Read the Nobels

Hamsun, Knut "Pan"

2013-05-22T12:03:00.002-07:00

(Norwegian Title: Pan) - 1894

We were lucky to have a Norwegian member in our book club who is a huge fan of this author, she was the right mediator between us and the world Knut Hamsun takes us too.

She had a difficult time to choose her favourite book of her favourite author, the other good ones according to her: "Victoria", "Hunger", "Growth of the Soil". She studied this one at school.

It’s fascinating how the author describes nature and makes it come alive. He smells the forest, paints a picture, reminds us of our youth, love, culture, nature, civilization. It’s an echo of childhood and youth for some of us, the inner soul of the human being, he loved to explore that. There is a struggle between opposites, men and women, nature and town, the love story is eminent, there are obstacles, pride, jealousy.

We liked the symbolism and the metaphors, e.g. the changing seasons.

Mythology plays a big part in the novel, the division between his love of nature and with people, we were taken by his love of nature.

The descriptions both of nature as well as the characters are beautiful. There were a lot of interactive descriptions as well as psychological analogies and comparisons.

Someone approached the book with an obtuse mind, yet, she could identify.

Conclusion: this tells us something about the dream and the longing, better than the life itself.

And even though not all of us were swept away by the story, we agreed it had been a very interesting read.

The question came up whether his characters in other novels are also dysfunctional? The answer to that: absolutely. He investigates the mind. His love to nature is tremendous, there is some extreme nature above the arctic circle.

Knut Hamsum has and is one of the favourite authors of many of his colleagues, even other Nobel prize recipients like Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse and Ernest Hemingway. He has influenced all sorts of literature and not just written his own. Definitely deserved his Nobel Prize.

From the back cover: "One of Knut Hamsun's most famous works, "Pan" is the story of Lieutenant Thomas Glahn, an ex-military man who lives alone in the woods with his faithful dog Aesop. Glahn's life changes when he meets Edvarda, a merchant's daughter, whom he quickly falls in love with. She, however, is not entirely faithful to him, which affects him profoundly. "Pan" is a fascinating study in the psychological impact of unrequited love and helped to win the Nobel Prize in Literature for Hamsun."

Knut Hamsun received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1920 "for his monumental work, 'Growth of the Soil'".

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.

Andrić, Ivo “The Bridge on the Drina”

2013-05-13T11:50:00.000-07:00

(Serbo-Croatian Title: На Дрини Ћуприја or Na Drini Ćuprija) - 1945

This is the story of a bridge. From the day it was built in the 16th century up until a couple of hundred years later in the 20th.

It is amazing what such a building or the river below it goes through during the centuries. We people only live a very short time compared to anything around us. In the long run, the life of one person is nothing compared to history.

The author manages to describe this very well. The river runs smoothly, or sometimes not so smoothly, and so does the history of man. Leaders come and go, war rages, natural catastrophes, the bridge still stands and watches over the lives of the people who cross the river .

Reading this makes you almost feel like being the bridge seeing the river flow below you.

But it also shows you a lot of the history of the Balkans that was always in the middle of the Western and Eastern Empires, the Occident and the Orient. As with most Eastern literature, there is quite a bit of poetry in the book, as well. You might want to concentrate on one part at the time. The book certainly brings you to a different part of this world.

Once you read it, you will understand why he was awarded the Nobel Prize for just writing one piece of fiction. It is a masterpiece.

From the back cover: "In the small Bosnian town of Visegrad the stone bridge of the novel's title, built in the sixteenth century on the instruction of a grand vezir, bears witness to three centuries of conflict. Visegrad has long been a bone of contention between the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian Empires, but the bridge survives unscathed until 1914, when the collision of forces in the Balkans triggers the outbreak of World War I.
The bridge spans generations, nationalities and creeds, silent testament to the lives played out on it. Radisav, a workman, tried to hinder its construction and is impaled alive on its highest point; beautiful Fata leaps from its parapet to escape an arranged marriage; Milan, inveterate gamble, risks all in one last game on it. With humour and compassion, Andric chronicles the lives of Catholics, Moslem's and Orthodox Christians unable to reconcile their disparate loyalties."

Ivo Andrić received received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 "for the epic force with which he has traced themes and depicted human destinies drawn from the history of his country".

Read my other reviews of the Nobel Prize winners for Literature.

Auto-da-fé by Elias Canetti

2013-05-13T04:40:00.002-07:00

Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

Elias Canetti was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1981. Auto-da-fé is an interesting story, confusing, even disturbing at times. If I were asked to use only one word to describe this writer’s only fiction work I’d probably call it weird.

At first, it seems to be a critique of society. On the one hand, there’s the well-to-do people (represented by the sinologist Peter Kien) who exaggerate the value and importance of education and reading to such an extent that it makes them unable to understand or at least cope with real life. On the other hand, there’s the common people who fight for survival every day and who have learned to care a lot about money, so much, in fact, that they don’t shrink back even from murder.

However, I think that the novel’s original German title – Die Blendung which is 'blinding' or 'deception' in English – hints at something else. Each one of the protagonists of the Auto-da-fé is to a certain degree obsessed by something: Kien lives for and through his private library of 25,000 volumes stored in the four rooms of his flat; his wife Therese – the former housekeeper, an old maid who deceived the inexperienced and asexual Kien into marrying her after eight years – only thinks of money and property, beauty and sex; the caretaker of the house is wrapped up in his past as a police officer and keeps living out his violent traits in order to press money from the tenants who he’s 'protecting' from bad lots like beggars and door-to-door salesmen; and last, but not least, the crippled Jewish crook Siegfried Fischer, called Fischerle, who is obsessed with chess and with going to America in order to prove that he’s better at that game than the current world champion, for which scope he – of course – needs a lot of money.

The obsessions of all those people result in an inability to see the world the way it really is. They always give information, conversations, and events a meaning which is consistent with their very own idea of a perfect life. So in a way, all of them create an imaginary world within themselves which differs from reality to a certain degree.

But you should see for yourself…

An interesting fact about the background of the story:
Elias Canetti wrote it in the early 1930s under the impression of rising National Socialism in Germany and of the first auto-da-fé of books on 10 May 1933. Even being Jewish himself he could hardly have imagined then what was still to come … the concentration camps. Heinrich Heine's saying that 'Wherever they burn books they will also, in the end, burn human beings' unfortunately proved right…

This review was first published on Edith's Miscellany.

Red Sorghum by Yan Mo

2013-05-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

Chinese Title: 红高粱家族 Hóng gāoliang jiāzú - 1987

Every year I am eagerly awaiting the announcement of the Nobel Prize winner for Literature. I have found the most brilliant writers among them and always choose to read one of their novels. I haven't been disappointed so far and this year was no exception.

I hadn't heard of Chinese author Mo Yan before and was surprised to hear that he was the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller.

The story takes place during the second Sino-Japanese war between 1937 and 1945, so approximately the same time the whole world was at war. The narrator tells the story of his ancestors, mainly that of his father, who was a teenager at the time, and his grandfather and grandmother. As in most war stories, there is a lot of brutality in the book, the author has a very picturesque way of describing the atrocities committed by both parties. But he doesn't just talk about the war, we also get to know the way people used to live in the eastern part of China at the time.

Red Sorghum, the title of the book, means so much for the Chinese, it is not just food, it represents their country.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. The writing style is at times a little confusing but very interesting to read, he paints the world in his own words. I have always been very interested in China, starting with the books of another Nobel Prize winner who wrote a lot about China, Pearl S. Buck. Mo Yan tells reports from another perspective, and from another era. Definitely worth the read.

