 This is a book that juxtaposes many opposites: poor and rich, good and evil, selflessness and selfishness, weakness and strength. The arduous week-long journey that Nell and her grandfather undertake also reflects a journey through life: with all its good and bad sides, experiences, disappointments, surprises and temptations. During the course of the story Nell shows herself to be an angel living on earth, whom everyone loves and in whose heart there is only good. She never falls into temptation like her grandfather or other "older and wiser" characters we encounter.
In stark contrast to her stands Quilp, who seems to feed exclusively on the suffering of others, especially when he initiates that suffering. Both find death towards the end of the book - again in very contrasting circumstances. While the one finds a horrible lonesome end by drowning in a dark foggy night, the other passes contentedly surrounded by people who adore her and who will always remember her and her angelic character. Is Nell a real person, or does she represent kindness, of which we readers should take something to heart? On our way, we see a lot of early 1800s life in England too: the poignant situation in industrial towns, the poverty in London, city and village life, the wandering entertainment scene, the relationships between societal classes. The numerous characters are very Dickensian - caricaturous, but it's Dickens who's created them and he does that for a reason, so he's forgiven. The one who I wouldn't call typical is Mr, Swiveller, for his character indeed develops from just a lousy young man enjoying life to someone who feels responsible for the faith of others. Apart from the touching and teaching story, I always admire and love the way Dickens describes some of the simplest things and which makes his books such a joy to read - I wish I had some of his talent :)  This is a great book!
I loved how the interrelation with the family's 18th century ancestor is made clear through his paintings (I couldn't help but think of Caspar David Friedrich and John Constable envisioning the descriptions), and very much enjoyed the magical/mythological elements those contain. This book is more than a family saga of lobster fishers: it's got early family drama, a Montague/Capulet like rivalry over fishing grounds, a touch of romance, and rough ocean scenes that go under your skin. All set in a salty island landscape in Northern America (it's not even clear if Loosewood Island belongs to Canada or the USA), and within the unconditional commitment of a small island community. I also loved how the connection between the three sisters developed throughout the book. I found the book very well composed and beautifully written and will defintely look into more of Zentners work.  This summer, I visited an exhibition on this work by Charlotte Salomon and was intrigued. I've never read a multimedial, multidimensional work like this before - it's like a graphic novel, but with music as a third medium added to it. And it truly is a masterpiece.
I especially loved the prologue, since that's the part where the paintings and the transparent overlays are equally artistic. The main part is more like what we know as a classic graphic novel today. Life? Or Theatre? is a very passionate peace of art. Through the paintings and transparencies, and references to music, Charlotte tells about her family history, which is signed by many suicides. She tells about what art (her stepmother was a singer, Charlotte herself started painting at young age) meant to her, about an obsessive love affair, the start of the Second World War, and her escape to Southern France where she was eventually captured and deported to Auschwitz in 1943.This summer, I visited an exhibition on this work by Charlotte Salomon and was intrigued. I've never read a multimedial, multidimensional work like this before - it's like a graphic novel, but with music as a third medium added to it. And it truly is a masterpiece. I especially loved the prologue, since that's the part where the paintings and the transparent overlays are equally artistic. The main part is more like what we know as a classic graphic novel today. Life? Or Theatre? is a very passionate peace of art. Through the paintings and transparencies, and references to music, Charlotte tells about her family history, which is signed by many suicides. She tells about what art (her stepmother was a singer, Charlotte herself started painting at young age) meant to her, about an obsessive love affair, the start of the Second World War, and her escape to Southern France where she was eventually captured and deported to Auschwitz in 1943.  This is a slow book. Not much is happening over 572 pages. The worst thing in the protagonist's life has happened already, and has turned out to be false, before the story starts. There isn’t a quest for an mysterious author, as was the case in Mercier’s bestseller and masterpiece Night Train to Lisbon. Rather, this book takes you into the life of Simon Leyland, a translator by trade, a lover of words and languages.
