tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-11679861214201619342024-02-06T23:07:06.010-05:00The Complete Booker<i>Reading winners and nominees for the Man Booker Prize for Fiction</i>Laurahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07219439074687598827noreply@blogger.comBlogger630125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-62430953228958860282018-02-10T21:07:00.003-05:002018-02-10T21:07:54.583-05:001970 - (Lost Booker) Troubles, by J.G. Farrell<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<i>Troubles</i> is the predecessor to <i>The Siege of Krishnapur </i>which won the Booker, and this one won the Faber Memorial Prize in 1970 (and posthumously, the Lost Booker Prize, one which has zero credibility with me because it was determined by popular vote). <br />
<br />
<i>Troubles</i> is not as good as <i>Krishnapur</i>, but it's very good in parts.
It's set in Ireland just after WW1 when the Troubles were just beginning. Major Bernard Archer goes to the ill-named and shabby Majestic Hotel (a symbol of the declining British Empire) to sort out an intemperate engagement but ends up falling in love with the place despite - or perhaps because of - its eccentricities.
<br />
<br />
Angela conveniently dies of leukaemia, but it doesn't matter much because neither of them cared about each other anyway. For the major, it's all a matter of behaving well, like an English gentleman should. Just like Edward, the owner, whose eccentricity declines into madness as the IRA 'outrages' come closer to home, till he can't ignore them any more.
<br />
<br />
Why does the major 'take on' the Majestic? It's falling to bits (and Farrell goes into overdrive with the farce, with hordes of cats and the vines taking over the bar). Not unlike the Empire, it's a drain on the purse, but he has become fond of it. He also falls in love with Sarah, who's really not very nice - but her characterisation isn't consistent, vacillating (due to a surprising lack of authorial control) between droll humorist to nasty cynic, an adventuress and a cripple playing for sympathy. She deserves to end up with Bolton, though like the major, I don't like his violence towards her. I guess she's a symbol of the violence the Empire doled out to the possessions it 'loved'.
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Farrell does quite a god job of depicting both sides of a sordid story - though at times he overdoes the didacticism. I can't quite visualise Edward's Oxford guests lecturing him on the need to look at the other fellow's point-of-view - it doesn't seem consistent with a gentlemanly background. Having said that, one of the themes is the way young people don't subscribe to the old ways of behaving. They're all a bit 'fast', quite rude, and not at all grateful. </div>
<br />
Still, it's an entertaining book, except for the final atrocities, which are horrible. <br />
<br />
I read and journalled this book 4/7/2003. </div>
Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02295557490861464595noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-62698258124522201032018-02-10T19:48:00.000-05:002018-02-10T19:48:41.410-05:001975: Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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It took less than a day to read this - 180 pages long and easy to read - but it's a rich and fruitful book. It comprises two stories in parallel: the tale of Olivia who abandons her British husband when she goes to India; and of her un-named relative who goes to Satipur some fifty years later to solve the mystery of what became of Olivia. She ends up becoming 'seduced' by India too.</div>
<br />
Olivia is naive but adventurous, and she doesn't like the other British wives and their disdain for Indian religion and culture. She is bored by their vapid lifestyle, and she outrages 'society' by visiting the local Naweb, an impoverished rogue in league with the Dacoits (bandits). The Naweb seems to exert a strange magnetic influence on those around him, including Harry, Olivia's only discerning friend and the one who helps her out when things go awry. <br />
<br />
In the process of discovering these scandals about her great-aunt , the narrator finds herself following in some of her footsteps. However, whereas during the British Raj Olivia was isolated from the 'real India' by class, caste and custom whatever her wishes may have been, in post-independence India her successor lives amongst Indians, and can make different decisions about how to live her life. Once again India is depicted as a place that attracts those interested in its 'spirituality' but the dropout Chid's distaste for life as a mendicant shows just how silly it is for affluent outsiders to hanker for a life of poverty and hardship. <br />
<br />
The title shows that Jhabvala had no illusions about the reality of life for most Indians. <br />
<br />
I finished reading and journalled this book on 13.10.05.</div>
Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02295557490861464595noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-50603289025592469082017-07-23T12:47:00.003-04:002017-07-23T12:47:51.008-04:00About this site You may have noticed that this site has not been updated for a long time. We have not been able to find anyone willing to act as administrator so reluctantly The Complete Booker is no longer actively maintained. However there is such a wealth of material within the site that we didn't want to lose so the site is still live and you can read all the archived content.Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-40940315138318314612016-07-25T14:16:00.000-04:002016-07-25T14:18:34.062-04:00J.G.'s Review - Wolf Hall (2009 Winner) and Bring Up the Bodies (2012 Winner) by Hilary Mantel<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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I spent a lot of time with Thomas Cromwell in July, and now that he's gone away, I miss him.<br />
<br />
My quest to read all the Man Booker Prize winners led me to <i>Wolf Hall</i> (2009) and <i>Bring Up the Bodies </i>(2012), both by Hilary Mantel. I'm not a big fan of historical novels in general, nor am I well-versed in the politics and romances of Henry VIII in 1520s England and Europe. That said, I thoroughly enjoyed these two books.<br />
<br />
Mantel's portrayal of Thomas Cromwell stands out as a major factor in my enjoyment. <i>Wolf Hall </i>opens with a savage scene in which the teenaged Cromwell receives a beating from his father, but (fortunately for me, as I was not looking forward to any more scenes like that) the beating motivates Cromwell to leave home, launching him on the winding road of his political career. It's the first of many personal incidents that inform Cromwell's public life. Somehow, in Mantel's portrayal, Cromwell keeps a core of kindness and compassion for those closest to him, not to mention random strangers, while moving in the highest, most precarious, most vicious political circles. This humanity saves Cromwell from being just another political tool sans moral compass and these novels from being just another rehash of historical events.<br />
<br />
<i>Wolf Hall</i> tells the story of Henry VIII's obsession with producing a male heir, an obsession with huge political, personal, and religious implications. Henry's insistence on annulling his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, freeing him to marry Anne Boleyn, creates ripples across England and across Europe. As Henry's advisor, Cardinal Wolsey, descends from favor, Cromwell's influence grows. It's a tribute to Cromwell's genius and subtlety that he's able to remain personally loyal to his mentor Wolsey while becoming one of Henry's most trusted counselors.<br />
<br />
<i>Bring Up the Bodies</i> continues the saga. Henry has waited seven difficult years -- while his personal desires destabilize international alliances and destroy religious institutions -- to marry Boleyn. However, prize achieved, he becomes disenchanted with her rather quickly, due to the same qualities of wit and willfulness that he initially found irresistible. Even more importantly from a political perspective, she seems unable to produce a male heir. At Henry's request, Cromwell engineers Boleyn's fall, while Henry's fancy turns to Jane Seymour. Regardless of my modern-day disapproval of Henry's behavior and the power of monarchy, Mantel manages to leave me in awe of Cromwell's smooth political machinations. And he's just so darn <i>likeable</i>, even while using Henry's request to seek revenge upon Wolsey's enemies. Amidst the events of his political life, Cromwell's personal memories, motivations, and pleasures remain part of the story.<br />
<br />
At times, Mantel compresses a lot of action and meaning into a few paragraphs. At other times, she draws an incident out at length, giving its implications time to sink in -- a very important skill when court intrigues are involved, as they often are. The result is a novel that breathes, expanding and contracting as the story unwinds. Domestic events in the Cromwell household intertwine with the historical record, adding contrast, richness, and depth. Mantel has a knack for making characters come alive.<br />
<br />
My enjoyment of Mantel's storyline may have been enhanced by my relative ignorance of the details of Henry VIII's time. If I knew more about the chain of events or that era in general, perhaps I might have noticed something inaccurate. (There are certainly those who feel her work is a rehabilitation of Cromwell that he doesn't deserve.) However, Mantel is such a masterful writer, clearly in control of her craft, that I doubt she makes any significant errors. Her cultural references are effortlessly natural; she portrays the times without ever appearing to insert detail just for effect.<br />
<br />
Others have remarked on one stylistic difficulty with Mantel's writing: her tendency to use an untethered "he," making the reading a bit difficult in places. "He" is almost always Cromwell himself, which blends first person and third person nicely when it gives the reader intimate access to his thoughts and feelings. But occasionally "he" is someone else in the very next sentence -- and that brings you up short in a passage, requiring a pause to figure out who is speaking or being described. Mantel helps sometimes by saying "He, Cromwell," an effective if somewhat clumsy method of clarification. Overall, it's not a major sticking point. Over hundreds of pages, you get used to it. <br />
<br />
Weeks after finishing these novels, I am still thinking about Cromwell. Fortunately Mantel plans to write another novel about the remainder of his life. Whether her sympathetic portrayal is accurate or not, it's been a long time since I enjoyed the company of such an intelligent, charming, kind, dangerous character. Meeting such a person in fiction is nothing but pleasurable. Although in real life I would run fast and far from Cromwell, I look forward to seeing him again on the page.<br />
<br />
(Crossposted from <a href="http://hotchpotcafe.blogspot.com/"><b>Hotchpot Cafe</b></a>, where books are always on the menu but aren't the only fare.)<br />
<br />
<u>Excerpt, from a meeting with Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, at Cromwell's home</u>:<br />
<br />
The door opens; it is Alice bringing in lights. "This is your daughter?"<br />
<br />
Rather than explain his family, he says, "This is my lovely Alice. This is not your job, Alice?"<br />
<br />
She bobs, a small genuflection to a churchman. "No, but Rafe and the others want to know what you are talking about so long. They are waiting to know if there will be a dispatch to the cardinal tonight. Jo is standing by with her needle and thread."<br />
<br />
"Tell them I will write in my own hand, and we will send it tomorrow. Jo may go to bed."<br />
<br />
"Oh, we are not going to bed. We are running Gregory's greyhounds up and down the hall and making a noise fit to wake the dead."<br />
<br />
"I can see why you don't want to break off."<br />
<br />
"Yes, it is excellent," Alice says. "We have the manners of scullery maids and no one will ever want to marry us. If our aunt Mercy had behaved like us when she was a girl, she would have been knocked round the head till she bled from the ears."<br />
<br />
"Then we live in happy times," he says.<br />
<br />
When she has gone, and the door is closed behind her, Cranmer says, "The children are not whipped?"<br />
<br />
"We try to teach them by example, as Erasmus suggests, though we all like to race the dogs up and down and make a noise, so we are not doing very well in that regard." He does not know if he should smile; he has Gregory; he has Alice, and Johane and the child Jo, and in the corner of his eye, at the periphery of his vision, the little pale girl who spies on the Boleyns. He has hawks in his mews who move toward the sound of his voice. What has this man?<br />
<br />
"I think of the king's advisers," Dr. Cranmer says. "The sort of men who are about him now."<br />
<br />
And he has the cardinal, if the cardinal still thinks well of him after all that has passed.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-2447994586013582062014-12-02T09:45:00.001-05:002014-12-02T09:46:39.254-05:00Marie C. Reviews The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b><i>The Narrow Road to the Deep North</i></b>, by Richard Flanagan. Published 2014 by Knopf. Literary Fiction.<br />
<br />
This
year's Man Booker Prize winner is a tough, tough read, but a very
rewarding one. Australian novelist Richard Flanagan tells the fictional
story of Dorrigo Evans, a doctor and survivor of the Japanese POW camp
that built the Burma Railway between Bangkok and Rangoon in 1943. The
railway was built using forced and slave labor; thousands of people died
constructing it under unimaginable conditions. The novel documents the
experiences of Dorrigo, several ordinary soldiers on the line including
Darky Gardiner, a young man who tries to find the good in every day even
when circumstances are at their bleakest.<br />
<br />
And there
always seems to be a new low. Flanagan gives us excruciating detail on
the privations and suffering the men endured- the starvation, the long
long miles of walking, the arduous work done without proper tools, the
ever-increasing demands of the soldiers directing the work, and the
brutal beatings and humiliations inflicted by the guards. He also gives
his characters startling humanity, including the guards and taskmasters
who regard suffering as a matter of course and the POWs as less than
human, because they are prisoners, alive and not dead.<br />
<br />
The cruelties of the Burma Railway have been documented in other books and films- <i>The Bridge Over the River Kwai</i>, Pierre Boulle's 1952 novel that became the famous David Lean film being the most famous example- but what <b><i>The Narrow Road</i></b> brings to mind for me is the more recent nonfiction <i>Unbroken</i>,
Laura Hillenbrand's recounting of the Louis Zamperini story,
particularly his time as a POW in Japan. Zamperini was not invovled in
the Burma Railway but Flanagan's story echoes some of the the same
themes and particulars, especially the POWs' living conditions.