Mo Yan "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary" received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.

From the back cover:
"Spanning three generations, this novel of family and myth is told through a series of flashbacks that depict events of staggering horror set against a landscape of gemlike beauty as the Chinese battle both the Japanese invaders and each other in the turbulent 1930s.

As the novel opens, a group of villagers, led by Commander Yu, the narrator's grandfather, prepare to attack the advancing Japanese. Yu sends his 14-year-old son back home to get food for his men; but as Yu's wife returns through the sorghum fields with the food, the Japanese start firing and she is killed.

Her death becomes the thread that links the past to the present and the narrator moves back and forth recording the war's progress, the fighting between the Chinese warlords and his family's history."

This review was first published on Let's Read.

The Plague by Albert Camus

2013-04-11T05:51:00.001-07:00

Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

Having a focus on African literature, it’s almost inevitable to give Albert Camus a special place in the limelight. Most people think that the existentialist, who always considered this label as rather inappropriate, was a French writer to the backbone, but the truth is that the roots of the Nobel Prize laureate of 1957 were North African, more precisely Algerian. What makes Albert Camus’ most popular and accessible novel The Plague an even better choice for today’s review is the fact that it’s set in Africa, namely in the city of Oran, Algeria.

Albert Camus was born in Dréan, Algeria, in November 1913. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers and joined the Algerian Communist Party that later expelled him. From 1938 on Albert Camus worked every once and again as a reporter. When he moved to Paris in 1940, he got into fiction writing. His first books, The Stranger (L'étranger) and The Myth of Sisyphus (Le mythe de Sisyphe), were published in 1942 and well received in literary circles. In 1945 his first play, Caligula, was successfully put on the stage. The best-selling novel The Plague (La peste) was published in 1947 and made the writer famous. Several other novels and plays followed until 1957 when he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Albert Camus was killed in a car accident in January 1960. Two of his works, A Happy Death (La mort heureuse) and The First Man (Le premier homme), were brought out posthumously in 1970 and 1995 respectively.

The story of The Plague covers approximately one year in the 1940s, starting in spring. Before jumping into matters a nameless narrator describes the city of Oran at the Mediterranean coast in great detail and declares his intention to chronicle the events that he witnessed there. The main character is Doctor Bernard Rieux who is present and doing his job from beginning to end. The first signs that something is awfully wrong in Oran are the rats appearing on the open streets and in the houses only to die there in agony. In the first part of the novel the inhabitants are startled at the number of dead rats, but not yet really worried, and the officials are reluctant to take action in order to prevent an epidemic even when ever more people die from ‘the special type of fever’. Only by the end of part one the city is sealed off and the outbreak of plague is officially declared. Parts two, three and four of the novel show how the inhabitants of Oran deal with being trapped in their city that has become dangerous all of a sudden. Many turn to religion, some take advantage of the situation to make a fortune, others devote themselves to taking care of the sick, and others again plan their escape from the city because they miss their loved ones so much. The epidemic continues to claim ever more victims and the conditions worsen as summer reaches its height. A curfew and martial law are declared to protect the desperate and helpless inhabitants. In autumn the epidemic finally reaches its tipping point, but people are too worn out and discouraged to rejoice already. The plague continues to keep Oran in its grip until spring, but then things soon are back to normal.

Albert Camus’ The Plague is a captivating story about human behaviour under inhumane conditions, especially in times of helpless suffering and under isolation from the world. The parallels to German-occupied France and the French Résistance during World War II are more than obvious. Resignation, collaboration and revolt are present throughout the text. Progress and course of the epidemic – fascism - are mirrored by the four seasons. The style of the novel is very metaphorical and has often been compared to Franz Kafka’s The Trial (Der Prozeß). Many sentences and passages allow different interpretations. Despite all it’s easy to read, probably because Albert Camus put much of himself into the story.

I enjoyed reading The Plague very much and although more than half a century has passed since its first appearance, it’s more than just worthwhile the time reading the story of Oran and pondering about the different aspects of life and the human condition that Albert Camus so masterly expressed. Hence I highly recommend this novel to all of you.

This review was first published on Edith's Miscellany.

Worstward Ho, by Samuel Beckett (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2013-03-19T02:42:00.001-07:00

I wonder how many other readers have been provoked into reading Samuel Beckett’s enigmatic Worstward Ho courtesy of Dublinesque, shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize? Vila-Matas references so many works in his novel it’s hard to know where to begin, but having seen a couple of Beckett’s plays (Endgame and Waiting for Godot) I was curious about his other works and so I went exploring. Worstward Ho is included in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die and it’s only 40 pages long, and you can read it online, so why not, eh?

Well, some might agree with this cursory dismissal in something called Brief Notes:

A sterile, dreadful exercise, it might be said, and one does not, as Dr. Johnson remarked of “Paradise Lost,” wish it longer than it is.

I don’t blame this unidentified reviewer because I think I would be still struggling with the first couple of lines if I had not stumbled onto Colin Greenlaw’s elaborations, which showed me how to read it.

I printed it out, and read each section aloud, tried to make sense of it my own way, then read the elaboration to clarify it, and by the end of page two in my printout I was (mostly) able to skip the elaborations because I’d got the hang of it. For what it’s worth, this is my interpretation:

Firstly, I don’t think it’s ‘about’ anything. It’s Beckett, in his unique Beckettian way, playing with the idea of reducing writing to less rather than more. (What else can an author do, after James Joyce’s Ulysses, eh?)

So the reader witnesses the author trying to say the absolute minimum. Obviously there has to be something to say, or the task/quest/game can’t be done at all, it would be an empty page or maybe not even that. But to fit Beckett’s self-imposed brief, the fiction needs to be the very least it can be and yet not be nothing. (Are you still with me? I’m having great fun trying to explain this …)

We witness the author exploring setting: what is the very least it can be? Only dimness, dimness so dim that there is nothing there – but not a void because a void is nothingness, and there has to be something.

So leastward on. So long as dim still. Dim undimmed. Or dimmed to dimmer still. To dimmost dim. Leastmost in dimmost dim. Utmost dim. Leastmost in utmost dim. Unworsenable worst. (Beckett)
Thus they plod on towards the least, so long as there is dim still, undimmed dim. Or dim dimmed to dimmer still, to the most dim dim. They plod on leastmost in the most dim dim, in the utmost dim. They plod on leastmost in the utmost dim, in the unworsenable worst. (Greenlaw)

We witness his efforts with character. Can there be just one character in a piece of fiction? (It’s labelled a novella, but really, it’s not, trust me). He messes around disposing of crippled hands and hats and boots and faces till left with nothing but a stare (which whether it was meant to or not brought to mind Munch’s Scream) and (I think) comes to the conclusion that even if they are only shades (i.e. spirits of people) and as ‘good as gone’ and yet still be there, there must be three, a man, a woman and a child – or else there is no future, people will cease to be.

