|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| B0DWV4QY1H
| 3.49
| 20,066
| Aug 20, 2019
| Sep 05, 2019
|
liked it
|
[3.5 stars] Richard Harris is an author well-known for a few titles I haven't read, such as 1992's Fatherland. However, I did enjoy his ancient Rome l
[3.5 stars] Richard Harris is an author well-known for a few titles I haven't read, such as 1992's Fatherland. However, I did enjoy his ancient Rome legal thriller, Imperium, told from the vantage point of the fictional slave of the real Cicero. Second Sleep takes place in a Britain that, at first glance, seems to be at the tail end of the Middle Ages. In fact, the year is given as 1468, which seems to align with the general state of things. People live agrarian, pre-industrial lives, and the Christian Church is society's dominant institution. Within a few chapters, though (making it not the sort of twist I'd consider a spoiler), the truth comes out: the setting is actually about eight hundred years into our FUTURE, with technological society having collapsed in the mid-2020s. Now, science is considered heresy, widely regarded as responsible for the downfall, though the church has kept the specifics of how it happened obscure. Our protagonist and POV character is one Father Fairfax, a young, unworldly priest who, until now, has led a sheltered life back at his bishop's home base, with little reason to question the official version of things. The story begins when he's sent to a remote village to conduct the funeral services of its long-time priest, who has just died, in circumstances that seem odder and odder as Fairfax learns more. As it turns out, the dead priest, Lacey, was collecting artifacts from the pre-apocalypse days and has also hidden some old record books, both rather suspect activities. Fairfax's curiosity gets the better of him, as does the attraction he feels to a mute village girl, and he decides to extend his stay. Little does he suspect what he's getting himself into. If you're wondering about the title, it has to do with the medieval practice, reconstituted in this story, of dividing the night into two "sleeps". People would go to bed relatively early, wake up in the middle of the night for a couple hours of activity, then go back to bed. I'd sometimes do something like that back in college, taking a long after-dinner nap, then going to the library to study, then returning to a dorm that was abuzz with activity until around 2am, at which point it was finally quiet enough to hit the sack for real. Anyway, Fairfax is soon enough involved in a mission to uncover lost relics buried near an ancient structure, an activity not good for his standing with either church or state, as well as getting a bit too entangled in local affairs. Other characters come off as the post-apocalypse versions of "types" from a whodunnit -- the gruff former army captain/business magnate, the free-spirited 30-something widow, the eccentric old man with an unusual set of interests, the good-natured housekeeper with a secret, the spiteful sister with a spying eye, the soft-spoken assistant who may be hiding something. Harris is a good writer and I was satisfied with the audiobook production, other than its making Father Fairfax sound a bit older and prissier than I thought fit the character. My feelings about the novel's ending are mixed, though. On one hand, I thought that the mini-apocalypse that takes place in the ruins of a citadel of the ancients was thematically fitting, making a point about the incorrigibility of humankind. On the other hand, it was rather abrupt, chopping off a few plot threads that I thought could have used a bit more closure. Still, Second Sleep is the first post-apocalypse novel I've come across that attributes the fall of civilization to something I've been increasingly worried about myself: the brain rot and growing social isolation inflicted by the internet and our omni-present connection to our addictive little devices. As Harris puts it, "in due course they displaced human memory and reasoning and even normal social intercourse--an enfeebling and narcotic power that some say drove their possessors mad, to the extent that their introduction marked the beginning of the end of advanced civilization.� As an American who's watched with dismay as a culture of anti-intellectualism and anti-empathy has metastasized over the past fifteen years or so, largely enabled by social media, it's hard for me to disagree. Human brains seemingly weren't made for the world that human brains have created. All in all, probably not one of Harris's best novels, but if you're a fan of his work, you might enjoy the unique world-building here, a future in which our own times are seen as a recapitulation of Adam and Eve's fall to temptation. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Mar 20, 2025
|
Mar 21, 2025
|
ebook
| ||||||||||||||||
| 0575075791
| 9780575075795
| 0575075791
| 3.81
| 1,214
| 1984
| 2005
|
it was amazing
|
How do you become invisible without becoming actually invisible? Hang onto that question, because it matters. I've read a good chunk of Christopher Pri How do you become invisible without becoming actually invisible? Hang onto that question, because it matters. I've read a good chunk of Christopher Priest's body of work, and this one might just be my favorite of his novels. It's a tightly constructed psychological thriller that not only places its characters in tense situations, but continuously undermines the reader's confidence in what seem to be the underlying realities of the story. This may sound gimmicky, but Priest, at his cool, precise best, is a master of games, illusions, and misdirection, painting pictures that at first appear to be one thing, but are revealed to be something else entirely when the perspective shifts (of course, there are plenty of clues that you won't think much of as they pass you by, but will jump out later). And the puzzles aren't meaningless fluff; they invite contemplation of significant human themes. Plotwise, this novel seems ordinary enough at first. A young man named Richard is recovering in hospital from the aftereffects of being caught near a car bomb explosion, which include some amnesia. He's visited by a young woman named Susan, whom he can't remember, but who claims to have been his lover during the weeks before the blast. Another narrative section (shifting from third to first person voice) fills in what seems to be the backstory. Richard is on holiday in France and meets Susan on a train. The two quickly fall for each other, but their love affair is gradually soured by the offstage presence of Susan's controlling, possessive ex-lover, Niall, who maintains a mysterious and seemingly unbreakable hold over her, much to Richard's frustration and anger. Then, the novel takes a turn into some strange territory, somewhat reminiscent, I thought, of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. We get Susan's version of events, which contains some notable factual differences from Richard's, but also ascribes semi-fantastical powers to her and to Niall, who takes on a whole new level of sulky menace once the extent of their disturbing codependency is clear. But, this is Christopher Priest, and there are reasons not to take Susan's account entirely at face value, to suspect that author is playing further tricks on us. Which, of course, he is, and the hints are there from page one. The turns that follow kept me glued to my reading device, and when Priest finally drops the floor in the last pages, it's a metaphysical mind-bender, revealing that Richard, Susan, and Niall might not be quite what we thought they were. So, what are they, then? That question kept my mind occupied for a while (hint: reread the first chapter), but the more I pondered, the more the conclusion clicked with the novel's interrelated themes of identity, memory, and visibility. What does it mean, in terms of human experience, to be "visible" (or not)? Naturally, I'm putting this question in purposefully broads terms, so as to not spoil what I think is a gripping reading experience, but I'm not sure I need to make it more specific. Just keep it to the side, let your mind make its own connections, and enjoy this brilliant novel. It's the sort of work that might result if someone found a way to take the hamfistedness out of Gone Girl and the movie Inception, and combined them both into something quietly, unsettlingly mind-blowing. And did so thirty years earlier. Audiobook narrator Barnaby Edwards is a good fit for Priest's style of writing, which maintains a certain level of emotional distance, but is able to be expressive when the moods of the characters warrant it. Some of his voices for minor characters sound a little cartoonish, but his use of different British regional accents for the major ones was a helpful cue. Merged review: How do you become invisible without becoming actually invisible? Hang onto that question, because it matters. I've read a good chunk of Christopher Priest's body of work, and this one might just be my favorite of his novels. It's a tightly constructed psychological thriller that not only places its characters in tense situations, but continuously undermines the reader's confidence in what seem to be the underlying realities of the story. This may sound gimmicky, but Priest, at his cool, precise best, is a master of games, illusions, and misdirection, painting pictures that at first appear to be one thing, but are revealed to be something else entirely when the perspective shifts (of course, there are plenty of clues that you won't think much of as they pass you by, but will jump out later). And the puzzles aren't meaningless fluff; they invite contemplation of significant human themes. Plotwise, this novel seems ordinary enough at first. A young man named Richard is recovering in hospital from the aftereffects of being caught near a car bomb explosion, which include some amnesia. He's visited by a young woman named Susan, whom he can't remember, but who claims to have been his lover during the weeks before the blast. Another narrative section (shifting from third to first person voice) fills in what seems to be the backstory. Richard is on holiday in France and meets Susan on a train. The two quickly fall for each other, but their love affair is gradually soured by the offstage presence of Susan's controlling, possessive ex-lover, Niall, who maintains a mysterious and seemingly unbreakable hold over her, much to Richard's frustration and anger. Then, the novel takes a turn into some strange territory, somewhat reminiscent, I thought, of David Mitchell's The Bone Clocks. We get Susan's version of events, which contains some notable factual differences from Richard's, but also ascribes semi-fantastical powers to her and to Niall, who takes on a whole new level of sulky menace once the extent of their disturbing codependency is clear. But, this is Christopher Priest, and there are reasons not to take Susan's account entirely at face value, to suspect that author is playing further tricks on us. Which, of course, he is, and the hints are there from page one. The turns that follow kept me glued to my reading device, and when Priest finally drops the floor in the last pages, it's a metaphysical mind-bender, revealing that Richard, Susan, and Niall might not be quite what we thought they were. So, what are they, then? That question kept my mind occupied for a while (hint: reread the first chapter), but the more I pondered, the more the conclusion clicked with the novel's interrelated themes of identity, memory, and visibility. What does it mean, in terms of human experience, to be "visible" (or not)? Naturally, I'm putting this question in purposefully broads terms, so as to not spoil what I think is a gripping reading experience, but I'm not sure I need to make it more specific. Just keep it to the side, let your mind make its own connections, and enjoy this brilliant novel. It's the sort of work that might result if someone found a way to take the hamfistedness out of Gone Girl and the movie Inception, and combined them both into something quietly, unsettlingly mind-blowing. And did so thirty years earlier. Audiobook narrator Barnaby Edwards is a good fit for Priest's style of writing, which maintains a certain level of emotional distance, but is able to be expressive when the moods of the characters warrant it. Some of his voices for minor characters sound a little cartoonish, but his use of different British regional accents for the major ones was a helpful cue. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
2
|
not set
not set
|
Aug 02, 2016
not set
|
Jan 19, 2025
