dappled shade

A Vision of Light

The other evening, before meeting a friend for dinner, I had a few minutes to wander through a bookstore. I was looking for something different to read, and came across A Vision of Light by Judith Merkle Riley.

I did my normal check on any new book that comes my way — I opened it up at random and read a few paragraphs. It was well written, and I was moderately interested to see that it was set in the middle ages with a female protagonist.

The book was entertaining and well put together, but I don't see myself buying the next one in the series.

Merkle Riley is correct that the middle ages were unbelievably misogynistic, and she portrays the worst case scenarios with great flair. The author sets up the protagonist, Margaret, as a saint, but also tries to make her a real person by pointing out her faults. (Quite literally as a saint, incidentally; Margaret communes with God.)

All the book's characters come across as flat, though, including the protagonist. They seem like modern day stereotypes dropped into the middle ages and then draped with fourteenth century costumes and ideas. This doesn't sit well as many (though not all) of the male characters are so awful, whereas the women tend to be long-suffering martyrs. It seems to me that the author isn't playing fair.

The problem may not lie so much with the book, though, as the reader. I seldom like melodramas; and Vision of Light is definitely a melodrama. This book left me with a vague feeling of irritation and disappointment as I don't find the world of melodramas — with its heroes and villains — convincing.

Vision of Light is a good read, and it certainly held my attention. It's not a book to be read to understand people better, though it does dramatically argue against a misogynistic society.

The Ghost Writer

When I was in elementary school, we were shown a movie one day in the cafeteria about a little girl who was a ghost (and who was very much attached to her doll) and a little boy. The plot of the movie has long since faded from my memory, but I do remember how wonderfully creepy and sweet and sad the story seemed.

I blame this movie for the number of ghost stories I read as a child, though this has decreased as an adult. For an adult, it's very rare to come across a good ghost story that is eerily unsettling; authors tend to use the ghost as a crutch, or the ghost gets in the way of the story.

I just finished The Ghost Writer by John Harwood, though, and thoroughly enjoyed it. The main story arc follows a man named Gerard from childhood until his early 30s. This story is interrupted by short ghost stories which Gerard's grandmother wrote. The ghost stories, of course, illuminate themes in the main story arc and help the main story along. While this is Harwood's first novel, he is an experienced writer, and it shows. The story set up is very complicated, but he brings the pieces together nicely.

One of the most interesting things to me about this book was that the short ghost stories sounded like they were written by a different person. The book, except for the short stories, is told in a first person narrative, in the tone of a slightly despondent, modern man. The ghost stories have another feel altogether — they are crisper and old fashioned (in the context of the book, they were written from the turn of the century though the 1920s). The illusion that there was more than one author is convincing.

The book itself is probably best described as a thriller. There are a lot of plot shifts that caused me to go back and re-read earlier passages, to see where that first clue or red herring was laid. The Ghost Writer is a very clever book and a great choice for a lazy reading day.

Fingersmith

About halfway through Fingersmith, I thought, "Oh no, not another plot twist".

The huge number of plot twists (along with the red herrings the author throws out along the way) is the most notable feature of this book. They're all neatly tied up at the end, though, with no reaching by the author, Sarah Waters, to have it make sense. This is almost unique among books which change direction as much as Fingersmith does.

Fingersmith is a melodrama set in Victorian England. An elopement, thieves, lunatic asylums, pornographers and tyrannical relatives all make an appearance, along with sighing and blushing heroines (though as far as I can recall, no one faints which seems a lost opportunity for a novel set in the 1800s).

One of the curious aspects is that all of the characters, viewed dispassionately, are fairly awful. In pursuit of their own interests they will trample anyone who gets in their way. The two heroines take turns playing victim and villain, though it's not clear until the end which role they're playing when.

Despite the selfishness, the author uses the love affair that develops between the two heroines to make them sympathetic to the reader. Their sincere attachment to each other helped to keep me engaged in the story and to care what happened to them. The two women's lack of control over the conditions of their lives (one because of poverty and the other because of a social system that disadvantages even rich women) helped mitigate some of the cruelty they displayed toward others. It didn't excuse it, but it at least made it comprehensible.

Fingersmith is a melodrama and a thriller with two women at the heart of it. While I don't know I'll ever re-read it, it was entertaining and certainly very clever.

Atonement

Friday night, I stood outside a shop window and finished Atonement by the store lights. I'd read all but the last 20 pages on the train and couldn't face the 10 minute walk home until I'd found out how the book ended.

Over the years I've developed a talent for not getting emotionally involved in books. My detachment is not absolute — I can't read a book in which I don't like any of the characters — but I seldom truly feel for the characters. I've been reading Atonement by Ian McEwan for at least the last 4 months. I got about half way through and then just couldn't get myself to read anymore because I was so emotionally involved in the book. McEwan has a remarkable ability to make his characters seem real, and for the events that occur to them to seem plausible. I picked up the book again just recently and finished it in a few days.