Hillenbrand's book also explains in historical terms why the United
States ceased prosecuting Japanese war criminals, which I found very
helpful in understanding those parts of Flanagan's book in which the point of view shifts to the guards, particularly their post-war experiences.<br />
<br />
Because
he does try to tell the story of the railway from their perspective
too, a choice I think is brave and challenging. Those passages were also
hard to read, the rationalizing of torture and cruelty, and Flanagan,
without justifying anything, I think is trying to talk about how someone
can be capable of violence, and comfortable with it. I think he's
trying to talk about how a culture of violence perpetuates itself,
showing the whole life cycle of it, from earliest humiliation to its
effects far downstream, on people on whom a hand was never laid.<br />
<br />
In
this book, those people are the women in Dorrigo's life, particularly
his wife Ella and his many mistresses. Dorrigo marries Ella out of
social expectation; he's deeply in love with his estranged uncle's young
wife Amy, whom he believes has died while he was at war. He spends the
rest of his life trying to bury his grief and his post-war trauma in
affairs and in his public life. In his post-war life he becomes a kind
of spokesman for the POWs on the railway and becomes a very well-known public figure. At some point, he has to reconcile all these parts of himself, find a way to move forward.<br />
<br />
There is a beautiful, terrible poetry to<b><i> The Narrow Road</i></b>
and I found the book very hard to put down. I would read short passages
at a time, take breaks, come back, read more, come back. It's
disturbing, sometimes terrifying, sometimes bleak and almost impossibly
sad, and yet I didn't want it to end. Flanagan has written a wonderful
and difficult book that I would recommend to just about anyone, a
classic deserving of the recognition it's received.<br />
<br />
Rating: BUY<br />
<i><br /></i>
<i>FTC Disclosure: I did not receive this book for review.</i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-75941375625124031152014-07-23T17:32:00.000-04:002014-07-23T17:32:04.914-04:00Man Booker 2014 long list announced The 13 novels long listed for the 2014 Man Booker Prize were announced today and as always there were mixed reactions to the selection.<br />
<br />
Many of the UK newspapers like the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booker-prize/10985238/Booker-Prize-2014-longlist-Americans-bolster-a-strong-British-dominated-list.html" target="_blank">Daily Telegraph </a>reflected on the number of novels by American authors who wouldn't have been eligible until the rule change for this year's prize. Some commented also on the paucity of female authors (three out of the 13 titles).<br />
<br />
Were there any surprises? The inclusion of Joy Ann Fowler, best known for the best selling <i>Jane Austen Book Club </i> raised a few eyebrows as did David Nicholls's listing. None of the commentators said so specifically but reading between the lines the feeling was that these were rather 'light' to be considered for a premier book prize.<br />
<br />
Inevitably there were comments on who had not been included - many of the big names were missing in fact. No Dave Eggers, no Ian McEwan, no Will Self and no Martin Amis. But of course the big surprise as The Independent, commented, was the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/man-booker-prize-2014-donna-tartt-left-off-new-international-longlist-9623201.html" target="_blank">absence from the list of Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch.</a> She had been considered a cert for the long list having won the Pullitzer Prize with the novel in April.<br />
<br />
Unless I was misreading the various articles, I didn't detect a lot of enthusiasm for this year's listing. No-one actually said it was a dull list but I didn't see any great buzz either. What people found disappointing was the shortage of representation by writers from Commonwealth countries which we have grown to see as a key feature of the Man Booker prize in the past. Only one Commonwealth writer actually made it to the list - the Narrow Road to the Deep North by the Australian writer Richard Flanagan. As Rebecca Jones, the BBC arts correspondent commented: "there are no Indian or African authors and that will raise eyebrows among those who feared writers from some Commonwealth countries might get squeezed out by the new rules."<br />
<br />
What do you think of the list? Care to take a bet on which will win eventually?<br />
<br />
<b>The Longlist</b><br />
<br />
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Joshua Ferris</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
To Rise Again at a Decent Hour</div>
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American</div>
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Richard Flanagan</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
The Narrow Road to the Deep North</div>
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Australian</div>
</td></tr>
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Karen Joy Fowler</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
American</div>
</td></tr>
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Siri Hustvedt</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
The Blazing World</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
American</div>
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Howard Jacobson</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
J</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
British</div>
</td></tr>
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Paul Kingsnorth</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
The Wake</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
British</div>
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David Mitchell</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
The Bone Clocks</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
British</div>
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Neel Mukherjee</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
The Lives of Others</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
British</div>
</td></tr>
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David Nicholls</div>
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Us</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
British</div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="row2"><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
Joseph O'Neill</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
The Dog</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
Irish/American</div>
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Richard Powers</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
Orfeo</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
American</div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="row2"><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
Ali Smith</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
How to be Both</div>
</td><td class="left" style="background-color: #ededed; border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
British</div>
</td></tr>
<tr><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
Niall Williams</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
History of the Rain</div>
</td><td class="left" style="border-bottom-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; margin: 0px; padding: 7px 8px 10px; vertical-align: top;"><div style="clear: left; color: #333333; font-size: 1em; padding: 0px; text-rendering: auto;">
Irish</div>
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</tbody></table>
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<br />Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-8033307923754073792014-07-20T14:47:00.000-04:002014-07-20T14:50:10.565-04:00The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton - 2013 winner <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc5kln61526moaVQSWQS2GsElPK55m4AmicNaWFR9MF6yPz4aOUSxOy7jh3CNTTeF_Z0p4cMSPXLchjAefq4mxYzX8jL8PEoHEkEbBMlAqZBsywqqj3Ep48Abw-pj5NQyhoritc4jiCQ/s1600/The+luminaries.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgc5kln61526moaVQSWQS2GsElPK55m4AmicNaWFR9MF6yPz4aOUSxOy7jh3CNTTeF_Z0p4cMSPXLchjAefq4mxYzX8jL8PEoHEkEbBMlAqZBsywqqj3Ep48Abw-pj5NQyhoritc4jiCQ/s1600/The+luminaries.jpeg" /></a></div>
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When Eleanor Catton's <em>The Luminaries </em>was declared the winner of the 2013 Man Booker prize, almost every article and review drew attention to the fact it was the longest novel ever awarded the prize and Catton the youngest ever winner. Much was made too of the genre affinity between Catton's work and that master of the sensation novel, Wilkie Collins. Most reviewers seemed to agree with the Booker judges who called it “extraordinary, luminous, vast,”. The only dissenting voices came from the panel convened by one of the UK tv channels the night before the award who admired Catton's technical virtuosity but didn't feel it was the best book of the year, and David Sexton in <em>The London Evening Standard </em>who argued that a stunning feat of construction didn't necessarily equate to a great book.</div>
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Having now read this 832-page tome, I find myself more in David Sexton's camp than that of the Booker judges.</div>
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That isn't to say I didn't enjoy the book. I did. Catton really knows how to tell a good story (but then she'd have to be good at this in order to keep people engaged through such a lengthy book). Her plot is intricately crafted and she manages the multiple story lines deftly, making you want to keep turning the page to find out what happens next in this tale of death, deception and doomed love set in New Zealand during the time of the gold rush.</div>
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The book opens on a stormy night as the young Scottish lawyer Walter Moody, lands on the shores of Hokitika, a town hurriedly constructed to service prospectors seeking to make their fortune in the surrounding hills and rivers. Shaken by an incident on the boat he goes into the first hotel he comes across, badly in need of a restorative drink and a bed for the night. He finds himself in a room of 12 men who slowly begin to reveal their unease about some strange recent events in the town involving a whore, a dead hermit and a missing fortune. Together these 12 luminaries set about trying to get to the bottom of these events by piecing together the knowledge each of them holds. Although they are not constituted as a jury they do weigh up the evidence from each man's version of events and make judgements about some of the people involved.</div>
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Catton made much of the fact that she structured her novel on astrological movements, using a software programme to help her pinpoint the exact positioning of the stars corresponding with events in the book. Each chapter begins with an astrological chart indicating which characters are in ascendancy on the date in question. I tried to follow this but couldn't see much beyond the fact the chart indicated which characters would be the focal point of the chapter. It felt like an artifice that didn't add much to our understanding of the story.</div>
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Initially the story is told in the form of a nested narrative where the 12 men tell their stories to Moody, in the hope he can make sense of their complex and multifaceted tales. This moves to straight forward narration of specific events but then at the end Catton loops right back to the beginning with some short chapters (some just two or three paragraphs long) which reveal the backstory and fill in the missing elements. Along the way we get plenty of melodramatic episodes with a shipwreck, a murder trial and a seance.</div>
