More Book Reviews That I’m Just Getting To Now…
I know…I know….some of these books I read about two months ago…and then when it came to blog, I just became wrapped up in other things.
- Astonishing Spashes of Colour
by Clare Morrall
I remember putting this book on a list of books I wanted to read soon after I found out it was a finalist for the Booker Prize. The story really captures the increasingly fragmented mind of a woman who loses her grip on the reality of family and tries to come to terms with the baby she lost. It was actually a bit unnerving for me as her writing style is somewhat similar to my own in the second book I wrote (I don’t even try to get them published so don’t ask.) and it definitely delves into a prominent characteristic of experimental fiction in the sense that the perspective you are getting can’t be truly trusted. It is one of a woman truly on the verge of a nervous breakdown. What’s painful for the reader is that, especially more towards the beginning, we can see her rationalizations and her good intentions go completely awry and it continues to get more difficult for her to explain why she does the things she does. Yet, the reader does overall understand what is going on and feels the tremendous stress of a life here.What is also painful is the fact that the main character doesn’t use some of the resources she has. She does reach out and seek help as well as answers from brothers and her father but it is somewhat perplexing to read about the relationship she has with her husband, who she lives nearby but not with and who she avoids answering telephone calls from even when she knows she needs and loves him. In some ways, in her inability to cope, she distances herself from those who may actually help comfort her.
Overall, the flow of the language and the metaphors are rich and fulfilling and it was a worthy read. Even though in some ways it has to do with a descent into almost madness, the plot progresses as well. It’s definitely an engaging read.
- Youth
It’s always a bit of a journey reading Coetzee or Nadine Gordimer because you travel to these towns in South Africa and really get more of a sense of what life and the culture is like there. Youth is definitely the least political of the three novels I have read of Coetzee, which also include Disgrace and Waiting for the Barbarians. Set in the early sixties, the main character goes from student in South Africa to a very early computer programmer in London. He is a real drifter who connects more with the women in films and novels than the ones who give themselves to him in real life. And…he’s also quite a cad, which he freely admits. When one of his young loves becomes pregnant, for example, he does the very least which is to drive her to the illegal abortion clinic and drive her home. He visits her while she is healing only for an absolute sense of obligation with no actual empathy or true feelings involved. He dares get jealous when he expects a woman he himself is cheating on may be cheating on him. He takes advantage of his cousin’s virginal friend and postures himself sleeping purposefully so that she will not stay. And, in the back of his mind all the while, you get the sense that what he’s really thinking is that he’s on a slow decline towards death (Death for him involves a big house with a wife and that type of lifestyle.) He doesn’t really see the point in living and isn’t going anywhere, which he freely admits himself.
Where the book delves into politics is when it talks of how he is treated differently in London because he is from South Africa and his struggle to reconcile this background of his. But unlike Disgrace, it doesn’t really address the violent and dangerous climate in South Africa. The book pales in comparison because the main character doesn’t really grow in his thinking and actions, either. Disgrace was very powerful in the argument it made for the capacity for positive human change in my opinion and this does the opposite. It’s also a challenge for the reader to really connect with this main character. You just want to shout to him to get with it and connect with other people; to stop just going through the rote motions of his life. It also, on some levels, doesn’t altogether make much sense why he can’t feel something very powerful. After all, he’s an artist and a poet and his trips to the library occupy a significant amount of time. I found the book overall lacking relative to Coetzee’s others, unfortunately.
- The Ecstatic
I picked this book up used on a whim without knowing anything about it because I read the inside back cover where it talked about how ectatatic has been a term used in ages past in varying areas (he speaks of London and Bengal specifically) for people whose actions did not make sense to the rest of the community of people they were living amongst. It seems as if the author set out to create a book filled with a family of ecstatics. They are misfits even amongst themselves living in Queens NYC. The main character is a hard worker with no real plans or goals. He has some college education but chooses manual labor jobs such as moving furniture and house cleaning instead. He is at sometimes just a huge puddle of a man who forgets to bathe for long periods and craves a woman. You end up feeling very sorry for him the majority of the time. He addresses some issues within his own African American culture in the form of beauty pageants and stereotypes but there is also an undercurrent of subtle racism he feels towards other minorities in NYC, which was very unnerving and bothered me.
At it’s best, the characters are honest and human, which is to say, utterly flawed.
- Immortality
In the beginning of this book, Milan Kundera sits by a pool observing and sees a woman who forgets her age and place and gestures a wave to a young lifeguard. This, as Kundera admits, becomes the basis of the main character. Yet, you can’t help but to forget that she’s just an invention when you journey with her through the struggles of her life. The narrative weaves in and out of the presentness of the text and this character and the accounts of the relationship Goethe has with Bettina. Just in case that was too easy to follow, Kundera also throws in some afterlife scenes between Goethe and Hemingway, who Goethe has chosen to spend his after-life with, as well as Goethe’s after-life trial for good measure.
I’m going to be honest, this book depressed me tremendously. It deals with identity and mortality in a way I was not ready for and when you read something you are not ready to read, it can have some deleterious effects on your mental well being. Perhaps the most troubling for me was when Kundera touches on what I’ve always had difficulty with, which is to say, the simple image of self. Early on, p.14, Kundera’s main character delves into this concept:A face is like a name. It must have happened some time towards the end of my childhood: I kept looking in the mirror for such a long time that I finally believed that what I was seeing was my self. My recollection of this period is very vague, but I know the discovery of self must have been intoxicating. Yet there comes a time when you stand in front of a mirror and ask yourself: this is my self? And why? Why did I want to identify with this? What do I care about this face? And at that moment everything starts to crumble. Everything starts to crumble.
I’ve read that passage about ten times now. It’s exactly how I have always felt. In addition, I can never seem to get a firm grasp on any kind of visual identity because I feel it’s always changing. I have no way of explaining this, though. My appearance certainly doesn’t change drastically from day to day. I stay at the same weight (and height obviously) and I part my hair the same way. But, take cutting hair….I cut my hair again on Saturday. When I say cut, I mean trim an inch off. Certainly not anything drastic. And yet, I felt as always that my very identity was in a state of flux. I wonder if this makes sense to anyone else but me.
The other major idea that the book addresses is the idea of gestures being the one truly unique thing we as humans have left as an expression of unique individual identity. Yet, gestures become echoed like phrases of speech by different characters.
Another minor theme Kundera explores within this text is the relationship between politician and journalist. A quote on p.116 captures this best:
The politician is dependent on the journalist. On whom are the journalists dependent? On imagologues. The imagologue is a person of conviction and principle: he demands of the journalist that his newspaper (or TV channel, radio station reflect the imagological system of a given moment.
Of course, what the book really speaks of in the most thorough sense is it’s topic of Immortality and it’s connecting anti topic of Mortality (How can one speak of immortality without speaking of mortality?) When Goethe is waiting for his afterlife trial, he tells Hemingway (p. 81): “That’s immortality. Immortality means eternal trial.”
If I had to critically rank the books I have read of Milan Kundera’s, I would put this inbetween The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1st) and Ignorance.(3rd) It’s a complicated but fulfilling read. Just make sure you are ready for it.
(now playing: Kings of Convenience and Beth Gibbons bittorrents)