theonioncellar

Twilight - Stephenie Meyer (2005)

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 09:14:48 GMT

"Do I dazzle you?"

Theory: Twilight would be vastly improved if, instead of being so ridiculously beautiful that Bella starts hyperventilating every time he looks at her, Edward Cullen resembled Max Schreck in Nosferatu. That way, the book would only be half as long (I swear the novel mainly consists of gushing references to Edward's beauty), and I wouldn't want to strangle the characters so much.

What a stupid book. No, really, what a stupid book. I don't even know where to begin. I suppose I'll start with the language itself. A Times reviewer on the back of the book praises the "hypnotic, dreamy prose". I sort of want to hunt down the reviewer, wave the book in their face, and shout, "EXPLAIN". The language in Twilight is mostly bland and awkward, with the occasional syntactical disasters, and Meyer frequently slips into nauseating purple prose:

His skin, white despite the faint flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut, though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal

How anyone can read a description like and continue to take the book seriously, I have no idea.

The characters are either vile, or dull, or both. Most characters in Twilight are merely dull, characterised only by their physical appearance or their attraction to Bella. Meyer misses an opportunity by making her vampire characters behave exactly like humans - where's the fun in that? Edward and Bella somehow achieve the impressive feat of being both vile and dull. The term "Mary Sue", frequently used in reference to the characters by those that hate the book, seems appropriate. Bella is attracted to Edward because of his face, nothing more (she mentions "the magnetic force of his personality" at one point, which is just a joke because he has no charisma whatsoever), and despite Edward telling Bella rather unconvincingly that he loves her, it's obvious that he only likes her smell. She smells like freesia, apparently. What a fantastic basis for a love story, I don't think.

I was torn between hating Bella for being so vacuous and feeling that weird kind of pity you feel for a character when you realise that an author is doing everything she possibly can to make you dislike her. It's hard to explain, but I suppose the only way of putting it is to say that instead of just being annoyed by Bella as a character, I began to really, really resent Stephenie Meyer for inventing such a character in the first place, for giving teenage girls a heroine with no intelligence, ambition or life outside of her horrible, possessive boyfriend.

Edward Cullen is not my idea of a perfect man (although as Robert Pattinson has observed, Twilight is basically just Meyer's "sexual fantasy"), and honestly, I find it disturbing that so many girls who read this book idealise the relationship. All right, I have a bit of a crush on Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights, but I'm not so stupid that I believe a relationship with him would be anything but a nightmare. Cathy also acknowledges how awful he is. Bella, however, is so absurdly dependent on him - completely incapable of doing anything without him, hyperventilating in his presence, letting him order her around without ever trying to assert her own indepence...and, disturbingly, finding nothing weird about the fact that he creeps into her room at night to watch her sleep. This is a character who's controlling and possessive, who tries to read her mind and won't let her do anything that doesn't involve him. Message to Twilight fans - if your boyfriend is possessive, it doesn't mean he loves you. It means he's an insecure moron.

I could continue ranting on this subject, but I think I'm going to write an article on how anti-feminist Twilight is for the sixth form newsletter, seeing as I need to have come up with an idea by next week, so I'll think about it a bit more and perhaps post the article here once I've written it. For now, I'll just say that any girl who reads this book and wants their own Edward Cullen should seriously reconsider.

The one thing that might have redeemed Twilight to some extent is a decent plot. I can cope with books where the prose isn't stunning and the characters aren't exactly three-dimensional if there's a gripping plot. Meyer doesn't bother with a plot for the first three hundred pages. Here's a review from Goodreads which, sadly, summarises the action in Twilight:

First 200 pages:
"I like you, Edward!"
"You shouldn't! I'm dangerous!"
"I like you, Edward!"
"But I'm dangerous!"

Next 50 pages:
"I'm a vampire!"
"I like you, Edward!"
"But I'm a vampire! I'm dangerous!"
"I like you, Edward!"

Next 100 pages:
"I like you, Edward!"
"You smell good, Bella. I'm dangerous!"
"I like you, Edward!"
"Damn, you smell good."
"I like you, Edward!"
"Also, I glow in sunlight."

Next 50 pages:
A. VAMPIRE. BASEBALL. GAME.
(I wish I was kidding)

Last 100 pages:
"Help me, Edward! I'm being chased!"
"I'll save you!"
"Help me, Edward! I'm scared!"
"I'll save you!"
"Oh, Edward!"
"You smell good."

What's tragic is that the review is completely true. That is exactly what happens in Twilight, and it's why writers like Stephen King (who was write to complain about Meyer being compared to J. K. Rowling, by the way), even though they're not in the same league as Shakespeare, are literary geniuses compared to her.

One final complaint (although I'm sure I could think of lots more, I'll stick to the major things to keep this from being too long-winded). Vampires. I like the idea of novels about vampires, and I'm not entirely averse to the idea of certain stereotypes about vampires being changed. What I do have an issue with, however, is Meyer domesticating her vampires, taking all the horror and blood and mystery out of them, and turning them into boyfriend material. I prefer my vampires to be ugly, hypnotic and genuinely terrifying, thank you very much. If you're going to make your vampires so boring that they play baseball and go the prom, why not just make them human?

I'll leave the final words to Robert Pattinson, whom I admire for laughing at this book even when his career depends on it:

"When you read the book, it's like 'Edward Cullen was so beautiful I creamed myself'. I mean, every line is like that. He's the most ridiculous person who's so amazing at everything. I think a lot of actors tried to play that aspect, I just couldn't do that. And the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy, so that's how I played him, as a manic-depressive who hates himself. Plus, he's a 108 year-old virgin, so he's obviously got some issues there."

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte (1847)

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 21:49:47 GMT

And I pray one prayer - I repeat it till my tongue stiffens - Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you - haunt me then! The murdered do haunt their murderers. I believe - I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live with out my life! I cannot live without my soul!

Writing objectively about Wuthering Heights is even harder than writing objectively about Brideshead Revisited, for me, and I get all weird and emotional about Waugh's novel is hard enough. Where to begin? My mother read it to me as a bed time story when I was nine, and I've read it myself pretty much every year since then. It was undoubtedly my very favourite book for a few years, and although the discovery of new favourites has recently led me to question how I truly feel about it, re-reading it now, I can't imagine there ever being a time when I won't adore Wuthering Heights. It's literally incomprehensible - only in a parallel universe! The adjective "haunting" is probably overused when the describing the story of Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship, but it still seems appropriate, and given the supernatural element in the book...

I'm aware of the fact that Wuthering Heights is flawed, and when people who hated it (hated, not disliked - is there anyone who reads it without having an extreme reaction?) complain about the confusing narrative style or the unpleasant nature of practically every character in the book I wouldn't accuse them of being wrong. But while I'm aware of all these flaws, they don't detract from my utter adoration of the novel. There is nothing I dislike about Wuthering Heights - I can't think of a single thing I'd change. I love the simplicity and the energy of the language; I love the setting; I love the characters, in spite of and because of their horrible/spiteful/vengeful personalities; I love the fact that Emily Bronte never passes judgement on her characters; I love the intensity of it all. Because it is so brilliantly intense, to the extent that I still find myself feeling almost breathless in certain points. The scenes immediately before and after Cathy's death, for example. I may not always relate to the characters - sometimes I hardly even understand them (Heathcliff will always be a bit of a mystery, as much as I love him), but I'm always gripped, feeling the force of their emotions. It's been said so many times, but it's amazing that someone with as inexperienced as Emily Bronte could dream up such an extraordinary novel. A little imagination goes a long way, I suppose...

I'm inclined to think it's a good sign that Wuthering Heights divides people. It shows just how weird the book is, even by modern standards. I always ramble on about how it's weird for a Victorian novel, but it's still pretty weird for a modern novel. Heathcliff and Cathy's relationship, and Heathcliff's supernatural ability to hold a grudge, are still incomprehensible to many readers, and the structure is unusual to say the least - how many other books can you think of where the heroine dies halfway through? Though of course, Cathy's there throughout the entire book, even if she's not physically present.

Perhaps one of the main reasons why so many people hate Wuthering Heights, though, is the fact that it's talked of as being a great romance, one of the best love stories ever told. And it is, but in such a twisted way that I'm not surprised readers with more conventional expectations read about Heathcliff strangling dogs and bashing his head against a tree and think, "And this is supposed to be the great romantic hero?!". For all his horrible qualities I would much rather have Heathcliff than Henry from The Time Traveler's Wife, but more on Heathcliff's sex appeal later. I think Heathcliff and Cathy are redeemed by the sheer strength of their love, to a certain extent, although I wouldn't try to argue that they're basically nice people, because they're so obviously not. Their love is destructive (destroying themselves and everyone else around them, and when victims later include poor Hareton, it's harder to forgive them), but it goes beyond the grave and is always convincing, and in that way, it's a brilliant love story. Actually, it's just a brilliant story in general, because I'm gripped every time, even though I feel I like I almost know it off by heart...

Oh, Heathcliff. I generally avoid mentioning him in conversations about attractive fictional characters because it's such a cliché, but he is attractive and I still haven't quite worked out why. I'm not one of those Heathcliff fangirls who, rather like Isabella Linton, thinks that he has a good heart underneath it all, and that he can be "saved". His only good qualities are his love for Cathy, and perhaps his feelings for Hareton. In my interview at Oxford I struggled to justify liking Heathcliff, and I ended up saying that the reader relates to Heathcliff because Heathcliff's the outsider in the novel, and the reader, as a stranger to the characters and setting, is also an outsider. That was enough for the interview, but I know it's not really enough. That explains why the reader might empathise with Heathcliff during his childhood, but when he becomes almost irredeemably evil, what is it? I don't know if I'll ever work it out. I wouldn't want to live with him, but that doesn't stop me from finding him sexy. Ugh, I can't even explain it. Can I just lazily say something about a je ne sais quoi and leave it at that?

I don't know how Emily Bronte felt about Heathcliff and Cathy, and I'm not sure I even care, strangely enough. Does it matter? Wuthering Heights is a masterpiece, Heathcliff and Cathy are two of the most memorable characters in literature, and the reader can choose between being repulsed, or transfixed by the story like Lockwood. I think I've probably failed to express my thoughts and feelings coherently, but this is the best I can do, at the moment. As I mentioned earlier, I can accept the fact that there will always be plenty of people who name this book as one of their least favourite books, but I'll never really understand them. I immediately feel this kind of gap between myself and people who hate Wuthering Heights, because it's a novel so close to my heart that, as stupid as it may sound, it's like I can't relate to anyone who didn't like it. My instinctive reaction is, "You weren't captivated by Heathcliff and Cathy? You were unmoved by the gradual development of Hareton and Catherine's relationship? WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!", and then that passes, and I can be perfectly reasonable about it, but there's still always some confusion.

Actually, writing this has made me realise that I sincerely hope I'm never asked to write an essay on this book. I may be more familiar with the plot and characters than any other book, but writing about it without going into passionate, defensive fangirl mode is impossible...

The Unbearable Bassington - Saki (1912)

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:59:45 GMT

"The gratitude of those poor creatures when I presented them with a set of table crockery apiece, the tears in their eyes and in their voices when they thanked me, would be impossible to describe."
"Thank you all the same for describing it," said Comus.

My father bought me a collection of Saki's short stories when I was nine or ten, and apart from "The Open Window", I don't think I really got them, but a few years later I went back to them and fell in love. Now, Clovis Sangrail is my hero and stories like "The Unrest Cure" are among the first things I turn to when I need cheering up.

As much as I love Oscar Wilde, I usually find his epigrams clever rather than funny, whereas practically anything said by Saki's characters makes me smile. I really enjoyed The Unbearable Bassington, but I do think Saki's at his best in his short stories - a few pages is all the space he needs to create havoc through Reginald or Clovis, with an ending that is usually very funny, very cruel, or both. The Unbearable Bassington is a short novel (not even 150 pages in my edition) and Comus is not quite as memorable as Reginald or Clovis, so inevitably, it's not quite as consistently sharp. But even so, there's still plenty of humour, and Saki's prose is strangely addictive in an accessible-yet-intelligent-and-witty sort of way. Comus also has his moments, such as his treatment of Lancelot Chetrof:

"By the way," he said to his grasping and gulping victim when the infliction was over, "you said Chetrof, didn't you? I believe I've been asked to be kind to you. As a beginning you can clean out my study this afternoon. Be awfully careful how you dust the old china. If you break any don't come and tell me, but just go and drown yourself somewhere; it will save you from a worse fate."

"I don't know where your study is," said Lancelot between his chokes.

"You'd better find it or I shall have to beat you, really hard this time. Here, you'd better keep this chalk in your pocket, it's sure to come in handy later on. Don't stop to thank me for all I've done, it only embarrasses me."

As Comus hadn't got a study Lancelot spent a feverish half-hour in looking for it, incidentally missing another footer practice.

Comus is not as likeable as Reginald or Clovis perhaps because he's too self-centered - he provides entertainment through the chaos he creates, but because he never observes or provides any real commentary on society like Saki's other heroes, the observations come from other characters, and Comus loses some of his potential charm as a result.

I'm so used to Saki's endings having a kind of "bite", a twist or cruel revelation, that I certainly didn't expect Comus to marry Elaine, leaving Francesca as the happy owner of the house in Blue Street and the Van der Meulen painting. But did I expect something so utterly tragic? I think it took me by surprise. The discovery about the painting on its own would have been sufficiently cruel for one of his shor stories, but the "unmitigated unhappiness" of Francesca's walk in St James's Park, followed by the announcement of Comus's death and those terrible last lines, leaving the reader to realise that Francesca will live with the guilt for the rest of her life...it's one of the bleakest endings to any book I've read. Also slightly reminiscent of A Handful of Dust (main character dies miserable and alone in a hot, foreign country - the difference here being that Francesca actually cares).

In the introduction it's suggested that it might have been better if the painting was genuine after all, and that Francesca no longer cared. I very rarely agree with suggestions for alternative endings, but in this case, I think it might have been more successful, somehow. Is Francesca's fate so terrible that it's a little over the top? I haven't made up my mind, yet, but it's possible that a genuine Van der Meulen might have improved the ending.

"This story has no moral. If it points out an evil at any rate it suggests no remedy", says the author's note at the beginning of the book. Knowing Saki (or rather, thinking I knew Saki), I was prepared to take that comment at face value, and I thought nothing of it until I'd finished the book, and found myself wondering if it was true. Saki's not a moralist (thank God!), but in my opinion, an evil is pointed out and a remedy is hinted at indirectly, at the very least. So I'm not sure what to make of the author's note, now. Perhaps I need to read more Saki in order to decide. I'd like to read a biography, but the judging by negative reviews of the most recently published one (The Unbearable Saki by Sandi Byrne) the author's one of those people who thinks "The Unrest Cure" is offensive and anti-semitic when it's so obviously not, and I'm not sure I want to read a biography by someone who appears to be biased against their subject. Oh, well. For now I think I'll return to the short stories, but I'm glad The Unbearable Bassington turned out to be rather more enjoyable than I was expecting.

