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.

05.05.14

by ELG Gray

The God of Small Things

Page turner: 7/10
Heart tugger: 9/10
Thought provoker: 9/10
Overall: 5 stars

I savored The God of Small Things. And savoring a book is a hard thing to do for a person not Reknowned for her patience. Someone whose personal tastes, normally, probably weight the page turner category a bit more than she should in the overall liking of a book. But not this time.

Cover of my copy of The God of Small Things. Check out the quote.

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a masterpiece. I admit that I’ve nicked the word from the cover of my copy of the book which has a quote from a review that calls it ‘A masterpiece, utterly exceptional in every way’. But still.

The book is about the childhood lives (or really, a week in their life) of twins Esta and Rahel, their immediate family, and the not-so-immediate consequences of tragedy and loss. It is heartbreaking – but you know it will be from the start – so you have time to prepare. And time to be swept along with the current of the book.

When I first started thinking about what I would write about this book, the analogy that popped into my head was a lazy river. Where you sit back, close your eyes, and when you open them again you’ve got a heck of a lot further than you thought you had. You moved and didn’t realize, as you were so set focusing on the here-and-now. The Small Things. And yet there you are. At the end.

The imagery and the language of this book carry you along. I (obviously) like the use of the occasional capital letter for Emphasis. So does Roy. Who also mixes sentence length, type, and rhythm enough to give variety, but consistently enough to give unity. The book is lyrical.

The plot itself at first doesn’t seem to have that much to it, but it deepens and thickens (remember that river? the depths? murky waters?). Rahel has Returned ‘home’ after years and years away, at precisely the same age as her mother was when she died (a vi-able dieable age). And the story is told in flashbacks, only they are so seamlessly interwoven around Rahel’s interactions with the main characters that ‘flashback’ is far too jolting a word. The story unfolds as Rahel remembers and rediscovers. Again, you almost don’t notice.

The God of Small things is beautiful and profound. You know those people who unwrap presents tortuously slowly, not tearing a single bit of paper? It’s painful, but you can’t tear away your eyes. This book is sort-of-like that. It’s a gift.

04.06.14

by ELG Gray

Schindler’s Ark

Page turner: 6/10
Heart tugger: 10/10
Thought provoker: 8/10
Overall: 4 stars

Schindler’s Ark is an absolutely phenomenal book. This story of the holocaust is really only believable because it is true. It is fact that the work only barely qualifies as one of fiction that I have struggled hugely with rating it ‘fairly’.

The story of Oskar Schindler and how he saved the lives of over 1,200 Jews during WWII is outrageous. It is a tale of bravado, of love, of ridiculousness, and of cunning. And it is true. The reason that Thomas Keneally chose to write it as fiction seems to be because a) that was the fashionable thing to do in the early 80s and b) to allow him to guess at a few conversations of which there are no records.

But the story reads like non-fiction. It reads like a biography of Schindler – and regularly quotes the many people who were interviewed as part of the book. His Jewish advisers and beneficiaries, his stoic wife, some Polish/German observers and Nazi participants all contribute. As such, how do I compare it with the ‘actual’ novels on this list? Keneally gets credit, of course, for choosing the topic and the breadth of time covered. He crafts the swathes of anecdotes, formal interviews, and historical documents into a incredibly readable, tragic, brilliant work. But it isn’t ‘his’ story. Not in the way that Hilary Mantel inserts her imagination into Crowmwell’s Wolf Hall. Or at least, it doesn’t *seem* to be.

I gave it a four because I feel like I should be rewarding a novelist’s originality. Otherwise, this book deserves a 5. Keneally brings the characters and personalities off the page. Schindler is very much a flawed man; but one who became larger than life as circumstance and coincidence presented himself with an almost-godlike opportunity that he uniquely is able to seize.

The haunting image of Genia, in red, taken from the film Schindler’s List based on Schinder’s Ark.

I have read a lot about the Holocaust, and Schindler’s Ark stands above all the other books I’ve read. It does a brilliant job of balancing the vastness of the loss of life in that era with the reality of the pain and horror of individual losses. How the loss of many millions of lives is in fact the loss of one life, then another, many millions of times.

And, especially for those people who have seen the film adaptation Schindler’s List, who can forget little innocent 4-year-old Genia, dressed head-to-toe in her favorite color red as she toddles towards death? Keneally must have somehow managed to connect Schindler’s memories of the girl in red with the thousands of anecdotes of Cracow ghetto survivors to determine who the girl really was.

Schindler’s Ark is haunting. Triumphant. Read it.