Back unsay shades can go. Go and come again. No. Shades cannot go. Much less come again. Nor bowed old woman’s back. Nor old man and child. Nor foreskull and and stare. Blur yes. Shades can blur. When stare clamped to one alone. Or somehow words again. Go no nor come again. Till dim if ever go. Never to come again. (Beckett)
I’ll go back and unsay that the shades can go, can go away and then come back again. No, the shades cannot go away – much less come back again. Nor can the bowed old woman’s back, nor the old man and child, nor the front of the skull and the stare. They can blur, yes: the shades can blur – when the stare is clamped to only one of them, or when somehow there are words again. But they cannot go away, nor come back again: not till the dim itself goes (if it ever does), never to come back again. (Greenlaw)

What about thought? Can there be a mind without people? Can there be words without minds? There must be, enough for joy. (This, farcically, made me think of IT in A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle. This was surely not intended by Beckett.)

Remains of mind then still. Enough still. Somewhose somewhere somehow enough still. No mind and no words? Even such words. So enough still. Just enough still to joy. Joy! Just enough still to joy that only they. Only! (Beckett)
There are still remains of mind then, still enough: still enough of someone’s, somewhere, somehow. Can there be no mind and yet be words? Even such words as these? So there are enough remains of mind still – still just enough to joy. (Joy!) Just enough still to joy that there are only they. (Only!) (Greenlaw)

If you enjoy getting horribly tangled in your own thoughts, Worstward Ho is a fascinating game. This fiction (if that’s what it is) revolves around trying to write fiction describing almost nothing, portraying the least that anything can be without being nothing. Because if there were truly nothing, there would be no one around to define it. Even when you have a vacuum inside something, if you can see it there is light, so it’s not nothing and you are there describing it, and you’re not nothing either.

But what makes this game hard, is that Beckett (being Beckett), is also reducing the words to their bare minimum. He is using a minimum of short, sharp words, ditching verbs, prepositions and articles, and forcing the reader to infill with clichés such as ‘stretch‘ for ‘stretch of the imagination’. And doing this to accomplish a task that has had philosophers struggling for years. As he gropes towards his goal he changes his mind, has to go back and un-say things or acknowledge that his words were mis-said. Sometimes, in order to keep going with his project, he just has to say, ok, let’s just say this for now, otherwise he would get stuck. And in the end he has to be satisfied with not knowing.

Enough still not to know. Not to know what they say. Not to know what it is the words it says say. Says? Secretes. Say better worse secretes. What it is the words it secretes say. What the so-said void. The so-said dim. The so-said shades. The so-said seat and germ of all. Enough to know no knowing. No knowing what it is the words it secretes say. No saying. No saying what it is they somehow say. (Beckett)
There are still enough remains of mind to allow me not to know: not to know what they say, not to know what it is that the words the mind says say. (“Says”? Secretes, rather – for better or worse I’ll say “secretes”.) What it is the words it secretes say, what the so-called void says, what the so-called dim says, what the so-called shades say, what the so-called seat and germ of all says. It’s enough to know that there is no knowing: no knowing what it is that the words it secretes say, and no saying it – no saying what it all is that they somehow say. (Greenlaw)

I couldn’t have read it, or made any sense of it without the crib sheet to start with, and maybe Beckett scholars are scratching their heads in dismay at my ramblings, but hey, I had fun!

PS Don’t try this at home without reading it aloud.

PS This is Beckett’s Nobel Prize citation:

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1969 was awarded to Samuel Beckett “for his writing, which – in new forms for the novel and drama – in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation”.

Author: Samuel Beckett
Title: Worstward Ho
Source: http://www.samuel-beckett.net/w_ho.htm at Samuel Beckett Resource Pages.

Cross-posted at ANZ LitLovers

The Way to Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa

2013-03-09T05:51:00.000-08:00

Reviewed by Edith LaGraziana

In his biographical novel ‘The Way to Paradise’ the Peruvian writer and Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa displays the lives of the French trade unionist and early women’s rights activist Flora Tristán (7 April 1803 – 14 November 1844) and of her famous grand-son, the post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903). The author highlights the common traits of their character as well as their search for the ideal and free life. When I first read the historical novel a few years ago, I was quite impressed by the double biography of those two outstanding and strong characters, so it seemed obvious to me to review it here.

Mario Vargas Llosa was born in Arequipa, Peru, in March 1936. Already as a teenager he took to writing and worked as a freelance journalist for local newspapers. While studying law and literature at the National University of San Marcos in Lima, Peru, he began to pursue his literary ambitions more seriously. His first short stories were published. For two years Mario Vargas Llosa continued his studies at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain, and moved on to Paris in 1960 where he started to write with more verve. His first novel, ‘The Time of the Hero’ (‘La ciudad y los perros’), came out in 1963 and was an immediate success. In 1966 ‘The Green House’ (‘La casa verde’) followed receiving even more acclaim and being considered the finest as well as the most important of Mario Vargas Llosa’s novels up to the present day. During the following decades the prolific author brought out a new novel every three to four years along with non-fiction work. ‘The Way to Paradise’ (‘El paraíso en la otra esquina’ which in Spanish is the name of a children’s game, by the way) was first released in 2003. For his life’s work Mario Vargas Llosa was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2010.

‘The Way to Paradise’ starts in April 1844 in a room in Paris, France, when Flora Tristán awakes at four o’clock in the morning, the day when she travels to Auxerre where she’s expected to give a trade unionist speech. Memory takes her back to her childhood. As the illegitimate child of a rich Peruvian she grew up in Paris with her poor French mother whom she despised for her miserable existence and for giving her away to the first man who wanted to marry her, the owner of the graphics and lithography workshop where she had been an apprentice, a syphilitic and violent drunkard without any respect for women. Paul Gauguin’s story, too, is told mainly through flashbacks and streams of consciousness. The account begins in Mataiea, Marquesas Islands, in 1892, when the painter had already been living in the Pacific Islands for a couple of years. In the novel the lives of Flora Tristán and her famous grand-son are interweaved although in reality they never met as Flora Tristán died before her grand-son was born. Alternating their stories throughout the twenty-two chapters of the novel, Mario Vargas Llosa shows the parallels of their respective flight from the social conventions of their time. Flora Tristán left her husband and devoted her entire life to the fight for women’s rights, workers’ rights and socialism. Paul Gauguin gave up his comfortable existence and his family in France in order to be a painter who seeks inspiration not only abroad, but also in sexual excesses with often very young Polynesian women. Their longing for freedom implied that they both had to face many struggles and hardships along with failing health caused by syphilis.

Overall ‘The Way to Paradise’ gives an interesting insight into the character of those two historical figures who themselves never arrived in paradise, but inspired others to follow their way and continue their strivings for an ideal life and society. I’m not in the position to judge the historical accuracy of the novel, to me it seems close enough to the facts, though, and it introduced me to Flora Tristán who I had never heard of before. The narrative is written in a style that can capture readers like me and that shows that the author was an experienced one who knew what he did. At any rate, I enjoyed reading the book very much although critics say that in this novel Mario Vargas Llosa didn’t show his usual genius. I can’t judge it since ‘The Way to Paradise’ is the only work of Mario Vargas Llosa that I know so far. Besides, there’s no accounting for tastes, is there?

This review was first published on Edith's Miscellany.

Silent House (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2012-12-30T01:00:00.002-08:00

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2006 was awarded to the Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk "who in the quest for the melancholic soul of his native city has discovered new symbols for the clash and interlacing of cultures".

