Warlight could have been a great book, but ultimately it left me disappointed. It did not help that it was longlisted for the prestigious Booker PrizeWarlight could have been a great book, but ultimately it left me disappointed. It did not help that it was longlisted for the prestigious Booker Prize in the year of its publication, which made me think - is it enough to just write a novel which claims to "explore" a certain subject, without any actual exploration being done and then call it a day and wait for prizes to follow?
If so, it's very sad, because it's the premise that drew me to Warlight in the first place. The novel begins in London in 1945, just after the end of the war. The narrator, Nathaniel, lives there with his sister Rachel and their parents, who one day unexpectedly declare that they have to travel abroad and leave them under care of their lodger, a mysterious man whom the children nickname "The Moth". And so begins a completely new life for the children - one full of shadows and mystery that will follow them into adulthood and which they will try to understand years after the events.
The novel's biggest problems is that it never takes advantage of this fascinating premise - soon after the introduction of its characters and the establishment of what would form the grounds for an eventual plot, Warlight commits one of literature's most egregious sins: it becomes incredibly boring. its characters never expand on the promise they gave us - especially The Moth - and I remain unconvinced as to why any reader would actually care about any of them. I understand the author's general aim with employing non-linear structure in this novel as wanting it to serve as a reflection of memory itself - especially splintered, shattered memories, that are often so difficult to put together and make sense of years later. I just don't think that these memories aren't very insightful and enlightening, and to make it worse they're not particularly interesting. It reminded me a lot of Transcription, but without that book's lightheartedness and humor. After all, it's meant to be a "serious" work, exploring "serious" subjects - so why does it never truly explore them, and leaves us with snippets of insight that are so often mistaken for profundity?
There are shades of good in Warlight, mostly in its prose, but the book remains an example of how sometimes good writing cannot carry a novel on its own - however, I am not surprised to see it longlisted for the Booker. After all, All the Light We Cannot See won the Pulitzer...
The Pull of the Stars tricked me - I expected a novel set in Ireland during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was (is?) eerily relevant at the time oThe Pull of the Stars tricked me - I expected a novel set in Ireland during the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was (is?) eerily relevant at the time of its publication in mid 2020, when the whole world was struggling with the outbreak of a new, deadly virus...
However, the almost the entire novel takes place in a single ward of a Dublin hospital, and deals with the stress and tribulations of a single maternity nurse. Julia Power, the novel's heroine and narrator, describes her work in great detail - if you want to learn about the struggle of pregnancy in the early 20th century with all its medical complications, this is definitely a book for you. Everything else is swept aside - the fascinating and complex subject of Irish struggle for independence is pushed to the background, and readers get only glimpses of Julia's life outside of the hospital. I understand that one of her leading characteristics was the bond that she felt with her job - thought that's too weak a word to describe it; the fusion she felt with her job would describe it better, and that it could be read as a commentary on the situation of women in general the early 20th century. However, it's also the book's biggest flaw - Julia barely exists outside of the role imposed on her by the author and the society, and other characters in the book are barely drawn. Therefore, the developments in Julia's personal situation at the end of the novel comes of as unexpected and out of place.
It would make sense that other subjects would barely be touched upon, if Julia's entire consciousness is devoted to helping her patients, but would it make for an interesting novel? In this case, sadly, I don't think so. As much as I wanted to enjoy it, I just can't recommend The Pull of the Stars, unless, of course, you just so happen to have an interest in early 20-th century midwifery. ...more
If you are in the mood for a French Canadian gothic horror this is perhaps the book to go, though I am not sure if any other contenders exist - I thinIf you are in the mood for a French Canadian gothic horror this is perhaps the book to go, though I am not sure if any other contenders exist - I think that The Little Girl Who Was Too Fond of Matches is a rarity in this field. Is it a good book, however? Not really.
Translated from French, the prose sometimes sounds stilted and unconvincing, and lacks the turn of phrase that would stick in your head after finishing the book - I don't think that a single line has retained itself in my mind after I finished the book. Where it does stand out is the story: the sheer audacity of things happening on the page leaves you wide-eyed, though still wishing that you were reading someone like Shirley Jackson, who could be both chilling and concise.