The book is set in England and France about 5 years before and also during WWII. Most of the narrative follows the experiences of the protagonist Briony — as a girl and as a nurse — and examines a crime and how atonement can be made for that crime.

McEwan delves into being human and what motivates people. While his books tend to be a little grim, he does seem to ultimately have faith in people. His characters are often good people who make mistakes or who have impossible situations foisted onto them.

This is the best book I've read so far by McEwan. Atonement is wonderfully written and beautifully constructed. Oddly enough, the ending has echoes of Villette. Compared to most modern books, Atonement is subtle and complicated, the language is sophisticated, but it would not appeal to all readers.

The Eyre Affair

Jasper Fforde has written a whole series of books about his heroine Thursday Next (whose name goes right up there with Neal Stephenson's character Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash). The Eyre Affair is the first of this series.

The Eyre Affair takes place in a world a lot like ours, but in which history and society took a slightly different course. The aforementioned Thursday Next is part of the LiterTecs (a group charged with the investigation of literary crimes). Characters in books are very real, and can even be kidnapped out of their books. Jane Eyre is kidnapped and Thursday Next has to get her back to her proper place, and, in the process, re-writes the ending of Jane Eyre.

The Eyre Affair is unabashedly a book for bibliophiles. For instance, a major running argument in the book is who actually wrote Shakespeare's plays. Fforde settles it, but perhaps not to everyone's taste.

(The argument — and this is real — goes that Shakespeare was not well educated enough to write the plays attributed to him; the counter argument is that people who say this are unspeakably snobbish. I'm probably oversimplifying the two camps, but it hits me as the type of argument people come up with to pass those long winter evenings.)

There are some ideas that don't sit comfortably with me in this book, but it's hard to take them too seriously. For instance, in Fforde's book, Bronte wrote Jane Eyre differently. Jane went to India with St John and never returned to Rochester. Thursday Next's changes re-wrote the ending and reunited Jane and Rochester. Being so casual about how the book ends changes Jane Eyre from a carefully constructed work of art to merely a story.

The Eyre Affair is not a book to be taken seriously or carefully analyzed, though. It's a fun book that has endless references to other books. The Eyre Affair is highly entertaining and a wonderful choice for a gloomy winter afternoon.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

When I was in college, a fellow lit student tried to convince me that Shakespeare wasn't really that good a writer. This fellow student was displaying his independence and rebelling against the establishment, though, ironically, he was obviously parroting and exaggerating a professor's lecture.

There's no way to say that Shakespeare was not a great writer. Anyone who does tends to come off looking slightly daft. It is completely socially acceptable, though, to write whole books on whether Hamlet was really mad, or just faking it.

I like picking up Shakespeare occasionally just for the mental exercise and I re-read A Midsummer Night's Dream recently. It's light, it's entertaining and it's a heck of a lot easier to follow than the tragedies (it lacks long soliloquies with twisted metaphors and meanings).

The problem with my copy of this play, though, is that the academics had clearly gotten a hold if it. The level of analysis (and I'm sure it only scratched the surface of what's out there) left all joy a reader could take in the play far behind. The introduction was nearly as long as the play, and considerably less entertaining.

Oddly enough it was Shakespeare that made me decide I would never pursue literature beyond the undergraduate level. I read an introduction to a Shakespeare play which had the for and against arguments for when he was born. Not, mind you, the year he was born in, but the day of the month. I did not want to spend my life having heated arguments with academics about the birthdate of a man who died hundreds of years ago.

A Midsummer Night's Dream is certainly one of the more accessible plays. The English language was much more fluid then (and let's face it, Shakespeare took some liberties) so it is good mental exercise. If you're looking for an easy Shakespeare read, this is a good play to start with. If you're looking to get to know Shakespeare better, though, go see a play or rent a movie version. The ones by Branagh are good, if a little dark.

The Fifth Elephant

I've largely given up trying to explain Terry Pratchett books to people who have never read them. When I start talking about the wizards, werewolves and assorted fantasy characters, I get the type of look normally reserved for Star Trek geeks. Despite knowing better, I couldn't resist at least one post, though, as I have long been a huge enthusiast of Pratchett's Discworld series.

I recently re-read The Fifth Elephant. Samuel Vimes, the protagonist, travels as an ambassador to a country where the Werewolves, Vampires and Dwarves are having a power struggle. (Even writing this down, and knowing that people will read it, is embarrassing.)

In The Fifth Elephant, as in all of Pratchett's books, I get involved in the characters and after awhile I stop noticing that the character I'm rooting for is a werewolf with family problems. Pratchett is very good at coming up with compelling motives for his sympathetic characters. And while he has his villains, generally good and evil are nuanced.

He has the habit (common to good authors) of apparently writing about one thing (e.g. a power struggle in a fictional country) but really making a comment on how people are motivated and how societies work.

Pratchett's books are also very funny and full of endless references.