Geek Love - Katherine Dunn (1983)

Mon, 29 Dec 2008 16:57:40 GMT

But he was a norm. At first I thought he was pretty even though he was a norm. But it grows on you. After a while it was his being such a norm that got to me, touched me...I don't know. Like colors or a spring tree against that kind of blue sky that pulls your heart out through your eyes. Pretty things will swarm you like that, like your heart was a hive of electric bees. He was like that, the geek boy. He made normal seem beautiful to me.

I liked Geek Love more for what I wanted it to be than for what it actually was. I thought it would be like a surreal cross between Angela Carter, Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel and David Lynch. It was a bit like that, but not exactly. Sometimes when I'm reading a book I get sudden, fleeting glimpses of what it could be, and I'm inevitably disappointed when I stop day-dreaming and return to the book, realising that it doesn't live up to my imaginary version of the book. My expectations were probably a little unrealistic, as I'd been dreaming up my own version of Geek Love months before I read it. "A novel about a couple who create their own family of freaks, narrated by a hunch-back albino dwarf! Brilliant!" The reviews also convinced me that it was the kind of book which would make me want to vomit. Books rarely have that effect on me, so I was intrigued as to why it was quite so disturbing. Anyway, for all its strengths, Geek Love in reality was not as amazing as the imagined version...

Perhaps the prose is just too ordinary. It isn't badly-written (although I'd happily agree with the people who've criticised the way it was edited), but to suit the subject matter, I think the prose needed to be striking, filled with phrases and passages that stuck in the reader's mind. The first page, and the vivid chapter headings ("Nose Spites Face, Lips Disappears"; "Catching His Shrieks in Cups of Gold") led me to expect poetic, disturbingly beautiful and unconventional prose, but it isn't. The structure's unconventional, but I don't think it adds anything to the novel - if anything, it just becomes frustrating, getting off to a slow start and often seeming irrelevant.

There are moments of brilliance, and the chapters that focused on Arty and his cult of amputees are undeniably fascinating - Arty himself is also the most interesting character by far - but it's inconsistent. It was almost as if Dunn had come up with this bizarrely original dysfunctional family and didn't know what to do with it. The "Notes for Now" sections drag as Miss Lick and Miranda aren't the most interesting or the most sympathetic characters. The reader can understand Olympia's interest in her daughter, but can't be quite as enthusiastic, possibly because Miranda's just too bland and, well, normal. Olympia's obsession with Arty is infinitely more disturbing, if less comprehensible, and I sometimes found myself wishing that someone would explain how Arty inspired such slavish devotion in his siblings.

The most common complaint seems to be how disturbing and disgusting it is, which is something that didn't really bother me. Am I just desensitised? I don't know. The only bit that made me feel remotely nauseous was the description of the Bag Man's missed shot. I don't think that Geek Love fails because it fails to shock (that's just a personal thing, anyway), but I don't think it's as awful as everyone else thinks. Although admittedly, the whole concept is messed up...

A little more focus, a better structure, a more ambitious writer and Geek Love might have been a masterpiece. As it is, I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure that it's really worthy of the "cult classic" label. Still, full marks for originality, and I doubt I'll forget it. A child using his telekinetic powers to impregnate his seventeen year old dwarf sister with her limbless brother's sperm? You don't get that with Victorian literature (I'll admit I've been reading Geek Love and neglecting Gaskell's North and South...)

Paradise Lost - John Milton (1667)

Mon, 17 Nov 2008 19:50:20 GMT

And, fast by, hanging in a golden chain,
This pendent World, in bigness as a star
Of smallest magnitude close by the moon.
Thither, full fraught with mischievous revenge,
Accursed, and in a cursed hour, he hies.

I'm not going to make this a long, rambling entry because I'm fully aware of the fact that I've only just begun to scratch the surface, and that as I've only read Paradise Lost once, it's impossible to do justice to its complexities, so I think I'll have to write a fairly simplistic summary of my thoughts and leave it at that. It took me about five weeks from start to finish, but I read it irregularly, sometimes reading two books in a day and then waiting a week before I picked it up again. It was not nearly as much of a struggle as I thought it might be - has anyone reading Paradise Lost for the first time, whether 17 or 37, read the opening lines without thinking, "Oh dear, is this going to be an absolute nightmare to read"? Of course it's challenging, but once I realised that the trick was to sit down and read proper chunks instead of picking it up randomly here and there, which is what I often do with other books, and that it was important to try and avoid being overwhelmed by the incredibly complicated syntax, it was all right. Unlike my attempt at reading Ulysses, which I can only describe as being like bashing one's head against the wall and feeling that trying to understand anything is futile, Paradise Lost was comparatively rewarding.

I'll happily count myself as one of the many readers who's fallen for Satan. His gradual disappearance from the story was one of the reasons I found the first couple of books so much more involving than the later parts (although of course he resurfaces later, and I loved the story of the battle in heaven, as told by Raphael). I can see why Blake and, of course, Shelley, were so attracted to the character of Satan, and I think I'd agree with Shelley's statement that "Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of Satan" even if, later in the essay, he seems to overlook Milton's aims as expressed at the beginning of Paradise Lost. I was discussing Milton with a teacher who said that she believed that he had failed in his purposes, because Satan was far too appealing as a character, especially when compared to the portrayal of God as a bit of a tyrant, and although I wasn't sure about whether Milton had failed or not while I was reading it, now that I've finished, I think I'm inclined to agree. As a non-Christian I don't think Milton successfully justifies the ways of God to man, and from what I've read about him, it seems unlikely that Milton intended to make Satan quite so charismatic. Stanley Fish's theory is intriguing, though - arguing that the common reader response shows how easy it is to be seduced by evil. I'd like to read Surprised By Sin...

So yes, my first impression is that Milton on that level, at least, fails (though after re-reading and studying the poem in more depth I could well change my mind), but as for one of his other aims - to write an epic surpassing those by Homer and Virgil - I think he succeeds. Not necessarily because of the subject matter or because of the influence of any "Heavenly Muse", but just because, as a work of literature, it's stunning. Parts of the poem blew my mind. The grandeur and sheer beauty of the language made it a pleasure to read, and the scenes in Hell and Chaos were some of the greatest things I've ever read. At times I got so drawn in that I forgot that Raphael wasn't actually telling the factual truth and I found myself thinking, "There are mountains in heaven?!", before I remembered that firstly, I don't believe in heaven and secondly, Paradise Lost is a work of fiction. But the descriptions of Hell, Chaos, Earth and Heaven are so striking, so imaginatively conveyed (and I liked the precise geography of it all, too) that I was completely immersed in it. The characterisation was especially good with Satan, naturally, but Sin and Death were pretty wonderful too. I still haven't made up my mind on Adam and Eve, although I will say that I think that the reviewer on Goodreads who claims that Milton is culpable for "all the gender inequalities in the Christian faith" is a moron.

I never expected to say this, but I loved Paradise Lost. For the language, above all else, and for Satan, and for Milton's imagination, and for the way in which it inspired Philip Pullman. If I wasn't panicking about all the things I need to re-read for university interviews (assuming I get more than one - fingers crossed for Oxford!) I think I'd go back to His Dark Materials once more. Having read Paradise Lost, I imagine I'll get so much more out of it. Although in a way, perhaps the same thing will apply to almost everything I read from now on. I don't think it's possible to read something quite as epic (well, literally epic) as this and not look out for its influence on later works of literature. Thank you, Milton, for pleasantly subverting my expectations, and thank you Jesus, for inadvertently leading to the creation of such a brilliant work of literature.

(I never thought I'd conclude an entry in my reading journal with "Thank you Jesus!" either, but there you go...)

Craven House - Patrick Hamilton (1926)

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 15:07:52 GMT

And at the sight of Elsie's room, which is the quietest, smallest, and most unasking of them all (like her own self), and with the lamplight shining upon the wall and ceiling, like a frail, silver ghost of her; and at the memory of Elsie, as she moved about in it, warming it with her own thoughts, and her own sensless and serious preoccupations, Master Wildman knows himself for a fool in ever having started to walk this gallery of shades, and he needs Elsie more than he ever dreamed he could need her, more than he dares allow that he needs her - Elsie, who knows about it all.

Very impressive for a twenty-one year old. It may be one of his most neglected novels, only coming into print again this year, but I find the idea of someone only four years older than myself writing something so funny, touching and perceptive, vaguely terrifying. As an aspiring writer, reading anything by a uncannily talented young novelist is always slightly frightening. Still, this is Patrick Hamilton, after all, and he seems to have arrived almost fully formed. The style, characters, themes - all the roots of Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky and his later novels are there, and in spite of the over-reliance on 'Komic Kapitals' and the 'whereupons' it seems, in many ways, as though in 1926 he was already on the verge of reaching maturity as a writer.

Of course it's flawed, as Mrs Nixon could have been a bit more developed (as it is, she's just this dark, overbearing figure without much personality), the scene where Miss Hatt has a nervous breakdown at dinner is perhaps too sudden and over the top, and while not a flaw of Craven House as a novel as such, you might criticise Hamilton for choosing his territory as a writer at the age of twenty-one and refusing to leave it. The alcohol and stalking are already there, with Mr Spicer's trips up to Hyde Park, and then there's the stifling boarding house atmosphere, the bullies, the disobedient servants, the social awkwardness, the sexual obsessions...So it's true, as the few critics who have actually bothered to pay attention to Hamilton's work in the first place have observed, that his scope is small. But he does it so brilliantly Even the "occasional sentimentality" (Hamilton's own words, in his apologetic preface to the 1943 edition) can be forgiven. The Dickensian influence is obvious, but this novel is sentimenal without being sickening, and although it may just be because I'm feeling ill and weirdly fragile at the moment, I found Elsie and Master Wildman's final meeting in the deserted house incredibly moving. After fifteen years of friendship, while Elsie adores Master Wildman and Master Wildman lusts after Miss Cotterell, they finally get together, repeating the story-telling scene("Ghost or Detective?") from their childhood:

'What do you think happened, Elsie?...Well, I don't quite know what happened. But anyway, there was a Young Girl in it somehow, Elsie. And what do you think she looked like?'
'I don't know,' says Elsie.
'Unspeakably beautiful, Elsie. Like a dawn - or a twilight - or like all the dawns or all the twilights that ever were. And why was she so like a dawn, Elsie?'
'I don't know.'
'Because her hair was red, Elsie.'
'Was it?'
'Yes. It was. Very red, But that's not in the story, Elsie,' says Master Wildman, but contradicts that assertion by putting up his hand and slowly passing it over the red hair of his very audience. 'Very red,' says Master Wildman. 'But that's not in the story. What do you think happened next, Elsie?'
'I don't know.'
'Can't you guess.?'
'No.'
'Try.'
'I don't know.'
'Why, they had a Love Scene, Elsie.'
'Did they?'
'Yes. They had a Love Scene. They did. Because they could. Because they were alone in an empty house, and they had a Love Scene.'
Elsie is heard weakly protesting that they didn't.
'But I am telling this story, or are you, Elsie' protests Master Wildman. 'I ought to know, didn't I?'

And because, by this point, you're longing for them to have their happy ending, a victory of young over old, in defiance of the tyrannical Mrs Nixon as they escape Craven House together, you're willing to overlook any sentimentality, and, if you're me, get quite watery-eyed over this particular scene.

The optimism is striking because never again would a Hamilton novel have an entirely happy ending. Somehow I think it's important to have at least one novel of his where everyone isn't completely miserable, because, as much as I love him, his books tend to break my heart a bit, every time...

Love Scenes aside, the other aspects of Craven House are very well done. I don't think the residents of Miss Hatt's boarding-house will stick in my mind quite as much as those in Slaves of Solitude, but then, none of them are quite as horrific. The little details of the servant's lives are a reminder as to how unpleasant it must have been for women like poor Audrey, misled into "Answering Back " by Mr Cree, and scenes such as Master Wildman's failed attempts at a proposal on a noisy tube had me smirking:

'I'm not trying to flirt or anything' says Master Wildman. 'As you rather seem to think. I absolutely adore you.'
Miss Cotterell bends her head politely nearer to him.
'I ADORE YOU!' thunders Master Wildman, a little out of temper.
'I'M SORRY TO HEAR IT!' returns Miss Cotterell.
'No need to be sorry,' says Master Wildman

Craven House isn't his best novel, but it's very enjoyable nonetheless, and when compared to something as bleak as Hangover Square, it's actually quite a comforting read. What makes it so good - and this applies to everything I've read by Hamilton (apart from Unknown Assailant, perhaps) is that throughout, you're always on the side of the characters. When you're on the side of Ella in The Plains of Cement it has a devastating effect, and however much I was rooting for Elsie and Master Wildman, I didn't end up feeling quite so drained. But it's admirable for any writer to succeed in drawing in their reader to that extent. And for a twenty-one year old, poorly educated writer, it's astonishing.

Nights at the Circus - Angela Carter (1984)

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:21:35 GMT

Her voice. It was as if Walser had become a prisoner of her voice, her cavernous, sombre voice, a voice made for shouting about the tempest, her voice of a celestial fishwife. Musical as it strangely was, yet not a voice for singing with; it comprised discords, her scaled contained twelve tones. Her voice, with its warped, homely, Cockney vowels and random aspirates. Her dark, rusty, dipping, swooping voice, imperious as a siren's.

Everyone says that Wise Children is Angela Carter's masterpiece, but I'm inclined to agree with Sarah Waters on this one - it's Nights at the Circus, the first novel I read by Carter, and still my favourite, that truly represents how great she is as a writer.

I don't think I could try to write about this novel objectively if I wanted to, so I'll be honest - I love this book. It gets better every time I re-read it, or so it seems. It's a joyous, dizzying novel with one of the best heroines in any work of literature that never fails to inspire me, and send me running off to the computer/my notebooks in order to write something of my own. All novels inspire me to write, to some extent, but no writer has quite the same effect on my imagination as Carter. I will never forget the impression Nights at the Circus first made on me when I discovered it, purely by accident, in the school library when I was fifteen. It was exactly the kind of book that I wanted to write, and I haven't found another writer who I find myself relating to (in terms of themes/imagination/shared interests) in quite the same way. When I read her work it's as if, in a parallel universe, I can imagine myself writing something very similar. It's hard to explain.

Nights at the Circus starts with an interview between an American journalist and the Cockney Venus in her London dressing-rooms in 1899, and ends in bleakest Siberia, having become increasingly detached from reality. It's something which must infuriate some readers, as although it's clearly a magic realist novel from the start, the sense of time and space, fact and fiction spirals out of control in the third part of the novel. I bet my grandmother, who enjoys novels by Hardy and Conrad and despises fantasy, would throw the book across the room in disgust, in much the same way as I was tempted to do with The Time Traveler's Wife. But personally, I like my magic realism, so the ambivalence about about Fevvers' wings (more on that later), the miraculous escape from the Grand Duke and the mystery of Walser's beard, amongst other things, don't bother me.

