tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-373575102024-03-20T22:46:37.846+11:00ScheherezadeUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger23125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-91423495147355396162018-11-29T19:19:00.000+11:002018-11-29T19:23:40.060+11:0063. The Blind Assassin - Margaret AtwoodAfter a long absence, I am back, ready to add a few more reviews to this project! I started with a book that I have long admired the cover of in libraries. It seemed so full of promise, but I must say, I left feeling disappointed.<br />
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My overall impression after reading this book was one of tarnish - a kind of dingy grubbiness. A feeling that nothing would ever shine out, bright and true and beautiful, because everything is seen through a lens of inevitable loss and disappointment.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I've looked back over what I've set down so far, and it seems inadequate. Perhaps there is too much frivolity in it, or too many things that might be taken for frivolity. A lot of clothes, the styles and colours outmoded now, shed butterflies' wings. A lot of dinners, not always very good ones. Breakfasts, picnics, ocean voyages, costume balls, newspapers, boating on the river. Such items do not assort very well with tragedy. But in life, a tragedy is not one long scream. It includes everything that led up to it. Hour after trivial hour, day after day, year after year, and then the sudden moment: the knife stab, the shell-burst, the plummet of a car from a bridge.</blockquote>
The novel begins with the death of Laura, the narrator's sister, in the car crash mentioned above, and is told by the narrator towards the very end of her much longer life as she looks back and remembers the details leading up to the great tragedies in her life.<br />
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I did become quite fond of Iris as a narrator, and the story held my attention, but in many ways I couldn't wait for it to be over so I could move onto something less... wearisomely sepia, less wrapped up in the sense of decay. The story line is very clever, in its interweaving of narratives within narratives, and the ending is at the same time surprising and not surprising at all - kind of glimpsed through a dreary veil - the combined effect of the rheum of old age and the smudged deception of unrealised dreams.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
I wonder which is preferable - to walk around all your life swollen up with your own secrets until you burst from the pressure of them, or to have them sucked out of you, every paragraph, every sentence, every word of them, so at the end you're depleted of all that was once as precious to you as hoarded gold, as close to you as your skin - everything that was of the deepest importance to you, everything that made you cringe and wish to conceal, everything that belonged to you alone - and must spend the rest of your days like an empty sack flapping in the wind, an empty sack branded with a bright flourescent label, so that everyone will know what sort of secrets used to be inside you.</blockquote>
It was a relatively easy read and I am not sorry that I read it - but I won't be reaching for it again.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-32589781852853655432012-04-09T08:58:00.001+10:002012-04-09T08:59:41.278+10:0028. Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLNuY0z1_yanfFKY8w2i-WbmgFsBgGqStkNI083KMyxDa9A01mV-6KeKoaSzhzw1rT5DIKAcRds2px_PanZGx-QlZ7BXmN3ttcMr_Qb-mP1khj63PVgJTA64d8Qkkt40Az8A/s1600/hm%252520-%252520Kafka%252520on%252520the%252520shore.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLNuY0z1_yanfFKY8w2i-WbmgFsBgGqStkNI083KMyxDa9A01mV-6KeKoaSzhzw1rT5DIKAcRds2px_PanZGx-QlZ7BXmN3ttcMr_Qb-mP1khj63PVgJTA64d8Qkkt40Az8A/s200/hm%252520-%252520Kafka%252520on%252520the%252520shore.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729168391709080754" /></a><br />I expected something strange and surreal from this novel, and I got it! Starting out with Kafka Tamura “the world's toughest fifteen year old” as he runs away from home, moving in with him into a secluded and private library where he can read to his heart's content, and fantasise that his new friend, the remote head librarian, Miss Saeki, might be his long-lost mother... while at the same time spiralling through the wilder narrative of Nakata, an elderly man who can't read or write, but who can talk to cats, trying to turn himself in for murder and having his attempted confessions dismissed as dementia... it is complicated, it is weird, but it great fun to suspend disbelief and just go for a ride with the author...<br /><blockquote>"So you can talk, huh?" the cat, a black and white tabby with torn ears, said a bit hesitantly as it glanced around. The cat spoke gruffly but seemed nice enough.<br /> "Yes, a little," Nakata replied.<br /> "Impressive all the same," the tabby commented.<br /> "My name's Nakata," Nakata said, introducing himself. "And your name would be?"<br /> "Ain't got one," the tabby said brusquely.<br /> "How about Okawa? Do you mind if I call you that?"<br /> "Whatever."<br /> "Well then, Mr. Okawa," Nakata said, "as a token of our meeting each other, would you care for some dried sardines?"<br />"Sounds good. One of my favorites, sardines."<br /> Nakata took a saran-wrapped sardine from his bag and opened it up for Okawa. He always had a few sardines with him, just in case. Okawa gobbled down the sardine, stripping it from head to tail, then cleaned his face.<br /> "That hit the spot. Much obliged. I'd be happy to lick you somewhere, if you'd like."</blockquote><br />Multiple story lines, fantasy elements, unexplained mysteries and metaphors abound... it's like reading a dream... neither easy or comfortable but phew what a rush!!! Themes? Isolation... whether it is possible to be master of your own fate... metaphysics, metafiction, metamorphoses... all very vague but what can you say about a book where fish and leeches rain from the sky, UFO's cause a group of school children hunting for mushrooms to lose consciousness, amazing sex is experienced with a ghost who knows you are asleep, where Johnny Walker cuts open stray cats to eat their hearts and collects their souls to make flutes, and Colonel Sanders attempts to restore order to the universe by pimping a philosophical prostitute ...<br /><blockquote>"It's not something you can get across in words. The real response is something words can't express."<br />"There you go," Sada replies. "Exactly. If you can't get it across in words then it's better not to try."<br />"Even to yourself?" I ask.<br />"Yeah, even to yourself," Sada says. "Better not to try to explain it, even to yourself."</blockquote><br />It's a novel that draws you in, takes you over and makes you part of itself for a while. You don't understand where, or why, or even how... but the dreamlike otherwordliness of it all leaves you asking – can't you just dwell in the strangeness for a while? Suspend yourself and just observe? do you really need to understand?<br /><blockquote>“It’s as if when you’re in the forest, you become a seamless part of it. When you’re in the rain, you’re a part of the rain. When you’re in the morning, you’re a seamless part of the morning. When you’re with me, you become a part of me.”</blockquote><br />As the author himself explained in an interview, <br /><blockquote>"Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Instead, several of these riddles combine, and through their interaction the possibility of a solution takes shape. And the form this solution takes will be different for each reader. To put it another way, the riddles function as part of the solution. It's hard to explain, but that's the kind of novel I set out to write".</blockquote><br />Indeed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-75759964635416373222012-04-08T20:19:00.003+10:002012-04-09T07:59:45.615+10:0074. Everything You Need - A.L.Kennedy<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKW9l74M3pHvIpNF_KCE2jDCJp6fYU2RymUUrqxP3ZU4TMygQDDRSDYfgrLjT3nJC131E8o_wwNueSDUc9eYdBPtcGoi6x7lCZCM5u0eJqB8phIfH8xCeTC23oA4lSkEOqxg/s1600/everything-you-need-kennedy-a-l-paperback-cover-art.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 136px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjKW9l74M3pHvIpNF_KCE2jDCJp6fYU2RymUUrqxP3ZU4TMygQDDRSDYfgrLjT3nJC131E8o_wwNueSDUc9eYdBPtcGoi6x7lCZCM5u0eJqB8phIfH8xCeTC23oA4lSkEOqxg/s200/everything-you-need-kennedy-a-l-paperback-cover-art.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728972764859696802" /></a><br />Everything You Need is a beautifully written tale of love's endurance. It also masterfully captures the ongoing struggle for self-mastery and self-expression in an innovative and entertaining way.<br /><br />Nathan and Mary circle each other warily throughout the novel, tentatively stepping together then startling apart. Their relationship constantly spirals inwards towards the final moment of revelation, when Nathan delivers his novel to Mary – his last novel, his serious novel, the novel which chronicles his romance with Maura and his delight in Mary's childhood. Nathan is, after all, Mary's father... although he is afraid to admit it.<br /><br />Although he has had no contact with her for maybe 15 years or more, Nathan is still obsessively in love with his ex-wife, Mary's mother. He yearns for her with every atom of his being and it is her memory – the thought that she might be out there somewhere, reading, that keeps him writing.<br /><br />Nathan lives on Foal Island, a small, strange, isolated community of writers led by the enigmatic and empathetic lighthouse keeper, Joe. When one of the seven writers dies, Joe and Nathan invite Mary, Nathan's long-lost daughter, to join them. Mary aspires to be a writer and Nathan is to be her mentor. Mary has been told by her mother that her father is dead, and she finds Nathan alternately frustrating and attractive. Meanwhile, Nathan is paralysed by his fear of losing her again and avoids every opportunity to reveal the true nature of their relationship. In private, he pours his memories of her childhood into what he swears will be his last and greatest novel. These memories are so honest, sweet and tender, it is impossible to imagine Mary not understanding and forgiving him.<br /><br />At a young age, Mary was left by her mother in the care of The Uncles! - Bryn, her mother's elder brother, and his life partner Morgan. The endearingly gentle if somewhat strange way these elderly Welshmen look after Mary is best illustrated by the scene following 19 year old Mary's first sexual encounter. <br /><blockquote><em>Fuck</em><br />The Uncles were here.<br />They'd padded into her unbuttoned room. They were here with her now, speaking. Finally, their reality yanked her dumb awake.<br />'Ah, there now, Mary. What should we do?'<br />They stood, Morgan holding the tea tray, Bryn's hands holding themselves, and each man gently but plainly alarmed by the way they had chosen to proceed. Still, they were trying to do right by Mary, to let her feel at home and approved of, loved. She lurched up and opened her eyes to Bryn's face: his puzzled eyes fighting not to seem lost. …<br />Bryn nodded through a carefully presented smile. 'We thought you might want a drink. Or a little to eat. We find that we do.'<br />'Afterwards.' Morgan drew away from the bed and back towards the door.<br />Mary and Jonathan lay rigid, sheet drawn to their chins, eyes dumbfounded, like a pair of bad Staffordshire figures - <em>The Lovers Apprehended.</em><br />'It's as if...' Bryn pondered, also moving for the doorway, 'you'd been on a bus trip for a long time, so you're peckish. Something like that.' He blinked at Jonathan, his voice wavering, perhaps at the verge of laughter, perhaps only made unsteady by the strain of the occasion. 'We do wish you well.'<br />'We do.'<br />Mary finally found herself saying, 'I didn't know -'<br />'We were here. No.'<br />'We weren't. We had gone out. But then we came back.'<br />'Because you might need us.'<br />'You know.'<br />'We were here in case.'<br />As if they were taking their leave from royalty, Bryn and Morgan backed respectfully away.<br />'Mary?' Bryn waited until she turned to him, gave him her proper attention, 'We just wanted you to be comfortable. And, um, proud. Your first time should be something to be proud of, because you'll remember it. Perhaps this wasn't the best...' He huffed. 'Drink your tea, now, before it gets cold.'</blockquote><br />There is a lot of swearing in this novel, but it is largely used appropriately, in context, and after a while I stopped noticing it so much. There is also a lot of poetry – not set off in rhyming stanzas, but inextricably part of the language in which the story is told. Words are important in this book and they have obviously been chosen with care – to amuse and entertain, to endear and entice, to shock and surprise. Nathan's melancholy musings and self obsession are depicted with a black macabre humour which I found quite appealing.<br /><blockquote>He was waiting and didn't like it. Never had. The wait, this particular wait: it was always so demanding, so predictably calculating and lecherous – give it an inch or a moment and it closed on him in a tingling swarm to his warmer parts. It bit round the cartilage lip of his ears, breathed close to the bare of his neck, it was brazen at his armpits and the quiet joints of his thighs, it made him sweat. His body weight stung down unfairly against his tensing prick, while his thoughts sank and dressed to the left with a stocky tick of blood.<br /><em>Rubbing an opened wound with living wasps. My wound. My wasps.<br />Worse.<br />Or stapling my scrotum to the flesh of my inner thighs and then performing Scottish country dances until I feel my socks congeal.<br />I think that would be worse.</em><br />This was ridiculous. He was ridiculous. A figure of no fun at all, waiting for something which would not happen, could not happen, which should not be considered and surely to God had been set and settled a pathetically long time ago – put to rest on the much larger island near which his was fixed. Surely to God this was over with now, surely <em>she</em> was over with.<br /><em>Being sodomised by an ill-tempered man using a plaster model of my own grandmother's arm.<br />That would be noticeably worse.</em></blockquote><br />That's Nathan. Always looking on the bright side of life :P<br /><br />All the characters in this novel are fascinating, from the other members of the writers community, each with their own personal obsessions, to Nathan's literary agent and publisher, Jack. Jack is worthy of a complete review in his own right, so I will leave you to discover him for yourself!<br /><br />I did not expect to like this novel, but by the end I was thoroughly hooked.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-66554306257274087192012-04-08T15:20:00.005+10:002012-04-08T16:47:00.229+10:00437. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0x9c_MW6TurnedICRKN2PwrqK-kcCdhkv7iEspT5f3Agejh8LWjB8pjZCrjJtTHFxx4sCoko-KK7B5hmyjNfo2i3leEdAP8mU0uQqBIpId_Ktr2IK5hNfbrGIsp5yCY5dTA/s1600/A_Clockwork_Orange.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0x9c_MW6TurnedICRKN2PwrqK-kcCdhkv7iEspT5f3Agejh8LWjB8pjZCrjJtTHFxx4sCoko-KK7B5hmyjNfo2i3leEdAP8mU0uQqBIpId_Ktr2IK5hNfbrGIsp5yCY5dTA/s200/A_Clockwork_Orange.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728895749494644530" /></a><br />Well, my droogs...!<br /><br />"Goodness is something chosen.. When a man cannot choose, he ceases to be a man."<br /><br />A Clockwork Orange proved to be an inspired choice to follow Oliver Twist!<br /><br />It is like the continuing story of the Artful Dodger, transported, not across the ocean, but through time and space to a not-so-brave new world. Witty, flamboyant, cynical and fastidious, 15 year old Alex is a classic teenage hoodlum of the sci-fi 60s, rebelling against the boring drudgery of his parent's life by indulging in extremes of ultraviolence and crime – vice for entertainment and the sense of power it provides, rather than in response to any pressure of poverty or lack of better opportunity. Some reviewers see it as an outbreak from a totalitarian regime, but in reality, the depicted society is less restrictive than the depiction of Dickens' Victorian England. As with Dickens, the focus is upon the way in which humans can be conditioned for good or ill, but Burgess makes more explicit both the importance of a free choice and the innate attractiveness of evil. Burgess explores this further in the preface to the version I read, where he laments the omission of the original ending from the American edition and from the movie (which, by the way, I have never watched).<br /><blockquote>“Unfortunately there is so much original sin in us all that we find evil rather attractive. To devastate is easier and more spectacular than to create. We like to have the pants scared off us by visions of cosmic destruction. … My own healthy inheritance of original sin comes out in the book and I enjoyed raping and ripping by proxy. It is the novelist's innate cowardice that makes him depute to imaginary personalities the sins that he is too cautious to commit for himself. But the book does also have a moral lesson, and it is the weary traditional one of the fundamental importance of moral choice.”</blockquote><br />The important lesson is the human capacity to change. As the prison chaplain says to Alex:<br /><blockquote>“What does God want? Does God want woodness or the choice of goodness? Is a man who chooses the bad in some ways better than a man who has the good imposed upon him? ...”</blockquote><br />The novel is narrated by Alex in Nadsac, the invented Russian/English/Cockney slang of his underworld youth culture. At first, this was disorienting, but I quickly picked up enough vocabulary to go with the flow of consciousness and appreciate its significance, as the colourful diction effectively created a vicarious distance between the reader and the graphic acts of brutality so enthusiastically described. I have chosen to share Alex's description of listening to a Mozart symphony and of how the power of the music accentuates his indulgence of violent and powerful fantasies...<br /><blockquote>“Then, brothers, it came, Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my guliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets three-wise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all the other strings, and these strings were like a cage of silk around my bed. Then the flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss my brothers. … I knew such lovely pictures. There were vecks and ptitsas, both young and starry, lying on the ground screaming for mercy, and I was smecking all over my rot and grinding my boot in their litsos. And there were devotchkas ripped and creeching against walls and I plunging like a shlaga into them, and indeed when the music, which was one movement only, rose to the top its big highest tower, then, lying there on my bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my gulliver, I broke and spattered and cried aaaaah with the bliss of it. And so the lovely music glided to its glowing close.”</blockquote><br />It all goes pear-shaped eventually – and inevitably – Alex finds himself on the receiving end. After a few years in prison, an opportunity to get out of jail free appeals to him, and he volunteers for an experimental new rehabilitation program. Here, he is effectively brainwashed, drugged, and forced to watch hours of filmed atrocities set to music. Under the influence of the drugs, his previous impulses towards power and violence are reversed, so now the music fills him with pain and nausea as does the thought of any cruelty, a pain and nausea he will avoid at any cost. In the space of a fortnight he is turned from an eager aggressor to a pathetic victim. He finds the change demeaning and intolerable, but even the thought of self-harm sets off the Pavlovian response.<br /><br />In both these stages of his life, Alex is likened to the clockwork orange of the title – a sweet and juicy natural object created to give pleasure to God but unnaturally activity by unthinking mechanical responses. There is seen to be little difference between mindless violence and mindless passivity – without conscious choice, right and wrong are simply different sides to the same coin. <br /><br />In his new impotency, Alex is seized upon by political forces who use him for anti-governmental propaganda. The Government in turn backpedals and anti-brainwashes Alex as a public relations exercise. He finds himself back on the street, with all his faculties intact. He half-heartedly attempts to recreate his previous gangworld, but he soon realises something is different. At the ripe old age of 18, he is starting to realise that he has a choice and control over the direction of his life, and that he is no longer satisfied by the thoughtless gratification of violent impulses. The change is a little incongruous and I can see why some feel that the final chapter is tacked on and unconvincing. <br /><blockquote>“Give me that”, I snarled and grabbed it skorry. I couldn't explain how it had got there, brothers, but it was a photograph I had scissored out of the old gazetta and it was of a baby. It was of a baby gurgling...”</blockquote><br />The introduction of this change, suddenly, shockingly, in the midst of a chapter in which one is watching Alex recreating his previous life and finding it doesn't fit is just a little bit too glib, too contrived... sure Alex justifies it, knows that his desired son is likely to repeat the same mistaken pattern of his own life, even if warned against it...<br /><blockquote>“youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal. No, it is not just like being an animal so much as being one of these malenky toys you viddy being sold in the streets, like little chellovecks made out of tin and with a spring inside and then a winding handle on the outside and you wind it up grrr grrr grrr and it is itties, like walking, O my brothers. But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot help what it is doing. Being young is like being one of these malenky machines.”