In the Forest

In the Forest: A Novel by Edna O’Brien
rating: 3.5 out of 4 stars

I’ve read quite a few Irish novels lately. In the Forest is my most recent read that falls into that category. This novel is based on a true story and is a creepy look into the mind of a killer. The killer in question is Michen O’Kane who we first meet as a young 10-year old boy in a small Irish town. Michen had a troubled home life full of domestic abuse and neglect.  Michen becomes known as The Kinderschreck after he steals a gun and shoots it in the general direction of two men.

The Kinderschreck. That’s what the German man called him when he stole the gun. Before that he was Michen, after a saint, and then Mich, his mother’s pet, and then Boy, when he went to the place, and then Child, when Father Damien had him helping with the flowers and the cruets in the sacristy, and then K, short for O’Kane, when his hoodlum times began.

Michen is sent to a juvenile detention center where he is tormented by the older boys and abused by a priest. He spends the next several years in and out of various detention centers and jails. Over time, Michen becomes a very troubled and mentally unstable young man. The residents of his small Irish village try to tolerate him at first but soon enough start to feel terrified of him.

The novel is told with alternating perspectives in each chapter. Some chapters are told from Michen’s point of view, some from his victims and other chapters from the various villagers whose paths Michen crosses. The prose was lyrical and the Michen chapters could be very difficult and disturbing reads at times. His mind became so twisted it was hard to tell what was real and what was dementia.

I recommend this book to those who enjoyed other books that let the reader delve into mind of a killer such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood or Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman.  In the Forest was included on the original list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.  I am slowly working my way through that list (I can’t resist tackling to-do lists)  At this rate I hope I don’t die until I am 120.  Must.finish.all.1001.books…

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Slow Man

Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee

rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sixty-something Paul Rayment is a photographer who is hit by a car one day while out riding his bicycle.  The collision shatters his leg and the doctors amputate it near the knee. Paul refuses a prosthesis. He finds himself feeling hopeless and isolated.

A circumscribed life. What would Socrates say about that? May a life become so circumscribed that it is no longer worth living?  Men come out of prison, out of years of staring at the same blank wall, without gloom taking possession of their souls. What is so special about losing a limb? A giraffe that loses a leg will surely perish; but giraffes do not have the agencies of the modern state, embodied in Mrs. Putts, watching over their welfare.  Why should he not settle for a modestly circumscribed life in a city that is not inhospitable to the frail aged.

 Paul who used to pride himself on his independence now finds himself having to depend on others. Two people he develops relationships with are Marijana, his Croatian nurse, and Elizabeth Costello, an author who mysteriously shows up at his door one day. Paul proclaims his love for Marijana and Elizabeth tries to push him to take a hold of his life and do something.

Slow Man  is the third Coetzee novel that I have read…and that man can write!  All of his novels cause you to think about their central themes long after you put the book down.  Slow Man, like his other novels. has a darker set of  themes: loneliness, isolation from others (both emotional and physical), and hopelessness.  Paul is a stubborn man who refuses to try to rebuild his life…instead he just wallows in his own loneliness and laments over his fate. Paul’s plight caused me to think about making each day count and developping deep meaningful relationships with people. The book also has hints of meta-fiction, which is almost always a plus as far as I am concerned.

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That They May Face the Rising Sun

That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern

rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you ever wonder what daily life is like in rural Ireland, John McGahern’s novel That They May Face the Rising Sunmay be a book that you want to pick up. Its a serene, meandering story about a small community surrounding a lake. We meet the local residents and experience their days with them. It is a book with a plot per se, other than the daily events in the characters lives. McGahern does an amazing job painting a scene.

The next morning a white mist obscured even the big trees along the shore. Gossamer hung over the pear and plum and apple trees in the orchard and a pale spiderwebbing lay across the grass in the fields. A robin was trapped in the glasshouse and set free before it became prey for the black cat. The heavy mower was uncoupled from the tractor and replaced by the tedder. The very quiet and coolness of the morning was delicious with every hour promising later heat.

I found the prose to be beautiful and while the book wasn’t a page turner, it was a pleasure to read. It was a book that I would read a little bit of at a time and then put it aside to pick up again another day.

Robinson Crusoe

Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would more accurately give Robinson Crusoe somewhere between 3.5 and 4 out of 5 stars.  It is one of those classics that I am glad that I finally read, but that I wasn’t wowed by.  Robinson Crusoe was originally published in 1719 and is considered by some to be the first English novel. The novel shows it’s age in the language and mind-set of the narrator, Robinson Crusoe.  The book is set in a time when British colonialism was at its peak and the British didn’t think to highly of people who were not white Anglo-Saxon Christians.  The novel appears to be an adventure story on the surface but there is a religious undercurrent throughout. Crusoe time and again mentions Providence, destiny, and God’s role in his adventure.  I found it interesting more for getting a glimpse into the mind of a typical 18th century Englishman than for the story itself.

