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(04/21/17 5:04pm)
Terry Pratchett was a masterful writer. His books are full to bursting with wit, riotous plots, engaging action, absurdly entertaining characters, social commentary, comedy and most of all a light-hearted joy that is all too rare these days. Fortunately, he was also incredibly prolific. His “Discworld” series contains over 40 full-length novels, as well as a variety of short stories, companion books and other supplemental material. “The Color of Magic” is the first in the series, but most of the novels work as stand-alone stories, requiring no context from previous ones. No matter which one you choose, you are guaranteed a rollicking journey from one of the greatest fantasy authors ever.
“Discworld” is set on a flat world that is carried on the backs of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle who is swimming through space. On this world there are endlessly colorful sets of characters and places, from witches and wizards to con men turned postal workers to high priests of forgotten gods to tourists and so much more.
Characters from one novel will often cameo or crossover with those from a different novel, creating a web of characters and stories. One of the characters who features frequently in other novels is the protagonist of “The Color of Magic:” an incompetent, cowardly, cynical wizard named Rincewind.
“The Color of Magic” begins with the arrival of a rich but naïve man named Twoflower in Ankh-Morpork, Discworld’s largest city. Seeking a tourist guide, Twoflower joins up with Rincewind. From then on, the two travel around Discworld together encountering a series of unlikely adventures. It is more or less episodic, with no overarching purpose except for Twoflower’s desire to see as much of the world as possible, a parody of the typical fantasy hero quest.
Pratchett at once draws inspiration from and parodies authors such as J.R.R. Tolkien or H.P Lovecraft as well as old folklore and myths. However, “Discworld,” for all its comedy, is never once malicious in its satire. It pokes fun at the traditions and stereotypes of fantasy storytelling but in the same breath manages to pay them homage. “Discworld” is rambunctious and joyful as it subverts tropes and mocks audience expectation. In the world of shows such as “Game of Thrones,” where so many people seem intent on creating fantasy that is grittier and more ‘realistic,’ Discworld is a needed reminder that fantasy can be pure fun. It is intended to be enjoyed, perhaps to be escapist and to help let your imagination run wild.
There is often little to no logic in the plot. For instance, in “The Color of Magic,” Rincewind and Twoflower encounter a community of people who can summon dragons by imagining them. After getting caught up in a succession intrigue, they eventually escape on the back of a dragon that Twoflower manages to imagine; however, when he passes out, they are left falling through the air. At this point, Rincewind, frantically wishing to be in any other situation than the one he is in, manages to imagine himself and Twoflower briefly into a passenger plane in the real world and quickly imagine them back out of it again, rearranging the entirety of the universe in the process. This moment is absurd and is never mentioned again, but it is hilarious and works as a deus ex machina to rescue them from their fall.
Most of Rincewind’s incidents are solved by similar kinds of ridiculous, lucky coincidences, and as a reader you can never quite anticipate what Pratchett may be planning to drop into his lap or on his head. Given the nature of Discworld, Pratchett’s excellent sense of balance in the narrative, giving him obstacles more often than solutions and hinting at the solutions just enough that they work, it manages to avoid feeling contrived.
As delightfully silly and amusing as much of the series is, it is not devoid of serious material. In fact, one of Pratchett’s greatest strengths is his ability to weave biting social commentary, emotional moments and sometimes even tragedy into his books without ever creating too harsh a shift in tone. There is always some amount of comedy right the way through.
Although you can technically start from almost any book in the series (with a few exceptions: “The Light Fantastic” is a direct sequel to “The Color of Magic,” and some of the very late books such as “Raising Steam” would be confusing without some basic background knowledge of a few of the characters), I still highly recommend beginning with “The Color of Magic.” It does an excellent job of introducing the zany, comedic tone of the series and gives you a good baseline for what Discworld is like. If you are looking for a book to take you on an adventure that is fun and colorful and rejects the idea that absurdity and happiness are only for children while adults must enjoy gritty realism, Discworld is where you want to go. Find it at the library at go/bookingit
(03/23/16 11:54pm)
Achilles. One of the most famous heroes in all mythology. He’s a hero of Homer’s Iliad, and he’s one of the most instantly recognizable names from Greek mythology. His fabled “Achilles heel” remains a colloquial expression for a weak spot to this day. His strength and invulnerability are the stuff of legend. Patroclus, on the other hand, you may not have heard of.
It is Patroclus, however, who narrates Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles, and it is through his eyes that we get an up-close and personal look at that famous Greek hero. After being exiled from his homeland for murder, albeit an accidental one, Patroclus is taken in by Peleus, Achilles’ father, as a ward. Over the years, he and Achilles grow close, first as friends, and then as lovers. Ultimately, of course, Paris carries off Helen, and they are both obligated to go to Troy together. However, the famous Trojan War and Achilles’ unsurpassed skill in battle, while present, are not the heart of this novel, nor do they drive the narrative. Song of Achilles is, first and foremost, a love story.
Though it arguably takes a significant departure from his characterization in classical source material, Miller’s novel strives to envision the man behind the legend. Our narrator is a less-than-mediocre soldier, and he has no interest in dwelling on Achilles’ military feats. He presents those that are necessary to the plot, and admires them insofar as they please Achilles himself and bring admiration, adoration or jealousy from those around him, but Patroclus keeps his focus firmly on their time together. We get vignettes of nights spent sleeping side by side and telling bad jokes, of days spent enjoying the sun or wandering through the forest.
There is no single major antagonist to the novel. The Trojans, though arguably the obvious enemy, hardly appear at all, Agamemnon is an antagonist but also their ally, and Thetis, Achilles’ mother, both comes between Achilles and Patroclus and does her utmost to protect her son. All of the characters have questionable motives that guide their actions, and none of them can be construed as evil or even wholly opposed to our main characters. In this sense, there is a grounding reality to the story: there is no black and white, no clear right and wrong path to follow.
On the other hand, there are some strongly mythological elements to this story. The most obvious is its fantastical edge: gods are not only an accepted part of this universe, but they can and do appear and intervene. Miller also includes bizarre events that are acceptable in myths but seem out of touch with reality, such as a warrior being able to convincingly disguise himself as a young woman.
All of this together – a myth that is also a slice-of-life story, the legend of a famous warrior told by a man who would happily avoid all fighting if he could – creates an oddball mix of a novel. It is touching, sometimes beautifully narrated, and if you’ve grown attached to the characters by the end it will be heartbreaking. The key word, though, is “if.”
There’s a curious sense throughout the novel that not very much seems to happen, or at the least, that any major events seem to happen very slowly and spaced far apart from one another. Miller’s indulgence is giving Patroclus time to describe his admiration and love of Achilles over and over. Sometimes he spends so much time on it that it grows unsettling, and seems more like hero worship on Patroclus’s part than a reciprocated relationship. The amount of time he spends extolling his friend could almost certainly have been cut down without losing the relationship they build. They could even be replaced with scenes that show more interaction between the two. There is a great deal more action as the book draws to its climax and conclusion, but up until that point there are long stretches of almost eerie calm. The problem is that it makes it difficult to empathize with the characters. Although later in the book Patroclus makes a name for himself as a medic and takes a stronger moral stance against both Agamemnon and Achilles, up until then he spends much of his time following Achilles around like a lovesick puppy while we are subjected to his continuous songs of praise. There is not a great deal in those early chapters that make me care about or root for either one of them.
Whether you love the masterful prose and slowly building relationship, or detest the swollen and repetitive nature of Patroclus’s praise, Miller’s novel is indisputably original. She weaves together myth and life, and the end result may be flawed yet it remains powerful. Find it at the library at go/bookingit.
(02/25/16 12:44am)
“A friendly desert community where the sun is hot, the moon is beautiful and mysterious lights pass overhead while we all pretend to sleep. Welcome to Night Vale.”
These are the words that launched the now internationally popular podcast Welcome to Night Vale back in 2012. They also remain perhaps the most concise way to communicate the style and premise of the podcast, which takes the form of a radio show for the fictional town of Night Vale. The podcast is absurd, sometimes unsettling and often beautiful.