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1324086033
| 9781324086031
| 1324086033
| 4.21
| 24,342
| Sep 24, 2024
| Sep 24, 2024
|
really liked it
|
[3.5 stars] I loved Richard Power's The Overstory, a humanist-minded, ecologically-conscious story that gradually brings together the lives of separat
[3.5 stars] I loved Richard Power's The Overstory, a humanist-minded, ecologically-conscious story that gradually brings together the lives of separate characters who each have some profound connection to trees. In that book, Powers found, for me, a good balance between hope and realism, wonder and sorrow, the timeless and the ever-evolving (notably his well-informed reminiscences on the early computer game industry), that moved me. Well-written characters helped, too. Playground, at first glance, seems like it's setting out to do something similar with oceans instead of forests, and, to be sure, the ocean is an important element, but this is a novel that's more about the high stakes of human play in our chosen playgrounds, about its implications in a time of such rapid technological and social transformation as now. Key characters: Evelyn Beaulieu: entering college in the late 1950s, this tall, awkward, passionate French-Canadian, daughter of an early aqualung innovator, is more at home diving in the ocean than in any life role that takes place on dry land. Her many experiences culminate in a popular book she writes in middle age, which is to have a profound influence on the life of... Todd Keane: the son of two wealthy parents in an unhappy marriage, Todd loves computers, which become his playspace. Years after reading Evelyn's book, Todd will become the founder of Playground, a sort of gamified social media application/site that becomes wildly popular, due in part to a foundational design idea in which users earn points through participation. By the time the story reaches the present day, Todd has become a multi-billionaire, with his company pursuing a cutting-edge Deep Learning framework. However, while still a teenager in an elite prep school back in the 1980s, Todd has another passion, chess, which leads to a bond between him and... Rafi Young: a supremely gifted black boy from the most disadvantaged part of Chicago, Rafi reads well beyond the level of most of his peers, drilled by a father who can't stand the thought of his son doomed to a life beneath his potential. In winning a scholarship to the same school Todd attends, Rafi finds himself both intrigued by Todd's intellect, on par with his own, and unable to stand the thought of being patronized by a rich white boy, which motivates him to try to beat Todd at his own preferred game. Soon, however, they've moved on from one black-vs-white game to another that feels, to both, even deeper and closer to something essential: Go. While in college with Todd, Rafi meets the woman he believes will be his wife... Ina Aroita: coming from a small island in French Polynesia, one whose mineral wealth was extracted by the French in ways of dubious benefit to the locals, Ina is an artist who feels a little homeless, having lived on Navy bases and in the States for so long. When she and Todd have an interaction that betrays Rafi's trust (not necessarily the kind you might guess), it leads to a falling out between the two young men -- and things are never quite the same again for her. Yet this only motivates Todd's desire to use computers as a tool to bridge the gaps between separate human minds. Naturally, that will have big implications for both the story and the world. Other characters, though receiving less page time, are still important. Most of these are other islanders, inhabitants of the same nine-square-mile speck of land that Ina comes from. All characters, major and minor, become involved with one another when Todd, dying of a neurological illness in his 50s, decides to launch a seasteading scheme, which will construct floating habitats on the island, completely upending the lives of its 80-ish residents with an influx of both wealth and disruption. How will everyone vote in a forthcoming referendum? How will Todd, Rafi, and their still-bitter fracture influence its outcome? Richard Powers has his flaws as an author. At times, he can be a little precious about his characters' fascinations. At times, he can be rather on-the-nose with points he wants to make. I mean, yeah, no one denies that race can be a touchy subject in relationships between black Americans and white Americans, but the way the touchiness unfolds between Rafi and Todd reads as a matter of mutual thick-headedness that two good friends probably could have patched over, were it not needed by the plot. Would it have been that hard to find a few more ideological clash points between a slightly autistic rich tech bro and a sensitive literary nerd? Yet, overall, I found this to be an enthralling book, taking themes that would have seemed hard to connect convincingly, had I been handed them on randomly selected cards, but then making them reinforce and build on each other with a sneaking cleverness that I couldn't help but admire. On one hand, critics of Powers might find it a little pretentious that he would call the ChatGPT-like system he invents in his novel "Profunda", but then again, the name is the brainchild of a tech billionaire in the same novel, and that's exactly the sort of thing tech billionaires do. I dunno, I can't help but enjoy writers who find ways to have their cake and eat it, too. Even taken separately, the individual character stories, filled with their own human struggles and quests for meaning, not fully understood by others, are well-researched and moving. I found their animating concerns largely believable, knowing that people are often so driven by their need for self-realization, as characters in this book are, that they might unwittingly hurt others. And, as someone who works in the field of robotics, I think that Powers's grasp of the impact of computers/the internet/social media/AI has some real insight to it, and insight, whether you get it from him or someone else, that shouldn't be ignored. The Rubicon the world crossed with the advent of Deep Learning, wherever future historians might retrospectively place it in time, was/is as big as The Atomic Bomb. I don't know if Powers would put it quite like that, but he DOES make repeated mention of atomic bomb tests in French Polynesia, so... I won't give away the significant twist in the final chapters that drives that point home, and which I have have mixed feelings about (just know: the narrator here isn't totally reliable). Still, Powers's thoughts on the implications were in strong resonance with my own. Can we use this new form of mind to fulfill its earlier promise of connecting us all, including those intelligent minds who are other kinds of animals, or will our jeux sans frontières with AI, and the power it gives some of us, ultimately be destructive? That Go match -- that endless series of Go matches -- has yet to play out. In sum, not quite as impactful to me as Overstory was, yet I can easily see other fans of his taking the opposite position. Or finding both of them equally good. Certainly, if you appreciate anything this author has written, you'll want to read Playground. It feels like one of those works that a writer's long career has built towards, and I'm always glad to see novelists of "advanced" age find deserved followings, proving that it's not only the young who have stories to tell. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Dec 29, 2024
|
Dec 01, 2024
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0593231465
| 9780593231463
| 0593231465
| 4.13
| 6,078
| Mar 29, 2022
| Mar 29, 2022
|
really liked it
|
I'm having a hard time thinking of a writer to compare Kate Folk, too -- George Saunders or Kelly Link are as close as I come up with. The pieces here
I'm having a hard time thinking of a writer to compare Kate Folk, too -- George Saunders or Kelly Link are as close as I come up with. The pieces here tend to focus on female-male social dynamics, though not exclusively, and are written with a sense of humor that's equal parts droll, black, and barmy. Picture speculative fiction as written by your oddball, over-educated-in-the-humanities older sister, who's too smart for most of the guys she dates. The scenarios Folk comes up with in this collection are generally a little disturbing and surreal, but often perceptive and funny. Highlights: Out There: Dating is even more challenging for women in a near-future in which there are lifelike androids that emulate men, and they're now on all the dating apps. Our protagonist initially feels lucky to score a seemingly authentic man, but things soon take an unexpected turn for her. The piece seems attuned to the struggles younger women face in finding romance, at least as I grasp it from relatives that age. The Last Woman On Earth: Even with just one woman left on Earth, a more-or-less average representative of her now-deceased sex, the male ability to resent women still finds a way. It's written with a disarmingly light touch, though. I laughed a few times. The Head in the Floor: Our protagonist has a way of drawing lonely men into relationships that serve some purpose for her, but aren't what they want. When one such white knight comes to her rescue, it's unclear what's weirder, their sexless dynamic or the fact she has a human head growing out of the floor. The Bone Ward: In a clinic for people whose bones dissolve at night, necessitating sleep in special pods, a thirty-something woman feels jealous when her in-clinic lover, a guy of pretty dubious merits, falls for a younger, prettier new patient, who's the only other woman there. From there, things get a lot darker. The story certainly has some biting things to say about gender dynamics and the ease with which people shoved to the bottom of the "desirability" hierarchy can still keep the hierarchy going. Dating a Somnambulist: A woman's sleepwalking boyfriend brings stranger and stranger things back to bed. Big Sur: This one was the gem of the collection to me. A young, not particularly attractive woman named Meg meets a gorgeous man named Roger, who seems keen on her. However, Roger speaks (and thinks) in a weirdly stilted, unnatural manner that resembles bad writing, and seems weirdly naive about so many things. The story that follows is equal parts bizarre, funny, disquieting, and sweet. I laughed at a lot, though a little less after remembering that "I don't have the mental bandwidth to date you" is a line that's been said to me. I don't have anything bad to say about the other pieces, but the ones above clicked for me most. Weird fiction, by nature, is often hit or miss for different readers. Quote: "The House doesn't care about your past life. It only cares about the moisture you can provide it." ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Oct 20, 2024
|
Nov 20, 2024
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0812511557
| 9780812511550
| 0812511557
| 4.14
| 1,469
| Aug 1989
| Nov 1990
|
really liked it
|
The protagonist of this literary fantasy series is Latro, a former mercenary living in the world of ancient Greece (though he's seemingly from Italy h