</blockquote><br />While I did not doubt Alex's desire and capacity to change, and being a firm advocate of happy endings, would not have been satisfied with anything less, the open-endedness left me doubtful. Alex suddenly wants a son, so tomorrow he will start looking for a girl to provide him with one, and on that he will base his new life. It may be cynical of me, but I am left doubtful of his chances of success, perhaps because he doesn't seem to see the need to work to bring about the change. I would have preferred to see him demonstrate more of the maturity and strength of purpose that he will need to make his new life a success. I choose (idealistically, optimistically) to hope, however, that like Charley Bates in Oliver Twist, Alex will go on beyond the novel's confines to demonstrate the redemptive power of intelligent humans to break free from mechanistic programming (whether internal or external) and choose anew to create a better future.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-1242590976026193022012-04-07T18:07:00.011+10:002012-04-07T19:20:36.374+10:00918. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPn2N72X296itx9v9K4GOG6axekH31FQjWQc0br2WhqRUZvLk3uArIvotXkbOeopbXwLAqcP3hXFOSvisdleG6sGvMP6o6z-Qy-gr9QjErMe5E-85bWhmOMr8A_Esveu2FdQ/s1600/9780141439747_olivertwist.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 131px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPn2N72X296itx9v9K4GOG6axekH31FQjWQc0br2WhqRUZvLk3uArIvotXkbOeopbXwLAqcP3hXFOSvisdleG6sGvMP6o6z-Qy-gr9QjErMe5E-85bWhmOMr8A_Esveu2FdQ/s200/9780141439747_olivertwist.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728568268174127106" /></a><br />Aaaaaaaaahhhhh. That is the huge sigh of satisfaction I always release after finishing a Dickens novel. Truly, if I were to pick my favourite author of all times, dear Boz would get the vote. This was the first time I had read Oliver Twist, and I was not in the least bit disappointed. <br /><br />At its simplest, it's theme is that care for people makes you good and care for money makes you bad, but it is so much more than that, so many shades of grey in between the absolutes, so many struggles between good and evil, right and wrong. It is tragedy, comedy, high drama, farce and romance all tied up in one brilliant package. As an author, Dickens knows how to capture both his characters and his readers...<br /><blockquote>"...there he stood, reading away, as hard as if he were in his elbow-chair, in his own study. It is very possible that he fancied himself there, indeed; for it was plain, from his abstraction, that he saw not the book-stall, nor the street, nor the boys, nor, in short, anything but the book itself: which he was reading straight through: turning over the leaf when he got to the bottom of a page, beginning at the top line of the next one, and going regularly on, with the greatest interest and eagerness."</blockquote><br />The plot is masterful in its unexpected twists and turns. Written in serial form, for monthly publication, it contains cliffhanger after cliffhanger, all winding inevitably to a wonderful happy ever after ending where the good and the bad each get what they deserve. There is poetic justice meted out to each larger than life character, and it is part of Dicken's genius that even the minor members of the cast attract our attention and sympathy. Poor little Dick, who wishes for nothing more than to join his little sister in heaven, where both can be innocent children together is as significant in his message as Oliver himself on his twisted path from rags... to riches... not material riches, for his eventual inheritance is quite moderate, but a surfeit of love, companionship and spiritual happiness which contrast so sharply with his earlier poverty, showing more truly than any dry sermon that man cannot live on bread alone. Dear, loyal Nancy, viciously murdered by her violent lover after sacrificing her chance of escape from the underworld for his sake, and hunted, hated Bill Sikes, dangling from a rope tied with his own hands when, in his attempt to escape from the bloodthirsty crowd, he finds himself condemned by his own guilty vision of Nancy's eyes. Rose, willing to sacrifice her love so as not to mar Harry's chance of fame and fortune, and Harry deliberately turning his back on worldly expectations to prove that Rose's love is the only treasure he desires...<br /><br />More than anything else, I think I love Dickens for his dark sarcastic humour, the little digs and metafictional asides in which he pokes fun at the society, the characters, the reader and himself as the author. There are times when his moralising becomes overt and one is tempted to gloss over a few paragraphs and get back to the story, but it never intrudes for long, and there is so much symbolism to be unpacked from every element that long after the story is finished there is plenty to think about, connections to be made, contrasts to be appreciated and lessons to be learned.<br /><br />As a historical and social commentary on the conditions prevalent at the time, it is educational, as a story that races the reader along from laughter to suspense to tears it is entertaining, and as an insight into the hypocrisy and heart of humanity it is enlightening... and above all, it is a purely enjoyable read that leaves me sorely tempted to plunge immediately into another of Dickens' tales... (although I think I will dole them out, saving them as the antidote for the next time a novel leaves me feeling that it had no meat on its bones - or should that be gruel in its golden bowl lol).<br /><br />In the immortal words of Oliver: "Please, sir, I want some more."Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-84706371641366414622012-04-05T19:42:00.022+10:002012-04-06T09:48:47.083+10:00775. The Golden Bowl - Henry James<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxqYyMp6tzvwyl5dJjay_kjeHEY_xQ0sjfdgokmGSdoUARHrGaeEZrD0O3WXFb9X3004w2np5lEe10AoeANKn8wKfcYuAsOAkvAqDtPYs6sJm8RF3g3WrrBUEn1FIQrRkDSw/s1600/9780141441276.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 195px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxqYyMp6tzvwyl5dJjay_kjeHEY_xQ0sjfdgokmGSdoUARHrGaeEZrD0O3WXFb9X3004w2np5lEe10AoeANKn8wKfcYuAsOAkvAqDtPYs6sJm8RF3g3WrrBUEn1FIQrRkDSw/s320/9780141441276.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728035284870198562" /></a><br />The plot of this novel would not be out of place in a Mills and Boon romance, but whereas it could be argued that the M&B would leave little to the imagination, Henry James leaves just about everything!<br /><br />This is the quote which for me summed up the reading experience:<br /><blockquote>"The young man, in other words, unconfusedly smiled - though indeed as if assenting, from principle and habit, to more than he understood."</blockquote><br /><br />In a nutshell, a smooth Italian prince (Amerigo) and an American beauty (Charlotte) enjoy a connection. They click. I can't call it an affair, because that much information is not provided. All we know is that they delight in each others' company for a time, but that neither has the financial resources to commit to any more permanent association. Then, each of them is "bought" in as gentle, quiet and loving a way as possible. <br /><br />An older English matchmaker (Fanny Assingham) who witnessed their connection and who has a soft-spot for the Prince proposes him to a sweet and innocent American Daddy's girl (Maggie). Maggie and her very rich, very wonderful widowed father (Adam) worship each other, and when Maggie's marriage sees fortune hunters beginning to move in on Adam, Fanny and Maggie both propose Charlotte (who just happens to have been a girlhood friend of Maggie, and of whose 'connection' with her husband Maggie is blissfully unaware) as the perfect solution. <br /><br />Charlotte and Adam get married, while Maggie and Adam continue their previous close and exclusive filial relationship. This leaves Charlotte and Amerigo space to reform their own connection (some reviewers call it adultery, but the extent of their connection is so airy, it is impossible to imagine them doing anything so excrutiatingly impolite). <br /><br />Maggie eventually has her suspicion of their growing infidelity confirmed through a chance encounter with a dealer in antiquities who had witnessed an exchange between Charlotte and Amerigo on the eve of Maggie's wedding... an exchange centering around an exquisite golden bowl with a crack in it... a bowl the Prince refuses to purchase (the crack being a bad omen), which Charlotte cannot afford to purchase, which Maggie does purchase, and which Fanny (deliberately and symbolically) smashes. Amerigo is told of Maggie's discovery, but Charlotte is deliberately kept in the dark by them both. Meanwhile Maggie maneuvres her father into taking Charlotte off to America, leaving her in full possession of the Prince, who now has eyes only for her (apparently supremely impressed by the smooth diplomacy and manipulative skill she has suddenly demonstrated).<br /><br />So much for the action. The real story exists in the vague and ambiguous interwoven tangles of selfishness and selflessness which make up each character. For me the whole story is about getting what you want without rocking the boat... it's all about reading between the lines, manipulating the others (and your own feelings) without ever coming right out and saying directly what is meant... and ultimately, I found the artificiality of this discourse - both internal and external - quite unsatisfying. <br /><br />As an example, here is a passage in which Charlotte and Amerigo convince themselves that in going with the flow and gratifying their own desires, they are selflessly clearing the path for their spouses to do the same.<br /><blockquote>"A large response, as he looked at her, came into his face, a light of excited perception, all his own, in the glory of which – as it almost might be called – what he gave her back had the value of what she had given him. ‘They’re extraordinarily happy.’<br /> <br />Oh Charlotte’s measure of it was only too full. ‘Beatifically.’ [...] <br /><br />‘I’m not afraid.’<br /> <br />He wondered for a moment. ‘Not afraid of what?’<br /> <br />‘Well, generally, of some beastly mistake. Especially of any mistake founded on one’s idea of their difference. For that idea,’ Charlotte developed, ‘positively makes one so tender.’<br /> <br />‘Ah but rather!’<br /> <br />‘Well then there it is. I can’t put myself into Maggie’s skin – I can’t, as I say. It’s not my fit – I shouldn’t be able, as I see it, to breathe in it. But I can feel that I’d do anything to shield it from a bruise. Tender as I am for her too,’ she went on, ‘I think I’m still more so for my husband. He’s in truth of a sweet simplicity – !’<br /> <br />The Prince turned over a while the sweet simplicity of Mr Verver. ‘Well, I don’t know that I can choose. At night all cats are grey. I only see how, for so many reasons, we ought to stand toward them – and how, to do ourselves justice, we do. It represents for us a conscious care –’<br /> <br />‘Of every hour, literally,’ said Charlotte. She could rise to the highest measure of the facts. ‘And for which we must trust each other – !’<br /> <br />‘Oh as we trust the saints in glory. Fortunately,’ the Prince hastened to add, ‘we can.’ With which, as for the full assurance and the pledge it involved, each hand instinctively found the other. ‘It’s all too wonderful.’<br /> <br />Firmly and gravely she kept his hand. ‘It’s too beautiful.’ [...]<br /> <br />‘It’s sacred,’ he said at last."</blockquote><br />I will leave the final word on this book to Gore Vidal, who <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1984/mar/01/cracking-the-golden-bowl/?pagination=false">pointed out</a> the real deficiency in this novel... it is a tale of forces, but it contains no Love. The characters skirt around the edges of talking about love all the time, but ultimately, it is their own selfish desire for internal security and selfish desire to appear externally selfless which leaves them feeling as hollow, empty and flawed as the golden bowl itself.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-22531177167382329742012-04-04T19:32:00.000+10:002012-04-08T19:35:02.996+10:00809. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtEZiYMm_4Nlgm5DEm0_fSaTIrKojkgWM9_yhuAzT0eKWFlRtfEIyZ8lJyStWKIHceq_PbTHEna5m358NeWD1gq-L4NedGtc0LhmC5eHi-FV0YUNfEF6oP8yutwW18uT1ViQ/s1600/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-7.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 127px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtEZiYMm_4Nlgm5DEm0_fSaTIrKojkgWM9_yhuAzT0eKWFlRtfEIyZ8lJyStWKIHceq_PbTHEna5m358NeWD1gq-L4NedGtc0LhmC5eHi-FV0YUNfEF6oP8yutwW18uT1ViQ/s200/the-picture-of-dorian-gray-7.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728960935606109314" /></a><br /><blockquote>“The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.”</blockquote><br />So opens Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray. What really captured my attention in this novel was the exquisite descriptions of external settings in what is essentially a novel of internal focus. Handsome young Dorian thinks it such a pity that the portrait which his friend has painted of him will remain young and fresh forever, while he is doomed to age and change. He vainly wishes for the opposite and his vanity is rewarded when his wish comes true. Encouraged by the worldly Henry Wotton, Dorian indulges every passion and vice, searching always for new sensations and sinking into ever greater depravity. He remains superficially beautiful, while the picture locked in the attic displays every mark of his growing perversion.<br /><br />I often grew frustrated with Dorian's lack of depth, the scorn he and Lord Henry express for anything that fails to accord with and support their cynical quest for superficial pleasure:<br /><blockquote>“Always! That is a dreadful word. It makes me shudder when I hear it. Women are so fond of using it. They spoil every romance by trying to make it last forever. It is a meaningless word, too. The only difference between a caprice and a life-long passion is that the caprice lasts a little longer.” </blockquote><br />Humph. By the end I was quite fed up with Dorian's determination to sacrifice his own real potential for a good life to Lord Henry's insistence that any experience is better than boredom. Faced with a choice between living well and aging gracefully, or giving in to every passing desire, Dorian chooses desire – on the condition that he can hide it successfully. For me, Dorian is a coward who lacks the conviction to stand up and admit to his own choices. Lord Henry is perhaps the main character in the novel – Dorian is his pawn, a challenge for him to corrupt, the evil genius who encourages Dorian to go further and further astray.<br /><blockquote>“Because to influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of some one else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him. The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly -- that is what each of us is here for. People are afraid of themselves, nowadays. They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty that one owes to oneself. Of course they are charitable. They feed the hungry, and clothe the beggar. But their own souls starve, and are naked. Courage has gone out of our race. Perhaps we never really had it. The terror of society, which is the basis of morals, the terror of God, which is the secret of religion -- these are the two things that govern us.” </blockquote><br />This is not a story with a moral of redemption. There is no saving Dorian. He kills everything that loves him and comes to hate himself – both the perfect self that he sees in the mirror, and the imperfect, internal damnation embodied by the portrait. He finally decides to destroy the portrait, blaming it for all that is wrong with his life, the wrong for which he refuses, right to the end, to accept responsibility for. When he stabs and slashes at the portrait, he does end the spell, but not in the way he intends. The novel ends with Dorian's body, ugly and debauched, lying at the foot of the once more pristine and youthful portrait.<br /><br />Much as I like happy endings, I was not disappointed by this one. The climax is perfectly timed and justly deserved, while the complete lack of authorial moralising lets the reader draw their own conclusions about the ambiguities so cleverly presented. Why must youth and beauty be ephemeral? What are the wages of sin? Why is living to excess a bad thing? It is a quick read with questions that linger long after the last page is turned.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-26421824104960306172012-04-04T17:09:00.004+10:002012-04-08T17:56:27.796+10:0068. Blonde - Joyce Carol OatesCatching up with a review on a book read previously (I finally found my pack of notes)...<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZyfhDTr-ubJo3KlfU70d8kZhONE6s_NDCMd9dZ1bLt-cXRl2NXMOAiUz8lnLeu_-xmFJVG05ES67uZAeeMuTxL0f9jEF6fjgyimRuoSSchs-GwojpX0tssXTqv06nd1GNuQ/s1600/n23130.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZyfhDTr-ubJo3KlfU70d8kZhONE6s_NDCMd9dZ1bLt-cXRl2NXMOAiUz8lnLeu_-xmFJVG05ES67uZAeeMuTxL0f9jEF6fjgyimRuoSSchs-GwojpX0tssXTqv06nd1GNuQ/s200/n23130.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5728924331917738610" /></a><br />This novel is a fictionalised biography of Marilyn Monroe. I don't know much about the real person, so I won't comment on the accuracy or otherwise of its portrayal. I did however find it quite readable and very interesting as a work of fiction.<br /><br />Although it tries to pay tribute to her intelligence and endurance, overall, the emphasis is on Marilyn's vulnerability. Emotionally scarred by her psychopathic mother, institutionalised and then forced to marry at the age of 16 because her foster father was starting to look at her the wrong way, Blonde is largely the story of a delicate, creature – a hummingbird heart is the recurring imagery used – who is exploited as a physical object by just about every male who crosses her path.<br /><br />Struggling to construct and retain some sense of self-worth and self-identity, Norma Jean is portrayed (no matter what her age) as a small scared child, hiding behind the glamour mask of Marilyn, at first sheltered by it, then increasingly consumed by it as she loses herself in a whirlpool of addiction and depression. The need to feed Marilyn's ego, and the barely submerged fears of Norma Jean's past combine to ruin every relationship which might give her the chance to feel normal.<br /><br />Far from being a nymphomaniac, Norma Jean is portrayed as being a passive partner in all her sexual encounters, allowing herself to be used almost like an unresisting doll. As she gets older, she emphasises this passive role by calling all her husbands and lovers “Daddy”, trying to satisfy her sense of loss for the father she never met, preserving a fairytale belief that one day he would ride into her life and rescue her by providing the unconditional affection she desires.<br /><br />The novel is LONG - over 700 pages, which the omniscient narrator never fails to remind us is going to end in tragedy. There is a constant tension between the impersonal legend – the Fair Princess, the Dark Prince, the Ex-Athlete, the Playwright and the President – and the personal story, told in Marilyn's own breathless, sweet, naivety. <br /><br /><blockquote>"I saw that I must be sold. For there I would be desired, and I would be loved."</blockquote><br />By the end, the lingering sense of a beautiful fairy tale possibility has been lost beneath all the gory details of the little girl's destruction. The universal myth recedes and the sordid reality takes over. The writing was powerful, or I wouldn't have made it to the end. She almost lost me a few times, but by the end I was crouching by torchlight, desperate for it to finish. In a way this struck me a betrayal of Marilyn (meaning Marilyn the character in the novel, and possibly also Marilyn the real person and Marilyn the symbol). While seemingly promising to set her free from the glittering cage of legend, the novel actually confines her as an impotent songbird with the focus of the story really being a condemnation of the forces surrounding her – instead of an investigation of feminism mystique, it came across as a scathing and unforgiving condemnation of masculine insensitivity. It left me feeling that Norma Jean had been exploited just one more unnecessary time.<br /><br />I am glad I found my notes on this one - I really don't want to ever read it again.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-27186322746890561652012-04-04T09:06:00.008+10:002012-04-09T10:00:05.835+10:0052. The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwZhRaBbF1Nuoq8NsHT-FgLIUFiVM_jBn7YR3ex9sxF5xW9dDRZ26syKw9WOmNxbyeqyCzUqPCXEk7nL_1Ne9SKKIP9K7n04GKIZkdvy2eUHSbh4vX7XeyVzBxu_26Ul74kw/s1600/4008.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 132px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwZhRaBbF1Nuoq8NsHT-FgLIUFiVM_jBn7YR3ex9sxF5xW9dDRZ26syKw9WOmNxbyeqyCzUqPCXEk7nL_1Ne9SKKIP9K7n04GKIZkdvy2eUHSbh4vX7XeyVzBxu_26Ul74kw/s200/4008.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5729170265629707666" /></a><br />This book would be an interesting companion piece for high-school students to read beside Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter...<br /><br />A stranger arrives in an isolated mountain village and makes an astounding offer: a fortune in gold for every resident if someone - anyone - in the town is murdered within a week! The outcome will answer the question - are people inherently good, or inherently evil?<br /><br />You can imagine the chaos that ensues... first inside Miss Prym, the barmaid to whom the offer is first revealed. Should she just forget she ever heard such a deal? Should she dig up some of the gold, and run away from her dead-end life? Should she trust her friends to do the right thing... or is she rightfully afraid of the mob-mentality?<br /><br />It's a short and simple story, easy to speed through, but worthy of stopping to consider its after effects. The ultimate answer is that there is no answer - there is no inherent good or evil in humanity, it is all a matter of individual choice. We are all tempted by evil. The issue is whether we are prepared to struggle against it.<br /><blockquote>"It was all a matter of control. And choice. Nothing more and nothing less."</blockquote><br />Each person has their own demon and angel on their shoulder... who will they listen to?<br />It is a novel full of cliches - the old story about the man who dies on a journey and doesn't realise he is dead, suffers horribly from thirst but refuses to enter the first gate with the lovely fountain, as his animal friends aren't allowed, continues on to the second gate where all are welcome and finds that this is heaven - the first gate being hell, which weeds out anyone who would slake their own thirst while leaving their faithful companions to suffer... the story of Midas who wished to turn everything he touched into gold and ended up regretting the result...