Book Review | ‘The Waves’ by Virginia Woolf

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1001 book list, book review, literary fiction, the waves, virginia woolf

The Waves by Virginia Woolf

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

“Let us again pretend that life is a solid substance, shaped like a globe, which we turn about in our fingers. Let us pretend that we can make out a plain and logical story, so that when one matter is despatched—love for instance—we go on, in an orderly manner, to the next. ”

This was such a hard book to get into that it’s not even funny! I mean, I _KNOW_ what was going on, I know what Woolf was aiming for in the structural planning of the book, and I absolutely adore how well she kept up her water imagery. I am overwhelmed by her talent, but there is a fact that cannot be avoided; her novels are either going to be pure bliss, or absolute hell. This, to me, was hell. This disjointed narrative follows the lives of six characters whose voices intertwine to tell the story of the passing of time, how people grow from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. It is intensely nostalgic and is designed to mimic how the passing of what seems like an age, is nothing in relation to the world around us. This is perfectly symbolised by a side-narrative featuring the waves on a beach which begins each section of the novel. The end result is two stories set to two different time scales that run parallel to each other; the first being the transformation of the beach which through the duration of the novel is a mere day in relation to the storyline of the characters which spans their whole lives. This is a delicious juxtapositioning that truly works and gives the reader a sense of how fleeting life is with regards to the natural elements around us.

“On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.”

However, this wonderful structure does not help. The fact remains that I just couldn’t stop my mind from wandering off because of how damn  internalized everything is. The downfall of the novel is that everybody is talking in their own heads and no one is really interacting with each other. It lacks action which I think is fundamental necessity. It doesn’t help that we sometimes get no indication of who is speaking when, it’s very much like the characters are all insular, disembodied voices that float somewhere in the ether directly above their tangible, physical selves. Yet in direct opposition to this, there are moments when these ghostly voices word an emotion or a moment that is often more real than reality itself.

‘The Waves’ is a very complex and deeply disturbing novel that reaches into and explores the ‘self’ inside us that thinks and records our personal histories free from the restraints of language. Whenever I reach for any of Woolf’s works I have always been torn in two about her narrative style. She is either a pioneer of capturing the obliqueness of human thought, or the one who releases it from the constraints of language.

“I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.”    

I have not yet made up my mind on what she was really aiming for as a writer. However I am certain that through her novels and short stories she was forever travelling towards the first moment of our being, when we make our initial impressions of objects and emotions that are so unbearably poignant that it hurts. I could say that ‘The Waves’ has packed full of such moments, especially the first part.

This is a novel that I’ll probably have to come back to later in order to fully appreciate it’s beauty.

For now, 2/5 stars.

This novel is now available in the public domain at:

The Gutenberg Australia website and in numerous formats on Feedbooks.com

View all my reviews

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• Reader reviews roundup (guardian.co.uk)
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Book Review | ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ by George Grossmith

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1001 book list, book review, Charles Pooter, george grossmith, humour, John Cleese, Kenneth Williams, the diary of a nobody

The Diary of a Nobody by George Grossmith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Meet Mr. Charles Pooter, perfectly average in every way. Actually, he doesn’t really like being average (as he is a smidgen snobbish) but he certainly isn’t a ‘nobody’ either. He is rather just one of us, a person trying to get ahead in life and be as successful as he can be in the face of life’s little embarrassing disasters. And believe you me there are plenty of those in this book!

This is his diary, wherein he faithfully records all of the aforementioned moments including the stress of moving into a new house. British comedy is famous for its sarcasm and dry wit, and ‘The Diary of a Nobody’ has this in spades as it was written by George Grossmith, a rather famous comedian of his time. The humour here is of the domestic variety, and includes sharp observations of moments between long-married couples like the Pooters, whose spats are not funny at the time of happening but become hilariously so in retrospect.