The protagonist of this literary fantasy series is Latro, a former mercenary living in the world of ancient Greece (though he's seemingly from Italy himself). As in the first book, he and his companions travel from place to place, visiting different parts of the Grecosphere, meeting important figures of the day, and having encounters with gods and other supernatural beings, the latter facilitated by Latro's unique ability to perceive them. Of course, the good-natured, matter-of-fact Latro continues to forget most things that happen to him within a day, and to chronicle his experiences in scrolls that he carries with him. This being Gene Wolfe, you can bet your sandals that having an unreliable narrator will be taken advantage of by the author. As with other works Wolfe has written, don't expect anything in the story to be quite what it seems to be at face value. There are layers of meaning, events and players clearly imbued with symbolic meaning. However, Joycian analysis wasn't something I had in me for this reading. Mostly, I found myself relating strongly to poor Latro and his malady, unable to remember much of what had happened in Book One, or even exactly what had taken place in earlier chapters of this book (my reading was much interrupted by various crises at work or in my personal life). So, a lot of deeper meanings, the Gene Wolfe stuff you're supposed to read between the lines for, undoubtedly went straight past me. At times, I wasn't even sure who the fuck this latest character in the story was supposed to be, if they'd been introduced before at some point. Still, you don't always need to fully grasp a work of fiction to enjoy it, and Wolfe's compelling prose kept me involved. I found that I did actually enjoy Latro's continuing journey, the travels of he and his friends through a well-drawn world in which the realistic and magical elements are reconciled through the tilted lens of a mind that lacks the context to really tell the difference. There was something poignant to me about experiencing all the meaningful moments in the life of a character fated not to remember them, through his perpetually fresh eyes. His observations seemed both of another time and timeless. I also enjoyed many of the side characters, such as Latro's young slave girl, Io, who's technically under his care, but is arguably his main caretaker, resisting his attempts to set her free and serving him as kind of a living Rolodex. The relationships between different factions and societies in this world, their different customs, and the exchanges of philosophical ideas the characters have were all worthwhile to me. Probably, it would take a second read through the series to make sense of the hallucinatory scenes in which different supernatural beings appear, but I might give it another go at some point. All in all, while this series seems to slip under the radar next to Wolfe's most towering work, the Book of the New Sun cycle, it's just as unlike most works of fantasy as that series was, subverting the mythical tropes of the hero's journey in its own way. It does so with a world and a protagonist that stand completely apart from Book of the New Sun's, and might even be more accessible. Wolfe is said to have been a genius, and while I wouldn't apply that term to myself, I still find it a pleasure to spend time in the light of his singular mind. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Nov 17, 2024
|
Nov 19, 2024
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0593535227
| 9780593535226
| B09T9D8QY7
| 3.58
| 34,854
| Oct 25, 2022
| Oct 25, 2022
|
it was amazing
|
[4.5 stars] Cormac McCarthy isn't for everyone, but he remains one of my favorite "literary" authors. Probably not surprising, as Stephen King is one
[4.5 stars] Cormac McCarthy isn't for everyone, but he remains one of my favorite "literary" authors. Probably not surprising, as Stephen King is one of my favorite popular authors, and King is a McCarthy fan, no doubt conveying enough of his appreciation into my young brain for it to take root over the years. While The Passenger isn't a novel I'd likely recommend as a starting point with McCarthy's work, I'm impressed with how hauntingly good it is for being written by a man in his late 80s. While the overall point is somewhat murky, never did I get a sense that the murkiness wasn't by design, that the author wasn't firmly in control of his vision, his characters, and his prose. It felt to me very much like the work of a writer facing the end of his life, fully conscious of its long thread and as unafraid as ever of contemplating death as a subject, still pushing towards depths that many other writers would shy away from. It's a novel that defies a straightforward, book club-level intellectual analysis, but, to me, that's a feature, not a bug. At least coming from a writer that I would permit to push my brain. The story concerns Bobby and Alicia Western, a brother and sister who are children of a scientist that worked on the atomic bomb at Los Alamos. Both have genius-level minds, particularly Alicia, the younger of the pair and a mathematics prodigy who succumbs to schizophrenia and commits suicide in the opening pages of the novel, about eight years prior to its 1980 "present". Bobby, we soon learn, has never gotten over the death of the one person he loved more than anyone else, and has spent his career not quite living up to his intellectual potential, first becoming a Formula One racer, then, after an accident, switching to salvage diving on the Gulf Coast. This is what he's doing at the beginning of the book, when he's sent to investigate a sunken crashed plane. Soon he's involved in a situation seemingly out of a thriller, because one passenger is missing from among the corpses aboard, and government agents think that Bobby Western (a good cymbal-splasher of a literary joke, this) knows something about it. McCarthy takes that mystery in a more cryptic, symbolic direction than a standard thriller would. For the most part, the deeper core of this postmodern novel is submerged (pun half-intended) beneath seemingly trivial events, recollections, and conversations, as Bobby goes through his daily life, has exchanges of Seinfeldian banter and philosophical ponderings with his few friends, and seems to teeter on the edge of breakdown. There are also chapters from Alicia's point of view, mostly detailing her interactions with a hallucinated, malapropism-spouting dwarf called the Thalidomide Kid, who shows up to torment her at regular intervals, along with a sideshow of other freakish beings. While the point of this character is open to interpretation, he's as memorable as some of the other strange, discomfiting characters from McCarthy's oeuvre, e.g. The Judge from Blood Meridian. Some readers online feel frustrated that the story raises a number of questions that it doesn't really answer. I'm not sure I'd agree with that assessment; to me, the answers actually are there, but (again) beneath the surface of the text. They reside in Bobby's subconscious, in the way the story's seemingly random historical allusions / remembered moments in time fit in, in the resonance of so much of McCarthy's imagery. And not all the answers are explicit; the author has left us a few to work out for ourselves. The novel's various digressions into seemingly irrelevant side stories -- the experiences of a helicopter door gunner in the Vietnam War, the life of a young transgender woman, conspiracy theories about the JFK assassination, the memories of a former soldier in the Spanish Civil War -- didn't feel irrelevant to me at all, but purposeful, intentional elements in the novel's tapestry of themes and contemplations. (And I was impressed that any author, especially one of McCarthy's age, could write with equal humanity and understanding about both that door gunner and the transgender woman, each carrying his/her own trauma.) Overall, I found myself gripped by the strength of the writing (particularly listened to in audiobook format), by its masterful evocation of grief, memory, and loss. As we age, we carry with us a patchwork of disconnected recollections, moments in time seemingly pulled from the stream arbitrarily, and the many second-hand experiences of others, internalized into ourselves. Yet, they all mean something, though unwrapping exactly what is a task we'll never complete. To me, this was a powerfully elegiac final work from an American master. Well, almost final -- I still have yet to read the companion novel, Stella Maris, but look forward to doing so. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Sep 08, 2024
|
Sep 15, 2024
|
Kindle Edition
| ||||||||||||||
| 0062316990
| 9780062316998
| 0062316990
| 3.65
| 103,329
| Jun 01, 2008
| Aug 13, 2013
|
really liked it
|
This book seems to have gotten hammered with a bloc of 1-star reviews on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, which is unfortunate. I thought it was quite good. The story, set
This book seems to have gotten hammered with a bloc of 1-star reviews on Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, which is unfortunate. I thought it was quite good. The story, set in the early 1970s, is about a 14-year-old boy named Edgar, who lives on a remote farm in Wisconsin, where his parents breed and raise dogs. The dogs are an unusually intelligent kind, bred according to an idiosyncratic system created by Edgar's father. His mother, meanwhile, is a skilled trainer. Edgar himself is mute, but not deaf, making him a bit of a cipher to both other characters and the reader. His life on a dog farm is a happy enough one, at least at the outset of the novel. Owing to his condition and his disinterest in school, Edgar's only real friends are the dogs, especially his beloved Almondine. However, things begin to take a troubling turn when his uncle, Claude, makes a reappearance after many years absence. Under his genial exterior, Claude definitely has a dark side. His presence leads to further compounding troubles, and Edgar, after a rash act, flees the farm in the company of several dogs, surviving by his wits as a wandering runaway. But, sooner or later, he must return home to confront Claude. The writing here is excellent. The story, despite its length, isn't complicated by a great many characters, but sometimes that's refreshing. I enjoyed the novel's sedate, meandering flow and its exploration of those characters, including the dogs. (Others didn't, and that's fine.) To some degree, Wroblewski's style of storytelling reminds me of Stephen King, the last author I read before this book, though Wroblewski is a writer with more consciously "literary" aims. As with King, every small-town denizen Edgar comes across has his or own small-town story and collection of quirks, investigated with POV detours from the main plotline. I also thought of Michael McDowell's Blackwater books. Some of the online complaints concern the supernatural elements in the story. These, though the first such sequence came as a surprise to me, were well-crafted, and could have plausibly been explained as the work of Edgar's own mind. Other complaints have to do with the last several chapters; readers found the motivations of the characters unbelievable. While it's fair to say that several make some choices that don't make a whole lot of rational sense, have you met actual people? A guy in a truck (of course a truck) yelled at me the other day for making the "wrong" hand signal before a turn on my bike, but it was actually the correct signal and he seemed to have literally gotten left and right mixed up. Anyway, making sense didn't really seem to be the point; the logic of the story's choices seemed more geared towards the thematic than the practical. Overall, a solidly enjoyable read/listen for me, and one that didn't tax my ability to follow the plot or keep track of characters, which I think is an underrated quality in audiobooks, especially if one is doing other things while listening. It's also nice, every so often, to read fiction that revisits the world as I knew it before computers and the internet pervaded everything, and makes the most of its pastoral setting. Even though a few characters are largely disconnected from the main story, such as Henry the "too ordinary" man and the ghost of the farmer who left behind a cluttered tool shed, I found them touchingly written. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jul 06, 2024
|
Jul 24, 2024
|
Jul 06, 2024
|
Audiobook
| ||||||||||||||
| 0812994167
| 9780812994162
| 0812994167
| 3.63
| 42,288
| Jan 15, 2019
| Jan 15, 2019
|
really liked it
|
[4.5 stars] While I can understand why many readers online just didn't connect with this speculative lit-fic novel, which focuses more on the psyches
