The Moonstone - a book review

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins is a 19th century mystery that provided the template for mysteries for many, many years to come, with bumbling policemen, a master sleuth, and amateur detectives all making their appearance. Because it was written in 1868, I was expecting something a bit stuffy, but was thrilled to discover that it was a warm, entertaining book. This is due primarily to Collins' skill at narrating with engaging voices. One of the participants in the mystery decides to put together a written, first-person account of the events surrounding the disappearance of the Moonstone, a huge yellow diamond, and asks various people who were present at various stages of the events to record their eye-witness accounts. So we are treated to a variety of voices. It broke down a little with the testimony of Miss Clack, who is one of those purse-mouthed, religious zealots designed to give religion a bad name. Even so, it is entertaining to see how she tells it from her point of view, but we are capable of seeing through her delusions even though she is not.

Three reasons you might like this book,
1. As mentioned above, the character of Gabriel Betteredge in particular draws us right into the story with his down-to-earth charm and the misogyny that he professes but seems to be quite incapable of practising.

2. Every time we think the mystery is solved (and I was frankly wondering what the rest of the pages would be used for), a new wrinkle comes along and things get complicated once again.

3. Although it was a contemporary novel at the time of its writing, it now fits in nicely with historicals. Anybody enamoured of 19th century Britain will be well satisfied with the necessarily authentic atmosphere and details. And grateful you didn't live then and there...

Three reasons you might not like this book
This part is going to be hard again.
1. The afore-mentioned Miss Clack. I got so fed up with her, I almost stopped reading. Like I said, I decided to be entertained instead by her profound lack of self-knowledge and general cluelessness.

2. You don't like a book that has a succession of narrators. It would have been fun to stick with Betteredge, I admit, but obviously Collins preferred the freshness of the first person, eye-witness account, even if it meant shifting from one narrator to another. I have mixed feelings about it, myself.

3. There are some plausibility issues. I am very suspicious of the medical evidence, even for the times. And there are a couple of characters I don't quite buy, but it wasn't fatal to the enjoyment of the story.

Three sentences from page 33

"The wicked Colonel's will has left his Diamond as a birthday present to my cousin Rachel," says Mr. Franklin. "And my father, as the wicked Colonel's executor, has given it in charge to me to bring down here."

If the sea, then oozing in smoothly over the Shivering Sand, had been changed into dry land before my own eyes, I doubt if I could have been more surprised than I was when Mr. Franklin spoke those words.

Other reviews
A variety at Top Mystery
Victorian Challenge
The Sleepy Reader

This was on my list for the 1% Challenge, which I had more or less abandoned because of the difficulty of handling library books when you're shuttling back and forth across the border. But when I saw The Moonstone on Feedbooks, my problem was solved. I rather doubt I'll catch up in the challenge at this point, but at least I had a lot of fun with this book.


Technorati tags: The Moonstone, Wilkie Collins

The Golden Notebook - a book non-review

I give up. I'm sorry, I just can't take any more. I've made it all the way to page 345, but that's only a few pages past the half-way mark and I'm starting to cringe every time I see the cover of The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing.

I know. It's a classic. Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature, largely on the strength of The Golden Notebook but I am bored to tears by mid-century angst. If you like Samuel Beckett and would like to see him stretched out in really long paragraphs over really long scenes in really long chapters with interminable ruminations on the spiritual and intellectual bankruptcy of communism (hardly a hot topic anymore or anything of a surprise), and on the similar void at the heart of Western culture (ditto), and on what it means to be a woman, complete with scenes of washing between the legs, and - well, you get the idea. If this kind of stuff is your cup of tea, go for it. Maybe when this stuff was fresh and cutting edge the audacity of it might have made for exciting reading. But fifty years later, the ideas are stale and worked to death, and acknowledging the fact that women have periods and brains - both at the same time - is not likely to trigger a reaction beyond ho-hum.

In short, this is an Idea Novel that has not aged well. If you don't have any inherent enthusiasm for the ideas, the story is not going to carry the weight. For those who like to mock literary fiction, this will provide you with a lot of ammunition.

Kudos to Anna, the protagonist, for having the intellectual courage to face the reality of her life. It's unfortunate that a better vehicle couldn't be found for it. A compelling read this ain't.

The structure, which was hailed for its innovation, actually contributes to the book's failings, in my opinion. The story proper is interleaved with readings from Anna's four notebooks, corporately the golden notebook. This means that any time the story starts to achieve any momentum, it's cut short by a shift to a different notebook. You have to be a determined reader indeed to continue despite the deliberate alienation. I'm not determined enough. And this is as good an illustration as any of the fact that innovation in and of itself is not necessarily a plus.

I am, of course, a dissenting opinion. You won't have to google very hard to find many different people telling you why The Golden Notebook is a masterpiece. I'm not as old and crotchety as Lessing (there are probably still videoclips all over the Internet of her swearing in disgust when she found out she'd won the Nobel) but I'm too old and crotchety to waste my time on a book I'm not enjoying, neither for the ideas, nor for the art.