Just a few months ago, the creators of the podcast released a novel that hit the Amazon bestseller list instantly. Although set in the same town as the podcast and featuring many of the same characters, the novel is an original, self-contained story, and so it is not necessary to be familiar with the podcast in order to understand the novel. Readers follow the narration of Diane Crayton, a single mother trying to learn how to connect with her shape-shifting son Josh, and Jackie Fiero, a pawn shop owner who is given a piece of paper she subsequently cannot get rid of that reads simply, “KING CITY.” Brought together by their search for a mysterious man in a tan jacket, Diane and Jackie find themselves allies as they try to hold onto their lives in a world that is making even less sense than usual.
Night Vale, both the podcast and the novel, has a peculiar style that may not bode well for everyone. Reminiscent of magical realism, it inverts and confuses reality without acknowledging what is happening is strange. For instance, there is no explanation for why Josh can shape-shift; he simply can, and no one questions the fact that Diane’s son may be a horsefly one day and a sentient patch of haze the next. There are long forays into description, painting the picture of the town and its inhabitantants in an extraordinariily beautiful manner. The town itself, in all its weirdness, is just as important as any of the main characters.
For all of the bizarre changes in reality that make up Welcome to Night Vale, its greatest strength lies in its ability to take the strange and use it to comment on real, relatable situations. In particular, the relationship between Diane and Josh is remarkably conveyed, with the strain of single parenthood and the struggles of communication between the mother and the teenage boy evident in every line. Of course, in the real world, teenage boys are not literal shape-shifters, but there is fickleness and uncertainty, a slipperiness of identity in puberty that we have all experienced. Diane’s every action is more than understandable as a mother who no longer knows how to relate to her son, a problem perhaps augmented by the fact that he does not always have a human form.
One reason behind the podcast’s popularity is its positive representation of various minority groups, especially the LGBTQ community. This is present in the novel as well. Both Diane, a working single mother, and Jackie, a young and independent business owner, stand out as people who do not often get to be protagonists. Fink and Cranor’s exceptional thoughtfulness when it comes to these portrayals is a positive mark for the novel for several reasons. Besides obvious benefits for people who belong to those minorities, working outside stereotypical characters allows for fresh and more surprising stories. The story in the novel is unpredictable not only because the rules of reality are different, but also because this is not a story that has been told a hundred times before. The characters are strongly individual, refusing to blend in with other books or movies. Their personalities are distinct and developed, and every decision they make is logical from what we know about them.
It is difficult to get an accurate impression of Welcome to Night Vale without actually reading it yourself. Descriptions get lost in trying to convey the strangeness without truly communicating the allure of the enchanting language and unexpectedly touching story. Even once you start reading, you might be too confused trying to understand what is happening to decide whether you actually like the book or not – and between the fantastical element and its peculiar style, there are certainly people who will not like the book. For others, it will be a favorite for years to come. Welcome to Night Vale will take you on a journey into a desert town, surprise you, move you and leave you dazzled by the mysterious lights overhead.
Find this book in the Davis Family Library through go/bookingit.
(01/28/16 12:38am)
Alice in Wonderland has been done a thousand different ways. From the original fantastical children’s book to Disney’s version to Tim Burton’s strange 2010 movie, we have a rich selection of Wonderlands to explore, all of them colorful, topsy-turvy lands in their own way. Something about the freedom of Wonderland’s insanity sparks the imagination and reawakens the curious child in all of us, dreaming of madmen and grinning cats and growing to the size of skyscrapers. One of my favorite versions of Wonderland, however, comes from an author who decided to take an entirely different route from the norm.
The Wonderland of Frank Beddor’s The Looking Glass Wars is not a delightfully mad, colorful world where logic has no place and one can rely on sudden growth spurts to prevent beheadings. Rather, it is a deadly serious fantasy queendom caught in a civil war. Noble families play for political power, card soldiers are mechanical, robotic beings and chess pieces are hardened generals. Enter into this Alyss Heart, the daughter of benevolent Queen Genevieve and a young girl with a powerful imagination – a force to be reckoned with in Wonderland, since imagining things here can make them come into existence. She is precocious and rather spoiled, and the heir to the throne if she manages to survive that long. Queen Genevieve’s older sister and Alyss’s aunt is the notorious Redd, an exceptionally cruel and dictatorial ruler who believes she was robbed of the throne and so is determined to take it back.
Redd’s coup d’état sends Alyss fleeing for safety, and she winds up falling through the Pool of Tears right into our world, in Victorian London. She remains stuck here for years, unable to return home or help free her kingdom from Redd. Although she is eventually adopted by the Liddell family, she remains miserable for a long time, teased by other children and lectured by adults for telling the story of her childhood. Only a reverend named Charles Dodgson seems willing to listen, and even he proves a false friend, publishing a ludicrously fanciful version of “Alice’s” tale under the name of Lewis Carroll. Meanwhile, one other Wonderlander is present in our world, and searching desperately for Alyss: Hatter Madigan.
Hatter Madigan is easily my favorite part of Beddor’s Wonderland. This version of the Mad Hatter is a mysterious but intensely loyal and expertly trained bodyguard, whose “hat” can turn into a deadly weapon at any moment. Hatter’s character captures a great deal of what I enjoy about Beddor’s novel. One core element, the hat, is practically all the similarity that Hatter Madigan shares with Lewis Carroll’s Mad Hatter, but that is enough to pay tribute to the original while giving Beddor the freedom to invent a delightfully original character.
The Looking Glass Wars is not, nor is it intended to be, a version of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. Rather, Beddor takes a world that has delighted people for years and picks out nuggets of ideas, almost as if he were reading Carroll’s notes rather than the finished work. From those nuggets, he builds a story that is entirely his own. It is a story for anyone who is fascinated by the idea of card soldiers or wise caterpillars but has either already exhausted their interest in the original and its more faithful adaptations, or possibly just wants a more coherent plot. The meta moment of inserting Carroll’s work into his own novel as the twisted version of events is a playful piece of writing, offering some tongue-in-cheek jokes for his readers.
This is hardly a challenging read, but it makes for an excellent fantastical page-turner. And that is, in my opinion, for the best. After all, the original work is so wildly topsy-turvy and difficult to follow down any coherent train of logic that while it certainly can be and has been interpreted to have any number of deeper meanings, those are often difficult to swallow. To enjoy Wonderland is to embrace the places that imagination can take us, to embrace a bit of madness and suspend our disbelief so that we can live for a little while in a different world. If Beddor’s Wonderland were some deep, literary work, it would lose a part of its heart. As serious as the story is for its characters, for us, it is an exciting, creative world full of magic and thrilling battles that we can sit back and delight in, just as we can delight in the dreamy romp of Carroll’s novel.
(12/10/15 12:46am)
If mystery and suspense are your genres of choice, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson is a must-read. A tense, unpredictable novel with frightening characters and a crafty plot, this book has become an international sensation. Originally published in Sweden under the title Män som hatar kvinnor, meaning Men Who Hate Women, the book has been translated and published worldwide, followed by its two sequels, film adaptations in both Swedish and English and a graphic novel adaptation, published by DC Comics. Although critics’ reviews have been somewhat mixed, the novel’s sheer popularity speaks to its power to capture an audience.
The story opens with Mikael Blomkvist, a journalist hired by retired CEO Henrik Vanger to look into the cold case of his grandniece Harriet’s disappearance. Henrik believes Harriet was murdered by a family member. After uncovering new evidence which puts him on the trail of the killer, Blomkvist requests assistance with his research and is joined by Lisbeth Salander, the eponymous girl with the dragon tattoo. She is an exceptional computer hacker, extremely anti-social and, when need arises, unapologetically violent. Since she was declared legally incompetent as a child, she has a legal guardian – placing her in a position of dependency which she resents.
What ensues is a familiar mystery story full of unexpected twists and turns. Larsson successfully takes tropes that appear in dozens of novels – such as the “locked room” mystery set-up – and keeps them exciting, making the ending unpredictable. He achieves the perfect balance of the mystery novel by giving you just enough information that you feel like you should be able to figure it out, while obscuring enough to make sure you’re still surprised when the twist happens. As with any good mystery, Blomkvist and Salander discover there are far more skeletons in the closet than just Harriet’s ¬ both proverbial and literal ones. As they delve deeper into the history and secrets of the Vanger family, they discover murders spanning decades as well as danger in the present.