[4.5 stars] While I can understand why many readers online just didn't connect with this speculative lit-fic novel, which focuses more on the psyches of people caught up in a strange, calamitous event than on the event itself, I really liked it. Surprisingly, The Dreamers was not at all informed by the 2020 pandemic, as I realized from checking the publication date when I was most of the way through (2019), but it felt, impressively, very much like it COULD have been. The story begins with the strange illness of a freshman at a small college in the mountains of southern California, who falls asleep and never wakes up, an event that her shy, unpopular roommate, Mei, bears witness to. Just as other girls and boys in the dorm are coming to terms with this freak tragedy, the mysterious illness begins striking down other students. The authorities, slow to grasp the stakes, eventually send in the National Guard and cordon off the whole town. No one is quite sure what to do, but people keep dropping, falling asleep in the grocery store, while driving, or while working at improvised field hospitals. All that can be done is keep the sleepers alive, hoping that they'll recover at some point, and keep the virus from spreading. The narrative camera eye floats through a rotation of main characters, giving the reader carefully-crafted, in-the-moment snapshots of their thoughts, fears, hopes, uncertainties, strengths, flaws, and relationships, while not getting so close as to create any clear protagonists that the story is "about". The overall effect is one of peeking in on the lives of slightly-connected strangers, but strangers whose inner realities prove to be familiar enough, at least (I would say) for college-educated American readers. All inhabitants of the same threatened town, many of the characters cross paths at some point in the story, seen from each other's perspectives as well as the narrative eye. I particularly enjoyed the relationship that develops between Mei, a girl who's always sought to avoid drawing attention to herself, and "Weird Matthew", a boy whose somewhat maddening sense of idealism is a rebellion against his own privileged background (indeed, I've met a few older versions of him in real life). Much pandemic fiction, of course, goes in a thriller direction, focusing on a desperate search for a cure, chaotic social breakdown, dramatic plot turns, and heroes having to make decisions with global ramifications, but, at my current stage in life, I think that I appreciate this kind of novel more. The Dreamers goes for a more lyrical, intimate experience, spending time with the small, ordinary human dramas that take place amid a greater upheaval, the things people do and think as they hunker down and wait, trying to cling to normalcy and not sure when or how it will all end. Didn't we all learn something about that in 2020? We simply flow from one moment to the next, barely noticed in our own small corners of the big picture. Except, in this case, by an omniscient narrative viewpoint that breaks through the physical and emotional curtains of separation between human beings in a way that I know many of us yearned for during the isolation of the real pandemic. Maybe, in the end, only art can do that, aggregating individual threads of being into an ineffable whole, a use of literature that I see as tracing its modern roots to the early 20th century works of John Dos Passos (The Dreamers, of course, is far less grandiose in scale). There's a kind of beauty to even the tragic moments in the story, such as the fate of a "sleepwalker" tracked by a news helicopter, a scene that seems to recognize human inadequacy next to our high-minded moral thinking, without trying to fault or analyze it. That seems to be a recurring theme. Even when a few young people foolishly flee through the cordon sanitaire, it's hard not to empathize with the exhilarating sense of freedom they feel as they do so. There's a strong whiff of the Jungian throughout The Dreamers, in the suggestion that the dreams the sick have somehow tap into a deeper well of being, one that allows them to experience visions of possible futures, forgotten pasts, or presents that might have been. However, the author doesn't assign any clear interpretation to these dreamspace memories, which I appreciated. When the sleepers awaken again, as some do, they have reasons to feel doubtful that what they once knew as the "real" world is as real as they once supposed, that their perceptions of time and space are as linear and reliable as they once thought. It's a conceit that certainly pushed a few pandemic buttons for me -- interesting that an author who toys with the idea of premonition managed to capture something of the zeitgeist two years on from her writing, the weird grief and mental shifts so many of us went through, not quite sure how to process. What would Jung have said about that? Overall, if you like lit-fic, I'd say that The Dreamers, with its visual writing and serene narrative voice is well worth your consideration. You might even find that it draws out some of that pandemic energy you might still be carrying around in unnoticed recesses of your mind. If you want something more overtly science fiction or horror, however, this is probably not your book. ---------- Quotes: "This is how the sickness travels fast, through all the same channels as do fondness and friendship and love." ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Jun 21, 2024
|
Jun 22, 2024
|
Jun 21, 2024
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0735224048
| 9780735224049
| 0735224048
| 3.99
| 15,586
| Jul 16, 2024
| Jul 16, 2024
|
really liked it
|
Grossman's fantasy trilogy that started with 2009's The Magicians was a half-sardonic adventure in which a collection of immature, self-absorbed young
Grossman's fantasy trilogy that started with 2009's The Magicians was a half-sardonic adventure in which a collection of immature, self-absorbed young adults from the Millenial generation attend a Harry Potter-like wizarding school, then travel to a Narnia-like alternate world. It was a heroic tale without heroic protagonists, but -- surprise -- if you stuck around to the last book, they matured, and on their own terms. Not everyone liked the genre ambivalence of these novels -- were they meant to be fantasy? literary fiction? satire? parody? -- but I did. I enjoy being tested (up to a point) and I admired Grossman's ability to take such a chimaera of ideas, and ultimately make it work. This novel plays subversive games with the tales and legends of King Arthur's court, taking them at face value in many ways, but slyly recontextualizing them, happily peering into the cracks that earlier tellings chose to plaster and whitewash over (for example, those invading tribes Arthur was always fighting off -- well, those were the Saxons and Angles, people whose "English" descendents would one day think of Arthur as is quintessentially "theirs" as tea). The embrace of contradictions is telegraphed from Page One, from the author's choice to open with a quote from "Monty Python and the Holy Grail", then launch straight into a duel between two armored men that feels entirely realistic and serious. To the degree I can remember the world of Camelot and its environs, from books I last read in childhood, Grossman embraces the parameters of the original fantasy, the idea of a court that exists on the boundaries of Christian and pagan Britain, just a stone's throw from the world of Faerie, which involves its magic in many things. However, like Kazuo Ishiguro with HIS novel, The Buried Giant, Grossman doesn't let the reader forget that his is a modern reexamination, paying homage to the still-resonant source, then going his own way with it. The source legends, after all, have never rested firmly on reality, and have been recast repeatedly through the centuries. Thinking back to whatever musty collection I read as a kid, it seems to have been a 1930-ish product of the colonialist era, whose perpetrators imagined themselves as noble white knights civilizing and Christianizing backwards savages. This story, more interested in questioning the credibility of such revisionisms than indulging in them -- not that it's possible to revise a history that didn't actually happen -- begins with the tale of the aspiring Sir Collum, a strapping young lad from a backwater island who has little to his name beyond a suit of stolen armor, the medieval equivalent of high school varsity skill with a blade, and a desire to join the legendary knights of the round table. After a few misadventures and significant encounters, he finds Camelot, but it's a demoralized Camelot, a place whose denizens hope halfheartedly that someone or something will repair its broken self-image. Many knights have been killed in the famous great battle against Mordred, and King Arthur himself has vanished, possibly dead. Civil war seems to be looming, and Collum joins the remaining few B- and C-list knights, who have him mainly because they don't have any better applicants. From there, Grossman spins a compelling tale that's part Game of Thrones (notably in its unglorious clashes of arms), part trip into Heironymus Bosch-like phantasmagoria, and part absurdist (though in a droller, less farcical way than Monty Python), imagining Camelot as a fraternity house engrossed in its own mythology to the point of self-parody, which the remaining players have found themselves to have lost sight of the point of. At this place in my writing, I have to wonder to what degree this novel, by an American author, is really about BRITAIN. Chapter by chapter, the Bright Sword inverts King Arthur's Court, putting its main figures into the background, and focusing instead on the lives of the misfit side players, each of whom wonders, in their own way, if their true quest now awaits, beyond Arthur's shadow. For the signs that God seems to be sending them are hard to make sense of, yet signs ARE being sent. Who will Arthur's TRUE heir be? Not who you think. The arch, self-aware literary gamesmanship of The Magicians, while definitely here, too, is less in the forefront, allowing the reader to enjoy characters who are more sympathetic and less irritating than those in his earlier work, and a story full of entertaining sub-stories. The main narrative frequently digresses from Sir Collum's to fill in the biographies of his new companions, and each of those tales is engrossing in its own way, from that of a former Roman centurion who was magically put to sleep for a century or so (was that a pun?) to that of an adventurer from Baghad's unhealthy obsession with a particular lady of the court, which he imagines (until finally learning better) to be the point of his journey to Britain. Some readers might grumble that one story, of a gender-swapped knight, is too "woke", as though they're worried that MAGAs read, but Grossman couches it in enough fairy tale elements that it felt entirely natural and unforced within its milieu to me. Things and people were swapped around in the old fairy tales all the time. I especially enjoyed the character Nimue, who was also important in Nicola Griffith's Arthurian novel, Spear, and is reinterpreted yet again by Grossman. If there's a moment in this book that truly sells his credentials as a fantasy writer, at least for me, it's the duel that takes place between her and her master, the sinuous Merlin. Complaints? Not many, but the main one is that this is a pretty long, meandering book, running twenty-three hours or so in audiobook form. Towards the two-thirds mark, all the questing starts to become a little tedious (though I think that was a literary point). Some readers might wish that there was more to the overall plot, and fewer digressions into side stories... though it's worth remembering that side stories were also a big part of the original legends. All in all, though, this is a book I'm happy to recommend to readers who enjoy the deconstruction and reframing of old myths, and aren't bothered by a dialogue between ancient and modern. Whatever its flaws, The Bright Sword is bouncing with energy and ideas, and has undeniable moments of brilliance. While I'm not sure that all readers who loved The Magicians will embrace this one in the same way, it's a novel that might actually work better for people who were "meh" about Grossman's earlier work. The audiobook narration is of high quality, though I did at times find myself getting different characters mixed up. Not much, as the narrator does a good job of providing different accents, but a little. Quote: "What are you questing for? I hope it isn't some last holy toenail that God left behind on his way out the door. But, it is, isn't it? Oh, dear, how disappointing. Well, I don't expect you'll find it. A quest is hero's work, and that's just not quite you lot, is it? You're the other ones, the sidekicks, the spear carriers. The stage is empty now, but for the stagehands, and who will play the story? But, the heroes could come again." ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 28, 2024
|
Dec 15, 2024
|
Jun 06, 2024
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0593597036
| 9780593597033
| 0593597036
| 4.12
| 82,823
| Sep 19, 2023
| Sep 19, 2023
|
really liked it
|
[4.5 stars] A very well-crafted work of fiction, exactly what I was in the mood for. I enjoyed Mason's The Winter Soldier, but North Woods was, for my
