Books Read on Trip so Far
Sep. 16th, 2008 05:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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bagheera_san
1. Stephen Fry's The Liar
Like Kim if Kim were good. An 'education of a spy' novel of a sort, with a lot of lingering on British public schools—and consequently, a lot of homosexuality. Told via Adrian Healey, who’s fundamentally untrustworthy—and you know how I adore unreliability in my narrators. Even now I’m unsure what of the personal history Adrian gives Trefusis is true and what isn’t, given a particular ambiguity between 1] what Adrian’s uncle says happened, 2] what Adrian tells Gary, when he has no reason to lie other than that lying’s in his nature, and 3] the exaggerated at best account he gives Trefusis in the car.
The ultimately false and unnecessary nature of Adrian’s long training served to underscore the absurdity of the whole business of espionage, the multi-layered nothing of it. As do the initially enraging sections where names are omitted in favor of fast-dating descriptions of clothing, which I think now are /meant/ to date quickly, to rapidly loose their content and relevance to the reader in order to increase the gestalt noisy insubstantiality of the schemes of the characters involved.
While it’s a really clever book, and very funny, and definitely worth reading, I found myself enjoying the rare bits of sincerity more than the wit. Though I know nothing about cricket, I appreciate the sweet languor of the cricket game description. The Pigs Trotter thing is horrible and excellent, and infinitely more compelling on rereading those sections after the initial read through. The eventual ruination of Cartwright is melancholy like a wet Thursday afternoon, and deftly handled. But to be fair I do absolutely adore the whole lost Dickens novel subplot, so it’s not as if the funny bits aren’t engaging.
Fry is an exceptional character creator. There’s no way you come out of the book not loving Professor Trefusis, for example. But there are scenes that make me too pleased, in a kind of embarrassing way that I sort of whish had been reigned in (I’m thinking of the feel-good-movie mischief of the press conference scene.). There are characters I wish more had been done with, but it’s already a crowded novel, and it works fine without such additions.
While maybe not a new entrant to my personal top five favorites list, I’m happy to acknowledge it as a really solidly good book.aralias has a trustworthy taste.
2. Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North
At 169 pages, it’s almost more a novella than a novel proper. It reminds me a little of Crime and Punishment in its atmospherics, and a little of Ian McEwan in its character relationships—I’m thinking of The Comfort of Strangers here, more than anything else.
Recommended to me bydraegonhawke, and I can see why she likes it. There's a lot to love here. It’s more the mysterious Mustafa Sa’eed’s story than the unnamed narrator’s, and it’s a bit riddled with a frustrating obscurity for obscurity’s sake. We only get a glimpse of the narrator’s love for Mustafa’s widow—insufficient to characterize either the narrator or the widow, just enough to confirm it as a plot point—before she comes to a bad and admittedly fascinating end.
We get teasing, flickering hints of Mustafa’s life and misdeeds, and while that works for this narrative format, I find myself asking the Jill Haberkern workshop question: “what does this piece gain by withholding this information from the reader?” What does the piece gain from the distancing mechanism of the frame narration? Really, it wants to be and should have been the story of Mustafa’s life. That’s the meat of this piece: a sort of Balzac or Dostoevsky-esque direct confrontation with a soulless figure falling ever further (I may be thinking of this book as a sort of bildungsroman for a Rastignac or a Svidrigailov, only instead of troubling the mystery of those characters’ evil, which should be left well enough alone, it could delve into Mustafa’s experience encountering the specific situations of colonialism, and probably explore the intellectual ravages of that more thoroughly than the book currently manages to).
But instead we get all this artistic vagueness, and if that vagueness is meant to say something discrete about the alienation from the self, the internal ambivalence produced by colonialism, fine I guess, but either I needed more of that or for it to be Mustafa’s story, fully lived. The characterization throughout the novel is more suggested than written, and could consistently be more directly confronted. Even if the point was a v. modernist “guys I’ve read The Stranger, really” alienation, then I think that would be better illustrated by a more thorough examination of character.
The language is occasionally great. The atmospherics and things evoked can be compelling—I was definitely driven to finish this book quickly. The scene when the narrator contemplates burning the contents of Mustafa’s secret room is gorgeous, and the ending attempted drowning is a good place for the story to go, if muddily conveyed. There I may not have been a sufficiently attentive reader, and further rereading of that scene might prove more rewarding, but on the whole I end up wishing that this story was what it wanted to be: a big, Dostoevsky length novel, capable of realizing its ambitions.