As good as the suspense and mystery is, stay away from this book if you do not do well with violence in media. Larsson does not shy away from revealing the ugliest side of human nature. His characters are intelligent and enjoyably complex, but many of them are also incredibly vicious and have no qualms about causing physical harm. The story takes many dark and unpleasant turns and leaves behind bloodied corpses in the process - other characters move forward with a horrifying lack of remorse. Larsson’s graphic descriptions of kidnapping, murder, rape and torture sometimes make Game of Thrones look positively tame. It creates a definite atmosphere for the book, making the characters gritty and self-sufficient, while dragging the ugliest realities into the spotlight. Just don’t read it if you aren’t prepared to hear a story where savagery and retribution are everywhere.
Despite all the violence, the book is not devoid of emotion or happiness. In fact, without spoiling too much, I can say that part of the ending seems almost too happy, slightly out of place in a book with so much darkness. Still, the relationship between Blomkvist and Salander remains intriguing: they are definitely the most developed and most interesting characters in the book and thus their partnership creates many of the novel’s high-points. The pair have some genuinely touching moments that feel like gasps of air of human goodness, although they certainly clash against one another from time to time as well. Through and through, they challenge each other and are both better for it.
Although the announced mystery is Harriet Vanger’s disappearance, the character of Lisbeth Salander is the true enigma of this novel. From her first entrance, Larsson raises a number of questions about her backstory. What could have led to her current personality? Why does an apparently brilliant though anti-social woman need a legal guardian? How much of a criminal is she? The hints we are given are murky at best and often raise more questions than they answer. Blomkvist is more often the reader’s point of view character and typically we follow his revelations and deductions more than Salander’s – yet Salander is the character who captures more interest and imagination. Larsson does ultimately reveal more of her backstory in his sequels, The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, but for this book, Salander remains mostly indecipherable.
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo may not be for everyone, but if you’re looking for an intense, scary, enigmatic ride, this is the novel to get. It will puzzle you, disturb you and ultimately leave you breathless and dying to know what happens next.
(11/19/15 1:10am)
We may be past Halloween, but Good Omens is good reading any time of the year. Written by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett back before either of them were famous, this novel is a hilarious story about the apocalypse and the eternal battle between heaven and hell. Neil Gaiman is the author of surpassingly original, darkly fantastical books such as Coraline, American Gods and The Sandman comics. His stories are full of the adventures of bizarre, fascinating characters and offbeat humor, all taking place in creepy or unsettling and unfamiliar worlds. Terry Pratchett is best known for his Discworld books, a series of over 40 fantasy novels that are all set in Discworld, a flat world carried on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant turtle who’s walking through space. Terry Pratchett is a king of humor. In Discworld he satirizes everything from Lord of the Rings to colonialism, making me laugh on every page while still providing powerful commentary and genuinely touching moments. His characters are vibrantly colorful and his world endlessly inventive. Together, these two authors have written a book that is original, clever, exciting, endlessly funny, bursting with personality and it will keep you glued to the page until there is no more to read.
The book draws some inspiration from the 1976 horror film classic The Omen, at least in its initial set-up. The Anti-Christ is born and an order of Satanic nuns switch him out with an ordinary baby to be raised by an unsuspecting couple. The book’s protagonists, however, are not the couple, but rather an angel, Aziraphale, and a demon, Crowley, who both decide that they rather like Earth and are going to attempt to stop the apocalypse. The problem is, someone has misplaced the Anti-Christ. The world spirals into confusion as the apocalypse begins, with the four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse, witch hunters, witches, hell hounds, aliens, Atlantisans and many more running amuck. Gaiman and Pratchett write incredibly well together. There is no inconsistency in the tone or style of the book and I can rarely point to a scene or a character and say definitively which author wrote that part. There are some obvious ones, for instance the character of Death bears a number of similarities to the Death in the Discworld novels. Likewise, some of the particularly creepy scenes are definitely more reminiscent of Gaiman’s novels than Pratchett’s. However, never at any point does it feel as though there are two authors struggling to tell the same story different ways.
The phrase “funny apocalypse story” does not, in general, make a lot of sense. It helps that the book is mainly a lead-up to the apocalypse rather than the event itself, so there are not immediately dozens of deaths. The authors do a wonderful job of balancing out anything horrible with more positive moments. They also by and large keep you at arm’s length from anything too awful. This is not one of those stories that you laugh at but then feel awful for doing so.
People do die, though, sometimes horribly or pitifully, and the book brings up themes that can be serious and thought-provoking. Aziraphale and Crowley’s whole alliance questions whether a dichotomy of good and evil truly exists, or if it is simply about picking sides. I see Pratchett’s genius at work here. His novels frequently combat a common misconception: just because a book is funny and light-hearted does not mean it can’t have something important to say. Yes, this novel is comedic and sometimes downright silly, but it does not disregard serious ideas. Instead, Gaiman and Pratchett slip those ideas into the stew of humor and outlandish apocalypse events, leaving them there to be considered at the reader’s leisure. It isn’t the type of literature that will leave you pondering human existence or inspired to analyze it for hours, nor is it completely literary slapstick.
Good Omens is fun. It is fun to read; it is fun to laugh at, and even the authors wrote it for fun, not because they were aiming to write a classic or a bestseller. The characters are full of idiosyncratic personality and when thrown together make the book explode off the page with their strange and unexpected antics. Parts of the plot seem as though they should just be stupid, like Atlantis rising to the surface, but the wild impossibilities are so tongue-in-cheek and humorously written that they leave me rolling on the floor with laughter. This is absurdity at its best: clever, unrestrained, and above all, funny. A brilliant collaboration between two great authors, Good Omens will make you laugh long and loud.
(11/04/15 11:33pm)
There are four Arthurs in The Tragedy of Arthur: the author, Arthur Phillips; the narrator, also Arthur Phillips; the narrator’s father, Arthur Edward Harold Phillips; and the legendary King Arthur of Britain. While this novel is fiction, many of the details of the author’s real life are the same as the narrator’s, making it difficult to determine where reality ends and fiction begins. This blurring of the line between reality and fiction preoccupies the audience and the characters alike.
The basic story of the novel is that the narrator’s father, a dying con man, gifts his son with a 1597 quarto of a previously undiscovered Shakespeare play, The Tragedy of Arthur, enjoining him to get it published. Of course, the necessary question is whether this play is real, or if it is the con man’s last and greatest scam. The novel is partially a memoir and partially an introduction to the play, which is included at the back of the book. (For simplicity’s sake, I will not be reviewing the play itself except to say that it is an enjoyable read and believably Shakespearean.) Evidence surfaces for both sides, much of it convincing, but none of it conclusive.
In order to explain the history of the play and his doubts as to its authenticity, the narrator finds himself recounting his life story. He talks about growing up with his twin sister Dana, struggling to win the approval of his recidivist father and running away from home and back again in the effort to find his place in the world. His father and Dana love Shakespeare; he hates the man and his plays. He ends up a spectator to a crucial part of the relationship between the two most important people of his life. The rift widens over time and the narrator is cut adrift from those he loves as they grow older and more problems intrude on their lives, as more differences, resentments and emotional instabilities thrust their fingers into the cracks and pull their family apart. The author masterfully escalates these issues toward the climax, bringing together the narrator’s relationship to his family members, Shakespeare, and The Tragedy of Arthur.
Does the title refer to the play, and the tragedy of King Arthur of Britain, an unwilling and fundamentally flawed king? Or is it the tragedy of Arthur Phillips, an unwilling and fundamentally flawed family member? Or perhaps it is the tragedy of Arthur Edward Harold Phillips, the narrator’s father. The lines between them blur. They bear uncanny resemblances and links to each other. Whichever one you are more interested in, you find yourself looking to the others for clues to their personality as you realize how similar they are, and how one can reveal what the other tries to hide in their hopes and fears.
This confusing stew of Arthurs is the most obvious way that the final Arthur, the author, brings up the theme of who and what influences us through our lives. All the Arthurs have an impact on each other, whether they want to or not, and they all wrestle with issues that parallel or echo each other. The narrator spends a large chunk of his story crafting “indifference” toward his father – and, by extension, to Shakespeare and The Tragedy of Arthur – but it ultimately fails. The author taps into a truth of human relationships here, which is that we cannot choose who impacts us. We only wish to build indifference towards people who have already changed us, and we often most loudly proclaim we do not care about someone’s opinion when that person’s praise would mean more than any other.
