Booker or Bummer?

The Gathering
Anne Enright
Black Cat

I finished reading The Gathering a couple of days ago. I'm inclined to believe that it is one of those books that you have to think about for awhile before you can actually presume to analyse it. I can tell you right now that I could think about it for the next year and still not know what to write. It was one of those books that hurt to read.

The Gathering is narrated by Veronica, a thirty something housewife, who has just learned that her brother Liam has committed suicide by filling his pockets and walking into the sea. She goes off to England to retrieve his body and bring it back to Dublin for a traditional Irish wake. The story jumps back and forth through time in a decidedly stream-of-consciousness kind of way and we learn that Liam and Veronica shared a terrible secret that may (or may not) have led to Liam's death.

The secrets, sins, vices, and failings of the entire Hegarty clan are laid bare for all to see. In fact, the most compelling part of this novel is how Enright describes a family that is no more or no less dysfunctional than any other. There is a universality in her characters and the defiant vulnerability of the protagonists (both Veronica and the imagined ghost of Liam) is heart-breaking and achingly beautiful. Three and a half drams of whiskey out of five.

Fiends, Animals and Fucktards

You Suck
Christopher Moore
William Morrow

Over the past few months, I have spent a great deal of time in my car. The downside is that I don't particularly enjoy driving -- especially by myself. The upside is that I have recently discovered audio books. Thanks to both my kick ass sound system and my local library, the road is no longer a sad and lonely place.

Last week, I listened to You Suck by Christopher Moore. The book opens with the hero, C. Thomas Flood (aka Tommy) discovering that his girlfriend Jody has recently turned him into one of the undead. Like all good fledgling vampires, Tommy goes out and recruits a minion -- Abby Normal -- a sixteen year old goth girl who looks like a broken marionette. Abby is completely infatuated with "vampire" culture and lives for the day when Lord Flood will complete her transformation into a creature of the night.

Maybe it would have been a different experience had I read the novel instead of having listened to it, but the best parts of the narration were the "excerpts" from Abby's journal. When she called someone a fucktard for the first time I almost drove off the road I laughed so hard. Like all Moore books, You Suck was a hilarious. Three stoner stock boys out of five.

Ordinary People

Middlemarch
George Eliot
Penguin Classics

The problem with reviewing a "classic" novel is that everything relevant, interesting, or even slightly thought-provoking has already been written. Virgina Woolf once said that Middlemarch is a "magnificent book which, with all its imperfections, is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people." Um, yeah. Given enough time, I'm sure I would have come up with that line. Really.

Middlemarch, which was originally produced/written as a serialized novel, reads very much like the script of a daytime soap opera. The plot focuses on the stories/character development of three main families -- the Brookes, the Vinceys, and the Lydgates. The novel is set in a fictional Midlands town during the early 1830s, and like a modern-day soap, the different narratives intertwine and add all sorts of complication to the characters' lives. Also like a daytime soap, the novel explores contemporary social themes -- in this case, religion, class mobility, political reform, the status of women, the nature of marriage, love vs. passion, and individuality (self-interest) vs. the social good. Middlemarch is a big book about big ideas. The fact that it is also a delightful read is just a bonus.

And, while I don't normally talk about the author, I'm going to make an exception in this case. George Eliot, or Mary Ann Evans as she was also known, was an extraordinary woman. Shunned by "polite" society because she lived unmarried with her partner, George Henry Lewes, she was one of England's leading Victorian writers and intellectuals. Even though women were publishing at the time, she took a male pen name to ensure that her novels were taken seriously. At the heart of most of her writing was the belief that it is the mundane and ordinary that prove to be the most interesting. Middlemarch is a brilliant example of this belief. Four extraordinary ordinaries out of five.

Jane Eyre -- A Poem, by the D-E-S

Jane Eyre

Charlotte Brontë

Penguin Classics

Plain Jane, good and kind,
Met a man who knew her mind.
Loved him well despite his lie,
Became so sad she thought she'd die.