All families have their dysfunctional side, and the Pooter ‘black sheep’ is none other than Lupin, the son – a young, cad about town with a bad work ethic and a penchant for making money fast through dubious means. Like most fathers, Charles Pooter is seriously concerned for his boy as he can’t seem to hold down a job and has taken to slang and courting chorus girls, which to him are marks of indecency. Attached to the Pooter household are the maids and two longstanding friends Cummings and Gowing, who (like their names) arrive whenever they want and always manage to finish off Mr. Pooter’s spirits.

The problem with Pooter, (or rather the sad part of it) is that he is an intelligent man, but for some reason is never entirely taken seriously by his friends and family. Everyone is making jokes at his expense and his own jokes aren’t all that good either. He is a rather sensitive character, and comes across as a bit of a pushover. In fact, he reminds me a little of Kenneth Williams of ‘Carry On‘ fame’ with a large helping of John Cleese.

All in all rather funny in a quaint way. Despite being written in the late 1800’s, it is very easy to read and relate to. I feel sorry for Mr. Pooter! I swear I know someone like this in real life…

View all my reviews

The Problem with Gargantuan Book Challenges, and How I Handle Them…

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1001 book list, book challenge

As Hallowe’en approaches I tend to look back on my reading record to see how well I’ve done throughout the year. Although I am heading nicely towards my target of 60 books, I was not pleased to discover that I had grossly deviated from my other book challenges, especially the most important one: 1001 Book Challenge.

It’s not an easy list to conquer, as anyone who is currently undertaking it will know. The sheer number of books aside, it is probably the only list that well and truly makes you ‘feel’ your mortality. Especially if you have (like me) gauged their yearly reading speed. Mine stands at approximately 50 books a year, placing me in the ‘slow reader’ category compared to some readers who manage well over 100 books a year!

One good thing about gargantuan challenges like the 1001 Book List is that many people are attempting it. It’s tough but it’s highly popular and if you can find a good online reading group (I’m a member of the goodreads one) there is plenty of camaraderie to be had along the way. And you’ll soon discover that most people are there to discover truly good books that deserve their time and effort. There is no pressure to actually COMPLETE the list. In reality, it would take a lifetime of reading. So the challenge is viewed as one that allows you to read a lifetime of ‘quality’ titles that have been tried and tested by critics.

Joining a group also means you’ll meet many people who have varying reading habits, some quite surprising. Some people begin to read the books in list order, finding a sort of rhythm as they tick off the books one by one. Some like me, tend to pick and choose haphazardly whereas others read books in ‘author’ order, e.g. reading all titles that happen to be in the list by Dickens, then go onto another author and so on. If you can’t be bothered to choose a book from the list yourself (and there are plenty of lists floating around in all formats) or you rather can’t bear to look at that heart-stopping list for fear of fainting then there is always the monthly readalongs that let you know which books are being read by the whole group. This is best by those who like to enter into heated debates. I like a good discussion every once in a while, but it’s rare that I choose to do a readalong, mainly because as soon as I commit something is bound to come up and stop me from joining in!

Now this year has been very up and down for me reading wise and with all good intentions I have not had the chance to make the best use of my time. I also believe that because I have 3 different 1001 lists (2006, 2008 and 2010), I have put myself off a bit. Just a tad. So I sort of gave up on it. But I won’t let that happen for 2012. Oh no, I’ve decided to make a shortlist of 1001 books that I have been DYING to get my hands on. My list is a mish-mash of titles taken from all three versions which makes things a bit more manageable.

