Month: March 2010

Categories
Film

Blindness (DVD)

Blindness by Jose Saramago is one of my favourite books, but I couldn’t imagine it making a good film. One of the best aspects of the book are the descriptions of what it is like to be blind. We know as little as the characters do, fumbling around in the darkness (or brightness as is the case in Blindness) trying to make sense of the world. The idea of transferring this book to the big screen, where suddenly we have the advantage of sight just made no sense at all. I was going to avoid watching this film, but then Sandy and CB James reviewed it and curiosity got the better of me.

I have to admit that it was much better than I expected it to be. The director, Fernando Meirelles, did a fantastic job of using special effects and a white screen to give the feeling of blindness at critical parts of the plot. The film was faithful to the book and I can’t imagine a better adaptation being possible, but (and that is a very big BUT!!!) this is a film that should never have been created. I don’t want anyone watching it and thinking they don’t need to read the book. The film is a very poor substitute for the terrifying world created by Saramago. Anyone watching this without having read the book will be underwhelmed – my husband described it as being OK, giving it a rating of 3/5.

I definitely enjoyed it more because I had read the book, but the averageness of this film upsets me. Saramago is never average. He is one of the greatest writers alive today and his amazing writing just doesn’t work on the big screen. The plot might have been the same, but the fear, tension and confusion present in the book were all diminished. If you have read the book then there is no harm in watching this film, but please don’t watch it first.

Watching this DVD reminded me how much I enjoy reading Saramago’s books and so I have reserved the sequel to Blindness from the library. I’ll be reading Seeing in the next week or two.

Have you read Blindness and Seeing?

What did you think of Blindness on DVD?

Categories
Orange Prize Other

The Orange Prize Long List 2010

The Orange Prize long list was revealed this morning. I tried to predict who would make the list last week and did a terrible job! I successfully predicted only five of the twenty books:

The rest of the long list:

I have only read two books from the list:

The Little Stranger – Sarah Waters  stars4

The Help – Kathryn Stockett stars4h

….although I did fail to complete Wolf Hall too!

Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel stars1 (DNF)

The great news is that there are a lot of books on the list which I haven’t heard of, so I will enjoy finding out a bit more about them. The ones that instantly grab my attention are:

This is How – MJ Hyland (I remember that a lot of people were surprised this wasn’t on the Booker list last year and I nearly read it in 2009 – I then forgot all about it!)

Black Mamba Boy – Nadifa Mohamed (I already have a copy of this one and so look forward to starting it soon) 

The Long Song – Andrea Levy (I’m currently reading Small Island and am loving it, so will get to this one at some point)

I need to investigate the rest of the list a bit further. I’m planning to read the entire short list when it is announced, but am not going to rush out to read all these books.

Which ones grab your attention?

Are there any you recommend?

Categories
2009

My Driver – Maggie Gee

My Driver follows Vanessa Henman, an English author, who flies out to Uganda for an African Writer’s conference. Whilst there she seeks out Mary Tendo, a Ugandan who used to clean her London home. Mary now has a good job, but her son has gone missing and in the first of a string of coincidences Mary has recruited Vanessa’s ex-husband Trevor to build a well for her village.

This is my first Maggie Gee novel and I think I may have been disadvantaged by not reading My Cleaner first, as all the other reviews I’ve seen emphasise the role reversal which takes place from one novel to the next (in My Cleaner Vanessa is the dominant one, in her home country). I don’t think I missed out on understanding anything in the book, but think the symbolic importance of this sequel is one of its main positives.

The writing was rich and beautiful, the plot holding my attention and flowing smoothly. Unfortunately much of the novel seemed to rely on satire and gentle humor, which I do not enjoy.

It’s still slightly strange for small land-based mammals to be shot through the air, thirty thousand feet up, with a skin of metal and two fallible engines between them and death, at five hundred miles per hour, which is seven times faster than they drive on motorways. But they have to look calm, for every one’s sake; you can’t have constant hysteria at airports.

All the usual African themes are here, including poverty and war, but life in Kampala is particularly well described. Perhaps because I have been to this city I found these sections especially vivid.

There were powerful events in this novel, but they were written in such a light way that their impact was reduced. I ended the book feeling as though I’d been taken on a pleasant journey, but nothing outstanding or unique had occurred and so I don’t think the experience will be very memorable. 

Recommended to anyone you enjoys gentle, satirical humor. 

