The final instalment in the Regeneration Trilogy struck me as a bit unfocused and heavy-handed in its use of symbolism and parallel storylines. HoweveThe final instalment in the Regeneration Trilogy struck me as a bit unfocused and heavy-handed in its use of symbolism and parallel storylines. However, certain scenes were very powerful, and the ending packed a punch.
I'm not sure why The Ghost Road rather than Regeneration or The Eye in the Door won the Booker Prize. I can only assume the Booker judges wanted to honour the trilogy somehow and so picked the last book to show their appreciation, much like the Academy showered The Return of the King with Oscars even though The Fellowship of the Ring was a vastly superior film. Personally, I thought The Ghost Road was the weakest of the three books (rated a mere 3.5 stars, as opposed to the 4 and 4.5 stars I gave the other two books), but it didn't mar my overall impression of the trilogy, which is good.
The second book of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy is every bit as good as the first one, and probably better. While I'm not sure how I feel about tThe second book of Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy is every bit as good as the first one, and probably better. While I'm not sure how I feel about the split personality thing, I loved the psychological drama and the period detail. Some fascinating stuff there. I'll post a proper review once I've finished the trilogy....more
Regeneration, the first part of Pat Barker's acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy, centres on Dr W.H.R. Rivers, a real-life army psychiatrist at CraiglockhaRegeneration, the first part of Pat Barker's acclaimed Regeneration Trilogy, centres on Dr W.H.R. Rivers, a real-life army psychiatrist at Craiglockhart War Hospital who treated the likes of Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen for shell-shock. Well-researched, well-imagined and well-written, it's an interesting mix of fact and fiction that provides a good insight into Great War-era Britain and early-twentieth-century psychiatry. A proper review will follow once I've read the whole trilogy....more
I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that Wow. Was this ever a pleasant surprise.
I got into Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series about eight years ago. Despite protestations from friends that I should steer clear of it because it went completely off the rails after about five books and probably wouldn't ever be finished, I gave it a shot, and like so many other readers I got hooked. This was unfortunate, because as I discovered halfway through the series, my friends were right. The Wheel of Time did go off the rails, and badly, with Robert Jordan losing himself in so many insignificant subplots and failing so utterly to bring the story closer to its conclusion that it seemed doubtful that it would ever be finished. Nevertheless I soldiered on, reading each new instalment despite my mounting frustration with them, because hey, I was hooked. So much so that I actually joined a Wheel of Time newsgroup at one point, where I spent many hours discussing theories about characters' double identities and where the series might be headed. That newsgroup probably did more for my love of fantasy literature than The Lord of Rings (my introduction to the genre, which I still love to death) ever did. I miss it quite a bit -- it was fabulous.
And then Robert Jordan did something incredible. Something his fans had joked about for years but had never considered a serious possibility. He passed away before he could finish the series, rendering the massive investment his fans had made in it (we are talking about eleven books of about nine hundred pages each) virtually useless, because after all that theorising, after all those looooooooong hours spent discussing the minutiae of the books, no one would ever find out how the story ended.
Enter Brandon Sanderson, a lesser-known fantasy author of whom I had never heard before, although with hindsight I probably should have. He was hired by Jordan's wife to finish the series, using her husband's extensive notes, unfinished passages and instructions for support. Like many others, I was sceptical about the enterprise, and not sure I wanted to read the result.
But then the prologue to Sanderson's sequel was posted on line, about a month before the book's release date, and to my infinite surprise it was good. And about a week later the first chapter of the sequel was leaked on line, and to my mounting surprise that was good, too -- more focussed than anything Jordan himself had written in a while, except perhaps New Spring, the much-maligned prequel to the series. In just two short chapters, Sanderson had got rid of several characters and plotlines which had irked myself and other fans for ages. It actually looked like he was getting the plot to move forwards, which was such a pleasant surprise that I suddenly found myself really, really looking forward to seeing what else he had done to Jordan's universe. So I bought the book the day it was released, ready to lose myself in Randland once more.