Here’s what my proposed 1001 Book Challenge for the coming year looks like:

Pre 1700’s
*Don Quixote (Own)
*Oroonoko (Own)
*Tale of Genji
*Aesop’s Fable
*Metamorphoses

1700’s
*Rasselas (Own)
*120 Days of Sodom
*Caleb Williams
*Camilla
*Wilhelm Maisters Apprenticeship

1800’s
*La Bete Humaine
*Germinal
*Bel-Ami
*Against Nature
*Nana
*Erewhon
*The Moonstone (Own)
*Crime and Punishment (Own)
*Woman in White (Own)
*The Red and the Black
*The Brothers Karamazov
*Tale of Two Cities (Own)

1900’s
*Locus Solus
*Rashomon
*The Great Gatsby (Own)
*The the Lighthouse (Own)
*Steppenwolf
*Lady Chatterley’s Lover
*Les Enfants Terribles
*Tender is the Night (Own)
*Nausea
*The Little Prince
*Zorba the Greek
*Love in a Cold Climate
*Go Tell it to the Mountain
*Casino Royale
*Bonjour Tristesse
*The Mandarins
*The Talented Mr. Ripley
*Pale Fire
*Ada
*Heartbreak Tango
*The House of Spirits (Own)
*If not now, When?
*Beloved
*The Black Dahlia
*Kitchen
*Buddha of Suburbia (Own)
*The Virgin Suicides
*A Suitable Boy
*The Poisonwood Bible

2000’s
*Kafka on the Shore
*Suite Francaise
*Elegance of the Hedgehog
*The Children’s Book
*On Beauty
*After the Quake

There are a total of 58 books, which means it is well within my means to conquer such a list. Obviously I hope to read more than that, as each year I try to stretch myself beyond the 50 mark. This year I’m trying for 60 books, of which I have read 47 so far. I know it’s a bit early to be making New Year’s Resolutions, but I’m really determined to take a big chunk out of that 1001 list. There are so many important books on there that I just have to make the knowledge of them ‘mine’! But considering that the list is updated every two years, I won’t be making much of a dent in it really.

So, enough of my list mania, what about yours? How do you handle your Book challenges? Is there a particular order, pattern to how you pick your next read? I don’t care how wacky it is, I would love to know.

Book Review | ‘The Yellow Wallpaper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

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1001 book list, book review, charlotte perkins gilman, classics, edgar allan poe, feminist literature, short story, virginia woolf, Yellow Wallpaper

The Yellow Wall-paper and Other Stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“A man’s honor always seems to want to kill a woman to satisfy it. “

Gilman’s prose is of the scary type. Scary for its’ intellect and practical advice for all women. First of all, she is an unapologetic feminist. These well-structured little stories could be divided into three themes which showcase Gilman’s adeptness in her art. The first third of the book displays distinct Gothic elements where houses (what Freud called the ‘Unheimliche’) become objects that reflect female repression. In ‘Yellow-Wallpaper‘, Gilman’s most famous and disturbing story, the house is portrayed as a domestic prison, a warden, and later as a mirror that depicts the awful break-down of the main character. In truth, I was not prepared for the subtle horror of the final scene due to Gilman’s clever use of language. There were also undertones to this story that paralleled partly with Virginia Woolf‘s own tragic death. Gilman’s inspiration came from personal experience after being admitted to a mental institution whereupon the regime was so bad that it almost made her lose her mind. In her preface, she states in particular how the story was written to all doctors who think total rest and complete detachment from any activity are sure cures for a curious, flexible mind.

“I often wonder if I could see her out of all the windows at once.
But, turn as fast as I can, I can only see out of one at one time.
And though I always see her, she may be able to creep faster than I can turn!

I have watched her sometimes away off in the open country, creeping as fast as a cloud shadow in a high wind.”

The second set of stories are mostly humorous satire’s based on the style of different well-known authors such as Austen and R.L. Stevenson. While they were well-written these did not particularly interest me so much. The last part of the book however clearly hammered home the political and socio-economic potential of women in the world. The stories prove that Gilman was a woman very much ahead of her time. The stories themselves must have caused a real stir and they are worded in such a way to stamp out any kind of protest from the ‘male chauvinistic pigs’ that she is constantly pounding.

“Woman” in the abstract is young, and, we assume, charming. As they get older they pass off the stage, somehow, into private ownership mostly, or out of it altogether.”