Plain Jane, a girl devout,
Left her man and ventured out
Into a world -- unknown and vast
Her soul adrift, her strength surpassed.

Plain Jane, a family found,
Joy and gladness all around.
But for the man she longed inside.
Buried deep, not cast aside.

Jane ... Jane, without a word,
His mind to hers, the call was heard.
To her Rochester she ran
Their souls entwined, their lives began.

----------------

Hey gang. I thought I'd mix it up a bit in terms of the reviews. I called my mom and read Jane Eyre to her over the phone (duh, the poem, not the novel ) and she gave me the green light to post the entry. The whole exercise seemed so Grade 5 that I figured I should pretend like it was homework.

Anyway, she said she'd happily take all criticism with regard to how poorly it is written and I cheerfully promised to pass it along. Oh -- and for the curious, Jane Eyre the novel gets 5 brooding heroes out of 5. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed it.

Postcolonial or Post 9-11?

The Inheritance of Loss
Kiran Desai
Penguin

When I was in grad school, postcolonial criticism was all the rage and as part of a number of courses, I had to read the likes of Said, Spivak and Foucault. While my brain is no longer capable of understanding and/or internalizing such big ideas, some of those lectures must have stuck because as soon as I picked up this novel words such as alternity, hybridity, otherness, imperialism and ethnocentrism immediately came to mind.

And it's true -- the novel, which is set in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas during the 80s, deals with all of these themes and how British and American culture, in particular, have altered the characters' perceptions of themselves. In addition to the collision of cultures, the story also examines the conflict between past versus present desires, the efficacy of terrorism, the gluttony of consumerism, and the cult of the individual. The more I read, the more I wondered if, despite the overt references to other examples of post-colonial literature, the novel was an expression of a post 9-11 sensibility? Is this even a legitimized critical approach? I would think so, but since I've given up academe, I'll have to leave it to the experts.

As for a rating, The Inheritance of Loss won the 2006 Man Booker prize so who am I to give it a score? I can say that it was lyrical, wise, beautiful and sad. In other words, a very good read.

May I have the envelope, please?

The D-E-S book of the year award for 2008 goes to (pause for drum roll and fumbling with a waxed seal ...) Diane Setterfield for her novel The Thirteenth Tale.

I absolutely adored this book and recommend saving it for one of those cold, rainy nights where you can curl up by the fire with a blanket, a glass of wine, and have the weather provide the soundtrack to the story. Don't plan on going to bed early though -- once you start this one, you might find it hard to put down. A few of my friends have written to complain of lost sleep and unproductive workdays. Do yourself a favour and start it on a Friday. Or better yet, take it up to the cottage and save it for a dark and stormy night. Enjoy.

I AM the Wolfman

Tooth & Nail

Ian Rankin

Orion Books

I read in the introduction to the novel that the original title of this book was Wolfman. It made me wonder how people come up with both titles and cover art. Does the publisher make the decision? Does the author have any creative control? And in the case of this particular novel, what do hydro lines and what looks suspiciously like starlings, have to do with a serial killer that bites his victims on the belly post-mortem? Maybe it's like a Warhol album cover for the Velvet Underground -- conceptual and far beyond my level of understanding.

Enough musings -- on to the meat of this post. Tooth & Nail is the third installment in the Inspector Rebus crime series by Ian Rankin. In this "episode", John finds himself shipped off to London to assist in the investigation of a particularly gruesome series of murders. As you would expect, nobody is terribly keen to have to listen to the "import" and as such, he seems more a fish out of water than ever. I particularly enjoyed the way Rankin used language in this novel to highlight Rebus' alienation. When Rebus' first gets to London, his accent and idiom are so thick that no one can understand him. We are meant to feel a little sorry for the rumpled old bloke. And I did.

I imagine we'll see Inspector Rebus at least a couple of more times over the course of the new year. For 2009, I'm going to try to branch out a little and read selections from outside my comfort zone. As for Tooth & Nail, this crime novel gets three hoolit cheers out of five. Fangtastic!