<br /><br />The townspeople decide they will drug and shoot a crazy old woman whom nobody will miss... they'll make it a Russian roulette so no one individual will bear responsibility... they are all gung ho and ready to go... but then Miss Prym raises some financial realities. How are they going to convert the gold into modern currency? The bank will want to ask questions about where it came from, how they got it... will they trust each other to keep the secret of their shame? The risk is too great, they can't trust each other, and so good prevails overall - through cowardice if not through conviction.<br /><br />In many ways, the novel is unsatisfying, for the one-dimensionality of its characters, for the way in which the narrative skips around from one to another without much sense of direction, the archetypal, allegorical aim that was just a bit too obvious... the ending which just fizzled away into nowhere (Miss Prym gets to start a new life with the gold, the villagers must pay for Berta's fountain after all, but nothing is really answered, no-one has really changed)... meh. The premise was good, but I think it lost something in translation.<br /><br />The only character I really liked was old Berta, the victim chosen by the townspeople, sitting on her doorstep chatting with her long-dead husband, and waiting for the devil to arrive.<br /><blockquote>Berta was watching the sun setting behind the mountains when she saw the priest and three other men coming towards her. She felt sad for three reasons: she knew her time had come; her husband had not appeared to console her (perhaps because he was afraid of what he would hear, or ashamed of his own inability to save her); and she realised that the money she had saved would end up in the hands of the shareholders of the bank where she had deposited it, since she had not had time to withdraw it and burn it.<br />She felt happy for two reasons: she was finally going to be reunited with her husband, who was doubtless, at that moment, out and about with Miss Prym's grandmoth er; and although the last day of her life had been cold, it had been filled with sunlight - not everyone had the good fortune to leave the world with such a beautiful memory of it.<br />The priest signalled to the other men to stay back, and he went forward on his own to<br />greet her.<br />'Good evening,' she said. 'See how great God is to have made the world so beautiful.'<br />'They're going to take me away,' she told herself, 'but I will leave them with all the world's guilt to carry on their shoulders.'</blockquote>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-74502238901904593722012-04-03T10:32:00.002+10:002012-04-06T10:39:18.138+10:00OoopsDarn it, I read a pile of these - mainly modern and pre-1700s... but didn't find time to write up my response, and now I can't remember them well enough (stupid aging memory and pregnancy brain lol)... here's to starting again!<br /><br />Books read but not yet reviewed:<br /><br />999.Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton<br />997.The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius<br />996.The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous<br />995.Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais (part read)<br />993.The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe<br />991.The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan<br />990.The Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette (part read)<br />989.Oroonoko – Aphra Behn<br /><br />28.Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami<br />52.The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho<br />68.Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates<br /><br />I think I made notes for some of them... I will try to refresh my memory and catch up on the reviews!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-33067004570808876402008-02-19T15:31:00.004+11:002008-02-19T15:48:17.085+11:00675. Orlando - Virginia Woolf<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWQNROFi8jp7DkM794Yuo0NBh6dFaaK0J4-bt6wJ38MgapGGHH_ITeMMWoqDbKeWDyJn92U-xLiOBO1AuxWpQXySEhfZaftUT5_AI8xzafqeaE_gqltkr_61pgaXrD8wcXnQ/s1600-h/orlando.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWQNROFi8jp7DkM794Yuo0NBh6dFaaK0J4-bt6wJ38MgapGGHH_ITeMMWoqDbKeWDyJn92U-xLiOBO1AuxWpQXySEhfZaftUT5_AI8xzafqeaE_gqltkr_61pgaXrD8wcXnQ/s320/orlando.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5168544721198748690" /></a><p>I had thought (this was a while ago) that I would read Woolf's <em>Mrs Dalloway</em>, to compare it with <em>Ulysses</em> and <em>Saturday</em>, since they are all novels which trace a single day in the life of their main character. While searching for my copy, however, I rediscovered <em>Orlando</em> and I was unresistingly hooked once more. If you never read anything else by Virginia Woolf, read this - it won't take long and if you're anything like me, as soon as you reach the end you will be tempted to start again.</p><p><em>Orlando</em> sparkles. It is a love letter to a dear friend that laughs at itself from beginning to end. It brings history to life in a way that makes you wish you were there. It makes the impossible seem not only possible, but as natural as breathing. It is one of those rare texts that prompts me to slow down and read every word, simply to prolong the enjoyment. If the modernist's credo was to 'make it fresh', <em>Orlando</em> is the wheatgrass juice, still growing in a little box on the juice-bar.</p><p>What is <em>Orlando</em> about? <em>Orlando</em> is about... Orlando! When the story starts, Orlando is a 16 year old boy, in the Elizabethan age, swinging his sword at a shrunken head in the attic of his ancestral home. By the end of the novel, Orlando is a young woman who has given birth to a son. It is now 1928, but despite the passing of time and alteration in gender, it is essentially the same Orlando. Don't ask me to explain how or why - read the book to see how Woolf achieves it.</p><p>From a thematic point of view, <em>Orlando</em> examines (but only in the most entertaining way) the difference between masculinity and femininity, and changes in those definitions over time. It is dedicated to Vita Sackville-West, with whom Woolf had a lesbian affair (though both were 'happily' married at the time). The <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando:_A_Biography">Wikipedia article</a> shows how Orlando is closely modelled on Vita, using the conventions of fiction and fantasy "to write a well-documented biography of a person living in her own age." I find, however, that these details of 'reality' actually detract from the story. It is not necessary to know who Vita was or what was her relationship with Virginia. The story stands perfectly well by itself as a magnificent, humorous fantasy. To try to tie it to history is to deny its imaginative power.</p><p>As an example, here is a passage where Orlando lies thinking about the meaning of life. I love the way we can hear the echo of Woolf wrestling with her own thoughts in Orlando's frustration!</p><blockquote>Every single thing, once he tried to dislodge it from its place in his mind, he found thus cumbered with other matter like the lump of glass which, after a year at the bottom of the sea, is grown about with bones and dragon-flies, and coins and the tresses of drowned women.<br><br>'Another metaphor, by Jupiter!' he would exclaim as he said this (which will show the disorderly and circuitous way in which his mind worked and explain why the oak tree flowered and faded so often before he came to any conclusion about Love). 'And what's the point of it?' he would ask himself. 'Why not say simply in so many words - ' and then he would try to think for half an hour - or was it two years and a half? - how to say simply in so many words what love is. 'A figure like that is manifestly untruthful,' he argued, 'for no dragon-fly, unless under very exceptional circumstances, could live at the bottom of the sea. And if literature is not the Bride and Bedfellow of Truth, what is she? Counfound it all,' he cried, 'why say Bedfellow when one's already said Bride? Why not simply say what one means and leave it?'<br><br>So then he tried saying the grass is green and the sky is blue and so to propitiate the austere spirit of poetry whom still, though at a great distance, he could not help reverencing. 'The sky is blue,' he said, 'the grass is green.' Looking up, he saw that, on the contrary, the sky is like the veils which a thousand Madonnas have let fall from their hair; and the grass fleets and darkens like a flight of girls fleeing the embraces of hairy satyrs from enchanted woods. 'Upon my word,' he said (for he had fallen into the bad habit of speaking aloud), 'I don't see that one's more true than another. Both are utterly false.' And he despaired of being able to solve the problem of what poetry is and what truth is and fell into a deep dejection.'</blockquote><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5QPfxEDa04NCRi15bFoRi0635DEU2Eo6j7xs-N9t5vqx7eyeLT5m4tkB9rXeUxvem_L6Ir7JKSQHgdB9VI88TqrFxnesUxdx0PeeUFFv_7L_qP-FGrXgE7NfV3RBUpac5dw/s1600-h/200px-Orlando_film_poster.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5QPfxEDa04NCRi15bFoRi0635DEU2Eo6j7xs-N9t5vqx7eyeLT5m4tkB9rXeUxvem_L6Ir7JKSQHgdB9VI88TqrFxnesUxdx0PeeUFFv_7L_qP-FGrXgE7NfV3RBUpac5dw/s320/200px-Orlando_film_poster.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5168544725493716002" /></a><br /><p>It is rare for me to appreciate a movie adaptation of a book that I love, but in this case, I heartily recommend the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orlando_%28film%29">film</a> of <em>Orlando</em> made in 1992, starring Tilda Swinton as Orlando, for the sheer beauty of the costume design and settings. This movie is an inspired adaptation and its visualisation of the book's magic has meshed seamlessly into my love of <em>Orlando</em>, so that when I am reading or thinking about this book, these are the images that I see.</p><p>You can download <em>Orlando</em> as a free ebook from <a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks02/0200331.txt">Project Gutenberg Australia</a>.</p><p>I'm giving <em>Orlando</em> my first PERFECT score!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-56218928750860445072007-11-16T15:46:00.001+11:002007-11-16T15:56:17.760+11:0038. Gabriel's Gift - Hanif Kureishi<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcIyDxIpjA8J3sLeM1WE99icv9WFgXUrA8t0x-wkNYjT0ZYCETeadsqHFmVCMmxvjzAuFL1ANNigLgNbHEXJs_4qQ-eKPM-WnA4CROdUFSrF_-qxA1kB9jFxvDv8uu04D-yw/s1600-h/gabrielsgift.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcIyDxIpjA8J3sLeM1WE99icv9WFgXUrA8t0x-wkNYjT0ZYCETeadsqHFmVCMmxvjzAuFL1ANNigLgNbHEXJs_4qQ-eKPM-WnA4CROdUFSrF_-qxA1kB9jFxvDv8uu04D-yw/s200/gabrielsgift.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5133296706621864274" /></a><p>This was a quite a sweet, enjoyable story, short and quick to read. The novel starts as Gabriel's father, an aging has-been rock-and-roll bass player, is thrown out of the family home. Gabriel's mother goes out to find a job in a local bar, bringing home strange men and entrusting Gabriel to the care of a fat and ugly Eastern European refugee named Hannah. While confused and upset by the changes happening in his family, Gabriel also feels slightly comforted by the fact that he now more 'normal' - almost everyone he knows comes from a broken home.</p><p>Gabriel is an artist, and much of the story focusses on his preoccupation with creating - sketching, writing, photographing, and planning the film he wants to shoot. My favourite expression of this artistic talent occurs in passing as Gabriel and his father are invited to visit the lead singer of his dad's old band. Where Gabriel's father faded into obscurity, Lester went on to find David Bowie-style fame and fortune.</p><blockquote>There was a deep hush in the hotel; the place was so stylish that there appeared to be nothing to disfigure the austerity of nothing piled on nothing, apart from - on an invisible shelf - a white vase containing a single white flower.<br>...<br>On reaching the lobby, Gabriel extracted an apple from his pocket, which he had taken from Lester's fruit bowl. He placed it on the floor in the middle of a ring of drab stones. The little patch of colour would cheer people up. He and his father passed into the crowd of photographers and fans stamping their feet in the cold. Gabriel turned to see several colourless figures scampering towards the anarchic apple.</blockquote><p>Colour plays a big part in Gabriel's world, often used in startling ways to illustrate a point, such as in this description of the men Gabriel's father hangs out with at the local pub - a far cry from the glitz and glamour of the life he so nostalgically clings to.</p><blockquote>The place was full of childish men from the post office and the local bus garage gazing up at the big TV screen. Dad's grey-faced mates were playing pool. They all looked the same to Gabriel with their roll-ups, pints and musty clothes. They rarely went out into the light, unless they stood outside the pub on a sunny day, and they were as likely to eat anything green, as they were to drink anything blue or wear anything pink.</blockquote><p>When he is most troubled, Gabriel talks to his twin brother Archie, a twin who died of meningitis when he was two, but who has never been forgotten in the family. This upsets Gabriel's mum, but his dad is more understanding.</p><blockquote>"By the way, what's this about you and Archie talking and stuff?"<br>Gabriel hesitated but said, "He's with me, Dad."<br>"Of course he is. He's with me too. That's where the kid should be, with his family."<br>"You talk to him?"<br>"Every day." Gabriel was relieved. Dad went on, "Don't tell Mum. It upsets her.</blockquote><p>Despite their problems, Gabriel's parents are doing their best. However, in many ways, fifteen year old Gabriel is more adult than they are. He is a nice lad, and the story told from his point-of-view is entertaining. I particularly appreciated the happy ending!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-40007567179309350182007-11-16T15:02:00.000+11:002007-11-16T15:08:11.709+11:0043. The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzz8EjOF_0C0vzujsS80EeIQbdhRBddvtMXqNswVKrzokxizorzTHUME8wpr0LLUC6do7U3_C7BIVuwvmCGNKzzx05XqC94bJ0nZ5LfqYWzpyKIn0mNGi5FerLjPl_X6o3w/s1600-h/corrections.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5133284075123046706" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQzz8EjOF_0C0vzujsS80EeIQbdhRBddvtMXqNswVKrzokxizorzTHUME8wpr0LLUC6do7U3_C7BIVuwvmCGNKzzx05XqC94bJ0nZ5LfqYWzpyKIn0mNGi5FerLjPl_X6o3w/s200/corrections.jpg" border="0" /></a><p>The most endearing feature of the characters in this novel is how utterly pathetic they are. As an example, here is a description of failed academic, Chip Lambert, attempting to shoplift a package of hideously expensive salmon.</p><blockquote>"Ha, ha!" he said, palming the seventy-eight-dollar fillet like a catcher's mitt. He dropped to one knee and touched his bootlaces and took the salmon right up inside his leather jacket and underneath his sweater and tucked the sweater into his pants and stood up again.<br>"Daddy, I want swordfish," a little voice behind him said.<br>Chip took two steps, and the salmon, which was quite heavy, escaped from his sweater and covered his groin, for one unstable moment, like a codpiece.<br>"<em>Daddy! Swordfish!</em>"<br>Chip put his hand to his crotch. The dangling fillet felt like a cool, loaded diaper. He repositioned it against his abs and tucked in the sweater more securely, zipped his jacket to the neck, and strode purposefully toward the whatever. Toward the dairy wall.[p94-95]</blockquote><p>This same salmon is later unknowingly served to his parents, Enid and Alfred, by his chef sister, Denise. Alfred has Parkinson's disease, and (like the father in <em>Lambs of London</em>) this gives him an endearing eccentricity which makes him probably the most attractive character in the novel. Even so, his triumphs are overloaded with pathos.</p><p>The tone of relationships in the novel is either one of bewildered, half-submerged affection, or aggressive, as in this conversation between the oldest brother, Gary and his wife Caroline.</p> <blockquote>"Did you tell the boys that I'm depressed?" Gary asked her in the darkness from the far margin of their quarter-acre bed. "Caroline? Did you lie to them about my mental state? Is that why everybody's suddenly being so agreeable?"<br>...<br>"You know, you are getting seriously paranoid."<br>"Fuck, fuck, fuck!"<br>"Gary, this is frightening."<br>"You're fucking with my head! And there is no lower trick than that. There's no meaner trick in the book."<br>"Please, please, listen to yourself."<br>"Answer my question," he said. "Did you tell them I'm 'depressed'? "Having a hard time'?"<br>"Well - aren't you?"<br>[p202]</blockquote><p>It is questionable how much of the children's later dysfunctionality is a result of Alfred and Enid's parenting style. Although we gather from Alfred's later thoughts that he is most fond of Chip, the middle brother, that is not how Chip remembers it. And while Enid is obsessed with bringing the family together for one last Christmas, it is an ideal of 'family life' that she longs for, not the reality of her husband and children. One of the most telling episodes is a flashback in which 7 year old Chip refuses to eat his mother's cooking. (It is worth quoting at length to show how this novel seems to cast a distasteful flavour over everything it touches on.)</p><blockquote>There was something almost tasty and almost sexy in letting the annoying boy be punished by her husband. In standing blamelessly aside while the boy suffered for having hurt her.<br>What you discovered about yourself in raising children wasn't always agreeable or attractive.<br>...<br>The dogshit-yellow field of rutubaga; the liver warped by frying and so unable to lie flush with the plate; the ball of woody beet leaves collapsed and contorted but still entire, like a wetly compressed bird in an eggshell, or an ancient corpse folded over in a bog: the spatial relations among these foods no longer seemed to Chipper haphazard but were approaching permanence, finality.[p 263]</blockquote> <p>It is Alfred, emerging from his basement laboratory five hours later after everyone else is asleep, who finally tucks Chip into bed and kisses him goodnight, finding the boy had fallen asleep at the table.</p> <blockquote>Returning to the dining room, he noticed the change in the food on Chipper's plate. The well-browned margins of the liver had been carefully pared off and eaten, as had every scrap of crust. There was evidence as well that rutubaga had been swallowed; the small speck that remained was scored with tiny tine marks. And several beet greens had been dissected, the softer leaves removed and eaten, the woody reddish stems laid aside. It appeared that Chipper had taken the contractual one bite of each food after all, presumably at great personal cost, and had been put to bed without being given the dessert he'd earned.<br>On a November morning thirty-five years earlier Alfred had found a coyote's bloody foreleg in the teeth of a steel trap, evidence of certain desperate hours in the previous night.<br>There came an upwelling of pain so intense that he had to clench his jaw and refer to his philosophy to prevent its turning into tears.[p 275-6]</blockquote><p>In his old age, Alfred suffers night-time hallucinations induced by his medication. These become particularly bad when he and Enid go on a holiday cruise together.</p> <blockquote>The turd had an attitude, a tone of voice, that Alfred found eerily familiar but couldn't quite place. It began to roll and tumble on his pillow, spreading a shiny greenish-brown film with little lumps and fibers in it, leaving white creases and hollows where the fabric was bunched. Alfred, on the floor by the bed, covered his nose and mouth with his hands to mitigate the stench and horror.<br>Then the turd ran up the leg of his pyjamas. He felt its tickling mouselike feet. [p 286]</blockquote><p>It would almost be funny - this image of a once proud old man struggling alone with the tabs of his adult diaper in a tiny cruise-ship bathroom, while being taunted by figments of his imagination - if it didn't make you want to cry.<p><p>The New York Times Book Review said, ""If you don't end up liking each one of Franzen's people, you probably just don't like people." I didn't like these people. I felt sad and sorry for them, and I was glad that when I closed the book, I could also close them out of my life. This was a big book - nearly 600 pages. It is not badly written, but I think the quote which comes closest to summing up my reaction is this one:</p> <blockquote>The Corrections is a lumpy, strange, singular work, very much of this moment even as it harks back to a kind of American novel long deemed extinct. Its portrayal of American family life sometimes seems cruel and unforgiving, yet the sheer amplitude of its vision implies a kind of sympathy, or at least understanding. (...) It's a vivid reading experience of tremendous texture and dimension, a masterwork of observed detail. It's not always likable, but it's real. - Andrew O'Hehir, Salon</blockquote><p>I just can't help being glad that it's not MY reality!</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-69678402040296848952007-10-21T07:14:00.000+10:002007-10-21T07:33:46.572+10:0046. Fury - Salman Rushdie<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw_MQZhNm0zzSk6PIYTb7TjcUFzNy8v6H-IOkE83TFISahfCCfiZIIxJa2jIKHiii5jBZV9hmlscFWhZ92v0yhcm4ntD2Np6XiJycNX3jHsselqd2vBbTTXEzln3_O0tYQMA/s1600-h/fury.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw_MQZhNm0zzSk6PIYTb7TjcUFzNy8v6H-IOkE83TFISahfCCfiZIIxJa2jIKHiii5jBZV9hmlscFWhZ92v0yhcm4ntD2Np6XiJycNX3jHsselqd2vBbTTXEzln3_O0tYQMA/s200/fury.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123530540935034498" /></a><p>Wow! This book blew me away from the first page to the last!