One chapter, one character, one generation and there's a fantastic history lesson. Some of the chapters were more engaging and memorable than others (One chapter, one character, one generation and there's a fantastic history lesson. Some of the chapters were more engaging and memorable than others (for me!) so there's something for everyone: the new bride from the city with newfangled vegetable ideas, the widow who gives up after the famine and emigrates, the happy child wandering away towards the swamp, the outlaw brother living in the forest, the violent family father at the end of his life, the forester striding in with modern techniques for clear-cutting... I recognised myself in the latest chapters: I'm writing this review in an old house where I can see the marks of the builders' skills in the very walls, but my own handywoman's capabilities fall far short of keeping it going. I don't have Turtschaninoff's ancient blood ties to the land, or the novel's magic realism, but I recognise her dilemma of land vs contemporary life. ...more
Barbara Kingsolver does a great job of describing environmentalism and climate change from the point of view of one of the US's have-nots; a characterBarbara Kingsolver does a great job of describing environmentalism and climate change from the point of view of one of the US's have-nots; a character the likes of whom are often labelled rednecks or described as egocentric, frightened idiots, there to be manipulated. The novel reads as if Kingsolver has this kind of background herself and is setting the record straight with a mix of empathy and despair. Her small-town characters have been left behind by the economy and the central government. Their public services and income opportunities are being gouged out by the neoliberal world order in a way that's been described in more exotic terms in speculative fiction (for example, The Peripheral, Snow Crash or The Bone Clocks). But these characters still have agency, opinions, preferences, secrets. The main character, Dellarobia, manages to squirm out of her disempowered position of unskilled, unemployable housewife being bossed around by her in-laws thanks to the novel-worthy turns of events. But I imagine that there's no near-miraculous appreciative stranger turning up to enlighten and employ most such people in real life. The scene where Dellarobia answers the "change your lifestyle to combat climate change!" questionnaire is delicious. We might associate conservative, religious rural people in big trucks with causing climate change, but here Kingsolver shows that if you're poor, you don't fly, you don't waste fuel, you don't shop unnecessarily. Any one of us who's taken an international flight pollutes more than they do, regardless of how anti-emissions we might profess to be. ...more
Whoooooaaa what was going on here?? I approached this as a quirky thought experiment by the author: what would it take for someone to sleep for a yearWhoooooaaa what was going on here?? I approached this as a quirky thought experiment by the author: what would it take for someone to sleep for a year, how would you actually do it. It didn't quite convince as a story, only maybe as an allegory of the depth of malaise in today's post-capitalist instagram society. The narrator is the Hollywood dream of good-looking, thin, rich, enjoying a lavish pile of undeserved privilege; of course she must suffer. She recognises this, inhabits the role with gusto (down to torturing herself with a hideous lover) but also opts out, by the abovementioned sleeping for a year. Parts of the novel are bleakly funny: the psychiatrist scenes. But others are a bit too sad to laugh at: the friend Reva (presumably the author's alter ego?). And the scrape-the-barrel(of your self-esteem) sex scenes are just gratuitous. I actually surprised myself by finishing it. In the end what kept me reading was technical curiosty about how the hell Moshfegh would manage to write herself through the obsacle-course premise she set herself....more
Deserves the hype! I was very impressed (and entertained) by Circe. I enjoyed the way Miller describes the nymphs and gods as Hollywood starlets or USDeserves the hype! I was very impressed (and entertained) by Circe. I enjoyed the way Miller describes the nymphs and gods as Hollywood starlets or US highshool movie mean girls or Instagram wannabe influencers - pretty, petty, shallow, ruthless, terrified, their only currency their looks and their gossip, one snub away from oblivion, all surface and no depth. I also liked the way Circe is slow to grow into her powers and independence - there are no quick fixes or sudden empowerment here they way you see in some YA or fantasy novels ("I found the magic goblet and look! now I can do anything!"). Circe doesn't have a mentor or teacher and the way Miller describes her slow hit-and-miss learning