Silent House is his second novel which although first published in 1983 has only just become available in English translation. (What took so long?) It is a fascinating story which uses the device of a family reunion to exemplify the conflict between Western and Eastern values in Turkey and their yearning for a distinctive identity which is also modern. Turkey’s geography places them on the border of Europe and Asia but it is not dynamic Asia which beckons. The political battle for Turkey’s soul is between the Middle East and Europe, between religious tradition and the secularism which modernised Turkey under the dynamic leadership of Kemal Atatürk. (The irony of this novel being nominated for the Man Asia Literary Prize when Turkey is actively campaigning to join the European Union won’t have been lost on anyone who knows Orhan Pamuk’s body of work).

The cover of the Australian edition shows the fate which secular Turks fear: shabby old houses, the ruins of a citadel representing lost glories, a prominent mosque, and a lonely woman in a headscarf plodding along with no apparent purpose. This is what the long-dead Selâhattin rages against in the novel, and it is the life his widow Fatma lives and does not want to change.

There are multiple narrators in Silent House and Selâhattin though long-dead is the most eloquent of them all. We know his voice because Fatma, now in her nineties, is still replaying their arguments in her memory. He was a rude, opinionated man who drank too much and having had to flee Istanbul because of his political ambitions, spent his time writing a derivative encyclopedia designed to replace religion with science and enable Turkey to belatedly join the modern world. His rejection of the existence of God appalls Fatma, and she refuses to be dragged into his sin.

But hide as she might in her room, Fatma cannot escape the intrusions of the modern world.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/12/16/silent-house-by-orhan-pamuk/

I read and blogged my review at ANZ LitLovers on December 16, 2012.

Happy Valley (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2012-12-30T00:14:00.000-08:00

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1973 was awarded to Patrick White "for an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature".

I didn’t think that I would ever get to read Patrick White’s debut novel Happy Valley. White suppressed it for fear of litigation and perhaps also because he thought it flawed, so copies were rare and (of course) well out of my price-range. But now in a bumper year for ‘new’ books by this author, along with White’s unfinished The Hanging Garden published posthumously byKnopf/Random House, Happy Valley has been reissued by Text Classics. And what a treat it is…

People with not much better to do with their time and opinions argue, sometimes, about Patrick White. It’s a no-win situation because readers of popular fiction and the occasional academic who would rather read a phone book than Voss soon clutter up the Comments space complaining that Nobel Prizewinners are generally not worth reading, that White’s Modernism is too highbrow or that his prose is ‘stultifying’. (Turgid is also a favourite pejorative). I can only feel pity for these people. I can understand why they may not enjoy White, because reading after all is a matter of personal taste. What I don’t understand is why they want to spend their time attacking a dead author who has brought prestige to Australian writing and who ‘is widely regarded as one of the most important English-language novelists of the 20th century.’

Anyway, it’s their loss. Don’t let them put you off reading Happy Valley. It’s a delicious portrait of small town life, and an engaging, accessible story that reminds me of Thea Astley at her acerbic best.

To read my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2012/11/13/happy-valley-by-patrick-white/.

I read and blogged my review on November 13, 2012.

The Age of Reason (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2012-12-30T00:04:00.003-08:00

Jean-Paul Sartre was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1964. His citation reads that the award was "for his work which, rich in ideas and filled with the spirit of freedom and the quest for truth, has exerted a far-reaching influence on our age".

Sartre has a rather intimidating reputation but I found The Age of Reason easy reading. Translated by Eric Sutton and with a helpful introduction by David Caute, this ‘Popular Penguin’ edition seems at one level to be like many another novel. It’s a chronological narrative with fairly orderly narrators giving the point-of-view of the main characters, and the plot is easy to follow.

It’s the story of Mathieu Delarue, a philosophy teacher, and his not-very-energetic efforts to find 4000 francs for his girlfriend Marcelle’s abortion. It’s quite interesting: Will he get the money? Who among his friends will he ask for it? What’s his relationship with those he asks? Do they refuse, and why? What then? Will she do something about it? Or does she really want to keep the baby? You could read this book at that level alone and enjoy it because it’s an engaging issue and the novel is well-written and constructed and the translation is good. Paris between the wars is its usual fascinating self, and the characterisation is fun: all sorts of odd-bods for Sartre to manipulate into interesting conversations.

There is more to it than that, of course. To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/02/25/the-age-of-reason-by-jean-paul-sartre/ but beware, there are spoilers.

I read and blogged my review of this book on February 25, 2011.

A Russian Journal (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2012-12-29T23:54:00.000-08:00

John Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. his citation reads "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception", and A Russian Journal is an example of the power and perception of his non-fiction reportage.

It's a wonderful little book, and quite an eye-opener. Written a scant three years after the end of the Second World war, when the world was coming to terms with the advent of the Iron Curtain, John Steinbeck and his photographer Robert Capa set out to see for themselves what Russia* was like.

Not surprisingly, they met some obstacles in the form of Soviet bureaucracy and prohibitions, and since they had to rely on government-approved translators, everywhere they went they were at their mercy and had no alternative but to assume the translator had integrity. Still, much of what is written has the ring of truth because Steinbeck insisted on meeting ordinary people wherever he could.

There’s a droll slyness to the reportage. Steinbeck affects a simplicity that belies his reputation as one of America’s foremost writers. He asserts again and again that they’re reporting only what they saw and heard for themselves, but of course choices were made about what to include and what to leave out. He chooses to include commentary about idiosyncratic plumbing and queues and bizarre airline schedules. He chooses also to explain that much of the inefficiencies he sees are due to having to make-do in the period of post-war reconstruction. He chooses to omit information about schools and health care and disparities in income.

But in other ways, with the wisdom of hindsight, the journal seems naïve. We, reading this book today, know much about Stalin that Steinbeck could not: about the purges, the famines, the gulags and the ruthless repression. So when he tells us without apparent guile that Stalin’s portrait is everywhere and how people make pilgrimages to his birthplace and revere him as a father-figure, we see a different figure to the one that Steinbeck portrays. The surveillance that Steinbeck finds mildly amusing had sinister connotations, but Steinbeck could not have known about that at that time.

What Steinbeck makes clear, in his inimitable style, is that ordinary Russian people were no more keen on the idea of war than the West was, and felt equally threatened by the other side’s hostility.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/06/15/a-russian-journal-by-john-steinbeck/

I read and blogged my review on June 15, 2011.

Home by Toni Morrison - Wendy's Review

2012-09-24T12:03:00.004-07:00

Weeks later, when her baby, delivered on a mattress in Reverend Baily’s church basement, turned out to be a girl, mama named her Ycidra, taking care to pronounce all three syllables. Of course, she waited the nine days before naming, lest death notice fresh life and eat it. Everybody but Mama calls her “Cee.” I always thought it was nice, how she thought about the nae, treasured it. As for me, no such memories. I am named Frank after my father’s brother. Luther is my father’s name, Ida my mother’s. The crazy part is our last name. Money. Of which we had none. - from Home, page 40 -

Frank Money has returned from the Korean War with anger, regret, guilt and the need for redemption. He arrives back in an America where racism is still dividing the country. As he travels to his hometown of Lotus, Georgia to rescue his little sister from an abusive situation, he remembers scenes from his childhood. His memory of Lotus is not a good one and he does not think of the place as home.

Lotus, Georgia, is the worst place in the world, worse than any battlefield. At least on the field there is a goal, excitement, daring, and some chance of winning along with many chances of losing. Death is a sure thing but life is just as certain. Problem is you can’t know in advance. – from Home, page 83 -

But, what Frank finds in Lotus is not just a sister in need, but something less tangible that binds him to the place. Deep in the south he finds himself immersed in the rich African-American culture and reconnecting to the people who are there to carry him forward.