[4.5 stars] A very well-crafted work of fiction, exactly what I was in the mood for. I enjoyed Mason's The Winter Soldier, but North Woods was, for my money, even better. It's a sort of literary ghost tale, taking place through a sequence of short stories and vignettes that are all set on the same plot of land in Western Massachusetts, from colonial times to the present day (and even beyond). Each character that comes along -- an eccentric 18th century apple farmer; his two twin daughters, identical but for one small but significant difference; a pre-Civil War slave hunter following a lead far into the North; a late 19th century nature painter with a big secret; a fraudulent mistress of seances; a lonely late 20th century widower who's made a few questionable choices; and... others -- have their relationships not only with the property and its house, but with the accumulating population of spirits, who take on a more and more active role as the book approaches the present day. The story mixes whimsy, tawdry human foibles (plus some of our darker tendencies), and sadness, in a way I found quite lyrical and charming. Mason uses magic realism rather than outright supernatural fantasy, though he's clearly having fun being fanciful. Though each character has their own distinct personality, the conflicting desires for solitude and apartness (as befits the setting) on one side, and for connection and love on the other, show up in each, in their own way. Clearly, Mason is picking up on some post-pandemic energies. Possibly, like me, he goes on long walks somewhere in New England, and wonders about all that has taken place on the ground he treads, all the stuff from a past we no longer fully understand that's nonetheless still with us. The past so often feels not so far away as it really is, and Mason skillfully employs the tools of fiction to create a liminal, slipstream-y space in which to engage with the idea of the world that came before as something still alive, as the people who came before as being so much closer to us than we might expect, living on in so many ways, natural and unexpected, beyond their deaths. What the barriers between us and them could, for a moment, come down? The shorter vignettes, in between the longer stories, add a lot of color and complement the longer bits nicely. I can't say I've ever encountered a more... enthusiastic... literary rendition of beetle love. While there were moments when it felt like Mason's emphasis on craft was a touch more "icing" than "cake", the level of craft IS impressive, both on a per-chapter level and in the connections formed between chapters. The resonance between the emotional lives of the different characters across decades, the intertwining of their themes, builds to a climax that I found eloquent and moving. I enjoyed this one from the joyous flight into the wild of the opening sequence to the sad, lovely reality shift of the final chapter, the awakening of its protagonist from her mundane, troubled life to something so much more, to her bearing witness to the return of the wild. I felt some spiritual link between this one and Richard Powers's The Overstory, another favorite of mine. If you read/listen to both books, you'll see what I mean. The audiobook production and voice acting is excellent. The cast includes several "names" likely familiar to long-time Audible customers. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Apr 06, 2024
|
May 14, 2024
|
Apr 06, 2024
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0593317335
| 9780593317334
| 0593317335
| 4.12
| 76,398
| May 02, 2023
| May 02, 2023
|
really liked it
|
I wouldn't call Chain-Gang All-Stars a perfect novel, but it's written with so much conviction and humanity that, for me, its flaws aren't worth spill
I wouldn't call Chain-Gang All-Stars a perfect novel, but it's written with so much conviction and humanity that, for me, its flaws aren't worth spilling too much ink over. Clearly critical of the USA's entire approach to crime and punishment, especially its disproportionate involvement in the lives of Americans of color, author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah imagines a near-future in which prisoners convicted of the most serious crimes (murder, rape, etc.) are granted the option, as an alternative sentence, of joining a wildly popular and profitable bloodsport league, where they fight to the death for the amusement of mainstream Americans. Throughout the book, he seeks to show the reader, through the narrative and various factoids interspersed with it, that enslaving people like modern-day Roman gladiators really isn't that big of a step from where the USA currently is. I doubt that any reader who currently feels bothered by the hypocritical cruelty, violence, gaslighting, and depravity of Trump-era right-wing politics would be likely to disagree. The question is, if such a future came to be, how hard would we stand up to oppose it? Or would we just learn to accept it? Adjei-Brenyah doesn't make his narrative morally easy. His fighters are in fact felons who have capital offenses behind them, not innocent victims, even if it could be said that many of them started life as such. Yet, they're all human underneath, and this is a story about honoring their messy humanity. The crux of the tale centers around two star fighters, Loretta Thurwar and Hamara "Hurricane Staxxx" Stacker, who have become lovers and allies (the rules of the games allow teams to form, at least among those ranked on the same level). Both now enjoy, if that's the word, a celebrity that they never could have known in their pre-incarceration lives, though they remain in the strange position of being wildly popular athletes without freedom, an irony not lost on either woman. Together, they lead a resistance movement among their teammates, though there is little it can seemingly achieve in terms of actually stopping the killing. The only way out is to survive enough matches and finally go free, leaving a further trail of bodies. In this version of America, redemption means doing a lot more, legally, of what put you behind bars in the first place. But, can the prisoners, both elevated and degraded beyond anything they ever were, access their own kind of redemption, one available to no one else? Chain-Gang All-Stars doesn't stay tightly focused on its two main protagonists, but brings in other points of view -- the driver of a prison bus, a fighter who makes singing part of his core identity after being literally denied a voice for years, an activist who's the daughter of another fighter, a superfan of the games and his more equivocating wife, and others. Though these side tales do draw energy away from the main story, there was something about their eloquent spareness that made them more moving and lyrical to me than the more prosaic character development given to Thurwar and Stacker. I was touched by how even no-account fighters, upon their deaths, are given brief eulogies by the author, snapshots of lives that had their own flames of meaning, despite wrong turns taken. Then there's the brutal spectacle of the combat scenes, their purpose not disguised under Hunger Games-like pageantry... nor their thrill. The extra layer of the two biggest stars being women, subjected not just to almost certain death, but to being objects of icky voyeurism, also packed a punch. The novel could have been a little less digressive and easier to follow, maybe put through a further round of editing. The audiobook had me rewinding repeatedly to make sense of scene and perspective switches. Certain characters could have been cut -- or given less page time -- allowing the cores of others to resonate more. I'm not sure that I understood, literally speaking, quite what happened in the crucial last scene. Still, the messier aspects of this novel didn't prevent its many powerful, contradictory moments from connecting with me. Adjei-Brenyah, who holds an MFA degree, clearly has a grasp of the fundaments of writing, and I would expect him to come more into his own with future works. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
May 22, 2024
|
Jun 13, 2024
|
Mar 30, 2024
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0380731819
| 9780380731817
| 0380731819
| 4.17
| 225,544
| 1995
| Jul 01, 1998
|
really liked it
|
[4.5 stars] I'd never previously heard of this short novel, first published in the late 1990s and only recently re-released, including on Audible, but
[4.5 stars] I'd never previously heard of this short novel, first published in the late 1990s and only recently re-released, including on Audible, but it proved to be a gripping read/listen. We first meet our narrator as a woman of unspecified age, resolved to tell her story before she dies of cancer. That story begins in almost surreal circumstances, with her adolescent self trapped in a large cage in an underground bunker, along with thirty-nine adult women. How exactly they got there, no one can remember clearly -- perhaps due to being heavily drugged at the time of incarceration -- nor does anyone have an idea of the reasons for the group's imprisonment. What they do know is that they're carefully watched day and night by a rotation of silent male guards, who respond with violence to any violation of the prison's unspoken rules. Even suicide is impossible. Our unnamed narrator, who was so young when she entered the cage as to have no memory of life before it, grows up with no understanding of the world beyond the bunker than what she's told by the others. So many aspects of normal life, particularly sex, remain a mystery to her. Nonetheless, she cultivates her own inner world, which, along with her friendship with another prisoner, opens a door to unraveling some of the mysteries of their circumstances. What can be learned from the little information the prisoners have? Then, one day, an event takes place that upends their whole world, while only deepening the puzzle of what's happening to these forty women and why. In fact, it remains ambiguous, for most of the story, what sort of literary territory we're in. Is this a post-apocalypse novel? Science fiction? Something else? Without being spoilery, let's just say I was reminded, satisfyingly, when all was said and done, of a writer whose short work I appreciate. The title of this novel states its deeper thematic question. What might it mean to live a full life as a woman in a reality defined by the near-absence of men, beyond the knowledge that they exist, or once did? Beyond her observations of the never-speaking guards and a few other glancing encounters with representatives of the male sex, the unnamed narrator lives the larger part of her life, over decades, without ever knowing the other half of her species. Not in any direct way. She can't fully understand her female companions, who HAVE known men, nor can they fully understand her. They are separated by a paradox, one in which the gap can never be bridged, except by altering the differential in experience that makes the gap possible. Of course, this one character's experience originates in the mind of one author, and questions about whether our narrator could have had some OTHER life in the same circumstances hover above the text. It's not the job of fiction, though, to answer such questions, only to ask them. As a reader, I appreciated the journey through the novel's bewildering landscape, speaking both literally and metaphorically, the mixed joys and sorrows of the main character's isolation, her way of finding meaning in it all. All in all, I can see why this is a highly-regarded work in the sub-genre of feminist speculative fiction. It contemplates femaleness, but through a compelling story and voice, accessible and universal enough to speak to both readers who choose to engage with it as a feminist text and to readers who choose not to give that label much thought. Audiobook narration: I didn't mind the voice narrator, but she was maybe a bit too cultured-sounding for what I would have imagined for this character. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jan 28, 2024
|
Dec 28, 2023
|
Mass Market Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0063265338
| 9780063265332
| 0063265338
| 3.74
| 11,366
| Oct 19, 2023
| Oct 24, 2023
|
really liked it
|
This novel is a retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but from the perspective of the character Julia, who has a liaison with Orwell's protagonist, Winst