Fevvers is fabulous. Such a good character - beautiful in a gigantic, slightly freakish way, a fully physical being who eats, yawns, farts, and utterly overwhelms Walser, greedy, noisy, inelegant, full of confidence, occasionally spiteful but essentially warm-hearted...that sentence just deteriorated into some kind of random stream of consciousness rambling, but never mind. Fevvers awes the reader in the same that she awes Walser, when she grasps him between "thighs accustomed to gripping hold of the trapeze" causing the besotted journalist-turned-clown to suffer a "sudden access of erotic vertigo". She is fourteen stone, six foot two and is not remotely grateful, but at the same time she's a powerfully feminine character who remains utterly unpredictable to the end.

And is she fact or fiction? I think it's tempting to assume that the wings are fake on the basis of the final pages, where Fevvers, straddling Walser, laughs and says, "Gawd, I fooled you!", but there's other evidence that suggests the contrary throughout the book. Walser observes that she doesn't actually have a navel. She discusses the problem of her wings with Lizzie when they're alone together, when, presumably, she would have no need to lie as Lizzie would be in on the secret. When she's not performing, they seem to be a constant inconvenience for her. And even when Fevvers takes over the narration, there is, I think, some reference to her wings that treats them as if they are very much physical parts of her body. Of course, ultimately, it's futile trying to distinguish fact from ficton in a magic realist novel with an unreliable narrator, but it's an interesting point to consider.

The plot is thoroughly entertaining, making Nights at the Circus quite unputdownable (yes,I know that's not a real word), even though I've read it before, and know what happens at the end. Even the sub-plots are brilliant, which is unusual, because in so many novels I find myself losing interest as soon as the narrator goes off on a tangent. But the sub-plots are partly what makes it so much more enjoyable, and I've always found Mignon's story particularly touching, as it switches between the past and present. Call me sentimental, but the following passage, after the horror of her past has been revealed and Fevvers has set her up in the honeymoon suite with Walser in St Petersburg, gets me every time:

If Mignon's day had started badly, it was ending well. It was ending like a girlish dream come true in fact, especially when Walser backed off. And she could not get over those roses! She cooed to them, caressed them, made soft, loving passes at them, hovered and purred around them with such heart-breaking, unknowing grace that Walser, by no means an insensitive man, let out an almost sob of touched perplexity.

'Oh, Mignon, what am I to do with you?'

To be addressed directly in the English language struck some chord in that peculiar and selective organ, her memory. She pulled the towel off her head and her Gretchen yellow hair sprayed out in all directions. She smiled. This smile contained her entire history and was scarcely to be borne.

'God save the Queen,' she said.

Walser could stand no more and rushed from the room.

It's incredibly moving, but Nights at the Circus is full of comic scenes, too. Walser's treatment at the hands of the apes and everything involving the wonderful caricature that is Colonel Kearney, with his pet pig, are just a couple of examples.

Still, it's not just an entertaining romp with no depth. The question of identity, the nature of story-telling, and gender are all explored here. Walser's devlopment from young, naive and essentially incomplete man to a proper human being, and Fevvers' transformation into a rather more mature, less self-absorbed character are depicted with humour but sympathy, too, and you can't help but feel that Carter is rather attached to her characters (Fevvers especially) by the end.

My aunt, vaguely recalling reading The Bloody Chamber several years ago, was under the impression that the short stories presented women in a negative way. I've no idea how she ended up with that impression, seeing as Carter is commonly labelled as a feminist writer, not to mention the fact that the women often come out on top in The Bloody Chamber (Red Riding Hood seduces the wolf, the Beauty finds love, the heroine of the title story is rescued by her mother etc). Because Carter is so rarely mentioned without being described as a feminist, someone who hadn't read any of her work might assume, judging by the label and the plot summaries of her novels and short stories, that she's the kind of feminist who's constantly showing disdain for men while making sure the women are always beautiful, perfect, powerful etc etc. But thankfully, this isn't the case with her work, and certainly not in Nights at the Circus.

Women do triumph - Mignon and the Princess fall in love, Fevvers escapes the men who try to harm her, the prostitutes educate themselves and refuse to be beaten, while the convicts in the women's prison in Siberia communicate through menstrual blood and eventually find liberation. But while the men are often characters to be feared or ridiculed, the same rule applies to the female characters, and Lizzie, presumably reflecting Carter's own views, is scornful of the convicts' plans to create a female utopia:

"What'll they do with the boy babies? Feed 'em to the polar bears? To the female polar bears?' demanded Liz, who was in truculent mood and clearly thought herself back in Whitechapel at a meeting of the Godwin and Wollstonecraft Debating Society.

I think Nights at the Circus is the perfect balance of humour and seriousness, and magic and realism. Her writing is sharp and beautiful but accessible, and while some of her earlier novels (and a few of her short stories) often seem almost over-written, there's none of that in Nights at the Circus. The only thing I might criticise is the way in which a lot of her characters tend to suddenly become the voices of Carter herself (this frequently happens with Fevvers and Lizzie, although the inconsistencies and contradictions often have an interesting effect in their own way. Fevvers: "This is some kind of heretical possibly Manichean version of neo-Platonic Rosicrucianism, thinks I to myself; tread carefully, girlie!"). It's the novel that rests comfortably between the completely mad The Passion of New Eve - which I also love, for different reasons - and Wise Children, which is, as I mentioned earlier, generally regarded as her best novel. Still, for me, Nights at the Circus, picaresque, tongue-in-cheek and magical, is the novel that demonstrates why Carter was such a good novelist, who deserves to be discovered and loved by a new generation of readers.

Narcissus and Goldmund - Herman Hesse (1930)

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:05:17 GMT

'Of course,' Narcissus continued. 'Natures of your kind, those with strong and delicate senses, the inspired, the dreamers, poets, lovers, are almost always superior to us men of intellect.Your origin is maternal. Your kind live life to the full, to you is given the power of love and the capacity to experience. We intellectuals, although we often appear to lead and govern you others, do not live life to the full. We live a parched existence. To such as you belong the fullness of life, the juice of the fruits, the garden of love, the beautiful land of art. Your home is the earth, ours is the idea. Your danger is of drowning in the world of senses, ours of suffocating in a vacuum. You are an artist, I am a thinker. You sleep on your mother's breast, I keep vigil in the desert. On me shines the sun, on you shine the moon and the stars. Your dreams are of girls, mine of the boys in my care...'

I bought Narcissus and Goldmund without knowing anything about it. I was drawn to a copy in a second-hand book shop merely because of the title, and the words "Dionysian and Apollonian" in the blurb. That was enough - I bought it. I'm easily persuaded by references to Greek mythology, you see. I had no idea whether or not I would like it, but I knew Herman Hesse was a respected writer, and liked the idea of a novel exploring the contrasts between artists and thinkers, so I was quite looking forward to reading it.

Anyway, I adored it in the end, and the novel quite exceeded my expectations. Goldmund - officially one of my favourite fictional characters. There's a bit in Brideshead - I think it must be something from the series, as I've flicked through the novel and can't find the quote anywhere - where Sebastian's reading one of Charles's books (see icon) and responds to the author's question about whether anyone feels the same way about a painting as a flower (or something along those lines) with the answer, "Yes - I do". Goldmund's an artist, but this is his way of thinking:

He studied the leaves of the little plant, arranged so neatly, so ingeniously, round the stalk. Virgil's poems were beautiful and he loved them; but they contained many a verse that was not half as clear and ingenious, not half as beautiful and meaningful, as the spiral symmetry of these tiny leaves ascending the stalk. What a delight, what bliss, how noble and meaningful it would be if a human being were able to create a single such flower! But no one could; no hero and no emperor, no pope and no saint.

Goldmund, the Dionysus to Narcissus's Apollo, the artist, the aesthete, the free-thinker, the lover, the son, the traveller, undergoes a fascinating progression, and I suppose in a way, Narcissus and Goldmund is the perfect example of the bildungsroman. Goldmund at the end of the novel is a very different person the young, wide-eyed boy who first arrives at the monastery, but still retains that charm, that warmth. The seasons change, the years pass, Goldmund loves, creates, murders, discovers "the extremes of both ecstasy and pain", but he is still the Goldmund the reader has grown to love and truly care about. It's clever how the reader is both characters at once - experiencing life through the eyes of Goldmund, and watching out for him, caring about him, like Narcissus.

Narcissus occasionally irritated me, as I wanted him to show a little more emotion, to talk to Goldmund on a more straightforward, personal level for once, but by the end, realising how much he truly cares about Goldmund, you can't help but like him, and sympathise. Besides, as Narcissus and Goldmund represent the two extremes, the reader sees a bit of themself in both characters, so I don't think you can fully take the side of one character against the other. Narcissus and Goldmund suggests that creating harmony between these two very different aspects of human nature is something to aim for, after all.

The novel has a sort of fairytale feel to it (although obviously, it has a lot more depth than the average fairytale) and the plot is very simple, and almost predictable. In fact, I predicted both the twist and the ending well in advance, but that doesn't make it any less suspenseful, or tragic. Arguably, the ending isn't really tragic, and eventually I'm sure I'll come to terms with it, but knowing this didn't stop me from having to try very, very hard not to cry during the final ten pages. If I'd finished reading it at home, no doubt I would have cried, but there's something slightly embarrassing about bursting into tears in the canteen at work. So I restrained myself...

Narcissus and Goldmund left me with a deep desire to travel, an interest in religion in Medieval Germany which had been non-existent until then, and a new favourite fictional character. I didn't just love Goldmund, I was in love with him, I think. An ardent, artistic young man who sees the beauty in every woman and travels across the country in search of new experiences - perfect. In the foreword, Graham Coxon (yes, that Graham Coxon) says that Narcissus and Goldmund is a "well from which we can draw limitless emotional strength". For the most part, it's the literary equivalent of a hug, and a novel which will be part of my special, "to be read in times of despair" collection.

Orlando - Virginia Woolf (1928)

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 15:45:50 GMT

The sound of the trumpets died away and Orlando stood stark naked. No human being, since the world began, has ever looked more ravishing. His form combined in one the strength of a man and a woman's grace. As he stood there, the silver trumpets prolonged their note as if reluctant to leave the lovely sight which their blast had called forth; and Chastity, Purity, and Modesty, inspired, no doubt, by Curiosity, peeped in at the door and threw a garment like a towel at the naked form which, unfortunately, fell short by several inches. Orlando looked himself up and down in a long looking-glass, without showing any signs of discomposure, and went, presumably, to his bath.

Utter heaven. I was expecting to like Orlando more than Mrs Dalloway, but I wasn't expecting to adore it. As a love-letter, it's beautiful, and as a novel, it's highly entertaining, witty and occasionally, in spite of the high-spirited airiness of the book, quite moving. Orlando's distress after Sasha abandons him, for instance.

I don't feel like writing a long, rambling entry where I try to pick the book to pieces and analyse every line - even though as someone who wants to study English Literature at university I should probably be more willing to do that - because at this stage, I'm not sure I can. With some novels, after one reading you're prepared to sit down, get your pen out, annotate each page and write essays exploring various themes or symbols, but with others - and this is the case with Orlando - you're aware that you loved it and can list several reasons, but don't quite feel ready to write an in-depth analysis. Orlando had an almost magical quality, probably due to the way in which the narrative speeds through the centuries at a frantic page, dipping and diving and covering love affairs, sex changes, Queen Elizabeth I, gypsies, Alexander Pope, symbolic mansions, geese, Russian princesses and whatnot, so that at times I almost felt dizzy. Pleasantly dizzy. I can see why it's the kind of book that some people might loathe, but I found the sheer energy of the language addictive, and as I've already mentioned on my main journal, when I was taking the book with me to school, I kept pining for it, desperate to get back to reading it and wishing that other things wouldn't get in the way. Which is always a sign of a good book.

I occasionally felt disorientated, which I suppose isn't terribly surprising, and in a way, it's not necessarily a bad thing - one thing you couldn't accuse Orlando of is predictability. Is "magic realist" an appropriate term to apply to Orlando? It felt that way sometimes, anyway, and reminded me of two of my favourite Angela Carter novels (Nights at the Circus and The Passion of New Eve), although obviously Woolf came first. One of the problems of the rather frenetic style and structure is that some details - the birth of Orlando's son? - were abandoned too quickly, and I was left wanting more. So that was slightly frustrating, but overall I loved how it jumped from one thing to the next, devoting pages and pages to a single moment while a century was covered in a sentence.

Vita Sackville-West's son described as the "longest and most charming love-letter in the English language", which may well be true, although it makes me wonder whether reading biographies, or at least learning a bit more about the lives of, Woolf and Sackville-West, would give me a better understanding of the novel overall. If I ever get the chance to study Orlando, I'd certainly like to learn about in-depth, and after I've had some more time to read it again and let everything sink in properly, I would quite happily analyse it line by line. But for now, I'm content with just having enjoyed it - loved it - and with having experienced a sense of joy whilst reading it that I've felt with very few other books. Orlando may have started as a joke (according to Woolf's diary), but although it's funny in places, of course, it's so much more than an elaborate joke. I would say, "There should be more novels featuring gender-bending romps across the centuries!", but then Orlando wouldn't be so unique.

(oh, and incidentally, on the subject of gender, I found Orlando's lack of interest in his/her change of sex and disregard for society's gender rules refreshing, particularly in a novel written as early as 1928.)

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh (1945)

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 18:00:28 GMT

But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiosity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchanted garden, which was somewhere not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.

My relationship with Waugh's novels - and Brideshead Revisited in particular, perhaps more than any other book - is so strange and sentimental that I find it hard to detach myself in order to write about them even remotely objectively. With Brideshead, there's the additional confusion of my obsession with the TV series, and how in spite of the fact that the series is a completely loyal adaptation of the novel, there are still differences in my attitude towards the two. My extremely emotional attachment to Sebastian, for instance, probably has a lot to do with Anthony Andrews, as much as I love the novel-Sebastian. Finally, there's the fact that I was thirteen when I first read Brideshead, and as I've re-read it several times since, with my feelings and interpretations changing every time, everything's become a bit of a muddle. I chose to re-read Brideshead partly because I'm mentioning Waugh in my personal statement, and wanted to reacquaint myself with the book in preparation for university interviews, but also because I realised that I really needed to sort things out, and to work out how I felt about the book. So forgetting about Castle Howard, Anthony Andrews sobbing on the stairs, and most of all, forgetting about my indignation in regards to the new film, here it is - my thoughts on Brideshead Revisited as written by Evelyn Waugh.