Toni Morrison’s newest novel explores the scars of war (both physical and emotional), the depths of grief and regret, and the road to recovery. Morrison does not spare the reader the ugliness of racism in the mid-century south, a blight on American life which robbed people of their dignity and freedoms. She also touches on the medical experimentation which impacted black women during that time – something I had very little knowledge of until I read this novel. I researched this topic after reading Home and found this article which notes:

In the US South, throughout the the 1960s and 1970s, federally funded welfare state programs underwrote the coercive sterilization of thousands of poor black women. Under threat of termination of welfare benefits or denial of medical care, many black women “consented” to sterilization procedures. Within southern black communities knowledge of the routine imposition of non-consensual and medically-unnecessary sterilization on black women was well known – a practice so common it came to be known as a “Mississippi appendectomy.” (Roberts 2000)

Home is a sparse book (less than 150 pages) which packs a big punch. Morrison’s writing is poetic, rich, and character-driven. She makes a huge impact on the reader with very few words – one reason, I believe, she was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Readers who appreciate literary fiction will want to read Home, a novel about a man who must return to his past in order to move forward into his future.
Recommended.

Caín by José Saramago

2012-07-15T18:41:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at: A Girl that Likes Books on July 11, 2012

***

Book Summary (from Goodreads.com)

In this, his last novel, José Saramago daringly re-imagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament, recalling his provocative The Gospel according to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the gift of speech, to the moment when Noah's Ark lands on the dry peak of Ararat. Cain, the despised, the murderer, is Saramago's protagonist.

Condemned to wander forever after he kills his brother Abel, Cain makes his way through the world in the company of a personable donkey. He is a witness to and participant in the stories of Isaac and Abraham, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf, the trials of Job. The rapacious Queen Lilith takes him as her lover. An old man with two sheep on a rope crosses his path. And again and again, Cain encounters a God whose actions seem callous, cruel, and unjust. He confronts Him, he argues with Him. "And one thing we know for certain," Saramago writes, "is that they continued to argue and are arguing still."

A startling book- sensual, funny- in all ways a fitting end to Saramago's extraordinary career

My Review

Now, why did it take me so long to finish the book? I mean 9 days! Well…did I mention I moved? I’m sick and tired of this excuse, but is true, the last 2 books I read took me forever, but that’s just because I needed my sleep, badly! But let’s go the reviewing, shall we?

This is the third book I read from Saramago, and I think we can safely say that I like his style. I realize that the absence of paragraphs, the dialogues that are not visually separated, etc, are not for everyone, but I think once you get used to it, you can read it as any other book.

The story starts, not with Cain and Abel, but with Adam and Eve, this is the first time Saramago presents to us his version of god, one that will talk to his creations just as you and I would talk. Then, as most of us know, they get kicked out of Paradise, and after several years Cain, Abel and Seth come to the scene.

After killing his brother, Cain is punished by god with a mark in his forehead and he is condemned to wander. The trick is that he won’t wonder just around, he will travel “in time” from biblical story to biblical situation. He will fall in love with Lilith, he will stop Abraham before killing his only son and he will be there in Noah’s Ark.

All through the book, Cain will criticize god, for his acts, his reasoning, etc. He even points out that this god that everyone is following is a jealous god, full of anger and grudges. There is a moment when he is talking with god and the later says:

“Some deny my existence […] they are out of my law, of my reach, I cannot touch them”.

If it hasn’t been obvious to you by reading his prior books, this should be clear enough. Saramago is quite critical of the image that Catholic Church gives people to believe in. I haven’t read The Gospel according to Jesus Christ but in Death without interruptions you can already see a lot of critics, not only to society itself (also a recurrent theme in his work) but to the church itself. Through Cain’s voice Saramago even accuses god to be “crazy and without a conscious”

I like the book a lot. I know it doesn’t necessarily show when you consider how long it took me (again people, I needed to sleep!) It was quirky, funny, satirical…it was fun to read, even though I kept feeling my grandma wouldn’t like me enjoying the book so much (she is really attached to the church still).

I loved the following sentence:

“Progress […] is inevitable, fatal as death. And life”

Every time that I read one of his books, I end up with a list of sentences that stuck to me, and that’s good, that means (for me) that the book went deeper inside of you than you thought. However, I don’t think it was as good as Death with Interruptions, and that’s why this one is getting one mushroom less. I think is a lovely way to finish an amazing career, short and sweet

The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

2012-06-05T13:14:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! I'm Athena of Aquatique and I'm back from hiatus! This was my first Nobel Laureate read of this year. I hope to update more in the future on this blog. Without further ado:

This edition of The Jungle Book includes an introduction from Neil Gaiman, and stories from both the first and second books. It features all the stories about Mowgli and one not with him.

I seemed to have missed out on reading this in my childhood. I got the feeling I started this when I was younger but never got around to finishing it. I still very much enjoy reading young adult and
children's books. I think I will keep reading them, and I hope to always find them enjoyable like I did this book.

I really liked all the characters in the Mowgli canon even Shere Khan the lame tiger. I do seem to appreciate stories about anthropomorphic characters though especially in young adult literature. Authors tend to imbue them with charm, innocence, but wisdom at the same time.

There were some good stories about life, death, and the nature of the world. It was sometimes sad as it can be with realistic stories. I think this is a good book about Man on earth and human's relations to the environment and animals. A book like this is always good to remind us of what our role on this planet should or could be.

I think this a good read for all ages, and I look forward to reading them again.

The Bluest Eye (a.k.a: L’Oeil le plus bleu) by Toni Morrison

2012-05-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at: A Girl that Likes Books on May 22, 2012

***

Book Summary (from Goodreads.com)

The Bluest Eye is Toni Morrison's first novel, a book heralded for its richness of language and boldness of vision. Set in the author's girlhood hometown of Lorain, Ohio, it tells the story of black, eleven-year-old Pecola Breedlove. Pecola prays for her eyes to turn blue so that she will be as beautiful and beloved as all the blond, blue-eyed children in America. In the autumn of 1941, the year the marigolds in the Breedlove's garden do not bloom, Pecola's life does change--in painful, devastating ways.

With it's vivid evocation of the fear and loneliness at the heart of a child's yearning, and the tragedy of its fulfillment, The Bluest Eye remains one of Toni Morrison's most powerful, unforgettable novels--and a significant work of American fiction.

My Review

This is the first novel I’ve ever read from Toni Morrison. I decided to start form the beginning of her work, as recommended by The Book Lady. I have to say, I loved the book, but it was a hard one. Not because it was in French, the language is not complicated and the story is so beautifully written, that even translated you are transported and you read and read.

The story takes place in 1941; about 20 years before the March on Washington African-Americans were emancipated, but oppression is still there (did it ever leave?). On the other hand, the country is trying to recover from the Great Depression, and the poor are even poorer. A poor neighbourhood, full of worker families is the environment for the whole story’s development. Claudia and Frieda MacTeer, too young sisters start the telling of the story, as witnesses of events. Pecola, another girl from a broken home, comes to stay with them, while her family recovers from a burning home...incidentally it started burning because her father set it on fire.