While I enjoyed reading Robinson Crusoe, it definitely wouldn’t be amongst my top ten books to bring with me to a desert island.

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Another 1%

Last year, I signed up for the 1% Well Read Challenge, which set the goal of reading 10 books from the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list. I ended up surpassing that goal and reading 16 books from the list.

Well, as you may know, I LOVE lists, so I am signing up for the challenge again this year. In the past year, the publishers have revised the 1001 list to take away some of the original books and add some new ones. If you include all the books from the original list and the new list that’s over 1300 books. These people must want me to spend every waking minute of my life reading!   Thus far, I’ve read 158 of the books from both lists, so, yes, I have a ways to go.

So, I am signing up to read 13 books from the complete list over the next year. (end date March of 2010) Some of the books that I plan on reading are (subject to change, of course):

1. The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien
2. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshin Hamid (new list)
3. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson (original list)
4. The Razor’s Edge by William Somerset Maugham 
5. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by José Saramago
6. The Double by José Saramago
7. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
8. The Quiet American by Graham Greene
9. The Spy Who Came in From the Cold by John le Carre
10. Vanishing Point by David Markson
11. That They May Face the Rising Sun by John McGahern
12. In the Forest by Edna O’Brien
13. Slow Man by J.M. Coetzee

ALTERNATES (because I have no shortage of books on my shelf)

1. Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey
2. A Prayer for Owen Meany  by John Irving
3. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
4. The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
5. V. by Thomas Pynchon
6. The Master by Colm Toibin
7. Snow by Orhan Pamuk
8. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
9. Great Apes by Will Self
10. How Late it Was, How Late by James Kelman
11. Remembering Babylon by David Malouf
12. The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez-Reverte
13. The History of the Siege of Lisbon by José Saramago
14. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
15. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

Have you read any of these books?

Drop City

Drop City by T.C. Boyle
rating: 3.5 out of 5

In T.C. Boyle’s novel, the Drop City referred to in the title is a free love hippie commune in the 1970’s. The commune starts out in California where the hippies lounge about enjoying their lifestyle. After a run-in with the local law enforcement, they decide to move north to Alaska to start Drop City North on land that belongs to one of their uncles.

The book also follows the story of Sess and Pam Harder, two newlywed homesteaders living in the wilds of remote Alaska. The work together to make a home out of Sess’scabin. Pam & Sess were much more interesting than the hippies.  I wish that Boyle had spent more of the book developing their characters.

Drop City offers up a sardonic social commentary about communal living. Is free love really all that free?  Are the hippies sure they really want to be one with nature?

The start of the book really dragged for me.  It took those hippies WAY too long to uproot their lives and move to Alaska.  Things got much more interesting once they were in Alaska. Plus, in my opinion there were too many hippies whose stories Boyle was trying to relay. He could have picked just 2 or 3 to focus on instead of the 8 or 10 he did. Some of them just blended together in my mind.

Drop City was a National Book Award finalist and was included on the list of books in the original edition of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die.

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The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw by Henry James

rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

I’d never read any books by Henry James and decided to read The Turn of the Screw  since it was part of the LOST Book Club, which contains books that were featured on the TV program LOST. LOST is one of my favorite shows.  The Turn of the Screwwas shown in the background of a season 2 episode. In the episode, the Dharma Orientation film was hidden on a shelf behind a copy of The Turn of the Screw.

The unnamed narrator of The Turn of the Screw tells the tale of a governess at a house called Bly. This governess watches over two orphaned children who are under the guardianship of their absent uncle. The governess begins to suspect that the house is haunted.

Was there a ’secret’ at Bly — a mystery of Udolpho or an insane, an unmentionble relative kept in unsuspected confinement? I can’t say how long I turned it over, or how long, in a confusion of curiosity and dread, I remained where I had had my collision; I only recall that when I re-entered the house darkness had quite closed in.

The book was extremely verbose and dense. This is not a light, quick read at all.  It read much like other Victorian novels with a young woman moving into an immense house with a mystery. It raises lots of questions that are never truly answered. A lot is left for the reader to decide for themselves what is going on. As proof of this, some think the book is a ghost story and others think that is a look at a woman slowly slipping into insanity. I still haven’t decided which way my thinking goes. I will have to think about it some more. Being that this book is such a mystery wrapped in an enigma, I can see why the creators of LOST are fond of it and gave it cameo appearance in their show.