</p><p>It was funny, sweet, unpredictable and endlessly surprising. All the characters were so lovingly drawn that even the most minor passerby was instantly imaginable. Take, for example, this image of the 'hero' attempting to lose himself in New York's varied culture:</p><blockquote>Professor Solanka, who thought of himself as egalitarian by nature and a born-and-bred metropolitan of the countryside-is-for-cows persuasion, on parade days strolled sweatily cheek by jowl among his fellow citizens. One Sunday he rubbed shoulders with slim-hipped gay-pride prancers, the next weekend he got jiggy beside a big-assed Puerto Rican girl wearing her national flag as a bra. He didn't feel intruded upon amid the multitudes; to the contrary. There was a satisfying anonymity in the crowds, an absence of intrusion. Nobody here was interested in his mysteries. Everyone was here to lose themselves. Such was the unarticulated magic of the masses, and these days losing himself was just about Professor Solanka's only purpose in life. (6-7)</blockquote><p>Professor Malik Solanka was born in Bombay, educated at Cambridge, happily married, father to a young son... With his wife's support, he gives up his work as an academic professor in order to follow his fascination with making dolls. His figurines are a great success, particularly 'Little Brain', who starts out by having her own tv show where she interviews various historical philosophers, but is gradually taken over by the marketing gurus and becomes bigger than Barbie. Malik is raking in the money, so he can't protest at the transformation of his beloved creation. Then one night he finds himself standing over his sleeping wife & toddler, testing the sharpness of the carving knife in his hand. Horrified by his unexplained fits of rage and the possibility that he poses a danger to his family, he jumps on a plane and flies to America, sure that there he will either be killed or cured. His family are bewildered, as is Malik himself, who reads about a mystery killer in the paper, targeting beautiful young socialites, and worries that the killings coincide with periods for which he has no memory.</p><p>As the story continues, we learn more of Little Brain, and how her commercialization is a major factor in the development of Malik's fury.</p><blockquote>This creature of his own imagining, born of his best self and purest endeavour, was turning before his eyes into the kind of monster of tawdry celebrity he most profoundly abhorred. His original and now obliterated Little Brain had been genuinely smart, able to hold her own with Erasmus or Schopenhauer. She had been beautiful and sharp tongued, but she had swum in the sea of ideas, living the life of the mind. This revised edition, over which he had long ago lost creative control, had the intellect of a slightly over-average chimpanzee. Day by day she became a creature of the entertainment microverse, her music videos - yes, she was a recording artist now! - out-raunching Madonna's, her appearances at premiers out-Hurleying every starlet who ever trod the red carpet in a dangerous frock. She was a video game and a cover girl, and this, remember, in her personal appearance mode at least, was essentially a woman whose own head was completely concealed inside the iconic doll's. ... Professor Solanka remained aloof, refusing all invitations to discuss his out-of-control creation. The money, however, he was unable to refuse. Royalties continued to pour into his bank account. He was compromised by greed, and the compromise sealed his lips. Contractually bound not to attack the goose that laid the golden eggs, he had to bottle up his thoughts and, in keeping his own counsel, filled up with the bitter bile of his many discontents. With every new media initiative spearheaded by the character he had once delineated with such sprightliness and care, his impotent fury grew. ... Fury stood above him like a cresting Hokusai wave. Little Brain was his deliquent child grown into a rampaging giantess, who now stood for everything he despised and trampled beneath her giant feet all the high principles he had brought her into being to extol; including, evidently, his own. ... Malik Solanka was forced to admit a terrible truth. He hated Little Brain. (98-100)</blockquote><p>He meets Mila Milo, intelligent daughter of Yugoslavian poet, playing at being a street teen-queen, and one of Little Brain's biggest fans. She even looks like her. Mila 'adopts' Malik and gets him to take another look at the world. I laughed out loud at her response to Malik's confession, quoted above. She told him about her father, having a great time drinking, smoking, loving and working himself to death, until he decided he was needed in the war between the Serbs and Croats:</p><blockquote>That's what I started out to say, Professor, don't talk to me about fury, I know what it can do. America, because of its omnipotence, is full of fear; it fears the fury of the world and renames it envy, or so my dad used to say. They think we want to be them, he'd say after a few hits of hooch, but really we're just mad as hell and don't want to take it any more. See, he knew about fury. But then he set aside what he knew and behaved like a damn fool. Because about five minutes after he landed in Belgrade - or maybe it was five hours or five days or five weeks, who, like, <em>cares</em>? - the fury blew him to pieces and there wasn't enough of him found to collect up and put in a box. So, yeah, Professor, and you're mad about a doll. Well, excuse <em>me</em>. (114)</blockquote><p>Mila turns out to be an extremely interesting character, one who kept me reading late into many early mornings.</p><blockquote>Mila's special thing turned out to be the collection and repair of damaged people... (117-8)</blockquote><p>I will leave you to discover her for yourself, and the ways in which she, herself, is a damaged person... and Neela, another brilliantly depicted, amazing character... and the new generation of puppets that Solanka creates... as I am finding myself being tempted to type out something from almost every page! At the start of this review, I referred to Malik Solanka as the hero, but in inverted commas. This is because he is not (until the very last moment) really very heroic. It is the women who shine in this novel, and the three women in Solanka's lovelife - his wife, Eleanor, Mila and Neela - who are really the heroines. (This feminine triumvirate echoes the three Furies, who are also major factors in the novel). I think I have said enough now to justify the high score I am going to give this one - and my heartiest recommendation so far!</p><p>If you have not studied English lierature, or are not American, there are going to be places where you feel a little lost among the names being dropped. However, the novel is so well-written and entertaining that you can easily let your eyes glaze over and skim these sections without losing anything of the story. Sure, at times, elements of the story are too way-out to be believable. The constant slapstick caused by Neela's head-turning beauty, for example, or the overly-simplistic responses of those involved in the civil war in Lilliput-Blefescue... but I did not find these elements out of place in a satirical comedy. If I had to choose something to dislike about this novel, it would be the dismissal of God and religion as a force in the society - but in a way, this works more powerfully than if religion were explicitly referred to, as in a novel so densely packed with cultural references, it is made more conspicuous by its absence. Where there were dismissive comments, I found myself internally arguing with the narrator, and after a while I began to wonder if this was Rushdie's intention. It is, on the whole, a very intelligent, active work that is larger not only than life - it is larger than fiction! The ending, by the way, was perfect - a joyful, hopeful image that I loved. Then there was a page headed "About the Author". The rest of the page, and the following pages were blank. I thought this was a nice touch, too - the book speaks for itself!</p><p>On finishing the novel, I have no hesitation in confirming my initial reaction - WOW! What an incredible story! The personal narrative of the characters is interwoven with social commentary so skilfully that it never really becomes intrusive or extraneous... just when you start to even think about getting bored, the plot takes a twist and you are right back in the middle of the action. It was also educational as well as being entertaining! For the first time in ages I found myself needing to look up a word (oenophile - one who appreciates and enjoys wine). There are stories within stories in this novel, and it would easily repay serious study, while remaining a fascinating experience for the casual reader. I really recommend this one! (Sorry about the over-effusive use of exclamation marks in this review. For once I wholeheartedly agree with the advertising hyperbole on the cover of 'Fury' - "A wickedly dark comedy from one of the world's truly great writers.")</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-85566678780995986302007-10-21T06:38:00.000+10:002007-10-21T06:53:06.120+10:0045. The Body Artist - Don DeLillo<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik8SlCDftrX95acNcoYAY3EijkKZDepaMD5NsgFpPk8WjK1G8B62Ko5oStXQD_PAVfYWbCZKIDUhmL5rJaFCe8sQLmU0npy-NtfaU27utQDrp1PQHFov-JCcr0hLiZgD_ZZA/s1600-h/body+artist.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik8SlCDftrX95acNcoYAY3EijkKZDepaMD5NsgFpPk8WjK1G8B62Ko5oStXQD_PAVfYWbCZKIDUhmL5rJaFCe8sQLmU0npy-NtfaU27utQDrp1PQHFov-JCcr0hLiZgD_ZZA/s200/body+artist.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123524802858727026" /></a><p>I raced through most of this slim novel with a slightly superior sneer on my face. It was weird, incomprehensible, boring. I would give it a 1/10, or even a zero, because there was no chance I was going to read it again. It started with the last, unremarkable breakfast between a man and his wife (Lauren) - he smoking a cigarette, she sniffing the foot-odour of her cereal, reading the paper, watching the birds. Then he drives into town and shoots himself in his first wife's apartment and Lauren is left alone.</p><p>Or is she? The center of the novel contains her obsession with the retarded man she finds living in her house, and her obsession with reshaping (torturing?) her own body. It feels repetitive, circular, uneventful. The reader feels somewhat embarrassed for her, pestering this poor unfortunate to repeat snippets of past conversations in her husband's voice, desperately trying to make him make sense. Then suddenly this child-man is gone and she is alone again. </p><p>It was at this point, almost at the very end of the novel, that I found myself pulled in and willingly riding "the wind-swayed web."(7) Nothing really happened, except that somehow, I began to understand - and to care. I want to quote the passage that marked my turning point:</p><blockquote>She wanted to create her future, not enter a state already shaped to her outline.<br><br>Something is happening. It has happened. It will happen. This is what she believed. There is a story. A flow of consciousness and a possibility. The future comes into being.<br><br>But not for him.<br><br>He hasn't learned the language. There has to be an imaginary point, a nonplace where language intersects with our perceptions of time and space, and he is a stranger at this crossing, without words or bearings.<br>...<br><br>This is a man who remembers the future.<br><br>...<br>If you examine the matter methodically, you realize that he is a retarded man sadly gifted in certain specialized areas, such as memory retention and mimicry, a man who'd been concealed in a large house, listening.<br><br>Nothing else makes sense.<br><br>It is a thing no one understands. But it makes and shapes you. And in these nights since he'd left she sometimes sat with a book in her lap, eyes closed, and felt him living somewhere in the dark, and it is colder where he is, it is wintrier there, and she wanted to take him in, try to know him in the spaces where his chaos lurks, in all the soft-cornered rooms and unravelling verbs, the parts of speech where he is meant to locate his existence, and in the material place where Rey lives in him, alive again, word for word, touch for touch, and she opened and closed her eyes and thought in a blink the world had changed.<br><br>He violates the limits of the human. (99-100)</blockquote><p>This question of what it means to be human, which had been so easy to dismiss and distance myself from, suddenly had me in its grasp. The author is masterful in his choice of when and how to reveal what it means to be a 'body artist'. Everything you have read so far in the novel seems altered when you realise what she, Lauren, had been preparing for. What she is and what she does as a performance artist. I won't spoil the surprise.</p><p>As the novel draws to a close, I began to suspect more and more that everything had not been as simple and straightforward as it seemed. Did the retarded man exist at all, or was he part of her creation, a rehearsal, a coping mechanism, or a madness?</p><blockquote>Why shouldn't the death of a person you love bring you into lurid ruin? You don't know how to love the ones you love until they disappear abruptly. Then you understand how thinly distanced from their suffering, how sparing of self you often were, only rarely unguarded of heart, working your networks of give-and-take. ... Sink lower, she thought. Let it bring you down. Go where it takes you. (116)</blockquote><p>So, with my sneer replaced by an expression of wonder, I reached the last page, regretting only that it was 3am and I couldn't immediately turn back to the first page and start again. This is one of those novels that I suspect will change and alter the reader's perceptions with every reading: "A flow of consciousness and a possibility." Externally, nothing really happens - nature and time move on, it is colder, the birds come to the feeders or they do not - but internally? The possibilities are endless.</p><p>Chances I will read it again? 6/10 For a while there it was a definite 10, but then I thought about the other 995 books on the list still waiting to be reviewed... this one was intriguing, but not fascinating enough to guarantee it an instant place among my all time favourites. Certainly one to remember, though.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-75279388223114719652007-10-08T07:03:00.000+10:002007-10-08T22:54:35.475+10:0011. The Lambs of London - Peter Ackroyd<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs2vQyvv6CoHC1Ca6C4xJE1BkluHM68dehxSrUca1sD8uYQXOiuyyxiijDfMQoY9Aj_wt_PYhSWRM_A6Lg4j_HSz_KIATaRgD5BWfiy21t_uL50eKiNEiHX12jGMHT7HQNog/s1600-h/lambs.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjs2vQyvv6CoHC1Ca6C4xJE1BkluHM68dehxSrUca1sD8uYQXOiuyyxiijDfMQoY9Aj_wt_PYhSWRM_A6Lg4j_HSz_KIATaRgD5BWfiy21t_uL50eKiNEiHX12jGMHT7HQNog/s200/lambs.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5118712006314331570" /></a><p>When I first realised this book concerned fictionalised versions of Charles and Mary Lamb, writers of 'Shakespeare for Children' in the late eighteenth / early nineteenth century, I was intrigued. Other reviewers have attempted to unravel historical fact from the invented narrative, so I will focus mainly on the novel's effect on me as a work of fiction. I must admit I was disappointed.</p><p>This is a novel of fakes and false appearances. However, this theme appears to have pervaded every aspect of the writing. The characters felt very much like cardboard cutouts being moved around an artfully decorated stage. </p><p>Charles and Mary Lamb live with their parents - their father senile with alzheimer's, and their mildly annoying mother, whose chief sin seems to be that she nags her children and treats her husband as an infant. Mary is in delicate physical and mental health following her recovery from smallpox, yet since her mother refuses to hire another servant, the brunt of domestic life falls on her shoulders (though we never see her cooking, cleaning, shopping or anything else in this line). She is sensitive and intellectual and longs for the companionship and esteem of her brother. He, in turn, dreams of a shining future as a writer, drowning his disenchantment with his mundane job in alcohol while discussing literature with his workmates at various local drinking establishments. When he returns home 'sozzled', it is Mary who removes his boots and tucks him into bed. Mary is in fact the better scholar of the two, but Charles makes light of her achievements: "He laughed again, and ruffled her hair. She tried to smile but then lowered her head; she felt vain and foolish." </p><p>There is a strong feminist subtext in Mary's story, beginning with the association between her and the moon (symbolic of her slide into lunacy) which is drawn in the first paragraph:</p><blockquote>"There was no one in the drawing-room with her, so she put her face upwards, towards the sun. Her skin was marked by the scars of smallpox, suffered by her six years before; so she held her face to the light, and imagined it to be the pitted moon." </blockquote><p>However, this much more interesting story exists in potential only, for Ackroyd conjures it only superficially as part of the larger narrative. Mary herself is constantly pushed into the background whenever she tries to emerge - by the author as much as by the other characters. </p><p>Along comes William Ireland, who excites Mary with his discovery of lost Shakespearean texts and artifacts. She is flattered by his attention and confidences, and cherishes romantic feelings towards him, but is ultimately destroyed (we assume) by his lukewarm dalliance and betrayal of her trust. When Mary overhears him confessing to his father that he forged the Shakespearean texts she so ardently supported on his behalf, Mary's heart is broken. She goes home and stabs her mother to death. There is a court case, Mary is committed to a private asylum for the insane, and Charles cares for her until she dies suddenly (while watching him perform a snippet of A Midsummer Night's Dream for her amusement).</p><p>Ireland, apparently, created the forgeries 'because he could' and to impress his father, who is obsessed with all things Shakespearean. His 'art for art's sake' motivation comes into conflict with his father's profit motive. He appears to have bothered with Mary purely in order to enlist her brother's help in authenticating the fakes, having been an eager eavesdropper on Charles' drunken literary conversations.</p><p>Ackroyd's recreation of Shakespearean poetry is quite well done and believable, as is the Georgian setting. There are lots of little historical details which give a nice background to the story. Overall, however, I found it unsatisfying. The idolatry of Shakespeare feels overdone and unjustified - perhaps more 'readings' from the bard himself might have helped?</p><p>One reviewer has called the novel: "an irreverent romp, a somewhat bawdy journey through 1790s London, thrusting the reader into the stuffy world of antiquarian literature and the people who think so highly of it." (Michael Leonard, The Lambs of London, <a href="http://www.curledup.com/lamblond.htm">Curledup.com</a>) As far as I am concerned, the 'bawdy' details were thrown in for purely gratuitous effect and stuck out like sore thumbs. There were only two such scenes - in the first, 17 year old William Ireland loses his virginity to a prostitute while riding on the roof of a public carriage, with his father seated inside. This was mildly amusing, but I looked in vain for the comedic aspects of this scene to appear elsewhere in the novel! The other involves an authorial aside giving details of the pederastic abuse of a young Carribean boy by two intellectual doctors. Neither of these two scenes (or characters) are ever referred to again and they seem to exist as vignettes, simply to give a 'flavour' to the age.</p><p>My favourite character in the novel was Mr Lamb, whose non-sequiter ramblings seemed more warmly human than almost anything else that was going on:</p><blockquote>When her mother had left the room, Mary sat down beside him on the faded green divan. ‘Did you sing at the service, Pa?’<br><br>‘The minister was mistaken.’<br><br>‘On what matter?’<br><br>‘There are no rabbits in Worcestershire.’<br><br>‘Are there not?’<br><br>‘No, nor muffins neither.’<br><br>Mrs Lamb professed to believe that there was some wisdom in her husband’s ramblings, but Mary knew that there was none. Yet he interested her more now than he had ever done; she was intrigued by the strange and random phrases that issued from him. It was as if language was talking to itself.<br><br>‘Are you cold, Pa?’<br><br>‘Just an error in the accounts.’<br><br>‘Do you suppose?’<br><br>‘A red letter day.’</blockquote><p>My overall impression was that the novel skipped around from scene to scene without really stopping to explore its themes in detail. I would agree wholeheartedly with the reviewer from The Age, who said: </p><blockquote>"The character of Mrs Lamb is even more sketchily drawn. We only really glimpse the inexplicable contempt of her children towards her, their desire to keep her at arm's length. As a consequence Mary appears highly strung and Charles charmless.<br><br>Ackroyd opens with his standard disclaimer. "This is not a biography but a work of fiction. I have invented characters and changed the life of the Lamb family for the sake of the larger narrative." Given Mary Lamb's historical notoriety the larger narrative might have benefited from a little more attention to the life of the Lambs and a little less to the well-chewed mutton of the literary fake." (Micheal Williams, The Lambs of London, <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/09/23/1095651455771.html">The Age</a>)</blockquote><p>I must say that I think a historically accurate biography of the Lambs would be more interesting. After all, Mary did actually murder her mother with the carving knife, and Charles did look after her, but she survived him by many many years - and neither of them ever knew William Ireland... (Murder by carving knife, <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2004/08/08/boack208.xml&sSheet=/arts/2004/08/08/bomain.html">Telegraph.co.uk</a>)</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-42729477016027626862007-10-05T00:14:00.000+10:002007-10-08T22:54:49.386+10:001. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkjP_N809PtakRYuu5uKaet5C6Ot_73Pe-y5Wu1tSUyDiiVmLv6vUCZ_2zSj3DQTI7G7STFpt3rgGPeJUAflRtWSakQQufLFh_96NvtuWFuT1ul6shXebbKuPkTN83KlOpcw/s1600-h/1+never+let+me+go.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5117485212048805378" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkjP_N809PtakRYuu5uKaet5C6Ot_73Pe-y5Wu1tSUyDiiVmLv6vUCZ_2zSj3DQTI7G7STFpt3rgGPeJUAflRtWSakQQufLFh_96NvtuWFuT1ul6shXebbKuPkTN83KlOpcw/s200/1+never+let+me+go.jpg" border="0" /></a>This is a strange, sad novel and I'm really at a loss to describe how I feel about it. To quote another reviewer, it is: "an intriguing, chilling and ultimately desolate fable." (Caroline Moore, Meanings Behind Masks; <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/03/06/boish06.xml&sSheet=/arts/2005/03/06/bomain.html">Telegraph.co.uk</a>) The genre is most easily described as science fiction, but so restrained that the plot seems well within the bounds of possibility. It is like reading about an alternative reality which would take very little to mesh seamlessly with our own. The thirty-one year old narrator, Kathy H, is reliable and her reminiscences are told in a confiding, conversational tone that assumes the reader shares a similar background. Key terms are left undefined and the reader must piece together the clues as the novel progresses. The disorientation this creates is an integral part of the novel's strategy - the reader is constantly kept off balance and so does not ask for or expect the nitty-gritty details of how these things could actually happen. Here is an excerpt from the novel's beginning which shows how ordinary words seem to take on unexplained, extraordinary meanings, and also how Kathy includes the reader in the narrative, constructing you as a student, a carer, and eventually a donor.