books, lately

Okay, it's always easy to write about books.

Perhaps I already mentioned reading Everyman by Philip Roth for my book group. I couldn't fault the writing - Roth is deservedly seen as one of the US's greatest contemporary writers - but I was annoyed by the central character in conjunction with the title. Although Roth's very atheist point - we all die in the end and that's it - is one I'm in synch with, the east coast USA Jewish man who is his 'everyman' is not me. If he'd named it something else, I might have liked it more. I'd read The Plot Against America a few months earlier which, although it fizzes out in the end in a way that the editor should have picked up on, was much more powerful and likeable.

Wuthering Heights: I did some Jane Austen novels in high school but although I liked them, I decided I was firmly a modernist and had avoided pre-20th century books ever since. (That's 30+ years of avoidance!) But last year I did a course which required me to read some of the greats of 19th century literature and I began to consider filling in the gaps in my literary education. So just before Christmas I read WH for the first time. What a very strange book. I preferred Jane Eyre, probably because it verges on being modern, whereas WH feels almost primeval. What's fascinating to me in all these early 19th century novels is the view of a life without medicine, without sewerage, without electricity, without mass transport and without the media or any forms of mass communication. Yet that life was only 150+ years ago. (For millions of people in today's world, such is life, still.) And people had developed very sophisticated ways of thinking about human relationships, even though in many cases, their lives were very short. ... I borrowed Middlemarch from the library this week - that's next on my self-education program.

The Impossibility of Sex: It was slightly annoying that someone chose the title of the 'sex' chapter to put on the cover as that was misleading  (especially as I was reading this in airports and public places in New Zealand). Susie Orbach was originally famous for writing Fat is a Feminist Issue and for being (or for being rumoured to be) Princess Diana's bulimia therapist. In Britain she's also known for writing a newspaper column from a therapy standpoint. This book was a fictional account of being a psychoanalytic therapist - there are several 'cases' which Orbach says were entirely made up so that she could convey what it's like to be a therapist. I'm in psychoanalysis so I guess I'm a big part of the target audience for a book like this - I found it deeply thought-provoking.

Bel Canto: this was our new year book club read. The meeting's tonight but I don't think anyone in my book group reads this, so I'll say what I thought ahead of time. I postponed reading this as the idea of a book about a 'terrorist' group taking hostages wasn't my idea of a good time. (The story is loosely based on the Lima crisis.) However, the book isn't anything like that. It's lightly written and humourous. In fact, its main fault, I thought, was that it was overly romantic. And though written by a woman, it's almost entirely 'inside' men's heads - the few female characters are less open for exploration. I thought it dragged a bit in the middle but the opening scenes and then the closing scenes were powerful - I really felt the Stockholm Syndrome at work.

A Misalliance: I'd never read anything by Anita Brookner but somehow ended up with this on my shelves, so I read it at the beach. Okay, it was written in 1985, which maybe perhaps explains the complete lack of feminist consciousness in this book ... feminist consciousness on the part of the author and every female character. From what I could work out, the main character, who's "middle aged", has been married for 20 years, got married in order to leave her mother and never seems to have had a job, so she can't be more than 45. Until her husband left her, she seems to have been pretty happy making his meals and changing into nice clothes to greet him on his return from work. In the course of the book she comes to greatly admire a neighbour who is an exemplary housewife. It's weird. Nevertheless, it's excellently written and I do know of a middle class London woman who when her husband died suddenly in the late 80s, had never travelled on a bus. These types are still out there, strange as it seems. Brookner herself has been a 'career woman' but as she was born in 1928, I guess that was relatively unusual. (The protagonist of A Misalliance is wrongly described as "prfessionally acclaimed" in that last link - makes me wonder what else on that site is wrong.)

Dirt Music: I'd also never read anything by Tim Winton (you can see the self-education theme at work here.) I seem to have chosen one of his least popular novels to begin with. I'd always been leery of Winton for his Christian blokiness. With this book, which is apparently being made into a movie by Phillip Noyce, I was impressed but essentially left cold. I might try Cloud Street or The Riders one of these days.

Comments

[Lori]

I read Wuthering Heights in the last couple years and found it mostly disappointing. I didn't quite get what the big fuss about it was. I always had the impression it was a great romance but it wasn't that at all, in my opinion. I did like Jane Eyre but not as well as Villette, my favorite by Charlotte Bronte.

I tried to read one of Tim Winton's novels a while back but never did get far into it. I don't recall which book now.

[suzoz]

The edition of WH I read had a good introduction which was upfront about how unromantic the story actually is. It's terribly gothic and many of the characters - especially Heathcliff - are brutish. The fact that it's been taken up as a great romance is interesting in itself, I suppose.

[Lori]

Yes, I do find it interesting that it's considered a great romance and wonder how this has come to be. I think that may be why I found it so disappointing. Maybe I should reread it with my current knowledge and see how I feel about it.

[Jacinta]

I really enjoyed The Riders. It was very emotional...strong. I had a decade of reading Anita Bookner on and off. All her books are the same. So depressing. Make A Misalliance your one and only. Each protagonist in each novel is grey, emotionally stagnant and self absorbed. I found Brookner exhausting to read. I read her because my friend and I swapped books. My friend was very depressed, not helped by Anita.

[Valerie]

Reading about people from 150 or 100 years ago, before medicine, sewage, running water, etc etc etc., fascinates me. Somehow I expect the people from the past to have brutish lives without those things, but instead the people -- at least the ones who wrote books that we still read today -- are thoughtful caring well-educated people. Maybe even more-so than today's average people are. I find that neat.

[Mikhela]

I found Middlemarch tiring - maybe because, due to my fervently Christian upbrining, I was a bit like the lead character (is it Catherine?) - so tediously devoted to 'doing good'.

I've never been able to finish a Tim Winton.