Gee’s pen flows with knowing satiric glee… Lizzy’s Literary Life

Maggie Gee’s writing is superb and nearly flawless. Wing’s World Web

Have you read any of Maggie Gee’s books?

Categories
1960s Classics

The Woman in the Dunes – Kobo Abe

 Translated from the Japanese by E. Dale Saunders

The Woman in the Dunes is a classic of Japanese literature. It was first published in 1962 and immediately received critical acclaim. It is said to have influenced Murakami and the new Penguin classics version has an introduction written by David Mitchell, so perhaps you can see why I had to read a copy!

The book focuses on Niki Jumpei, an insect enthusiast, who heads to the sand dunes in the hope of finding a new species of beetle. At the end of a long, fruitless search he looks for somewhere to shelter for the night. He finds a strange village on the dunes and agrees to spend the night in the home of a young widow. In the morning he wakes to find that the rope ladder he climbed down has been removed and he is trapped in the steep-sided sandpit. The villagers force him to shovel the ever-encroaching sand that threatens to bury the village and he wonders if there is any possibility of escape from this nightmare.

This house was already half dead. Its insides were half eaten away by tentacles of ceaselessly flowing sand.

The Woman in the Dunes is a very accessible novel, making it the perfect introduction to Japanese literature. I loved the simple, yet powerful themes present in this book, as we witness one man’s struggle for survival against man and nature. The tone of the book is quite bleak and the scenes are described so vividly that you can almost feel the sand getting into every crevice and crease of your body.

There are many elements of Japanese mythology in this book, but unlike some Murakami it stays grounded in reality (if you consider it realistic to trap people in giant sandpits!). The book is quite short and the suspenseful nature of the plot means that it is a quick read. The simplicity of the story line is the only reason I haven’t rated this book higher. It should become a classic every language, but its fleeting time in my life means that I probably won’t give it much thought in the coming months.

Recommended – especially to those who want to try Japanese literature for the first time.

 

…a very powerful and intriguing book  Tony’s reading List

Extremely provocative, mind-bending, but most of all the uncomfortable. Paper Foxes Run Run

….a bleakly beautiful rendering of nature’s ultimate authority. Incurable Logophilia

Kobe Abe has written several books and I am keen to read more of his work.

Have you read any of Kobo Abe’s books?

Categories
Other

Happy Mother’s Day!

It is Mother’s Day here in the UK so I’d like to wish every one a 

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY!! 

I have been having a lovely day with my family. I had a long lie-in and was then woken up with pancakes in bed. After enjoying breakfast I had the opportunity to read a few chapters of Small Island and then we headed out for the day. We had a picnic and then went for a walk in the wood.

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We played hide and seek….

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….walked on logs….

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….and discovered a lovely old windmill.

I’m off to spend some more time with my family.

I hope you have had a good weekend too!

Categories
1980s Nobel Prize

July’s People – Nadine Gordimer

 Nadine Gordimer won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1991

July’s People was our latest book group choice. Unfortunately I was unable to make the discussion, which is a shame as I think this is a book which benefits from being discussed.

July’s People is set in South Africa. The book follows the Smales, a white couple and their three children, as they are rescued from the violence taking place in their city. Their servant, July, takes the family back to his native village where they have to learn to cope in a world very different to the one they have left. The small rural community uses little money, finding everything they need in the forest. The Smales have to adjust to the reversal of power, relying on the black community to both  protect and provide for them. The book gives a fascinating insight into the difference between the black and white communities of South Africa and the delicate relationship between the two.

Unfortunately July’s People wasn’t an easy read. The prose was confusing and this meant that I often has to re-read entire sections in order to work out what was happening. There were no speech marks so it was difficult to tell who was speaking – sometimes the speaker even switched mid-line. This meant that I found myself concentrating on the words rather than what was happening. The effort it took to understand each page meant that any emotion that might have been present was removed. I felt very detached from all the characters and because I often didn’t know who was talking they lacked a unique voice, all seeming to merge into one. I found myself having to invent their feelings based on the situation, but this felt fake as I don’t really know how things must have been for them.

The premise for this book is fantastic, but the complexity of the prose ruined it for me.

Recommended to anyone who enjoys studying books rather than reading them.

The other members of the book group seemed to enjoy this book much more than me and they also found out more about the background of this book. I recommend you read their insightful reviews:

Kim’s Review, Simon’s review, Claire’s review, Polly’s Review

Have you read anything by Nadine Gordimer?

Are all her books difficult to understand?