<br /><blockquote><p>I won't be a carer any more come the end of the year, and though I've got a lot out of it, I have to admit I'll welcome the chance to rest - to stop and think and remember. I'm sure it's at least partly to do with that, to do with preparing for the change of pace, that I've been getting this urge to reorder all these old memories. What I really wanted, I suppose, was to get straight all the things that happened between me and Tommy and Ruth after we grew up and left Hailsham. But I realise now just how much of what occurred later came out of our time at Hailsham, and that's why I want first to go over these earlier memories quite carefully. ... I don't know if you had 'collections' where you were. When you come across old students from Hailsham, you always find them, sooner or later, getting nostalgic about their collections. At the time, of course, we took it all for granted.</p></blockquote><br /><p>This technique seems harmlessly inclusive at the start, but by cleverly insinuating the reader into the narrative, the novel's concerns become our own, preparing the way for some frightening questions at the end. I found it easy to 'take it all for granted' while I was reading, but the real impact of this novel occurs after you have read the final page and put it away!<br /></p><p><br />Most of Kathy's memories are centered on her days at Hailsham, which at first appears to be a privileged boarding school with a slightly strange over-emphasis on the children's health and creativity. The narrative revolves around the love triangle that develops between Kathy and her friends, Ruth and Tommy. The student's lives seem relatively normal, but there is a sinister, over protective atmosphere at the school which grows as they, and the reader, gradually learn the truth about their purpose in life. Even then, nothing is grasped with certainty - the language is pervaded with qualifiers: "maybe", "somehow", "perhaps", and Kathy matter-of-factly accepts her own inability to grasp any certainty about her existence: "Of course, I'll never know for sure," and "I don't really understand it."<br /></p><p><br />When they 'graduate' from the school, they are released into a society which seems alien to them - a world of relationships and economics in which they exist as observors, playing no real part, waiting for the next, mysterious phase of their life to begin. I am struck by a butterfly metaphor here - at Hailsham, the students are caterpillars, voraciously devouring the education that is fed to them, and when they are released, as they cling to each other and try to adjust to their new life, they seem to cocoon themselves in their memories of the life they have left. One by one they 'hatch' and move on to start their new futures - but here the metaphor fails - no glorious flight of freedom awaits them. In a way, the students' upbringing at Hailsham (and similar establishments across Britain) seems to have instilled in them a kind of mechanical detachment, so while in one sense they are learning to live and love as typical emotional adolescents, there is always that awareness of external complications and expectations that we can't quite see or understand. This is best illustrated by the intricate mechanical animals which Tommy begins to draw:<br /></p><br /><blockquote><p>I was taken aback at how densely detailed each one was. in fact it took a moment to see they were animals at all. The first impression was like one you’d get if you took the back off a radio set: tiny canals, weaving tendons, miniature screws and wheels were all drawn with obsessive precision, and only when you held the page away could you see it was some kind of armadillo, say, or a bird. . . . For all their busy, metallic features, there was something sweet, even vulnerable about each of them.</p></blockquote><br /><p><br />The reality, which the reader has suspected from the start, is that Kathy and her friends are clones, created for the sole purpose of becoming organ donors. The real mystery of the novel is ostensibly why Hailsham placed such an emphasis on their personal development, seeing as they were destined never to have any real future. The reader is not the only one who finds this bewildering.<br /></p><br /><blockquote><p>"Why train us, encourage us, make us produce all of that? If we're just going to give donations anyway, then die, why all of those lessons?"</p></blockquote><br /><p><br />However, a stronger underlying mystery which has kept me thinking and rethinking about this novel, is why, as adults, the students are so accepting of their fate. There is one scene where Kathy and Tommy are driving at night through a lonely countryside, returning from a meeting where all their hopes of - not escaping - but delaying their inevitable final donations have been destroyed. In a way, they are driving back to certain death. I found myself screaming at them to stop. To turn down some quiet side road and spend the rest of their lives together, instead of docilely submitting themselves to be used and thrown away - not in ignorance, but fully aware and willingly sacrificing themselves, because that is what they were born to do.<br /></p><p><br />My feelings about this novel are brilliantly summed up in the following quote from The Guardian:<br /></p><br /><blockquote><p>"It's about the steady erosion of hope. It's about repressing what you know, which is that in this life people fail one another, grow old and fall to pieces. It's about knowing that while you must keep calm, keeping calm won't change a thing. Beneath Kathy's flattened and lukewarm emotional landscape lies the pure volcanic turmoil, the unexpressed yet perfectly articulated, perfectly molten rage of the orphan. ... This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been." (M John Harrison, Clone Alone; <a href="http://books.guardian.co.uk/bookerprize2005/story/0,,1546492,00.html">Guardian Unlimited</a>)</p></blockquote><br /><p><br />We are left wondering - but the temptation to dismiss the characters as not fully human, as somehow emotionally deficient, cannot stand against the caring relationships and creative expression that the reader has shared through Kathy's eyes. The worrying conclusion then becomes would we, too, with sufficient indoctrination, willingly acquiesce in such a fate?<br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-54748168452811427002007-08-16T16:25:00.000+10:002007-10-08T22:55:05.433+10:002. Saturday - Ian McEwan<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1NkpP7o-waFDehB4xROEF8ApEvMfy2XNbY8bDU5B7PTcVB1IlR2YqTBmNvXltiTxHV2K8xDgSiUar_mn4x07VhHvoH1hJZneDEq2DexRerfRBKE8128WZ-XmQEMij7Uogg/s1600-h/saturday.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5099181618191379186" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1NkpP7o-waFDehB4xROEF8ApEvMfy2XNbY8bDU5B7PTcVB1IlR2YqTBmNvXltiTxHV2K8xDgSiUar_mn4x07VhHvoH1hJZneDEq2DexRerfRBKE8128WZ-XmQEMij7Uogg/s200/saturday.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><p>This novel continues in the footsteps of Virginia Woolf's <em>Mrs Dalloway</em> and James Joyce's <em>Ulysses</em> by encapsulating a single day in the life of its main character - in this case, a British neurosurgeon named Henry Perowne.</p><p>The edition I picked up from the library had 4 pages of "international praise" at the start of the book - quotes from many reviewers lauding the brilliance of McEwan's writing. It is certainly an achievement which any aspiring writer may envy and desire to emulate. A quick and easy read, it kept me turning the pages quite contentendly, but it somehow lacked that dazzling quality which would inspire me to want to read it again. </p><p>Perowne is generally an attractive and likeable, though somewhat apologetic character, and the action centres around him preparing for a small family reunion on a day when London is brought to a standstill by an immense peace demonstration against the war in Iraq. </p><p>Most of the novel's themes are summed up in the following passage, which takes place as Perowne chooses fish for the stew he plans to make that evening.<br /></p><blockquote>"He turns the corner into Paddington Street and stoops in front of the open-air display of fish on a steeply raked slab of white marble. He sees at a glance that everything he needs is here. Such abundance from the emptying seas. On the tiled floor by the open doorway, piled in two wooden crates like rusting industrial rejects, are the crabs and lobsters, and in the tangle of warlike body parts there is discernible movement. On their pincers they're wearing funereal black bands. It's fortunate for the fishmonger and his customers that sea creatures are not adapted to make use of sound waves and have no voice. Otherwise there'd be howling from those crates. Even the silence among the softly stirring crowd is troubling. He turns his gaze away, towards the bloodless white flesh, and eviscerated silver forms with their unaccusing stare, and the deep-sea fish arranged in handy overlapping steaks of innocent pink, like cardboard pages of a baby's first book. Naturally, Perowne the fly-fisherman has seen the recent literature: scores of polymodal nociceptor sites just like ours in the head and neck of rainbow trout. It was once convenient to think biblically, to believe we're surrounded for our benefit by edible automata on land and sea. Now it turns out that even fish feel pain. This is the growing complication of the modern condition, the expanding circle of moral sympathy. Not only distant people are our brothers and sisters, but foxes too, and laboratory mice, and now the fish. Perowne goes on catching and eating them, and though he'd never drop a live lobster into boiling water, he's prepared to order one in a restaurant. The trick, as always, the key to human success and domination, is to be selective in your mercies. For all the discerning talk, it's the close at hand, the visible that exerts the overpowering force. And what you don't see... That's why in gentle Marylebone the world seems so entirely at peace." (p 127)<br /></blockquote><br /><p>This is not an environmental novel - and from memory, these fish are the only animals mentioned - but the ways in which human perceptions of our place in the universe have changed, the way in which world events and moral reactions to them are viewed broadly, ambiguously and with only partial understanding, and then narrowed to the realm of immediate individual decisions on how to act and think, how decisions are coloured by personality how they change and develop as events impact upon the characters - these concerns are typical of the novel as a whole. </p><p>Perowne is most human in his interactions with his family - his busy lawyer wife Rosalind, his poet daughter Daisy, and blues-singing son Theo. Poetry actually plays a major role in the novel - though Perowne has limited literary tastes, his cantankerous father-in-law is a published poet and his daughter has just had her first volume published. Perowne struggles to understand the fascination and is more interested in what Daisy's poems seem to reveal about her life away from the family. He forces himself to try and understand the art, both for her sake and because he worries he might have missed something worthwhile in his single-minded focus on a medical career. </p><blockquote>"Novels and movies, being restlessly modern, propel you forwards or backwards through time, through days, years or even generations. But to do its noticing and judging, poetry balances itself on the pinprick of a moment. Slowing down, stopping yourself completely, to read and understand a poem is like trying to acquire an old-fashioned skill like drystone walling or trout tickling." (p129) </blockquote><p>Poetry and literature and music are another element, just as the water was for Perowne's mother (a champion swimmer), or the physical structure of the human brain is for Perowne himself. There is a kind of escapist challenge in being able to immerse yourself in this 'other', abandoning your personality and temporarily forgetting the wash of events going on around you. </p><p>The only real action in the novel centers around a street thug named Baxter. Perowne narrowly escapes a violent confrontation with him by accurately diagnosing his medical condition, and the encounter leaves him physically and mentally uncomfortable for the rest of the day. That evening, when the family is finally gathered together, Baxter invades their home. There is potential for disaster, for Perowne's comfortable, luxurious world to be ripped apart, but in the end it is only Baxter who really gets hurt. Perowne assuages his guilt (feeling he should have handled the original altercation better) by operating to save Baxter's life, in the process deciding to forgive him and ensure he lives the rest of his short life expectancy with proper institutionalised care.</p><p>The turning point in the home invasion comes when Daisy, naked and vulnerable, quotes Mathew Arnold's poem 'Dover Beach' to Baxter (he had demanded she read something of her own from her book). I found this the most unconvincing moment of the story, perhaps because that poem has never been one that spoke to me.</p><blockquote>"Daisy recited a poem that cast a spell on one man. Perhaps any poem would have done the trick, and thrown the switch on a sudden mood change. Still, Baxter fell for the magic, he was transfixed by it, and he was reminded how much he wanted to live. No one can forgive him the use of the knife. But Baxter heard what Henry never has, and probably never will, despite all Daisy's attempts to educate him." (p278)</blockquote><p>Poetry, music, good food and wine - a comfortable existence transposed on a world of turmoil, of vaguely troubling thoughts and doubts about terrorism, war and genocide. At the end of the novel, Perowne stands at his window looking out at the pre-dawn, just as he did at the beginning, only now he thinks about what a doctor standing there a hundred years ago might have thought, about how lifestyles and expectations have changed over time. The novel was first published in 2005, but already it feels rather dated. I would be surprised if it endured to be a classic read in the next century.</p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-33089361939768251832007-08-06T15:59:00.000+10:002007-10-08T22:55:20.530+10:00723. Ulysses - James Joyce<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH06PHioB4k6_PgazKQ_EaIl6d8iODGI3RnrnGj9KXwGTLCXYbSMSr8DEfb0nXEcSc5rUkaL-ih1yQEHBgL-L52QkyLl6ZF65v_uC4ORT6DXc7fKCIMlBQxP_I798_bCoCkQ/s1600-h/ulysses.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5095463485824053346" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH06PHioB4k6_PgazKQ_EaIl6d8iODGI3RnrnGj9KXwGTLCXYbSMSr8DEfb0nXEcSc5rUkaL-ih1yQEHBgL-L52QkyLl6ZF65v_uC4ORT6DXc7fKCIMlBQxP_I798_bCoCkQ/s200/ulysses.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br />When I first downloaded <em>Ulysses</em> from Gutenberg and started reading it, I was very much inclined to agree with Michelle from <a href="http://scribbit.blogspot.com/"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Scribbit</span></a>'s assessment of it as spam. Then I noticed that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Alkeda</span> the Gleeful (<a href="http://saintsandspinners.blogspot.com/">Saints and Spinners</a>) counted it among her favourite books, and figured if a children's storyteller likes it, it must be worth another chance. There is also my renowned literary masochism. If I start reading something, I will finish it, no matter how bad it is (well, almost).After all, if I could wade my way through <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Something_Happened">Something Happened </a>(in which nothing happened except my increasing desire to throttle the narrator... and then hit him over the head with a sledgehammer... and maybe run him over with a garbage truck for good measure) then I ought to persist in finishing a classic text like <em>Ulysses</em>. I do want to read all 1001 on the "Books you must read before you die" list... and <em>Ulysses</em> is there at number 723.<br /><br />Despite all this, the Gutenberg text was just not managing to attract my attention during my rare moments of computer time. Then my father's graduation present arrived. For some strange reason, knowing my love of literature, Dad carried an attractively boxed set of Joyce's complete works back to Australia from Amsterdam of all places. As Yeti said, of all the works in English literature, Dad managed to pick the one author whose works I had almost totally avoided studying (except for <em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Dubliners</span></em>, Joyce's collection of short stories, which I quite enjoyed). If it had been the complete works of Dickens, or Woolf, or any number of other authors, I would have been veraciously devouring it... but now, faced with a gorgeous green and gold copy of <em>Ulysses</em> in three tiny volumes, I had no excuse not to dive in.<br /><br />To a large extent, I am still in agreement with <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Scribbit</span>. I don't mind works being intellectually difficult, but I object when the lexicon needed to appreciate (or even begin to understand) a novel threatens to be three times the size of the actual novel! Not having such an aid to comprehension at hand, I found myself skimming pages with only a very very dim idea of what was being said (forget the Latin and French - half the time I can't figure out the English - even with a dictionary!).<br /><br />However, in a way I can appreciate Joyce's experiment as a continuation of Virginia Woolf's view that "identity, rather than depending on the concrete circumstances of a person's life, is primarily constructed from within, through an <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">individual's</span> deployment of language." (Kate Flint, 'The Waves', in Julia Briggs (ed) <em>Virginia Woolf - Introduction to the Major Works</em>)<br /><br />This is directly connected with one of my favourite Woolf quotes:<br /><br /><blockquote>Supposing the looking-glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people - what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror; that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness in our eyes. And the novelists in future will realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the description of reality more and more out of their stories, taking knowledge of it for granted. (Virginia Woolf, <em>Mark on the Wall</em>)</blockquote><br />Despite my longstanding fascination with this quote, and my vague desire to one day put it into practice, I am finding myself reading Joyce purely for those momentary depictions of reality and avoiding (as much as possible) engaging with the characters musings in the 'mirror'. I must applaud Joyce's mastery, for each time I grow bored and my attention starts to drift, he tucks in a little gem of lovely poetic description which wins me back to his cause. I find some of these are too real for my taste. I will spare you the graphic picture of a dog investigating the decomposing corpse of another dog which is now indelibly fixed in my memory. Instead, here is a beautiful image of the sea:<br /><br /><blockquote>It flows, purling, widely flowing, floating <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">foampool</span>, flower unfurling.<br />Under the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">upswelling</span> tide he saw the writhing arms lift languidly and sway reluctant arms, hissing up their petticoats, in whispering water swaying and upturning coy silver fronds. Day by day: night by night: lifted, flooded and let fall. Lord, they are weary; and, whispered to, they sigh.</blockquote><br /><br />The success of Joyce's experiment in Woolf's theory also shines through the contrast between the inner worlds of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Dedalus</span> and Mr Bloom. We are catapulted from Stephen's <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">shoreside</span> symphony to the mundane <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">musak</span> of Leopold's thoughts, while making breakfast for his wife and feeding his cat.<br /><br />As I read on... and on... and on... I became less enamoured with the experiment. Stephen <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Dedalus's</span> long narrative in which he discourses on Shakespeare seemed interminable, and even Leopold Bloom's narrative became tedious over time, particularly when I realised he was engaging in what must be one of the longest descriptions of a fart in English literature.<br /><br />There were moments of brilliance. I enjoyed the voyeurism of the scene with the three girls on the beach in the chapter called <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Nausicca</span>, but then we were back to Bloom's musings on the event, which were less than inspiring. Once again, however, Joyce managed to tuck in that little poetic description that kept me reading for more - Bloom sees a bat in the evening air: "Like a little man in a cloak he is with tiny hands. Weeny bones. Almost see them shimmering, kind of a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">bluey</span> white."<br /><br />With most 'adult' books, when my one year old gets bored with Mummy reading, I can read a bit aloud to him and he is happy. My major grudge against <em>Ulysses</em> is that it is absolutely impossible to read aloud - even some of the bits that look like real words!!! Honestly, I thought lawyers were guilty of writing the most convoluted <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">english</span>, until I came upon this sentence (which is just one example among many):<br /><br /><blockquote>Universally that person's acumen is esteemed very little perceptive concerning whatsoever matters are being held as most profitable by mortals with sapience endowed to be studied who is ignorant of that which the most in doctrine erudite and certainly by reason of that in them high mind's ornament deserving of veneration constantly maintain when by general consent they affirm that other circumstances being equal by no exterior splendour is the prosperity of a nation more efficaciously asserted than by the measure of how far forward may have progressed the tribute of its solicitude for that <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">proliferant</span> continuance which of evils the original if it be absent when fortunately present constitutes the certain sign of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">omnipollent</span> benefaction.