromil, is spoon-fed poetry and spoilt rotten by his coddling mother. So it's no surprise that the boy becomes brattish and ostentatious, incurring the enmity of his peers. And each time it rained, his mother would wait for him at the school gates with a big umbrella, while his schoolmates waded barefoot through puddles, their shoes slung over shoulders.
Into adulthood, our vainglorious poet maintains his overblown sense of importance, imagining himself an artist of greater eminence than he actually is. As Wharton would say, he is the reflection of a candle in a mirror, rather than the candle itself. One senses that Milan Kundera was poking fun at some (or just one) of his literary confrères. I imagined he was getting something off his chest, annoyed that lesser-talented writers were getting all the praise.
It is said that Kundera has done for his native Czechoslovakia what Gabriel García Márquez did for Latin America. Well, that might be so; he does have an allegorical writing style and also shares Márquez's fondness for the absurd but, for me, he lacks the lyrical wordplay of the Colombian maestro. I dimly remember my wife venerating Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being many years ago, so she's definitely a fan.
The book was really good, but not really great. It didn't grab me by the lapels and kiss me full on the lips. I was frustrated by the author's restraint – in all probability instilled in him during a childhood of communist oppression. I did however like Kundera's pithy observations, his scampish irreverence and his understated humour....more
"I am the person who stands at the police tape watching someone's life unravel." —Frances Jellico
Prickly old lady, Frances Jellico, lies dying in a"I am the person who stands at the police tape watching someone's life unravel." —Frances Jellico
Prickly old lady, Frances Jellico, lies dying in an 'end-of-life' facility of some kind. She is visited by Victor, a seemingly dubious vicar (yes, Victor the vicar), who hopes to extract a confession from Frances for a hitherto-unspecified crime. So, with the 'enigmatic beginning' box firmly ticked, Frances goes on to recall the English summer of '69 and a ramshackle country home whose crumbling grandeur serves as a metaphor for what is to follow.
Miss Jellico, our unworldly main protag, is one of life's bystanders when it comes to hugging, kissing and general frivolity. Therefore it comes as a great surprise - not least of all to Frances - that she becomes friends with cool hedonists, Cara and Peter. While Frances thrives academically, her social skills are decidedly wooden: Cara and Peter, on the other hand, are captivating, outgoing and friendly.
But all is not what it seems. Why the sinister undertones? And what will become of this improbable friend triangle?
This book has the feel of one written several decades ago, so kudos to Claire Fuller for that, especially as it perfectly suits the period. Fuller is clearly an accomplished writer; her narrative style reminding me very much of Anita Brookner's. This wouldn't be for everyone though; an eager reader is likely to lose patience with it. Though the story lacks the animation and pizzazz that I hope for in a novel (it simmers more than it boils), edgy, stylish writing, such as this, should always be celebrated.
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." —Norman Cousins
In light of her heart condition, h"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live." —Norman Cousins
In light of her heart condition, how could Louise Mallard's sister broach the terrible news that Louise's husband has just died in a railroad accident? Kate Chopin throws an abundance of literary devices at this clever little allegory: namely, irony, foreshadowing, deception, metaphor, allusion and symbolism, whispered from a feminist perspective. Remember, after you've devoured it, that I did say it was clever. : )
It takes less time to read than it does to toast a slice of bread. And it's free to enjoy online: here it be, shipmates.
My thanks to Tadiana for her intriguing review...more
In need of respite from a run of poorly-written modern novels that were blinged up to the eyeballs with hype, I sought refuge in a Graham Greene one, In need of respite from a run of poorly-written modern novels that were blinged up to the eyeballs with hype, I sought refuge in a Graham Greene one, knowing that elegant prose and grammatical excellence awaited me. Our narrator, Mr Brown, is a burnt-out international wheeler-dealer who returns to Haiti by ship, having inherited a hotel there. On the voyage over, Mr Brown buddies up with (wait for it) a Mr Smith and a Mr Jones.
Haiti has fallen under the tyrannical rule of "Papa Doc" and his secret police. And it is against this backdrop that we witness (amongst other things) a dead body floating in a swimming pool, a knee-trembler in a cramped car, corruption, rebellion and civil unrest. Brown (possibly a facsimile of Greene himself) is rootless, cynical and non-commital in love; a man who prefers to 'go it alone'. I binge-read Graham Greene's books as a teenager and, until this one, hadn't returned since. For the life of me, I can’t think why - the man’s prose is as slick as a buttered eel.