While the stories were entertaining, I did tire of the overly feminist tone, and soon the plots all began to merge together. Allow me to explain: a woman at the dregs of her life (a mere 50 years old) suddenly gets the urge to live for herself for once. Her children are married off, the husband is conveniently dead, so there is nothing stopping her. The children are trying to get at her money (what little is left of it) by getting her to sell off the property and move in with them. The matriarch refuses and instead of explaining what she’ll do with her life, sets about renting off her property, setting up ‘ladies clubs’, starting up a jam-making business, whereupon in a year her income doubles and trebles. In two years she becomes a millionaire and laughs in the face of her children and everyone else who considered her a helpless good for nothing old lady. End of story.

As I said, while this is entertaining, it does get tedious. But all in all a must-read even if just for ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’.

View all my reviews

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• ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ … for her own good? (hamptonroads.com)
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• All Souls (2012yearbookblog.wordpress.com)
• Sat (2012yearbookblog.wordpress.com)
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I, Android | The Beauty of the eBook App

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1001 book list, android apps, audiobook, ebook, goodreads, gutenberg project, librivox, the art of war

 
For god’s sake. Stop being such a paranoid android,
and learn to love the little green man…

I take it back. Every negative word I have written about the ebook/ audiobook phenomena (or any format that deviates from the traditional way of reading) has as of today, come to an abrupt end. Who or what converted me so completely and painlessly? The world of android apps, of course. Those wonderfully cute and colourful icons of free information that you stream onto your phone, those friendly and extremely useful gadgets that help pass the time, convert your money to any currency you want… or allow you to access thousands of classic novels. All for FREE. Now that is an app to die for.

Among the thousands of these tiny little widgety things I discovered an oasis of reading material. The website I happened to used was Android Market that came pre-installed on my phone. It’s a really useful website that offers information about the different types of apps on offer. Searches can be made separating the best paid and free apps on the market, and it allows direct download into your phone via a USB cable. What’s more, I really liked the reviews of the different products. Very valuable if you are a techno-phobe like me and dread getting into trouble with glitches and viruses.   

I quickly discovered that there was really no need to pay for many of the stuff I wanted to use, because the free ones operate just as well as the paid ones. Among my sojourns in the ‘Books and Reference’ section, I discovered a lot of apps for Bibles, Moon phases and other religious books. Ideal for those who wish to carry their scriptures with them while on the go.

Wondering what I managed to find? Here’s my list of book related apps:

•  Goodreads – A must have. Before I had to log onto the full website and frantically toggle between full and mobile mode (full mode wont let me update my shelves). So this is a real godsend. Works like a dream.

 

•  Free Audiobooks (Travelling Classics) – Excellent for when you are on the go. Thousands of titles are available, and is especially good for those trying their hand at the 1001 BYMRBYD. This is like the ‘Gutenberg Project’, only all texts are from the ‘Librivox’ library and are narrated by ordinary people. I must admit, I didn’t quite like ‘Librivox’ because it kept me close to the computer (limited, rather), but with this app I can cook, clean, do anything and listen to quality unabridged classics from Dickens to Aesops Fables. Once the novel is downloaded, it will continue to works even without internet access. Get this while you still can!

 

•  The Art of War eBook – I have a beautiful hardcover 
  version of this I got from Borders years ago. It’s sitting on my shelf gathering dust! This however is a great condensed version of the military/ tactical classic from Sun Tzu that everybody has heard about, but few have actually read. This will help feed my love for Asian non-fiction.

It has in some respects been a day of revelation to me. I who was a proud reader of the ‘written word’, has finally ‘got’ it. I hope to discover many more bookish apps and through sharing them hope to help other conservative minded readers make the switch over to the digital realm a little more easier. Do you have any bookish apps that you have discovered or can’t do without? Please do share!

Midnight’s Children Readalong | Part 3 Discussions

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1001 book list, midnights children, readalong, salman rushdie

Reading ‘Midnight’s Children’ has been quite an experience, and I’m both glad and sad that it’s over. This is the final set of questions that wraps up this modern literary classic and I would like to thank JoV at Bibliojunkie for hosting this readalong, the insightful questions she posed and for all the people who joined in.

