Lory
I've known of The Color Purple for so long but never read it. The new Folio Society edition finally pushed me into reading it, and I'm so glad I did. This is a beautiful novel about love and human connection and the wonder that is the heart of all true religion, as well as the immutable reality of suffering. Alice Walker describes herself as a “medium” for her characters, and indeed they seem so real that it's hard to think of this as fiction.
“I remember one time you said your life made you feel so ashamed you couldn't even talk about it to God, you had to write it, bad as you thought your writing was. Well, now I know what you meant. And whether God will read letters or no, I know you will go on writing them; which is guidance enough for me. Anyway, when I don't write to you I feel as bad as I do when I don't pray, locked up in myself and choking on my own heart.”
I'm going on a Kate Milford binge after reading The Raconteur's Commonplace Book and needing more background. TLHF was a welcome return to Lucy and Liao, although I thought it was not as successful as Bluecrowne - more muddled and unfocused. The quest for a mysterious object that nobody can really describe or define was not convincing. How on earth could the questers latch onto those particular objects from the cryptic descriptions? I know Nagspeake is not really our regular earth, but still. There were some missing steps, which is unfortunate because usually Milford is careful about making her magic systems coherent.
The romance element was also totally unnecessary and felt tacked-on. Not one of the strongest in the series, although it was fun to visit some new corners of Nagspeake.
I read this to follow up The Raconteur's Commonplace Book, and it gave more information about some of the characters that helped me make sense of that one. (Some info may also be in Greenglass House that I have forgotten.) This was satisfying, plus it was an exciting and heartwarming book on its own. Milford does an impressive job detailing forms of magic – time walking, firestarting – that have their own logic and their own consequences, and are not just waving wands and saying Latin words. Her imaginary world, even with its touches of whimsy, feels increasingly solid to me, as if it is indeed as real a place as she asserts. I'm tempted to go on a Milford binge now and put more of the pieces together.
I finally made it through this! I did not always find it easy going, and I know I did not understand everything, while there are other points I might disagree with if I felt more qualified – but overall I learned a lot and I'm glad I did. I was struck especially by the reasoning behind why learning a language is only possible in early childhood (it takes up a lot of energy and since in most of evolution humans only needed to learn one language, it was more evolutionarily favorable to divert those forces once it has been learned); and why our left brain controls the right side of our body (a 180 degree twist of the head at some point in evolution, during the change from crawling creatures whose spine is on the ground and in “front” to walking creatures with the spine in back and soft parts in front.)
I have enjoyed all the “Greenglass House” books that I've read so far. The hook of this one is that it's the book Milo is reading in the first GGH book; at first it seems a loose connection of travelers' tales, but then it gains complexity as we discover more about the tellers through and between their tales. The weaving together of an overall narrative out of disparate materials is nicely done, although I didn't understand some references and wonder if they come from other works (am I supposed to know who Maisie is?)
It's incredible how little we know about our digestive system. I think Enders is right when she says it's become associated with dirt, refuse, and unpalatable things we prefer to avoid looking at, but it's time for that to change. The young author does a great job of presenting information in a lighthearted way that is nevertheless intellectually respectable (for the nitpicky, footnotes would help). Since the book came out there has been more research and more books on the subject, but this is still a good introduction to the topic. I hope we'll be hearing a lot more about it and that it will become, as it should be, the ground of our healthy, happy existence in an interdependent world.
Entertaining mystery set in Sicily, with a structure that could have been too confusing and contrived, but somehow worked for me - the “author” is the title character's nephew, a writer working on a family saga that never gets off the ground, who visits Poldi periodically and ends up writing about her amateur sleuthing adventures instead.
Lots of local color and an eccentric MC (based on the real author's real aunt) make this an amusing way to while away a few hours. I might try reading the next adventure in the original German, hoping not to get too derailed by Bavarian dialect.
Also great to have an older woman as the energetic and sensual center of the story, egging her nephew on to live life more fully, but her periodic bouts of depression and recurrent wish to drink herself to death added a jarring note. Also, her wig slipping off kept distracting me. What did she look like without the wig? Did this not interfere with her amorous adventures? The nephew wondered this too, but she did not answer him.