This novel is a retelling of Nineteen Eighty-Four, but from the perspective of the character Julia, who has a liaison with Orwell's protagonist, Winston. It's been years since I read the original, so I'd forgotten a lot about it, other than the lasting impression its grim, oppressive world left with me. Contemporary politics being what they are, that can't help but include my memory of Big Brother's overall media strategy, the creation of a fabricated truth that's insultingly at odds with the real world. Is the "two minutes hate", in which fictional characters angrily curse and hurl trash at a TV screen detailing the purported wrongdoings of a shadowy fifth column acting against the noble, patriotic people of Oceana, really all that different from the interactions that your angry, alcoholic, Thanksgiving-ruining uncle has with Fox News? Last time I watched Fox News, it was hard for me to tell the difference. The Julia we meet here, herself a participant in a mandatory "two minutes hate" session, is a spirited young woman who habitually bends the rules in a society that relies on some level of rule-bending, but has the street smarts to avoid looking like anything less than a model Party member, not while eyes are watching. At least, she has so far, doing things like trading goods on the black market found in "prole" districts. And despite being a member of the Party's Anti-Sex League (people are now encouraged to reproduce via "artsem"), she has a healthy sex drive, which is what brings her coworker Winston to her attention via an "attractively brooding man" fantasy. Oh, how naive Julia turns out to be. The Party has been watching her after all, and steps in to exploit her sexuality, using her to lure men into its web. Winston, of course, is one of them, though I found that "affair" less interesting than another. Julia, struggling with her conscience, finds that these male victims come to "live their best lives", like flies deliciously intoxicated by the spider's paralyzing poison (not sure if this has a basis in biology, but it worked for me as a metaphor). Of course, she's conflicted about what she's being made to do, but there's part of her that feels (justifiably) annoyed with these men for falling into this trap. Though she begins to hear hopeful rumors of a resistance movement in England, a possible "out" for her, how can she know that these rumors aren't themselves a trap? To what extent are Big Brother's henchmen willing to manipulate the perceptions of citizens? Orwell's original novel came out in 1948. Sandra Newman, the author of this one, is clearly conscious of all the history that has happened since then, salting the novel with nods to it. For example, many who fell afoul of Stalin's internal security services during his rule of the Soviet Union went to their ends believing that Stalin himself would have objected to these atrocities, if only he'd been aware of them (Stalin is said to have laughed uproariously at one such account, hearing of an interrogation victim's protestations). Julia maintains similar delusions, seemingly less because she really believes and more because it's a deep-seeded survival mechanism. There's also a graphic torture sequence, consisting of specific tortures that have happened in countless real-world cells and dungeons over the last seventy-six years. One or two are things that Iraqi security forces, acting on behalf of US occupiers, would do. Everyone involved on our side knew what went on. The excuse, as usual, was that the other side (substitute in "Eurasia" or "Eastasia", if you will), was worse. As a tribute to the original Nineteen Eighty-Four, this is, for the most part, a commendably chilling and skillfully written one. Newman's exploration of how Oceanan society "works" on an everyday level and into its history, as remembered by a character born in the late 1950s, are convincing. While I can't really remember how Orwell wrote the character Julia, her fleshing-out here (somewhat at the expense of Winston's sympathetic-ness) calls out the fact that it's not just men and male aspirations that are crushed under the weight of totalitarian systems, nor is it just men who choose or are forced into being collaborators. (In writing that sentence, I'm conscious of a recent online testimonial I read from some middle-aged female Russian office worker, observing the ease with which her younger women colleagues bloodthirstily swallow Putin's absurd lies about the Ukraine war, but noting that she has to keep her own mouth shut because she's not in a position to put her continued employment at risk.) Where the story felt on less firm ground to me was in its ending, which advances the plot beyond where Orwell left it. This extension felt a little forced to me, though I'll leave it to other readers to form their own opinions. Again, you might be reminded of post-Orwell real-world events. Overall, while I enjoyed it, I can't honestly say that I find Julia to be a *necessary* companion to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Being an authorized retelling of a work that hasn't yet entered the public domain, there isn't a lot of divergence from the original. Which is understandable, though a little frustrating if one wants retellings to deliver some significant twist on the original, while still grokking its spirit. I guess I'd say that, if, like me, you've already read and been influenced by Orwell's original, and are overdue for a reread, consider Julia as an alternate vehicle for your return to Airstrip One. --------------------------------------- Quotes: "Only then she understood her role in the comedy. In Winston's dream, his woman would agree to any moral enormity, if it was what he wished. For him, she would die any death and commit any crime, quite without any motive of her own. Would she bring about the death of hundreds of people? Would she burn off the face of a child?" "Poetry, yes, they can't get rid of it, can they? Not altogether. The world would stop existing, in a way. It would be like the eons before anyone lived on Earth, when there was no one here to see anything, great lizards lumbering about without knowing anything." "The new Party platform has come out against the lizards; that's bourgeois biology now." "Oh? I'd missed that. No lizards then. How lonely." "Don't imagine that you will save yourself. No one who has once gone astray is ever spared. And even if we chose to let you live out the natural term of your life, still you would never escape from us. What happens to you here is forever. We shall crush you down to the point from which there is no coming back. Things will happen to you from which you cannot recover, if you lived a thousand years." ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Feb 2024
|
Feb 15, 2024
|
Dec 28, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 0316955108
| 9780316955102
| 0316955108
| 4.29
| 26,227
| Mar 19, 1951
| Apr 15, 1992
|
it was amazing
|
For my money, the barroom speech by the lawyer Barney Greenwald, the one that occurs not too far from the end of the book, is one of the best in moder
For my money, the barroom speech by the lawyer Barney Greenwald, the one that occurs not too far from the end of the book, is one of the best in modern literature. It’s a monologue that can only truly be appreciated by a reader who has already taken in all that has preceded this moment, covering about twenty hours of audiobook time. The brilliance of the scene lies in its taking what the reader has been led to understand about the implications of the events in the story, including a preceding court martial trial, and turning it sideways. Wouk, whose later novel, Winds of War, was a favorite of mine a few years ago, skillfully develops circumstances that lead to a brief mutiny aboard a World War Two minesweeper involved in the Pacific Theater of operations. The mutiny happens peacefully and cordially during a moment of crisis, against a captain of rather questionable competence. But was the removal of this commanding officer from his post truly justified? Were the seeds of discontent against Captain Queeg, nurtured by an immature officer and embraced by others over many months, ones that should have been allowed to bear fruit? Such are the questions the story asks, and they aren’t easy ones to answer, involving multiple entangled truths. In a way, The Caine Mutiny is really a book about workplace politics, except as they occur in circumstances where the work in question really, really matters. Or, it could be interpreted as a book about what leadership really means, when both leaders and followers are imperfect, and someone must ultimately step up and do what’s necessary, as well as HOW the stepping up should be done. It’s about the subordination of oneself to a bigger mission, and what distractions must be placed aside, what screw-ups must be overlooked, and which ones can’t. No one truly has the right to be in charge of the lives of others, and yet, someone must be. The closest the novel provides to a main POV character is one Willie Keith, initially a somewhat callow and coddled midshipman. After nearly flunking out of officer training school on demerits, he discovers a stubborn will to graduate and prove something of himself, partly motivated by a last letter from a terminally ill father. Upon being assigned to the aging Caine, a rusting World War One destroyer now converted to a minesweeper, Willie clashes with a relaxed-minded captain whose slapdash disregard for spit-and-polish discipline annoys the newly self-righteous ensign, even though the captain is skilled enough at his main duties. To Willie’s relief, this captain is eventually replaced with Captain Queeg, who begins his command promisingly, but turns out to be a small-minded petty disciplinarian with an unwillingness to admit to his own mistakes. Other characters are a Dickensian collection (Dickens is mentioned a few times, in what I assume was a self-deprecating way on the part of Wouk). There’s the stolid and practical second-in-command, executive officer Steve Maryk, a good officer of limited imagination. There’s Tom Keefer, a more junior officer who’s kind of the opposite of Maryk, an Ivy League type who cares more about working on his novel in his cabin than his duties, and looks down on most others in the Navy, though his intellectual gifts are unquestionable. As Keefer gradually and cunningly stokes Maryk’s doubts in Captain Queeg, Willie is pulled along in their wake, his own frustrations turning him into a key player in the mutiny at the moment Keefer proves a coward. Back on land, Willie’s romance with a girl named May provides a sort of parallel to the relationship between officers and men, in that one is more educated and upper-class, and the other, not so much. Willie dilly-dallies over whether a marriage can truly happen between a working-class girl and someone of his station, and isn’t very faithful. Everything eventually comes to a head in a trial that explains something of why Tom Cruise was chosen as the hotshot Navy lawyer in A Few Good Men (have no doubt that this book provided inspiration for that film). The defendants, Maryk and Willie Keith, find that their choices in the mutiny, and the justifications for it, seem far less solid under cross examination, with the unique circumstances of the moment of Queeg’s removal from command being hard to explain to men on dry land, who are most interested in what can be quantified. Here, I found the aspects of the trial that relate to mental health particularly interesting -- I hadn’t guessed that the field was quite so advanced in the 1940s, though I guess the many shell-shock cases emerging from the First World War would have compelled the Department of Defense to take the psychological pretty seriously in the sequel conflict. (As opposed to how the Russian leadership did things, which was to ignore all that, point a gun at the back of someone’s head, and say, “forward�, which is what they like to do to this very day.) I’d be remiss to spoil how the cleverly constructed courtroom scenes, one of the centerpieces of the novel, play out, except to note that there’s a good reason they were turned into a drama for the stage. When the court martial comes to an end, don’t mistake it for the only trial in the novel, or its outcome for the only penance. As the war in the Pacific grinds to its conclusion, with a last desperate attack by the enemy upon the Caine, Willie receives his chance to break free of his boyish self and fully grow into a leader. As with Winds of War, there’s arguably a little bit of corniness to Wouk’s storytelling, a few crowd-pleasing winks for the camera, and a viewpoint that doesn’t much stray beyond that of the white middle class, carefully censoring sex and profanity into vague allusions, but all that’s transcended by how masterful he is at developing that story and its themes. Wouk might not be the most-studied American writer in terms of prose, but as a storyteller, he might be one of the greats. Again, it is a very long book, probably one that could have been edited down a bit, but I found the details of shipboard life so interesting that I didn’t mine (oops, I meant to type "mind", but I'll leave that unintended pun). Audiobook narrator Kevin Pariseau is for the most part excellent, though his depiction of some enlisted men can be a little cartoonish. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Nov 22, 2023
|