TRIGGER WARNING: regrettably, the word "golliwog" is used once in the narrative. The only mitigation I can offer is that the book was written fifty-three years ago, so make of it what you will.
I didn't write it, so please don't shoot the messenger. : (
By all accounts, Graham Greene was an irascible, quarrelsome fellow given to condescension (I'd have locked horns with the truculent old bugger) but there is no doubt that he was a stylish writer....more
"Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-o"Like a sailor in distress, she would gaze out over the solitude of her life with desperate eyes, seeking some white sail in the mists of the far-off horizon."
It's always difficult to properly appraise a book when one hasn't read it in the language in which it was written. My edition was translated by Geoffrey Wall, who preserved Flaubert's distinctive punctuation, italicisation and paragraphing habits. Though the overuse of exclamation marks is discouraged by modern-day publishers, Flaubert scatters them like seed. I'm all for it, as it added to the vibrancy of his writing. I read this classic at a leisurely pace, one chapter at a time, in between newfangled reads. I carefully jotted down notes and some well-chosen passages, intending to reproduce them here. Sadly, I unintentionally left my humidity-corrugated notepad by a pool in Thailand! : ( Emma (Madame Bovary), along with Lady Chatterley and Anna Karenina, is in the running for literature's most famous adulteress. And in that respect, she doesn't disappoint. Defying convention, Flaubert deliberately chose to make his bourgeois femme fatale unlikeable, which I saw as a good thing: it makes her character believable; it makes her seem modern, (Flaubert would cast her as an influencer if he could come back to life) and it shows the extent to which the author was unfettered by tradition. Emma "Drama Queen" Bovary, whose untamed heart rules her head, is trapped in a boring, frigid marriage and, without a care in the world, looks for love and lust elsewhere. In many ways, she behaves like a sex-hungry man who can’t keep it in his pants, except she’s living in patriarchal France in the 1800s!
Of course, when a literary character plays with fire, you just know they're gonna get burnt!
Yes, Emma is shallow and selfish and wants what she can't have but, because she is a flawed human being wholly driven by sentimentality, I somehow sympathised with her. Translations notwithstanding, I really enjoyed Flaubert's anomalous writing style and luxuriant prose but, for me, this isn't the page-turner that Anna Karenina is....more
Theoretically, Edith Hope, an English writer of romantic fiction who leads a vanilla existence and bears a resemblance to Virginia Woolfe, has retreatTheoretically, Edith Hope, an English writer of romantic fiction who leads a vanilla existence and bears a resemblance to Virginia Woolfe, has retreated to an out-of-season hotel in Switzerland to work on her latest novel. In reality, she (view spoiler)[has indulged in a bit of naughtiness with someone other than her fella (hide spoiler)]. So her friends have expeditiously packed her off to the Hotel du Lac to think things through. The Hotel is a snooty institution, selective of its clientele and tastefully austere. And as such it is unencumbered by the vulgarity of piped music, scatter cushions and fabulous furnishings. The du Lac prides itself on not being one of the herd; its service is impeccable, its discretion assured. Edith, as is true of all writers, is an inveterate people watcher and secretly invents lives for the rich strangers who frequent the hotel. In due course, she is summoned into their cosseted worlds and used as a sounding board to reinforce their social standing: a person required to listen and not speak.
This is a stylishly-written book; one to admire for its elegant prose and for Brookner's insightful and wryly amusing examination of the human condition. For my taste though, the story was largely uneventful and Edith's willing compliance did become frustrating after a while. As well as wanting to fit in with these self-obsessed socialites, the fictional author yearns for true love. Not the sweaty "take me, baby, take me" kind of love; more the walking arm-in-arm on a beach variety. Affable Edith, though, puts great faith in being the tortoise that triumphs in a world of hares.
In summary, this book is beautifully written, but a little too civilised for this reader. It's a comfy cardigan of a book, but I don't do comfy cardigans; I wanted Adam Ant's hussar tunic with the gold braiding.