I think I can quite safely say that I adore the book, with or without anything that came later. Out of all of Waugh's novels (or out of the six I've read, at any rate), it's the one that moves me most, the one with the most complex characters, the big themes, the novel with sharp humour and scenes that make me cry every time. I admire Waugh as a satirist, but I think I admire him for Brideshead more than anything else. Even A Handful of Dust, now that I've re-read both novels recently. Perhaps A Handful of Dust is the "better" book - I've heard some critics argue that it's his masterpiece, and I suppose technically, it's not as sentimental (Brideshead's arguably sentimental by Waugh's standards, in a way). But do I care about Tony Last as much as Sebastian Flyte? Not really...

I might as well start with Sebastian, because he is still my favourite major character in the novel - my two favourite minor characters are Charles's father and Anthony Blanche, but more on them later. When I first read Brideshead I think I had a rather one-dimensional understanding of it as a book, and many of the religious issues went completely over my head. Sebastian, however, was a character I loved and cared about from the beginning, and my feelings towards him, in contrast to my feelings towards other characters and my understanding of the book as a whole, have never changed. I adore him just as much now as I did when, as a thirteen year old, I first sobbed over Cordelia's prediction for his future. He was the first fictional character I truly fell in love with - as a beautiful, charming, doomed young man torn apart by his religion, his alcoholism, and, possibly, his sexuality, how could I have resisted?

While I'm aware that strictly speaking this is pretty poor literary criticism, as this is my personal reading journal, it makes sense to say something about my personal response to Sebastian as a character. Besides, I think it also has an important effect on the way I see the story through Charles's eyes - enchanted by the eccentric but beautiful undergraduate at Oxford, distressed by his descent into alcoholism, and despairing when he falls ill in Morocco. Charles's education "To know and to love one other human being is the root of all wisdom" becomes your own, in a strange way, if you care about Sebastian to such an extent. In fact, the last couple of times I read the book I found myself getting increasingly frustrated with Charles, feeling that I was more concerned about Sebastian's future than he was, and wishing that he would do more to help him.

Charles telling Julia that "he [Sebastian] was the forerunner", and listening with interest to Cordelia's encounter with Sebastian years later, may show that he still loves and cares about his friend in a way, but sometimes it seems that it's not enough. There are hints about Charles's feelings towards Sebastian throughout the novel, in his conversation with Cara, the couple of lines I've quoted above, and the parts of the book which have been pounced upon by those (including myself, I'll admit) who want to believe that it was more than just a friendship. "...and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins". I wonder. But whether or not their relationship was platonic, I still feel that Charles could have done more, or at the least, could have felt more. Although Brideshead would not be the same with a different type of narrator, I can't help but wonder what it would have been like if Charles was a more passionate, emotionally involved narrator. Many narrators seem rather colourless, or cold, as the focus is on the subject of the story and not themselves, but a little more evidence of Charles's feelings towards Sebastian would have been nice. The only time when he really shows that he's capable of suffering is in that tragic conversation with Julia near the end of the book:

'Now we shall both be alone, and I shall have no way of making you understand.'
'I don't want to make it easier for you,' I said; 'I hope your heart may break; but I do understand.'

And consequently I find it rather hard to like Charles. I know other people have had similar difficulties with Charles as a character, and although one day I may understand him better, for now, I'm not terribly keen on him.

I can understand why some people are so attached to the first half of the book, while virtually ignoring the later sections with Julia. I used to do the same thing myself, because I loved - and still love - the Arcadia parts, with plover's eggs, Eliot recitals from the balcony, Aloysius, crocks of gold, Venice, and so on...Because I was missing Sebastian and the other characters and features of the book that came with him, I read the second half of Brideshead in a confused, nostalgic haze, not really paying proper attention. But as my understanding and appreciation of Brideshead has changed - and, I hope, matured - over the last few years, I've finally begun to take a proper interest in Charles's relationship with Julia.

For I am no longer one of the Brideshead fans who dismisses Julia merely as Sebastian's less interesting, almost inadequate successor. Yes, in the earlier chapters she's not particularly likeable, because we see her - again, through Charles's eyes - as Sebastian without the charm or warmth. The older Julia, on the other hand, is a much more intriguing and complex character, with her new, mature beauty, her understanding of Rex's true character ("something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce") and the sad, mysterious aspect of her faith, demonstrated most memorably in that monologue.

The religious themes in Brideshead are what I've found the hardest to understand - they're what prevent me from relating to the Marchmains as much as I might if it weren't such a barrier. Once again, reading Brideshead as a Catholic novel (because that's what it is, primarily, more than anything else) is something I'm only just beginning to come to grips with. I think I practically ignored the religion the first time I read it, as ridiculous as that may sound, because my only experience of Catholicism was the interminable weekly masses I sat through as a bored and uncomprehending nine year old at primary school. Actually, my time at school is still my only real experience of Catholicism, but as I've grown up a bit, taking more of an interest in religion, I've made a conscious effort to try and understand the Marchmains as a Catholic family. I've never been as dismissive of religion as Charles, but I think it's still a struggle to fully comprehend Brideshead without a real knowledge and understanding of Catholicism. Just as religion is a source of confusion between Charles and Sebastian where Sebastian says of the Nativity story, "It's a lovely idea", and later, to an even greater extent, where Charles and Julia argue over the decision to let a priest visit Lord Marchmain on his death-bed, it's also a barrier between the non-religious reader and the novel.

For example, I still can't fully understand Charles's conversion at the end of the novel. In fact, for at least two or three years I didn't even believe that he had converted, and Julia's reasons for leaving Charles, even if he understands, leave me with a lot of unanswered questions. Yet the Catholicism also adds a layer of mystery to the novel, which perhaps makes it even more alluring, as I'm drawn to reading it again in an attempt to understand. Is it possible to truly love a book where you feel as though you fully understand every theme and every character, leaving you with no questions whatsoever? Probably not.

It wouldn't be accurate to say that Brideshead's one of those books where, with each reading, you pick up on all these interesting little details you hadn't noticed before, but nonetheless, it's some of these subtle little details that add up and make the book so interesting as a whole. Cordelia's present tense use of the verb "to love", Sebastian's imperatives, Anthony's absurd but endearing egoism ("Have I changed? Would you recognize me? Where are the pictures? Let me explain them to you"), Bridey's match-box collection, the unconventional first meeting between Charles and Sebastian, Jasper's lecture, Julia's tortoise...

While the humour isn't as frequent as in Vile Bodies, for example, I think it's still worth mentioning that there are certain parts of Brideshead which never fail to make me laugh out loud. Charles's father is a wonderful character:

'Well,' said my father. 'I'm sorry you are upset. Reading this message I should not say that the accident was as serious as you seem to think - otherwise it would hardly be signed by the victim himself. Still, of course, he may well be fully conscious but blind or paralysed with a broken back. Why exactly is your presence so necessary? You have no medical knowledge. You are not in holy orders. Do you hope for a legacy?'
'I told you, he is a great friend.'
'Well, Orme-Herrick is a great friend of mine, but I should not go tearing off to his deathbed on a warm Sunday afternoon.'

And then there's Anthony, whose few appearances in the book are unforgettable:

At the George bar he ordered 'Four Alexandra cocktails, please, ranged them before him with a loud 'Yum-yum' which drew every eye, outraged upon him. 'I expect you would prefer sherry, but, my dear Charles, you are not going to have sherry. Isn't this a delicious concoction? You don't like it? Then I will drink it for you. One, two, three, four, down the red lane they go. How the students stare!

And even Lady Marchmain, unexpectedly, has a sense of humour, as shown in response to Rex saying, "You know how Charlie Kilcartney used to drink.'

'No,' said Lady Marchmain, with that sweet irony of hers. 'No, I'm afraid I don't know how Charlie Kilcartney used to drink.'

I honestly think that everyone should read Brideshead Revisited, as a lesson in writing, as a character study, as an exploration of the Catholic faith, as a beautiful, nostalgic insight into another world, the "low door" to which has shut ("open it now and I should find no enchanted garden"). It is not only my favourite of Waugh's novels, but a close contender for my favourite novel by any writer, and I admire it more than I can possibly express. Because of the age I first read it, I suspect Brideshead might turn out to be own "crock of gold", something precious which I can dig up again and remember years later - although hopefully, I will never be quite as miserable as poor Sebastian. Next time I read it I will undoubtedly have changed my mind about so many things (Sebastian excluded) that most of this entry will be irrelevant. But I'm already looking forward to re-reading and falling in love all over again.

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:51:20 GMT

She brought him his papers, the things he had written, things she had written for him. She tumbled them out on to the sofa. They looked at them together. Diagrams, designs, little men and women brandishing sticks for arms with wings - were they? - on their backs; circles traced round shillings and sixpences - the suns and stars; zigzagging precipices with mountaineers ascending roped together, exactly like knives and forks; sea pieces with little faces laughing out of what might be waves: the map of the world. Burn them! he cried. Now for his writings; how the dead sing behind rhododendron bushes; odes to Time; conversations with Shakespeare; Evans, Evans, Evans - his messages from the dead; do not cut down trees; tell the Prime Minister. Universal love: the meaning of the world. Burn them! he cried.

Much more approachable than one of the other "modernist masterpieces" I attempted recently (Ulysses, obviously), and I was able to get into the story more easily than the first time I tried to read it. I still wasn't gripped, exactly, and as I didn't fall in love with it I'm not sure if I'll ever be a Woolf obsessive, but I think I
enjoyed Mrs. Dalloway more than I was expecting to.

Perhaps the main reason was Septimus - and not just because, as my mother suggested, "It's only because you know Rupert Graves plays him in the film!" Naturally he's the character you most sympathise with, as a shell-shocked, unhappy young man, and the only character in the novel to suffer any real tragedy. His insanity, and the parts of the book detailing his unsuccessful meetings with doctors, are evidence, I suppose, that autobiographical writing is often the most convincing. His sudden switches between joy and distress, his distant and awkward relationship with Rezia, and the sad, if not entirely unexpected, event of his death, made his "story" (as compared to those of Clarissa Dalloway's and Peter Walsh's) the most moving.

I think I have a love-hate relationship with stream of consciousness writing - with Joyce, I just found it confusing and alienating. Instead of being an insightful look into the characters' innermost thoughts it just seemed self-indulgent, as if Joyce was getting carried away and leaving the reader isolated and perplexed. Obviously I don't get Joyce - not yet, anyway - but the same thing applies to the use of that technique in other books. Beloved by Toni Morrison, for example. At first, I thought I'd find Mrs Dalloway a similarly confusing experience, and I'll admit that it did take me a while to get into it (and even then, I sometimes found myself drifting away again, only to be drawn back in unexpectedly), but I found it more effective, and, considering the subject of the novel, more appropriate. Septimus's thought processes were particularly interesting and, predictably, rather sad.

Mrs Dalloway was originally conceived as two separate short stories, and while it did occasionally seem a little disjointed, overall I liked the way the novel flowed, drifting from character to the next, from the present to the past and back again, from Westminster to Bloomsbury...It seemed quite natural, almost effortless, which worked well with the stream of consciousness style. I thought Woolf wrote well about London, too, and I was able to read it with a mental map (albeit a twenty first century one) of the walks through Regent's Park, Piccadilly, Tottenham Court Road, and other parts of London. With the constant references to shops and street names, it's the kind of book which could easily be turned into a literary walk - perhaps I'll try that some time, as I did with Patrick Hamilton and Hangover Square/Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky.

Occasionally certain phrases or descriptions stuck in my mind as being especially beautiful, or memorable for whatever reason. I should have bookmarked them, although if I flick through the book again I should be able to find them easily enough. I remember a critic referring to Keats's "extraordinary sensitivity to the impression of the moment", and although I've noticed that more frequently with Keats's poetry than Mrs Dalloway, that was the phrase that came to mind when I read a few specific descriptions. I think one of them was in the bit with Septimus and Rezia in Regent's Park...I'll have to look it up. Perhaps edit this entry when I find it.

I can't think of any major criticisms - I think I'm mainly pleased to have discovered that I don't hate Woolf. I don't know why that should have worried me in the first place. Perhaps because so many people I've talked to, with whom I share quite a few literary interests, admire her so much, and I would have felt almost guilty if I loathed Mrs Dalloway. I didn't adore it, but I enjoyed it enough to want to read more by Woolf. Maybe Orlando, which has been recommended to me a couple of times by technicolorpuff . And besides, after reading a plot summary, it's too intriguing to resist.

Although I really can't imagine how Mrs Dalloway works as a film, being the kind of book that focuses on thoughts, memories and motivations rather than external events, I think I'm going to watch it as soon as I have the opportunity, anyway. Rupert Graves is quite an incentive, after all...
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The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers (1940)

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:26:25 GMT

The radio and the lights in the house were turned off. The night was very dark. Suddenly Mick began hitting her thigh with her fists. She pounded the same muscle with all her strength until the tears came down her face. But she could not feel this hard enough. The rocks under the bush were sharp. She grabbed a handful of them and began scraping them up and down on the same spot until her hand was bloody. Then she fell back to the ground and lay looking up at the night. With the fiery hurt in her leg she felt better. She was limp on the wet grass, and after a while her breath came slow and easy again.

If I could write a book like this when I was twenty-three...well, not many twenty-three year olds could write a book like this, with language so vivid and full of energy, and yet perceptive and mature at the same time. It's also rare to find a writer who's first novel is regarded as his or her best novel, but this seems to be the case with McCullers.

When I read a plot summary of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter I thought it was an interesting concept, but also a concept that could go horribly wrong. Another writer might have turned the "four people of different ages, genders and races befriend a deaf-mute who changes their lives" idea into something very sentimental. But there's no sentimentality in McCullers' writing, and her characters are flawed, intriguing, three-dimensional creations. She's sympathetic but honest, and you find yourself completely believing in Jake, Dr. Copeland, Biff and Mick. Especially Mick. As she clearly shares some things in common with her creator, such as the interest in music and their aspirations, even if she's not an entirely autobiographical self-portrait, she's a complex character. And as I was a thirteen year old girl not so long ago, I found it easier to relate to her more than some of the other characters.

I had my doubts about Singer, at first, and thought that he might turn out to be a Jesus-like figure - patient, gentle, and even, ironically, a good listener. The truth was infinitely more interesting than that, and I thought the other characters' idealised perceptions of Singer in relation to themselves when compared to the real man made a good point about egoism and self-delusion. It's perhaps more forgiveable in Mick than a character like Jake, though. Although Singer remained enigmatic to the end, his imperfections made him human, and again, believable. His rather pathetic adoration of Antonapoulous offered a good insight into his true personality, as well as proving just how wrong his visitors were about him.

McCullers' prose, blunt, straightforward and unpretentious worked well, and gave the saddest parts of the novel, such as the death of Singer, a greater impact. I actually had a nightmare about Singer's death last night, which perhaps proves the point. The language of the novel also had its own kind of poetry at points, and some scenes were so vivid that they were almost cinematic, leaving me with an incredibly clear mental image.