For the purposes of the 1% Challenge, I still intend to count this. I mean, I read an ordinary novel's worth... Graham Greene never needed 600+ pages to portray angst and disillusionment.


Technorati tags: The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - a book review

Hemingway on acid. That's what this book felt like to me. And after I read Philip K. Dick's Wikipedia entry, I started to understand why.

The spare, clipped prose, the protagonist who is at once emotional and detached, the macho worldview, all these smack of Hemingway. The way Dick messes with your assumptions is pure Dick. The way the bottom falls out of reality altogether by the end of the book, that is pure acid.

For the first part of the book, Dick plays with very similar themes as Katerina Sedia's The Alchemy of Stone, those of marginality, defining human-ness, the way we deal with those perceived as "other." Dick takes it a step further, and challenges the new assumptions we have made by following along with his story, which I found delightful. And then he challenged so many assumptions, I was no longer sure which direction was up, leaving me both confused and intrigued.

It's this last word that is important. Usually books that confuse me that badly irritate me enough that I put the author on my "don't bother with" list. But I am almost certain to pick up another Philip K. Dick book, wondering if I won't be able to get it this time.

Having said all that, there are clumsy moments in this book. He is particularly fond of doing infodumps disguised as dialogue, which really should have been dealt with before the book went to print. Characters expounding to each other on things they all know, receptionists suddenly spouting the detailed technical specs on the latest model of android - I don't think so.

So the final word for me is that I will read Philip K. Dick again, not expecting to be awestruck, but challenged and intrigued.


Technorati tags: Philip K. Dick, Science fiction, Book review

City of God: A Novel - a review

City of God is a fragmented, dissonant, self-absorbed, and self-referential piece of post-modernist twaddle. Written by someone with real talent. It was only the fact that I had publicly committed to reading the book as part of the 1% Well-Read Challenge that kept me from abandoning it fairly early on in the game, despite the talent and the beautiful language.

The book is essentially a modern cry of despair, the logical conclusion of a worldview essentially wrapped up in self. Everett, the author whose words we are supposedly reading, has this to say about himself. (Or was it his fictitious alter-ego? I forget. It's very hard to keep track of who is speaking sometimes.)

So he is lean, fit, he takes very good care of himself in that way of someone profoundly faithless. He runs, works out almost religiously, for the self-maintenance that is his due.

The main object of his attention is Tom Pemberton, a maverick Episcopal priest who is supposedly seeking to find out who God really is, but who is equally self-absorbed. Witness his take on prayer:

You should try it. As an act of self-dramatization, it can't be beat. You get a hum, a reverberant hum of the possibility of your own consequential voice.

He calls his skull his cathedral, appropriate imagery for several reasons.

The plot, if you can call it that, is highly fragmented, told from various viewpoints, all presumably written by the fictitious author, and is really a series of different stories and metaphysical ramblings, interspersed with an adult version of teen angst poetry, riffing off of some of the classic songs of the early 20th century. A few little ornithological observations are thrown in for a reason which would probably become clear if I reread the book and spent a few hours meditating on its symbolism. (And please, Mr. Doctorow, it's not Canadian geese, it's Canada geese.)

The voice is well-done. Doctorow has a deft way with the language and occasionally throws out a flash of insight that delights. But there are a large number of viewpoint characters, most speaking in the first person, and almost all of them sound alike. This is sloppy characterization and makes it even harder to fit together the shards of story that make up City of God.

All in all, I found this a highly irritating book. From the pretentious arrogance of much of the metaphysical ramblings (I get very annoyed when affirmations of opinion are presented as logical necessities, when they are anything but), to the disjointed "story-telling", to the essentially unsympathetic characters, too much of this book was designed to grate on my nerves, so that its virtues just weren't enough to win me over.

Doctorow has won plenty of awards for his work, so obviously plenty of people disagree with me. I do note, however, that City of God appears to be one of his least popular books as rated by Amazon reviewers.

Technorati tags: E.L. Doctorow, City of God

The 1% Well-Read Challenge

Book lovers of the world, unite!

Peter Boxall's book, 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, is the basis of a challenge that is being thrown out by Michelle of 1morechapter.com. To accept this challenge, you commit to read 1% of the list over the next 10 months, which is one book a month. She even refers us to a nifty spreadsheet that allows you to tick off all the books you've read and get an automatic calculation of how many you need to read a month to get them all in before you die. I would have to read three a month. Not going to happen. Reading three books a month is not the issue; I just have too many books outside of that list I want to read.

But there were so many books on this list that I really wanted to read anyway, I figured I'd officially throw my hat in the ring.

The 10 books (subject to change) I have selected for this challenge are:

City of God - E.L. Doctorow
A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
Beloved - Toni Morrison
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep - Philip K. Dick
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
The Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins
The Betrothed - Alessandro Manzoni


Technorati tags: Reading Challenge, 1001 Books