03.23.14

by ELG Gray

Rabbit at Rest

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

Returning after a holiday hiatus: Rabbit at Rest. Once again, I feel that I have a missing category for ‘language’ or ‘vividness’ as John Updike is a master at both. I was sucked into Harry ‘Rabbit’ Angstrom’s semi-retired world utterly. It just didn’t ‘wow’ me. But maybe I’m being harsh after a fun-in-the-sun vacation.

My edition of Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest is, I learned, the fourth novel in a series of books following the life of Harry Angstrom, a decade at a time. In ‘at Rest’ Rabbit is in his fifties, has heart troubles, and is facing mortality for the first time in his life. To be honest, Rabbit is a bit of an ass: a womanizer, an attention seeker. A not-so-hot father. But then, the people around him aren’t exactly ‘winners’ either, and so it is easy to empathize. And very easy to feel like Brewer, Pennsylvania is a real place.

Much of this book is an indulgence in nostalgia. Full of poignant memories of past affairs (both sexual and innocent), triggered by simply driving down the street. Rabbit faces them to the extent his character is able – his moral code is willowy at best. And, as the nickname perhaps belies, he does have something of a tendency to flee. And to hump – almost indeterminately. But he bends rather than breaks. And he does love, in his own way.

At some point I will read one of the earlier Rabbit books (I think Updike won more than one award for the series) at which point I will be clued in a bit more on the nickname. But apart from that, I can confirm that the novel stands on its own. In fact, I think I’m rather pleased I read it first.

What I like about Updike’s work (which I had never read before) is a rawness that feels so real. It does what it does SO well … but somehow I am left wanting a little bit more from him. From Rabbit. And *certainly* from his son, Nelson, and his wife, Janice, neither of whom win family-member-of-the-year awards.

Rabbit at Rest is an excellently constructed novel. I liked it. And I liked the window in the world of Harry Angstrom. For all his flaws, I liked him too. I LOVED the way Updike wrote the book. So if nothing else, I’m going to go in search of some more Updike work and see how I get on.

02.11.14

by ELG Gray

Brave New World

Page turner: 8/10
Heart tugger: 7/10
Thought provoker: 10/10
Overall: 5 stars

Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley, is brilliant.

In my head, I thought it would be a sort-of precursor to 1984: author creates totalitarian regime for political point. Point made well and clear, and good story along the way an added bonus. (Not to diminish from 1984, which I will certainly get to and give proper consideration in due course!) A Brave New World is so much better than that. Huxley, in 1932, publishes a book that creates an entirely different planet- full of crazy rocket technology, syntethetic experiences, and sky scrapers- that hasn’t, really, aged. And this new planet isn’t really the result of an intentially extreme political party gaining world dominination. Instead, it is an entirely new culture. A new world. One that I had never even considered feasible.

The brave new world which Huxley writes about is a world of ‘decanting’ rather than ‘birth’; where happiness, consumption, and stability reign at the price of passion, liberty, and independence. Imagine a world where ‘pneumatic’ is the highest of compliments. It’s so very, very backwards from what we all take for granted. But it takes not-very-long before you get into it. Even as I read about the conditioning that people go through in order to create this society of solidarity (think Pavlov … on crack), I felt for them. You feel the pressures of thier invisible constraints. And you empathize.

The appropriately eerie cover from my edition of Brave New World

Really, I think this book should have been in the curiculum on one of my university anthropology courses. Talking about seeing things through different lenses. It’s nurture trumping nature – but playing by totally different rules.

Meanwhile, it’s still a good story. Lots of sex (not too explicit), drugs, love, death, and a bit of adventure. And the accessories of the world itself is more novel and fascinating than plenty of ‘modern’ science fiction books.

It’s also incredibly well written. Concise but descriptive. Clever but functional. And, not to be too blunt, a very readable length. Well edited.

Brave New World is really a commentary about what happens ‘for the sake of progress’. When technology gets us so far – then what? You can see why what happens happens. And simultaneously you can totally comprehend the perspective of ‘ancient’ Shakespeare (his works feature) and of the folks of a ‘Savage Reservation’ whose way of life resembles that of Native Americans at the turn of the 20th century. Sort of.

I will admit that by a somewhat surprising turn of events the two main locations of the book- London and Malpais, New Mexico – are places that I hold rather personal connections with. But that probably just makes it a cheeky 6 stars for me, and a 5 for everyone else. So, if you are looking to read a Great Book, getting many virtual brownie points for high school English teachers the world over, go with Brave New World.