Pecola, as a lot of young girls, doesn’t feel happy with her looks. Add to that the effect that all the “pretty” standards are white, blond girls. See, this was the first time I had to put the book down, fighting tears of rage, remembering how this hasn’t changed much. How the standard of beauty that a lot of girls grow with is just hurtful for them. I remembered my little cousin (by then 4 years old) feeling ugly because her hair was not blond and straight...she has the most beautiful black hair, slightly wavy and green eyes...but no, that’s not how Cinderella looks like is it? Anyway, moving on, this just one of the hard topics in the book, how a tiny girl, reaching puberty is so discontent with her looks, because she is convinced NOBODY will ever love her unless she has blue eyes.

Little by little, we get to know the story behind her drunken father Cholly, why is he in the position he is. Now, this will make you understand his behaviour, but in no way condone it. A child from problematic childhood grows into a man full of grudges, and unfortunately, he takes it on others instead of trying to give a better childhood to his own kids.

Mrs Breedlove (Pauline), Pecola’s mother had a nice childhood, up to a certain point. She fell in love with Cholly and then...well, thing went downhill, and she has been building up bitterness, that again falls over her kids and her household.

Around this family, there’s a gossipy community that will talk about the problems, but sadly won’t help to solve them. Prostitutes with a heart of gold, a con-artist with a conscience, a girl with slightly paler skin that is looked up as “better” than the others because of her looks; all of them secondary characters that little by little takes us to the resolution of the story.

What do I think about the book? It was amazing, you feel every single bit of pain, physical or emotional, and you want to cry quietly for half of the characters. Is NOT a feel good book, but is a powerful one. The way the environment is constructed, as I mentioned, transports you to every house in the community, you feel the scents, the sun or the cold of winter. You want to take Pecola in your arms and tell her that she is a beautiful human being, that nothing happening around her is her fault. You want to slap her fathers and make them snap out of their pain constructed reality.

The book touches different hard subjects. The concept of beauty is just one of them. Morality, injustice all of them aggravated by latent racism and a family that is just not there for a little girl. Because of this, it is not a book to take with you to sleep, trust me; you will feel sometimes so disgusted at situations or at the fact that some of those situations are still common nowadays that you will need time to cool off. Personally I needed a couple of days to be able to write this, without giving much away, particularly in the parts that made me utterly emotional.

Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

2012-04-27T17:29:00.000-07:00

Originally posted at: A Girl that Likes Books on April 6, 2012

***

Book summary (by Goodreads.com)

On the first day of the New Year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration—flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home—families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance policies become meaningless, and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots.
Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small "d" became human and was to fall in love?

Book review

Have any of you read any of Saramago’s books before? I have only read Blindness, a book where everyone except for one person, becomes blind, and shows the changes of the society under this change. Well, this book, Death with Interruptions, explores the situation in which people just stopped dying.

If you haven’t read Saramago before, you should know something; his writing style is particular and is not for everyone. What do I mean by that? Well for example, he is a fan of long paragraphs, and, at least for the books I’ve read from him, he doesn’t separate the dialogs in lines, so if you open the book randomly you might be under the impression that there are no dialogs at all, even though it is not the case. So is a “demanding” reading in the sense that you have to really be paying attention to realize that you enter a dialog. But I happen to like it.

It was funny how I stumble upon this book, a dear friend of mine was telling me how she was trying to read a book, she didn’t remember the name, but it was “hard to read, because there are no paragraphs”. I remember thinking that it sounded familiar. Then, a couple of days after she came into my lab, handing me a book and saying: “Here! I can’t, you try it” And then…I saw it, the name in the front…and I understood perfectly what she meant. Even more funny, when I told the story to another friend of mine, he had the same “off course” moment when I mentioned it was Saramago.

If you have the opportunity to read the book, have patience, I cannot extend more how at first is hard to get used to his style, his long sentences that become paragraphs, but for the 2 books I have read from him so far, I have to say, it is worth it.

But, back to the book. I don’t know if it was because the first time I read him was in Spanish, or because his mother tongue is Portuguese, but when I was reading the book, the words took a Latino accent invariably, and I think that subconsciously I was translating the words. The story begins just as the review says, people stop dying all of the sudden. Off course at first people are thrilled…healthy people that is. You see, people only stopped dying, not getting sick, nor aging. So off course, you have people in never ending agony, never dying.

As always (here I am taking the liberty to say always, considering that I have only read 2 of his books, but every critic I’ve read about Saramago’s work seem to agree with me) he uses this fictional situation to critic different parts of society. In the first 20 pages I found a very enjoyable moment about the Minister of Health addressing the population:

“He could have left the matter there, […], but the well-known impulse to urge people to keep calm about everything and nothing and to remain quietly […], which is a tropism of politicians […] led him to conclude the conversation in the worst possible way […]”

So simple words, yet a powerful critic of the mania of politicians to tell us whether to or not to panic, and then it goes on to show the other side, the journalist using the tiniest word to his advantage. Further I found this other sentence that just made me put the book down and think:

“Whether we like it or not, the one justification for the existence of all religions is death, they need death as much as we need bread to eat”

Did I mention before that Saramago was a declared atheist? Critic to established religion is a constant in his work, and this book is no exception.

Eventually, someone finds a loophole in this…people are not dying in A country, not all over the world, so people start crossing the border with their loved, almost dead ones, so they can finally rest…the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, ha?. This off course, creates a political issue, since the surrounding countries are not particularly happy about people crossing their borders just to die. But wait…only humans are not dying. And that’s when a particular question arises: Have you ever wonder if death is the same for all living things?

Then, one day, death is back…with a letter announcing the end of the situation. I will not mention her reasons here, for I found them delightful, but keep in mind that the reason I kept writing death with a lower case d is due to another letter that appears later in the book that, once again, will leave you thinking.

But then someone, a man, “escapes” from his faith, that is, he doesn’t die. We never discover why, and don’t worry, this is not a spoiler, because from the description, you know who this man is, the one that will make death learn about love.

Since this part is at the very end of the whole book, I will not tell you more about the story itself. I loved the way Saramago portrays death, her character, her behavior. Aside from the way he critics society and the way we react to a change in the status quo, I have to say my favorite part is the way the character is constructed, presented and described. Funny, there is a part where someone critics the way death writes…which incidentally is remarkably similar to that from Saramago.

Lord of the Flies, by William Golding - Wendy's Review

2012-02-08T08:58:00.000-08:00

Some were naked and carrying their clothes; others half-naked, or more or less dressed, in school uniforms, grey, blue, fawn, jacketed, or jerseyed. There were badges, mottoes even, stripes of color in stockings and pullovers. Their heads clustered above the trunks in the green shade; heads brown, fair, black, chestnut, sandy, mouse-colored, heads muttering, whispering, heads full of eyes that watched Ralph and speculated. Something was being done. – from Lord of the Flies, page 13 -

A plane crashes on a deserted island, leaving in its wake children – the only survivors. These children are British school boys, civilized kids with manners and well-versed in respect for authority. There are very small children – the “littluns” who don’t seem to understand the enormity of what has happened. And there are older kids, boys who quickly recognize the need for a leader, a chief of sorts. A new society is forming, and before long survival demands a return to one’s baser instincts.

Lord of the Flies is a classic. Penned in 1954 by Nobel Laureate William Golding, it is a novel which asks deep moral questions and examines what happens when the civilized world is stripped away and individuals are left to create their own society.

