On the surface, this is a tale of forbidden love that takes place in the fictional Cambridge college ofJust perfect. What a beautiful, beautiful book.
On the surface, this is a tale of forbidden love that takes place in the fictional Cambridge college of St Angelicus in the early 20th century. The story is fittingly framed between two historical events: antipope Benedict XIII’s role in the Papal Schism of 1378, and Ernest Rutherford’s discovery of the nuclear atom in 1911.
Instead of mostly relying on symbols like in The Bookshop, here Fitzgerald pads the story out with the exploration of several themes, the two main overarching ones being the limits of science in human experience (perhaps best encapsulated by Hamlet’s ‘There are more things in heaven and earth...’) and the entry of women into worlds theretofore exclusive to men (heavily symbolised by a specific event at the end of the book).
These themes are further milked through recurrent sub-themes, such as the academic mind vs the streetwise mind, women as free individuals vs women as housewives, etc.
The early suffragettes and the problems faced by women in the workplace, when forced to interact with men who still don’t see them as equals, are subjects dealt with subtly but with a sting. Seedy at times, but never pathetic.
Fitzgerald’s mastery of language and specialised lingoes makes the experience all the more pleasant. One moment she’s telling a chilling ghost story, the next a physics lecture as far up its own arse as to be convincingly academic. One part recounts the routine of a London nurse, with detailed lists of the medicines and apothecary trinkets involved, then another deals with matters of the law written in legalese so convincing it makes you feel your wallet tighten.
All this could only be made possible with hours on end of patient, prudent and passionate historical research. I often found myself wondering where she learnt all these titbits and sort of wished for a bibliography at the end.
I could go on. I’ll wrap it up by sharing the first paragraph, which has to be one of the best openings to a book I’ve read in the past year:
How could the wind be so strong, so far inland, that cyclists coming into the town in the late afternoon looked more like sailors in peril? This was on the way into Cambridge, up Mill Road past the cemetery and the workhouse. On the open ground to the left the willow-trees had been blown, driven and cracked until their branches gave way and lay about the drenched grass, jerking convulsively and trailing cataracts of twigs. The cows had gone mad, tossing up the silvery weeping leaves which were suddenly, quite contrary to all their experience, everywhere within reach. Their horns were festooned with willow boughs. Not being able to see properly, they tripped and fell. Two or three of them were wallowing on their backs, idiotically, exhibiting vast pale bellies intended by nature to be always hidden. They were still munching. A scene of disorder, tree-tops on the earth, legs in the air, in a university city devoted to logic and reason.
Too often does the fantasy genre feel contented with a good concept at the expense of style. In Titus Groan, Peake's unrelentingly descriptive and aspToo often does the fantasy genre feel contented with a good concept at the expense of style. In Titus Groan, Peake's unrelentingly descriptive and asphyxiatingly atmospheric writing is as much a part of the experience as the concept, and one wouldn't be complete without the other. His style is a velvet glove tailored to fit a clammy, cadaverous hand.
This is a perfect example of a book impervious to film adaptation. One can take the story to the big screen, sure, and it might even be great, but the book will remain unaffected, as it offers an experience that goes beyond story.
(In my mind, the perfect film adaptation would be something stylistically akin to Lynch’s Eraserhead: a twitchy, heavy, contained, slightly off-putting and yet utterly magnetic grotesquerie.)
One thing I couldn’t stop thinking is that Gormenghast castle and its environs feel so real. I’m not even sure the concept ‘worldbuilding’ applies here, because everything in this world feels like it was built long ago and we are merely stepping in to visit.
The characters that inhabit this gigantic castle are so lonely and duty-bound by the rigid traditions they adhere to with Talmudic fastidiousness, they hardly know how to express their feelings to one another, and when forced to talk, they do so in nervous tautological outbursts.
With its snail's pace and ridiculously overlong descriptions, this book has no right to be as entertaining as it is. I feel like Peake is getting away with murder, and we the dumbstruck readers acquiesce like rubbernecked voyeurs....more
This is a book about jealousy, death, milfs and tea. At its core, though, lies an exploration of ritual and tradition. That's Kawabata for you. His boThis is a book about jealousy, death, milfs and tea. At its core, though, lies an exploration of ritual and tradition. That's Kawabata for you. His book are like essays wrapped up in torrid telenovelas.
Kawabata is old-school Japan at its best. His books invariably celebrate tradition. Even his spare writing style is a sort of poignant demonstration of how much meaning can be packed into the traditional kanji in which he writes.
So in Thousand Cranes it was nice to see him using the Japanese Tea Ceremony as a vehicle for grappling with the meaning of ritual and tradition: why we pass them down the generations, how we attach meaning to ritual objects, how we seek traces of former owners in these guiltless objects, and how these objects outlive us:
When you see the bowl, you forget the defects of the old owner. Father’s life was only a very small part of the life of a tea bowl.
We don’t want to let go of the past, but sometimes the past is too heavy to bear. So we turn memory into action and thus dilute our grief in repetition.