The narrator writes his memoir unwillingly, with what he calls “a gun to his head.” It is therefore littered with sarcastic, annoyed and self-aware references to the genre. He questions his own memories and how much he has written or rewritten them, and continually points out his lack of qualification to write objectively about his own life. The result is darkly amusing and sometimes pitiable, as he staggers between struggling to justify his actions and condemning them and his justification alike. He will draw attention to “memoirists’ tricks” as he tells his stories.
Much like a Shakespeare play, this novel does not contain only one theme or story, but rather the multitudes of a complicated, fractured family life. Within this one family are the joys and tragedies of relationships of all kinds, the coming of age stories, the losses, wonder at the magic of the world and disenchantment with it, the trials of learning how you are different from your loved ones and how you are the same, the struggle to be your own person and the struggle to live up to the expectations of others. Arthur’s life is, as any other, filled with ups and downs that are equally exciting and exasperating to follow, but are worth reading either way.
(10/14/15 11:44pm)
Alcatraz-1259 by William G. Baker is the autobiographical account of a former Alcatraz inmate. Alcatraz Island, located in the San Francisco Bay, was a federal prison for approximately thirty years in the mid-20th century until it was abandoned and eventually converted into a museum. A thriving tourist hotspot today, it held some of the most famous convicts of the day, including Al Capone and Robert “Birdman” Stroud, and was notoriously difficult to escape. Several movies have dramatized the various (failed) escape attempts, as the isolation and harshness of its conditions continue to capture the imagination of many.
Baker’s book is a straightforward, honest account of his time both on Alcatraz and in and out of some other prisons. He has spent much of his life behind bars, mostly for counterfeiting checks. What eventually landed him in Alcatraz was an escape attempt from another prison. He is frank to the point of crassness, and expresses contempt toward the prison system and most of the people who work in it – though he does have a kind word for guards he felt did their jobs honestly and fairly.
Overall, he has a great deal more interest and sympathy for his fellow inmates in all of the prisons that he describes. He speaks of the friendships that flourished between them as they worked together, taught each other card games, secretly fermented alcohol in trash cans, plotted escape attempts and simply sat and watched San Francisco from inside Alcatraz’s walls, dreaming of what they would do when they left. One particularly memorable line describes one of Baker’s fellow inmates; “he was a really nice guy; he just really liked to rob banks.” Baker sees nothing wrong with that.
The style of the book is conversational; the writing familiar at best, clunky and meandering at worst. It is littered with swear words and questionable grammar. The narrative jumps across time in a way that is more confusing than artistic, although Baker certainly uses it to provide insight into his upbringing, what set him on the path of a career criminal who was consistently in and out of prison and what kept him there. There is one stretch in the book that takes place in another prison and goes on for so long that I began to wonder why the book is named Alcatraz-1259 rather than simply The Life of William Baker. The writing is definitely not the strong suit of the book. Nor is it the history of Alcatraz that makes it worth reading, as there are far more comprehensive and focused books on the subject out there.
However, the sometimes awkward and confusing anecdotes give voice to a perspective on prison life that is not heard enough – and in the case of Alcatraz, the chance to understand these experiences is rapidly diminishing, with few former inmates still alive today. Despite his crass and clunky style, Baker still manages to get across a great deal about what it meant to be an Alcatraz inmate. The reader is exposed to glimpses of daily life: the monotony, the excitement, the cringe-worthy moments and the strange but wonderful triumphs. While looking for something to do on yard breaks, Baker decides that he will plant, water and nurture a small patch of earth. The plants are mostly weeds, but his awe when they bloom creates an unexpectedly touching moment.
This open-hearted honesty is so very human, empathetic and poignant. It is what makes Baker’s book worth the read. At times, that honesty made me feel uncomfortable or alienated as I struggled to understand how someone could fail to see that stealing money was morally wrong. Sometimes, that honesty is sexist.
Yet the writing is compelling precisely because it is so barefaced. Baker never apologizes for his actions or his viewpoints, or for those of his fellow inmates. He simply offers them up as his experience, leaving the reader to decide what they want to make of them. I may not know much about the history of Alcatraz’ most infamous residents, but I learned a lot more about what the inmates actually thought and felt than I ever could have from someone who had merely researched the place. There may be parts that I disagreed with or that felt far removed from my own personality, but by unabashedly showing the good, the bad and the ugly, Baker allows for much more truthful insight than would have been possible had he tried to make the story palatable to the widest possible audience.
(09/24/15 12:44am)
In Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven, the world ends almost quietly. There are no bombs or devastating nuclear holocausts, no alien invasions or apocalyptic meteor crashes, no bizarre and wholly unanticipated environmental disasters, no anthrax or genetically engineered superb ug or villainous plot by a mad genius, and there are no wild dashes across the country, no heroes stealing planes and cars and battling to reach a loved one. There is only an exceptionally deadly strain of flu and the gradual blinking out of those elements that formed the basis of modern civilization. Internet, television, stock market, government, telephones, electricity, newspapers and more: one by one they all disappear.
The novel starts when the famous actor Arthur Leander suffers a heart attack and dies on stage during a performance of King Lear. As a prelude to a novel where almost the entire human population is killed by a virus, this one death is set apart, yet Mandel does not, thankfully, write it as a melodramatic doomsday herald. It is a natural, if not everyday, occurrence, and it is a small tragedy in its own right. Mandel treats individual deaths with first-hand care and attention; they are intimate and brought to life with small details. Consequently, we feel empathy and fear and sadness for those individuals, even though we think only distantly and abstractly about the swaths of humanity that die in the flu.
Arthur Leander’s death is the unifying moment of the novel, as it brings together, in one way or another, the novel’s five central characters. There is Arthur himself, his first wife Miranda, and his best friend Clark, both of whom are present through Arthur. An aspiring EMT named Jeevan jumps up on stage and performs CPR in a vain attempt to revive Arthur, and then briefly comforts the child actress Kirsten, who witnessed the whole thing. The flu strikes that night. What follows after this moment of unification is a novel that moves back in forth in time, from Arthur’s childhood decades before the flu, to Jeevan’s effort to stay safe away from infection by barricading himself and his brother in an apartment, to Kirsten’s life twenty years after the collapse of society. Mandel tells quietly moving stories of lives, of hopes, dreams, goals, achievements, failures and surprises. The stories of five individuals showcase small slivers of a much bigger, more chaotic world that swarms about the characters. This intimate understanding of a relatively miniscule subset of people allows us a glimpse into the world as a whole, and awakes our sympathy in a way that sweeping descriptions could not.
Twenty years after the flu, Kirsten is part of a theatre troupe called the Traveling Symphony which goes from town to town performing music and Shakespeare. Their motto is a quote from Star Trek: “Because survival is insufficient.” This is, above all, what Station Eleven is about. These characters struggle to survive in a dangerous, unfamiliar world, but they try to do more than that. They struggle to live life on their own terms and find beauty and hope, no matter the difficulty. This is what makes the novel so compelling, and so hopeful. The novel takes the view that there is more to living than pure subsistence or survival, and that people will cling to art and expression as much as they will cling to food and shelter. Mandel eloquently comments on the power of art, of beauty and of humanity’s desire to survive, even in a world torn to pieces.
The novel is nostalgic in a way unusual to dystopia fiction. Rather than mourn the great abstract concept of modern society, Mandel offers the reader what she calls “an incomplete list” of things now lost. This list includes things such as “diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below” and “porch lights with moths fluttering on a summer night.” This is not a novel of revolution and battle sequences: though the post-apocalyptic world is dangerous, it is not a place filled with total chaos and bloodshed. So instead of the leader of a revolution, we get five relatively ordinary characters. Instead of mourning — a sometimes vague ideal — it is the concrete and comparatively small losses that Mandel points out, losses that are much easier to imagine, and so, in the end, more powerful and visceral to the reader. This quiet novel travels the range of human emotion, from immense sadness and pain to unanticipated joy, offering us a glimpse into a truth about ourselves, about art and about the will to do more than survive.