Dec 04, 2023
|
Nov 22, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0063251922
| 9780063251922
| 0063251922
| 4.48
| 652,871
| Oct 18, 2022
| Oct 18, 2022
|
really liked it
|
Yep, this novel is a retelling of David Copperfield, set in the modern USA instead of Victorian England. Between the title and the opening Dickens quo
Yep, this novel is a retelling of David Copperfield, set in the modern USA instead of Victorian England. Between the title and the opening Dickens quote, it shouldn't be much of a surprise. If you've read the famous 19th century drama, you'll find that Barbara Kingsolver sticks to the same broad story beats; if you haven't, I don't think it'll matter too much. Our protagonist and narrator is one Damon "Demon", born to a teenage addict mom in a trailer home in backwoods southwestern Virginia in the mid-1980s, his father dead before his birth. His cultural surroundings are hillbilly all the way, though it'll be years before he properly understands how the rest of the country views his demographic and learns to push back on those perceptions. Writing as an older, wiser adult (presumably from the present day), Demon gives the reader a thorough tour of his world, describing all the realities of growing up on the raw bottom of American society, a place where the poverty and rampant addiction issues have been manufactured by the powers that be over the generations, first because the economy needed coal and later because pharmaceutical companies needed a dumping ground for pills. It's a place where fishing and hunting are still part of daily life, where being a truck driver certified to haul liquor is considered a princely line of employment (among the legal options, anyway), where the social scene revolves around high school football and its heroes, and where Army recruiters who need to fill the rolls for Iraq/Afghanistan know where to dangle their lures. The child Demon and his mother get by, with the help of the sprawling, more-or-less functional clan next door. Eventually, as he nears middle school, his mother's demons -- her OTHER demons -- catch up to her, and he's alone, ping-ponging through what Kingsolver portrays as a shockingly broken rural foster care system. A year or two after, Demon decides he wants no part of being the dirt poor, smelly kid at school or the mop-pushing destiny that seems laid out ahead of him, and sets out on the road in search of his dead father's family. Naturally, various twists, turns, and reversals of fortune follow. The storytelling's definitely Dickensian, with a cast of characters that could have fit into one of his novels, had any been set around the turn of the 21st century. I was also reminded of Huck Finn. Overall, this was a novel/audiobook that kept me listening raptly. Demon's life is full of tragedy and setbacks, some of them self-inflicted, but there's a certain wholesome "aw, shucks" forthrightness and good-naturedness to his voice, even when he's engaged in doings of a pretty non-wholesome nature. Some of these activities (e.g. working as child labor for a meth lab) are wholly due to innocence, others (getting dangerously addicted to oxy painkillers after a high school football injury) only partly so. Demon is mistreated, taken advantage of, made witness to shady doings, and forced to make tough choices, but he keeps trucking along, finding his stumbling way towards what seems to be a better "present" than his past, even though his memoir rarely looks ahead of its year-by-year chronology in any direct way. Along with the heartbreaks and villains, he also finds joy, redemption, benefactors, and family. I'm not 100% onboard with the online lovefest. At times, Kingsolver's commitment to the framework of David Copperfield feels a little forced. Certain characters seem like they're there as a tribute to one of Dickens's, but don't feel entirely organic to this particular story. Also, it's hard to escape the feeling that Demon and other characters are straining at the fourth wall to portray -- or directly speak -- Kingsolver wants to say about the world found at the borders of Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Demon, especially, comes across as more ignorant or misguided than possessed of any flaws that would truly test the reader's sympathies. Still, the social justice "documentary" aspects of the novel are well worth listening to, and not so far away from the spirit of Charles Dickens himself. There's no denying that the rural poor in the US are heartbreakingly under-served by an economic system that has less and less use for them. Working as I do in the high-tech sector, I can see that that the US relies heavily on well-educated foreign labor, but neglects to provide a quality STEM pathway to many of its own citizens. Where is this taking us? All in all, this one wasn't *quite* up to The Poisonwood Bible for me, but that's a high bar. I'd say that Demon Copperhead is definitely a worthwhile further step into Kingsolver's work. Audiobook narration by Charlie Thurston gives the protagonist plenty of personality. Someone online thought that this novel would be a good read for a high school AP English class, and I'd probably agree. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Sep 21, 2023
|
Sep 23, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| 1250819326
| 9781250819321
| 1250819326
| 4.07
| 8,213
| Apr 19, 2022
| Apr 19, 2022
|
really liked it
|
This is the third modern take on Arthurian legend I’ve enjoyed in a year or so, the other two being Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, and David Lower
This is the third modern take on Arthurian legend I’ve enjoyed in a year or so, the other two being Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant, and David Lowery’s compelling dark fantasy film, “The Green Knight�. Spear contains its own part-real, part-mythical interpretation of a still half-pagan Britain, but from a female -- and queer -- perspective. The protagonist of this tale is a girl who grows up in a wilderness cave with only her troubled enchantress mother, who wishes to protect them both from discovery, and wild creatures for company. However, as she grows, she feels an urge to know more of the world around her, and ranges further and further from home, eventually stumbling on the corpse of a solitary fallen knight. She takes his weapons, in particular a formidable spear, and hones her skills to a deadly mastery. Then, though her mother resists, she sets forth into the world of humankind, disguised as a young (male) warrior. It’s clear to the reader that she’s more than an ordinary human being. It’s not long before she meets some of Artos’s (Arthur’s) men, proves her mettle to them in several exchanges, and realizes she wants nothing more than to be one of them, to reside at his court with the king and his queen. However, the king is suspicious of this new guest, who doesn’t know who his father is and won’t name his mother. And that’s when Paretur meets a young woman who’s assistant to the great wizard Merlin and can help her uncover the secrets of her past. But where is Merlin? And why have the knights of King Artos’s court suddenly been pulled into a quest for a legendary magical cup, even as bigger threats loom at the kingdom’s border? This story is much more straightforward and less open-ended than either The Buried Giant or “The Green Knight�, but treats the mythical source material with comparable respect, which I appreciated. The writing is descriptive and evocative without being too flowery, even a little sexy in places. While I thought the story could have used more tension, its “outsider� observations of humankind are pithy. From a brief scroll through Wikipedia, it seems that the major female characters have a basis in actual myth, but Griffith seems to give nods to several different story branches from the original body of legend without committing to any one in particular. For me, it worked. Playing around with them is what legends are for. Overall, not a “heavyweight� book, but one I enjoyed and can easily recommend. Griffith herself actually narrates the audiobook, and does so quite well (not always true for authors reading their own material). Get that version instead of the print edition, if you’re inclined to listen to books. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Aug 25, 2023
|
Aug 29, 2023
|
Hardcover
| ||||||||||||||
| B0DV1MLWGD
| unknown
| 3.83
| 835
| unknown
| Sep 18, 1995
|
really liked it
|
A bold, deceptively simple short story, playing with the classic trope of a memory flashing before someone's eyes in their last instant of life. Out o
A bold, deceptively simple short story, playing with the classic trope of a memory flashing before someone's eyes in their last instant of life. Out of all the things our protagonist COULD have remembered (but didn't) as a bank robber's bullet finishes him off, what does the one thing he DOES remember say about him? Have we, the reader, judged him too fast? The story is written in a way that invites questioning and reexamination. I've read this piece somewhere before -- it might well be considered a modern classic. Deservedly, I'd say. PS. A couple people online seem to think this is a story in which Wolff is fantasizing about the death of some book critic who'd trashed his work. No, guys, this is an author who understands that the reader's first instinct will be to go for that rather obvious interpretation, especially with a character that initially seems so over-the-top. Look deeper. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Aug 18, 2023
|
Aug 19, 2023
|
Unknown Binding
| |||||||||||||||
| 0553342134
| 9780553342130
| 0553342134
| 4.14
| 28
| unknown
| Jan 01, 1986
|
really liked it
|
I found this one at a yard sale years back, and came across it again while cleaning out my overstuffed bookshelf. Since I couldn't remember much of my
I found this one at a yard sale years back, and came across it again while cleaning out my overstuffed bookshelf. Since I couldn't remember much of my years-ago first read, I decided to read it again. Other than the story "Bullet in the Brain", I don't know if I've read anything ELSE by Tobias Wolff, who I think I confused with Tom Wolfe when I bought the book, but he's won awards for his short fiction. Certainly, the pieces feature a level of craft, bleak humor, and honesty that could be used for instruction in a creative writing workshop. Highlights: The Barracks Thief: The title story depicts three young soldiers awaiting deployment to the Vietnam War, all "Fucking New Guys" ignored by the more veteran men. Unhappy for their own private reasons, known to the reader but not each other, the three are forced to bond when sent to guard an ammunition depot in the woods. There, their angst propels them into an act of reckless bravado, which is to have further repercussions on the choices they make over the rest of the piece. A study in how people do things for reasons that don't entirely make sense even to themselves, let alone to others, but have lasting consequences, even (or especially?) in the most disciplined of environments. I have yet to read any Vietnam War-related literature that doesn't leave me with the impression that the whole thing was a sad, stupid tragedy. Hunters in the Snow: a hunting trip involving three guys who each get on each other's nerves from the start takes a dark turn when one member takes a joke too far. It made me think of a college spring break trip with some guy friends, on which clashing personalities and some risky behavior got a little out of hand (thankfully less so than in this story). I loved the clever setup, the finely balanced tensions/power dynamics between the three characters, and the pushing-the-envelope black humor. The lesson? Don't be THAT guy. Smokers: a teenage boy at an elite prep school sets out to make the "right" friends, but gets a taste of what that means when the character that might be his truest friend gets kicked out and a wealthy pseudo-friend who probably deserves that fate more doesn't. Captures a lot about both class and the naive way with which we justify our choices to ourselves as teenagers. Garden: an aging academic comes to the realization that she's played her life too safe, that her peers don't take her seriously, and that the whole system is a farce. I can't say that this is a critique of academia that I haven't heard before, especially from women. The Liar: an adolescent boy can't help himself from making up lies about his mother, though clearly out of compulsion and not malice. I'm sure this behavior has some sort of name and psychological diagnosis, but no one in the story is fit to offer one. The boy struggles to make sense of his two parents, the father deceased from cancer several years earlier, their checkered relationship, and his own place in the family, and the lies seem to be the tool that serves him best. It made me think of how I floundered through several years of life after losing a family member to cancer in my teens, not receiving any professional counseling (because nobody thought of it in those less enlightened days), but dealing in my own eccentric ways (different than depicted here). The narrator, writing from a more adult perspective, seems to have made peace with his past. I didn't appreciate these stories as much in my late 20s, when literary layers were a little lost on me. I "get" them a lot more now. Wolff seems fond of building his stories around triangular relationships, which he uses quite artfully. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