After reading Falconer by John Cheever, I wanted to read something by an actual prisoner. Shaka Senghor's story lacks the elaborate phraseology and literary nuances of Cheever's tale, but it's clearly and lucidly written and the story itself packs a powerful punch. Senghor describes his journey into the hellish pit of imprisonment, external and internal – and wrests his freedom from within, before he is released. It's an astonishing achievement of the human spirit. He is far more insightful and self-aware than Cheever's character Farragut, who walks through his imprisonment and escape as if in a dream.
No thanks for Senghor's rehabilitation are due to the prison system itself, which seems determined to grind human beings into the dust and bring out their worst possible sides – guards as well as prisoners. But something lives in the individual spirit that can counteract these forces. What we need is to design institutions and procedures that support this spirit rather than crushing it. Accounts like Senghor's are of inestimable value as we confront this challenge.
Most striking to me was the moment when Senghor started to write down his feelings and found that this gave him enough distance and perspective to stop reacting immediately in ways that ultimately hurt him (he had just viciously attacked a prison guard who harassed him and been put in solitary confinement for an extended period). He also became a voracious reader, especially of Black history, social justice, and spirituality, and this put him on the road to self-respect and to understanding the wider context of his painful experiences. Reading and writing are not just intellectual exercises, but spiritual disciplines which release us from the prison of disconnected experience and raise us to a higher level upon which we can move and act freely, because we have not just sensations or emotions, but knowledge and insight into the whole.
A relationship begun while Senghor was still in prison played a large part in the latter chapters of the story - sadly, it seems this relationship was not as ideal as he describes it (see description of the book by his partner, Ebony Roberts). Nobody is perfect, and even those who have made huge steps in self-development can still have unhealed wounds which continue to hurt them and others. However, I hope that both Senghor and Roberts can both continue to learn and grow and raise children to a better life, none of which can happen if we keep chaining people up with our prejudices and judgment and misunderstanding.
A second Kate Saunders book for my “I need something diverting and unchallenging but not totally stupid to read” mood. It fit that bill well enough. The 1935 school setting was well done and Flora's gradual adaptation to her new circumstances, and her seeing sides of herself and others she hadn't before, fit believably into the story arc. The one thing that felt very “off” to me was that the point of the time-travel episode was to make Flora's grandmother a better person, one who THINKS OF OTHER PEOPLE, but then she still leaves her baby son??? That made no sense.
“Long ago when they first invented the atomic bomb people used to worry about its going off and killing everybody, but they didn't know that mankind has got enough dynamite right in his guts to tear the f*** planet to pieces.”
Read this with one of my English students who had enjoyed a story by Cheever (“The Swimmer”) and wanted to try a novel. I'd never read this author before and did not know what we were in for.
Falconer is a nightmarish, phantasmagorical tale of imprisonment and escape, more of a series of vignettes than a coherent narrative, of which some or even most of the scenes may be dreams or fantasies. The protagonist, a former WASP professor who rejoices in the name of Ezekiel Farragut, has been sent to prison for killing his brother (an act he denies and which is further explained only in the final few pages of the book). Through Cheever's stylized, mannered prose, we move in and out of his current and past experiences, impressions, memories, and visions, which are comic, repulsive, pathetic, and squalid by turns.
I would not go to this book expecting realism of any kind. It's not a realistic prison exposé. It's a sort of Inferno through which Farragut must pass, coming in the end to a kind of apotheosis, but not giving us anything solid for our tidy minds to grasp. We are only left with the certainty of what another prisoner expresses in the quote above, that in the guts of man is all the explosive needed to blow up the world – but maybe also all that is needed to redeem it.
Excellent and highly unusual balance of spiritual and scientific wisdom, honoring both sides of the truth, in which artistic and rational methods are not in opposition but complement and complete one another. It's both/and, not either/or! If only more scientists would start to think this way, we might actually have a future.
I was only disappointed that Kimmerer is too dismissive of Western tradition and its contributions. Nothing is gained by categorically devaluing the Judeo-Christian worldview, in spite of the atrocities done in its name. It doesn't have to be that way. (Eve was an indigenous woman too!)
Another enjoyable read from McFarlane, mixing quirky characters, witty banter, and some seriously deep topics in a way I've never quite encountered before. It's as if P.G. Wodehouse decided to throw some PTSD awareness into the mix of his madcap comedies – and it works somehow.