Two main characters emerge early on. Ralph is a sandy-haired boy who is quickly chosen to be the “chief” and who focuses on building shelter and maintaining a fire to attract rescue. He holds “assemblies,” where participants are called to participate with a blow from a conch and are designed to maintain order. Jack is a charismatic boy, the leader of a choir of boys, who quickly establishes himself as the hunter, tracking down the wild pigs on the island with a sharpened stick as a spear. Before long, Jack and Ralph are in a competition for leadership with Ralph being the voice of reason, and Jack appealing to the more savage aspects of the boys’ personalities.

Another character, Piggy, emerges as the philosopher and the scapegoat. Piggy is obese, bespectacled, afflicted with asthma, and a bit of a know-it-all. Despite his wisdom (or maybe because of it), he is bullied.

There had grown up tacitly among the biguns the opinion that Piggy was an outsider, not only by accent, which did not matter, but by fat, and ass-mar, and specs, and a certain disinclination for manual labor. – from Lord of the Flies, page 60 -

There is also a fourth character, Simon, who plays an important role in the novel. Simon is a loner, but he is also reasonable and practical and gifted with an insight which the others lack. When talk of a beast begins, it is Simon who refuses to acknowledge a physical beast and instead recognizes that the beast is the fear within them.

These four characters – Jack, Ralph, Simon and Piggy – take center stage in a novel about the disintegration of morals and the descent into savagery.

I first read this novel in high school…and my memory of it is inexact. Of course, I remembered Piggy for his victimization, but in terms of theme, my memory was lacking. During this re-read, the story returned to me and I found it so much more compelling from my adult point of view. Classic literature is defined as something which stands the test of time…and there is no doubt that The Lord of the Flies meets that definition with its memorable characters, shocking twists of plot and ruminations on what it means to be human. Written in the 1950s, it could easily have been penned today.

Lord of the Flies is a novel which will generate great discussion in book groups and in the classroom. It is not an “enjoyable” read, and yet it is an engaging one. There is a good deal of violence in this slim book and I found myself anxious as the plot unfurls and it becomes obvious that things are going very, very wrong.
This is a classic, dysptopian-type novel about good vs. evil, but it also forces the reader to look within and to examine his or her role as part of a larger society.

Highly recommended.

Quality of Writing:
Characters:
Plot:

Overall Rating:

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich

2012-01-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's short novel of a day in a Stalinist camp is a story of human dignity, survival and faith. The Stalinist prisons were not for criminals, and they attempted to break the wills of those in the camps. Ivan, or Shukhov as he is referred mostly in novel, is essentially a dignified and proud character. The characterization is subtle. He is from a peasant background and not particularly intellectual, religious, or rebellious, but there is a quiet dignity and pride about him. He is simple, and very much the beautiful every man:

And although he had strictly forbidden his wife to send anything even at Easter, and never went to look at the list on the post--except for some rich workmate--he sometimes found himself expecting somebody to come running and say: 'Why don't you go and get it, Shukhov? There's a parcel for you.' Nobody came running. As time went by, he had less and less to remind him of the village of Temgenyovo and his cottage home. Life in the camp kept him on the go from getting-up time to lights out. No time for brooding in the past.

I liked this novel. I think it's hard to pinpoint what's particularly unique or special, but it is a straightforward and well told story. There seems to be such wonderful simplicity in the prose that gets across the character and the experience of camp life so well:

Shukhov's idea of a happy evening was when they got back to the hut and didn't find the mattresses turned upside down after a daytime search.

The book ends with a discussion of faith, religion and spirituality which is part of the survival of the camp. In his own way, Shukhov is spiritual in his actions and the way he carries himself. He has hope after all:

For a little while Shukhov forgot all his grievances, forgot that his sentence was long, that the day was long, that once again there would be no Sunday. For the moment he had only one thought: We shall survive. We shall survive it all. God willing, we'll see the end of it.

From my blog Aquatique.

This would be my first book.

Blindness and Seeing by Jose Saramago

2012-01-15T20:19:00.000-08:00

I've been on a Saramago roll lately! His writing style intrigues me; and his allegorical-philosophical discourses - while they can get me a little bogged down - never fail to surprise me with his insights into human nature, even the worst of it.

After passing over Seeing many times as it happens always to be on the shelves... finally a few months ago, I saw Blindness. All I knew is that I'd need to read Blindness before Seeing.

The books in one sentence each:

Blindness: A city is inexplicably hit by blindness - save for one woman - the blind are confined to a mental hospital where man's worst appetites rear its ugly head.
Seeing: Majority cast blank votes in the election; government strives to deal with this "revolt," and pinpoints that the "seeing woman" is behind this plot.

My thoughts: I've always been intrigued by dystopian literature, though it can be a little of a downer for me so I always make sure to stagger read it.

Blindness is a depressing read yet shows what goodness, forgiveness and strength of character can do to rise above depravity and anarchy. The scenario is simple - in an entire city of blind people, one woman remains able to see. Why? What does she do?

This enigmatic phenomenon starts off with a man who is strangely struck by blindness. He goes to his ophthalmologist to find out why ... and instead he starts off a strange epidemic of blindness in other patient, including the very doctor who seeks to cure them.

The blind are quarantined in an old mental hospital. The doctor's wife, who remains able to see, refuses to leave her husband's side and feigns blindness to be able to do so. The hospital leaves the blind to basically left to fend for themselves ... and anarchy takes over in the fight for survival. The doctor's wife arises as a natural leader.

The characters are an interesting lot and lend various perspectives to this unusual story. There is the "girl with the dark glasses" - a prostitute who turns motherly to a young boy separated from his parents. Then there is the "man with the black eye patch," who unlike everyone else, takes his blindness calmly and matter-of-a-factly and sees it as an opportunity to learn a much-needed lesson. There is also the tyrannical "Ward 3 leader," who when supplies run low and modes of payment are non-existing, demands women in exchange.

{I watched the movie (Julianne Moore?!?) and decided that this story is something best left as a book. It is much too graphic and depressing to have to watch - instead of being fodder for thought.}

* * *

Seeing is the sequel to Blindness post-blindness. Sight is miraculously restored and election time has swung around. The whole day, very few come around to vote, explained away as a heavy rain falls. But right after the skies clear up at around 4:00 pm, people are inexplicably at the polls and extensive lines start up. And to everyone's shock, the majority of the votes cast are blank.

Government investigates, viewing this sudden surge of voters at 4:00 pm and the resulting blank ballots as a plot to overthrow the government. In the increasingly oppressive nature of this Government, there is widespread discontent yet the fear of the repercussions of communicating this. Government keeps up a semblance of normality through what is regarded as highly suspicious propaganda. Meanwhile people are questioned and start disappearing - and what results is an interesting yet precarious balance between the ruled and the rulers.

The "seeing" woman again figures in this story. She is pinpointed as the one responsible for orchestrating the casting of bank votes by mere virtue of her retaining her sight during the inexplicable blindness. A Superintendent is assigned to investigate who is responsible for this "revolution." The Superintendent, in the course of his investigations comes to see the human side of the situation, and he becomes a dissenting voice in this silent city.

Verdict: Both must-reads! Blindness focuses on the individual at his best and worst. Seeing focuses on the government at its worst.

{Originally posted at guiltlessreading.blogspot.com.}

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee (3m)

2011-10-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted at my blog, 1morechapter

Winner, 1999 Booker Prize

Disgrace caught me by surprise. I didn’t like the main character; I didn’t like the events that happened in the book; but yet, as I turned the last page, I realized it was flat out brilliantly written. It definitely deserves its place on the shortlist for Best of the Bookers.