The theme of loneliness and the way that people communicate (or, in many cases, fail to communicate) was explored in-depth, and in such a way that it (this is in an incredibly banal way of putting it) "really made think". Not about politics, religion, or a particular issue as such - just about human relationships in general. I'm still not sure how to express it, but perhaps when I've had some more time to reflect, or even when I've re-read it (which I can see myself doing one day, after I've read some more of her work), I'll find the words.

Sometimes The Heart is a Lonely Hunter felt almost too bleak - Singer's death was devastating, and the ambiguous ending for the other central characters, while admirable in one way, was frustrating, too. But there's some consolation to be found in Mick's determination and strength, I think, and while not exactly a hopeful novel, it's not as gloomy as some reviews would have you believe. Ultimately, I was very impressed, and if not uplifted, it left me feeling satisfied in the way that only intelligent, thought-provoking novels can make you feel.

Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 20:42:02 GMT

There was no house now, no brewery, no building whatever left, but the wall of the old garden. The cleared space had been enclosed with a rough fence, and, looking over it, I saw that some of the old ivy had struck root anew, and was growing green on low quiet mounds of ruin. A gate in the fence standing ajar, I pushed it open, and went in.

A love of Dickens seems to be hereditary in my family - my father inherited his love of Dickens from his mother, and I think she inherited her love of Dickens from another ancestor - but the Dickens-loving gene has, for the time being, at least, died out. My brother reads hardly anything, and is unlikely to suddenly become a fan of everything Dickensian, and while this is only the second Dickens novel I've read...well, it doesn't look promising.

I'm happy to admit that I enjoyed Great Expectations much more by Hard Times. Great Expectations has the advantage of a decent plot, characters that are slightly more than symbols, and a non-dogmatic narrative voice. Unlike Hard Times, I was able to read this without suffering from the urge to throw the book across the room. I wouldn't call Great Expectations a bad book, or a dull book. And yet...

...I fail to see the qualities which make it so frequently listed as a "classic", or named as a favourite book. I'm not going to be difficult and say that Dickens is horribly overrated and that he was a good popular writer for a Victorian audience rather than a great, immortal writer who deserves to be gushed over in the same breath as Shakespeare. (Well, I sort of just did say that, but never mind). My problems with Great Expectations were varied, and while arguably all quite trivial individually, when added together, they did have quite a serious impact on my enjoyment of the book.

Firstly, characterisation. I've heard Dickens praised for his characterisation before, which I find very difficult to understand. Praise him for his ability to write an entertaining, well-structured, reasonably well-written novel if you must, but for his characterisation? As I've already mentioned, Pip, Herbert, Miss Havisham etc are convincing when compared to the characters in Hard Times, but I really don't think Dickens's strengths as a writer lie in his characters. Pip's reactions to his transformation from apprentice to London gentleman and his horror when he discovers the true nature of his "great expectations" are interesting to a certain extent, but otherwise, I didn't find Pip a terribly memorable character in other respects. The "depth" of other characters seemed to consist of ridiculous names (Mr. Pumblechook, really?) and exaggerated lisps or accents. Pip's sister is an unbelievable, stupid caricature. As for Estella, I never felt Pip's obsession. The concept of being incapable of love had potential, and I did like the dark, almost gothic element in the early chapters describing Estella and Miss Havisham, but Estella as a character is rather bland. Dickens tells us repeatedly that Pip is madly in love with her, but somehow that's not enough. While most critics would probably laugh at me for making the comparison, Hamilton described the agony of unrequited love and infatuation infinitely better in The Midnight Bell...

Weak characterisation could be forgiven in a novel with a thrilling plot, like The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins (I can't remember much about the characters in The Woman in White, but the complexity of the plot still sticks in my mind). But the plot is neither exciting nor complex enough to justify the length. At several hundred pages, Great Expectations feels slightly bloated. Inevitable, perhaps, with the popularity of the three volume novel, but I think it suffers for it.

Dickens is generally cited as the London writer, and as most of Great Expectations is set in Victorian London, I was hoping, at least, to gain an appreciation of Dickens as a London writer...

Er. I think both Gissing and Hamilton describe the streets and atmosphere in London with much more success. Ironic, really, as both writers were huge fans of Dickens.

This won't be my last encounter with a Dickens novel, but for now, I'm happy to be reading something different.

The Gorse Trilogy - Patrick Hamilton (1951-1955)

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 11:34:45 GMT

'Well, my dear Ryan,' he said, very nearly saying 'Watson', for at the moment he had a strong impression that he was Sherlock Holmes being called upon at an early hour by an anxious client. 'I'm delighted to see you. You come at an early hour - and the earlier the better.'
He nearly added 'And what can I do for you, sir, pray?' but realised just in time that he was not really Sherlock Holmes.
But he puffed mightily at his pipe, and took a rapid, nervous sip at his coffee - thus giving a clever impression both of smoking 'poisonous shag' and of being a drug addict.

Sadly, I've now read everything by Patrick Hamilton that's currently in print. It's also unfortunate, perhaps, that I seem to have read his books in the order of best to worst, but never mind. The Gorse Trilogy, although it's not rated very highly compared to his other works, isn't that bad. The first book, The West Pier, is excellent, described by Graham Greene as "the best book written about Brighton" (of course, he could say that, when his own novel, Brighton Rock, was already regarded as a classic), and even the final book in the trilogy isn't as bad as some people seem to think it is.

Gorse is a strange character. He never reaches his full potential, and in some ways doesn't exactly "work", because even though Hamilton drops endless hints about how he goes on to become a murderer and do terrible, terrible things, we never have any evidence of him doing anything truly awful. His motives for the crimes he commits often remain unclear, and if he is such a criminal, then why does he waste time on barmaids and naive eighteen year olds? Even his act of tying up Ivy is too comic, and really rather pathetic, to be taken seriously. A criminal mastermind he is not. As D. J. Taylor observes in the introduction, The Gorse Trilogy is an example of going against "the grain of your literary nature", imagining that "your forte is epic villainy when what you really excel at is small-scale deceit". So Gorse is never completely convincing, and consequently, the trilogy should be a failure. And yet, it isn't. The circumstances in which Gorse finds himself are described are so brilliantly, and the way in which manipulates his victims are frequently very funny, even if they end in tragedy, that I found The Gorse Trilogy quite compelling.

As I've already mentioned, The West Pier was very, very good. It was also unexpectedly funny, and I laughed out loud on several occasions. This had less to do with Gorse than with the characters he associates with. Bell, probably a self-portrait of Hamilton as a spectacle-wearer, literary nerd and someone who's not remotely attractive to girls, has to be one of my favourite fictional characters ever. As the pretentious school-boy and the awkward eighteen year old and "other one", tagging along with the much more attractive Ryan, he's really very endearing. His "date" with Gertrude is excruciatingly uncomfortable, and, as with practically everything Hamilton writes, utterly believable. I suppose it's also a sign of how bitter Hamilton was at this point, though, that he had to invent an unhappy future both for both Bell and Gertrude, in a similar way to his killing-off of Stan in Unknown Assailant. It's as though there's no redemption, no happy endings for even the minor characters. Consequently, the end of The West Pier, in particular, is almost unbearably grim.

Something that struck me with all three books is how good Hamilton is when writing about women. When he writes about men, it's as if he's spent years in their company, closely observing their behaviour and mannerisms. When he writes about women, however, it's as though he's been living a woman's head for twenty years. How does he do it? I honestly can't think of another male writer who gets into the minds of women so convincingly. Someone on the back of my copy of Carol Ann Duffy's poetry says of Duffy, "so often with Duffy does the reader say 'Yes, that's it exactly'". I haven't experienced that with Duffy yet, but with Patrick Hamilton, I get it all the time, whether he's describing the awkward friendship between Esther and Gertrude, Esther's awe and embarrassment in the Metropole, Mrs Plumleigh-Bruce's diary-writing (as if writing to an "imaginary woman friend...with whom...it was necessary to hold one's own"), Ivy's conflicting emotions on the train journey from Richmond, Mrs Bullit's use of the word "darling" that made Ivy "cry more and more"...I could go on and on. There are so many examples. It's just that I'm so frequently impressed by his observations, however subtle or seemingly un-profound they may be. There's proof of his talent when writing about other subjects, such as the drunken ramblings of Mr Stimpson or Mr Barton, but he's at his best when describing the thoughts, feelings and motives of women. He's such a typical Pisces. (I'm aware that you can't talk about a writer's star sign in relation to the style of their writing in serious essays or reviews, but hey, this is my personal reading journey and besides, it's true...).

He's also the master of social awkwardness, as ridiculous as that may sound. Something which people outside England never seem to understand is the relationship between our social awkwardness and our tendency to drink too much in order to not be so awkward. Again, no writer does it better.

The West Pier is undoubtedly the best of three, so inevitably, it all goes downhill after there. Esther's abandonment left me feeling quite devastated, and I was almost angry at Patrick Hamilton for being so cruel as to leave her in that position, so I didn't really want to go on and read the next book. He's a strangely sadomasochistic writer - sometimes going out of his way to deliberately upset the reader by making horrible things happen to kind or naive characters, and probably upsetting himself in the process. Anyway, Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse was all right, if not as good as its predecessor. It was slightly repetitive, with Gorse befriending and then stealing money off yet another woman. Even though it's still full of the brilliantly depicted characters and observations that can be found in his other books, it doesn't work as well, partly because of the repetitiveness of the plot, but mainly, I think, because there's no one to root for. Gorse is awful. Mr Stimpson is awful. Mrs Plumleigh-Bruce is awful. On the plus side, this means it's less devastating when Mrs Plumleigh-Bruce is ripped off, but it also makes it difficult to get quite as involved, to care as much.

I was expecting the final book, Unknown Assailant, to be an incoherent, drunken mess, for some reason. Perhaps because it was written just a few years before he died, when he was in the middle of the process of drinking himself to death. But although it's substandard when compared to his other novels, it wasn't too bad. At barely a hundred pages, it doesn't stand up very well on its own, and there is something undeniably half-hearted about it, rushing through to get to the end and not bothering with too much detail. There's also the repetitiveness of the plot, although Hamilton does describe Gorse being physically violent towards a woman for the first time. Still, it was nice to have a sympathetic female character again, and the final chapters, with the memorable introduction of Stan Bullit, reminded me of just what it was that I loved about Hamilton in the first place.

The saddest thing about reading The Gorse Trilogy, for me (forgetting the whole last-book-in-print thing for a moment) is contemplating how much it says about Patrick Hamilton as a person. A biography, Through a Glass Darkly, is back in print in October, so it will be interesting to see just how much of his work is autobiographical. But the sheer amount of alcohol in Mr Stimpson and Mr Gorse is depressing, a reminder of how Hamilton ended his life, and every time one of his more unlikeable characters lapses into "Wardour Street English", I automatically think of his strained relationship with his parents, especially his tyrannical father. Then, of course, there's the sadomasochistic element, which might be revealing a little too much about his sex life than it seems at first (I think it was the introduction to The Slaves of Solitude that mentioned it quite plainly). This paragraph was especially striking:

Gorse, though normally rather sexless, had bouts of great physical passion, and when these came upon him he was mostly stimulated by what is (on the whole foolishly) known as a perversion.

He liked to tie women up in order to get the impression that they were at his mercy, and he also liked to be tied up by women and to to feel that he was theirs.

It is foolish to call this a perversion because, as every serious student of the general psychology of sex (who would be supported by any prostitute, or keeper or frequenter of brothels) knows, it is merely another emphasised form of the sadistic or masochistic element under-lying every physical relationship between man and woman, or, if it comes to that, man and man, or woman and woman.

It's also a possibility that he was secretly gay, which just goes to show that Hamilton had (as he might say himself with his "Komic Kapitals"), "Issues".

Finally, even though Hamilton married twice (unhappily), it's tempting to make the connection between his unhappy future and Bell's, which is summed up in the short but sad line, "Bell was a bachelor all his life".

Poor Bell. Poor Hamilton. I have a feeling that the biography - which, naturally, I'm reading as soon it's published - will not be a happy read.

The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks (1984)

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 12:12:03 GMT

It was just a stage I was going through.

(Review written for Bigmouth Strikes Again fanzine)

Opinions of The Wasp Factory, may have varied widely when it was first published in 1984 – some reviewers described it as “brilliant” while The Times dismissed it as “a joke, meant to fool literary London into respect for rubbish”. However, almost everyone who has read Iain Banks’s first novel seems to agree that it’s dark, disturbing, and not for the squeamish.

Sixteen year old Frank Cauldhame lives on the coast of Scotland with his eccentric father, who measures the furniture and ensures that Frank knows “the height, length, breadth, area and volume of just about every part of the house”, while awaiting the return of his half-brother, Eric, who’s just escaped from the mental hospital. Violence and a tendency to be cruel to animals and small children seems to be hereditary, as Eric’s insanity leads him to set fire to dogs and stuff handfuls of maggots into the mouths of children, while Frank is preoccupied with his own sinister experiments.

In terms of plot, most of the novel could be summarised in Frank’s response when asked what he’s been doing recently – “Not a lot. I killed a few rabbits the other day and I keep getting weird phone calls from Eric, but that’s about all”. The Wasp Factory is interesting mostly as an insight into a strange, nightmarish, misogynistic environment, where the greatest threats are “Women and the Sea”. The portrayal of Frank as a superstitious loner, who spends most of his time torturing animals and dispassionately assassinating family members, is the most successful aspect of the novel, more convincing than the slightly uncomfortable blend of horror and comedy. Frank, like Oskar Matzerath in The Tin Drum and A Clockwork Orange’s Alex, is an intriguing, almost likeable anti-hero, even though his claim that all the violence “was just a stage I was going through” doesn’t quite ring true. As Frank does not technically exist because his birth was never officially registered – his father is conducting his own experiment, which is harmful in a different way to Frank’s treatment of the wildlife – he’s free to do whatever he likes. In this way, The Wasp Factory is reminiscent of Lord of the Flies; as well as the insect reference in the titles, they both explore isolated islands and the savagery that takes place when the protagonists are freed from the laws and moral constraints of a normal society.

I found the ending disappointing, and the twist, while admittedly not predictable, seemed ludicrous. The Wasp Factory sometimes feels self-consciously quirky, the “weirdness” overdone. Eric is little more than a caricature, even if his surreal conversations with Frank are occasionally humorous. To call the Cauldhames “dysfunctional” would be an understatement, and although this is not a novel which ever pretends to be entirely realistic, it often verges on the unbelievable.

While not as gratuitously nasty as the earlier reviews may imply, the animal cruelty may upset vegetarians – dog-lovers in particular – and the revelation of “what happened to Eric” left me feeling physically sick. However, if you have a taste for the macabre, there are probably worse places to start than The Wasp Factory.

Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:31:47 GMT

This then is my story. I have reread it. It has bits of marrow sticking to it, and blood and beautiful bright-green flies. At this or that twist of it I feel my slippery self eluding me, gliding into deeper and darker waters than I care to probe.

I finished reading Lolita for the third time, and it's funny how, although I've liked Humbert Humbert less and less with each read, my admiration for the novel continues to grow...

I've heard it described as Nabokov's "love letter to the English language", which is a nice way of looking at it, I think. The main reason I adore this book is the prose, the way in which every line seems practically perfect. It's easy to get carried away and gush over your favourite books, but I adore Nabokov's writing and with Lolita, often find myself picking it up randomly to re-read certain lines or passages. From that description of their first meeting, "my Riviera love peering at me over dark glasses" to that prolonged, tense build-up to the consummation in the Enchanted Hunters, every sentence seems so brilliantly constructed. Even the short, dry stabs of humour ("Nymphets do not occur in polar regions") are stuck in my mind a long time after finishing the book.

Something that I've noticed when reading people's opinions on Lolita on the internet is that although not everyone can be divided up so neatly, there appears to be two separate categories, a clear divide: Those who think that Humbert is a complete monster and that poor Dolores Haze is entirely innocent and those that share the opinion of Robertson Davies ("not the corruption of an innocent child by a cunning adult, but the exploitation of a weak adult by a corrupt child"). I'm inclined to think that anyone who takes either side hasn't read the book properly. Humbert is basically a pretty horrible person whichever way you look at him - selfish, cruel, and more like Quilty than he would like to believe. He's also, quite clearly, wrong to take advantage of the situation in the way that he does. Lolita is not particularly pleasant either, and the word "manipulative", which seems to be commonly associated with her character, is appropriate. They are both at fault - Humbert more so, but I can't understand how anyone could go to either extreme when deciding who's to blame.

It's only recently that I've begun to appreciate, however, how difficult it is to analyse Lolita. Lolita as in Lo/Dolly/Dolores, that is. Humbert describes in loving detail her physical appearance and her way of speaking, but as we discover at the end of the novel:

my Lolita remarked
"You know, what's so dreadful about dying is that you are completely on your own"; and it struck me, as my automaton knees went up and down, that I simply did not know a thing about my darling's mind and that quite possibly, behind the awful juvenile clichés, there was in her a garden and a twilight, and a palace gate - dim and adorable regions which happened to be lucidly and absolutely forbbiden to me, in my polluted rags and miserable convulsions

So Humbert admits that he never truly knows or understands Lolita, in spite of all the time they spend together, and it's because of this that however the reader reacts to Lolita's speech or actions - sympathising with her when she sobs after discovering what has happened to her mother, raising an eyebrow when it is revealed that, "Sensitive gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover", and perhaps hating her a bit when she runs off with Quilty - it is very difficult to form a definitive opinion of her. Someone recently wrote a novel called Lo's Diary, I think, telling the story from her point of view, which was an interesting idea but apparently not a very successful project. Asar Nafisi has said that, "To reinvent her, Humbert must take from Lolita her own real history and replace it with his own", and I think I'd agree. Humbert, the "monster of incuriosity", narrates the story of their affair with so much care and attention, while the eponymous heroine remains an enigma. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that while we are well acquainted with Lolita, Dolores Haze - not quite the same person - is comparatively remote.

Vanity Fair describes Lolita as the "only convincing love story of our century". Really? Perhaps it's because I read the quote out of context, but I'm really not sure I could agree with that. I'm not sure what I'd call "the only convincing love story of our century", but I'm quite sure that, as much as I love it, it wouldn't be Lolita. And I wonder what Nabokov would make of that label. While I haven't come to a proper conclusion on what the exact nature of Humbert and Lolita's relationship is, I would hesitate to call it "love". Humbert is obsessed, unquestionably in lust, and Lolita has a crush on him at the beginning (which quickly sours, as Humbert himself seems to realise), but even when Humbert says, "You see, I loved her. It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight" - a gorgeous line from my favourite passage in the book - I'm not sure that I believe him. As an unflinching account of obsession it's very convincing, but as a "love story"? I'd like to meet that Vanity Fair reviewer and ask for an explanation.

Incidentally, when on the subject of that passage:

No matter, even if those eyes of hers would fade to myopic fish, and her nipples swell and crack, and her lovely young velvety delicate delta be tainted and torn - even then I would go mad with tenderness at the mere sight of your dear wan face, at the mere sound of your raucous young voice, my Lolita.

If I had been more convinced of Humbert's love, if Lolita had been a very different book, that would have to be one of the most strangely romantic sentences ever written. As it is, it's not - it's merely elegantly constructed and poetic in a funny sort of way - but if, if...

I imagine that the sexual aspect is either what repulses or attracts certain readers. My mother didn't want to read it because of the subject matter (I encouraged her to read it and she hated it anyway, but that's another story), and if I'm entirely honest, the whole taboo issue of a sexual relationship between a twelve year old girl and a middle-aged man was what made me first want to read Lolita. Of course, Lolita is so much more than that, and anyone wanting a cheap thrill would be better off with something else. It's erotic without being overtly sexual, something which I admire it for. It feels as though every inch of Lolita's body has been described in-depth, and Humbert spares no detail of his agonising, wakeful night in the Enchanted Hunters, but the sex itself is dealt with in brief, dispassionate sentences. As Humbert says, "I am not concerned with so-called 'sex' at all. Anybody can imagine those elements of animality", and at that point in the book I can't help but grin, thinking of all the first-time readers, impatient to get to the dirty bits, finishing the chapter and going, "That's it?!"

In this article, the writer comments on how "you must work past its [Lolita's] beauty to recognize how shocking it is". Which is true. Humbert is such a cunning narrator that with my first reading, at least, I was almost completely tricked, taken in by the beauty of language to such an extent that I forgot how on its most basic level, the story of Lolita is really quite disturbing. There are a couple of moments which would, I hope, shock even the most loyal, Jeremy-Irons-fancying Humbert fangirl. For example

...for I must confess that depending on the condition of my glands and ganglia, I could switch in the course of the same day from one pole of insanity to the other - I would have to get rid somehow of a difficult adolescent whose magic nymphage had evaporated - to the thought that with patience and luck I might have her produce eventually a nymphet with my blood in her exquisite veins, a Lolita the Second, who would be eight or nine around 1960, when I would still be dans la force de l'age; indeed, the telescopy of my mind, or un-mind, was strong enough to distinguish in the remoteness of time a vieillard encore vert - or was it green rot? - bizarre, tender, salivating Dr Humbert, practicing on supremely lovely Lolita the Third the art of being a granddad.

I wouldn't encourage reducing books to their most level, necessarily, but I do think it's quite an achievement for a writer to (temporarily, at least) blind you with beautiful language and make you sympathise with a man who is, essentially, a murderer and a paedophile.

Lolita has, more than any other novel, I think, made me appreciate just how beautiful the English language is, and as well as giving me all kinds of bitter, sulky, "I'll never be this good" thoughts, it's also motivated me to try harder, to think more about how the right choice of words, the carefully considered sentence, can make a piece of writing so effective. On this reading of Lolita I had the annotated copy, which I'd recommend to anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding of just how clever Nabokov is as a writer. Perhaps too clever, because I remember how with Ada it sometimes felt as if he was too caught up in own intelligence, leaving the reader behind. But Lolita is infinitely more accessible, and while anyone reading it at face value would miss out on a lot, for those who are curious to find out more, it's fun noting all the clever hints, the parallels, the allusions left there for the reader to find. Even the most subtle things can be inexplicably moving. For instance, the note next to the line "She said don't be silly, they would fly to Jupiter and buy a car there" explains:

they are going to Juneau, but to H.H. it might as well be the planet. Jupiter is veiled by haze, and Lolita dies in "Gray Star, a settlement in the remotest Northwest".

I love Lolita for too many reasons to list, and I could ramble on ad infinitum about the poetry, the dark humour, the tragedy of the ending, the sensual writing, the vivid, twisted depiction of their travels across America...but my advice to anyone who wanted to read this book would always be: Don't read Lolita for the plot, or for the characters - and certainly don't read it for the sex. Read it, instead, as a lesson in writing and an example of the brilliant things the English language can do.

Thus, neither of us is alive when the reader opens this book. But while the blood still throbs through my writing hand, you are still as much part of blessed matter as I am, and I can still talk to you from here to Alaska. Be true to your Dick. Do not let other fellows touch you. Do not talk to strangers. I hope you will love your baby. I hope it will be a boy. That husband of yours, I hope, will always treat you well, because otherwise my specter shall come at him, like black smoke, like a demented giant, and pull him apart nerve by nerve. And do not pity C.Q. One had to choose between him and H.H., and one wanted H.H. to exist at least a couple of months longer, so as to have him make you live in the minds of later generations. I am thinking of aurochs and angels, the secret of durable pigments, prophetic sonnets, the refuge of art. And this is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.

Atonement - Ian McEwan (2001)

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:25:01 GMT

No longer a playwright and feeling all the more refreshed for that, and watching out for broken glass, she moved further round the temple, working along the fringe where the nibbled grass met the disorderly undergrowth that spilled out from among the trees. Flaying the nettles was becoming a self-purification, and it was childhood she set about now, having no further need for it. One spindly specimen stood in for everything she had been up until this moment. But that was not enough. Planting her feet firmly in the grass, she disposed of her old self year by year in thirteen stokes.

This was my second reading of Atonement, and I think I enjoyed it more than I did last time. And it's also - stating the obvious here, but never mind - so much better than the film. As with most novels, the more closely you look at it, the more interesting it becomes. We're studying it for A-Level English Literature next year, and hopefully I'll appreciate it even more by the end of the course. It doesn't always work that way, as I liked Lord of the Flies before I studied it at school, liked it even more halfway through the course, but by the time I'd sat the exam, was so sick of it that the phrase "darkness of man's heart" made me want to scream.

I seem to be unusual in finding the first third of the book (everything up until Robbie's arrest) infinitely more interesting than everything that follows. So many people complain about the pace, claiming that it's so slow-moving and dull that they're unable to get past the first hundred pages, and then some fans of the book appear to agree, insisting that it gets so much better later on in the story. Perhaps it is too slow, almost self-indulgent, to devote such a huge part of the book to descriptions of the events of just a couple of days. But I can honestly say that I didn't find it remotely dull, and that, on the contrary, I adored every detail, from the rehearsals of The Trials of Arabella to the descriptions of how Emily Tallis is confined to her bedroom with a migraine, and then the library scene...

I'm not put off by slow pacing or long descriptive passages if it serves a purpose and works well, and the uncomfortable, soporific atmosphere is conveyed so effectively that McEwan could probably have devoted another hundred pages to describing that day, and I wouldn't have minded. The narrative, drifting from one character to another as effortlessly as Emily's exploration of the house from her bedroom with her "tentacular awareness".

One thing that has always baffled me about people's reaction to Atonement - perhaps it's the fault of the film, and the casting of Keira Knightley and James McAvoy - is the focus on Cecilia and Robbie's relationship. Yes, on one level it's a love story, and McEwan does the whole war-time romance thing much more successfully than, for example, Sebastian Faulks in Birdsong. However, I find Briony so much more fascinating as a character, and I've always thought that that's obviously where the focus ought to be. Briony is the narrator, the protagonist, the character whose actions have a profound effect on the fates of Robbie, Cecilia and Lola, and the only character who seems fully-developed. When the plot shifts to follow Robbie's experiences in WW2, we are not really looking through his eyes - we are looking through his eyes through Briony's eyes. And as Briony is the egotistical girl who, in my opinion, remains a "fantasist" to the end, she is the character who deserves a closer examination and interpretation.

On a brief and unrelated note, I kept wincing during some of the gory hospital scenes, so that was also successfully done, in a different way...

My copy of Atonement comes with a special reading group questions section at the back, so I might as well make the most of it.

Consider this 'final draft' of Atonement - alllegedly to be published after Briony's death. How much faith do you place in the accuracy of this final draft? Do you think it is an objective historial account or has Briony adapated to manipulated it to suit her own purpose?

My opinion may change, but currently, I'm inclined to think that it has been manipulated, to some degree. People change, and you would expect there to be a great difference between someone at the age of thirteen and seventy seven. But mightn't Briony be an intrinsically self-centred and manipulative person, whose basic personality can never truly change? I'm not trying to argue that she's a bad person, just that there are certain aspects of her personality that are unlikely to disappear, no matter what she appears to have learned during the process of her 'atonement'. I'm aware that this might seem unduly pessimistic, as it suggests that Briony has learned nothing, and that it would also make it rather frustrating trying to work out which parts of the story are "real". It's just that I can't help but feel that she is still, essentially, the thirteen year old girl who is convinced that she can "describe anything" and is willing to demonstrate her skills as a novelist at the expense of accuracy. As a novelist, Briony believes that she is "also God", and with that kind of power, how likely is it that the final draft will be wholly accurate? Coming from someone with such an elevated sense of her own importance, the truth will never emerge unchanged.

Consider the character of Briony. By the end of the novel could she still be described as a fantasist, consumed by her own imagination? What changes in her character can you identify as the novel develops? Do you ultimately view her as a sympathetic character?

I think I've basically answered this already, but yes, I believe she is still a fantasist. She has, in her own words, "made a huge digression and doubled back to my starting place". Being consumed by her own imagination needn't necessarily be interpreted as a bad thing, but with her choice to end her novel with the lovers surviving, the frightening prospect of the dementia and what that would do to her mind (and consequently her imagination), and with her desire to replace fantasy with reality (seemingly content to let her family and herself exist only as fictional characters after her death), it seems that this is still the case. It's difficult to judge how much she has or hasn't changed on the basis of the short final chapter, but her attitude towards her writing and her family left me thinking that she hasn't really changed that much.

She is not a sympathetic character, nor a likeable character, but she is an interesting character, mainly for her role as both narrator and fictional character in her own novel. I personally find her especially intriguing as the thirteen year old aspiring novelist, as even though I don't think I was quite that precocious (and I never committed a crime like that either, obviously), I can relate to her.

Has Briony atoned by the end of the novel?

No.

The definition of 'atonement' - "amends or reparation made for an injury or wrong". Briony may regret her actions, but that in itself is not really enough. She apologises to Cecilia and Robbie five years later, yet this appears to be only an imagined scene, so in "reality" (trying to explain or even to understand that concept when discussing a novel within a novel by an unreliable fictional character is too complicated) she has not actually apologised, and therefore done nothing to make amends. As for her decision to "let my lovers live and to unite them at the end" - well, once again, that's simply proof of her egoism, suggesting that by turning them into fictional characters and giving them a happy ending she has made an actual difference to their lives. By doing that she has probably made herself feel somewhat less guilty, but it hardly counts as a real 'atonement' and on some level, Briony herself seems to recognise this.