(09/18/15 12:20am)
It is 10 a.m. the week before the start of school, but a group of students is already focusing intently. Forming a circle on the stage of Wright Memorial Theatre, the students stand with their eyes shut. Over the sound of a loud fan, they listen to each other, waiting for the right moment. Suddenly, it is there. The stillness is broken as the students all jump together — or not all together, as it turns out.
“Try again,” a voice says.
The students close their eyes and restart.
This is part of the MIDDSummer Play Lab, a week-long program right before the fall semester. Now in its third year, the Play Lab is a unique chance for alumni and students to connect. The main focus of the Play Lab is to workshop a new play written by a Middlebury alum. This year’s play was Ubiquitous, a Hitchcock-esque thriller by Jake Jeppson ’06. Last year, the play was Clickshare by Lucas Kavner ’06.5, which will be produced by the Theatre Department this fall.
During rehearsals of Ubiquitous, students were given the opportunity to discuss the play, offer feedback and ask questions. Professor of Theatre Dana Yeaton helped to lead these discussions, while students worked to advertise and facilitate a public reading of the play. Taking place this past Saturday, Sept. 12, the reading featured four alumni in the program.
In addition to putting together a new play, the alumni provide master classes to students in the Play Lab. This year, the curriculum included ‘Creativity and Collaboration’ with Jeppson and Tara Giordano ’02, ‘The Actor in Space’ with Jay Dunn ’0.5, ‘Activating the Text’ with Becky Martin ’04 and ‘On-Camera Acting’ with Kristen Connolly ’02 and Joe Varca ’02. Classes are designed to be playful and supportive environments that allow students to explore everything from silent, physical ensemble work to scene-reading for auditions.
“Play Lab ... gives us a chance to hone skills we don’t normally get to work on during the year,” said Student Coordinator Caitlin Duffy ’15.5.
Students are encouraged to branch out and discover various kinds of theatre and acting. Since all of the instructors are alumni, they are familiar with the types of training and classes that already take place at the College. This allows students to both see where their careers might take them, and to talk with alumni about how to get there.
Another master class and major element of the Play Lab is the opportunity to delve into the business side of theatre. This fall, discussion topics ranged from the details of how to get headshots and organize a resume, to questions about which cities are best for young theatre artists. Students shared research on these topics, amd additionally attended a question-and-answer session with the alumni about their careers. Susan Walker, Associate Director of Professional & Career Development at the Center for Careers & Internships (CCI), who helped fund the Play Lab, was also part of this conversation.
Ubiquitous playwright and alum Jeppson enjoyed hearing his play read aloud and receiving feedback from the students. He plans to continue developing Ubiquitous, and would love to return to the Play Lab in the future.
“Once I hear my play in the mouths of actors, I am excited and energized to keep writing,” he said.
The students also enjoyed the week of exploration and connection.
Ashley Fink ’18 described it as “super fun and exploratory... more like play than work.”
Though still in its infancy, MIDDSummer Play Lab serves as a valuable opportunity for collaboration among students and alumni, and will hopefully continue to grow for years to come.
(04/15/15 4:01pm)
Dejima and everything it stood for is at the heart of The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet. This novel by David Mitchell, best known for writing Cloud Atlas, is set at the turn of the 19th century, in a secluded and suspicious Japan. Dejima, a small, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki that functioned as a Dutch trading post, was the sole point of contact between Japan and the Western world. Mitchell’s novel explores the lives of all who came in contact with it: Dutch traders and clerks, Japanese interpreters and magistrates, students, soldiers, sailors, scholars and more. Dejima leaves none of them untouched. Thousand Autumns portrays it as a point of collision between cultures, ideas and values with complicated outcomes.
Although the novel centers on its eponymous character, Jacob de Zoet is only one person in a sea of backstories and parallel plots and action. Mitchell creates rich, unique stories and personalities for his characters that enliven the story as a whole. A large portion of the middle of the book barely even mentions de Zoet, focusing instead on two of his Japanese friends: Ogawa Uzaemon and Aibagawa Orito.
The book begins a little slowly, and if I had not thoroughly enjoyed Cloud Atlas I may have been turned off of it. However, I had faith in Mitchell’s writing and ability to surprise, so I persevered, though I floundered a little in the sea of Dutch and Japanese names. Jacob de Zoet arrives in Dejima to make his fortune so that he may marry his fiancée back home with her father’s consent. His particular mission is to aid his superior,
Vorstenbosch, in rooting out the corruption and underhanded trading that is running rampant in Dejima. His struggle to remain true to his morality and principles in a sea of greedy traders is a driving force in the novel, and what held my interest in the beginning of the book. The other part of his storyline, an infatuation with Japanese medical student Aibagawa Orito, I found trite and frankly annoying. They have few, brief interactions that did not, to me, merit his ardor, although I could understand his interest.
As the characters moved into separate storylines and Mitchell developed them apart from one another, I found they were both wonderfully interesting characters to read. I never quite reconciled myself to de Zoet’s love for Aibagawa, but it was only one thread of a complicated tangle of plots and subplots. Mitchell built the suspense and mystery, weaving this tangle expertly, and once I was approximately a third of the way through I was devouring every word. The novel pulls you in with constant new perspectives and pieces of backstory and agonizingly difficult decisions for the characters. That I was annoyed by de Zoet’s hasty and perhaps contrived ardor for Aibagawa hardly mattered at the end, because I found myself thoroughly enjoying each and every character regardless, holding my breath at cliffhangers and desperately captivated by question “What will happen next?”
I hesitate to reduce this novel to any particular theme or maxim because it is so rich and so intricate. However, I said that Dejima and everything it once stood for is at the heart of Thousand Autumns because if the novel is about any one thing, it is finding one’s place in a different and unexpected life. The island represented a point of contact, an exchange of ideas and goods and a collision of cultures and values. It was at once valuable and dangerous. It presented opportunities, but fostered corruption. Yet it fostered loyalty also. For Jacob de Zoet, Dejima appears to him almost as a prison sentence at the beginning, and in carving out his existence there he finds he carves out a much richer life than he had hoped for or imagined. The Dutch and the Japanese are almost always at odds with one another, from the prohibition against any markers of Christianity such as crosses or Bibles, to the threatening Dutch ultimatums against the Japanese. However, despite all this, they persist in working together and find a commonality in the desire for trade. With that commonality, they endure the difficulties and isolation of Dejima, and sometimes they even forge friendships. It is these wary yet powerful friendships that bring the novel to life. It is exquisitely emotional. You are never entirely sure who to trust while reading it, but you do always know that you feel deeply for them, one way or another.
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet is an unexpectedly moving story, full of characters more complicated and thought-provoking than you initially think. It delves into a strange, untold corner of the past where Mitchell picks apart a knot of contrasting cultures. It is fascinating, dangerous and definitely worth a read.
(03/11/15 2:21pm)
I did not realize the brilliance of Neil Gaiman’s writing until, attempting to recommend his novel Neverwhere to a friend, I realized what a difficult time I had describing the plot. This was not because the book was difficult to understand or fractured into excess subplots; to the contrary, it is wonderfully written with a driven, exciting story. I had trouble describing the book because of its sheer originality. There are many familiar elements like protagonists and antagonists, a murdered family, a quest for answers and revenge, an attempt to return home, a sprinkling of romance and friendships. After helping a young woman, a man named Richard Mayhew finds himself stuck in her bizarre and fantastical world. However, this is not Narnia, and Richard does not pass through a portal or ride a magical train away into this strange world. In fact, at first he does not physically go anywhere at all. Simply by interacting with the young woman named Door, he “falls through the cracks.”
In Neverwhere, there are two Londons, London Above, which is life as we know it, and London Below, which is a strange and semi-magical place occupied by people who have “fallen through the cracks” and are no longer truly visible to the people of London Above. However, London Below occupies the same physical space as London Above, fitting itself into the empty and unnoticed spaces. It takes up empty Tube trains, rooftops and Harrods after closing, imbuing them with strange and magical qualities. The people who live in London Below are likewise strange and sometimes magical. Door, for instance, has the ability to open any door, anywhere.