All the people mentioned throughout share that fascination, which leads to many interesting discussions on terminology and the sound of certain words in certain languages. Having studied semantics and language sciences, I thoroughly enjoyed that. I also loved the philosophical touch of the book. I had wished philosophy would play just as big a role as it did in Nighttrain. What I didn’t like so much were the many anecdotes. There were lots of side characters who were introduced with pretty much all of their life’s stories. And then they were repeated in letters. By the end of the book, Leyland begins writing his first ever story, rather than translating or retelling other’s stories in other languages. Without giving away too much: it is then that Mercier’s book falls into place and everything makes total sense. Leyland is probably in his early sixties, and more than once during reading I asked myself if readers of that same age category would enjoy it more than I – being 30 – did now. I don’t recognize the feeling of “being finished with life” in a satisfied way; that’s not because life treated one badly, but just because it’s been enough, one has seen everything, felt everything, and just is nourished.  Through the eyes of Jack Burden, we follow the rise and fall of Willie Stark, a politician in a Southern State in the USA. Originally an idealist (his biggest project is to build a hospital that offers care for everyone, for free), he soon learns that achieving his goals is practically impossible without corruption.
Jack observes this development of his friend and boss. More than a story of Willie Stark's career, this novel follows Jack's personal development. He falls in love with his childhood friend Anne, starts studying Law - a topic that doesn't interest him in the least, but he chooses because he suspects his girlfriend expects him to study it -, but breaks up with her for a reason unbeknownst to himself. He becomes a journalist and somehow ends up being Willie Stark's right hand, helping him in corrupt businesses which also makes him manipulate his childhood friend Adam, Anne's brother, and attempt to manipulate Judge Irwin, a longtime friend of his mother and a kind of mentor for himself - with fatal effects. Over the course of time, Jack has developed a nihilistic approach, seeing himself as merely an observer of life and his relations, but a number of events make him realize that everything that happens does have a direct cause, and in turn every action he takes has consequences. A very strongly written book, deeply psychological, and the language and style is much fun to read.  "Stories from village life? Sounds boring", said my husband when I read the blurb aloud. "Amos Oz has written them, I don't think so," was my reply.
And they were anything else than boring. Eight stories of eight people living in the same old village, who are all somehow lost or lonely: a middle aged single woman who is waiting for her nephew who was to visit, but isn't in the bus. A widowed woman that lives with her grumpy old father, a former member of the Israeli parliament, who complains about digging sounds from beneath the house at night - as if someone was digging the facade of his life away. He suspects the Arab student that lives in the house's shed, but then it turns out the student hears the noise too. A real estate agent that visits the old house he want to buy to replace it by a modern resort, but it toured the house by the owner's granddaughter and lives an intimate moment with her in the basement. A middle aged man that receives a note from his wife stating he's not to worry about her, but when she does not show up at home, he goes searching for her. Another man, living with his old mother, is visited by a stranger, who isn't clear about the subject of his visit, but slowly it turns out he seems to force himself upon the family in order to receive a part of the inheritage. A nameless single man finds himself at a singing gathering in a house where a 16 year old son committed suicide. Though there is a single woman and they seem to feel attracted towards each other, he is more attracted to the upstairs room where the tragic event happened. And Oz is merciless. The stories create a sense of unease, the unease felt by the protoganist is felt by the reader. In every story, the protagonist is left in some disconcerting situation: in bed, without knowing where the nephew is but in possession of a random coat; in the bedroom, suddenly hearing the strange digging noise too; in a cellar in the dark with a locked door; on a park bench, waiting for his wife after searching the village for her; on a bed with both the mother and the stranger; beneath the parent's bed, the exact spot where the boy shot himself. And we, the readers, are left just there. The story stops, and we never learn if Gili's nephew came the following they, if Beni's wife returned, if Jardena freed Jossi from the cellar, or what was the reason for the digging sounds Pessach, Adel and Rachel started to hear. This is wildly disturbing. At first, I was irritated, a bit angry even, wanted Oz to just clear the case. But after a night's sleep I realized this unease was just genius. Village life boring? Every person has his story, his fears, his package of life to carry. And they often aren't relieved in the next minute, or the next day. Why would we, the readers, have the right to be granted that satisfactory feeling then?  Well, this is a book that demands your full attention. No comfy reading on the couch while you're husband is watching a movie with this one! The story jumps around in both character perspective and time, without even indicating this by a using a paragraph break. Nowadays, we're spoiled by chapter captions telling you the exact date and - especially in crime/detective novel - occassionaly even time of day described, but Conrad considered his readers were able to find that out for themselves. Or he was just being a very true early modernist.
