The scariest thing about Atwood's dystopian fantasy, first published in 1985, is how prophetic it seems. There were references in the book which sent The scariest thing about Atwood's dystopian fantasy, first published in 1985, is how prophetic it seems. There were references in the book which sent a chill of recognition down my spine. A right-wing government which blames Islamic fundamentalists for terrorist attacks and begins to suspend certain human rights, claiming it is doing so to protect the people from heathen bastards? I daresay it will sound familiar to any left-wing American who has ever looked with a wary eye at the country's increasingly influential religious right. Nuclear disasters which affect health and fertility? I know some Ukrainian women who could tell a few nasty stories about that. And of course the suppression of women which is the main subject of The Handmaid's Tale is only too real in places like Iran and Afghanistan, where many women are probably worse off than Atwood's protagonist, Offred.
So, yes, the novel rang true to me. I've read reviews by people who said their appreciation of the book was significantly undermined by the unlikeliness of the premise, but it didn't seem that far-fetched to me. I don't think a society like the one Atwood describes in The Handmaid's Tale would necessarily exist for a long time, but then regimes don't have to last long to cause untold damage. Just look at the havoc Nazi Germany wreaked in just over a decade, or Mao's Red Guards in Cultural Revolution-era China...
I found The Handmaid's Tale a compelling book, and not just for its powerful vision of a dystopian future. Sure, it has a cold, impersonal tone, but that is appropriate, given the subject matter. What stayed with me most, other than the disturbing descriptions of chants and punishments, was Offred's boredom, the sense of loss that pervades the book. Bereft of her job and the right to read books or own anything, Offred has no distractions from her own thoughts, which she refers to as 'attacks of the past'. She frequently dwells on people and things she has lost -- people and things she used to take for granted, and now will never see again. Furthermore, she endlessly analyses her own thoughts, feelings and actions, simply because she has nothing else to do. Atwood does a great job describing Offred's crushing boredom and her desire for distraction, for something to give her life a little meaning. At the same time, she shows how indoctrination and forced inertia can wear an otherwise intelligent and engaged person down. Atwood's Offred is no heroine, no rebel. She sometimes has rebellious thoughts, but she never actively goes out there and makes things happen. Instead, she waits for others to give her cues, showing little initiative of her own. As a modern heroine, then, she is flawed; she is too passive really to appeal. However, as an illustration of how fear and oppression can beat an intelligent woman down and paralyse her into near-submission, she is near perfect. Those readers who complain about her passivity and lack of active engagement obviously missed the point.
As far as I'm concerned, The Handmaid's Tale has only one real flaw, which is its ending. It felt rushed to me. I didn't necessarily crave more closure; I just felt the story deserved a less abrupt ending. As for the epilogue with its almost flippant tone, I didn't really care for that either, but I can see why Atwood felt the need to include it; it definitely answered a few questions, and offered a message of hope, as well. I can see how some readers might appreciate a message of hope after such a depressing read. Personally, though, I think the book would have been even more memorable if Atwood had remained true to the style and tone of the rest of the book. It would have made a chilling read just a tad more compelling.
When I first heard Orson Scott Card had written a parallel story to Ender's Game, dealing with virtually the same events as the original book but toldWhen I first heard Orson Scott Card had written a parallel story to Ender's Game, dealing with virtually the same events as the original book but told from another character's perspective, I thought it was a cheap way to cash in on the success of his first bestseller. Like many people, though, I had to eat my words after reading Ender's Shadow. For not only is it as gripping a read as Ender's Game, but in some regards it is actually a better book.
Ender's Shadow centres on one of Ender's lieutenants, Bean, an even younger and more intelligent child prodigy than Ender himself. After some thrilling adventures on the streets of Rotterdam, Bean is sent to Battle School, where he keeps hearing about this genius called Ender. Bean gets obsessed with Ender, or rather with proving to himself and others that he is a better strategist than Ender. But when he finally meets Ender, he realises that there is a reason why Ender is revered the way he is, and learns to accept his place in the universe. Nope, he doesn't get to command Earth's army, but he plays a major part in the background -- in many ways a more interesting part than the one Ender plays in the foreground.