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All the elements are there for a darn good read. And yet, for all its technical prowess, there was something missing from this book. It was difficult at first to pin down what that missing element was but eventually it dawned on me that what I was lacking was any sense in which the novel illuminated the human condition. Outside the plot there wasn't much else of substance, all was really smoke and mirrors and the characters just faded out rather than came more sharply into view the more we heard them speak. There was little that caused me to pause and reflect, in short there was little evidence of the emotional or philosophical weight that I expect from a Booker prize winner.</div>
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And that's really my issue. <em>The Luminaries</em> IS a really enjoyable, well crafted novel and is one of the best of its kind I have read in many years. But it's not up to the gold standard that the Booker <em>should</em> represent. How the judges chose this over Jim Crace's <em>Harvest</em> is just baffling.</div>
Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-34319848653553925172014-03-29T12:56:00.000-04:002014-07-20T14:49:17.489-04:00Unexploded by Alison Macleod - 2013 Longlist<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS1SLjh7cV7G0MeaIQ7-dfF7tdPBvM9YFeYVa5yTTR5UqXuci4P744ITiTuZadx0_DAClMeCBJWk2_xbp3dVvW5GPxIjr5r5aKUursGYZMet3-CTy0-YZNcamv7s1fAxBK71IZxjp4pA/s1600/unexploded.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiS1SLjh7cV7G0MeaIQ7-dfF7tdPBvM9YFeYVa5yTTR5UqXuci4P744ITiTuZadx0_DAClMeCBJWk2_xbp3dVvW5GPxIjr5r5aKUursGYZMet3-CTy0-YZNcamv7s1fAxBK71IZxjp4pA/s1600/unexploded.jpeg" height="200" width="128" /></a></div>
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Eight months after Britain declares war on German, the people of Brighton anxiously prepare for a rumoured Nazi invasion. The town's piers are dismantled and barbed wire goes up on the beach. Soon vegetable seedlings will replace the flower displays in the parks and the lights of the fun fair will be dimmed. Already the racecourse has been transformed into an internment camp for whose people deemed to be 'suspicious'. such as Otto Gottlieb, a German-Jewish artist whose work featured in <a data-mce-href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/16/secondworldwar" href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/aug/16/secondworldwar" title="">the Nazi exhibition of "degenerate art"</a>.</div>
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In the Beaumont household, the preparations ignite underlying tensions. Geoffrey Beaumont is a banker charged with a secret mission to secure the future of the country's currency by removing it to an undisclosed location, leaving his wife Evelyn and eight year old son alone to face the invaders. The only preparations he makes on their behalf involve a stack of cash and an envelope containing two cyanide pills buried in the garden, a contingency plan that in Evelyn's eyes, amounts to a betrayal. The resulting tension between them escalates when Evelyn takes more than a close interest in Otto Gottleib and questions the treatment of the internees at the camp.</div>
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It's easy to see why <em>Unexploded</em> was long-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize. Macleod delivers a very persuadable sense of the period, rich in detail and atmosphere. Even though so much has been written about the lives of ordinary people at this point in Britain's history; the anxiety of an unknown enemy, the constant rumours, the day to day trials of food shortages, the narrative often has a fresh feel. In one extended passage she describes how it would feel to be on the receiving end of a bomb attack.</div>
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
You are lifted from your bed even before you hear the blast..... You wake, unable to understand why heaps of gravel and brick dust are being shovelled over you at speed. You stumble outside for air, but even here the day is thick with dust, soot and - you can't make sense of it - a blizzard of feathers.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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The immediacy of the present-tense approach coupled with her use of imagery made this one of the most memorable passages in the book for me.</div>
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I also enjoyed her characterisation of the Beaumont's son Phillip. As an only child his loneliness leads him to become friends with boys who would not be out of place in <em>Lord of the Flies,</em> to hide in corners listening illicitly to the radio, and to betrayal. Where the adults are simply frightened by the prospect of Hitler's arrival, Philip's reaction is more complex. It starts as a game, an amusing diversion, but then things happen that although he doesn't comprehend fully, he still recognises as disturbing and wrong.</div>
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His story is suggestive of a theme in the novel about the way the war acts as a catalyst, igniting elements that have until now lain idle such as the incompatibility between Evelyn and her husband and the anti-Semitic attitudes held by sections of the British population. In essence this is a novel that shows a society at a turning point:</div>
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Change was creeping under the door and through the windows of their home, persistent as gas … It was gathering over the house in spite of the purity of the day's rinsed blue sky. It was spiralling down the flue. At night as they slept, it would settle over their hearts.</blockquote>
</blockquote>
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A good story; well-written prose; lots of simmering tension, strong characterisation and meticulous attention to detail: it would be hard to find much about this book not to enjoy.</div>
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<strong>EndNotes</strong></div>
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<em>Unexploded</em> was published by Hamish Hamilton in 2013.</div>
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Alison MacLeod is a professor of contemporary fiction at the University of Chichester in the UK. Raised in Canada she has lived in England since the 1980s. This is her third novel.</div>
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This review is crossposted from <a href="http://bookertalk.com/">BookerTalk.com</a></div>
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Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-11619483947923135652014-03-13T10:18:00.002-04:002014-07-20T14:50:30.892-04:00The Marrying of Chani Kaufman, by Eve Harris - 2013 Longlist <h3 class="post-title entry-title" itemprop="name">
</h3>
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<i><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT61O3ZjTgFJXnkoaxmKlFmkFrfIKux1gpmn_CGAcHmum7r3wb-zEcVdRDjqUcqoLE7He_anW2WFX1gR5rwvTNKTqJuo54HH5nyvVEwSsWY0zpVlmDyo8vvlLEUqpFBIP93HPGaGPNveAf/s1600/chani.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT61O3ZjTgFJXnkoaxmKlFmkFrfIKux1gpmn_CGAcHmum7r3wb-zEcVdRDjqUcqoLE7He_anW2WFX1gR5rwvTNKTqJuo54HH5nyvVEwSsWY0zpVlmDyo8vvlLEUqpFBIP93HPGaGPNveAf/s1600/chani.jpg" /></a></b></i></div>
<i><b>The Marrying of Chani Kaufman</b></i>, by Eve Harris. Published by Black Cat Press 2014.<br />
<i><b><br /></b></i>
<i><b>The Marrying of Chani Kaufman</b></i> came out in Great Britain
last year and was longlisted for last year's Booker Prize. Don't worry
though- this is no stuffy "literary" book, although it is well-written,
delightful and addictive reading.<br />
<br />
Set in the present-day London neighborhood of Golders Green amid its
Orthodox Jewish community, the story centers on a 19-year-old young
woman named Chani who is about to get married to Baruch, a 20-year-old
she barely knows. As the book opens she's preparing for the nuptials-
getting dressed, getting nervous, and he's doing the same. The opening
pages capture their anxiety as they shoulder tradition, the expectations
of their families and their own innocence, and author Eve Harris
conjures this mood so beautifully that these first few pages are what
stay most in my mind.<br />
<br />
From here Harris shifts perspective to the Rebbetzin, whose husband is
the lead rabbi of this particular community. By extension she herself is
an important community leader; women come to her for advice and it
falls to her to take young Chani to the mikvah, or ritual bath, before
her wedding day because Chani's mother is busy with her large brood
(Chani is one of eleven children). But the Rebbetzin is deeply
conflicted, having grown up secular and then come to Orthodoxy as a
young woman when her then-boyfriend committed to a traditional Jewish
life. The Rebbetzin has played her role well, admirably even, but now,
in midlife and after suffering a traumatic miscarriage, she isn't so
sure anymore. Harris takes us through her life's story and into her
future.<br />
<br />
We get to know Chani and Baruch's families, and see how they interact.
Baruch spies Chani at a party and asks to meet her; his mother, a
wealthy social-climber, isn't happy that a poor girl has attracted her
precious son's attention and schemes to undermine the blossoming
relationship. Chani, for her part, isn't sure she even likes Baruch but
she knows she has to get married and he seems nice enough so she goes
along with it. Ironically it's Baruch's mother's resistance that gets
Chani to dig in her heels.<br />
<br />
I'm telling you a lot about what happens, so I'll stop. The book isn't
perfect; some of the conversations struck me as unrealistic but overall I
think <i><b>The Marrying of Chani Kaufman</b></i> is a charming and
absorbing novel with great characters and a winning couple at its
center. I don't think it comes down as very negative about Orthodox life
though there are characters who find frustration as their lot. There
are also those who will find a way to make it work. The key to
happiness, Harris seems to say, is rational balance and finding a
partner with whom you can build happiness and satisfaction. Conflict
only brings alienation. The book is very heavy on the details of
Orthodox ritual and is clear and accessible enough to be a
good read for someone interested in learning about that. If you're new
to the subject I hope you won't be put off and miss out on this great
read.</div>
Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-52419430580387826552014-02-20T19:17:00.002-05:002014-07-20T14:49:50.781-04:00Skios by Michael Frayn - 2012 Longlist<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9E1MgeKvh6I-Z942YQ4-4G7LBXTyky9tZTHB-X7uJXd4Hkv4rYL85jpg0sG1N0ALb5Bip5rEcO_0KduIyRaeUL1HsVmYi29hfjtgu5Xj2vLJRE3mb55TM6OA9mPyMH_Dfz-LQBiJ7Y8mN/s1600/skios.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9E1MgeKvh6I-Z942YQ4-4G7LBXTyky9tZTHB-X7uJXd4Hkv4rYL85jpg0sG1N0ALb5Bip5rEcO_0KduIyRaeUL1HsVmYi29hfjtgu5Xj2vLJRE3mb55TM6OA9mPyMH_Dfz-LQBiJ7Y8mN/s1600/skios.jpg" /></a><i><b>Skios</b></i>, by Michael Frayn. Published 2013 by Picador.<br />
<br />
So, what got my attention about <i><b>Skios</b></i> was two things. First, it was longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Second, its author wrote the very silly play "Noises Off."<br />
<br />
<i><b>Skios</b></i>, by Michael Frayn. Published in the US 2013 by Picador. Longlisted in 2012. <br />
<br />
So, what got my attention about <i><b>Skios</b></i> was two things. First, it was longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Second, its author wrote the very silly play "Noises Off."<br />
<br />
This is a very silly book.<br />
<br />
The
plot hangs on a thin premise that some readers won't be able to buy
into. Stuffy academic Dr. Norman Wilfred is making his way to the
private Greek island of Skios
for an international jet-setter's weekend conference. His is to be the
keynote address and his presence is a big draw for the wealthy donors to
an NGO.