Overall, I do not regret reading the book, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone else - if it finds itself in your hands, then give it a try, and if not, well, have no regrets - you're not missing out on anything spectacular. ...more
Ivan E. Coyote is a Canadian author and activist born and raised in the town of Whitehorse, in the northern Canadian territory of Yukon. Close to SpidIvan E. Coyote is a Canadian author and activist born and raised in the town of Whitehorse, in the northern Canadian territory of Yukon. Close to Spider Man is Coyote's first collection of stories, but those who experience stories of remote hardship, logging and fishing are in for a big surprise, as all of them feature characters who are experimenting with sexuality and trying to find their own, which is not always easy when you're living at the ends of the earth.
The stories themselves are very, very short (often just a few pages long), and play on the traditional ideas of gender and feature female protagonists who refuse to bow down to social expectations of sexuality for various reasons. In No Bikini, for example, a girl refuses to put on a bikini top when going to the pool for swimming lessons, and joins other boys in the pool; she feels exhilarated by not being expected to be afraid of the water, and experiences "six weeks of boyhood, six weeks of bliss" which leave her changed forever. Manifestation is a quick short featuring an accidental dirt mustache, which is a sign of further manifestations to come; in The Cat came Back an uncle catches his niece dressing up in his clothes, and reacts in a way which surprises and empowers her. Also worth mentioning is a two-page long non-story titled Eggcups, which features important information about the proper way to keep eggs in the fridge.
The eponymous story is probably the best one; a young waitress has a secret crush on her coworker, an attractive French Canadian named Sylvia; she does not understand her feelings and does not know how to act on them, but when Sylvia does not show up for work and she hears terrible news regarding her family, she suspects the worst and runs off to help her friend, jumping across rooftops and balconies. It's both amusing and touching and for it alone the collection is worth reading, especially since it will not take more than one afternoon....more
Although Bilodo is clearly meant to be a sympathetic character - he's lonely and socially awkward, and has no one close even the fellow post worker whom he considers to be his friend is abusive towards him. Bilodo is presented as a genuinely lonely and largely sad person, whose only joy in life comes from exploring the lives of other people via reading their mail. We are supposed to feel sad for him, and he is created as a character with whom we should sympathize with - if you can get over the fact that he steals and reads other people's private letters, not only breaking the law but also breaking in into their lives via their private correspondence, uninvited. if Bilodo was more business savvy he would have found employment in the local NSA - we can feel sad for him because he has no friends, but we can't excuse - or romanticize - what he is doing. Perhaps it's the translation from French, but the language reads in a very artificial, constructed way - making it even harder to connect with Bilodo and care about him.
This would be a more successful novel if the author had the idea to take it to a dark place - actually present Bilodo as a stalker and have him act out in a gruesome way, instead of trying to create a sympathetic and innocent character. But he doesn't, and the novel limply whimpers out at the end - leaving little impression behind and few reasons to say positive things about it, except for the fact that it was mercifully short....more
In the afterword to Stone Mattress Margaret Atwood writes that these are nine stories, but nine tales - meant to evoke the world of folk and wonder taIn the afterword to Stone Mattress Margaret Atwood writes that these are nine stories, but nine tales - meant to evoke the world of folk and wonder tales as told by tale tellers, removed at least slightly from the world of the mundane and the ordinary. It's no surprise then that most of these stories are quite whimsical, even when speaking about otherwise macabre things, and often involve a fantastical element. They're not detached far enough to be timeless as tales are - which can and are read by all audiences in all times - but I liked the idea good enough to read them.
