I love a good literary novel - I read them almost exclusively. But this one is just too loosey-goosey for me. Too unstructured, too haphazard. The opposite of clear and succinct. And I am sure the author worked very hard to make it that way.
Sunday, September 28, 2008
How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
I gave this book about a hundred pages before giving up on it. It's written entirely in dialect - Scottish. The odd thing is that it is third person, not first person, so the unseen, unnamed narrator is talking in dialect.
There are also no chapter breaks. That's not enough by itself to make me give up on a book, but it is aggravating.
So I gave up on it. It just wasn't worth the effort, and this is a Booker prize winner. Life's too short...
There are also no chapter breaks. That's not enough by itself to make me give up on a book, but it is aggravating.
So I gave up on it. It just wasn't worth the effort, and this is a Booker prize winner. Life's too short...
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
The Remains of the Day by Kazui Ishiguro
This could be the perfect, short, first-person novel. It can't be more than 70k words, yet it says so much. The voice of Stevens the butler is perfect, as is his questioning of his past while he professes to be so proud of it.
I only wish that I had read it before seeing the movie. I can't tell if my love of the book has been influenced by the images from the movie. They are both excellent.
I only wish that I had read it before seeing the movie. I can't tell if my love of the book has been influenced by the images from the movie. They are both excellent.
Monday, September 22, 2008
The Widow of the South by Robert Hicks
A historical novel about Carrie McGavock, who just happened to live on the the edge of a battle in the waning months of the Civil War. Her house was used for a field hospital, and the battle was one of the bloodiest of the war. Later she led an effort to move the dead from their hasty burial places on the battlefield to a cemetery on her property.
This is a novel about those facts, and the author focuses on the attempts by the survivors to make sense of what has happened. Why did so many die, and for what? It is essentially an unanswerable question, I think, although the author makes a valiant attempt.
A lot of the novel is devoted to answering those questions. In my opinion, maybe too much. Late in the novel there is a little bit of drama as the battleground is threatened by the plow, and some conflict emerges over saving the bodies from destruction.
There's also some unorthodox craft in the telling of the story. Some of the chapters are in the first person viewpoint of the two principal characters. The rest of the chapters are in third person. An unusual technique, but not unheard of.
I thought the novel, after the beginning, was going to be something along the line of the "Spoon River Anthology", since one of the characters is gifted at envisioning the dead - that might have been a very interesting method of telling the story - alternate chapters that deal with the present difficulties with chapters from the dead soldiers. Instead the novel drags in the middle - how many times can we revisit the same questions?
This is a novel about those facts, and the author focuses on the attempts by the survivors to make sense of what has happened. Why did so many die, and for what? It is essentially an unanswerable question, I think, although the author makes a valiant attempt.
A lot of the novel is devoted to answering those questions. In my opinion, maybe too much. Late in the novel there is a little bit of drama as the battleground is threatened by the plow, and some conflict emerges over saving the bodies from destruction.
There's also some unorthodox craft in the telling of the story. Some of the chapters are in the first person viewpoint of the two principal characters. The rest of the chapters are in third person. An unusual technique, but not unheard of.
I thought the novel, after the beginning, was going to be something along the line of the "Spoon River Anthology", since one of the characters is gifted at envisioning the dead - that might have been a very interesting method of telling the story - alternate chapters that deal with the present difficulties with chapters from the dead soldiers. Instead the novel drags in the middle - how many times can we revisit the same questions?