He's an older guy, kind of set in his ways and whose charisma owes more
to habit than to actual charm. Enter Oliver Fox, an English playboy.
Oliver Fox and Wilfred Owen, through circumstances I won't go into, end
up with their identities switched. And then the fun really begins.<br />
<br />
Stuck in the middle is hapless Nikki Hook, in charge of organizing the weekend. She is a bundle of nerves and anxiety and
nearly becomes unhinged as events take their course. Other characters
have significant roles to play but basically the book comes down to
waiting to see what's going to happen when the ruse is finally up.<br />
<br />
All I can say is, if you can put your brain on hold and just go along for the ride, <i>Skios</i>
is a fun book. It's definitely a beach book- it reads fast and it's got
an undeniable air of frivolity. Some reviewers think it asks deep
questions about the meaning of identity; I don't know about that. It's
also a great book to read this winter if you live in New England- you'll
be feeling that Greek sunshine coming right through the page.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-89821658809492181602014-02-05T17:00:00.000-05:002014-07-20T14:51:05.557-04:00Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala - 1975 winner<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNEwaFKMOt3m1CLCvGXpTMyesYdL8aaGpo-a84wuYrT_FoZA2xKCBUZcrqQD6d1w-cMgwgGUMJiQsBdnacxG3Uvu3fPTV25wHFR-V3Skx-7svbgaIqackoGRU3gdRgc00Nfx84hMMLfw/s1600/HeatandDust.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNEwaFKMOt3m1CLCvGXpTMyesYdL8aaGpo-a84wuYrT_FoZA2xKCBUZcrqQD6d1w-cMgwgGUMJiQsBdnacxG3Uvu3fPTV25wHFR-V3Skx-7svbgaIqackoGRU3gdRgc00Nfx84hMMLfw/s1600/HeatandDust.jpeg" /></a></div>
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I opened <em>Heat and Dust</em> hoping that Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's 1975 Man Booker Prize winning novel would provide a fresh take on a theme explored by Paul Scott in <em>The Jewel in the Crown</em> (the first book in his <em>Raj Quartet</em> series) and of course that classic of the cultural divide; E M Forster's <em>A Passage to India</em>.</div>
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In many of the tributes written about Jhabvala on her death in April 2013, she was described as a "cold-eyed observer of people and places" and a writer whose status as a non-native inhabitant meant she could view the country with unemotional detachment.</div>
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Detached and unemotional are indeed good descriptions for this tale of the cultural divide between colonisers and the natives they govern and of those who try to break free from conventions and restrictions.</div>
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The story is that of an un-named woman who travels to India in an attempt to unravel the mystery of her step grandmother Olivia during the rule of the British in the 1920s. She deciphers the story mainly from letters Olivia wrote to her sister and by visiting places where her grandmother lived. Gradually we learn that Olivia's story is one of disgrace and scandal Feeling smothered by the restrictions of the British way of life in India, she fell under the spell of a Nawab (an Indian prince) for whom she abandoned her husband . Fifty years later her grand-daughter, though more independent and less naive than Olivia similarly becomes seduced by India. She too crosses the divide.</div>
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The novel has none of the tension found in Scott's novel nor does it have the subtleties of <em>A Passage to India.</em> It doesn't so much end as simply peters out inconclusively leaving me feeling decidedly underwhelmed. It's not what I expect of a prize-winning novel.</div>
Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-26555380625650220722013-12-31T00:04:00.000-05:002014-07-20T14:52:03.372-04:00The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald - 1978 shortlist<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Christmas Time is a lovely time to muse about which books you'd
like to read next year and to ...well...read! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0cm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Most of the time, I have a great stack of books beside the bed,
half of which I can't remember how they got there or why I ordered them.
This time I am determined to record how I got to this book. I was
idly reading <i>The Guardian Weekly</i> Vol.
190 No 2 &3 and its<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/nov/23/mantel-franzen-catton-writers-critics-best-books-2013">Books
of the Year<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></a>article. The
enclosed recommendations had a devastating effect on my PayPal account and
library card. Several authors (John Lanchester, Penelope Lively and
Hilary Mantel) all recommended Hermione Lee's<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.bookdepository.com/Penelope-Fitzgerald-Hermione-Lee/9780701184957">Penelope
Fitzgerald: A Life</a>. In his column, <a href="http://www.librarything.com/author/lanchesterjohn">John Lanchester<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span></a>describes her novels as
"funny/sharp". Thanks John. I think you have put me on to
a very good thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij9_a-T4maUm9l_y91JHCUyRYCWiO1Wp0ZALuHj4moDX8MtiPadXhNH8qseQpzYO9dy1NiEJ5O0oEEayUF1Ti3H5uM8ZTe5gblcyYO5m3TsP9eTgLRMyhSwab7-wNYp_yU_TpNohdRm-Q/s1600/Penelope_Fitzgerald.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij9_a-T4maUm9l_y91JHCUyRYCWiO1Wp0ZALuHj4moDX8MtiPadXhNH8qseQpzYO9dy1NiEJ5O0oEEayUF1Ti3H5uM8ZTe5gblcyYO5m3TsP9eTgLRMyhSwab7-wNYp_yU_TpNohdRm-Q/s1600/Penelope_Fitzgerald.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2008/may/19/thequietgeniusofpenelopef">Source </a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Like John, I thought I'd better read some of Fitzgerald's work
before I read her biography. I'm deeply ashamed to say that I had never heard of her and was only slightly consoled that my other half hadn't heard of her either. Whilst </span><a href="http://library.moretonbay.qld.gov.au/cgi-bin/spydus.exe/MSGTRN/OPAC/HOME" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">the library service</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> where I work had
several of her novels, I was impatient for a good read and so opted for an
e-version of</span><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.librarything.com/work/27147">The Bookshop</a></i><span class="apple-converted-space" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">through </span><a href="https://elibcat.library.brisbane.qld.gov.au/uhtbin/cgisirsi/?ps=ale5q3sbi1/ZZELIBCAT/268920029/60/1308/X" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">my other city council libraryservice</a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">. </span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There are pluses and minuses about e-versions. Negatives are
that they don't come with yummy covers - well not on my Kobo touch anyway.
I am a firm believer in judging a book as much by its cover as anything
else. Positives are that you can get a book (usually) when you are in a
hurry. Whilst you can make notes, I still find a tree book better when it
comes to reflecting on a book and its merits. Maybe it comes down to the
user - I try to make notes or highlight text that appealed to me but I don't
seem to do it very well. I find flicking through a real book much easier.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway, enough about me and my incompetence. Let's talk about the book. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">It's only 107 pages long (e-version; the tree version is about 175 pages). Can you believe it? Of late
most prize-winning books seem to have to be absolute door-stoppers. This
tends to make me a bit cross and feel defeated before I've even begun. My
first Fitzgerald was looking even better than I'd hoped. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">At first when I was reading <i>The
Bookshop</i> I tended to compare its author with Barbara Pym - and not as
favourably. I found the writing a bit jumpy and disjointed. I
wondered if I was missing some knowledge of dialect or whether there were some
typos or glitches with the e-version. I longed to compare the e-version
with a ridgy-didge tree book. Has anyone else noticed this? Here's an
example of what I am referring to in some dialogue:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"<i>Why
should you mind about that, my dear?"<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"They say she can't hold on to it,<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>do they'll have her up.
That'll mean County Court."<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I've highlighted the bit I don't understand. Maybe it's
Suffolk idiom. If you know, please edu-macate or enlighten me. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Then I started to smile a bit and think "Hmm...this is a damn
queer book. Is it a ghost story?" </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiJDGExmFu1Tnv_npWWasAgjnHjbM4oG9bRMGBuD6hncIyJUw5EoguVboyXOFnj30wkLfm1f619e6NdmCfSmZXQ91e3oWNdWs7A2JKJQmfz-oUy7AFe4hGJwP_tDBF8bL8oWkHcwZruDw/s1600/4829805059_b6009677d0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiJDGExmFu1Tnv_npWWasAgjnHjbM4oG9bRMGBuD6hncIyJUw5EoguVboyXOFnj30wkLfm1f619e6NdmCfSmZXQ91e3oWNdWs7A2JKJQmfz-oUy7AFe4hGJwP_tDBF8bL8oWkHcwZruDw/s1600/4829805059_b6009677d0.jpg" height="320" width="214" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Source <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/howzey/4829805059">Flickr</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Well no it's not. Well there is a ghost - but it isn't the
main focus of the book. The "rapper" as they call it, is quite
entertaining for a colonial like me living in a land where there don't seem so
many ghosts on hand. It was from about the poltergeist scene onward that I
relaxed and settled into the Fitzgerald groove. As<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2008/may/19/thequietgeniusofpenelopef">Edmund
Gordon</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> </span>says:</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Fitzgerald's greatness doesn't announce
itself within a few sentences, but creeps up on you slowly, over the course of
a novel." <o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Anyway I don't really want to tell you much more about<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>The Bookshop</i>, other than I
really really liked it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Trevor's review tells you what it's about. I just want to
second his review and say that the writing made me laugh out loud, gasp and say
"Oh no!" on several occasions. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">There is some exquisite writing. I find it hard to
articulate why it is so great. Fitzgerald writes as much about what's <i>not</i>
there as well as what <i>is </i>there. I liked this passage the best (when aged
Mr Brundish takes the unprecedented step of emerging from his abode to come to the heroine Florence Green's defence).<span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt 36pt;">
<i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Without attempting to disguise his weakness, without
pretending to stop for a few minutes to admire the proportions of the hall, he
clung to the banisters, struggling for breath. His stick fell with a
clatter to the shining floor."<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I wanted to say in conclusion that I liked how many of
Fitzgerald's characters didn't mince words but just said it like it was.