Most of Gaiman’s novels have a similar feeling. They are fantastical, but they rarely take the form of the epic quest, chosen-one-who-saves-the-world type of fantasy. They are usually dark, and tend to feature worlds such as London Below, which are simultaneously part of our world and separate from it. There is a disturbing quality to many of his novels and short stories. They go places you do not quite expect, were not prepared for, and are not sure that you like. His newest book, a short story collection called Trigger Warning, is specifically an exploration of that idea. While Gaiman is one of my favorite authors and I have, so far, immensely enjoyed everything I have read by him, Neverwhere is probably my favorite. For me there is something especially captivating about the story. It has an exciting page-turner plot, that is perhaps faster-paced than some of his books, but I think there is also something beguiling about the world of London Below. Perhaps it is its closeness to the real world and the ease with which Richard slips into it.
There is a clear bit of social commentary hovering on the edges of this novel. The characters who are not big-shots in London Below end up begging in the Tube from London Above and London Below inhabitants alike, barely visible to either. The idea of falling through the cracks is not simply a fantasy. It is, of course, a harsh and difficult reality for many people, especially in a big city. Richard is also new to London, having moved from Scotland, perhaps suggesting that it was much easier for him to fall through the cracks because he was already in an unfamiliar place without many friends or people to remember him, which is of course the case with many people who move from small towns to big cities. That said, I do not believe Gaiman in any way intended Neverwhere as commentary or allegory. While it leaves the reader something to ponder, it is not the focus of the novel at all.
One of the other reasons I particularly love this book are its characters. Richard and Door, the two protagonists of the book, spend most of it exploring London Below trying to find someone named Islington. Besides allowing the reader to get many different glimpses of London Below, this brings them into contact with any number of colorful characters, from the sarcastic Marquis de Carabas to the flamboyant Earl to the stoic and legendary Hunter. The characters and their various quirks and murky backgrounds are what truly brings the novel and the world that Gaiman creates to life. Even characters such as Croup and Vandemar, who fall neatly into the blundering henchmen stereotype, add a great deal of flavor to the story.
In the hands of a less skilled writer, this book could easily have collapsed into a boring pattern. The two main objectives of the novel – Richard’s quest to return to his home and Door’s quest to discover answers about her family’s murder – are broadly familiar ones. However, Gaiman’s incredibly original and occasionally unsettling world, coupled with his brilliantly vivid characters, is fascinating, unpredictable and thrilling.
(02/25/15 4:57pm)
Impressive archery is a frequent “wow” factor for the big screen. From Robin Hood to Legolas to Hawkeye, masters of this highly specialized weapon intrigue and entertain us, providing the opportunity for diverse and pretty badass fight choreography. In Bernard Cornwell’s book The Archer’s Tale, the real, historical archery masters come to life in a vivid, bloody painting.
Set in 14th century England and France, The Archer’s Tale follows the story of a young man named Thomas who joins the English army to seek revenge on the French after his town is raided, leaving him the only survivor. Thomas is one of the infamous English archers who use longbows, a far more deadly weapon than the crossbows used in France and the rest of Europe, and one of the biggest reasons England posed a major threat to France. They are known as the “devil’s horsemen” and are hated throughout France for the destruction they wreak on the countryside. Cornwell successfully evokes the dark reality of medieval warfare. Although the protagonists and narrative are fictional, most of the battles are lifted directly from history, making the backdrop to the action highly realistic. Cornwell does not romanticize the events, or shy away from the raping, burning, pillaging and slaughter that occurr. Yet he manages to make the characters who commit these horrors lively and enjoyable so that you root for them. They are not simply faceless monsters, although they are sometimes not especially well-developed. He does not demonize the French or the English. It is often jarring, in fact, to be reminded that these characters whose witty banter you enjoy on one page destroy dozens of people’s lives on the next.
Even Thomas, though he is presented as somewhat more restrained and level-headed in the violence relative to other characters and he is never explicitly identified as a rapist, is capable of his own fair share of pillaging, drunkenness, blasphemy and even cold-blooded murder. Though uncomfortable for a reader searching for good-at-heart protagonists, these characters would be unbelievable and unrealistic if they were written any other way. It would also be as bad and boring as a formulaic genre novel. Presenting the people committing the atrocities of war as the human beings that they are, no matter how violent and awful, is not only necessary for the accuracy of the story, but also a thought-provoking exercise important to every part of human history, including today.
One of the most impressive elements of the novel is Cornwell’s obviously extensive research. The battles and other major events involving more characters than just the protagonist are almost all based in historical fact. He also spends a great deal of time discussing the mechanics of archery. Although most of it is relevant, it could probably have been condensed, and certainly the level of detail included is not necessary to understanding the plot. The text occasionally gets lost in a technical tangent. It is a fantastic mini-history lesson on archery, if that intrigues you, but would probably seem boring to someone uninterested in the subject. Since the story is so strongly rooted in historical events and the importance of the longbow, I would not recommend it for someone who does not care for historical fiction. It does not require any particular foreknowledge of 14th century history to enjoy the book, but it is certainly more enjoyable if you have a least a vague interest in the era.
Something I particularly enjoyed in this novel was Thomas’s attitude as the protagonist. A major part of the plot is his promise to his dying father that he will recover a relic stolen from the church when their town was raided by the French. Despite this vow and the recurring instance of every other father or mentor figure reminding him he has a destiny to fulfill, Thomas remains reluctant and vaguely annoyed at the whole situation. He is not angsty or upset about being “chosen,” he just genuinely does not care and wishes other people would stop badgering him about it. Although his “destiny” does play a role throughout the novel and form part of the climax, Cornwell allows the novel to make fun of itself and subvert the weary Destiny trope, at least a little bit.
The Archer’s Tale offers a wonderfully detailed glimpse into the life of a 14th century English longbow archer. It is a bloody, dramatic story all the more interesting for being rooted in historical fact. Although it is probably not going to win many awards for literary value, the book is a page-turner. It is well-paced and occasionally shocking, with colorful characters and an engaging plotline. The research and commitment to accuracy is truly outstanding. Ultimately, it is a fun story with a history lesson on the side that is well worth the read.
(01/21/15 11:09pm)
Who doesn’t love dragons? (Well, apart from Bilbo Baggins.)
Naomi Novik’s rich and exciting Temeraire series is, at first, a basic concept. She writes about the Napoleonic Wars, but with dragons. Out of this simple premise Novik creates a complex, suspenseful and interesting world to explore. Although the series diverges from history at some points, it is clear Novik did her research. She successfully creates the atmosphere of an early 1800’s Britain from the deck of a Navy ship to the halls of aristocracy, seamlessly waving in new layers to integrate the existence of dragons.
The focus of this review is the first book in the series, His Majesty’s Dragon. It begins with the introduction of the protagonist, Captain William Laurence, a somewhat stiff-necked but devoutly loyal character. If not for happenstance, he would have been a largely unremarkable person in the grand scheme of things, as he possesses no special intelligence, inheritance or power, which makes for a refreshing change from the “chosen one” trope in fantasy and science fiction. This is not to say he is dull or underdeveloped as a character - to the contrary. He is wonderfully believable, as are most of Novik’s characters. He comes from a fairly rich family and serves in the Navy, basically happy with his lot in life. However, when his ship captures a dragon egg off of a French ship far from shore, he has to harness the newly hatched dragon, or it will not be serviceable in the British army. This makes him the dragon’s captain, and so he is thrust into Britain’s Aerial Corps, a group normally restricted to those who began training at age seven. The dragon, which he names Temeraire, turns out to be exceptionally intelligent and impressive in battle, so Laurence and Temeraire become an invaluable part of Britain’s defense against Napoleon.
Part of what makes this entire series brilliant is its world-building. The society is complex and realistic, filled with prejudice springing from misunderstanding on both sides. It does not confine itself to black-and-white situations or assign the majority of the human species a single viewpoint. The world is filled with characters who have varying opinions and degrees of open-mindedness, both inside the Corps and out. Laurence is an outsider to the Corps, but when he becomes a member he is also largely outcast from his previous society, both in the Navy and at home, leaving him to drift between identities. This unique situation means that Laurence begins to question assumptions and traditions on both sides. Through him, Novik skillfully tears into both fantastical and real social prejudices and constructs. The intelligence of dragons and their place as more than brute beasts is one of the questions and themes this novel raises, but so is sexism, especially in the military, as well as racism, colonialism and the problem of discipline versus innovation. Even the more fantastical debates would be reasonably easy to apply to any number of real-life marginalized groups.