This is the third Kawabata I read and they’ve all been five-starers for me. I’m a fanboy. Even though he writes about an antiquated, heavily patriarchal world I don’t identify with at all, I can’t help reading his books with anything but sheer delight. He explores his themes by dancing around them, glancing at them in different lights, peeking at them from behind curtains, but never explicitly addressing them. Everything is in the subtext.
Also, his execution manages to feel both surgically precise and ethereally evocative. He’ll often convey moods or set a scene with these crisp descriptive passages that feel almost like haikus in prose form:
Though it was broad daylight, rats were scurrying about in the hollow ceiling. A peach tree was in bloom near the veranda.
Never had international trade looked so much like symbiosis.
Embassytown is a generous serving of yummy brainfood titillating with novum and teeming wNever had international trade looked so much like symbiosis.
Embassytown is a generous serving of yummy brainfood titillating with novum and teeming with grotesque alien life forms. I’m in love.
I mean, you know you’re reading a good book when you’re just over a third of the way in and you’re horrified and appalled and keep thinking this can’t possibly get any worse and it consistently does to the point where it becomes borderline depressing and yet you never lose faith because at all times you feel that the author knows exactly what he’s doing and that this isn’t an aimless snowball of self-indulgence but a meticulously composed symphony of horror vacui and despair tumbling purposefully towards a very specific premeditated conclusion.
If you’re into languages or linguistics, Embassytown offers a lot to chew on. I was constantly fascinated by Miéville’s ability to seamlessly incorporate semiotics and theory of language into the story and not have it come across as experimental.
I got a very gratifying Solaris vibe from the first third of the book, when we're presented with the near-impossibility of fully understanding, let alone establishing communication, with an alien life form so different from our own.
Anyway, I know I’ve read a five-star book when I can't do more than babble enthusiastic gibberish at the end. I’m happy this man exists and I’m looking forward to reading more of his stuff. (By the way, you should check out interviews with China Miéville on YouTube; he’s not only a gifted storyteller with an elephantine imagination, but also a really cool and eloquent guy.)...more
Here goes a plot synopsis in the form a JOKE SETUP The last woman on Earth sits naked and menstruating in front of a typewriter. PUNCHMy God. This book.
Here goes a plot synopsis in the form a JOKE SETUP The last woman on Earth sits naked and menstruating in front of a typewriter. PUNCHLINE Her perception of the world is based on Wittgensteinian logical atomism.
Now seriously, if I had to explain it to a three-year-old, I’d say: she lives in a world that exists inside her head, and unlike our world, which is made of atoms, her world is made of facts.
I’m not very good with kids.
But so anyway, the manuscript she produces, i.e., this book, is an exploration of what it would be like to inhabit the world described by Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.
This takes a while to come to terms with.
When I first started reading it, at times I couldn’t help thinking that the book’s deeply strange narrative voice sounded like one big 'literally' joke, or like a memoir written by Drax from Guardians of the Galaxy.
But then, as you slowly piece together the grated slices of story (insofar as there is one), you begin to better understand the narrator’s situation and the implications of her worldview, and what originally seemed a quaint and stilted writing technique suddenly becomes purposeful existential crisis fuel.
It might sound dull and pretentious, but I honestly believe this book is far from being impenetrable post-Derridean nonsense. It could have easily fallen into the literary entrapments of deconstructionism (for which I have very little patience), but it still manages to have heart thanks to the humanity of Kate, the protagonist, who the more you learn about, the more you root for and really just want to hug.
Her notion that nothing outside of language (okay, sorry Ludwig, nothing outside of 'fact') is real, makes for some oddly tense reading. Every word matters. No matter how mundane or innocuous the fact she is stating (from our perspective), in the little/big world inside her head it carries all the weight and seriousness of removing a single block from the lower levels of a Jenga palace.
This isn’t a book for everyone. I do believe it benefits from some minimal knowledge of the Tractatus to fully appreciate what the author is going for. That isn’t to say you won’t enjoy it if you aren’t familiar with Wittgenstein’s work, but you certainly have to be a patient reader and have a taste for experimental narratives.
BONUS: There’s an afterword by David Foster Wallace, and any excuse is a good excuse to buy a book containing an obscure Foster Wallace text geeking out over one of his favourite books....more
This book is long but taut as a harp string and intricate as a Swiss watch.
Unpredictable magic of lovecraftian proportions, wry and witty parlour dramThis book is long but taut as a harp string and intricate as a Swiss watch.
Unpredictable magic of lovecraftian proportions, wry and witty parlour drama, immersive historical accuracy, an Austen-like 19th-century narrator who can’t keep her opinions to herself, characters with personalities so complex you feel they could walk into your house at any minute (special shout-out to Mr Norrell, who I alternately loved and loathed throughout the course of the book), and ultimately a deep exploration of English mores, culture and history.
I found the book’s pacing to be andante, but never lento. Once you get used to its flow, it’s just fun, fun, fun, fun fun.
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