Maybe that can be said of Fitzgerald too. It is perhaps the economy
or thrift of words that I loved most about her writing. Thrift is an attribute for which I am not
famous, but which I deeply admire in others. In support of this self-assessment, I am now off to purchase my own tree version. Whilst I would like, in deference to thrift and booksellers to purchase locally, I confess to being rather taken with the Everyman omnibus which features a rather lovely cover portrait of the author. It would, after all, be a tribute to Florence Green's fondness for Everyman editions.....</span></div>
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Alex Dawhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05083753053051713061noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-37991495503067028962013-12-15T12:31:00.001-05:002014-07-20T14:51:26.091-04:00Harvest by Jim Crace - 2013 shortlist<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="background-color: white; color: #888888; font-family: 'Droid Serif', Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 14px; font-style: italic; line-height: 23px;">…. rain or shine, the earth abides, the land endures, the soil will persevere for ever and a day.</span></blockquote>
<br />
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That quote from Jim Crace's latest book <em>Harvest </em>might lull you into thinking this novel is a homage to the timeless quality o<a data-mce-href="http://allthingsbooker.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/harvest.jpeg" href="http://allthingsbooker.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/harvest.jpeg"><img alt="Harvest" class="alignleft wp-image-2756" data-mce-src="http://allthingsbooker.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/harvest.jpeg" data-mce-style="margin-left: 6px; margin-right: 6px;" src="http://allthingsbooker.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/harvest.jpeg" height="257" style="border: 0px; cursor: default; float: left; margin-left: 6px; margin-right: 6px;" width="159" /></a>f the countryside. It isn't any more than it is a sentimentalised evocation of England's green and pleasant land or even a tribute to the symbiotic relationship between the land and the generations of dwellers for whom the land has provided a means of existence.</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.3em;">
Instead it's a deeply thoughtful story that examines the human consequences of a rupture in a traditional way of life resulting from a pursuit of "Profit, Progress, Enterprise".</div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.3em;">
The setting is a small rural English community known simply as The Village where life follows the ceaseless cycle of sowing,planting and harvesting required to eke out even the barest of subsistence living. The Village exists in a bubble where the regular routine is seldom troubled by anything beyond the ancient oaks and dry stone walls that mark the reaches of the settlement.</div>
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Even if the inhabitants are not fully aware of it, this is a way of life that is threatened. As the novel opens, smoke wisps are still rising from the ruins of a stable at the local manor house, – the result, the villagers believe, of an arson attack. Barely have they recovered from that shock when there is a further signal of a disturbing nature. New comers have arrived, taking advantage of a law that gives them the right to settle within the village's boundaries as long as they can put up a rudimentary shelter and send up smoke before they are caught. The events become conflated in the minds of the villagers fearful that the year's disastrous harvest will have to stretch even further.</div>
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What the villagers do not know is that there is an more profound change on the horizon. The manor lord Master Kent has always taken a paternalistic attitude towards his tenant but now his claim to the estate has been revoked. The new lord intends to enclose all the fields, turning them from crop growing to the more profitable venture of sheep grazing. The villagers who have tended these fields for generations will be forced out when the land they farm in common is enclosed for sheep. When he arrives to take stock of his new estate complete with his entourage of strong- arm men, aggression, violence and death soon ensue.</div>
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Our guide to these events is one Walter Thirsk, an old boyhood friend and former servant of Master Kent. Although he's lived in the village for a dozen years or so after marrying one of the villagers, they still view him as an outsider. Walter has a deep and abiding affection for the fields and oaks around him, viewing them as a form of Eden. But he has no illusions about the way nature can be inflexible and stern, presenting hardships for those who make their living from the land. He is a realist who knows that the world around him is changing and that it will be to the detriment of his community. For all the new master's talk of a new order "to all our advantages" and the prospect of a life without hard work and where uncertain grain harvests will be swapped for the predictability of sheep farming, The effects of enclosure for him will be "to throw a halter around our neck."</div>
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Walter sees the economic and human consequences of enclosure. But he also sees it as a rupture of man's connection to his past.</div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 1.3em;">
We're used to looking out and seeing what's preceded us, and what will also outlive us. ... Those woods that linked us to eternity will be removed... That grizzled oak which we believe is so old it must have come from Eden to our fields will be felled and routed out. That drystone wall put up before our grandpa's time .... will be brought down entirely ....until there is no trace of it. We'll look across these fields and say, 'This land is so much younger than ourselves."</div>
</blockquote>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.3em;">
Crace relates this story in language that at times borders on poetry. There is a close attention to detail - we get many names of hedgerow plants for example which might enable some experts to actually pinpoint the location or even the era. And some wonderfully evocative phrases such as the Turd and Turf, an area which does double duty as both latrine and burial ground. Crace has a real feel for the landscape - its shape, its sounds and its smells - but even more powerfully rendered his is appreciation for man's relation to the land.</div>
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<span data-mce-style="color: #000080;" style="color: navy;"><strong>My Verdict</strong></span></div>
<div style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', 'Bitstream Charter', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 21px; margin-bottom: 1.3em;">
A superb novel, one of the best I've read all year. Immediately on finishing it, I wanted to start it all over again. I read it before the judges announced it was not the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize. There's no justice in this world!</div>
Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-37172356595397959132013-11-18T11:23:00.000-05:002014-07-20T14:52:29.660-04:00 A Tale for the Time Being, by Ruth Ozeki - 2013 shortlist<i><b>A Tale for the Time Being</b></i>, by Ruth Ozeki. Published 2013 by Viking Adult.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzZf78uL0_Oe8PjtfI4SVOaufSmkWu98165OFT65LX7mImavwidJrCDY-bFx7UicYxwacG8cPZfC1aUDUgLCrn6F_XVu7yQ_DM8vlsWC-Uo293FqSSpWzq2hfTeoSWn5Ukg1GCzs7Wza4T/s1600/ozeki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzZf78uL0_Oe8PjtfI4SVOaufSmkWu98165OFT65LX7mImavwidJrCDY-bFx7UicYxwacG8cPZfC1aUDUgLCrn6F_XVu7yQ_DM8vlsWC-Uo293FqSSpWzq2hfTeoSWn5Ukg1GCzs7Wza4T/s1600/ozeki.jpg" /></a>I picked up <i><b>A Tale for the Time Being</b></i>
after it got a starred review in Kirkus; I tend to do well with starred
Kirkus books, and I liked this one right from the opening lines. These
lines come from a diary written by a teenage girl, Nao, who grew up in
America but has moved back to Japan with her mother and father. Her
father is unemployed and steeped in shame and depression; her mother is
trying to support the family, and Nao is just trying to survive. When
the book opens Nao's tone is cheeky and funny, but her story goes to
some very dark places, and very quickly.<br />
<br />
Coupled with Nao is a writer named Ruth, living on a Canadian island with her boyfriend Oliver. They share a quiet life, but grief and anxiety
lie beneath the surface. Ruth's mother has recently died, and when she
finds Nao's diary washed up on the beach, she becomes more and more concerned about the sixteen year-old's fate.<br />
<br />
She
has reason to be concerned. The Fukushima nuclear disaster occurred
rather near to where Ruth thinks the diary came from, and Nao becomes
more depressed and suicidal as the narrative of the diary wears on.
There are some interesting things going on in this book. Ruth reads
Nao's diary as if it will contain the end to Nao's story, but if Nao is
alive or dead at the moment Ruth is reading, the answer won't lie within
the diary's pages. Ruth has to negotiate her relationship with the
text, to understand what she can and can't learn from it, the same way
we always have to understand our position in relationship to what we're
reading. In this way the book is really about the act of reading itself,
about how to understand what we're reading and to understand that there
are things we can never know.<br />
<br />
Nao's driving
motivation for writing the diary isn't so much to recount her own story
but to tell the story of her great-grandmother, an elderly Buddhist nun
whose son died as kamikaze pilot at the beginning of World War 2. This
story is one she comes upon by accident, much the same way Ruth
discovers Nao's. Like Ruth, Nao is left to make sense of the story by
herself, with only the most slender of clues. In this way the book
closes in on itself a little, like a nesting doll, stories within
stories.<br />
<br />
<i>A Tale for the Time Being </i>was short-listed for the 2013 Man Booker Prize and the fact that it lost to <i>The Luminaries </i>only makes me want to read that book because I need to know what made it better! <i>Time Being </i>is
a quiet book that I didn't expect to receive recognition- it certainly
wasn't hyped or promoted that I noticed- but I think it's a great book
for the literary reader who has the time and stamina for a difficult,
thoughtful and intricate book. It's not for every reader; it doesn't
have much plot, and it's more about introspection than action. And it's
long, too. But it's worth it, if you're up to it.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-64242716997580515202013-10-29T17:37:00.000-04:002014-07-20T14:52:52.777-04:00Transatlantic by Column McCann - 2013 Longlist<br />
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Colum McCann opened his award-winning novel<em> Let the Great World Spin</em> with a dramatic, real-world event — Philippe Petit's 1974 high-wire walk between the newly built Twin Towers of New York. In similar vein he opens <em>TransAtlantic</em> with another astonishing feat — the first nonstop transatlantic flight by the British airmen Alcock and Brown shortly after the end of World War 1.</div>
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In both novels, these daring acts demonstrate man's relentless desire to challenge and push through the boundaries of what is possible. They also serve as narrative anchors for a McCann's multi-stranded narrative about individuals whose lives overlap and connect during some 150 years of American-Irish history.</div>
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McCann brings together three real-life stories: Alcock and Brown and their ground-breaking flight; a visit to to Ireland in 1845 by the antislavery activist Frederick Douglass and the diplomatic attempts by Senator George Mitchell to broker the 1998 Good Friday peace settlement in Northern Ireland. The novel's final strand introduces four generations of women whose fictitious lives intersect with those of the real-life characters over the centuries. Via these multiple narratives we go back in time to an Ireland on the verge of famine and to the American Civil War and then come forwards to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the demise of the Celtic Tiger.</div>
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It's an ambitious approach structurally and thematically. McCann's story is essentially about the complex connections between two nations separated but yet united by the same stretch of water. Into this he weaves ideas about the way ordinary lives are touched by great moments in history.</div>
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Given the scope and scale of his ambition, he could perhaps be forgiven a few misses. <em>TransAtlantic</em> begins on a strong note with the recreation of Alcock and Brown's flight through snow and fog aided only by some rudimentary navigation systems.</div>
<blockquote style="color: #333333; font-family: 'Open Sans', sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 19px;">
Three thousand feet above the sea. In the cloud their balance is shot to hell. No sense of up. No down. Two thousand five hundred. Two thousand. The slap of rain and wind in their faces. The machine shudders. ... Their bodies are thrown back against the seats. What they need is a line of sky or sea. A visual. But there is nothing but thick, grey cloud... No horizon, no centre, no edge.</blockquote>
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The next few sections sadly don't live up to that opening promise. The 1845 famine caused by the failure of the potato crop is sketched slimly while the chapters set during the American Civil War are dealt with so slightly they don't have much impact. For me the weakest strand came with the efforts to bring about some form of lasting settlement between the British government and the paramilitary forces in North Ireland. Diplomacy by its nature doesn't lend itself that well to the dramatic but the portrayal of Senator George Mitchell sucks even more life from the narrative. We get no strong insight into his character beyond the fact he is tired of the painfully slow progress of talks and would much rather be at home with his family instead of criss-crossing the ocean.</div>