None of these social commentaries, however, are the focus of the novel. Issues and differences have to be set aside because Napoleon is a far more pressing matter, and although Napoleon is depicted as a villain and tyrannous invader, it is clear that British society is far from perfect. This is not a battle of good versus evil. Novik’s particular brand of fantasy is a fully believable world that happens to include fanciful elements.
It is perfectly possible to sit back and enjoy His Majesty’s Dragon as an exciting war novel. It does begin a bit slowly, with multiple chapters of Laurence slowly moving towards his training base as he stops to say goodbye to friends and muses about what is to come along the way. Once he reaches his training base there is also a significant amount of time spent simply introducing the readers to characters and concepts. It could have been condensed a bit, but it was still interesting to read and did a great deal to establish Laurence and Temeraire as characters and their relationship, which is central to the whole series. Once it does begin to reach the more action-packed scenes, it remains highly engaging without resorting to rapid pacing or cheap cliffhangers. The first book also effectively sets up for the continuation of the series, but is self-contained and a perfectly enjoyable read without committing to all nine books.
His Majesty’s Dragon is a fantasy novel, but it is not genre fiction. It consciously avoids many of the more tired tropes and instead offers a truly well researched and well-planned original, complicated, convincing world. It is a fun, gripping story whether you typically enjoy fantasy or not.
(12/03/14 10:12pm)
Margaret George does not shy away from historical giants. The Elizabethan period was rich with these giants in politics, literature, philosophy and science. George tackles them all, exploring Raleigh, Shakespeare, Drake, Bacon and more through the eyes of Queen Elizabeth I and her cousin, Lettice Knollys.
This is typical of George’s novels, which include The Memoirs of Cleopatra, The Autobiography of Henry VIII and Mary Called Magdalene. In her latest work, Elizabeth I, she uses two first-person narrators, audaciously trying to get inside the head of an enigmatic monarch and her little-known relative. The novel is bold and it pays off. One of the major strengths of the story is the blending of the personal narratives with the political, a combination made possible by the intimacy of the first-person narration. It quickly becomes evident that although Elizabeth and Lettice perceive each other as rivals, they share many opinions and think in many of the same ways. Yet for the time period spanned by the novel, Lettice is banned from the court that Elizabeth presides over, giving the reader two characters with vastly different perspectives and access to different sets of information.
Upon starting the book, I was a bit disappointed to find that the story began already well into Elizabeth’s reign, skipping over her childhood, the reign of Queen Mary I (better known as Bloody Mary) and Elizabeth’s ascension to power entirely. The building action and climax of the novel focus primarily on the life of Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex and England’s long struggle with Spain and Catholicism. It was a smart move to limit the scope of the novel, and George certainly had more than enough material without adding more than explanatory paragraphs concerning Elizabeth’s younger years. Still, including such a formative part of the history of both Elizabeth and England itself could have added a great deal of depth to the character. Elizabeth and Lettice both lament the loss of a time when they were friendlier with each other, but they start the book already embittered, so this loss is not fully felt by the reader. Similarly, Elizabeth has a great deal of affection for a number of her older courtiers, particularly Robert Dudley, that the reader does not necessarily feel or understand because their past relationship is only summarized briefly, if at all. It can also be difficult to keep characters straight when George interchanges the use of last names, first names and titles.
That said, Elizabeth I is an excellent book. George has a particular ability to bring to life these baffling historical giants. Her descriptions provide detail about build, posture, wrinkles, bad habits and fashions, her dialogue gives them voices that make them relatable and real and her plot makes sense of their actions. George draws the parallels between Lettice and Elizabeth beautifully. Their interactions with Robert Devereux are some of the book’s strongest moments. Neither of them are blind to his faults, but both want to forgive each other and believe in Devereux, showing their similarities both in political shrewdness and emotionality. The interplay of these two sides of the women is what makes the novel compelling.
Of course, George takes a fair number of artistic liberties, both in her presumptions of how the women felt on specific matters and in certain cases with actual historical events. Some of these I personally find too fanciful, although to my knowledge everything she included could possibly have happened. In any case, the story needs to be read as historical fiction, not as a perfectly correct recounting of facts. It is ultimately about trying to understand two extraordinary women as people. The fact that they did exist and helped shape history is amazing, but almost secondary to the story. As a novel, the book works wonderfully.
George’s choice to use Lettice Knollys as a narrator for half the book was perhaps the most formative part of the novel. Unlike the title character, few people know her by name and even fewer would be able to give a lengthy account of her life and character. The decision to use her probably sprung, at least in part, from the book’s focus on Devereux, but it was also clever for another reason. It gives a perspective on Elizabeth I’s life that few people would know anything about. Although the reader may well be familiar with the writings of Francis Bacon or the life story of Sir Walter Raleigh, Lettice would almost certainly be new. And she is a wonderful, layered character. She always has her own opinions, she is endlessly planning for herself and her son and she has a complex relationship with Elizabeth that holds tension throughout the novel. George clearly did her research and made several shrewd decisions about what to include in her novel that left us with an incredible story, populated by fantastically complex and fully human characters.
(10/29/14 8:30pm)
No one but Jonathan Safran Foer – who spoke at the Middlebury College Commencement in 2013 – could have written Everything Is Illuminated. Of course, this is true to a degree of any piece of writing, but one can imagine that if another author was, for example, given the outline of an Agatha Christie novel and asked to write it, the story would remain intact. Not so with Everything Is Illuminated. Foer’s unique, extraordinary style is integral to the novel at every level, clear in the plot, the characterization, the emotional investment and the terribly beautiful series of climaxes. Foer’s writing shapes them all.
It is not a comfortable novel to read. If you are new to Foer, I would recommend possibly starting with his other famous novel, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Although the writing in the latter is not by any means conventional, the plot and the general sense of the novel are far more straightforward. In Everything Is Illuminated, Foer never lets you rest. It stretches across time, from the crash of a wagon in a tiny unnamed town in the middle of Ukraine in 1791 to the troubled family life of a teenage boy in modern-day Odessa. The novel will jump ahead of itself, flashback, flash forward, scrounge up scraps of the past and leave you dizzy wondering what year it is, or if it even really matters. That which is comic Foer turns poignant, and that which is odd Foer makes comic, with moments of drama appearing when you least expect them. The reader careens from one emotion to the next, never entirely sure what the experience is or should be and eventually coming out the other side confused but not untouched. The semi-memoir, semi-fictional quality of the book, too, leaves one unsteady. Was it real? Was it fiction? Or both? Or perhaps it is fiction, but what is important is the greater literary truth that it expresses.
On the surface, the story does not seem all that complicated. A young American man named, coincidentally, Jonathan Safran Foer, comes to the Ukraine with an old photograph searching for the woman he believes saved his grandfather from the Nazi’s. It has the potential for a satisfying and moving tale, laced with the humor of the difficulty of finding vegetarian meals in Eastern Europe and the slightly inept translator coping with his cranky grandfather as chauffeur and the clueless American client. Foer, however, makes this story far, far more.
No sooner do you open the book than you are greeted with “An Overture to the Commencement of a Very Rigid Journey,” an introductory chapter that begins with “My legal name is Alexander Perchov. But all of my many friends dub me Alex, because that is a more flaccid-to-utter version of my legal name.” Roughly half of the novel is told from the perspective of Alex, who is the occasionally incompetent translator mentioned above. All of his sections are similar to those first few lines. His English is awkward at best, at times downright wrong and confusing at its worst. Yet Foer’s genius shines through as he uses his narrator’s language to communicate tone and feeling in a way not possible with traditional, proper English. Alex’s stilted repetition of the translations between Ukrainians and the “hero,” Jonathan Safran Foer, conveys the confusion and awkwardness of the back-and-forth better than any description could do. His gradual loss of punctuation, paragraph breaks, and even indications of who is speaking catches the reader in the stream of action so that one is as much in the moment as the characters. Foer’s use of language transcends its normal confinements to communicate in ways we encounter when speaking in everyday life, but do not expect to find in a novel.