So what has Sanderson done to Randland? In a word, he has revived the series. The Gathering Storm is by far the best instalment in the Wheel of Time saga of the last ten years. An action-packed romp which actually takes the story forwards several weeks (gasp), it's a return to the form of the earliest books, before Jordan started introducing every single Aes Sedai in existence, expecting us to care about their minor squabbles. In marked contrast to Jordan's later books, The Gathering Storm actually focuses on the main characters (you know, the original heroes of the series, who got us interested in it in the first place), allowing them to achieve goals which had eluded them for quite some time. It eliminates unnecessary side plots like the Prophet and the Shaido, often swiftly so. It is largely free of padding (although a very critical reader might ask what exactly Mat's storyline is meant to accomplish, other than getting him on his way to the Tower of Ghenjei and showing that the Dark One is touching the world). And best of all, it is faithful to the style of the early Jordan, which is to say without endless descriptions of clothes and characters taking baths, yanking their braids, tapping their feet, etc. Nynaeve actually overcomes her urge to yank her braid every time she gets mad at the beginning of the book, which I'm sure is a development welcomed by any reader of the series. In other words, Sanderson has managed to channel Jordan without all the latter's infuriating obsessions, following Jordan's style without copying its bad aspects. I wouldn't say the transition is seamless (Sanderson's style, featuring many short sentences, is punchier than Jordan's), but it certainly isn't jarring, either. While there is the odd moment where you'll find yourself thinking, 'Hmmm, that didn't sound entirely Jordanesque,' these moments are more than made up for by Sanderson's ability to focus on essentials, in my opinion. It's refreshing, reading Randland stories without all the padding.
So what actually happens in The Gathering Storm? (WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD) Well, the Prophet finally dies (about time). Tuon (one of my favourite characters, though less so here than before) finally becomes Empress of Seanchan. The Seanchan finally attack the White Tower, which Egwene has been prophesying for ages. Egwene herself finally becomes Amyrlin Seat, in quite an impressive manner. Rand, who seemed to be going increasingly mad in the last few books, finally finds himself again, in a way which holds promise for the future. Perrin finally accepts his wolf self, while Mat and his cronies finally set out for the Tower of Ghenjei, a subplot anyone with a brain has seen coming for the last seven books or so. For her part, Aviendha is finally accepted as a Wise One, in a manner befitting those strange Aiel customs. Gawyn, who was fighting on the wrong side, finally sees the light (ha!) and joins the rebel Aes Sedai. Siuan Sanche and Gareth Bryne finally become an item, though rather chastely so. Two more Forsaken are taken care of (presumably). And in two of the more brilliant plot twists, a mysterious character from the beginning of the series is revealed to be Black Ajah (a jaw-dropping chapter, very well written and conceived), while Elaida is deposed in a way which had me chuckling out loud. I'm not sure who came up with the idea for Elaida's demise, Jordan or Sanderson, but whoever it was, he has a rich sense of poetic justice. It's just too, too good.
Of course, many storylines still remain unresolved, and Sanderson now believes he will need two books to tie them up, not one, as previously planned. I have faith in him, though. I know that these two books of his will really be two books, not seven (as with Jordan). And I have no doubt that they will be good books. Books in which we will finally see Moiraine make a reappearance. Books in which all the prophecies and viewings which have been bandied around for the last twelve books will finally be fulfilled (or not, as the case may be). In which Perrin, Lan, Logain, Mazrim Taim, Slayer, Elayne, Galad, Thom, Birgitte, Olver, the Sea Folk and the Kin will probably get to see more action than they did in The Gathering Storm, and in which the stage is well and truly set for Tarmon Gai’don, the final battle. And I also know that thanks to Sanderson, I am excited about this series again. I will probably spend more time than I care for at Wheel of Time websites over the next few months, looking up old prophecies and comparing theories about where the story is heading. And when it's all over, two books from now, I will in all likelihood look back on the Wheel of Time series with fondness, rather than the bitterness Jordan was increasingly inspiring in me.
Thanks for that, Brandon. After all the time I have invested in this series, I need to love it again, rather than despair of it. It now looks like I may, which is great....more
There was no way I was not going to love this book. Experience has shown that I love Guy Gavriel Kay and the characters he comes up with. They are, wiThere was no way I was not going to love this book. Experience has shown that I love Guy Gavriel Kay and the characters he comes up with. They are, without exception, passionate people, and I love reading about passionate people, especially when they have a Cause. And boy, do the characters in this book have a cause. Can you say, epic cause?