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Nor are these middle sections helped by McCann's terse prose which often contains verbless sentences or one-sentence paragraphs where the words come forth like a machine gun.</div>
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You might be tempted during these sections to give up on the book.</div>
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I urge you to resist the temptation.</div>
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McCann has saved his best for the final chapters.</div>
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This is where he switches to the remaining female members of his fiction family. The particular focus is on Hannah Carson, the great grand-daughter of a young maid who was so inspired by hearing Douglass talk of freedom and equality, that she crossed the Atlantic to make a new life for herself in America. Her descendants eventually returned to the motherland.</div>
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Now aged 72, Hannah lives in the family's tumbledown cottage on the shores of a tidal lake with only her incontinent dog for company. She feels not only the pressure from a bank that demands she sells so she can clear her overdraft, but also the weight of her country's history and its traumatic effect on her own family. It's quite the most powerful and moving part of the whole novel.</div>
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Originally posted at www.bookertalk.com</div>
Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-68278113094771908332013-10-15T17:53:00.000-04:002013-10-15T17:53:01.602-04:00Change in the Rules?Hello all, it's Booker Prize Announcement Day! While I have been hovering over the imminent release of this year's Man Booker Prize winner, I stumbled across some serious prize news (and maybe you all already know this and I am just living under a rock but...) Next year they are going to start incluindg works by American authors??!?!<br />
<br />
Can we discuss this??<br />
<br />
As an American, on the one hand I've always been a little irked by this commonwealth-only stuffiness. It feels a little like its affirming a certain Colonialst mindset (No, you can't participate because you rebelled against British Rule before it was OK). But on the other hand, there are already several American literature prizes, and I read the winners and moninees of those from time to time to get my fix of American literature. One thing I've always liked about the Booker is that it is my window into the rest of English literature, and I get to read high-quality works by authors from incredibly diverse international perspecitves. So if this means that the Bookers will now consist of mostly American works (and I am by no means suggesting that this will inevitably be the case), then maybe this is a disappointing change in the rules.<br />
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Anyone else excited/disappointed?Athena K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/06002883851301948198noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-57483697507511448442013-09-25T23:55:00.001-04:002013-09-25T23:58:54.069-04:00Athena K's Review - The Testament of Mary<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">The term "novella" may be too big for this short story. I think that was my first disappointment. And the length of the piece is not mandated by the subject. The story felt at times truncated and rushed, at other times over packed and too dense. Colm Toibin has an interesting starting point here, but I'm not a fan of how he delivered.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>The Testament of Mary</em>, we are supposed to understand, is the first hand account of Mary, mother of Jesus Christ. (In case you were confused, and I'd argue that you would have an excuse to be, the Library of Congress has helpfully applied the Subject Heading "Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint — Fiction.") However, nowhere is the narrator identified as Mary explicitly, and nowhere does she refer to her son by his first name. Instead, Toibin relies on his audience's assumed familiarity with the basic story of Jesus to put the pieces together.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It's Toibin's coyness on the whole subject matter that bothers me the most. Rather than writing a compelling story, I think he wrote <em>around</em> a compelling story. His gaps are supposed to be filled in by Biblical scripture. He relies on his audience knowing the vague references he makes to characters from the gospels (without using their names, for the most part). However, as I am not a biblical scholar, or even a sometimes reader, I found myself lost on many of his more obscure references. Oh, I'm familiar enough with the tales of Lazarus and the wine-into-water miracle, and the circumstances of Jesus' death, but Toibin expected me to have a greater understanding of the details - otherwise his plot twist and foreshadowing fall somewhat flat, as they did for me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">However, it was clear even to me that the Mary narrating this story is not the sweet demure Mary of the illustrated Children's Bible we had growing up. This Mary is bitter, and dislikes people - particularly men:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have made clear to her that her sons, if they ever should come here, cannot cross this threshold. I have made clear to her that I do not want their help for anything. I do not want them in this house. It takes weeks to eradicate the stench of men from these rooms so that I can breathe air again that is not fouled by them.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Maybe Mary's dislike of men springs from the loss of her son, but it seems that Mary was a bitter woman prior to her son's murder. Speaking of a time before his death, she states:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">And so I decided to set out for Cana for the wedding of my cousin's daughter, having decided previously that I would not go. I disliked weddings. I dislike the amount of laughter and talk and the waste of food and the drink flowing over and the bride and groom more like a couple to be sacrificed, for the sake of money, or status, or inheritance, to be singled out and celebrated for something that was none of anyone's business and then to be set up with roars of jollity and drunkenness and unnecessary gatherings of people.</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> Harsh words from Mary! Whatever it was in her past that has caused her to feel this way about people or marriage is simply not touched in this story.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Which gets me back to the very short length of this story. Toibin could have developed the plot so much more. Mary's experience of the circumstances of Jesus' conception, birth, and childhood remain a mystery. Oblique references to minor characters could have been fleshed out more satisfactorily. Mary's character could have undergone a palpable change into the acerbic misanthrope we hear narrating the story. We could have find out a bit more about Joseph and her relationship with him. Providing these details would have helped make this story more engaging and memorable for me.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">It's my first of the 2013 Booker Shortlist novels, but its already not my pick for winner.</span>Athena K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/06002883851301948198noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-11783647197367695692013-09-25T23:12:00.001-04:002013-09-25T23:58:17.393-04:00Athena K's Review - Dirt Music<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, "Times New Roman", serif;">Tim Winton fills <em>Dirt Music</em> with severely damaged characters - and I'm not sure I was able enough to like them enough for the novel to work for me. Georgie Jutland is a natural caregiver who isn't caring for anyone, including herself, and is on a downard slope to alcoholism and self destruction. The man in her life is Jim Buckridge, a blokey Western Australian who may never get over the death of his wife. And, after a one night stand, the other man in her life is the much younger Luther Fox, who should be a soleful musician but who makes a living as an illegal fisherman because he is haunted by violence and loss. Its not clear how any of these characters can be redeemed, and they certainly try to find redemption and healing through each other. But plot twists take us into implausible waters and Winton ultimately did not hold my attention.<br /><br />What did captivate me about this book was Winton's beautiful sense of place - the coasts and interiors of Western Australia. Perhaps because I spent some time living and traveling in Western Australia, I felt his images were incredibly evocative. I could really picture the light - the harsh mid-day glare, or the golden dusty sunsets permeated nearly all of his scenes. He captured perfectly the essence of small town Western Australian life without relying on stereotypes or characatures, which I really appreciate. Still, I didn't enjoy it enough to recommend it to anyone I know.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia;">I completed this book on December 19, 2012, and have been very late in posting my review.</span><br />
<br />Athena K.http://www.blogger.com/profile/06002883851301948198noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-60807815997864132602013-09-25T17:48:00.004-04:002013-09-25T17:48:58.583-04:002012 Shortlist The Lighthouse by Alison Moore<br />
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Alison Moore's debut novel <em>The Lighthouse</em> is a quietly deceptive tale; one of those books that so gently wraps itself around you that you just have to keep reading even when you're not really sure where it's going.</div>
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This is not a novel that bursts forth with a big bang opening or one that contains any significant dramatic events. Instead we follow the slow trail of a middle-aged man bearing the oddly-sounding name of Futh, as he takes a solo walking holiday in the Rhineland. Futh's idea of a good holiday is rather simple; he isn't looking for adventure but rather a 'week of good sausages and deep sleep' that will help him recover from the recent break up of his marriage. We soon discover that his marital separation isn't anywhere as traumatic an experience as his mother's decision to abandon him as a child.</div>
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Futh is a lonely and rather hapless soul. A man who seems only half complete. He has no true friends; his father mocks his work as chemist who creates fake scents for polishes and air fresheners and his marriage is little more than a relationship of convenience. As he tramps the paths along the Rhine each day with blistered feet and sunburnt head he recalls episodes and fragments from his life.</div>
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Futh clings to his past life with the aid of a small lighthouse-shaped perfume bottle that once belonged to his mother. He carries it with him everywhere, a talisman whose violet scent always reminds him of his mother and the last day they enjoyed together before she abandoned him.<br />
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This small object, one of many motifs within the novel, takes on additional significance in the second strand of the book in which we meet the owners of a small hotel/bar called Hellhaus (German for ‘lighthouse’) where Futh begins and is due to end his holiday. Esther has a habit of enticing some of her male guests to sleep with her as a way of getting her taciturn husband Bernard to show an interest in her again. He does with the aid of dark threats and a heavy fist. Poor Futh gets caught up in their tangled lives on his first night on holiday when he attracts Bernard's mistaken suspicions of an assignation with Esther. Futh leaves the establishment on the first morning blissfully unaware of the smouldering fuse he is leaving behind in this hotel and to which he will return. Although this is not a suspense novel in the traditional sense, Moore's narrative gradually notches up the tension with each step that takes Futh back to the hotel.</div>
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<em>The Lighthouse</em> explores the consequences of a traumatic incident in childhood; the way the past impacts the adult self. Futh evokes our sympathy for the hopelessness and emptiness of his life and his obsession with the past, with its old wounds and childhood hurts that will always keep dragging him back and prevent him achieving from achieving happiness.</div>
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Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-32562461450558882002013-09-10T16:59:00.001-04:002013-09-10T16:59:15.268-04:002013 Booker Prize Shortlist<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The Luminaries - Eleanor Catton</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The Harvest - Jim Crace</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">A Tale For The Time Being - Ruth Ozeki</span><br style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;" /><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 18px;">The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin</span>Messy_Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05793938555354522246noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-85181975499612700372013-08-30T04:10:00.000-04:002013-08-30T04:10:46.386-04:001974 Shortlist: The Bottle Factory Outing<br />
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<a class="zem_slink" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beryl_Bainbridge" rel="wikipedia" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.3s linear; border: 0px; color: #af5245; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="Beryl Bainbridge">Beryl Bainbridge</a> made it to the Man <a class="zem_slink" href="http://themanbookerprize.com/" rel="homepage" style="-webkit-transition: all 0.3s linear; border: 0px; color: #af5245; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;" target="_blank" title="Man Booker Prize">Booker prize</a> shortlist a record five times but never succeeded in winning the award. <em style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s linear; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Bottle Factory Outing, </em>her fourth novel was one of the shortlisted titles in 1974 but was beaten to the prize by Stanley Middleton’s <em style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s linear; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">Holiday. </em></div>