Ender's Shadow does have a few problems. As a Dutchwoman, I dearly wish Card had gone over the Dutch names and references in the Rotterdam segment with a Dutch person, as many of them are riddled with mistakes (Sinterklaas lights? WTF?). Furthermore, there were a few times (especially halfway through the book) when I found Bean's superiority complex a bit grating. Apart from these minor flaws, though, Ender's Shadow is a solid novel by an author who had clearly matured immensely since writing Ender's Game. The prose in Ender's Shadow is much richer, the psychology has more depth, the back story is more fully realised, and thanks to Bean's amazing tactical and analytical insights, he is able to offer an interesting perspective on events known from the first book. Bean himself, too, is a much better drawn protagonist than Ender -- not always entirely likeable, but always fascinating. His story may lack some of the surprise and impact of Ender's, but in its own way it's thoroughly engaging and thought-provoking. It easily holds up as a stand-alone book, and as a companion piece to Ender's Game, filling in gaps and providing new perspectives on known events, it is simply superb. I never thought I'd say this about a young-adult-meets-sci-fi novel, but there you are. Good stuff....more
Every now and then you come across a book whose prose is thoroughly unimpressive but whose premise and sheer bravado manage to suck you in nonethelessEvery now and then you come across a book whose prose is thoroughly unimpressive but whose premise and sheer bravado manage to suck you in nonetheless, to the point where you end up enjoying it an awful lot. Ender's Game falls into that category for me. The first few chapters feature some of the choppiest prose I've come across in a published book -- sentences so short and dull that I seriously wondered how the book had ever got published. However, the writing gradually gets better, and as for the story itself, well, it's simply compelling. It kept me up for the better part of two nights and had me doing some serious thinking afterwards. Not bad for a young-adult-cum-science-fiction novel.
Ender's Game centres on Andrew 'Ender' Wiggin, a precocious six-year-old who is selected for the inter-planetary Battle School, where children are trained to become commanders for the International Fleet (a space agency which is supposed to keep alien threats at bay). Ender's teachers suspect he is a strategic genius, so in order to nurture his talent and see what he is capable of, they subject him to an increasingly gruelling training programme in which he has to lead much older kids into mock battles. It soon becomes apparent why: the teachers believe that Ender may be the only person capable of beating the Buggers, a technologically advanced race from outer space who may or may not have evil designs on planet Earth. So they push young Ender to his very limits, only to realise much later that they may have pushed him too far. Is Ender up to the challenge? And what exactly does this challenge entail, and what does it mean in terms of right and wrong? These are just some of the questions raised in Ender's Game, a page-turner if ever I read one. While overall characterisation is shoddy (Ender himself remains a two-dimensional character, and the other characters never make it past 1.4-dimensional), there can be no doubt that Ender is a great protagonist. It's simply riveting to watch him overcome his own fears, outwit his enemies, win the respect and support of those who matter and prove himself worthy of the big task ahead of him. Reading about his game tactics is like watching a strategy book come to life, and I for one really enjoyed that experience (I guess I should be reading Machiavelli and Sun Tzu next). But Ender's Game is more than an exciting tale about a child prodigy overcoming tremendous odds to find the meaning of his life. It also deals with fairly fundamental ethical issues. Once the final battle is over, you are left with a lot of questions -- about the legitimacy of manipulation and using children as a means to an end, and about the ethics of war and colonisation. You are given an insight into how lonely life can be at the top, and how hard it can be to live with yourself after you've done something terrible (even if you were tricked into doing it). You are left feeling not just for Ender, who pays a heavy price for the games others play on him, but for his victims, who may not quite deserve the treatment they get. So what if the writing is sketchy and the characters are cardboard cut-outs? It's still a gripping read which makes some worthy points. A deserved classic, in my opinion....more
I have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinI have to admit to being somewhat baffled by the acclaim Slaughterhouse-5 has received over the years. Sure, the story is interesting. It has a fascinating and mostly successful blend of tragedy and comic relief. And yes, I guess the fractured structure and time-travelling element must have been quite novel and original back in the day. But that doesn't excuse the book's flaws, of which there are a great many in my (seemingly unconventional) opinion. Take, for instance, Vonnegut's endless repetition of the phrase 'So it goes.' Wikipedia informs me it crops up 106 times in the book. It felt like three hundred times to me. About forty pages into the book, I was so fed up with the words 'So it goes' that I felt like hurling the book across the room, something I have not done since trying to read up on French semiotics back in the 1990s. I got used to coming across the words every two pages or so eventually, but I never grew to like them. God, no.