Tipping the Velvet - Sarah Waters (1998)

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:45:07 GMT

Her gaze grew gentle, then. 'How queer you are!' she said mildly. 'You have never tipped the velvet-'
'I didn't say that I had never done it, you know; only that I never called it that.'
'Well. You use all sorts of peculiar phrases, then. You seem to have never seen a tom in a pair of trousers. Really, Nance, sometimes - sometimes I think you must've been born quite grown - like Venus in the sea-shell, in the painting...'

Very entertaining. It may have been an especially easy read having already watched the TV series twice (I'll try to avoid comparisons as much as possible, although it seems almost inevitable), but it was 'unputdownable' nonetheless. It never dragged, and it felt well-paced, flowing beautifully from Kitty to Diana to Florence and ending at just the right place. I keep seeing it referred to as a "romp through Victorian London" or something along the lines, which doesn't really do justice to Sarah Waters as a novelist, but it does rightly suggest a book that's enjoyable and (this applies to the earlier parts of the novel, at least) an example of sheer escapism.

I thought it evoked Victorian London quite well, and considering the themes - Homosexuality! Cross-dressing! Prostitution! Unrequited love! London! Victorians! - it's almost as if it were written for me in the first place, considering my interests...I'm surprised I hadn't read it before. On the subject of sex, I have yet to make up my mind on whether or not the sex scenes (of which there were many) were well-written or not. Tipping the Velvet has been described variously as a "erotic", or as having "poorly crafted" sex scenes "devoid of sensuality". The last two quotes are from unimpressed Amazon reviewers, and you can always count on Amazon for finding some bitter, perhaps almost unreasonably negative reviewers. I think it's very difficult to write a good sex scene, and I'm not even sure how I would define a "good" one in the first place, but I don't think Sarah Waters did too bad a job. I did feel, however, that the descriptions of Nan's drawers being "damp" were overused, and that lesbian or not, having someone stick their hand up your vagina can never really be described in a way to make it sound erotic.

The words "gay" and "queer" used in their old-fashioned context were probably also a little overused, but I suppose that as they were appropriate, it can be forgiven...

One of the problems of many novels told in the first-person is that the narrator becomes something of a blank, never fully developed by the writer, so that by the time the book has ended, the reader still doesn't have a clear idea of the narrator's personality in their mind. This is a problem that is avoided, in my opinion, in Tipping the Velvet, as Nan is distinctly unlikeable. Her attitude towards her family, her devotion to Diana, her treatment of Flo and the way in which she doesn't seem that bothered by having to leave Mrs. Milne all gave the impression that she was really quite cold and superficial - nearly as bad as Kitty, at times. She is at her most likeable at the beginning of the book, as the lovesick, naive eighteen year old sitting in the theatre night after night in the hope that she will be the recipient of one of Kitty's roses, but post-Kitty, I can't say I felt much towards her one way or another. In a way I was glad that she was not portrayed as the victim, as that would have been too predictable, but it also meant that it was difficult to get very involved, or to care about her even when she was suffering the most.

The socialism at the end of the novel felt somewhat contrived, as if Waters was making up for all the bodice-ripping by saying, "Look, I can do politics too!". The presence of Diana and Kitty at the rally in Victoria Park was also unbelievable, and as for the actual ending, I can't quite make up my mind. If I'm honest, I think I preferred the ending to the TV series (oh, how sentimental of me), where the viewer's left feeling convinced of Nan and Flo's love and the fact that they're going to go skipping off into the sunset together to live in their socialist paradise with Ralph and Cyril. The ending of the novel -unbelievable appearances of ex-girlfriends aside - was obviously more realistic, and maybe it was "better" for not turning into a fairytale and wrapping things up so neatly.

A couple of other things that bothered me slightly. I found Nan's infatuation with Diana difficult to understand. I had the same problem with the TV series - surely tailor-made suits and Monsieur Dildo weren't really enough to compensate for being practically imprisoned for two years? I think Nan claims to hate Diana later in the book, but sometimes she appears to be more attached to Diana than she was to Kitty. Although there are no illusions about the kind of love that exists between them, I couldn't quite get my head around Nan's feelings towards Diana. Maybe that's just me.

Also, something which the TV series changed and which I felt made more sense that way, was the scene where the meaning of the novel's title is explained. In the book, it is Flo who explains to Nan, in the series it's the other way round. Surely Nan, who must be something of an expert lesbian by this point, would be more knowledgeable about slang terms than Flo? And given Nan's career on stage, would she really be so slow to recognise a woman in trousers?

A few minor complaints aside, I loved it. I rarely finish a book quite so quickly, and my speedy reading of Tipping the Velvet is a testament to how much I enjoyed it. I needed something light, anyway, as I'm planning on plunging into all sorts of thick, intimidating-looking books over the summer.

Middlemarch - George Eliot (1879)

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:37:36 GMT

Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.

Middlemarch was a novel which I admired rather than enjoyed. Well, I did like it, but it's not a book I could get terribly attached to. Guy Burgess was obsessed with it, reading it over twenty times (although as Cambridge Spies suggests, it may have also had other purposes), but I really couldn't see myself doing that. It's a book which seems to be cited as a great work of literature all the time - I wouldn't disagree - but how often do you hear people (apart from Guy Burgess) name it as one of their favourite novels?

I did find myself caring about Dorothea, which took me by surprise as in many ways, Middlemarch is so detached that I didn't expect to get deeply involved with the characters. But by the end I was actually quite desperate for Dorothea and Will to get together, so I suppose it took me by surprise in that way. I also liked the way in which characters such as Casaubon and Rosamund, who might have been turned into completely unlikeable caricatures by other novelists, could still be understood and sympathised with to a certain extent. I wanted to hate Rosamund, but couldn't, even when she was at her most selfish. The narrative voice, if detached, was too compassionate for that, and although it's not as sharp as Thackeray's in Vanity Fair (something which I enjoyed about it, even if I have yet to finish it), I liked the fact that it was also devoid of nastiness.

A review I read of Middlemarch describes it as "page-turning". I would have to disagree, judging by the ridiculous length of time it took me to get through all nine hundred pages. It is, perhaps, a little on the long side, and considering that there is not very much in the way of plot development, even the enjoyment derived from the narrative was not enough to keep me reading avidly. The setting, as trivial as it may sound, probably didn't help, because as I've learned from Hardy, the English countryside is not something that interests me that much. Middlemarch did reinforce the idea that living in such a small town wouldn't be much fun, whether it meant to or not, due to the way that gossip travelled and Bulstrode and Lydgate so quickly became the subjects of scandal, but the slow, meandering pace of the book and the descriptions of local politics weren't features that I was naturally drawn towards.

I'm reading North and South soon, for school, so it will be interesting to compare Gaskell and Eliot, even if their subject matters are somewhat different, seeing as they were both female Victorian novelists writing at roughly the same time...and unless I imagined it, I think they were friends.

So is it the greatest novel in the English language? Looking at it objectively, possibly, although there are other highly regarded English-language novels that I've enjoyed much more (ie: Lolita, which isn't the most logical comparison, but it's true)...I admired it, quite enjoyed it, and thought it was extremely well-written. While reading it I also got the feeling that I would have liked Eliot as a person. But I didn't love it. I am, however, keen to read some of Eliot's other novels. My mother's currently reading Daniel Deronda, which she says she's enjoying, so I might try that at some point over, the summer, if I have time. My reading list looks somewhat intimidating at the moment, so I hope I manage to get through everything.

The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman - Angela Carter (1972)

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 12:41:05 GMT

But you must not expect a love story or a murder story. Expect a tale of picaresque adventure or even of heroic adventure, for I was a great hero in my time though now I am an old man and no longer the 'I' of my own story and my time is past, even if you can read about me in the history books - a strange thing to happen to a man in his own lifetime. It turns one into posterity's prostitute. And when I have completed my autobiography, my whoredom will be complete. I will stand forever four square in yesterday's time, like a commemorative statue of myself in a public place, serene, equestrian, upon a pediment. Although I am so old and sad, now, and, without her, condemned to live a drab, colourless world, as though I were living in a faded daguerreotype. Therefore -

I, Desiderio, dedicate all my memories
to
Albertina Hoffman
with my insatiable tears

Possibly the maddest book I've ever read. Oh, I love you, Angela Carter, with your gang-raping Moroccan acrobats, peep-shows, eccentric somnambulists, Lithuanian counts, cannibals and centaurs...but is there such a thing as too much? As much as I enjoyed The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman, it often felt like it was just jumping from weird event to the next, and to a certain extent, the plot was rather repetitive. Desiderio meets eccentric after eccentric, is subjected to sexual abuse, narrowly escapes death...and so on and so forth. It's because of this, I think, that I much preferred The Passion of New Eve, which retains the weirdness but has the advantage of a stronger plot and less of an emphasis on weird sex. Judging by reviews, there are many people who wanted to like this book but couldn't cope with the sex - although I wasn't that bothered by it, I suppose "oversexed" might be an adjective that could be applied to this...

One problem that I had was the issue of Albertina - she's supposedly Desiderio's soul-mate, and yet her appeal is never fully explained. As I think I've mentioned before, I don't think character development is one of Angela Carter's stronger points, but whereas her later novels have other qualities which make up for this, I'm not so sure about TIDMODH (ergh, too much effort, typing out that title). It's a short novel, and Albertina doesn't play much of part until the end, which may be part of the problem. And to a certain extent, I felt that the confrontation with Doctor Hoffman was almost an anti-climax...

The concept was fascinating, and trying to wrap my head around the whole reality idea was fun - I especially enjoyed the earlier chapters, describing the attacks on Desiderio's city - but I'll admit that by the end of it I was a bit "Er, what?" and I'm not sure that I fully understood. In fact, if I'm honest...did I truly understand the novel as a whole? Is there something I missed? I'm not sure if it's my fault or Angela Carter's - more likely mine, but we'll have to see. I'll read it again in a few years, and see if my opinion changes.

This all sounds rather more negative than I intended, as I did enjoy it, which is more than can be said for many other books I've read. It's not the kind of novel that I'd recommend to....well, anyone, unless they were an Angela Carter fan interested in reading her earlier novels, as I can't see that many people enjoying it. According to Wikipedia, it "failed to achieve commercial success", which doesn't surprise me. It's a picaresque blend of feminism, surrealism and god knows what else, so I can see why it would have limited appeal...But I'm glad that I read it, as it's especially interesting when you compare it to her later novels, and see how she was developing as a writer. There are just two more Carter novels left - Several Perceptions (1969) and Love (1971), and then I've read them all.

P.S

Hmm, I seem to be falling behind in updating this journal. I actually finished TIDMODH about a week ago. And I haven't been reading as much as I'd like to, mainly because of the exams and procrastination on the revision front which led to me wasting time on the computer instead of doing something productive. I've been reading Middlemarch, which I'm about a third of the way through, and it may take me a while, but I'll write something about that eventually. I may also start something else at the same time - possibly give On the Road another go. Oh, and I'm planning on attempting Ulysses soon, once I find a copy....may be too ambitious, and I'm not expecting to finish it, but I can try, at least...

The Tin Drum - Günter Grass (1959)

Fri, 16 May 2008 17:41:49 GMT

When at length he brought out the drum, I cried out: 'No!'
Raskolnikov; 'Take the drum, Oskar. I have seen through you.'
I, trembling: 'Never again. All that is ended.'
He, darkly: 'Nothing is ended, everything returns, guilt, atonement, more guilt.'
I, with my last strength: 'Oskar has atoned, spare him the drum. I'll hold anything you say, anything but a drum.'
I wept when the Muse Ulla bent over me. Blinded with tears, I could not prevent her from kissing me, I could not prevent the Muse from giving me that terrible kiss.

First and foremost, I adore Oskar Matzerath. Whether he's singing light-bulbs to pieces, sexually harassing nurses with carpets, challenging statues of baby Jesus to perform miracles or even being partially responsible for the death of a parental figure, he's a fascinating character. Not always completely likeable, and at no point do you really sympathise with him - but then, he never asks you to. For six hundred pages Oskar, perhaps one of the most unique protagonists of any novel, remains almost disconcertingly detached, unmoved by deaths of friends and family and able to survive the horrors of Nazism, coming out the other side one inch taller but otherwise practically unchanged. He may become increasingly unhinged and hysterical towards the end of the book, following the death of friend and fellow dwarf Bebra, but then you suddenly remember that the narrator ("Granted: I am an inmate of a mental hospital") was never entirely reliable, or sane, in the first place. One of the things I love about magic realism, and The Tin Drum in particular, is how you're never sure what to believe, what to take at face value and what to view with suspicion. You believe Oskar when he insists that his mother's lover, the tragic Jan Bronski, is his father, but then a couple of hundred pages later he admits that Matzerath probably was his real father after all, and that it was partly because of this that he had to die. Yet there's still the matter of Oskar's blue Bronski eyes, so then you don't know quite what to think. And the same applies to the deaths of all three parental figures - does his mother die from over-indulging on fish, or did Oskar drum her into the grave? Would Jan perhaps have returned to the Post Office and died if Oskar hadn't persuaded him? Should Oskar's confession about the badge which causes Matzerath to choke to death in the cellar be believed or not? Perhaps some readers might it frustrating, but for me, it just adds another layer of interest to the story, and makes Oskar even more intriguing.

And I think it's an accomplishment of sorts to make Oskar - the manipulative dwarf in the mental hospital - seem sane while portraying the other characters as the mad or eccentric ones. The Tin Drum is filled bizarre scenes and eccentric but memorable characters, which has led to some people criticising the book for endlessly moving from one weird scene to the next. A fair criticism, in a way, but it's the weirdness of The Tin Drum that makes it so compelling. The eroticism of fizz powder, the suicide of the greengrocer with a penchant for teenage boys, the triangular face of Lucy, the orgies of grief in the Onion Cellar, the severed ring finger, the grandmother's skirts, and the vivid and disturbing image of the horse's head seething with live eels...it wouldn't mean much to anyone who hadn't read the book, but to those who have, it's a reminder of just a few of the striking and memorable scenes and images throughout the book. You might lose patience with the final parts of the story (it does lose momentum) or dislike Oskar as a character, but I honestly can't imagine how anyone who's read The Tin Drum could ever forget it. It's dazzling and highly visual, which may not always make for comfortable reading when you consider the subject matter and how disturbing some scenes are.

I wish I understood German, as I can't help but wonder what I'm missing when I read a book in translation, but this particular translation of The Tin Drum (by Ralph Manheim) is extremely good, flowing beautifully and reminding me in some ways, occasionally, of the voice of Humbert Humbert in Lolita. I obviously have a thing for highly intelligent but deranged narrators...