The one qualm I have is that in both the books I have read so far, all the main characters are heavy drinkers. They drink when they are happy, they drink when they are sad. They drink to calm down and to pep themselves up, and just for the heck of it. If I had to reckon up the amount of time they spend being seriously intoxicated during the main action of the story and important conversations, I would estimate about 80%. Yet absolutely no one has a problem with that, not an inkling of a notion that it might be going too far or a form of self-medication that should be reconsidered.
Even though there are good messages about self-empowerment and authentic relationships, alongside these is the constant assumption: “We can't really have fun and live life to the fullest unless we are sozzled.” I find this a little weird. And sad. Alcohol is not to the human body as oil is to a car engine, something it needs in order to run happily and smoothly. It's a harmful toxin, however pleasurable its use may be, and should be treated with some caution. Call me a spoilsport if you like (Bertie Wooster certainly would), but in our day and age, it's just strange to promote drinking culture so one-sidedly without ANY awareness of the drawbacks.
This was a sweet romance with a serious message at its core. I found Georgina an endearing character, and rooted for her all the way. The pop-culture-strewn style of humor, which often leaves me cold, was in this case amusing and the verbal banter well-judged. Somehow, even with a number of truly awful characters (boss, ex-boyfriend, housemate, and stepdad from hell) the overall tone was still comic and uplifting, maybe because they were balanced out by supportive friends, relatives, and coworkers. I'll definitely read another McFarlane and hope it makes me smile as much as this one did.
I was unsure during the first segment about a disgruntled farm wife, but once this set of linked stories moved on to the next segment I was hooked. Four Swiss women with four points of view (the outer two third-person, the inner two first-person), each of whom observes and comments on the others ... their stories deftly linked into a little chain that becomes a circle at the end, rounded out by their mutual concern with another character who at first seems to be only a minor distraction. It's a microcosm of a particular place and time in history that opens up a window into many human concerns that vex us to this day.
I don't want to give away more about the plot or characters because much of the pleasure of this slim narrative is observing how O'Dea builds it up, step by step, out of the lived experience of women's lives. On this historically significant day, these women are denied by male Swiss voters their right to participate politically in society, yet they retain the right to choose - to choose life, agency, empathy, and creativity over passivity, stasis and despair. Yes, all people deserve the right to cast a ballot, but it's our will to “vote” with our hearts that will ultimately determine our future.
While I detested this author's Five Children on the Western Front (I couldn't read more than a couple of chapters because she got the Psammead so wrong), I was willing to try her again with this Victorian mystery and was pleasantly diverted. I thought she did a respectable job with the literary voice while still inserting some rather modern social commentary via the perspective of an independent-minded widow. There was rather a pile-up of Victorian lit and/or murder mystery tropes by the end (an Afterword reveals that the book is actually based on a subplot from David Copperfield), and most of the characters were fairly generic and forgettable, but I'd read another book with Mrs. Rodd in it.
An ingenious puzzle mystery written entirely in electronic correspondence (mostly emails and text messages). As one might imagine, this requires some straining of credulity, particularly regarding persons who exist only via said correspondence. It also seems absurd that a pair of legal counsel would never meet in person to discuss the evidence but would laboriously go over it via WhatsApp. However, I found it compulsively readable and couldn't sleep until I'd gotten to the end. The plot was certainly primary, but the characters were acceptably interesting and it was fun to see how the author revealed their characters through their missives. I enjoyed the “Little Theatre” setting too. In some ways, drama is in some ways the opposite of the epistolary form – as it relies on people interacting in real space and time. But on the other hand, through letter-writing one can conceal one's real identity, as does an actor. So there was a neat tension of literary form along with the criminal intrigue.
Strange, disjointed tale with some compelling images and lines but overall not as satisfying as some of MacDonald's other works. Read because of C.S. Lewis's statement in Surprised by Joy of the powerful effect it had on him – one of those books that can be incredible when it hits you at the right time. It was not the same for me.
Finally got through this long, absorbing but very dark and tragic historical epic. For me it picked up in the last 100 pages when the narrator finally got to the period of her own life. As a bearer of family trauma, generational and national trauma, she becomes the recording angel of unbearable, unspeakable things, attempting to pass them on in a way that will not stifle but give impetus to an unknown future.