I can say that best part of this has been answering the questions. It’s forced me to take a really good look at what I’m actually reading. Interpretation is what gives a book its flavour. Discovering that you have your own spin on something also sheds light on what kind of reader you are (and subsequently, what kind of WRITER you might be if you put your mind to it). So I took the opportunity to look at some of Rushdie’s more elaborate motifs/ use of language as a way to develop myself as a writer. This was why it probably took me so long to finish the thing! 

Below are some of the discussion questions (pages 350 – 500) and my responses to them. Click here for part 1 and here for part 2 of the discussions.

Question 1: What is the role of the 1001 children?

At first glance this question had me a bit stumped. I think the number 1001′ comes with its own special meaning; the most obvious being the ‘1001 Nights’, the legendary Arabic story-within-a-story that winds and rewinds around itself to create a continuous narrative. Therefore the children could be just this; people who signify stories, and who come to culminate and echo inside Saleem’s mind, or the ‘Midnight Conference’ as it’s known. At first, Saleem converses with his fellow brethren within the fictional realm of the psyche. The children are really nothing more than voices who are telling their own stories. It is only later, when that secret agora is permanently destroyed that Saleem actually meets some of the midnight children in reality.

Each child has his/ her dark gift bestowed by the powers of midnight and each is like a prophet in their own right, a little living god/ goddess. Rushdie uses a lot of religious symbolism, often juxtaposing Islam (Monotheism) and Hinduism (Polytheism). At the beginning we are introduced to Aadam Sinai, whose faith in Islam is suddenly tarnished when he accidentally hits his nose on the ground during prayers. This foreshadows the breaking of the country into two pieces (Pakistan and India). People of different faith who have managed to live together for centuries suddenly feel an urge to separate. This nationwide feeling or obligation to choose sides grows like a cancer in the population. The most affected by this are probably the mothers, whose as of yet unborn babies are suffused with this unbearable sense of divide and the ‘yoke of destiny’, as Saleem puts it.

In a sense, the country undergoes a caesarean section of sorts. There is a cutting and a taking out. A certain set of people are forced to leave their homes and make a life elsewhere. While birth is the creation of life, it can also be an expulsion of it. What was in the womb, or ‘mother India’ is expelled, and the moment of expulsion when ‘both hands meet’ is the creation and expulsion of the children. It is in effect the cancer made manifest. The ‘1001 children’ also personify the common hatred of the two communities. In effect they are quite literally born out of the synchronised birth/ death of a nation. These magical imps are each a vessel of foreboding and prophecy. Saleem’s often inadvertant hand in political scheme of things (pepperpots) indicates this. The rounding up and systematic castration of the midnight’s children also shows that anyone who understands the real reason of the breaking up of India, knows that the children are a gross representation of the many-headed gods/ beliefs/ ideologies that made the break possible in the first place.

Question 2: Why did the author give so many characters two names?

At the heart of the story we have a country who is hacked in two and given a different identity. The hopes and misgivings that such a divide causes is questioned by the thought that midnight might bring the two nations a fresh/ different set of values. When this is so, Rushdie probably went one step further and mirrored this in his characters. The notion of midnight is one of change or magical transformation. The idea that things morph during this particular moment into something else is also thwarted, as many people expected the land to undergo some sort of magical transformation and become better, more fertile and lucky for its inhabitants. The only transformation that midnight had was on the people themselves. This also goes for what became Pakistan, or ‘land of the clean’ as it was so hopefully named.

There is also the fact that a person is born with a given name. That name may have set values or expectations that come with it. Saleem is constantly called ‘little-piece-of-the-moon’ by his mother and is faced with the  tremendous expectations of his family. But as a person grows and begins to ‘become’ the person they are, they may change names to suit their evolving identity.