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The Lambs of London

The Lambs of London: A Novel by Peter Ackroyd

rating: 3 of 5 stars

Lambs of London is the fictionalized account of siblings Mary & Charles Lamb. The Lambs are best known as the authors of the children’s book Tales from Shakespeare. The novel is set in 19th century London where Mary & Charles fill their lives with literature, particularly the works of Shakespeare.  Charles passes his time by working a boring job as a clerk and drinking to excess with his friends, while Mary is trapped at home caring for her parents.  Mary feels desperately lonely whenever Charles isn’t home and loses herself in literature to fill the emptiness.  The Lambs meet William Ireland, the son of a local book seller, who informs them that he has a benefactor that has given him access to a cache of papers and documents that had belonged to her dead husband. Amongst these papers is what appears to be a long lost play by Shakespeare.  Some doubt the authenticity of the papers, but Mary staunchly believes that they were true Shakespeare artifacts.

I checked out Lambs of London from the library since it was on the list of 1001 Books you Must Read Before You Die. I was rather disappointed with the book as a whole. Although the novel is based on historical events, Ackroyd took some liberties with history and dates.  The Lambs of London reminded me a bit of The Poe Shadow, which I read a couple of months ago. Both are works of historical fiction about authors. The Poe Shadow was a grueling read for me that I didn’t deem worthy of a review. The Lambs of London was a step up from that, but it still didn’t quite capture my interest. It may have been Ackroyd’s narrative style which was very slow and plodding at first and then towards the end of the book things became almost too rushed.  It almost made me do a double take. The story took so long to develop and then all of a sudden lots of things started happening one after the other. The story just didn’t engage me the way that I hoped it would.

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The House Of Mirth

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton


rating: 4 of 5 stars

House of Mirth is a social satire about hoity-toity New York city society in the early 20th century.   The title of the novel comes from Ecclesiastes: The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning; but the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.  Lily Bart the protagonist of the novel may just dwell in the house of mirth. She is a social climber who cares more about rising in society than her own happiness and well-being.

Lily Bart is a stunningly beautiful, 29-year old socialite who is financially dependent upon a wealthy aunt.  Most women her age in her social circle are already married but Miss Bart has yet to find the perfect suitor. Lily’s primary goal in life is to rise to the tip top of New York society. Her planned method of achieving this is by marrying a prominent, rich & powerful man. However, she is torn between marrying for wealth and marrying for love.  She comes close to being engaged several times, but in the end sabotages her chances.  Lily gets over her head in debt from trying to keep up with the richer members of her social set and struggles to maintain her position. Through her desperation to achieve independence and rid herself of her debt, Lily makes several poor decisions that tarnish her reputation.

It is less mortifying to believe one’s self unpopular than insignificant, and vanity prefers to assume that indifference is a latent form of unfriendliness.

 I thoroughly enjoyed this novel of manners. Observing Lily’s downwards spiral was painful at times. I often felt like reaching into the pages and shaking some sense into her. Is it really so much worse to be married to a dull man or a not-quite-wealthy man than to be alone and a social outcast with no income?  House of Mirth is a downer of a book but a very good read. Wharton’s descriptions of society are spot-on. After you finish reading it, cheer yourself up by going out and splurging on a new pair of shoes!

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Reads: Nights at the Circus

Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter

rating: 4 of 5 stars

 A truly unique and unusual work of magical realism!

It is the cusp of the 20th century in Europe. Sophie Fevvers is a Cockney aerialiste extraordinaire who works in a travelling circus. She isn’t built like the typical trapeze artist…she stands at over 6 feet tall and is sturdily built. Oh, and she was born with wings and claims to be half human-half swan. 

Fevvers captures the attention of Jack Walser, a young American journalist who is writing an article called “Great Humbugs of the World” and hopes to expose Fevvers as a fake. Fevversregales him with tales of her life as an orphan and her time spent working in a brothel.

“Lor’ love you, sir!” Fevverssang out in a voice that clanged like dustbin lids. “As to my place of birth, why, I first saw the light of day right here in smoky old London, didn’t I! Not billed the ‘Cockney Venus’, for nothing, sir, though they could just as well ‘ave called me ‘Helen of the High Wire’, due to the unusual circumstances in which I come ashore – for I never docked via what you might call the normal channels, sir, oh, dear me, no; but, just like Helen of Troy, was hatched.

Jack quickly becomes infatuated with Fevversand joins the circus as a clown in order to be able to spend more time with her.  The circus travels to Russia, where the excitement and pace of circus life only increases.

Nights at the Circus was originally published in 1984. It was released to mix critical reviews, but it had popular acclaim. Nights at the Circus won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction in 1984.

This book is a fantastical romp, with quick changes between points of view and narrators, lots of sex and circus intrigue and scandal. Nights at the Circus contains political undertones and themes of gender roles.  Carter prompts the reader to “briefly contemplate the unimaginable”.  The tale is dark, crude and imaginative and not for the faint of heart. The ending was a slight letdown, which is what made me rate the book 4 stars instead of 5.

This is the first work of Carter’s that I have read, but it’s spurred me on to seek out more of her work.

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