The collection begins strongly with Alphinland, which introduces the character of Constance, an elderly, widowed writer, haunted by the ghost of her lat husband, Ewan. Ewan speaks to Constance in her head, but not only - sometimes she hears him in a trunk with his old stuff that she didn't throw out, and she's very careful to not tell him that he's dead as she's afraid that he might leave her for good. "Alphinland" is the fantasy series that Constance has created, and which also serves as her personal shrine and place to store memories. It's a stormy winter evening, and Constance soon finds herself reminiscing about the past and her old boyfriend, Gavin, and the wild life they had in Toronto during the 1960's.
Gavin himself is the protagonist of the second story, Revenant - now a grumpy and rather unpleasant old man, who dismisses Constance's work as trash unworthy of attention - even though it sustained them both, while he attempted to be a poet. Now his career is overshadowed by that of Constance's, and his work is studied largely by academics who want to see how he fits into her canvas. Such is the case when he's visited by Naveena, a young academic, who wants to "find" Gavin in Alphinland for a thesis that she writes, the subject being "the function of symbolism versus neo-representationalism in the process of world-building". The old man realizes that not only is his life being snooped upon, but that he's only valuable and interesting for Naveena because she wants to find him in Constance's work that he ridiculed. Although Gavin is clearly meant to be a narcissistic and vain, unsympathetic character, he has the honor of having the greatest outburst in the whole collection and going all out on poor Naveena for treating him like an object, closing the story admirably with a good skewering of academics who can't see the forest for the trees. The story of Gavin and Constance ultimately concludes in The Dark Lady, which observes Gavin through the eyes of his former lover - a woman named Jorrie, who remembers how she met him and played her part in driving them apart from each other.
Other stories in the collection are unrelated, but also engaging well-written. The Freeze-Dried Groom is almost a spoof of the detective novel, involving an antique dealer buying contents of abandoned locker rooms - and entertaining himself with thoughts of his own murder. One day he purchases a particularly creepy antique and discovers that he finally might have gotten more than he bargained for. He's very excited about it, but Atwood deliberately (pardon the pun) kills the story prematurely. The Dead Hand Loves You reminded me of Atwood's Booker winner, The Blind Assassin - it's a frame story of a successful horror author, who regrets making signing an extremely bad contract: e agreed to share profits from the novel he had yet to write with his roommates, as compensation for unpaid rent. The horror story of a severed hand seeking revenge against a past lover of the rest of its former body turned out to be extremely successful - analyzed critically and adapted twice into film - which left the author furious at those whom he perceived took advantage of him in his weak moment, and now he's planning his own revenge in return. Stone Mattress is also a story of revenge - a woman bumps into a man who has ruined her life during a trip to the Arctic. She contemplates the various ways of killing him, and his impact on her life. In the afterword Atwood writes that the story is a result of her own trip to the Arctic and the idea of how one might commit murder on such a trip and not get caught. This story presents one idea, but little beside it. Torching the Dusties is the last story in the collection - featuring Wilma, an elderly pensioner in a retirement home. Wilma suffers from a disease which makes her see little people, in historically inaccurate costumes; a Tudor neckline here, a Harlequin outfit there. But that's the least of her problems - the youth of the world is extremely dissatisfied with the planet that Wilma's generation has left for them. It's greed has destroyed it, and it's their turn now - they want all old people to go, and go for good, hence they storm retirement homes and burn them down with their inhabitants. It's almost like a desperate attempt at making a ritual offering - but what if the planet doesn't want anything to do with us anymore, young and old?
The two other stories in the collection stick out as if they didn't fit - Luxus Naturae is a pretty standard gothic with elements of folk legends, while I Dream of Zenia with the Bright Red Teeth revisits a group of protagonists from an earlier novel (The Robber Bride) who believe that the woman who onc stole their partners might have returned to haunt them - resurrected as a dog. Not sure why both have been included in this collection, as both have been published before - first in an anthology, the other independently.
Stone Mattress is not a bad collection - I just wish that the whole volume contained interconnected stories, like those of Andrea Barrett's. The three opening stories are the most successful and I would like to see their characters and ideas developed more, along with the world of Alphinland - other stories are entertaining and well written, but not as memorable. Still, I'm a fan of the form and I'll take what I get....more
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