by ELG Gray

The Sense of an Ending

I’m back! After a ridiculously long hiatus (during which time I could only bring myself to read books with either a) happy endings or b) containing at Least One Of dragons, wizards, or gnomes), here we go again.

So I started with Julian Barnes’ The Sense of an Ending; short and sweet. It was a superb re-introduction to the world of Serious Literature. (Not that I’m knocking the fab genres that have filled my last 18 months. Fantasy books, I love you.) I haven’t read Barnes before, and, in spite of an ending which I have a strong sense of leaving me unfulfilled, I really enjoyed my first foray into his work.

The Sense of an Ending is a personal history – the memoirs of Tony Webster, focusing on the events of his adolescence and young adulthood. It confronts suicide, sex, depression, history, mental health, and a host of other huge issues in a hyper personal, extremely specific way. In a way that is almost light hearted … only it isn’t, quite.

One of the most fascinating things about the book is the sense of perspective Tony, our protagonist and narrator, gives us. I like him. I want to believe him. But he proves that his own memory (and indeed his own interpretation of his memory) is suspect. Sometimes he owns up to that – other times less so. So what do we believe? Is there an answer?

As the title suggests, this book is really all about the Ending. Essentially the critical pieces of the puzzle are only unveiled in the final two pages. At which point it is far too late to ask more questions of Tony, or really to figure out what, exactly, happened. In many such books I end up Angry – WHY would the author do this to me!? What a friggin’ cop out! But somehow, with Barnes, I got the sense (pardon) that he Knew what he was doing. And that there IS an answer, if only I was smart enough to unpick it. The book meanders so much and yet is so concise, I really can’t fault it. It’s a splendid contradiction.

So I ask of you – please go read this book. And please tell me what you think of the ending. I would love to figure it out.

01.02.15

by ELG Gray

American Pastoral

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 9/10
Overall: 4 stars

You know the expression, ‘so good it hurts’? Well, Philip Roth’s American Pastoral is sort-of the inverse of that. It hurts so much … it’s good. The story is so gut-wrenching. So over-the-top human, you get sucked in and hurt along with the main character’s hurt. It definitely isn’t a happy book, but it is compelling and thought provoking.

In American Pastoral, the narrator is Nathan Zuckerman, a Jewish man living in the 1990s (now in his 60s) recounting not only his own life, but the life of his childhood local hero – Seymour ‘Swede’ Levov. Needless to say, the Swede’s charmed existence of being the realisation of the American Dream in the heavily Jewish New Jersey of the mid-century doesn’t last him through his entire life, though it takes Nathan some digging to uncover what happened. Precisely what *does* happen, and how the Swede himself feels about it is never entirely clear, but Roth does a phenomenal job of showing us our options for interpretation, and getting me to ponder imponderable questions about social upheaval and personal trauma.

The focus of the work (there are lots of intricacies, and don’t want to over-indulge details) is Nathan uncovering the fact that in the 60s/70s the Swede’s daughter is somehow involved in a local Vietnam war protest which involves blowing up a pharmacy. It kills an innocent pharmacist. How can a ‘together’, charming, good-looking man have produced such a child? Who is this teenage horror? Are her beliefs justified? Did she do it, anyway? And how does this effect his relationship with his own parents, brother, and wife?

As we read more and more about the back-story and the ‘present’ day (the book does a lot of flashing back, reconstructing, and surmising) it becomes teeth-suckingly painful. I wanted to read more, but had to pace myself simply because of the intensity.

Like Roth’s other book I’ve reviewed, Portnoy’s Complaint, the title character certainly has the tendency to ramble and rant, but here it is more targeted, more focused. And I developed a real sense of empathy for a few of the main characters which I lacked in Portnoy. To be honest, I didn’t at all expect the drama/trauma of what I subsequently experienced in reading American Pastoral, but it was well worth it. A definite must-read.

11.18.14

by ELG Gray

The Town

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 6/10
Thought Provoker: 6/10
Overall: 3 stars

I have been so very delinquent. I probably finished reading The Town about 3 months ago. Once a week I think, ‘I REALLY should write the review’ and compose a summary in my head of what I want to say. And yet, clearly, procrastination has prevailed. Not to mention the other two reviews I’m sitting on. But anyway…

The Town is the third in Conrad Richter’s ‘The Awakening Land’ trilogy, recounting the later stages in the life of Sayward Wheeler, the quintessential American Pioneer, and her flock of children. And it actually was quite a fascinating read just after The Magnificent Ambersons. In many ways, though it is the third in Richter’s series it is an entirely apt prequel to Tarkington’s work. If I had known, I would have read them that way ‘round.

In any case, The Town follows the ‘progress’ of a small frontiersman’s town to a more bustling American mid-western town of the 19th Century. Sayward’s generation represents the heartiness, the pluckiness, the determination and grit of the Original Pioneers. Her youngest child (and really the book’s protagonist), Chancey, is the youthful embodiment of technological progress, pacifism, and gentleness. Though this is not the gentility that starts off the Ambersons, by any means. It’s a big deal that the Wheeler’s town house has more than 2 rooms, to put things in context. Chancey is the youngest of many kids, and is born with some unspecified illness making him an invalid, until suddenly he isn’t any more because he finally realizes that maybe there isn’t anything physically wrong with him any more. There is pampering and babying, but also a smidge of negligence and certainly an inability for anyone in his family to understand him, or his point of view. So at first you feel for him. But slowly (and I choose to believe this is Richter’s point) you start to find him pitiable, and a bit cloying. Somehow Sayward, seen by her son as an old stick-in-the-mud is in fact the more dynamic, the more able to continue to adapt to change than the supposedly modern son. That’s sort-of the whole book. The relationships, which are probably Richter’s focus, to me were OK. Interesting but OK. It’s a slim read, though, so I suppose there isn’t a huge amount of time for more.