rings very true. (The other really vivid section is the "single mum of a cranky baby" part - the rawness of the writing makes me think it must come from hard-won experience... I sense some bitterness when Circe explains that she only pulls it off because she's immortal and doesn't need to sleep.) And although most of the action takes place on Circe's little island where she doesn't have company, it never gets boring - quite a narrative feat. Another interesting feature of the novel is Odysseus' character, his contradictions and demons: is going home to his goats and his wife really what this mastermind of the wars and a dozen adventures really wants? Is he really so accident-prone that it takes him twelve years to get home, or is he procrastinating? I'm not very au fait wth Greek mythology so I was a little worried that the book wouldn't make sense without a Classical education: not so. (I now have the opposite problem, that most of my knowledge of Greek mythology comes from prose re-workings like Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad, and this.) Thanks also to Islington Library for making Circe available! ...more
This was an enjoyable historical fiction (OR IS IT MAGIC??) novel that also deals with heavy themes. The protagonist Fleetwood's husband seems to realThis was an enjoyable historical fiction (OR IS IT MAGIC??) novel that also deals with heavy themes. The protagonist Fleetwood's husband seems to really love her - but he also betrays her for cold calculation, lust, friendship with another man... or seems to... and she, Fleetwood, doesn't react in the kneejerk Hollywood way we'd expect from lesser storytellers. Is it because she's living in 1610? Or because the author is saying something a bit more interesting about human nature? Regardless, that ambiguity in the relationship is very well described and would make the book worth reading by itself. But there's more! Fleetwood, the uncomfortable mistress of a disdainful household (and only seventeen years of age), has a precious friendship with the mysterious Alice. That brings in a storyline about witches, based on the real-life Pendle witch trials. I didn't know about that bit of history, but you could tell that we're reading about real people just because sevearl characters share the same first names... which novelists tend to avoid. (Unless they're Charlotte Bronte.) Halls never resolves whether there's magic involved, or just coincidences, herbs and the placebo effect - excellently done. She manages to evoke an atmosphere where the protagoist has no way of telling whether the accusations against women are nonsense, or righteous justice for horrific crimes. My only quibble with the book is that I doubt whether ladies in 1610 were allowed to be galloping around the forests by themselves, and Fleetwood's freedom of movement is key to a lot of the plot. But then again, what do I know? I checked this out of the library both as an e-audiobook and e-book, and listened to it while working. The reader was good at the different voices but I don't think she was that good at reading. I'd recommend the read-it-yourself version.
I didn't get this book. It's all about the lake and how it sort of seeps into the lives of all the characters... I guess... I forced myself to finish I didn't get this book. It's all about the lake and how it sort of seeps into the lives of all the characters... I guess... I forced myself to finish it and came away with an impression of wading through a sucking swamp with smelly cold water wicking through my clothes. I couldn't empathise with the main character Ruthie, or Sylvie, or Lucille for that matter... but I enjoyed the insouciance of Sylvie, one of the most free-spirited characters of all the books I've ever read. She reeeeally doesn't give a flying fuck about convention, or common sense. Hm. Now I'll read other peoples' reviews and see what it was that I missed!...more
This is mostly fun but a bit tedious nonetheless... It has a meta-structure of the novelist's own (?fictional?)diary notes interspersed with novel chaThis is mostly fun but a bit tedious nonetheless... It has a meta-structure of the novelist's own (?fictional?)diary notes interspersed with novel chapters, where you see the writer recycle characters and situations from his 'notes'. He also gives away the twist of the story in the second chapter. On the plus side, the many vignettes are enjoyable and the descriptions are often innovative and poetic. It's a series of wonderful, magical-realist description of the edges of southern Africa but it doesn't quite hang together. My main annoyance with this novel was that none of the characters have a voice of their own. It's supposed to have multiple narrators but they all sound the same. "The Book of Chameleons" was a more gratifying read....more
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