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Bainbridge’s story is set in a small Italian-run factory somewhere in London which bottles wines and some spirits. Freda and Brenda are two members of the workforce , working alongside some middle aged Italians who clean and label the bottles for despatch. The pair share a workbench by day and a miserable bedsit room by night. They also share a bed though they build a wall of books to ensure there is a clear demarkation of space on the mattress. <sup id="cite_ref-5" style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s linear; border: 0px; bottom: 1ex; font-family: inherit; font-size: 11px; font-style: inherit; height: 0px; line-height: 0; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;"></sup></div>
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They are an unlikely pair of women to hitch up together. They have little in common either in their backgrounds or their attitudes to life.</div>
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Freda is one of those people who seem born with a bigger pair of lungs than the average human being. Loud and fearless, she has aspirations to be an actress or, failing that, to marry someone rich. Brenda is her complete opposite, dark haired and completely passive, the kind of girl that will never say no to anyone in case they are offended. Her one moment of bravery it seems was to leave her husband, a drunkard much prone to urinating on the doorstep of their home in the north of England and to set up alone in London.</div>
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Freda is a girl with dreams. She comes up with a plan for the entire team to take off for a day out in country. It will, she hopes, give her the opportunity to capture the heart of the manager, Vittorio. Brenda has more pressing concerns – how to avoid the amorous intentions of her fellow worker, the lecherous Rossi.</div>
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Their day of freedom fails to live up to all their expectations. It’s starts with the non appearance of the van they’d booked as transport and gets steadily worse because instead of a wine-fuelled picnic in the grounds of a stately home, they have to enjoy their repast on a patch of grass near the road. It all ends in in tragedy.</div>
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<em style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s linear; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Bottle Factory Outing</em> is a novel inspired by Bainbridge’s own experience of working in a bottling plant. At times offbeat, the humour is mingled with moments of poignancy particularly in the final scenes as the workers gather at a bizarre party in the factory attic.</div>
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The front cover blurb says Grahame Greene considered <em style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s linear; border: 0px; font-family: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;">The Bottle Factory Outing </em> to be ‘outrageously funny and horrifying.’ Funny yes with some scenes that are pure farce but I couldn’t find anything remotely ‘horrifying’ within these pages. It struck me rather as a story that ripples with pathos. All the workers in this factory have dreams that sustain them through their mundane lives; they long for something to relieve that monotony but ultimately those wishes and desires come to nothing. <i style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s linear;"><br style="-webkit-transition: opacity 0.3s linear;" /></i></div>
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I enjoyed Bainbridge’s economic style of writing and warmed to these two women but the novel ultimately failed to live up to its promise. The black humour and the poignancy ultimately became as unlikely a pairing as Freda and Brenda.</div>
Karenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05415811109852633395noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-52577836990594665522013-08-29T07:22:00.002-04:002013-08-29T07:22:59.786-04:00Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - Almost English - Charlotte Mendelson<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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No, no, no, no, no, no and no. Sorry judges but seriously how did this novel make it onto the 2013 longlist? I would hope that there was some heated debate about including it, otherwise Robert Macfarlane (Cambridge AND Oxford), Robert Douglas-Fairhurst (Oxford), Natalie Haynes (The Independent and The Guardian), Martha Kearney (BBC) and Stuart Kelly (The Scotsman, The Guardian and The Times) have a bit of explaining to do. Such noble qualifications and history amongst you and I know reading 151 novels to cut it down to 13 would be a monumental task but surely you couldn’t have all fallen asleep when reading this?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Have I said this already? No, no, no, no, no, no and no. The Man Booker website review says: “In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally-delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.” That précis actually reads better than the book itself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Basically we have the ingredients for a Man Booker novel, living in a foreign land, ostracised from your homeland but not accepted in the new but what a mishmash of points to be made: teenage angst, puberty, sexuality, hidden family secrets, embarrassing family members, mysterious lecherous older men, public school mores, broken relationships, illness, affairs, lost fortunes, not fitting in at school, at home, no history, depression, drugs – I could go on and on and on and on.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The 2011 Longlist featured a novel “A Cupboard Full of Coats” by Yvette Edwards which featured Jinx of who I said “a more selfish, passionately self-absorbed character I don’t think I’ve ever met”, well this year I may have stumbled across another – Laura, the mother of Marina, who has more meltdowns, tears, selfish moments than her teenage lost insecure emotional daughter but only marginally so.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Kisses can grow. They spread over your skin like lichen while, inside, you change too. You can’t stop thinking: what did it mean?<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our novel switches throughout each chapter from Laura being our protagonist to Marina taking the stage (and I’m sure the chapter breaks are only there so you can have a rest, even though they are marked with dates they seem totally irrelevant). If that’s not frustrating enough both characters are equally unappealing. The “overbearing, secret” Hungarian in-laws are sketched characters with no depth (suppose they need to be as they’re so secretive) so you feel no passion at all for them and to simply start blurting out history at the end of the novel gave me no satisfaction as I couldn’t care less what had happened to these self-absorbed characters. How on earth have they lived together for 17 odd years and not discussed anything beyond undergarments and food?<o:p></o:p></div>
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There are not many novels that I utterly dislike on these literary longlists but this one surely qualifies. I’d made it 100 pages in and thought, “this has got to improve to make the longlist” once I was 200 pages down I wasn’t going to let it get the better of me, 300 pages in and I needed a break, finally the lot was conquered and I’ve wasted a week’s reading, a week I’ll never get back. Normally I’m a little less harsh on these novels (the last three that I’ve reviewed that I didn’t like were from first time authors so I went a little lighter), here there is no excuse. I don’t blame the writer, nor the publisher as I’m sure there is an audience for this type of novel out there (somewhere) but Man Booker judges hang your heads in shame, this is NOT adding to diversity, yes you may be “independent of fashion” but surely one other of the 138 novels that didn’t make the list would have been more worthy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If this makes the shortlist I’ll donate $100 to the Indigenous Literary Foundation to help a local aborigine community in their pursuit of reading, let’s just hope their library doesn’t include this novel.</div>
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Cross posted at <a href="http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/">my blog</a>.</div>
Messy_Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05793938555354522246noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-64970861135905980432013-08-26T18:02:00.001-04:002013-08-26T18:02:23.739-04:00Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - We Need New Names - NoViolet Bulawayo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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One enjoyable part about setting yourself the goal of reading all the Man Booker Prize longlist each year is the fact you come across new authors, new voices. You hear stories from diverse regions of the Commonwealth. Whereas some of the novels may not be as challenging or diverse as some of the selection from the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, you still manage to find a few areas of literature that you haven’t explored before.<o:p></o:p></div>
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NoViolet Bulawayo is a Zimbabwean author who moved to Michigan when she was eighteen years of age and she is currently s Stegner Fellow at Stanford University in California. In 2011 she won the Caine Prize for African Writing and in 2009 she was shortlisted for the South African PEN Studzinsi Award. A pretty impressive resume and this is her first novel, straight onto the Man Booker Prize Longlist!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our novel is narrated by Darling, who we follow through the ardour of growing up in Zimbabwe and follow to schooling and work in America. With the usual themes of displacement, not having a homeland, being rejected by your adopted country etc. this could be classed as standard Booker Prize fare (look at “The Garden of Evening Mists” by Tan Twan Eng last year or “Pigeon English” by Stephen Kelman the year before or “Half Blood Blues” or right back to 1971 and V.S. Naipaul’s “In a Free State” the list of similar themes in endless). But the difference here is the story told in Zimbabwe where local currency is worthless, human life is worthless, a country in total decline where locals are taking back the land from the white people.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Jesus Christ died on this day, which is why I have to be out here washing with cold water like this. I don’t like cold water and I don’t even like washing my whole body unless I have somewhere meaningful to go. After I finish and dress, me and Mother of Bones will head off to church. She says it’s the least we can do because we are all dirty sinners and we are the ones for whom Jesus Christ gave his life, but what I know is that I myself wasn’t there when it all happened, so how can I be a sinner?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I don’t like going to church because I don’t really see why I have to sit in the hot sun on that mountain and listen to boring songs and meaningless prayers and strange verses when I could be doing important things with my friends. Plus, last time I went, that crazy Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro shook me and shook me until I vomited pink things. I thought I was going to die a real death. Prophet Revelations Bitchington Mborro was trying to get the spirit inside me out; they say I’m possessed because they say my grandfather isn’t properly buried because the white people killed him during the war for feeding and hiding the terrorists who were trying to get our country back because the white people had stolen it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Told in an innocent voice throughout, Darling and her friends play game like “Find bin Laden” (we’d call it hide and seek), steal guava’s from the trees in the built up neighbourhood they call Budapest, await the monthly relief trucks (the NGO) and wear recycled “Go Green” t-shirts. They dream of a better life in America, Europe…anywhere.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let’s sing Lady Gaga, Sbho says.<o:p></o:p></div>
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No, let’s sing the national anthem like we used to at school assembly, I say.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Yes, let’s sing, and me, I’ll stand in front because I’ll be president, Bastard says. We line up nicely by Merjury’s shack and sing at the top of our voices, sing until the little kids come and gather around us, but they know they must not join.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Wayyyt, wayyyt, wih neeeeed tuh tayke a pictchur, whereh ease mah camera? Godknows cries, making like he is the NGO man, and we laugh and we laugh and we laugh. Gondknows runs and picks up one of those bricks with holes in them and holds it like it’s a camera and takes and takes and takes pictures. We smile and we strike poses and we look pretty and we shout, Change! Cheese! Change!<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think it is really important that diverse and important stories and voices like Darling’s are heard, the reality of the shanties in Zimbabwe are truly brought to life, where food is scant and simple pleasures of singing, playing with your friends, eating stolen guavas until you burst, raise their hopes. But we are also told the horrors of AIDS of pregnancy at age eleven of extreme hunger, civil war, destruction and a despot president.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Darling manages to escape the horror and make it to America (on a visitor’s visa) but from there she longs for home, even though her dreams of owning a Lamborghini were far-fetched and the reality of working the worst of jobs as you are an illegal immigrant bring a touch of further reality to our story. America is still the country of plentiful:<o:p></o:p></div>