</blockquote><br /><br />This little snippet is followed, so far as I can gather, by a number of men (some of them doctors, but also including Bloom & Stephen <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Dedalus</span>) holding a drunken feast in the dining room of a maternity hospital - an episode told in the language of medieval epic. Throughout Ulysses, Joyce borrows from various kinds of 'high-flown' discourse, covering almost every genre you can think of since the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_17">english</span> novel began - but there's so much of it, it really gets incredibly tedious.<br /><br />At the end of the chapter entitled <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_18">Eumaeus</span>, Joyce makes his clearest reference to the modernist thinking that I believe underlies this novel. Bloom and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_19">Dedalus</span> are staggering back to Bloom's house when they see a sweeper horse. What follows is another of Joyce's classic moments of epiphany.<br /><br /><blockquote>Bloom looked at the head of the horse ... suddenly in evidence in the dark quite near, so that <b>it seemed new</b>, a different grouping of bones and even flesh, because palpably it was a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_20">fourwalker</span>, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_21">hipshaker</span>, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_22">blackbuttocker</span>, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_23">taildangler</span>, a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_24">headhanger</span>, putting his hind foot foremost the while the lord of his creation sat on the perch, busy with his thoughts. But such a good poor brute, he was sorry he hadn't a lump of sugar, but as he wisely reflected, you could scarcely be prepared for every emergency that might crop up. He was just a big foolish nervous <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_25">noodly</span> kind of a horse, without a second care in the world. (my emphasis)</blockquote><br /><br />In addition to these moments of epiphany - the clear-seeing and clear-saying - my other reason for persevering with <em>Ulysses</em> right to the end is for the feel and flow of Dublin life at the start of the twentieth century.<br /><br />I did regret my decision a number of times during the Circe chapter. There were several scenes in that which I would rather not have fed into my imagination. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_26">Uggghhh</span>. In contrast, Molly Bloom's rambling amorous musings in the final chapter, Penelope, were at least slightly amusing and generally inoffensive so I was able to put the novel down having somewhat assuaged my general distaste.<br /><br />The major flaw with <em>Ulysses</em>, in my opinion, is that it is too long - although the narrative covers only a single day, it also incorporates the entirety of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_27">english</span> literature! If it were condensed into just one of these volumes, it would be a highly enjoyable novel! The great catch cry of the modernists was "make it new". This Joyce has certainly done. However, in my opinion, he has not managed to make it readable - and it is definitely not in the language of the common man!!!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-7002765308787289152007-07-07T15:25:00.000+10:002007-10-08T22:55:35.102+10:00864. Therese Raquin - Emile Zola<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5rLVMjbQsXCTBi4cyzUUUJpuym-XpvwrNNCQ3L1zNNkOZz3aL1Drytyl1WHwIdZyqdHbouDuiHBMq4torAn8WaMqeg6QNnsR0_1EyKwDSBZ2sX3Bhif6fbItniXvT_Hzpg/s1600-h/Therese_raquin.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5084322049783896210" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjN5rLVMjbQsXCTBi4cyzUUUJpuym-XpvwrNNCQ3L1zNNkOZz3aL1Drytyl1WHwIdZyqdHbouDuiHBMq4torAn8WaMqeg6QNnsR0_1EyKwDSBZ2sX3Bhif6fbItniXvT_Hzpg/s400/Therese_raquin.jpg" border="0" /></a> I may be still plodding through <em>Ulysses</em>, but I raced through <em>Therese Raquin</em>.<br /><br />Set in Paris, first published in 1867, I would classify it as a gothic novel - there are no castles, but there is a haunting. It has that classic mixture of romance and horror, with a macabre twist at the end.<br /><br />Therese is the orphaned daughter of a French soldier and an African princess. Left with her aunt as a baby, Therese is raised as a companion for her invalid cousin. Every natural impulse is stifled as this healthy child lives an enforced existence of stillness and quiet. Therese is even made to take her cousin's medicines, as he won't take them unless she does too.<br /><br />When the cousins are old enough, the aunt arranges for them to marry, to ensure that her beloved son will always have someone to look after him. As each piece of Therese's inner character is revealed, vibrant and alive, in contrast to the dark, damp shop in which the family come to live, the reader knows that eventually she must break free from these constraints.<br /><br />This is how Therese sees the small circle of guests who gather at the Raquin table every Thursday night to play dominoes:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Therese could not find one human being, not one living being among these grotesque and sinister creatures, with whom she was shut up; sometimes she had hallucinations, she imagined herself buried at the bottom of a tomb, in company with mechanical corpses, who, when the strings were pulled, moved their heads, and agitated their legs and arms. The thick atmosphere of the dining-room stifled her; the shivering silence, the yellow gleams of the lamp penetrated her with vague terror, and inexpressible anguish. ... until eleven o'clock, she remained oppressed in her chair, watching Francois (the cat) whom she held in her arms, so as to avoid seeing the cardboard dolls grimacing around her."</blockquote><br /><br />There are so many wild emotions bottled up inside Therese that an explosion of passion and tragedy seem inevitable. Nor is the reader disappointed.<br /><br />The spark comes when Therese's husband, Camille, brings home an old friend from their childhood. Laurent's main attraction lies in his physical contrast to the weak creatures with whom Therese is surrounded. He is strong, with large hands and a thick "bull-like" neck that fascinates Therese. However, any sense that he will be a romantic saviour for Therese is offset by his self-confessed greed and laziness. Laurent is no hero - but compared to Camille, his brutish physical ardour is irresistable.<br /><br />The reader's premonition of tragedy is enhanced by the portrait which Laurent paints of Camille:<br /><br /><blockquote>"The next day, when Laurent had given the canvas the last touch, all the family assembled to go into raptures over the striking resemblance. The portrait was vile, a dirty grey colour with large violescent patches. Laurent could not use even the brightest colours, without making them dull and muddy. In spite of himself he had exaggerated the wan complexion of his model, and the countenance of Camille resembled the greenish visage of a person who had met death by drowning. The grimacing drawing threw the features into convulsions, thus rendering the sinister resemblance all the more striking. But Camille was delighted; he declared that he had the appearance of a person of distinction on the canvas."</blockquote><br />An affair begins between Therese and Laurent, and to Laurent's surprise, he finds that Therese, whom he had thought ugly, flowers into beauty when her features are animated.<br /><br />I will not spoil the rest of the story - you can go to Wikipedia if you want to know what happens next - or better still, read the book! Just don't expect a happy-ever-after ending!<br /><br />Zola has a talent for description, and at each stage of the book, the environment mirrors the emotions of the characters:<br /><br /><blockquote>"Nothing looks more painfully calm than an autumn twilight. The sun rays pale in the quivering air, the old trees cast their leaves. The country, scorched by the ardent beams of summer, feels death coming with the first cold winds. And, in the sky, there are plaintive sighs of despair. Night falls from above, bringing winding sheets in its shade."</blockquote><br />This is not a book I would advise reading before bedtime! The scenes in the morgue are particularly gruesome.<br /><br />It is a psychological horror story whose main theme is divine justice. Those who do wrong are not punished by social forces, but their guilt means they find no rest or happiness until they finally punish themselves. It is well written and the moral is conveyed through the actions and emotions of the characters - there is no external moralising by the author to interrupt the flow of the story.<br /><br />I read Therese Raquin in easy installments emailed to me by <a href="http://www.dailylit.com/books/therese-raquin">Daily Lit</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-42727422543917153192007-06-17T07:18:00.000+10:002007-06-17T07:25:32.573+10:00DailyLitI am still slogging through Joyce's Ulysses, but have been making notes as I go, so the moment I finish I can post my review. Since I have it as an actual book, I am reading while I do my exercise each morning.<br /><br />For many of the other books on this list, I don't own a copy, won't be able to afford to buy one, and am not hopeful of finding them in my rural library. <br /><br />However, I have found a way to access some of them: <br /><br /><a href="http://www.dailylit.com/home">DailyLit</a> has a large selection of titles, and will email you the the whole book, broken up into convenient small messages that take less than 5 minutes to read. You can choose how frequently the emails are sent.<br /><br />Although not quite as convenient for me as reading while on my exercise bike, this does seem like a good way to read books which I can't obtain any other way. Maybe one day I will get lucky and be able to afford a PDA so I can still read & exercise at the same time!!!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-55954366178267821952007-05-15T03:31:00.009+10:002018-11-26T17:59:09.777+11:00The LISTThe list of 1001 books comes from a reference book written by <a href="http://shop.abc.net.au/browse/product.asp?productid=162397">Dr Peter Boxhall </a>(an English literature professor at the University of Sussex) and his team. It has received a lot of attention (including a lot of complaints about peoples' favourite books being left of the list, or the inclusion of books people don't like). Despite that, it looks like my kind of fun - especially since most of my reading so far occurs at the far end of the list... I will have to make sure I choose some of the more modern novels as well :)<br />
<br />
It will take me a while to get it all pasted into the side bar, so in the meantime, here is the FULL list. (I have italicized the ones I have read previously - though I do hope to read them again!)<br />
<br />
<strong>2000s</strong><br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>1.Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro</s></span><br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>2.Saturday – Ian McEwan</s></span><br />
3.On Beauty – Zadie Smith<br />
4.Slow Man – J.M. Coetzee<br />
5.Adjunct: An Undigest – Peter Manson<br />
6.The Sea – John Banville<br />
7.The Red Queen – Margaret Drabble<br />
8.The Plot Against America – Philip Roth<br />
9.The Master – Colm Tóibín<br />
10.Vanishing Point – David Markson<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>11.The Lambs of London – Peter Ackroyd</s></span><br />
12.Dining on Stones – Iain Sinclair<br />
13.Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell<br />
14.Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle<br />
15.The Colour – Rose Tremain<br />
16.Thursbitch – Alan Garner<br />
17.The Light of Day – Graham Swift<br />
18.What I Loved – Siri Hustvedt<br />
19.The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon<br />
20.Islands – Dan Sleigh<br />
21.Elizabeth Costello – J.M. Coetzee<br />
22.London Orbital – Iain Sinclair<br />
23.Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry<br />
24.Fingersmith – Sarah Waters<br />
25.The Double – José Saramago<br />
26.Everything is Illuminated – Jonathan Safran Foer<br />
27.Unless – Carol Shields<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>28.Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami</s></span><br />
29.The Story of Lucy Gault – William Trevor<br />
30.That They May Face the Rising Sun – John McGahern<br />
31.In the Forest – Edna O’Brien<br />
32.Shroud – John Banville<br />
33.Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides<br />
34.Youth – J.M. Coetzee<br />
35.Dead Air – Iain Banks<br />
36.Nowhere Man – Aleksandar Hemon<br />
37.The Book of Illusions – Paul Auster<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>38.Gabriel’s Gift – Hanif Kureishi</s></span><br />
39.Austerlitz – W.G. Sebald<br />
40.Platform – Michael Houellebecq<br />
41.Schooling – Heather McGowan<br />
42.Atonement – Ian McEwan<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>43.The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen</s></span><br />
44.Don’t Move – Margaret Mazzantini<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>45.The Body Artist – Don DeLillo</s></span><br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>46.Fury – Salman Rushdie</s></span><br />
47.At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill<br />
48.Choke – Chuck Palahniuk<br />
49.Life of Pi – Yann Martel<br />
50.The Feast of the Goat – Mario Vargos Llosa<br />
51.An Obedient Father – Akhil Sharma<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>52.The Devil and Miss Prym – Paulo Coelho</s></span><br />
53.Spring Flowers, Spring Frost – Ismail Kadare<br />
54.White Teeth – Zadie Smith<br />
55.The Heart of Redness – Zakes Mda<br />
56.Under the Skin – Michel Faber<br />
57.Ignorance – Milan Kundera<br />
58.Nineteen Seventy Seven – David Peace<br />
59.Celestial Harmonies – Péter Esterházy<br />
60.City of God – E.L. Doctorow<br />
61.How the Dead Live – Will Self<br />
62.The Human Stain – Philip Roth<br />
63.The Blind Assassin – Margaret Atwood<br />
64.After the Quake – Haruki Murakami<br />
65.Small Remedies – Shashi Deshpande<br />
66.Super-Cannes – J.G. Ballard<br />
67.House of Leaves – Mark Z. Danielewski<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>68.Blonde – Joyce Carol Oates</s></span><br />
69.Pastoralia – George Saunders<br />
<br />
<strong>1900s</strong><br />
70.Timbuktu – Paul Auster<br />
71.The Romantics – Pankaj Mishra<br />
72.Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson<br />
73.As If I Am Not There – Slavenka Drakuli<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>74.Everything You Need – A.L. Kennedy</s></span><br />
75.Fear and Trembling – Amélie Nothomb<br />
76.The Ground Beneath Her Feet – Salman Rushdie<br />
77.Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee<br />
78.Sputnik Sweetheart – Haruki Murakami<br />
79.Elementary Particles – Michel Houellebecq<br />
80.Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi<br />
81.Amsterdam – Ian McEwan<br />
82. Cloudsplitter – Russell Banks<br />
83.All Souls Day – Cees Nooteboom<br />
84.The Talk of the Town – Ardal O’Hanlon<br />
85.Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters<br />
86.The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver<br />
87. Glamorama – Bret Easton Ellis<br />
88.Another World – Pat Barker<br />
89.The Hours – Michael Cunningham<br />
90. Veronika Decides to Die – Paulo Coelho<br />
91.Mason & Dixon – Thomas Pynchon<br />
92.The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy<br />
93.Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden<br />
94.Great Apes – Will Self<br />
95.Enduring Love – Ian McEwan<br />
96.Underworld – Don DeLillo<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">97.Jack Maggs – Peter Carey </span></em><br />
98.The Life of Insects – Victor Pelevin<br />
99.American Pastoral – Philip Roth<br />
100.The Untouchable – John Banville<br />
101.Silk – Alessandro Baricco<br />
102.Cocaine Nights – J.G. Ballard<br />
103.Hallucinating Foucault – Patricia Duncker<br />
104.Fugitive Pieces – Anne Michaels<br />
105.The Ghost Road – Pat Barker<br />
106.Forever a Stranger – Hella Haasse<br />
107.Infinite Jest – David Foster Wallace<br />
108.The Clay Machine-Gun – Victor Pelevin<br />
109.Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood<br />
110.The Unconsoled – Kazuo Ishiguro<br />
111. Morvern Callar – Alan Warner<br />
112.The Information – Martin Amis<br />
113.The Moor’s Last Sigh – Salman Rushdie<br />
114.Sabbath’s Theater – Philip Roth<br />
115.The Rings of Saturn – W.G. Sebald<br />
116.The Reader – Bernhard Schlink<br />
117.A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry<br />
118.Love’s Work – Gillian Rose<br />
119.The End of the Story – Lydia Davis<br />
120.Mr. Vertigo – Paul Auster<br />
121.The Folding Star – Alan Hollinghurst<br />
122.Whatever – Michel Houellebecq<br />
123.Land – Park Kyong-ni<br />
124.The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee<br />
125.The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami<br />
126. Pereira Declares: A Testimony – Antonio Tabucchi<br />
127.City Sister Silver – Jàchym Topol<br />
128.How Late It Was, How Late – James Kelman<br />
129.Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres<br />
130.Felicia’s Journey – William Trevor<br />
131.Disappearance – David Dabydeen<br />
132.The Invention of Curried Sausage – Uwe Timm<br />
133.The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx<br />
134.Trainspotting – Irvine Welsh<br />
135.Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks<br />
136.Looking for the Possible Dance – A.L. Kennedy<br />
137.Operation Shylock – Philip Roth<br />
138.Complicity – Iain Banks<br />
139.On Love – Alain de Botton<br />
140.What a Carve Up! – Jonathan Coe<br />
141.A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth<br />
142.The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields<br />
143.The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides<br />
144.The House of Doctor Dee – Peter Ackroyd<br />
145.The Robber Bride – Margaret Atwood<br />
146.The Emigrants – W.G. Sebald<br />
147.The Secret History – Donna Tartt<br />
148.Life is a Caravanserai – Emine Özdamar<br />
149.The Discovery of Heaven – Harry Mulisch<br />
150.A Heart So White – Javier Marias<br />
151.Possessing the Secret of Joy – Alice Walker<br />
152.Indigo – Marina Warner<br />
153.The Crow Road – Iain Banks<br />
154.Written on the Body – Jeanette Winterson<br />
155.Jazz – Toni Morrison<br />
156.The English Patient – Michael Ondaatje<br />
157. Smilla’s Sense of Snow – Peter Høeg<br />
158.The Butcher Boy – Patrick McCabe<br />
159.Black Water – Joyce Carol Oates<br />
160.The Heather Blazing – Colm Tóibín<br />
161.Asphodel – H.D. (Hilda Doolittle)<br />
162.Black Dogs – Ian McEwan<br />
163.Hideous Kinky – Esther Freud<br />
164.Arcadia – Jim Crace<br />
165.Wild Swans – Jung Chang<br />
166.American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis<br />
167.Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis<br />
168.Mao II – Don DeLillo<br />
169.Typical – Padgett Powell<br />
170.Regeneration – Pat Barker<br />
171.Downriver – Iain Sinclair<br />
172. Señor Vivo and the Coca Lord – Louis de Bernieres<br />
173.Wise Children – Angela Carter<br />
174.Get Shorty – Elmore Leonard<br />
175. Amongst Women – John McGahern<br />
176. Vineland – Thomas Pynchon<br />
177.Vertigo – W.G. Sebald<br />
178.Stone Junction – Jim Dodge<br />
179.The Music of Chance – Paul Auster<br />
180.The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien<br />
181.A Home at the End of the World – Michael Cunningham<br />
182.Like Life – Lorrie Moore<br />
183.Possession – A.S. Byatt<br />
184.The Buddha of Suburbia – Hanif Kureishi<br />
185.The Midnight Examiner – William Kotzwinkle<br />
186.A Disaffection – James Kelman<br />
187.Sexing the Cherry – Jeanette Winterson<br />
188.Moon Palace – Paul Auster<br />
189.Billy Bathgate – E.L. Doctorow<br />
190.Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro<br />
191.The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai<br />
192.The Temple of My Familiar – Alice Walker<br />
193.The Trick is to Keep Breathing – Janice Galloway<br />
194.The History of the Siege of Lisbon – José Saramago<br />
195.Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel<br />
196.A Prayer for Owen Meany – John Irving<br />
197.London Fields – Martin Amis<br />
198. The Book of Evidence – John Banville<br />
199. Cat’s Eye – Margaret Atwood<br />
200. Foucault’s Pendulum – Umberto Eco<br />
201.The Beautiful Room is Empty – Edmund White<br />
202.Wittgenstein’s Mistress – David Markson<br />
203.The Satanic Verses – Salman Rushdie<br />
204.The Swimming-Pool Library – Alan Hollinghurst<br />
205.Oscar and Lucinda – Peter Carey<br />
206.Libra – Don DeLillo<br />
207.The Player of Games – Iain M. Banks<br />
208.Nervous Conditions – Tsitsi Dangarembga<br />
209.The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams<br />
210.Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams<br />
211.The Radiant Way – Margaret Drabble<br />
212.The Afternoon of a Writer – Peter Handke<br />
213.The Black Dahlia – James Ellroy<br />
214.The Passion – Jeanette Winterson<br />
215.The Pigeon – Patrick Süskind<br />
216.The Child in Time – Ian McEwan<br />
217.Cigarettes – Harry Mathews<br />
218.The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe<br />
219.The New York Trilogy – Paul Auster<br />
220.World’s End – T. Coraghessan Boyle<br />
221.Enigma of Arrival – V.S. Naipaul<br />
222.The Taebek Mountains – Jo Jung-rae<br />
223.Beloved – Toni Morrison<br />
224.Anagrams – Lorrie Moore<br />
225. Matigari – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o<br />
226. Marya – Joyce Carol Oates<br />