Aug 14, 2023
|
Aug 20, 2023
|
Aug 14, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 0575127724
| 9780575127722
| 0575127724
| 3.65
| 1,773
| Dec 15, 2015
| Dec 15, 2015
|
really liked it
|
[3.5 stars] The question of "what if reality, when the curtain is pulled back, isn't what our perceptions tell us it is?" isn't exactly a new theme in
[3.5 stars] The question of "what if reality, when the curtain is pulled back, isn't what our perceptions tell us it is?" isn't exactly a new theme in science fiction, though most takes on that tend to go towards "what if we're living inside a computer simulation?", with the virtual reality in which Keanu Reeves is doing slow-motion backflips merely a representation of a familiar physical reality that still exists in the story. This novel takes on the question in the more pure form that the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant considered it. At least, Kant had argued that the nature of reality as it truly is (Ding an sich) is unknowable to us; Adam Roberts plays around with the possibility that a crack can be found in the barrier between subjective and objective, between determinism and free will. The Thing Itself, demonstrating a balance between the cerebral and having a sense of humor, opens at a 1980s scientific research station in Antarctica, an obvious nod to the beloved 1982 horror film "The Thing". Our protagonist, Charles, behaves in a flippant, short-sighted way that would make him a rather irritating roommate to endure six months of night with, but he's well outdone by his insufferable sole companion, Roy, a computer whiz short on social charms and long on passive-aggression. They're monitoring the stars on behalf of SETI, but strange, troubling things begin to happen. Here, connections to "The Thing" are put aside and a shocking experience of a different kind is visited on both of them. Fast forward to thirty years later and Roy is in a mental institution. Charles has fared better, except for facial scarring and missing toes from frostbite. And except for the fact that his career as a promising graduate student long ago crumbled to alcoholic ruin, leaving him a sad-sack, middle-aged garbage collector. But then, just as he's sure he has nothing left to look forward to in life, he's contacted by a mysterious "Institute", which clearly wants to use him to get to Roy, who doesn't seem to want to talk to anyone else. The means by which Charles is lured into this duty is both laughably pathetic and little troubling, which, of course, endeared me to the book. His problems are soon further compounded by his own limitations in thinking things through. Roy soon reenters the story, now a Hannibal Lector-like figure, and other... beings become entangled in the plot as well. Soon, Charles is fleeing for his life, but possibly with a few faulty assumptions about where to go and who to trust. I did enjoy some creative use of physics that comes up, retroactively explaining something of events early in the book. This novel might not have been so interesting to me if it relied solely on the main plotline, but Roberts puts a literary spin on things, interspersing colorful historical vignettes that reminded me of David Mitchell at his best. One of these involves some male-on-male rape scenes, so trigger warning about that, though I'll note that these figure into the portion of the book I found most gripping, in wondering if/how the main character would escape his tormentors. The connections that develop between these varied vignettes were, in my opinion, more artful and poignant than the dry, weedy discussions of Kantian ideas that take place in the main storyline, and would be my main incentive for reading other things by Roberts. It's hard to picture a book like this finding more than a narrow audience, but if you're the kind of person who enjoys existential horror with a dose of humor, has a passing familiarity with Western philosophy, or has some Borges or Mieville under your reading belt, you might find The Thing Itself worth a read. Definitely DON'T read it if you're looking for a story that's more than glancingly comparable to "The Thing" -- straight horror this is not. ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Aug 06, 2023
|
Aug 13, 2023
|
Paperback
| ||||||||||||||
| 1473235138
| 9781473235137
| 1473235138
| 3.55
| 272
| Sep 15, 2022
| Sep 15, 2022
|
really liked it
|
[3.5 stars] If you're unfamiliar with Christopher Priest, you'll probably want to start with one of his older novels, which I think are a little more
[3.5 stars] If you're unfamiliar with Christopher Priest, you'll probably want to start with one of his older novels, which I think are a little more accessible than his more recent work. That said, I think that this novel is a worthy entry into the author's oeuvre. Expect Me Tomorrow is an enigmatic but carefully constructed puzzle of a novel that hints throughout at deeper resonance between seemingly disparate parts, but never quite spells out how the reader ought to interpret it. Nor does it resolve all of its own questions. In this case, the elements and themes include twin brothers (a longstanding fascination of Priest's), mistaken identity, two timelines that seem to influence each other (see also The Separation), an unlikely technological whatsamadoozy, and an encroaching climate catastrophe (which has been making itself quite visible in the year I write this). Quite a few balls to juggle, but juggle them Priest does, and in a way I found largely convincing. Certainly, I was sold on his characters and their experiences and concerns, as I usually am. The plot centers around two story lines, one taking place in the late 19th century and the other in a semi-fractured Britain of the year 2050, where a degrading climate and immense political instability arising from it are both unwelcome intrusions into daily life. In the former story line, a glaciologist named Adler Beck has become convinced of a forthcoming ice age that he believes will strike towards the end of the 20th century. At the same time, his wayward libertine of a twin brother, named Adolf, has fallen into legal jeopardy for alleged crimes of fraud, which Adler believes his twin to be innocent of. (In fact, Adolf Beck was a real person whose case attracted significant interest at the time, but read the novel first and look him up on wikipedia later.) Both of these twins experience occasional mental intrusions from a mysterious, seemingly confused stranger, but are unsure of what to make of these anomalous events. At least, not until Adler, the more level-headed of the two, decides to take a rational approach to finding out who and what the visitor is. The intruder, of course, is Charles, a descendant of the Becks who was born in 2002. Charles works as a "profiler" for the police in 2050, taking a data-driven approach to solving crimes, but finds his career on less and less solid footing in an increasingly authoritarian Britain. He's fitted with a futuristic gadget called an IMC, a skull-embedded device that enables an almost telepathic connection between users, as well as enhanced internet access. Charles also has a twin brother, a journalist named Gregory, who has long been interested in their long-ago relative, Adolf. After being laid off from his job, and acting on Gregory's behest, Charles decides to use his IMC to investigate Adolf, which somehow opens the semi-controllable mental connection between himself and the 19th century brothers. Soon, their minds and emotions are bleeding into one another's. As their stories must also do from a thematic point of view, given the intriguing parallels that Priest has written into them. The two main layers of the novel concern the question of Adolf's innocence, and the question of whether there might be reprieve from a sentence of climate doom. This comes into play when Charles is recruited by a multinational corporation that claims to have found evidence that climate change will soon reverse itself. This corporation hopes that Charles will employ his profiling skills to demonstrate that they might be right. What will Charles do? What is RIGHT? How will his conversations with Adler affect his decision? Even with half an hour left to the audiobook, I was in suspense as to how it would all conclude. This is hardly a perfect novel. Even as a certified Christopher Priest fan, I was frustrated with his apparent cluelessness about computer technology, though hardly unusual in a Baby Boomer. His vision of how people interact with and think about the spiderweb of technology that surrounds us is dated even for 2022, never mind 2050. He doesn't seem to realize that even conservative-minded institutions like the police are already becoming pretty comfortable with all things cyber. (And in ways that people around the world will increasingly find themselves on the boot-stomping end of.) Overall, though, I liked Expect Me Tomorrow. As can be expected from a Priest novel, this one doesn't arrive at a neat, satisfying solution to today's climate worries (which would be impossible), but seems to find hope in the very uncertainty of human calculation and consensus. The ending, while ambiguous, landed for me on an emotional level. What if we could speak to people caught in the gears of history from some future vantage point? What could we teach them? What could we learn from their experience? Having read The Glamour, still my favorite work by Christoper Priest, I'm primed to think that there's an alternate interpretation to the story's events hiding in plain sight, but I won't share my theory on that. (Happy to discuss, with appropriate "spoiler" tags, in the comments, if anyone who has finished the book wants to.) ...more |
Notes are private!
|
1
|
not set
|
Jul 2023
|
Jan 10, 2023
|
Hardcover
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
my rating |
|
|
||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| 3.49
|
liked it
|
Mar 20, 2025
|
Mar 21, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 3.81
|
it was amazing
|
Aug 02, 2016
not set
|
Jan 19, 2025
|
|||||
|
| 4.21
|
really liked it
|
Dec 29, 2024
|
Dec 01, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 4.13
|
really liked it
|
Oct 20, 2024
|
Nov 20, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 4.14
|
really liked it
|
Nov 17, 2024
|
Nov 19, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 3.58
|
it was amazing
|
Sep 08, 2024
|
Sep 15, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 3.65
|
really liked it
|
Jul 24, 2024
|
Jul 06, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 3.63
|
really liked it
|
Jun 22, 2024
|
Jun 21, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 3.99
|
really liked it
|
Dec 15, 2024
|
Jun 06, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 4.12
|
really liked it
|
May 14, 2024
|
Apr 06, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 4.12
|
really liked it
|
Jun 13, 2024
|
Mar 30, 2024
|
|||||
|
| 4.17
|
really liked it
|
Jan 28, 2024
|
Dec 28, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.74
|
really liked it
|
Feb 15, 2024
|
Dec 28, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.29
|
it was amazing
|
Dec 04, 2023
|
Nov 22, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.48
|
really liked it
|
Sep 21, 2023
|
Sep 23, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.07
|
really liked it
|
Aug 25, 2023
|
Aug 29, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.83
|
really liked it
|
Aug 18, 2023
|
Aug 19, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 4.14
|
really liked it
|
Aug 20, 2023
|
Aug 14, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.65
|
really liked it
|
Aug 06, 2023
|
Aug 13, 2023
|
|||||
|
| 3.55
|
really liked it
|
Jul 2023
|
Jan 10, 2023
|
Loading...