For those of you who have never heard of Terry Pratchett, it's curiously difficult to pull out one book to recommend. The difficulty is that the early books tend to be a series of jokes (think Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe, but less random). His later ones are much more plot driven, but lose some of their appeal if you don't know the character's back stories.

If you've never read a Pratchett book, start with Mort. It stands reasonably well on its own with the bonus that Death is a character. If you're familiar with the author, The Fifth Elephant is very entertaining and worth a read.

Occasional Happenings

If you're a friend who has dropped by, welcome! I'm posting to announce my personal site at http://dappledshade.typepad.com/personal (I've also added a link in the right-hand sidebar).

I tried a personal weblog once before, and what I rapidly found was that though my life is intensely interesting to me, it's hard to make it interesting for the casual reader. So I've called the site Occasional Happenings as it will be an occasional update for those who really want to know what I've been involved in recently.

Happy reading.

The Great Gatsby

The Great Gatsby is the perfect English-curriculum high school book. It's oozing symbolism (with varying degrees of obscurity) and dwells on humanity's innate corruption. In other words, The Great Gatsby gives English teachers plenty to talk about and school boards a warm and fuzzy feeling that they are preparing students for the real and nasty world out there.

It almost goes without saying that The Great Gatsby is also well written and has genuine value. Among other things, the author, F. Scott Fitzgerald, examines how the very rich and selfish can cause terrible events to occur to the people around them. In a society which prides itself on equality, this is a point worth considering. If wealth allows people to dodge culpability, then an equal society does not exist.

The problem with The Great Gatsby is that I don't like it very much. I didn't like it in high school, and I've re-read it twice recently and I still don't like it. I can see it's well-written and well-constructed, it's clever and the author presents ideas that are worth considering. I think where it falls flat with me, though, is that the characters are just not likable.

I mentioned above that Fitzgerald examines how the rich can avoid blame for their actions. People from all economic backgrounds, though, are fairly unlikable in this book. They're selfish, short sighted, petty and narrow minded. Money doesn't make people objectionable in this book; it just gives them more power to be objectionable.

A few of the characters have redeeming features, but the timing and presentation of these more positive characteristics tends to be too little, too late. Gatsby is the obvious example. At least arguably, he does redeem himself, but it's fairly far on in the book before this is revealed. The reader is left flailing through the book, trying to latch onto a character who can represent what is good in a sea of characters who represent what is wrong.

How much this will bother readers, of course, depends on what they think of people in general. A misanthrope would probably think this book is spot on, though would perhaps consider Gatsby's more positive characteristics exaggerated.

Without hesitation, I recommend The Great Gatsby to all misanthropes. To everyone else, it's an interesting read and a very well constructed book.

Beowulf

Beowulf is an odd story. I can't make up my mind if it seems like a really odd story because I'm female (and to put it mildly, this is a story of manly men doing manly things) or because the culture is so unknown to me.

I read Beowulf for the first time while I was in college. As far as I can tell, the reason people read Beowulf as widely as they do is because Tolkein talked about it, and most (male) academics are geeks at heart who loved Lord of the Rings (the female academics are geeks, too; they just read Jane Austen instead).

In the story, Beowulf kills Grendal, Grendal's mother and a dragon — all creatures that are not human. So, yes, I get the bit in Beowulf about the enemy being a non-human villain which can be slain without remorse. It neatly ties up people's abiding interest in violence and death, without any moral complications as the creatures which are being killed represent evil.

What seems odder to me is the exaltation of the warrior class. It is clear at the end, after Beowulf dies, that lacking his protection, the country he ruled is going to fail and be overrun. The options for a country seemed to either be strong enough to hold others at bay, or for the inhabitants to be murdered and enslaved.

As long as warriors rule, war will always be present. And as long as war is present, warriors will always need to rule. The people in Beowulf were unable to break this cycle (I suspect it wouldn't even have occured to the ruling warrior class to try). The best they could do was to find a strong leader and shelter behind him.

The treatment of the hero, actually, seems a lot like an action movie to me. The main hero is a strong man who establishes order and protects the weak. In Beowulf, the main hero also has lesser heros at his side who are not as strong. A hero can die a heroic death but a hero is never crippled by the loss of a limb or a blow to the head. In other words, a hero is never weak; he's either strong or gloriously dead.

Action movies are notoriously aimed at men. Perhaps the similarity beteen Beowulf and action movies (i.e. the glorification of a super-alpha male through violence) is one of the reasons the story seemed so strange to me.

While violence is certainly an important part of a modern government (though it's referred to as "defense" now), we idealize violence in war and the violent less. It may in part be our methods. In Beowulf, a warrior killed his opponent on the field of battle in hand-to-hand combat, he didn't bomb a house and accidentally kill school children. There is something admirable about defeating an opponent in combat face to face; it's hard to make the same argument for bombing people.

If you're a Tolkein fan, you should certainly read this story.  Even if you're not, it's worth reading, if only for the story of defeating evil incarnate in the form of Grendal, Grendal's mother and the dragon.