6/5 for the well-crafted prose and the ab-fab characters. 2/5 for the going-nowhere story....more
Now I don't read Booker Prize-winning author Alan Hollinghurst for his storytelling. In truth, the lyrical beauty of his flawless writing almost negatNow I don't read Booker Prize-winning author Alan Hollinghurst for his storytelling. In truth, the lyrical beauty of his flawless writing almost negates the need for a story. So my five-star rating is solely for his penmanship (though he doesn't employ synonyms for the word "said". The repetition of "he said/she said" dialogue tags is hard to ignore). Alas, the story, such as it is, drags itself along like a beached turtle. This ambitious (and lengthy) novel is rather difficult to describe; an English upper-class/middle-class love triangle with a smattering of homoerotica thrown in – a Brideshead-meets-Atonement hybrid, but without a plot. I felt as if I was witnessing an evolution, rather than anything resembling a story. So, in truth, it was tedious. The author, like Ian McEwan, is undeniably one of Britain's finest writers and, as is true of McEwan, it's his elegant prose that steals the show. Hollinghurst is an artist in command of his craft but the whole, unfortunately, was less than the sum of its parts and if I were to rate the actual story, it would only merit a measly two stars.
Still, Hollinghurst is a highly gifted writer. Most authors out there would hate to have him peering over their shoulders while they’re tapping at a keyboard, so who am I to award him anything less than five lustrous stars?
Nonexistent story ... two stars Top-tier prose .... five stars Writing wins!...more
"I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!" —Homer (Simpson)
Following James Joyce's lead, I used Homer’s he"I'm not normally a praying man, but if you're up there, please save me, Superman!" —Homer (Simpson)
Following James Joyce's lead, I used Homer’s heroic story as inspiration for a novel-in-progress. But how can I, a mere mortal, do justice to the most famous epic poem ever written? An encounter with a work of this magnitude should be shared, rather than reviewed. Homer is the great, great, great (recurring) grand-daddy of modern literature and this colossus is as immortal as the gods within it. And what a tale this must have been way back in the 8th century BC. Then, it was sung, rather than read, and I guess the first to bear witness must have been jigging about in their togas with unbridled excitement.
Alas, I didn't read it in ancient Greek, as Homer had intended. My copy was transcribed to a Kindle, rather than papyri, and translated by none other than the genius that was Alexander Pope (yep, I went old school on this).
Odysseus, he of the title, otherwise known in Latin as Ulysses, embarks on a perilous, stop/start, um, odyssey, attempting to get home to Ithaca after fighting in the Trojan War for a decade. Such an amazing story, overflowing with an abundance of adventure. Poor Odysseus, having battled treacherous seas, wrathful gods, enchanting sirens and a Cyclops, then has to put up with big bad Poseidon weighing in with some nautical muscle and shipwrecking his boat!
Plagued by setback after setback, the journey home takes TEN gruelling years to complete! And, as if that wasn’t bad enough, wife Penelope has meanwhile given up hope of him returning home alive and is being courted by one hundred suitors, none of whom are fit to kiss our hero's sandals.
This is by no means a page-turner and some background knowledge is required to appreciate the finer points. Pope has done an amazing job to remain somewhat sympathetic to the timbre of Homer's lyrical story, and his rhyming couplets are a thing to behold:
"But when the star of eve with golden light Adorn'd the matron brow of night."
Beautiful!
Homer (the poet, not the cartoon character) has fuelled the imagination of countless authors throughout the centuries, and therefore it would be sacrilege for me to award anything less than five heroic stars....more
Evelyn Waugh's writing is delightfully (and spitefully) mischievous. He's as witty as Oscar Wilde and as caustic as drain cleaner. Something of a pessiEvelyn Waugh's writing is delightfully (and spitefully) mischievous. He's as witty as Oscar Wilde and as caustic as drain cleaner. Something of a pessimist and a social misfit, Waugh loved to send up the chattering classes of which he was a part. This book also has an autobiographical aspect to it and centres on his inside view of upper-class selfishness and the erosion of spiritual values in post-WWI England....more
A must-read allegorical classic with more clanking chains than you'd find in a dominatrix's sex dungeon.A must-read allegorical classic with more clanking chains than you'd find in a dominatrix's sex dungeon....more
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