Tigana is the name of one of the countries of the Palm, a peninsula loosely based on Renaissance Italy. Divided and distrustful of one another, and unlikely ever to unite, the countries of the Palm are an easy prey for overseas invaders. When the story proper starts, two sorcerer-kings from abroad, Brandin of Ygrath and Alberico of Barbadior, have carved out the Palm between them, each ruling about half of the peninsula, each greedy for the other half. One of the sorcerers, Brandin, has destroyed the country of Tigana and cursed it so comprehensively that none but its older inhabitants remember its existence. The very name 'Tigana' cannot be written, spoken or heard, except by those Tiganans who were alive when the outrage that provoked Brandin's wrath occurred: the death of his son Stevan at the hands of Prince Valentin of Tigana, a noble man determined to protect his country from the mighty invader. Twenty years later, Valentin's son Alessan, along with a ragtag crew of similarly minded nobles, commoners and wizards, sets out to overthrow Brandin (preferably in a way which will not yield his land to his arch rival Alberico) and restore once-beautiful Tigana to its former glory. And that, in a nutshell, is what Tigana is all about.
Except, of course, that it is not allTigana is about. A big and ambitious book, Tigana is about the things that make people tick, the things that keep them going when all their efforts seem futile. It's about loyalty, justice and politics, about how to be a good and inspiring leader in troubled times, and about how to orchestrate changes if you need them. It's about shared memories and how they bind people together, forging a shared identity. It's about nationalism and how to get people to unite behind a common ideal when being divided isn't working for them. It's about shame and despair and what they will drive us to. It's about all these things and more, and Kay effortlessly weaves them into a coherent story, which somehow manages to be both epic and startlingly intimate. It's a literary tour de force, and then some.
Needless to say, though, it's not just about ideas. Central to the book are two very human tales of two very extraordinary humans, Alessan and Dianora. The former is a charismatic leader who tries to look beyond the needs of his own country and work for the greater good of all the people of the Palm, only to be cursed by his proud mother for not focussing enough on poor Tigana and revenge. The latter is a beautiful girl whose family has been wrecked by Brandin and who sets out to kill him, only to fall deeply and devastatingly in love with him and actually save his life when someone else has a go at assassinating him, to her own amazement and mortification. The relationship between Dianora and Brandin has to be one of the most haunting ones I've come across in any type of fiction. There is real internal drama here, and genuine, heart-felt emotionality, and Kay expertly takes you through it all, from Dianora's early anger to her anguished acceptance of her own feelings for Brandin, revealing layer after layer of involvement until the heart-wrenching finale. It's riveting stuff, told by someone who really, really understands the conflicts of the human heart, and it just about broke my own heart.
The other characters are less thoroughly fleshed out than Alessan and Dianora, but they do make for an interesting mosaic of personalities and storylines. Due to the constant switches in perspective, some parts of the story have a somewhat jarring quality, but the fast pace and sheer balls of the story more than make up for this. Some plot turns are predictable and a little cheap, but Kay always puts in sufficient pathos to make them interesting. Other plot turns, like the unexpected twist which ends Brandin's storyline, are surprising and quite brilliantly handled. I actually found myself nodding with admiration at the conclusion to the book, something I hardly ever do. And as usual, I just loved Kay's characters, who are so driven that one can't help rooting for them. I don’t think I cared for Tigana's heroes quite as much as I did for The Lions of al-Rassan's, but I cared, and in Dianora's case my heart broke a little at the denouement of her story. I never expected her to live happily ever after (it was obvious that her storyline was headed for tragedy), but to see such promise wasted like that was, well, tragic. Genuinely tragic, as opposed to the overwrought sentimentality that passes for tragedy in many other fantasy novels.
Tragedy aside, the real genius of Tigana is, in my opinion, Kay's refusal to make his characters either completely good or completely bad. There are many shades of grey here. The hero of the story, Alessan, is a great guy who justifiably attracts many followers, but he is not without flaws. Nor is the main villain of the piece, Brandin, without redeeming qualities. One of the most surprising things about Tigana is how sorry you feel, towards the end, for Brandin, the powerful sorcerer who may have wrecked a country and an entire generation of people, but did so out of bottomless grief and love. He's a complex villain, is Brandin, and his inevitable demise at the end is not as satisfying as you might expect it to be because you have actually come to care for him a little. It takes a brave author to attempt a conflicted ending like this, but it makes for a rich and rewarding reading experience. If only more fantasy writers were prepared to write stories like this...