Alternating with Alex’s chapters are those written in Foer’s voice. In these, he does use proper grammar and vocabulary, but his style is still far from traditional. His story ranges from the mundane to the almost fantastical, from passages of farcical characterization to strange and beautiful descriptions of love and painted hands and sex and dreams and death. Through it all, the novel maintains the ability to surprise. The present and recent and distant pasts interweave in ways one does not expect, but Foer is not one to tie everything together with a neat bow. The ending does not leave everything resolved or even trace each character succinctly back to his or her roots. Instead, I think Foer captures something much more truthful, beautiful and sad about the past. There are connections where one does not expect them, and there are none where one hopes to find them. The resolutions the “hero” wanted to find are not there, but other ones are.
Everything Is Illuminated is, above everything, hard to pin down. It is difficult to know what is truth or fiction, whether to laugh or cry, what is past or present and even who the characters are. Its title is misleading. Yet it is precisely because of its ambiguity that this novel can capture you, whisk you away to Ukraine, and leave you moved by its passion and beauty.
(10/01/14 8:23pm)
When the Emperor Was Divine is slow. That is not to say that it is boring or disengaging. To the contrary, its slowness is a powerful stylistic choice by author Julie Otsuka. The novel follows the lives of four members of a Japanese-American family struggling through the racism and gross injustice of the internment camps during and immediately after World War II. While it is in some senses a war novel, there are no explosions, no firefights, no daring espionage or close calls, no heroics. Otsuka tells the story of an entirely different kind of war, one fought against prejudice, injustice, racism and the conflict of loyalty to two different countries. In this war, the family does not fight back, at least not in the way we tend to think of fighting. They simply continue, day by day, to try and live their lives as best they can while the U.S. government tears their world down around them.
A great deal of the book is occupied with waiting: waiting for the move-out day, waiting for a train to arrive, waiting for the war to end. The family’s struggle to fill the empty hours is matter-of-fact and mundane. Yet, whenever you may be on the verge of forgetting the family’s new reality, Otsuka delivers a reminder all the more jarring for being said in the same pragmatic manner as the rest of her book. Their time in the internment camp is largely characterized by passages such as the following:
“Now when the girl undressed — always, the quick flick of the wrists and then the criss-crossing arms and the yellow dress billowing up over her head like a parachute in reverse — she asked him to turn away. She told him about the seasons and hibernation. She said that any day now she’d be bleeding. ‘It’ll be red,’ she said. She told him that Franklin Masuda had a terrible case of athlete’s foot — ‘He showed me’ — and that someone had stuffed a newborn baby into a trash can in Block 29.”
Passages like this are the essence of what makes Otsuka’s writing so affecting. She reminds us that life never stops – that despite the camps and the war, people continue struggling through. Girls grow up and get their periods for the first time. Children gross each other out with infected feet. Events such as these would be happening to everyone all over the country and the world. The difference is that to the girl and her brother, a baby in a trash can is no more or less interesting than any of these other occurrences. It is simply part of their life. The juxtaposition between the ordinary and the grotesque brings the novel and its characters to life in all its heart-breaking, gritty detail.
Another element that makes this novel quietly brilliant is its refusal to stop at the end of the war. It would have been easy to end with the reuniting of the family and a hopeful look to the future now that the war is over. But Otsuka’s novel struggles, more than anything, to tell the story how it really might have been lived, by those who were never anywhere near the front lines, and yet had the war brought to them all the same. So it continues, past what we expect to be the happy ending. It explores not only the hardships of wartime itself, but also the aftermath of neighbors never coming home, slurs scrawled on the walls of homes and sidelong glances from people who used to be friends. It drives home to both readers and characters that life can never be what it was before.
The story is told from five different perspectives: the mother, the daughter, the son, the children together and, briefly, the father. Yet, while almost all of the side characters have names, none of the family members do. They are rich, vibrant characters, effortlessly brought to life by Otsuka’s attention to detail, and yet they remain nameless and largely faceless. The narration also shifts, about three-quarters of the way through the novel, from third to first person. It is an upsetting, unexpected transition that wrenches you closer and deeper into these characters’ lives. The characters themselves are oddly dichotomous: somehow simultaneously Every Person, and yet also particular, highly empathetic characters. Like the plodding mundanity, interrupted by moments of shock, that characterizes Otsuka’s style and sets the atmosphere of her novel, these characters are a powerful stylistic choice. A cursory glance leaves them characterized as nothing more than nameless, faceless Japanese-Americans, numbers on a camp roster. However, even a few minutes of closer reading reveals dozens of details and unique qualities for each character. When the Emperor Was Divine is not a novel for plot and action. What little action there is passes slowly. It is, however, rich with detail and extraordinarily real.
(09/10/14 2:04pm)
Dystopias seem to be “in.”
The Giver, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, The Maze Runner and Divergent have all been adapted into films within the past twelve months, and plenty of other novels of similar themes populate the shelves, from 1984 to Clockwork Orange to Oryx and Crake. They often include adventure, sometimes romance; they cover the range from fantastical futuristic technology to worlds eerily close to our own, and they end with anything from a total reshaping of society to a return to the status quo. But they all imagine a dismal future for the human race.
One of the major themes of dystopian literature is to provide commentary on current government and social structures and a warning to society: this is what we could become. While there is nothing wrong with leaving out that message and choosing to read and write adventure or romance novels that use dystopias as nothing more than a setting and a plot device, you lose some of the depth of the genre in doing so. Books like Divergent – a less original version of The Hunger Games trilogy with more sci-fi – are not truly believable futures. It requires a great suspension of disbelief to envision this society existing at all, let alone in our future. For a more compelling dystopian novel, it is typically more effective to have a society one can imagine came out of our present world. Dave Eggers’ The Circle has all of the commentary and believability of some of the best dystopian literature; but, rather than being set in a dystopia, it explores the transition to one.
There is only one major difference between the world of The Circle and the real world: the invention of the company Circle, which has erased anonymity on the Internet. The creation of an algorithm by a young genius who wanted to combine his online accounts so as to stop remembering twelve different usernames and passwords led to Circle, an online account now necessary for any Internet activity. Everyone online now has a single account, and they must be honest. There can be no more anonymous hateful messages or trolling, because everything links back to your true identity. It is not a huge jump to imagine this occurring in the real world; it could happen in less than five years.
The Circle follows the character development of Mae, a new employee at Circle. Her change over the course of the novel is chilling. Circle changes her incrementally, so that the differences are often hardly noticeable until the reader stops to compare her to an earlier point in the book. The foreshadowing appears in the tour on her first day. There are glass walls everywhere, and dorms on the “campus” of the offices so that employees never have to leave. She is slowly pulled farther and farther into the life of Circle and their social media, and slowly loses her privacy entirely. It is written with finesse: she pauses and backtracks and is reluctant, and yet continues forward. This is what makes her development terrifyingly believable; this is how you make someone build a dystopia. It happens in bits and pieces, and most importantly, Mae and everyone else at Circle believe they are creating Utopia.
It is a key element of The Circle that many of the ideas put forward seem like good things theoretically or in moderation. Mae’s boyfriend is working on a system that would protect children from abductions; a student presents a method that would alert the police to cases of domestic abuse. The world of The Circle is puissant because you catch yourself agreeing and struggling to articulate why the citizens’ ideas are wrong and what, exactly, should be done instead. The problems they are addressing are all real problems today, and they believe they are providing solutions. In case you were not clear on the book’s moral stance, however, Eggers makes it just extreme enough, and just obvious enough, to show that their solutions may be worse than the original problems.
There are two struggles in The Circle. One is the right to privacy and anonymity – at what point is the surveillance too much? If the tradeoff for more privacy is more homicide, rape, kidnappings and abuse, then where should we draw the line? The other struggle, exemplified by the isolated living conditions, is remembering a life outside of the Internet, where you do not need to document and share everything you do with the world.
I am no snob about technology. I certainly spend more time on Facebook than I should. What Eggers does best, though, is acknowledge the value of the very things he condemns. There is value in instantaneous communication across the globe, and there is value in sharing your experiences for those who cannot have them. There is value in a more open world, where information is public. However, Eggers says, some things ought to be kept to yourself.