Finished stuff I've yet to write up thoughts on:
3. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park
4. Big Finish Audio's Zagreus
5. Jane Austen's Emma
Almost done with Passage to India and A Tale of Two Cities, so those are likely up next.
bagheera_san1. Stephen Fry's The Liar
Like Kim if Kim were good. An 'education of a spy' novel of a sort, with a lot of lingering on British public schools—and consequently, a lot of homosexuality. Told via Adrian Healey, who’s fundamentally untrustworthy—and you know how I adore unreliability in my narrators. Even now I’m unsure what of the personal history Adrian gives Trefusis is true and what isn’t, given a particular ambiguity between 1] what Adrian’s uncle says happened, 2] what Adrian tells Gary, when he has no reason to lie other than that lying’s in his nature, and 3] the exaggerated at best account he gives Trefusis in the car.
The ultimately false and unnecessary nature of Adrian’s long training served to underscore the absurdity of the whole business of espionage, the multi-layered nothing of it. As do the initially enraging sections where names are omitted in favor of fast-dating descriptions of clothing, which I think now are /meant/ to date quickly, to rapidly loose their content and relevance to the reader in order to increase the gestalt noisy insubstantiality of the schemes of the characters involved.
While it’s a really clever book, and very funny, and definitely worth reading, I found myself enjoying the rare bits of sincerity more than the wit. Though I know nothing about cricket, I appreciate the sweet languor of the cricket game description. The Pigs Trotter thing is horrible and excellent, and infinitely more compelling on rereading those sections after the initial read through. The eventual ruination of Cartwright is melancholy like a wet Thursday afternoon, and deftly handled. But to be fair I do absolutely adore the whole lost Dickens novel subplot, so it’s not as if the funny bits aren’t engaging.
Fry is an exceptional character creator. There’s no way you come out of the book not loving Professor Trefusis, for example. But there are scenes that make me too pleased, in a kind of embarrassing way that I sort of whish had been reigned in (I’m thinking of the feel-good-movie mischief of the press conference scene.). There are characters I wish more had been done with, but it’s already a crowded novel, and it works fine without such additions.
While maybe not a new entrant to my personal top five favorites list, I’m happy to acknowledge it as a really solidly good book.
aralias has a trustworthy taste. 2. Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North
At 169 pages, it’s almost more a novella than a novel proper. It reminds me a little of Crime and Punishment in its atmospherics, and a little of Ian McEwan in its character relationships—I’m thinking of The Comfort of Strangers here, more than anything else.
Recommended to me by
draegonhawke, and I can see why she likes it. There's a lot to love here. It’s more the mysterious Mustafa Sa’eed’s story than the unnamed narrator’s, and it’s a bit riddled with a frustrating obscurity for obscurity’s sake. We only get a glimpse of the narrator’s love for Mustafa’s widow—insufficient to characterize either the narrator or the widow, just enough to confirm it as a plot point—before she comes to a bad and admittedly fascinating end. We get teasing, flickering hints of Mustafa’s life and misdeeds, and while that works for this narrative format, I find myself asking the Jill Haberkern workshop question: “what does this piece gain by withholding this information from the reader?” What does the piece gain from the distancing mechanism of the frame narration? Really, it wants to be and should have been the story of Mustafa’s life. That’s the meat of this piece: a sort of Balzac or Dostoevsky-esque direct confrontation with a soulless figure falling ever further (I may be thinking of this book as a sort of bildungsroman for a Rastignac or a Svidrigailov, only instead of troubling the mystery of those characters’ evil, which should be left well enough alone, it could delve into Mustafa’s experience encountering the specific situations of colonialism, and probably explore the intellectual ravages of that more thoroughly than the book currently manages to).
But instead we get all this artistic vagueness, and if that vagueness is meant to say something discrete about the alienation from the self, the internal ambivalence produced by colonialism, fine I guess, but either I needed more of that or for it to be Mustafa’s story, fully lived. The characterization throughout the novel is more suggested than written, and could consistently be more directly confronted. Even if the point was a v. modernist “guys I’ve read The Stranger, really” alienation, then I think that would be better illustrated by a more thorough examination of character.
The language is occasionally great. The atmospherics and things evoked can be compelling—I was definitely driven to finish this book quickly. The scene when the narrator contemplates burning the contents of Mustafa’s secret room is gorgeous, and the ending attempted drowning is a good place for the story to go, if muddily conveyed. There I may not have been a sufficiently attentive reader, and further rereading of that scene might prove more rewarding, but on the whole I end up wishing that this story was what it wanted to be: a big, Dostoevsky length novel, capable of realizing its ambitions.
Finished stuff I've yet to write up thoughts on:
3. Jane Austen's Mansfield Park
4. Big Finish Audio's Zagreus
5. Jane Austen's Emma
Almost done with Passage to India and A Tale of Two Cities, so those are likely up next.