I found some other nits to pick, too. Some of them were small and trivial and frankly rather ridiculous, such as -- wait for it -- the hyphen in the book's title. Seriously, what is that hyphen doing there? There's no need for a hyphen there. Couldn't someone have removed it, like, 437 editions ago? And while I'm at it, couldn't some discerning editor have done something about the monotonous quality of Vonnegut's prose -- about the interminable repetition of short subject-verb-object sentences? Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all authors should use Henry James- or Claire Messud-length sentences. Heaven forbid. I'm actually rather fond of minimalism, both in visual art and in writing. But Vonnegut's prose is so sparse and simplistic it's monotonous rather than minimalist, to the point where I frequently found myself wishing for a run-on sentence every now and then, or for an actual in-depth description of something. I hardly ever got either. As a result, there were times when I felt like I was reading a bare-bones outline of a story rather than the story itself. Granted, it was an interesting outline, larded with pleasing ideas and observations, but still, I think the story could have been told in a more effective way. A less annoying way, too.
As for the plot, I liked it. I liked the little vignettes Vonnegut came up with and the colourful characters he created (the British officers being my particular favourites). I liked the fact that you're never quite sure whether Billy is suffering from dementia, brain damage or some kind of delayed post-traumatic stress disorder, or whether there is some actual time-travelling going on. I even liked the jarring switches in perspective, although I think they could have been handled in a slightly more subtle manner. And I liked the book's anti-war message, weak and defeatist though it seemed to be. In short, I liked the book, but it took some doing. I hope I'll be less annoyed by the two other Vonnegut books I have sitting on my shelves, Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle. ...more
I'll confess I had a hard time getting into Neuromancer, the book that started the cyberpunk craze back in the mid-eighties. The first few chapters weI'll confess I had a hard time getting into Neuromancer, the book that started the cyberpunk craze back in the mid-eighties. The first few chapters were so disjointed and deliberately obscure that I wasn't sure what was going on, nor whether I actually cared. Then things gradually started to fall into place. Seventy pages into the story I got the hang of Gibson's style, one hundred pages in I actually began to enjoy it, and now that I've finished it, I actually look forward to reading it again at some point. I'm not sure if that makes Neuromancer a good book, but it's certainly interesting.
As the blurb has it, Neuromancer is about Case, who was the sharpest data thief in the matrix, until an ex-employer crippled his nervous system. Now a new employer has recruited him for a last-chance run against an unthinkably powerful artificial intelligence. With a mirror-eyed girl street-samurai riding shotgun, he is sent on an adventure in a futuristic world where the lines between fantasy and reality are blurred and where nothing is quite what it seems, to fight an enemy he doesn't know. On the way to the final showdown, the reader is taken to Japan, America, Turkey and a few imaginary places, gets to meet quite a few bizarre people (if they are even human) and generally wonders what the f*** is going on.
You have to give Gibson credit for the virtual reality world he created over twenty years ago, long before the Internet and virtual reality as we know it were a fact. His futurama is a pretty fantastic and well-realised place, with characters of its own, a vernacular of its own, the works. The reader is thrown headlong into this world and is not given any explanations along the way, which makes the first few chapters hard to get through. After a while, though, you start getting a feel for the patois, and the book becomes much easier to read. However, it still has a few major flaws, which only become more obvious as you continue reading. For one thing, the characters aren't developed nearly as well as the world in which they live. They are interesting, but Gibson doesn't give them an awful lot to do or feel, which is a great shame. The same is true for the story as a whole. While there are plenty of interesting ideas floating in there, somehow they won't gel into a proper story, as Gibson is so busy focusing on the cool world he has created that he forgets to add such basic things as backgrounds, emotions, story arcs and smooth transitions. Even more damagingly, he fails to provide his heroes with a clear quest. While their actions and adventures are quite exciting, it is not clear exactly who or what they're up against or what they're trying to achieve or prevent, which makes it hard to identify with them or root for them. Throw in a rather vague bad guy (or bad guys?) and you have quite a few examples of bad story-telling -- things that any creative writing teacher would warn his students to steer clear of, and which have no business being in a book as famous and acclaimed as this one.