Book Review | ‘Madame Bovary’ – Gustave Flaubert

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1001 book list, 50 books a year, book review, Catherine Earnshaw, gustave flaubert, Madame Bovary, rory gilmore reading list

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Book Challenges: 1001 books (no. 887), 50 Books A Year (no. 48), Rory Gilmore Challenge.

“Il ne faut pas toucher aux idoles: la dorure en reste aux mains. [We must not touch our idols, the gilt sticks to our fingers.]”

The most famous line from the book sums up the very heart of the matter; as it illustrates in good old-fashioned terms how romantic legends should be admired from the pages of a book but never acted upon. Unfortunately our ill-fated Emma Bovary doesn’t heed this lesson, and reaches again and again to touch the moth-winged fabric of love, only to have it fall around her like dust.

A controversial novel in its time, ‘Madame Bovary’ still continues to draw a significant amount of praise for its handling of a subject like forbidden love. It took me AGES to finished this, but it was well worth it. First of all ‘Madame Bovary’, for all it’s old-fashioned language could teach modern storytellers a thing or two about proper ‘character development’. There are many elegant phrases that stand out, but what I admired most was the beautiful descriptions of the countryside:

“The walls of the gardens with pieces of bottle on their coping were hot as the glass windows of a conservatory. Wallflowers had sprung up between the bricks, and with the tip of her open sunshade Madame Bovary, as she passed, made some of their faded flowers crumble into a yellow dust, or a spray of overhanging honeysuckle and clematis caught in its fringe and dangled for a moment over the silk.”

Emma Bovary has to be without a doubt the most complex heroine I have ever read. Not even the enigmatic Rebecca de Winter, or the wild mistress-of-the-moors Catherine Earnshaw can come close to the depth and flexibility of this creation. Flaubert has rendered as complete an image of woman that can possibly be done in literary terms. She differs greatly from other heroines of her time, because Flaubert strived to depict a woman who was equally bad as she was good. You won’t find any of that ‘angel fallen from heaven’ malarkey here, oh no. Emma Bovary was greedy, needy and a thoroughly lustful lass to boot. She cuckolded her husband more than once, spent his money to the last centime and did not care an iota for her poor child Berthe.

Emma is a sensual creature despite her innocent looks; but it’s within the nuance of language and her character deconstruction that Flaubert saves his heroine from being taken as a total whore. Unlike his contemporaries he takes time to empathise with his characters. I was more fascinated by Flaubert’s sensitive wording of emotions than of the plot itself. Unhappy in her marriage, Emma seeks consolation in religion. But her convent days are over and she (despite having spent a great deal of time there) has never truly outgrown her romantic fantasies. Instead they fuel her bored mind until the unfortunate opportunity presents itself and the clandestine meetings with the suave Rodolphe begin. In fact I’ve clocked Flaubert accusing piety as the culprit for Bovary’s tragic end many times. It’s an interesting undertone that runs throughout the novel.

Emma’s unfaithfulness is just the beginning of a downward spiral designed to no doubt serve as a moral tale for young ladies. The ending results in the most tragic consequences, as Emma’s selfish actions have a knock-on effect to her husband and daughter. In short, the whole family is irreversibly ruined.

I say this is one of the more enjoyable reads out of the classics. Read it when you can.

View all my reviews

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Book Review | ‘Spring Flowers, Spring Frost’ – Ismail Kadare

Tags

1001 book list, Albania, book review, Feud, Fiction, ismail kadare, Kanun, spring flowers spring frost

As winter slowly ebbs away, strange things begin to stir in the thaw of one Albanian town. Mark, a semi-successful artist, begins to notice violence of a different sort taking root in his neighbourhood. Old vendettas are re-surfacing, blood feuds thought to have been buried with the passage of time have found their way back into memories. However, the most dangerous thing is the return of the Kanun; the ancient and archaic mafia law of settling accounts of honour in the most barbarous way imaginable.

The confusion soon spreads across the whole town, and its’ inhabitants struggle to make sense of the developments as they spiral out of control.