Besides the swifts in time and people, the plot is complex in itself. It's done brilliantly though, and actually it's amazing how Conrad manages to create a fictional country with a rich and complex political history, including a society and a whole lot of key characters with their own personal history in *just* 600 pages. It's a story that shows how the idea of money and wealth destroys even the most sober and noble-hearted people. It's a story about colonialism, about Europeans treating indigineous people as savages (something that Conrad is guilty of himself, according to Chinua Achebe) and them trying to force their political systems onto worlds and societies that are incomparable to theirs. It learns us that money and not individuals actually rules the world and that greed makes people as unreasonable as can be. It's a tough read, but this book definitely is a great literary accomplishment.  ‘The Red Pony’ is a beautiful novella consisting of four episodes out of the life of Jody Tiflin, a boy living on a California ranch in the first third of the 20th century. In each of the four stories, Jody experiences something that initiates adolescence in his young soul: in the first, he’s getting a red pony to take care of. He feels his responsibility and takes this very serious. When the pony is left outside in the rain for an whole afternoon, it get an infection and dies a couple of days later. Jody’s despair upon its dead is heartbreaking. Also, he learns that Billy Buck, the ranch-hand, isn’t infallible, since he had stated it would be safe to let the pony stay out - an insight that hurts Billy’s own feelings as well. The third story also has to do with horses. This time, Jody is promised to be getting the responsibility for a colt yet to be born. But when time comes, the colt is in the breech position and so Billy Buck has to kill the mare and perform a cesarean section in order to save the colt in order to keep the promise. Jody learns that birth isn’t necessarily a happy thing.
In the second and fourth story, old men are the central figures to take effect on Jody. An old Mexican man appears at the ranch, requesting to stay there to die, because he was born on those grounds. Jody’s father refuses but offers him to stay for the night. Jody is intrigued by the old man, assuming he must be full of adventurous stories, but doesn’t get much out of him. In the morning, the man has taken an old horse from the barn, of which Jody’s father Carl had said it resembled the man. Jody feels worried about the old man who has now left for the unknown mountains. In the last story, Jody’s grandfather comes to visit, to Carl’s despair, for he can only talk about the time he led a group of people across the plains. Jody feels sorrow for his grandpa and encourages him to tell his stories when Carl makes clear he loathes them. In both of the stories, Jody is actually the one having pity and acts selfless. Each of the stories is beautifully written. It’s amazing how Steinbeck always manages to touch me deeply using rather simple language. A great storyteller, a great talent.  I think Annie Proulx deserves to be called the Mistress of Bizarre Deaths. The cruel ways in which characters meet their ends was already what I remember her Wyoming stories for, but this book tops all of those!
The only stable factor within Accordion Crimes (except for the deaths) is a little green accordion, which throughout the book gets into the hands of countless people from various descent. Roughly a century goes by, while Proulx takes us on a wild and windy road through her limitlrss fantasy. The book is divided into 8 parts, and each of those has families with other roots in focus: Italian, African, German, Irish, French, Mexican, Polish, Norwegian, and travelling through the States of Louisiana, Iowa, Texas, Maine, Illinois, Montana, and Mississippi. While telling stories of ordinary people, all with some interest in accordion/traditional/folk music, Proulx gives us insight into the history of migrants, acceptance, assimilation or staying true your own traditions, and racism in the US. Even within the seperate parts of the books there are short stories, which makes me marvel about the immense variety of stories and character Annie Proulx has in store. Her harsh humor made me smile quite some times, the US is a bitter country when you base your impressions on Proulx' narrations. Nevertheless, I always love to get lost in them.  ‘Heart of a Dog’ is a satirical novel which attacks Bolshevism. It was written a year after Lenin’s death and at the height of the NEP period, when communism appeared to be relaxing in the Soviet Union. It wasn’t published in the Soviet Union until 1987, but in the “underground” it circulated nevertheless.
In the story, a professor takes care of a stray dog, from whose perspective the story is being told initially. It soon turns out the professor didn’t take in the dog, which he names Sharik, out of pity, but because he wants to conduct an experiment with him. On his operation table, he gives the dog a human pituitary gland, as well as human testicles which were taken from a homeless guy with bolshevist sympathies….. After the operation, the rest of the story is being told by the professor’s assistant, Bormenthal. In the days and weeks following the operation, the dog’s manners and his looks begin to transform, until he is a human being (albeit quite a primitive version of one). The professor and Bormenthal attempt to teach him manners, but they fail dramatically. Rather, Sharik, who renamed himself Poligraf Poligrafovich Sharikov, turns out to become an aggressive Bolshevist. The novel is quite hilarious, I grinned at Bormenthal’s desperation several times. Of course it reminded me of H.G. Wells’ The Island of Doctor Moreau, though that one is more of a horror story whereas this has quite a dose of satire. 4 stars. |
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