What makes the book a great deal more interesting, was just the history. The insight into what life was like for the American Pioneers entering, taming, and building the so-called wilderness for the first time. (Native Americans feature briefly in the book in a highly stereotyped way, so make no mistake this is the white man’s view.) In fact, those three words really characterize Richter’s three books – (entering) The Trees, (taming) The Fields, and (building) The Town. I did read ‘The Trees’, the first in the triliogy, and enjoyed it immensely, again just from the detailed look at day-to-day life in the woods and the existence that families managed to scrape together. Try as I might, getting my hands on The Fields proved to be nearly impossible (for any price I deemed reasonable), but from the reviews and articles I’ve found I believe my characterization is fair.

So read this book to discovery more of the history of the American white-man moving westward. You’ll glean a bit about human relationships and progress, but read it to learn what life was like in an age that is very, very hard grasp in the 21st century. And maybe we’ll learn a bit about what real work is like. Or that’s what Richter would have wanted!

08.18.14

by ELG Gray

The Magnificent Ambersons

Page turner: 5/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 6/10
Overall: 3 stars

After a rather prolonged hiatus, I am pleased to return with a full report of Booth Tarkington’s The Magnificent Ambersons. Which I liked. I found it a bit unoriginal, but that may be the result of a century of hindsight. Still, I liked it.

The Magnificent Ambersons is the second book in Tarkington’s ‘growth’ trilogy. Try as I might I could not get my hands on a copy of the third and final book in the series, I couldn’t find it. Which is both a testament to me liking the second book, and perhaps a reflection on the second also being the ‘best’ of the three. Anyway, the ‘growth’ that the title refers to is the changing dynamic of the American mid west … and how settlements grew to towns and cities as the turn of the twentieth century saw the huge boom in urban populations.

The Ambersons were the relative nobility of the small Midwestern town as it was originally settled. They owned vast swathes of land, the great house, and had the most beautiful and elaborate items brought over from the East. Georgie Amberson is the protagonist of the novel, and is the grandson of the founding father who amassed the fortune. And Georgie is a spoiled brat of the most spoiled type. His really only redeeming feature as a child is that he uses the term ‘riff raff’ which always made me chuckle. The story (predictably, to modern eyes) progresses as the town grows, the Ambersons’ wealth diminishes and new money comes to take their place. It is the story of the transition of a town to a city, and the way that young Georgie is forced to reconcile with changing circumstances. Tarkington does a good job of succinctly and believably narrating both parallels in the story. I won’t say whether or not Georgie shows himself of being of strong moral fiber in the end.

The trouble is – I feel I have read it all before. Perhaps it was one of the first of its kind to talk about that boom in Midwestern America, but it is awfully reminiscent of stories of the Industrial Revolution and the rise of New Money vs. aristocracy in Europe as well as on the East Coast of the U.S. Published in 1918 was The Magnificent Amberson’s a trailblazer? Or a very good example of this ‘genre’ of story? I don’t think my literary history is good enough to know the answer, but I do wonder. This shortcoming, however, is what made it a three for me, and not a higher rating.

Still, Tarkington’s book is a slim read, and definitely fulfilling. It’s about growth – both physical and personal, and as such is quite rewarding to follow along with!

06.30.14

by ELG Gray

The Luminaries

Page turner: 7/10
Heart tugger: 4/10
Thought provoker: 6/10
Overall: 3 stars

The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton, gets off to a pretty strong start. It has quite a gripping middle. But I was massively underwhelmed by the ending.

The trouble I had, I suspect, is in it’s re-readability. In my ignorance, this wasn’t really a category I had considered before, but I have learned (courtesy of my friend, Dan – fount of all knowledge) how critical it is in an award-winning book. And all the moreso here. Let me explain:

I read The Luminaries once, and mostly, I read it for the plot. It is (seemingly) a murder-mystery set during the New Zealand gold rush. It features a whore and a missing person and at least one ghost. So pretty action packed, and full of twists and turns. All along the reader notes that the chapters open with signs of the zodiac, and there are some overtures to other astrological symbolism. But, frankly, I pretty much ignored it. A bit too airy fairy for me. Besides, there was just too much going on! There are well over a dozen ‘main’ characters in the book.

The trouble is, the ending really quite clearly ISN’T about the plot. It’s a pretty big anticlimax. It is MUCH more about the astrology, and the paths the characters lives take. So I was massively disappointed. But upon reflection, if I read the book again and had the time/patience/inclination to take more note of the star signs throughout, I think it would be a much subtler, cleverer book. And, returning to my original point, a book only wins an award after the people reading it have read it a good many times. I suppose it makes sense that the panels of people giving the prize have to read and re-read countless books in order to give them all a ‘fair’ comparison. I suppose.

Whilst I can understand that a Great book could/should have multiple layers, I think that only really being ABLE to access them through multiple reads feels a bit inappropriate. I mean, I loved watching the Sixth Sense, and watching it a second time was pretty awesome, but I didn’t NEED to do so in order to get a lot of out of it. Also, the Sixth Sense’s running time is 107 minutes and the Luminaries weighs in at an incredibly hefty 832 pages. The prospect of reading it again makes my shoulder hurt.

All that said, it is a good book. And shout out to the only-28-year-old Ms. Catton. What a hugely impressive accomplishment pre-30. The very nice thing is that if The Luminaries is any indication of future work, I look forward to reading more by her again in the future!