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We ate like pigs, like wolves, like dignitaries; we ate like vultures, like stray dogs, like monsters; we ate like kings. We ate for all our past hunger, for our parents and brothers and sisters and relatives and friends who were still back there. We uttered their names between mouthfuls, conjured up their hungry faces and chapped lips – eating for those who could not be with us to eat for themselves. And when we were full we carried our dense bodies with the dignity of elephants – if only our country could see us in America, see us eat like kings in a land that was not ours.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is a powerful story that gives you a decent reality check on what is transpiring in other parts of the world, an important story, a story that leaves you shocked and amazed at the resilience, a story that will linger long after you’ve read the final page. Not only an indictment on Zimbabwe but also the USA the innocent, naive voice of Darling tells us the horrors in a voice that only a child could own. The only criticism I do have is there are sections where it lacks a little cohesion, as though the chapters are short stories reliving a theme that were heard pages before. For example, the food example above was explored a lot earlier with the story of one kids eating enough pizza for lunch to feed a Zimbabwean family for a week. This is not to say that this is a novel that is not worth exploring, however it may be sufficient to see it miss the short list cut.</div>
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Cross posted at<a href="http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/"> my blog</a>.</div>
Messy_Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05793938555354522246noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-8939879931514326012013-08-13T07:31:00.003-04:002013-08-13T07:31:50.755-04:00Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - A Tale For The Time Being - Ruth Ozeki<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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As I write this review now it will be my recollections and feelings on Ozeki’s novel at the present moment. If I was to defer the writing and start my thoughts tomorrow, it would be a different review, or would it? Today’s thoughts, tomorrow’s thoughts…same thing!<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you’re not familiar with Zen Buddhist teachings you may think I’ve finally cracked, or even if you are you may think I’m being a little too glib. I had no other way of starting this review but in the present moment, so off I went.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Ruth Ozeki’s novel is not your everyday bedtime read. Basically we have Ruth (herself) finding a Japanese lunchbox washed up on the shore of her island. In the box we have the diary of a teenage Japanese girl, Nao, the letters of a Kamikaze pilot (written in French to hide their content from his superiors) and Japanese writings and an antique watch. The diary is hidden within the covers of Proust’s “A la recherche du temps perdu” and contains Nao’s story of her 104 year old great grandmother Jiko a Buddhist nun. “A Tale For The Time Being” contains excerpts from the diary, footnotes and appendices made by Ruth, interspersed with Ruth’s story of researching the diary, writing her own novel and living her daily life on a remote island, with smatterings of the translated letters, Zen teachings and more.<o:p></o:p></div>
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It was hard to get a sense from the diary of the texture of time passing. No writer, even the most proficient, could re-enact in words the flow of a life lived, and Nao was hardly that skilful.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Home-leaving is a Buddhist euphemism for leaving the secular world and entering the monastic path, which is pretty much the opposite of what Ruth was contemplating when she pondered her return to the city. Zen Master Dogen uses the phrase in “The Merits of Home-Leaving” which is the title of Chapter 86 of Shohogenzo. This is the chapter in which he praises his young monks for their commitment to a path of awakening and explicates the granular nature of time: the 6,400,099,980 moments that constitute a single day. His point is that every single one of those moments provides an opportunity to reestablish our will. Even the snap of a finger, he says, provides us with sixty-five opportunities to wake up and to choose actions that will produce beneficial karma and turn our lives around.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Those two sections are taken from Ruth’s part of the novel, where she is learning the detail attached to Nao’s diary. But she is reading it in real time and at the same time building a relationship with that writer who actually entered our book before she entered our book!!!<o:p></o:p></div>
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If you’ve ever tried to keep a diary, then you’ll know that the problem of trying to write about the past really starts in the present: No matter how fast you write, you’re always stuck in the <i>then</i> and you can never catch up to what’s happening <i>now</i>, which means that <i>now</i> is pretty much doomed to extinction. It’s hopeless, really. Not that now is ever all that interesting. Now is usually just me, sitting in some dumpy maid café or on a stone bench at a temple on the way to school, moving a pen back and forth a hundred billion times across a page, trying to catch up with myself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As you’ve probably figured out, this is very much a tale of time, it includes quantum physics parallel universes, reactions to 9/11, the Japanese earthquake and tsunami (which may be the reason why the diary has washed ashore in Canada), as well as delving into the mind of a kamikaze pilot who knows his moment in time is coming to a close:<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have written to you of my decision to die. Here is what I did not tell you. In either side of me, my comrades sigh and groan, restless in their sleep, and outside the insects cry, but the ticking of the clock is the only sound I hear now. Second by second, minute by minute…tick, tick, tick…the small dry sounds fill every crevice of silence. I write this in the shadows. I write in the moonlight, straining my ears to hear beyond the cold mechanical clock to the warm biological noises of the night, but my being is attuned only to one thing, the relentless rhythm of time, marching toward my death.<o:p></o:p></div>
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If I could only smash the clock and stop time from advancing! Crush the infernal machine! Shatter its bland face and rip those cursed hands from their tortuous axis of circumscription! I can almost feel the sturdy metal body crumpling beneath my hands, the glass fracturing, the case cracking open, my fingers digging into the guts, spilling springs and delicate gearing. But no, there is no use, no way of stopping time, and so I lie here, paralyzed, listening to the last moments of my life tick by.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is a complex novel that explores suicide, culturally and from a number of angles (including kamikaze pilots of course), Japanese modern culture, fetishes, environmental issues, radioactive particles, sub species, Latin, bullying, a sense of home, origami beetles made from "The Great Minds of Western Philosophy" and more. But quite simply it is an engrossing tale, a mystical balance between a number of eras, cultures and styles. If you want something a little different, a slight insight into Zen Buddhism, but at the same time an engrossing story then this is definitely one to pick up. Surely will become a favourite of many a book club as the subjects covered are broad and enlightening.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The only times I was slightly put off was the movement from first person, to third person, to second person (depending upon the author of the section you are reading) but this distraction was momentarily and hey there are 6,400,099,980 moments that constitute a single day.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I’ve only read the three novels from the 2013 long list so far, but this one is the standout for myself to date. Another ten to go and I may well have changed my mind. I may even change it before you’ve stumbled across and read this blog post!!!</div>
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Cross posted at <a href="http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/">my blog</a>.</div>
Messy_Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05793938555354522246noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1167986121420161934.post-90971079826649191042013-08-11T06:18:00.001-04:002013-08-11T06:18:44.045-04:00Tony Messenger - 2013 Longlist - The Testament of Mary - Colm Toibin<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Now before I get all the comments about “how can a bloke read and review that many books in a week” I better start this review with the disclaimer that the latest “novel” from Colm Toibin is exactly 104 pages long. They are small pages too – so a “novel” you can easily knock over in a single session.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The back cover of my edition has a review from Edmund White of the “Irish Times” that says “This is a short book, but it is as dense as a diamond”, I agree, it is a short book, and yes it could be called dense, it could also be called presumptuous.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In 1953 Nikos Kazantzakis had his novel “The Last Temptation of Christ” published, the novel being written from Christ’s perspective, a human, a man also subjected to self-doubt, fear and of course temptation. In 1955 he was apparently excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church for his writing. Imagine making Christ a mere mortal, even if it was for literary purposes.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So now we have Colm Toibin revisiting the story of Jesus’ mother, Mary. In this book she is a mere mortal, a mother struggling to come to terms with the reverence that is being bestowed upon her child:<o:p></o:p></div>
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He was the boy I had given birth to and he was more defenceless now than he had been then. And in those days after he was born, when I held him and watched him, my thoughts included the thought that I would have someone now to watch over me when I was dying, to look after my body when I had died. In those days if I had ever dreamed that I would see him bloody, and the crowd around filled with zeal that he should be bloodied more, I would have cried out as I cried out that day and the cry would have come from a part of me that is the core of me. The rest of me is merely flesh and blood and bone.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This story relies heavily on you already understanding Christian dogma, there is a basic assumption that the Bible’s teachings of walking on water, turning water into wine and healing sick etc. is base knowledge:<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the kitchen the next morning news came that Martha, Mary and Lazarus were going to come to Miriam’s house first, and then accompany us to the feast. Lazarus was still weak, we were told, and his sisters had become aware of how afraid people were of him. ‘He lives with the secret that none of us knows,’ Miriam said. ‘His spirit had time to take root in the other world, and people are afraid of what he could say, the knowledge he could impart. His sisters do not want to go alone with him to the wedding.’<o:p></o:p></div>
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The sorry, inner lament that is Mary’s story as she recalls the pain of a grieving mother is amazingly mapped throughout, paced immaculately (nice word for a review of this type) and nuanced with slow reflective passages.<o:p></o:p></div>
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And then time created the man who sat beside me at the wedding feast in Cana, the man not heeding me, hearing no one, a man filled with power, a power that seemed to have no memory of years before, when he needed my breast for milk, my hand to help steady him as he learned to walk, or my voice to soothe him to sleep.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Interestingly the name “Jesus” is not mentioned once throughout but I can imagine this book will still upset a number of fundamentalists, as it explores the inner machinations of Mary as she is telling her tale to the disciples who want to continue the good word. Personally I thought this no more “outrageous” than Kazantzakis’ Last Temptation and to be honest some of the last sections that call into question the historical accuracy of biblical tales could well be considered more heretic than Kazantzakis’ work. That is not, in any way, to say this is a lesser work, nor a story not worth exploring.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I have done my best to not refer to Colm Toibin’s latest work as a “novel” throughout this review as it is not, it is a short story – even if it is as “dense as a diamond”. As a result I don’t think this will be announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize (unless the judges think controversy is a good thing) as besides being too short a work it also relies very much on readers having an understanding of Christian teachings – if you did not know about Lazarus coming back from the dead and living with his sisters what sort of fantasy would you be reading?<o:p></o:p></div>
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There is no doubt that this is a fine work but not a gong winner for mine.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Cross posted at <a href="http://messybooker.blogspot.com.au/">my blog</a>.</div>
Messy_Tonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05793938555354522246noreply@blogger.com1