And yet... For all its flaws, Neuromancer IS pretty cool, and I genuinely look forward to re-reading it at some point. I just wish Gibson had made better use of the superb ingredients he's working with. Neuromancer could have been a brilliant book; as it is, it's merely interesting. ...more
In the third instalment of the series, real life becomes a bit too dangerous for Thursday, so she goes into hiding in the book world. And not just anyIn the third instalment of the series, real life becomes a bit too dangerous for Thursday, so she goes into hiding in the book world. And not just any part of the book world, but the Well of Lost Plots, where unpublished novels languish. Here, while the pernicious Aornis Hades tries to erase her memories, Thursday continues her training to become a Jurisfiction agent. Which is not as easy as it might sound, for characters are failing to show up for their Rage Control Meetings, murderous Minotaurs, verbivores, grammasites and mispeling vyruses are wreaking havoc, and if that weren't spectacular enough, the revolutionary new book-operating system UltraWord is about to be launched, which may not be such a good thing. In short, Thursday's dreams of an easy, tranquil pregnancy are quickly dashed, never to return.
Once again, Fforde's imagination knows no bounds. He pokes fun at everything from Verne, the Bronte sisters and Lewis Carroll to Microsoft and generic thrillers, and has a splendid time parodying bad fiction and good fiction alike. Sadly, however, he spends so much time world-building and losing himself in interesting ideas that the plot suffers. Very little actually happens in the first three fourths of the book; mostly it's an overly long description of life in the book world. The humour is a bit off, too -- while there are plenty of half-smiles, there are few genuine laughs, like the ones in the previous two books. Still, the book sets the stage for Book 4, and as such is a useful addition to the series....more
The second book in the Thursday Next series provides more literary fun for those who are into that kind of thing.
Thursday's exploits in Jane Eyre havThe second book in the Thursday Next series provides more literary fun for those who are into that kind of thing.
Thursday's exploits in Jane Eyre have made her a bit of a celebrity, which means she has to make regular appearances on TV. Not everybody likes her, though; a mysterious foe keeps trying to kill her, her husband of one month has been eradicated from history and if that weren't bad enough, her time-travelling father tells her Armageddon is at hand. So not only does Thursday have to get her husband back from the depths of time, but she has to stay alive long enough to save the world. Fortunately, there is plenty of literary stuff going on to keep her from going mad. First she has to authenticate a newly found play by Shakespeare, which may well be a ploy in a political conspiracy; then she has to head back into fiction to become a literary detective inside the book world, apprenticed to none other than Miss Havisham. Along the way, she meets Neanderthals, mammoths, the Cheshire Cat and many others, learns many useful skills and ends up saving the planet. Naturally.
Fforde's first sequel to The Eyre Affair isn't as tightly plotted as the original, but is equally delightful and inventive, and just as full of literary in-jokes. There are references to anything from Austen and Dickens to Kafka, not to mention lots of time travel and seriously evil baddies. In short, it's heaps of fun for those who take their literature seriously... and those who don't. ...more
Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series is an awful lot of fun for English lit geeks who cherish their classics. It is set in an alternate England where Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series is an awful lot of fun for English lit geeks who cherish their classics. It is set in an alternate England where people have cloned dodos for pets, croquet is the national sport, time travelling is a regular part of life and literature enjoys the kind of position that beer, football, cricket and TV have today, meaning that the country eats, drinks and breathes literature. It would be a perfect place to live, if it weren't for the fact that (1) it is run by a rather sinister and megalomaniac company, the Goliath Corporation; (2) the Crimean War is still going strong after 131 years and lots of people are dying; and (3) border skirmishes with the Socialist Republic of Wales are frequent. In this rather interesting world lives Thursday Next, a young literary detective who gets involved in the literary crime of the century: the kidnapping of Jane Eyre, which threatens to rid us of the book for ever. Thursday has her work cut out for her -- not only does she have to enter the world of fiction to liberate Jane (and her own aunt, who has been trapped in a Wordsworth poem), but she also has to eliminate the super villain who kidnapped her, halt the Crimean conflict and figure out who really wrote Shakespeare's plays. Oh, and persuade the man she loves to marry her, for obviously, there is some romance, too.