Although some people have complained that, for a book set in Poland and Germany during the war, the reader doesn't learn enough about what it was really like to live at that time, I think that, as an anti-war and anti-fascist novel, it works rather well (forgetting the exposure of Grass's past and accusations of hypocrisy for a moment). Oskar might not directly confront the Nazis taking over Europe, although there is that small act of rebellion underneath the rostrum, but as a Polish artist with a disability and a dislike of authority he is the opposite of what the Nazis stand for, and with that titular, symbolic drum, he continues to be a subversive figure. Art versus war is an ongoing theme, and one of my favourite images in The Tin Drum, simplistic but effective, is that of the two pictures in the Matzerath flat:

The picture of the gloomy Beethoven, a present from Greff, was removed from its nail over the piano, and Hitler's equally glooomy countenance was hung up on the same nail. Matzerath, who didn't care for serious music, wanted to banish the nearly deaf musician entirely. But Mama, who loved Beethoven's slow movements, who had learned to play two or three of them even more slowly than indicated and decanted them from time to time, insisted that if Beethoven were not over the sofa, he would have to be over the sideboard. So began the most sinister of confrontations: Hitler and the genius, face to face and eye to eye. Neither of them was very happy about it.

Witty, intelligent, twisted and thought-provoking, I enjoyed my second reading of The Tin Drum just as much as the first time round, and in spite of its considerable bulk, which may have dissuaded quite a few people from even attempting it, I think I'll probably end up reading it again and again over the years. It's the kind of book that stays with you for life. Oskar may observe that "even bad books are books and therefore sacred", but The Tin Drum is by no means a bad book. Thanks to its idiosyncratic, strangely perceptive protagonist, it's one of my favourite novels.

New Grub Street - George Gissing (1891)

Sun, 04 May 2008 16:38:34 GMT

"How I envy those clerks who go by to their offices in the morning! There's the day's work cut out for them; no question of mood and feeling; they have just to work at something, and when the evening comes, they have earned their wages, and they are free to rest and enjoy themselves. What an insane thing it is to make literature one's only means of support! When the most trivial accident may at any time prove fatal to one's power of work for weeks or months. No, that is the unpardonable sin! To make a trade of an art! I am rightly served for attempting such a brutal folly."

Despite being well-written, I'm not sure that New Grub Street would have a very wide appeal. Unless you're interested in writing, publishing, journalism or the Victorian literary world, I doubt that there would be enough to hold a reader's interest, as the plot isn't that involving, most (but not all) of the characters aren't terribly interesting, and the "romance" between Jasper and Marian isn't quite as interesting as it could have been (although you can't help but feel a little sorry for Marian at the end...). Still, having said that, I did enjoy New Grub Street, to a certain extent - probably because I'm interested in anything relating to writing, and I've read very few books that explore the theme of what it's like to be a writer in great detail. But New Grub Street allows the reader to take a look at late nineteenth century London and the lives of the writers dying for their art (Reardon) and others who will do anything as long as they can make money out of it (Jasper).

I thought the most interesting part of the novel, in a way, was the early chapters with Reardon and Amy, constantly arguing with Amy despairing of Reardon's lack of productivity and Reardon claiming that it is impossible to write until he finds inspiration. It's possible to sympathise with both of them, although ultimately, it is Reardon (based on Gissing himself) who wins the reader's sympathy. Poor Reardon. His death is a case of particularly bad timing, considering what has just happened to his son, but nonetheless, apart from Biffen, he's undoubtedly the most likeable character. Perhaps because he's a failure who's made the mistake of marrying a middle-class, ambitious woman rather than because the reader warms to his personality, but even so...

I also liked the way it was slightly unpredictable - nothing was too straightforward or one dimensional, and the tragic fates of the "good" writers (Reardon and Biffen) compared to the success of Jasper, made it more enjoyable, in a strange way. I hate novels where the good are rewarded and the bad inevitably punished, but with New Grub Street everything was more complex, and I liked how Jasper, who may not have been bad as such, but who really didn't deserve such a happy ending, was able to emerge victorious. Jasper may have predicted that everything would end badly for Reardon at the beginning of the book, but I enjoyed reading on and alternately hoping that Reardon would succeed and knowing Jasper was probably right.

So while New Grub Street might not have a terribly wide appeal, it deserves to be more well known that it is currently - Gissing's one of those novelists that seems to have been practically forgotten - and I think it would interest anyone who's ever tried to write for a living. I suppose that having read this book I should have been completely put off the idea of trying to make a career out of writing novels. But I haven't. Oh, well...I can imagine returning to this when I'm in my twenties, living in London (or not, seeing as I probably couldn't afford it with house prices now) and struggling to make money and find inspiration for future novels. Because over a century later, I don't think it will have lost any relevance - and that's usually a sign of a good book, isn't it?

The Slaves of Solitude - Patrick Hamilton (1947)

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 17:09:26 GMT

Here, for two hours or more every evening, the guests of the Rosamund Tea Rooms sat in each other's company until they were giddy - giddy with the heat, the stillness, the desultory conversation, the silent noises - the rattling of re-read newspapers, the page-turning of the book-reader, the clicking of the knitter, the puffing of the pipe-smoker, the indefatigable scratching of the letter-writer, the sounds of breathing, of restless shifting, of yawning - as the chromium plated clock ticked out the tardy minutes. Finally they went to their bedrooms in a state of almost complete stupefaction, of gas-fire drunkenness - reeling, as it were, after an orgy of ennui.

Ugh, I love Patrick Hamilton. I mean, I think I've already established that in previous entries, but I'm not exaggerating when I say that I adore every word he's ever written.

For a forty year old alcoholic with erectile problems and a generally dysfunctional love life and sex life, his ability to write about women is pretty impressive. Whether describing the on-off relationship between Miss Roach and the American Lieutenant or writing an in-depth analysis on the profound hatred between two middle-aged women, his writing is utterly convincing and nothing short of enthralling. I always find myself feeling mildly surprised how he manages to make me care so much about a lonely barmaid, a pathetically lovesick schizophrenic or the breakfast confrontations between a woman and an elderly man. But I do care. More than care, actually - every time I'm gripped, unable to put the book down, feeling weirdly, emotionally involved...cringing when Mr. Thwaites begins speaking in the third person or sympathising deeply with Miss Roach when the odious Vicki goes too far. The dramatic climax of the novel - the tormented Miss Roach finally loses her patience and pushes Mr. Thwaites, causing him to fall over - really shouldn't be that exciting, and yet, when Patrick Hamilton writes...I don't know how he does it.

Although perhaps his talent lies in getting into the heads of his characters to such an extent that you feel as though you are the protagonist. Miss Roach may not be as sympathetic a character as Ella from Twenty Thousand Streets Under the Sky (which I keep hear being referred to variously as Ten Thousand Streets Under the Sky or even One Thousand Streets Under the Sky), and yet you're on her side right until the end. It takes an extremely talented writer to really, convincingly, describe the thoughts of a character of the opposite gender, and yet he manages it.

His skill for creating the most truly awful villains in the history of literature is also remarkable. He delights in conveying the sheer awfulness of Mr. Thwaites, the boarding room bully who gets his kicks from mercilessly teasing Miss Roach and intimidating the other guests while disturbingly showing signs that in spite of his apparent dislike of the Germans, he's actually fonder of Nazism than he's willing to admit. And Vicki, of course, initially befriended by Miss Roach until she turns irredeemably nasty, effectively destroys the relationship with the Lieutenant, implies that Miss Roach is a pathetic spinster and spreads rumours that she's having an affair with a teenage boy. The most worrying thing is that both these characters are said to be based on Hamilton's parents. Mr. Prest, Hamilton's alter-ego, and the most perceptive character by far, understands the other guests completely:

Mr. Prest thought that the old man was a noisy, nattering, messy piece of work who ought to be in a mental home. He liked and pitied Miss Roach. He thought that the German woman was about as frightful a bitch as you were likely to find anywhere, and that something pretty nasty was going on, at that table, and between those three, one way or another.

The tense, uncomfortable and claustrophobic atmosphere of the boarding house makes The Slaves of Solitude a difficult read at times. The guests rarely speak to one another and spend their time in small, cramped, stuffy bedrooms listening to the gurgling of the heating system and drifting downstairs to eat their meals, forced to endure the oppressive influence of Mr. Thwaites and never really socialising with one another. As the title says, they are the "slaves of solitude", and even Miss Roach, who eventually escapes the boarding house and ends up spending a night in Claridge's, is left with an uncertain future but is still, ultimately, a lonely woman.

There are sharp, savage bursts of wit but The Slaves of Solitude is something of a pessimistic read - more enjoyable than either of the Hardy books recently, I must say, but with a novelist as desperately unhappy as Hamilton and as resolutely unsentimental, you couldn't exactly expect a light read. As far as I know, the only other books of his that are still in print are the novels that make up The Gorse Trilogy. I'll try and save those for as long as possible, but I don't know what I'll do after that. Return to 'The Midnight Bell' and revisit Bob, Jenny and Ella, perhaps? Oh, it's such a shame that he's so underrated....

Tess of the d'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 17:44:36 GMT

"THY, DAMNATION, SLUMBERETH, NOT."

Actually, I think I preferred Jude.

One discovery I made while re-reading Tess was that I'm not actually as interested in descriptions of the English countryside as I thought I was. At first, I was patient, but with every description of the cows being milked or a walk across a field I realised that my attention was wandering. I know that the English countryside is what Hardy does best, and I admire him as a writer (prefer his prose to anything by Dickens) but perhaps I can only enjoy his writing to a certain extent? I ought to read at least a couple more of his novels before I make my final decision, but it was interesting to discover that I liked Tess less this time round than I did with my first reading (when I was thirteen, and generally less critical, though).

Apart from my lack of interest in the setting, I think the thing I disliked about Tess was the characters. By the end of the novel, I'm not exaggerating when I say I wanted to strangle Angel Clare. I know it would have been a shock to learn about Tess's past, but going off to Brazil for a couple of years and abandoning the woman you're supposedly madly in love with? Not on. Stupid Angel. And while I did sympathise with Tess, I also found her long-lasting loyalty to Angel slightly exasperating, as I couldn't see how he really deserved it. Even more confusing was the way in which Tess's fellow milk-maids were still obsessed with Angel over a year later, turning to alcohol and attempting to commit suicide out of love for him. Charismatic, intelligent and handsome he may be, but his treatment of Tess and his hypocrisy...sort of unforgivable, in my opinion. He's more well developed than the two dimensional villain that is Alec d'Urberville, but I felt that his attractive qualities might have been emphasised a little more, in order for Tess's devotion to be fully justified.

Something that I experienced this time, which I don't remember bothering me the first time I read it, is the sense of "I know it's going to end miserably, so what's the point?" The fatalism...obviously doesn't make for happy reading, and although I wouldn't have necessarily wanted a happy ending for Tess (well, I honestly couldn't see it happening), the endless negativity where Tess is the victim again and again is just, er, depressing. Escaping from her misery for such a short time, to be temporarily re-united with Angel (ergh) before being executed....I know that the point is that nothing really changes and that Tess is unable to change her destiny, but somehow it doesn't make for very rewarding reading.

And having said all that I still managed to enjoy Jude with all its endless gloom and child-suicides. Ha. I can't explain it.

The strange thing is that even though I was actually feeling quite frustrated by the point of Alec's murder, I still felt weirdly upset by the final chapters. So I suppose Tess is successful in that respect - for me, anyway - as I found the journey towards Stonehenge moving and even felt a bit like crying:

'It is as it should be,' she murmured. 'Angel, I am almost glad - yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!'

She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved.

'I am ready,' she said quietly.

Part of me wishes that the novel had ended there, as the final chapters, with Tess's execution and the suggestion that Angel marries her younger sister sort of ruined it, in a way.

To conclude - Angel Clare is quite possibly one of my least favourite fictional characters and perhaps I need to try and develop an appreciation of the English countryside as described in Victorian literature. Or not. It's a shame that I should prefer Hardy's writing when Dickens is the novelist writing about London...

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin (1956)

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 13:51:27 GMT

I moved, looking for a cigarette. They were in my hand. I lit one. In a moment, I thought, I will say something. I will say something and then I will walk out of this room forever.
'You know I cannot be alone. I have told you. What is the matter? Can we never have a life together?'
He began to cry again. I watched the hot tears roll from the corners of his eyes onto the dirty pillow.
'If you cannot love me, I will die. Before you came I wanted to die, I have told you many times. It is cruel to have made me want to live only to make my death more bloody.'

I bought Giovanni's Room on impulse in a second-hand book shop in Camden and read it in one go late last night. I very rarely do that with novels - starting and finishing in the same day (although a friend of mine claims to have read Bleak House in one sitting...how she managed that I don't know), but even though Giovanni's Room is so short that it could almost be called a novella, I think it's a testament to how compelling it is as a story that I was unable to put it down. I started reading it feeling exhausted, I was wide awake thirty pages into it, and I finished feeling emotionally drained but also sort of satisfied. The kind of feeling you only get when you've finished a really, really good book.

If I could have changed anything about Giovanni's Room it would probably have been the length - too short. I would have liked the section on Giovanni's relationship with David, the scenes set in the room referred to in the title, to have been expanded slightly. Their relationship has hardly begun to develop before it abruptly ends, in the most painful circumstances imaginable. Still, forgetting about the parts of the book that don't exist and concentrating on the parts that do, I think it's a remarkable novel by anyone's standards. Apparently Baldwin had a difficult time getting it published - a black, gay man writing about white, gay characters in the 50s was controversial, and his publishers originally tried to persuade him to change the title and make Giovanni's character a woman. Which would have defeated the point of the novel entirely, so it's just as well he refused and went off to find another publisher...

Elegantly written, with convincing characters that can be either empathised with (poor Giovanni!) or loathed but still understood (David's selfishness is disturbing yet he's also a very believable character), it's short, simple and to-the-point but still incredibly moving. The final fifty pages are nothing short of devastating, as David, unable to come to terms with sexuality, returns to his American fiancée, leaving Giovanni without a word, only to be temporarily reunited in the room he sought to escape - the confrontation that takes place, where Giovanni pours his heart out and tells David, "I worked to make this room for you", is one of the most distressing scenes I've ever read. Continuing yesterday's rant on The Time Traveler's Wife - take note, Niffenegger...that is how you write something that moves the reader to tears.

And the knowledge that it could have all been avoided if only David had told Hella sooner - in the end David loses both Hella and Giovanni, and as Hella would have been hurt either way, David might as well have broken off the engagement on her return to Paris - makes it so much sadder. Incidentally, Baldwin writes well about Paris, and despite being American himself, makes a few rather interesting comments on the perception of American expatriates through the voices of Giovanni and a few of the Parisian characters. Oh, and I hadn't realised that people were still being guillotined that late into the twentieth century! According to, er, Wikipedia, it wasn't actually abolished until 1981...

Concise, claustrophobic, and ultimately tragic (unlike the fantasy ending of Maurice, which I'm admittedly rather fond of, there's no happy ending for Giovanni and David), Giovanni's Room is proof that an intensely moving story can still be told in the space of just one hundred and fifty pages, and that sadly, as Jacques says, "Nobody can stay in the Garden of Eden".