So why, after all that praise, am I withholding one star? Mostly because I feel the book could have done with better editing. There are sloppily written passages where the punctuation is a little off and where Kay randomly switches tenses, two things to which I'm quite allergic. Furthermore, Kay has a habit of breaking off the action mid-sentence only to continue it in the next paragraph for greater dramatic effect, which tends to annoy me. Finally, and most seriously, I feel Kay is frequently guilty of telling rather showing in Tigana, a flaw any good editor could and should have pointed out to him. However, these are minor quibbles. By and large, I loved the book, and I'd recommend it to any lover of good fantasy fiction. I quite look forward to continuing my acquaintance with Kay. I think I'll tackle A Song for Arbonne next...
I love travelogues. I love classical antiquity. So I really expected to enjoy Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus, an attempt to mix modern lI love travelogues. I love classical antiquity. So I really expected to enjoy Ryszard Kapuscinski's Travels with Herodotus, an attempt to mix modern literary reportage with the writings of one of the greatest travelling reporters of all time, Herodotus. Sadly, however, the book was a bit of letdown. The old and new stuff didn't blend well, so the final result, while occasionally poignant and insightful, was a little underwhelming.
Maybe I went in with the wrong expectations. When I bought the book, I was expecting it to be something like Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah, a frightfully erudite book with quotes so absurd that they frequently made me howl with laughter (in public, which was rather embarrassing). Travels with a Tangerine is a very focused author's attempt to follow in the footsteps of Ibn Battutah, visiting the places the great fourteenth-century Arab traveller visited and trying to recreate the experiences he had there. It is a genuinely interesting, genuinely insightful and ever so entertaining book. I naively assumed Travels with Herodotus would be a similar read, only focusing on the places Herodotus described: Persia, Egypt, Eastern Europe, etc. Sadly, Kapuscinski took a different approach. Travels with Herodotus is not an attempt to retrace Herodotus' steps (admittedly a tall order, as Herodotus was probably the best-travelled man of his age, or many another age for that matter). Rather it is a loving tribute to the book Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish foreign correspondent working in Africa and Asia for most of the second half of the twentieth century, calls his greatest inspiration, his main source of sustenance and his favourite travelling companion: Herodotus' Histories. In between recollections of his own travels, many of them beautifully written, Kapuscinski quotes from the Histories, analysing Herodotus' method and explaining how it came to shape his own views of the world and travel reportage. Sometimes the quotes are tenuously linked with places Kapuscinski himself visited or historical events Kapuscinski himself witnessed, but most of the time they seem randomly chosen, with nary an attempt at contextualisation or analysis. In the end, I grew rather weary of this method. I found myself increasingly skipping the Herodotus quotes, not because they were dull (they weren't), but because I failed to see their relevance to Kapuscinski's muddled narrative. I finished the book thinking I would rather have read Herodotus without Kapuscinski's asides, or Kapuscinski's memoirs without his constant digressions on Herodotus. Judging from other reviews of the book, I'm not the only reader who feels this way.
It's a pity Kapuscinski chose such an ill-thought-out approach to his last book, because when he is not losing himself in overambitious homage, he is a fine writer. Travels with Herodotus contains some excellent reportage, most of it dealing with the African countries where Kapuscinski spent a considerable part of his life. Like Herodotus before him, Kapuscinski is an objective reporter who seldom judges the people he meets (even when they rob him). Also like Herodotus, he has an eye for telling detail, recounting small stories as well as monumental ones, and often instead of monumental ones. His Socialist background adds an interesting touch. And he does really understand the subjects he is dealing with. On the rare occasions when he does go into analysis, he makes interesting observations on life and politics in developing countries, observations of which Herodotus himself would be proud. Unfortunately, however, most of the analyses and anecdotes recounted in Travels with Herodotus are too fragmented and disjointed to be truly memorable or insightful. They focus so much on isolated moments in Kapuscinski's travels that they fail to provide an insight into the greater picture. There are some great anecdotes in the book, but since they don't really go anywhere, they ultimately leave the reader unsatisfied. I myself ended up feeling that I would have liked to read more about Kapuscinski's time in the Sudan than merely his recollection of a Louis Armstrong concert he attended there, and more about his experiences in civil-war-era Congo than just his nerve-racking meeting with two soldiers who walked up to him all menacingly, only to humbly ask him for a cigarette. I also would have liked to read more about his experiences in 1960 Egypt (which was just then in the grips of an anti-alcohol campaign) than his nervous attempt to get rid of an empty beer bottle while being watched by people who might well be police informants. Because as evocative as these anecdotes are (they are!), they don't tell the whole story of the place and the age, nor even a tenth of it. They are fragmented impressions -- interesting and well-written, but fragmented nonetheless. In short, I guess I'll have to read some of Ryszard Kapuscinki's other books to find out why he is considered one of the greatest reporters of the twentieth century. I'm sure he has written books in which he does go into detail, sticks to the topic at hand and really reports, rather than leisurely recounting disjointed memories. Unfortunately, Travels with Herodotus isn't one of them.