227.Watchmen – Alan Moore & David Gibbons<br />
228.The Old Devils – Kingsley Amis<br />
229.Lost Language of Cranes – David Leavitt<br />
230.An Artist of the Floating World – Kazuo Ishiguro<br />
231.Extinction – Thomas Bernhard<br />
232.Foe – J.M. Coetzee<br />
233.The Drowned and the Saved – Primo Levi<br />
234.Reasons to Live – Amy Hempel<br />
235.The Parable of the Blind – Gert Hofmann<br />
236.Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel García Márquez<br />
237.Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit – Jeanette Winterson<br />
238.The Cider House Rules – John Irving<br />
239.A Maggot – John Fowles<br />
240.Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis<br />
241.Contact – Carl Sagan<br />
242.The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood<br />
243.Perfume – Patrick Süskind<br />
244.Old Masters – Thomas Bernhard<br />
245.White Noise – Don DeLillo<br />
246.Queer – William Burroughs<br />
247. Hawksmoor – Peter Ackroyd<br />
248.Legend – David Gemmell<br />
249.Dictionary of the Khazars – Milorad Pavi?<br />
250.The Bus Conductor Hines – James Kelman<br />
251.The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis – José Saramago<br />
252.The Lover – Marguerite Duras<br />
253.Empire of the Sun – J.G. Ballard<br />
254.The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks<br />
255.Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter<br />
256.The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Milan Kundera<br />
257.Blood and Guts in High School – Kathy Acker<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">258.Neuromancer – William Gibson </span></em><br />
259.Flaubert’s Parrot – Julian Barnes<br />
260.Money: A Suicide Note – Martin Amis<br />
261.Shame – Salman Rushdie<br />
262. Worstward Ho – Samuel Beckett<br />
263.Fools of Fortune – William Trevor<br />
264.La Brava – Elmore Leonard<br />
265. Waterland – Graham Swift<br />
266.The Life and Times of Michael K – J.M. Coetzee<br />
267.The Diary of Jane Somers – Doris Lessing<br />
268.The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek<br />
269.The Sorrow of Belgium – Hugo Claus<br />
270.If Not Now, When? – Primo Levi<br />
271.A Boy’s Own Story – Edmund White<br />
272.The Color Purple – Alice Walker<br />
273.Wittgenstein’s Nephew – Thomas Bernhard<br />
274.A Pale View of Hills – Kazuo Ishiguro<br />
275.Schindler’s Ark – Thomas Keneally<br />
276.The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende<br />
277.The Newton Letter – John Banville<br />
278.On the Black Hill – Bruce Chatwin<br />
279.Concrete – Thomas Bernhard<br />
280.The Names – Don DeLillo<br />
281.Rabbit is Rich – John Updike<br />
282. Lanark: A Life in Four Books – Alasdair Gray<br />
283.The Comfort of Strangers – Ian McEwan<br />
284.July’s People – Nadine Gordimer<br />
285.Summer in Baden-Baden – Leonid Tsypkin<br />
286.Broken April – Ismail Kadare<br />
287.Waiting for the Barbarians – J.M. Coetzee<br />
288.Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie<br />
289.Rites of Passage – William Golding<br />
290.Rituals – Cees Nooteboom<br />
291.Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole<br />
292.City Primeval – Elmore Leonard<br />
293.The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco<br />
294.The Book of Laughter and Forgetting – Milan Kundera<br />
295.Smiley’s People – John Le Carré<br />
296. Shikasta – Doris Lessing<br />
297.A Bend in the River – V.S. Naipaul<br />
298.Burger’s Daughter - Nadine Gordimer<br />
299.The Safety Net – Heinrich Böll<br />
300.If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler – Italo Calvino<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">301.The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams</span> </em><br />
302.The Cement Garden – Ian McEwan<br />
303.The World According to Garp – John Irving<br />
304.Life: A User’s Manual – Georges Perec<br />
305.The Sea, The Sea – Iris Murdoch<br />
306.The Singapore Grip – J.G. Farrell<br />
307.Yes – Thomas Bernhard<br />
308.The Virgin in the Garden – A.S. Byatt<br />
309.In the Heart of the Country – J.M. Coetzee<br />
310.The Passion of New Eve – Angela Carter<br />
311.Delta of Venus – Anaïs Nin<br />
312.The Shining – Stephen King<br />
313.Dispatches – Michael Herr<br />
314.Petals of Blood – Ngugi Wa Thiong’o<br />
315.Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison<br />
316.The Hour of the Star – Clarice Lispector<br />
317.The Left-Handed Woman – Peter Handke<br />
318. Ratner’s Star – Don DeLillo<br />
319.The Public Burning – Robert Coover<br />
320.Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice<br />
321.Cutter and Bone – Newton Thornburg<br />
322.Amateurs – Donald Barthelme<br />
323.Patterns of Childhood – Christa Wolf<br />
324.Autumn of the Patriarch – Gabriel García Márquez<br />
325.W, or the Memory of Childhood – Georges Perec<br />
326.A Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell<br />
327. Grimus – Salman Rushdie<br />
328.The Dead Father – Donald Barthelme<br />
329. Fateless – Imre Kertész<br />
330.Willard and His Bowling Trophies – Richard Brautigan<br />
331.High Rise – J.G. Ballard<br />
332.Humboldt’s Gift – Saul Bellow<br />
333.Dead Babies – Martin Amis<br />
334.Correction – Thomas Bernhard<br />
335.Ragtime – E.L. Doctorow<br />
336.The Fan Man – William Kotzwinkle<br />
337. Dusklands – J.M. Coetzee<br />
338.The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum – Heinrich Böll<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">339.Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – John Le Carré </span></em><br />
340.Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.<br />
341.Fear of Flying – Erica Jong<br />
342.A Question of Power – Bessie Head<br />
343.The Siege of Krishnapur – J.G. Farrell<br />
344.The Castle of Crossed Destinies – Italo Calvino<br />
345.Crash – J.G. Ballard<br />
346.The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene<br />
347.Gravity’s Rainbow – Thomas Pynchon<br />
348.The Black Prince – Iris Murdoch<br />
349. Sula – Toni Morrison<br />
350.Invisible Cities – Italo Calvino<br />
351.The Breast – Philip Roth<br />
352.The Summer Book – Tove Jansson<br />
353.G – John Berger<br />
354.Surfacing – Margaret Atwood<br />
355.House Mother Normal – B.S. Johnson<br />
356.In A Free State – V.S. Naipaul<br />
357.The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow<br />
358.Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson<br />
359.Group Portrait With Lady – Heinrich Böll<br />
360.The Wild Boys – William Burroughs<br />
361.Rabbit Redux – John Updike<br />
362.The Sea of Fertility – Yukio Mishima<br />
363.The Driver’s Seat – Muriel Spark<br />
364.The Ogre – Michael Tournier<br />
365.The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison<br />
366.Goalie’s Anxiety at the Penalty Kick – Peter Handke<br />
367.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou<br />
368. Mercier et Camier – Samuel Beckett<br />
369.Troubles – J.G. Farrell<br />
370. Jahrestage – Uwe Johnson<br />
371.The Atrocity Exhibition – J.G. Ballard<br />
372.Tent of Miracles – Jorge Amado<br />
373. Pricksongs and Descants – Robert Coover<br />
374.Blind Man With a Pistol – Chester Hines<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">375.Slaughterhouse-five – Kurt Vonnegut, Jr</span></em>.<br />
376.The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles<br />
377.The Green Man – Kingsley Amis<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">378.Portnoy’s Complaint – Philip Roth </span></em><br />
379.The Godfather – Mario Puzo<br />
380.Ada – Vladimir Nabokov<br />
381.Them – Joyce Carol Oates<br />
382.A Void/Avoid – Georges Perec<br />
383.Eva Trout – Elizabeth Bowen<br />
384.Myra Breckinridge – Gore Vidal<br />
385.The Nice and the Good – Iris Murdoch<br />
386.Belle du Seigneur – Albert Cohen<br />
387.Cancer Ward – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn<br />
388.The First Circle – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn<br />
389.2001: A Space Odyssey – Arthur C. Clarke<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">390.Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? – Philip K. Dick </span></em><br />
391.Dark as the Grave Wherein My Friend is Laid – Malcolm Lowry<br />
392.The German Lesson – Siegfried Lenz<br />
393.In Watermelon Sugar – Richard Brautigan<br />
394.A Kestrel for a Knave – Barry Hines<br />
395.The Quest for Christa T. – Christa Wolf<br />
396. Chocky – John Wyndham<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">397.The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe </span></em><br />
398.The Cubs and Other Stories – Mario Vargas Llosa<br />
399.One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel García Márquez<br />
400.The Master and Margarita – Mikhail Bulgakov<br />
401.Pilgrimage – Dorothy Richardson<br />
402.The Joke – Milan Kundera<br />
403.No Laughing Matter – Angus Wilson<br />
404.The Third Policeman – Flann O’Brien<br />
405.A Man Asleep – Georges Perec<br />
406.The Birds Fall Down – Rebecca West<br />
407.Trawl – B.S. Johnson<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">408.In Cold Blood – Truman Capote</span></em><br />
409.The Magus – John Fowles<br />
410.The Vice-Consul – Marguerite Duras<br />
411.Wide Sargasso Sea – Jean Rhys<br />
412.Giles Goat-Boy – John Barth<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">413.The Crying of Lot 49 – Thomas Pynchon</span> </em><br />
414.Things – Georges Perec<br />
415.The River Between – Ngugi wa Thiong’o<br />
416.August is a Wicked Month – Edna O’Brien<br />
417.God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater – Kurt Vonnegut<br />
418.Everything That Rises Must Converge – Flannery O’Connor<br />
419.The Passion According to G.H. – Clarice Lispector<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">420.Sometimes a Great Notion – Ken Kesey </span></em><br />
421.Come Back, Dr. Caligari – Donald Bartholme<br />
422.Albert Angelo – B.S. Johnson<br />
423.Arrow of God – Chinua Achebe<br />
424.The Ravishing of Lol V. Stein – Marguerite Duras<br />
425. Herzog – Saul Bellow<br />
426.V. – Thomas Pynchon<br />
427.Cat’s Cradle – Kurt Vonnegut<br />
428.The Graduate – Charles Webb<br />
429.Manon des Sources – Marcel Pagnol<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">430.The Spy Who Came in from the Cold – John Le Carré </span></em><br />
431.The Girls of Slender Means – Muriel Spark<br />
432.Inside Mr. Enderby – Anthony Burgess<br />
433.The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath<br />
434.One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich – Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn<br />
435.The Collector – John Fowles<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>436.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest – Ken Kesey</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>437.A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess</s></span><br />
438.Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov<br />
439.The Drowned World – J.G. Ballard<br />
440.The Golden Notebook – Doris Lessing<br />
441.Labyrinths – Jorg Luis Borges<br />
442.Girl With Green Eyes – Edna O’Brien<br />
443.The Garden of the Finzi-Continis – Giorgio Bassani<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">444.Stranger in a Strange Land – Robert Heinlein </span></em><br />
445.Franny and Zooey – J.D. Salinger<br />
446.A Severed Head – Iris Murdoch<br />
447.Faces in the Water – Janet Frame<br />
448.Solaris – Stanislaw Lem<br />
449.Cat and Mouse – Günter Grass<br />
450.The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie – Muriel Spark<br />
451.Catch-22 – Joseph Heller<br />
452.The Violent Bear it Away – Flannery O’Connor<br />
453.How It Is – Samuel Beckett<br />
454.Our Ancestors – Italo Calvino<br />
455.The Country Girls – Edna O’Brien<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">456.To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee </span></em><br />
457.Rabbit, Run – John Updike<br />
458.Promise at Dawn – Romain Gary<br />
459.Cider With Rosie – Laurie Lee<br />
460.Billy Liar – Keith Waterhouse<br />
461.Naked Lunch – William Burroughs<br />
462.The Tin Drum – Günter Grass<br />
463.Absolute Beginners – Colin MacInnes<br />
464.Henderson the Rain King – Saul Bellow<br />
465.Memento Mori – Muriel Spark<br />
466.Billiards at Half-Past Nine – Heinrich Böll<br />
467.Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote<br />
468.The Leopard – Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa<br />
469.Pluck the Bud and Destroy the Offspring – Kenzaburo Oe<br />
470.A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute<br />
471.The Bitter Glass – Eilís Dillon<br />
472.Things Fall Apart – Chinua Achebe<br />
473.Saturday Night and Sunday Morning – Alan Sillitoe<br />
474.Mrs. ‘Arris Goes to Paris – Paul Gallico<br />
475.Borstal Boy – Brendan Behan<br />
476.The End of the Road – John Barth<br />
477.The Once and Future King – T.H. White<br />
478.The Bell – Iris Murdoch<br />
479.Jealousy – Alain Robbe-Grillet<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">480.Voss – Patrick White </span></em><br />
481.The Midwich Cuckoos – John Wyndham<br />
482.Blue Noon – Georges Bataille<br />
483.Homo Faber – Max Frisch<br />
484.On the Road – Jack Kerouac<br />
485.Pnin – Vladimir Nabokov<br />
486.Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak<br />
487.The Wonderful “O” – James Thurber<br />
488.Justine – Lawrence Durrell<br />
489.Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin<br />
490.The Lonely Londoners – Sam Selvon<br />
491.The Roots of Heaven – Romain Gary<br />
492.Seize the Day – Saul Bellow<br />
493.The Floating Opera – John Barth<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">494.The Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien</span> </em><br />
495.The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith<br />
496.Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov<br />
497.A World of Love – Elizabeth Bowen<br />
498.The Trusting and the Maimed – James Plunkett<br />
499.The Quiet American – Graham Greene<br />
500.The Last Temptation of Christ – Nikos Kazantzákis<br />
501.The Recognitions – William Gaddis<br />
502.The Ragazzi – Pier Paulo Pasolini<br />
503.Bonjour Tristesse – Françoise Sagan<br />
504.I’m Not Stiller – Max Frisch<br />
505.Self Condemned – Wyndham Lewis<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">506.The Story of O – Pauline Réage</span> </em><br />
507.A Ghost at Noon – Alberto Moravia<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">508.Lord of the Flies – William Golding</span> </em><br />
509.Under the Net – Iris Murdoch<br />
510.The Go-Between – L.P. Hartley<br />
511.The Long Goodbye – Raymond Chandler<br />
512.The Unnamable – Samuel Beckett<br />
513.Watt – Samuel Beckett<br />
514.Lucky Jim – Kingsley Amis<br />
515.Junkie – William Burroughs<br />
516.The Adventures of Augie March – Saul Bellow<br />
517.Go Tell It on the Mountain – James Baldwin<br />
518.Casino Royale – Ian Fleming<br />
519.The Judge and His Hangman – Friedrich Dürrenmatt<br />
520.Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison<br />
521.The Old Man and the Sea – Ernest Hemingway<br />
522.Wise Blood – Flannery O’Connor<br />
523.The Killer Inside Me – Jim Thompson<br />
524.Memoirs of Hadrian – Marguerite Yourcenar<br />
525.Malone Dies – Samuel Beckett<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">526.Day of the Triffids – John Wyndham </span></em><br />
527.Foundation – Isaac Asimov<br />
528.The Opposing Shore – Julien Gracq<br />
529.The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger<br />
530.The Rebel – Albert Camus<br />
531.Molloy – Samuel Beckett<br />
532.The End of the Affair – Graham Greene<br />
533.The Abbot C – Georges Bataille<br />
534.The Labyrinth of Solitude – Octavio Paz<br />
535.The Third Man – Graham Greene<br />
536.The 13 Clocks – James Thurber<br />
537.Gormenghast – Mervyn Peake<br />
538.The Grass is Singing – Doris Lessing<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">539.I, Robot – Isaac Asimov</span> </em><br />
540.The Moon and the Bonfires – Cesare Pavese<br />
541.The Garden Where the Brass Band Played – Simon Vestdijk<br />
542.Love in a Cold Climate – Nancy Mitford<br />
543.The Case of Comrade Tulayev – Victor Serge<br />
544.The Heat of the Day – Elizabeth Bowen<br />
545.Kingdom of This World – Alejo Carpentier<br />
546.The Man With the Golden Arm – Nelson Algren<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">547.Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell</span></em><br />
548.All About H. Hatterr – G.V. Desani<br />
549.Disobedience – Alberto Moravia<br />
550.Death Sentence – Maurice Blanchot<br />
551.The Heart of the Matter – Graham Greene<br />
552.Cry, the Beloved Country – Alan Paton<br />
553.Doctor Faustus – Thomas Mann<br />
554.The Victim – Saul Bellow<br />
555.Exercises in Style – Raymond Queneau<br />
556.If This Is a Man – Primo Levi<br />
557.Under the Volcano – Malcolm Lowry<br />
558.The Path to the Nest of Spiders – Italo Calvino<br />
559.The Plague – Albert Camus<br />
560.Back – Henry Green<br />
561.Titus Groan – Mervyn Peake<br />
562.The Bridge on the Drina – Ivo Andri?<br />
563.Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">564.Animal Farm – George Orwell</span></em><br />
565.Cannery Row – John Steinbeck<br />
566.The Pursuit of Love – Nancy Mitford<br />
567.Loving – Henry Green<br />
568.Arcanum 17 – André Breton<br />
569.Christ Stopped at Eboli – Carlo Levi<br />
570.The Razor’s Edge – William Somerset Maugham<br />
571.Transit – Anna Seghers<br />
572.Ficciones – Jorge Luis Borges<br />
573.Dangling Man – Saul Bellow<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">574.The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry </span></em><br />
575.Caught – Henry Green<br />
576.The Glass Bead Game – Herman Hesse<br />
577.Embers – Sandor Marai<br />
578.Go Down, Moses – William Faulkner<br />
579.The Outsider – Albert Camus<br />
580.In Sicily – Elio Vittorini<br />
581.The Poor Mouth – Flann O’Brien<br />
582.The Living and the Dead – Patrick White<br />
583.Hangover Square – Patrick Hamilton<br />
584.Between the Acts – Virginia Woolf<br />
585.The Hamlet – William Faulkner<br />
586.Farewell My Lovely – Raymond Chandler<br />
587.For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway<br />
588.Native Son – Richard Wright<br />
589.The Power and the Glory – Graham Greene<br />
590.The Tartar Steppe – Dino Buzzati<br />
591.Party Going – Henry Green<br />
592.The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck<br />
593.Finnegans Wake – James Joyce<br />
594.At Swim-Two-Birds – Flann O’Brien<br />
595.Coming Up for Air – George Orwell<br />
596.Goodbye to Berlin – Christopher Isherwood<br />
597.Tropic of Capricorn – Henry Miller<br />
598.Good Morning, Midnight – Jean Rhys<br />
599.The Big Sleep – Raymond Chandler<br />
600.After the Death of Don Juan – Sylvie Townsend Warner<br />
601.Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day – Winifred Watson<br />
602.Nausea – Jean-Paul Sartre<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">603.Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier</span></em><br />
604.Cause for Alarm – Eric Ambler<br />
605.Brighton Rock – Graham Greene<br />
606.U.S.A. – John Dos Passos<br />
607.Murphy – Samuel Beckett<br />
608.Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck<br />
609.Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">610.The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien </span></em><br />
611.The Years – Virginia Woolf<br />
612.In Parenthesis – David Jones<br />
613.The Revenge for Love – Wyndham Lewis<br />
614.Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen)<br />
615.To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway<br />
616.Summer Will Show – Sylvia Townsend Warner<br />
617.Eyeless in Gaza – Aldous Huxley<br />
618.The Thinking Reed – Rebecca West<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">619.Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">620.Keep the Aspidistra Flying – George Orwell </span></em><br />
621.Wild Harbour – Ian MacPherson<br />
622.Absalom, Absalom! – William Faulkner<br />
623.At the Mountains of Madness – H.P. Lovecraft<br />
624.Nightwood – Djuna Barnes<br />
625.Independent People – Halldór Laxness<br />
626.Auto-da-Fé – Elias Canetti<br />
627.The Last of Mr. Norris – Christopher Isherwood<br />
628.They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? – Horace McCoy<br />
629.The House in Paris – Elizabeth Bowen<br />
630.England Made Me – Graham Greene<br />
631.Burmese Days – George Orwell<br />
632.The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers<br />
633.Threepenny Novel – Bertolt Brecht<br />
634.Novel With Cocaine – M. Ageyev<br />
635.The Postman Always Rings Twice – James M. Cain<br />
636.Tropic of Cancer – Henry Miller<br />
637.A Handful of Dust – Evelyn Waugh<br />
638.Tender is the Night – F. Scott Fitzgerald<br />
639.Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse<br />
640.Call it Sleep – Henry Roth<br />
641.Miss Lonelyhearts – Nathanael West<br />
642.Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers<br />
643.The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas – Gertrude Stein<br />
644.Testament of Youth – Vera Brittain<br />
645.A Day Off – Storm Jameson<br />
646.The Man Without Qualities – Robert Musil<br />
647.A Scots Quair (Sunset Song) – Lewis Grassic Gibbon<br />
648.Journey to the End of the Night – Louis-Ferdinand Céline<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">649.Brave New World – Aldous Huxley </span></em><br />
650.Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons<br />
651.To the North – Elizabeth Bowen<br />
652.The Thin Man – Dashiell Hammett<br />
653.The Radetzky March – Joseph Roth<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">654.The Waves – Virginia Woolf</span> </em><br />
655.The Glass Key – Dashiell Hammett<br />
656.Cakes and Ale – W. Somerset Maugham<br />
657.The Apes of God – Wyndham Lewis<br />
658.Her Privates We – Frederic Manning<br />
659.Vile Bodies – Evelyn Waugh<br />
660.The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett<br />
661.Hebdomeros – Giorgio de Chirico<br />
662.Passing – Nella Larsen<br />
663.A Farewell to Arms – Ernest Hemingway<br />
664.Red Harvest – Dashiell Hammett<br />
665.Living – Henry Green<br />
666.The Time of Indifference – Alberto Moravia<br />
667.All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque<br />
668.Berlin Alexanderplatz – Alfred Döblin<br />
669.The Last September – Elizabeth Bowen<br />