Just because a book is part of the 1001 book list, doesn’t guarantee that it will be a good read. Kadare’s ‘Spring Flowers, Spring Frost’ is testament to that. Despite the gushing reviews and the generous comparisons to Gogol, Kafka and Orwell, I found this story to be extremely confusing. The aim of the novel was always a little bit out of my reach. I didn’t quite understand the structure of the ‘chapters’ and ‘counter-chapters’. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough to make sense of it all, but I was expecting the story to have a sound direction at least, a place it was going or taking me. I am afraid to say, Kadare’s characters were uninspiring, I simply wasn’t interested in their wellbeing, which I have found to be absolutely crucial if a story is to at least keep my attention.

There are, however, pockets of brilliance, but these are few and far between. When Kadare is writing about the strange ritualistic laws of the Kanun, it gets exciting. The story about the virgin who married a snake was engrossing, but I was quickly disappointed when Kadare didn’t follow this up. The account itself stood out as a stand-alone piece of information that had no bearing on the reflections of Mark or the inhabitants of the town.

Another thing I have noticed is this edition is translated from the French, which is translated from the original Albanian. This may also be the reason for the negative experience I had. If you are fluent in Albanian, or even French, I guess you my have a better chance of enjoying this short novel. I wouldn’t recommend this book at all, purely because I think a better translation is desperately needed.

I give this book 1/5 stars. I left it half-finshed, which says a lot!

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Quick Review | ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’ – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

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1001 book list, 50 books a year, arthur conan doyle, book review, Holmes, Jude Law, Robert Downey, Sherlock Holmes, Watson, Wizard of Oz

Hound of Baskervilles Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Book Challenges: 1001 BYMRBYD , 50 Books a Year (no.44)

“Everyone knows SHERLOCK HOLMES. Now is the time to rediscover him.”

These were the words on the back cover of my edition of ‘Hound of the Baskervilles‘, and I wholly agree. In fact I must say I had no idea Sherlock Holmes was so much fun! Again, here is a popular book (indeed, a cast of characters) that has been depicted extensively in cartoons and film, the latest being the blockbuster ‘Holmes’ starring the lovely Jude Law and notoriously unhinged Robert Downey Jr. Perfect casting as far as I’m concerned, but it always bugged me that I had never actually met with the real ‘Holmes’, the original, untampered version thought-up by Doyle. So I decided it was time I found out what made this literary figure so great in the crime-fiction genre.

As with ‘The Wizard of Oz’, I couldn’t help approaching the story with a certain mish-mash of varying images of the legendary Holmes and his sidekick Dr. Watson. On the whole, I was expecting a pedantic, slightly scary/ crazy guy (complete with quintessential English dry humour), whose brain is permanently hard-wired with an unusually uncanny level of intelligence. And to an extent I found the above to be a staple part of his character, so I was pleased that they kept pretty much to Doyle’s creation. However, what I discovered in this book was a much darker version of the detective. For one, he smoked a rare type of tobacco rumoured to be cannabis which can be seen in this novel. He is also reputed to be a cocaine user, who oddly abhorred the tought of visiting an opium den for his fix. The drugs were, of course, perfectly legal back in 19th century England and didn’t cause the slightest stir back then; but having them connected to a character of clear logic with today’s knowledge of the drugs puts Holmes in totally different light, suddenly giving him a depth that suggests a men battling with his inner demons. And his oddball attitude certainly supports this theory, especially since his way of looking at the world is so very different from the rest of us.

Of course, discovering the ‘real’ Holmes wasn’t the only positive. Dr. Watson turned out to be made of much sterner stuff than his TV/ film counterparts. He is an intelligent man, with a wit that only just falls short of Holmes’ brand of prodigious divining.

As far as the story goes, Doyle keeps to the usual time-honoured rules of crime-fiction by ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’. The narrative is also handsomely varied between third-person story-telling, diary entries and the favourite ‘epistolary’ style of its’ day. The plot starts off at a rather good pace with no time wasted in establishing a gothic ambience with the legend of a hell-hound that dogs the ancient Baskerville family. The size of beast and its terrible penchant for human flesh puts a slightly ‘lycan’ spin on the whole mystery, but this is soon dissipated as Holmes starts unravelling what he terms as a yarn spun by a most singular and diabolical adversary.