As for Herodotus, I'll obviously have to reread his Histories, for whatever the shortcomings of Travels with Herodotus, it did most definitely whet my appetite for more Herodotus.
Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's Is it wrong that I kept seeing Audrey Hepburn in my mind's eye while reading Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote's best-known novella? I guess it's understandable, given how iconic Hepburn's portrayal of Holly Golightly is. In fact, I think Hepburn's Holly may well be my all-time favourite movie heroine. She's a slut, a snob and a gold-digger, and her life is so shallow and vapid that it should be reprehensible to me, but at the same time she is so delightfully charming and eccentric that it is impossible not to fall under her spell and end up madly in love with her. As played by Hepburn, Holly is the ultimate It Girl, witty and beautiful and so stylish it hurts, but vulnerable and conflicted enough for us not to envy her.
Capote's Holly is slightly different from Hepburn's. She is tougher and more potty-mouthed than her movie counterpart, with a touch of racism that I don't remember from the film. She also seems a bit more hell-bent on self-destruction, and less inclined to be saved by the well-meaning narrator. For these and other reasons, she should be mildly off-putting, but for some reason she's not. I guess it's because she is immensely alive -- less girlishly and innocently so than in the film, but just as alluring. And she doesn't need Hepburn's charm to come off the page. Capote did a great job imagining Holly and fleshing her out, giving her one good line after the other and endearing quirks galore. It probably isn't fair to him that I (along with millions of other readers, no doubt) kept picturing Audrey Hepburn while reading his descriptions of Holly, to the point where I was shocked to discover Capote imagined her as a blonde (surely not?), but thankfully, my love for the film didn't prevent me from recognising the quality of the writing, which is beyond dispute. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Capote was a master storyteller with a finely developed ear for dialogue and a massive flair for making the unglamorous glamorous. He used both gifts to great effect in Breakfast at Tiffany's, creating a story which, while less romantic and emotionally gratifying than the film adaptation, nevertheless succeeds in making the reader yearn for Holly the same way the narrator does. The prose is effortlessly elegant, even when it refers to ugly things, which it does rather more regularly than George Axelrod and Blake Edwards seem to have cared to replicate in the film. Timeless and evocative, it is a story about friendship valued and lost, about belonging and refusing to belong, and like the film, it stays with you as the perfect blend of cynicism and sentiment, with an added sense of loss. I can't think why I waited so long to read it...
The other three stories in the collection, 'House of Flowers', 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory', are almost as strong as Breakfast at Tiffany's. Like the better-known novella which opens the book, 'A Diamond Guitar' and 'A Christmas Memory' are elegies on broken friendships, on bonds shared and then lost, and like °Õ¾±´Ú´Ú²¹²Ô²â’s, they are poignant and evocative, with moments of startling intimacy and many a well-turned phrase and eye-opening observation. 'House of Flowers' (about the romance between the most beautiful prostitute in Port-au-Prince and the peasant who makes an honest woman of her) is less poignant, but just as memorable for its matter-of-fact weirdness and quirkiness (spider bread, anyone?). All three short stories prove that Capote was a master of the genre, equally at home in first-person narratives and third-person ones, with male heroes and female ones, with child protagonists and more mature ones. The four stories contained in Breakfast at Tiffany's all have vastly different points of view, styles and subjects, but in their own ways, they are all interesting and memorable, making it all the more regrettable that Capote only published so few of them. He was obviously quite the short-story teller.
Do seek this collection out if you haven't already -- you won't regret it. ...more
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