I had a wish to reread this after the first stage in Narniathon, to understand better the spiritual process behind Lewis's writing. I found it frustratingly evasive in many ways, even as it was unusually articulate in others. Although Lewis tries his best to describe his elusive experience of “Joy” and how he was led from atheism to theism to Christianity, I was left uncertain as to what he really experiences and believes in the fullness of his soul. I suspect at the point of this writing, there was much he was unable to admit to himself, let alone to an audience. There is no wonder at Lewis being an emotionally wounded man, considering the many traumas he went through in his early years; like most of us, he covered these up and endured them as best he could, but that left him with some strange disjunctions in his inner life. It's only now that a fuller understanding of trauma is being unfolded and that new healing methods are being discovered. But even if he was unable to benefit from these, he was a seeker of healing in his own way. I still feel gratitude to him for all that he shared.
An additional note on the e-book edition I read: the proofreading was terrible and there were many mistakes left in from the scanning process (e.g. “Fie” for “He,” extraneous apostrophes, etc.) This is a disgrace for an edition of the work of a man who was meticulous with words. E-book publishers must be more careful about these errors.
“We live and learn, yes. But we die and learn, too, it appears.”
Reread of what I think is Davies's weakest novel, with an interesting but awkwardly worked out premise. The idea of a recently deceased man viewing a private “film festival” of his ancestors' lives is ingenious, but hard to put into practice: describing films is the deadliest thing imaginable, and aside from a few glimpses Davies wisely doesn't try, mostly reverting to the narrative techniques that he is accustomed to using. In effect his first-person narrator becomes a third-person narrator of the scenes he is beholding, and the switching back and forth can be jarring.
I also don't feel like we get enough of Gil, the dead man - he comes to know himself through this vision of his forebears, or so he says, but who is he? Again, we get some glimpses, but then we're swept away into someone else's life, and the result just doesn't entirely satisfy.
Along the way there were some wonderful nuggets of wisdom, even if the whole didn't quite gel for me.
“Was I really such an unreflecting, uncomprehending jackass when I was alive that I supposed the sufferings and inadequacies of humanity came for the first time in my own experience? No; not wholly. But I had never applied what I knew as general truths to the people without whom I should never have experienced life; I had taken them for granted. As McWearie used to say, one's family is made up of supporting players in one's personal drama. One never supposes that they starred in some possibly gaudy and certainly deeply felt show of their own.”
In the end, the message is one of compassion and love, for the players with whom we share our little drama, but also for ourselves. And that's always worth an attempt at communication.
I can't understand the reviews that describe this book as “beautifully written.” The writing is clunky, with awkward attempts at eloquence, hackneyed descriptions, and clichéd “wisdom” - here's a sample chosen at random: “The window was not so high, and he could see the tiled roofs and bare-branched trees shimmering in the orange light, and the birds singing and gliding across the sky. This, the everlasting stillness of morning, brought him unbearable joy and sorrow. Tears flowed down his cheeks raked by time. Death was such a small price to pay for life.”
Besides this uninspiring prose, the POV switched so often and so rapidly between so many different characters that I had a hard time caring much about any of them. The tragic central love triangle left me completely cold, and there were long stretches where not much of anything happened. The exciting tiger hunt at the beginning was by far the best part. Oh, and the cover is gorgeous.
I used to love Tracy Chevalier's books, but of late I find them a bit “stagey.” The historical details feel wedged in, with scenes and characters arranged to make them possible to mention rather than growing organically. So although this novel was well constructed and the writing was unexceptionable, I was left somewhat disappointed. I also found the resolution quite unrealistic. Louisa Pesel was my favorite character though! I wish she had been more central.
This was the rare book that was in equal parts hilarious and dismaying. The eternal human quest toward liberty and independence comes into the modern age, meeting the intractable forces of nature and raising many questions about whether we'll be able to survive the project. Most intriguing was the suggestion that the destructive, self-sabotaging behavior of both bears and humans may be related to a parasite causing damage in the brain. It's super ironic to think that the so-called “freedom” of the libertarians may be a mirage elicited by a tiny creature of which they have no knowledge, for all their pride in their own mental acuity. What is freedom anyway? It's not so simple as taking over a town, or a state, or a country, and subjecting it to your own selfish ideas. Here's hoping we can preserve some degree of mental health, and find some more workable solutions.