Fforde is on to a great idea here. His recreation of England is brilliant; if it weren't for the almighty Goliath Corporation, who are running the place in a rather unpleasant manner, I think every bibliophile would want to live there. References to the classics are abundant, as are jokes. As The Independent said, it's a silly book for smart people, combining erudition with accessible humour, ingenuity and quite a bit of charm. English lit fans will eat it up. ...more
The fouth instalment of the Thursday Next series is my favourite one, the one in which all the plotlines set out earlier are woven together and politiThe fouth instalment of the Thursday Next series is my favourite one, the one in which all the plotlines set out earlier are woven together and political satire enters the series in a grand way.
In Something Rotten, Thursday returns from the book world to late-1980s England with her two-year-old son, two dodos and the Prince of Denmark, Hamlet, who wishes to see a bit of the world. As it happens, Hamlet's arrival in the real world poses a bit of a problem, for unbeknownst to Thursday, a fictional character, Yorrick Kaine, has been trying to get himself elected dictator of the British Isles, and he has just launched a vitriolic campaign against all things Danish, including Kierkegaard and Out of Africa. Just as worryingly, the almighty Goliath Corporation is trying to pass itself off as a religion rather than Big Brother, which, if everything goes according to plan, will change life in Britain significantly, and not for the better. Needless to say, Thursday has to sort things out, which she does while trying to evade an assassin, visiting the world of the dead and making sure that the local croquet team wins the cup, as the thirteenth-century saint St Zvlkx, who is always right, has predicted that the fate of the world depends on this match. Naturally, she also spends a bit of time trying to get back her husband, who still has an existence problem, but first she has to arrange a baby-sitter for her son, which proves just as difficult.
Something Rotten gets off to a slow start, but once it gets under way (some 100 pages into the book), it's excellent; the second of half of the book may well be the best part of the series so far. The political satire is thick and hilarious, the cameos and conspiracy theories are great fun, the loose ends are tied up very nicely, and in the end, nearly everyone gets what he/she deserves. What more could a reader want?...more
Ever wonder what it would be like to travel in time and be able to rewrite parts of history? In The Anubis Gates, Brendan Doyle, a professor of nineteEver wonder what it would be like to travel in time and be able to rewrite parts of history? In The Anubis Gates, Brendan Doyle, a professor of nineteenth-century English literature living in 1983 California, accidentally gets to try his hand at it when he is invited by a mad scientist to attend a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810 London. Needless to say, an accident prevents Doyle from returning to his own time (it always does in these books, doesn't it?), so he is stuck in early-nineteenth-century London, where he gets to deal with gypsies, underground dens of beggars, an unpleasant clown, a body-shifting werewolf, a young woman disguised as a boy, a brain-washed Lord Byron, assassins, homunculi, legendary beasts, life without antibiotics and last but not least, an ancient Egyptian sorceror who seems to want something from him. What ensues is an off-the-wall tale full of outlandish conspiracies, time travel, Doppelgangers and magic, and yes, a bit of poetry. The evocation of nineteenth-century England isn't entirely convincing (there are some glaring historic and linguistic anachronisms), and the narrative gets a bit predictable at times (despite the plot being so insane), but the action is non stop, the story unfolds at a cracking pace and there are enough inventive and amusing links to actual history and literature to make even the harshest critic chuckle. In short, it's a fun read -- not perfect, but perfectly entertaining, with some interesting ideas to ponder afterwards.
I'm now wondering where *I* would go if I could travel in time......more
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