670.Harriet Hume – Rebecca West<br />
671.The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner<br />
672.Les Enfants Terribles – Jean Cocteau<br />
673.Look Homeward, Angel – Thomas Wolfe<br />
674.Story of the Eye – Georges Bataille<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>675.Orlando – Virginia Woolf</s></span><br />
676.Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence<br />
677.The Well of Loneliness – Radclyffe Hall<br />
678.The Childermass – Wyndham Lewis<br />
679.Quartet – Jean Rhys<br />
680.Decline and Fall – Evelyn Waugh<br />
681.Quicksand – Nella Larsen<br />
682.Parade’s End – Ford Madox Ford<br />
683.Nadja – André Breton<br />
684.Steppenwolf – Herman Hesse<br />
685.Remembrance of Things Past – Marcel Proust<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">686.To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf </span></em><br />
687.Tarka the Otter – Henry Williamson<br />
688.Amerika – Franz Kafka<br />
689.The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway<br />
690.Blindness – Henry Green<br />
691.The Castle – Franz Kafka<br />
692.The Good Soldier Švejk – Jaroslav Hašek<br />
693.The Plumed Serpent – D.H. Lawrence<br />
694.One, None and a Hundred Thousand – Luigi Pirandello<br />
695.The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie<br />
696.The Making of Americans – Gertrude Stein<br />
697.Manhattan Transfer – John Dos Passos<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">698.Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf</span> </em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">699.The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald </span></em><br />
700.The Counterfeiters – André Gide<br />
701.The Trial – Franz Kafka<br />
702.The Artamonov Business – Maxim Gorky<br />
703.The Professor’s House – Willa Cather<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">704.Billy Budd, Foretopman – Herman Melville </span></em><br />
705.The Green Hat – Michael Arlen<br />
706.The Magic Mountain – Thomas Mann<br />
707.We – Yevgeny Zamyatin<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">708.A Passage to India – E.M. Forster </span></em><br />
709.The Devil in the Flesh – Raymond Radiguet<br />
710.Zeno’s Conscience – Italo Svevo<br />
711.Cane – Jean Toomer<br />
712.Antic Hay – Aldous Huxley<br />
713.Amok – Stefan Zweig<br />
714.The Garden Party – Katherine Mansfield<br />
715.The Enormous Room – E.E. Cummings<br />
716.Jacob’s Room – Virginia Woolf<br />
717.Siddhartha – Herman Hesse<br />
718.The Glimpses of the Moon – Edith Wharton<br />
719.Life and Death of Harriett Frean – May Sinclair<br />
720.The Last Days of Humanity – Karl Kraus<br />
721.Aaron’s Rod – D.H. Lawrence<br />
722.Babbitt – Sinclair Lewis<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>723.Ulysses – James Joyce</s></span><br />
724.The Fox – D.H. Lawrence<br />
725.Crome Yellow – Aldous Huxley<br />
726.The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton<br />
727.Main Street – Sinclair Lewis<br />
728.Women in Love – D.H. Lawrence<br />
729.Night and Day – Virginia Woolf<br />
730.Tarr – Wyndham Lewis<br />
731.The Return of the Soldier – Rebecca West<br />
732.The Shadow Line – Joseph Conrad<br />
733.Summer – Edith Wharton<br />
734.Growth of the Soil – Knut Hamsen<br />
735.Bunner Sisters – Edith Wharton<br />
736.A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man – James Joyce<br />
737.Under Fire – Henri Barbusse<br />
738.Rashomon – Akutagawa Ryunosuke<br />
739.The Good Soldier – Ford Madox Ford<br />
740.The Voyage Out – Virginia Woolf<br />
741.Of Human Bondage – William Somerset Maugham<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">742.The Rainbow – D.H. Lawrence </span></em><br />
743.The Thirty-Nine Steps – John Buchan<br />
744.Kokoro – Natsume Soseki<br />
745.Locus Solus – Raymond Roussel<br />
746.Rosshalde – Herman Hesse<br />
747.Tarzan of the Apes – Edgar Rice Burroughs<br />
748.The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists – Robert Tressell<br />
749.Sons and Lovers – D.H. Lawrence<br />
750.Death in Venice – Thomas Mann<br />
751.The Charwoman’s Daughter – James Stephens<br />
752.Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton<br />
753.Fantômas – Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">754.Howards End – E.M. Forster</span> </em><br />
755.Impressions of Africa – Raymond Roussel<br />
756.Three Lives – Gertrude Stein<br />
757.Martin Eden – Jack London<br />
758.Strait is the Gate – André Gide<br />
759.Tono-Bungay – H.G. Wells<br />
760.The Inferno – Henri Barbusse<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">761.A Room With a View – E.M. Forster </span></em><br />
762.The Iron Heel – Jack London<br />
763.The Old Wives’ Tale – Arnold Bennett<br />
764.The House on the Borderland – William Hope Hodgson<br />
765.Mother – Maxim Gorky<br />
766.The Secret Agent – Joseph Conrad<br />
767.The Jungle – Upton Sinclair<br />
768.Young Törless – Robert Musil<br />
769.The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy<br />
770.The House of Mirth – Edith Wharton<br />
771.Professor Unrat – Heinrich Mann<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">772.Where Angels Fear to Tread – E.M. Forster </span></em><br />
773.Nostromo – Joseph Conrad<br />
774.Hadrian the Seventh – Frederick Rolfe<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>775.The Golden Bowl – Henry James</s></span><br />
776.The Ambassadors – Henry James<br />
777.The Riddle of the Sands – Erskine Childers<br />
778.The Immoralist – André Gide<br />
779.The Wings of the Dove – Henry James<br />
780.Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad<br />
781.The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<br />
782.Buddenbrooks – Thomas Mann<br />
783.Kim – Rudyard Kipling<br />
784.Sister Carrie – Theodore Dreiser<br />
785.Lord Jim – Joseph Conrad<br />
<br />
<strong>1800s</strong><br />
786.Some Experiences of an Irish R.M. – Somerville and Ross<br />
787.The Stechlin – Theodore Fontane<br />
788.The Awakening – Kate Chopin<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">789.The Turn of the Screw – Henry James</span> </em><br />
790.The War of the Worlds – H.G. Wells<br />
791.The Invisible Man – H.G. Wells<br />
792.What Maisie Knew – Henry James<br />
793.Fruits of the Earth – André Gide<br />
794.Dracula – Bram Stoker<br />
795.Quo Vadis – Henryk Sienkiewicz<br />
796.The Island of Dr. Moreau – H.G. Wells<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>797.The Time Machine – H.G. Wells</i></span><br />
798.Effi Briest – Theodore Fontane<br />
799.Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy<br />
800.The Real Charlotte – Somerville and Ross<br />
801.The Yellow Wallpaper – Charlotte Perkins Gilman<br />
802.Born in Exile – George Gissing<br />
803.Diary of a Nobody – George & Weedon Grossmith<br />
804.The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle<br />
805.News from Nowhere – William Morris<br />
806.New Grub Street – George Gissing<br />
807.Gösta Berling’s Saga – Selma Lagerlöf<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">808.Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy </span></em><br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>809.The Picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde</s></span><br />
810.The Kreutzer Sonata – Leo Tolstoy<br />
811.La Bête Humaine – Émile Zola<br />
812.By the Open Sea – August Strindberg<br />
813.Hunger – Knut Hamsun<br />
814.The Master of Ballantrae – Robert Louis Stevenson<br />
815.Pierre and Jean – Guy de Maupassant<br />
816.Fortunata and Jacinta – Benito Pérez Galdés<br />
817.The People of Hemsö – August Strindberg<br />
818.The Woodlanders – Thomas Hardy<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">819.She – H. Rider Haggard </span></em><br />
<i>820.The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – Robert Louis Stevenson</i><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">821.The Mayor of Casterbridge – Thomas Hardy</span> </em><br />
822.Kidnapped – Robert Louis Stevenson<br />
823.King Solomon’s Mines – H. Rider Haggard<br />
824.Germinal – Émile Zola<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">825.The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain </span></em><br />
826.Bel-Ami – Guy de Maupassant<br />
827.Marius the Epicurean – Walter Pater<br />
828.Against the Grain – Joris-Karl Huysmans<br />
829.The Death of Ivan Ilyich – Leo Tolstoy<br />
830.A Woman’s Life – Guy de Maupassant<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">831.Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson</span></em><br />
832.The House by the Medlar Tree – Giovanni Verga<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">833.The Portrait of a Lady – Henry James </span></em><br />
834.Bouvard and Pécuchet – Gustave Flaubert<br />
835.Ben-Hur – Lew Wallace<br />
836.Nana – Émile Zola<br />
837.The Brothers Karamazov – Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />
838.The Red Room – August Strindberg<br />
839.Return of the Native – Thomas Hardy<br />
840.Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy<br />
841.Drunkard – Émile Zola<br />
842.Virgin Soil – Ivan Turgenev<br />
843.Daniel Deronda – George Eliot<br />
844.The Hand of Ethelberta – Thomas Hardy<br />
845.The Temptation of Saint Anthony – Gustave Flaubert<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">846.Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy</span></em><br />
847.The Enchanted Wanderer – Nicolai Leskov<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>848.Around the World in Eighty Days – Jules Verne</i></span><br />
849.In a Glass Darkly – Sheridan Le Fanu<br />
850.The Devils – Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />
851.Erewhon – Samuel Butler<br />
852.Spring Torrents – Ivan Turgenev<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">853.Middlemarch – George Eliot </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">854.Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll </span></em><br />
855.King Lear of the Steppes – Ivan Turgenev<br />
856.He Knew He Was Right – Anthony Trollope<br />
<i><span style="color: lime;">857.War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy</span></i><br />
858.Sentimental Education – Gustave Flaubert<br />
859.Phineas Finn – Anthony Trollope<br />
860.Maldoror – Comte de Lautréaumont<br />
861.The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">862.The Moonstone – Wilkie Collins </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">863.Little Women – Louisa May Alcott</span></em><br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>864.Thérèse Raquin – Émile Zola</s></span><br />
865.The Last Chronicle of Barset – Anthony Trollope<br />
<i>866.Journey to the Centre of the Earth – Jules Verne</i><br />
867.Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">868.Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll</span> </em><br />
869.Our Mutual Friend – Charles Dickens<br />
870.Uncle Silas – Sheridan Le Fanu<br />
871.Notes from the Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">872.The Water-Babies – Charles Kingsley </span></em><br />
873.Les Misérables – Victor Hugo<br />
874.Fathers and Sons – Ivan Turgenev<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">875.Silas Marner – George Eliot </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">876.Great Expectations – Charles Dickens </span></em><br />
877.On the Eve – Ivan Turgenev<br />
878.Castle Richmond – Anthony Trollope<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">879.The Mill on the Floss – George Eliot</span> </em><br />
880.The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins<br />
881.The Marble Faun – Nathaniel Hawthorne<br />
882.Max Havelaar – Multatuli<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>883.A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens</i></span><br />
884.Oblomovka – Ivan Goncharov<br />
885.Adam Bede – George Eliot<br />
886.Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert<br />
887.North and South – Elizabeth Gaskell<br />
888.Hard Times – Charles Dickens<br />
889.Walden – Henry David Thoreau<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">890.Bleak House – Charles Dickens </span></em><br />
891.Villette – Charlotte Brontë<br />
892.Cranford – Elizabeth Gaskell<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">893.Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lonely – Harriet Beecher Stowe</span> </em><br />
894.The Blithedale Romance – Nathaniel Hawthorne<br />
895.The House of the Seven Gables – Nathaniel Hawthorne<br />
896.Moby-Dick – Herman Melville<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">897.The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne</span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">898.David Copperfield – Charles Dickens</span></em><br />
899.Shirley – Charlotte Brontë<br />
900.Mary Barton – Elizabeth Gaskell<br />
901.The Tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Brontë<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">902.Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë </span></em><br />
903.Agnes Grey – Anne Brontë<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">904.Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">905.Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">906.The Count of Monte-Cristo – Alexandre Dumas </span></em><br />
907.La Reine Margot – Alexandre Dumas<br />
908.The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas<br />
909.The Purloined Letter – Edgar Allan Poe<br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>910.Martin Chuzzlewit – Charles Dick</i></span>ens<br />
911.The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe<br />
912.Lost Illusions – Honoré de Balzac<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">913.A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens</span> </em><br />
914.Dead Souls – Nikolay Gogol<br />
915.The Charterhouse of Parma – Stendhal<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">916.The Fall of the House of Usher – Edgar Allan Poe </span></em><br />
917.The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens<br />
<span style="color: #ff6600;"><s>918.Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens</s></span><br />
919.The Nose – Nikolay Gogol<br />
920.Le Père Goriot – Honoré de Balzac<br />
921.Eugénie Grandet – Honoré de Balzac<br />
922.The Hunchback of Notre Dame – Victor Hugo<br />
923.The Red and the Black – Stendhal<br />
924.The Betrothed – Alessandro Manzoni<br />
925.Last of the Mohicans – James Fenimore Cooper<br />
926.The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner – James Hogg<br />
927.The Albigenses – Charles Robert Maturin<br />
928.Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Robert Maturin<br />
929.The Monastery – Sir Walter Scott<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">930.Ivanhoe – Sir Walter Scott </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">931.Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">932.Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen</span> </em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">933.Persuasion – Jane Austen </span></em><br />
934.Ormond – Maria Edgeworth<br />
935.Rob Roy – Sir Walter Scott<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">936.Emma – Jane Austen </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">937.Mansfield Park – Jane Austen </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">938.Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen</span> </em><br />
939.The Absentee – Maria Edgeworth<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">940.Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen </span></em><br />
941.Elective Affinities – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">942.Castle Rackrent – Maria Edgeworth </span></em><br />
<br />
<strong>1700s</strong><br />
943.Hyperion – Friedrich Hölderlin<br />
944.The Nun – Denis Diderot<br />
945.Camilla – Fanny Burney<br />
946.The Monk – M.G. Lewis<br />
947.Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">948.The Mysteries of Udolpho – Ann Radcliffe </span></em><br />
949.The Interesting Narrative – Olaudah Equiano<br />
950.The Adventures of Caleb Williams – William Godwin<br />
951.Justine – Marquis de Sade<br />
952.Vathek – William Beckford<br />
<span style="color: red;"><strike>953.The 120 Days of Sodom – Marquis de Sade</strike></span><br />
954.Cecilia – Fanny Burney<br />
955.Confessions – Jean-Jacques Rousseau<br />
956.Dangerous Liaisons – Pierre Choderlos de Laclos<br />
957.Reveries of a Solitary Walker – Jean-Jacques Rousseau<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">958.Evelina – Fanny Burney </span></em><br />
959.The Sorrows of Young Werther – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe<br />
960.Humphrey Clinker – Tobias George Smollett<br />
961.The Man of Feeling – Henry Mackenzie<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">962.A Sentimental Journey – Laurence Sterne </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">963.Tristram Shandy – Laurence Sterne </span></em><br />
964.The Vicar of Wakefield – Oliver Goldsmith<br />
965.The Castle of Otranto – Horace Walpole<br />
966.Émile; or, On Education – Jean-Jacques Rousseau<br />
967.Rameau’s Nephew – Denis Diderot<br />
968.Julie; or, the New Eloise – Jean-Jacques Rousseau<br />
969.Rasselas – Samuel Johnson<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">970.Candide – Voltaire</span></em><br />
971.The Female Quixote – Charlotte Lennox<br />
972.Amelia – Henry Fielding<br />
973.Peregrine Pickle – Tobias George Smollett<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">974.Fanny Hill – John Cleland </span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">975.Tom Jones – Henry Fielding </span></em><br />
976.Roderick Random – Tobias George Smollett<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">977.Clarissa – Samuel Richardson</span></em><br />
978.Pamela – Samuel Richardson<br />
979.Jacques the Fatalist – Denis Diderot<br />
980.Memoirs of Martinus Scriblerus – J. Arbuthnot, J. Gay, T. Parnell, A. Pope, J. Swift<br />
981.Joseph Andrews – Henry Fielding<br />
982.A Modest Proposal – Jonathan Swift<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">983.Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift </span></em><br />
984.Roxana – Daniel Defoe<br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">985.Moll Flanders – Daniel Defoe</span> </em><br />
986.Love in Excess – Eliza Haywood<br />
<span style="color: #66ff99;"><em>987.Robinson Crusoe – Daniel Defoe </em></span><br />
988.A Tale of a Tub – Jonathan Swift<br />
<br />
<strong>Pre-1700</strong><br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>989.Oroonoko – Aphra Behn</i></span><br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>990.Th</i><i>e Princess of Clèves – Marie-Madelaine Pioche de Lavergne, Comtesse de La Fayette</i></span><br />
<i><span style="color: lime;">991.The Pilgrim’s Progress – John Bunyan</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: lime;">992.Don Quixote – Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra</span></i><br />
993.The Unfortunate Traveller – Thomas Nashe<br />
994.Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit – John Lyly<br />
<i><span style="color: lime;">995.Gargantua and Pantagruel – Françoise Rabelais</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: lime;">996.The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous</span></i><br />
<span style="color: lime;"><i>997.The Golden Ass – Lucius Apuleius</i></span><br />
998.Aithiopika – Heliodorus<br />
<i><span style="color: lime;">999.Chaireas and Kallirhoe – Chariton</span></i><br />
<i><span style="color: lime;">1000.Metamorphoses – Ovid</span></i><br />
<em><span style="color: #66ff99;">1001.Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus</span> </em><br />
<br />
Wow - I've read 88 of them - better than I thought ;) but not even 10% :P I have a few quibbles with the list myself. Some of the books on it that I have read are far from my favourites - Voss, Lord of the Flies, Jack Maggs... but still, I could see why they were classics - just rather unreadable (Ulysses will also fall into this category). Despite that, I like the list - enough of my favourites are on there to tempt me to discover why the others are there... and even the ones I have read and didn't enjoy are important as works of fiction and have shaped my thinking and who I am today... maybe in re-reading them I will discover something in them I didn't see before. I think you have to be something of an intellectual masochist to want to read them all (yup, that's me) but I will review them as I read them, so stick around and I'll let you know which ones I think are worth the effort - and why!Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37357510.post-64959214242041755712007-05-11T10:19:00.000+10:002007-05-15T03:22:46.740+10:00In the beginning...I said I would renovate this blog when I had a use for it... I don't have time to really start it now, but I want to just mark my place & foreshadow my intentions. <br /><br />I found this list of <a href="http://www.listology.com/content_show.cfm/content_id.22845/Books">1001 books I must read before I die</a> on Listology.<br /><br />I want to do it! I have read a number of books on the list, and heard of others, but I want to work my way through it. At current rates of reading (given all the other claims on my time) even if I manage 1 book a month this will take me 83 years ;P But I won't always be studying, and I won't always have a toddler, so hopefully my rate of progress will pick up to my normal speed and I will actually finish the list one day!<br /><br />I have started somewhere near the middle, with James Joyce's <em>Ulysses</em> (No. 723), and I will use this site to post reviews as I finish each book...<br /><br />In the meantime, this post is really just to give me somewhere to post a title graphic, so I can feel like I have 'started'...<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Jq67E-7MQsBrkdTG01pASRFYCVXqxN3mP1297wibi7Qjq0eiZt5R4BJ9aKVmSPc_J2reaP_X9KBwktDR5WIpcWKgJEcSq-7yQd5afZ9nOlF5xOdrxxoK3JX1Iavnjk1tfw/s1600-h/sche.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4Jq67E-7MQsBrkdTG01pASRFYCVXqxN3mP1297wibi7Qjq0eiZt5R4BJ9aKVmSPc_J2reaP_X9KBwktDR5WIpcWKgJEcSq-7yQd5afZ9nOlF5xOdrxxoK3JX1Iavnjk1tfw/s400/sche.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5063095219335173346" /></a><br /><br />I will add the rest of the list to the sidebar as I get time... which won't be now as Wombat has just woken up...Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1