Before reading it, all I really knew about it was that a professor had an affair with a student. As it turns out, that’s only a minor point. The book has several issues: men’s subjugation of women, South Africa after apartheid, and animal rights. How Coetzee could say so much in just a little over 200 pages is amazing. There are several parallel stories going on. I want to say so much about it, but to do so would be to give away everything. I’m glad I was ignorant going into this novel, so I won’t say much except that it will definitely get a re-read from me someday and preferably in a group setting. There would be many, many things to discuss.

(1999, 220 pp.)

As to the film, I thought it followed the book almost exactly. It was produced by Australians but I believe most of the outdoor shots at least were filmed in South Africa; the scenery was beautiful. John Malkovich played David Lurie exceptionally. My only small quibble is that his South African accent went in and out some. I thought the actress who played Lucy was also excellent. I highly recommend this movie IF you have read the book. You probably wouldn’t appreciate it as much or at all if you haven’t.

Film grade: A

Blindness by José Saramago (Lisa Hill - ANZ LitLovers)

2011-10-20T04:22:00.000-07:00

Blindness, by the Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, is completely different to The Double which I read last year. It’s an astonishing book. I don’t think I will ever forget it.

It’s the story of an epidemic of ‘white blindness’, which spreads across a city affecting everyone. The novel reveals just how quickly chaos descends.

It begins with the sudden blindness of a man at the wheel of his car, and though a stranger’s first impulse is to kindly drive him home - the opportunity to steal the car is irresistible. He is then taken by his wife to an eye doctor, who soon goes blind himself, and within 24 hours the others in the waiting room become blind as well. The only one not to lose her sight, inexplicably, is the doctor’s wife.

Before long they are quarantined along with other victims in a former mental asylum, and Part I of the story traces their adjustment to the loss of their sight, their freedom and their independence. The government abrogates their human rights, providing them only with rudimentary shelter, paltry rations, inadequate sanitation, and no medical assistance or supplies. There is also a trigger-happy set of guards, who eventually panic over the proximity of the internees and fire on them because they believe the blindness to be contagious. There are squabbles over bed allocations and sharing of rations; there is distrust and untruth; there is a distasteful dispute over the burial of the dead and there is opportunistic fondling of one of the women with a dramatic consequence – but that is nothing compared to what is to come.

To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.com/2011/10/20/blindness-by-jose-saramago/

The Eye of the Storm by Patrick White (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-09-14T18:06:00.000-07:00

I was hoping, as I began reading Patrick White’s The Eye of the Storm, that there would be heaps of erudite reviews out there in cyberspace, to help me make sense of it so that I didn’t write anything really inane here. Alas, no, hardly anybody has tackled it so at this stage I am free to interpret it any way I like and few but experts skulking in academia will be any the wiser. I expect I’ve missed heaps. Patrick White’s books are like that, and that’s what makes them so good. Each time I re-read one, especially if in the interim I’ve stumbled on some other work of literature that’s he’s referenced, I enjoy it more because I notice new things…

The Complete Review found The Eye of the Storm ‘impressive’ and recommends it for readers with ‘staying power’. Anderson Brown in Puerto Rico had a go at it, intrigued by the exotic idea of a Nobel Prize winning author being ’an Australian, no less’. But apart from noting that White’s ‘terrain is the nature of consciousness’ approached in a ’painterly’ way, he doesn’t have a lot to say in his review. Martha Duffy at Time thought it ‘pallid and self-indulgent’ and wished that ‘that the storm would blow every bit of it away’. (She was a journalist who started in fashion magazines and a royal watcher, so make of her vehemence what you will).

King Lear and the Fool by William Dyce
(Wikipedia Commons)

It is Alan Lawson, at the ABC website about White who makes the connection between King Lear and this novel. (Though the book is littered with references to Lear, so it’s not exactly revelatory. Unless you don’t know King Lear. Best to read a quick summary at Wikipedia if you don’t.)

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/09/15/the-eye-of-the-storm-by-patrick-white/

The Passport, by Herta Müller (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-07-30T01:43:00.000-07:00

When Herta Müller won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009, there was the usual outcry from the powerful claiming to be oppressed by the European bias of the judges. Why is our literature being ignored? howled those who dominate the book industry throughout the English-speaking world, and of course they denigrated the winner as if to prove their point.

Tibor Fischer at the Guardian on behalf of the UK was so unimpressed that he misrepresented the plot with a reductive summary:

The Passport is a 90-page novel about a miller, Windisch, a Swab, or ethnic German, who applies for a passport to leave Romania. That’s all in the way of plot or narrative impetus.

Well no, it’s not just about that, Mr Fischer. Not even at literal level. Even the dopiest reader will soon figure out that there’s more to the plot than that.

To read the rest of my review, please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/07/30/the-passport-by-herta-muller-translated-by-martin-chalmers/

Main Street (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-07-29T06:23:00.000-07:00

Sinclair Lewis was the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930. The citation reads for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humour, new types of characters. His most well-known novels are Main Street (1920) and Babbit (1922).

Main Street ruffled more than a few feathers in small town America when it was first published in 1920, and I expect it has the same effect on some readers today, nearly a century later. Sinclair Lewis wrote this savage satire as an indictment of small town life in the early 20th century – a time when prairie life was patriotically idealised as wholesome and honorable. But Lewis saw small towns as claustrophobic, narrow-minded, anti-intellectual, mean-spirited and conformist. He labelled the power of small town life to inculcate its citizenry with enervating shallow values as ‘The Village Virus’, and the focus of the story is whether the outsider Carol will succumb to Main Street, or not. The choice of Carol as the central character means that Main Street also explores the same territory of female aspirations and limited career choices as Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie (1900), and this adds interest to

Lewis’s primary critique.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/07/29/main-street-by-sinclair-lewis/

I read and blogged my review of Main Street in July 2011.

Lisa Hill, Melbourne, Australia

Wandering Star by J.M.G. Le Clezio (Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers)

2011-07-09T15:52:00.000-07:00

I’ve had a mixed experience with Nobel Prize winners that I’ve recently read. The Piano Teacher by Elfriede Jelinek was challenging to say the least, and Auto-da-Fe by Elias Canetti was bizarre. On the other hand, Beloved by Toni Morrison was a revelation, and The Double by José Saramago was very entertaining. But Wandering Star aroused intense feelings of melancholy about the Arab-Israeli conflict and of anger about international indifference to the persisting plight of refugees all over the world.
J.M.G. Le Clézio was awarded the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature as an ‘author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilization’ – and I bought Wandering Star, the only one of his books available in English, shortly afterwards. Now that I’ve finally read it, I understand why he won the prize.
Alison Kelly’s review at The Guardian explains that Le Clezio wrote experimental fiction in his first phase as an author, but that Wandering Star reverts to using ‘conventional modes of storytelling complete with familiar devices such as characters, settings and plots’. Since I haven’t read any of his unconventional works, I can’t comment on the full scope of this author, but (despite the pedestrian translation) this book shows a writer in great command of his powers. In this novel he has tackled that most intractable of geopolitical issues, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the point of view of two young girls, both of whom are ‘wandering stars’ in search of a home. Esther is a Jewish refugee in post-Holocaust Europe, and Nejma is a dispossessed Palestinian. Their parallel stories illuminate the anguish of exile.

To read the rest of my review please visit http://anzlitlovers.wordpress.com/2011/07/10/wandering-star-by-j-m-g-le-clezio/