There are plenty of action-packed moments, and the ending was especially satisfactory which is a must for a mystery novel. Having looked at the other titles in this series and I’m glad to see they are slightly more gory and have a wider scope in terms of location and plot.

3/5 stars to a good rollicking tale!

View all my reviews »

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Quick Review | ‘Disgrace’ – JM Coetzee

Tags

1001 book list, 50 books a year, book review, David Lurie, disgrace, jm coetzee, South Africa

Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Book Challenges: 1001 BYMRBYD, 50 Books A Year 2010 Challenge (no.41)

“After an impulsive affair with a student, David Lurie is forced to resign from the University where he teaches poetry. He retreats to his daughter’s isolated smallholding in the South African bush, where, for a time, the natural rhythms of the farm promise to harmonise his discordant life. But the balance of power in the country is slowly shifting, and a savage attack is to bring into relief all the fault lines in his life.”

Chosen to coincide with the South African 2010 World Cup, this is the first time I’ve had the pleasure of reading Coetzee. Here the word ‘pleasure’ is not used in the usual way, because nothing was pleasurable or nice about this novel. It is used to indicate the enjoyment I derived from the dexterity and ruthlessness of Coetzee’s writing. It is a rare and wonderful thing to witness an author treating his creations like lifeless, worthless paper dolls; and this is what I felt David Lurie, his daughter and all the other characters really were. The theme of ‘disgrace’ runs heavily through the novel, where Coetzee analyses the varying degrees of the ‘fall’ with disturbing clarity.

Dogs feature as a major symbolic significance in Coetzee’s design, as time and time again we see humans reduced to a simple, crude set of impulses that serve to throw a wrench into centuries of ‘cultural grooming’ that have taught us to repress and ignore our base needs.

As I stated earlier, this isn’t a nice story. There were many moments where I read on in disbelief as Coetzee seemed to be almost ‘punishing’ his characters by putting them through things that I seemed unnecessary. I cared for these characters; for David and Lucy who see South Africa as their homeland, for Petrus who being a native South African and descendent of a once noble people who were exploited by White invaders now have to share their land with them. The story begins with David and his sexual transgression with a student, but this triggers a whole series of incidents that has a startling domino-effect on the course of everyone’s lives.

Unlike most stories, the stasis at the beginning with David and his respectable job, his daughter’s adventurous outing as a farmer in the bush is never returned to. The events lead to an undoing, the humiliation and the disgrace of the characters are permanent. All Coetzee leaves us with is a sense that at least the main character, David, has finally learned his lesson (eventually leaving his high and mighty ways, cowed by the terrible event that scars his daughter). The lesson here is deep and complex. It is to do with animal instincts, how none of us are above them, and how unchecked they can bring misfortune upon us and our loved ones. It is about karma, and having our sins return to visit us in the worst form possible: by having our children pay for them. It is about accepting the bitter pill of defeat and learning when to surrender to the powers that be, which Lucy teaches her wayward father by the extraordinary strength she displays in the face of her own personal disgrace.

“How humiliating,’ he says finally. ‘Such high hopes, and to end like this.”

“Yes, I agree, it is humiliating. But perhaps that is a good point to start from again. Perhaps that is what I must learn to accept. To start at ground level. With nothing. Not with nothing but. With nothing. No cards, no weapons, no property, no rights, no dignity.’

“Like a dog.”

“Yes, like a dog.”

This is a story that will stay with me for a long time, as the most powerful things are not those that were expressed, but rather the things that were left unsaid. With this book Coetzee has given me a glimpse of the complexity of South African history, the ethnic discord between its people and the awful reality that some actions really can leave a permanent mark on our lives.

View all my reviews >>

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