Category: Classics

Categories
1930s Classics Crime

Before the Fact – Francis Iles

I first saw Before the Fact mentioned on Shelf Love, but was persuaded to read it when Teresa selected it as a ‘book that deserves a wider audience’ at Reading Matters.

Francis Iles is an important author in the crime fiction world as he progressed the genre from simple “whodunnits” into books where the murderer is known to the reader and the joy is in understanding their motives and finding out if they get caught.

I loved the first paragraph of Before the Fact:

Some women give birth to murderers, some go to bed with them, and some marry them. Lina Aysgarth had lived with her husband for nearly eight years before she realized that she was married to a murderer.

Before the Fact was easy to read, with a light, almost humorous tone. We watch Lina’s relationship with her husband grow and then falter, as she slowly discovers his flaws and finally realises that he is a murderer. The narrative darkened slightly towards the end, but I’m sure that even the most nervous reader could cope with this book.

It is hard to imagine how 1930s readers reacted to discovering the name of the murderer on the first page, but despite the fact that this frequently happens in modern books I was impressed by the way the plot developed. The book was packed with 1930s charm, but the issues of trust in a relationship are still relevant today.

I’d recommend it to anyone interested in the development of the crime novel, or if you are after a lighter, enjoyable read.

I also watched the DVD as part of C.B. James’ Read The Book, See the Movie Challenge

The Hitchcock classic, Suspicion, is based upon Before the Fact. I hadn’t seen any Hitchcock films before and so thought this was the perfect place to start.

I was really disappointed by Suspicion. The book opens with you knowing that the husband is a murderer, but the film starts off really slowly. You have absolutely no idea where it is going – all you see is a happy couple getting together and setting up their own home. Little things slowly start happening to indicate that everything might not be quite right, but it was too little too late for me. I’m not used to watching these older films, so perhaps it is just a sign of my addiction to the faster paced ones created today, but I can’t help feeling that Frances Iles had the right idea by letting us in on the secret from the start.

The film also looks at things from a slightly different angle – you don’t know whether or not he is a murderer until the very end. This is he/isn’t he? question really irritated me, but perhaps that was because I’d just read the book!

My husband started watching the film with me, but gave up after 40 minutes. At that point I told him that Cary Grant was a murderer. He almost decided to continue watching, but in the end decided he couldn’t take any more of their slow relationship building!

I’m afraid I wouldn’t recommend Suspicion – read the book instead!

Have you read any books written by Frances Iles?

Have you seen Suspicion?

Categories
1920s Classics

The Sound and the Fury – William Faulkner

The Sound and the Fury was first published in 1929 and is considered to be one of the most important novels of the 20th century. The book follows the Comptons, an Aristocratic southern American family, struggling to deal with their poor reputation and the breakdown of their family.

The Sound and the FuryThe Tale of Genji or Ulysses, if I ever manage to finish them!!).

The first section is narrated by a mentally disabled man called Benjy. I finished these 72 pages without having much idea of what had happened. The disorienting world of someone who doesn’t fully understand what is happening was made even more confusing by a stream of consciousness writing style.

I wasn’t crying, but I couldn’t stop. I wasn’t crying, but the ground wasn’t still, and then I was crying. The ground kept sloping up and the cows ran up the hill T.P. tried to get up. He fell down again and the cows ran up the hill. Quentin held my arm and we went toward the barn. Then the barn wasn’t there and we had to wait for it to come back.

I sought out a summary of the chapter on wikipedia and this helped a lot – especially learning that anything written in italics is a flashback. I re-read the chapter, trying to seek out all the points mentioned on wikipedia, but I have to admit that I probably wouldn’t have noticed some of the plot points without a guide to help.

The second section, narrated by Benjy’s older brother, was easier to understand, but not much!! Again I had to rely on wikipedia and re-reading to pick up many of the plot points. I continued the rest of the book having read the wikipedia summaries in advance. It was hard work! I also discovered Spark Notes, which gave me an even greater insight into the book.

The problem that I find with books like this is that the effort it takes to simply understand what is happening removes any chance to form an emotional connection to the characters. The plot wasn’t that exciting and so I didn’t feel as though the effort I put in was rewarded.

I’m sure that you can derive a lot of pleasure from studying this book, but I’m afraid that I prefer to read books rather than tease out the meanings from individual paragraphs.

Highly recommended to people who enjoy studying literature.

Have you read The Sound and the Fury?

Categories
1980s Classics

Nights at the Circus – Angela Carter

I hadn’t read any Angela Carter, so when I saw that Claire was creating a whole month dedicated to celebrating her work I decided it was time to give Angela Carter a try.

Nights at the Circus centres on Fevvers, an extraordinary character who claims she was hatched from an egg. During an interview she explains that she was a normal child until she hit puberty, when wings grew on her back. Fevvers is a famous circus performer and one of the most vivid characters I have ever read. Raised in a brothel, with a distinctive Cockney accent, her presence just leaps from the page – I loved her!

Her voice. It was as if Walser had become a prisoner of her voice, her cavernous, sombre voice, a voice made for shouting about the tempest, her voice of a celestial fishwife. Musical as it strangely was, yet not a voice for singing with; it comprised discords, her scale contained twelve tones. Her voice, with its warped, homely, Cockney vowels and random aspirates. Her dark, rusty, dipping, swooping voice, imperious as a siren’s.

Unfortunately the rest of the book didn’t capture my imagination in the same way. I’m not a big fan of magical realism and so its heavy presence in the book wasn’t a positive for me.

The book also contained little plot. Lots of things happened, but there was never that forward momentum compelling me to read on – it was more like reading several individual scenes instead of one connected story. I had hoped that everything would be brought together at the end, but instead I found the last page very irriating – I think I just lack Angela Carter’s sense of humor!

I’m really pleased that I read this book, as I think it is an important novel that has influenced many other authors, but I’ll have to leave all the Angela Carter promotion to Claire! 

Highly recommeded to fans of magical realism.

 

Most people seem to love this book, so I’ll leave you to have a look at some wonderful reviews:

 ….a dizzying and magical journey… Things Mean a Lot

Carter’s style is scandalously generous with brilliant descriptions, stunning word portraits that pack every event out with jewel-bright glimpses into the different layers of her fictional world. Tales from the Reading Room

Do you love Angela Carter’s books?

Do you enjoy magical realism?

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
1950s Classics

The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger

A few weeks ago J.D. Salinger sadly died. A brief discussion on twitter revealed that several of us had not read any of his books, so we decided to join together and read of his most famous work.

It is amazing how wrong preconceptions of a novel can be. For some reason I thought Catcher in the Rye was about a legal case; I’d have put my money on fraud, but wouldn’t have been surprised by murder or drug dealing. I was, however, very surprised that this wasn’t a crime novel at all, but a coming of age novel about an obnoxious teenager.

For the few of you who have as little knowledge of this book as me, it is about Holden Caulfield, a teenager who is thrown out of his school. After his expulsion Caulfield heads to New York where he meets girls, gets drunk and then gets a bit lonely.

As you can probably guess from my description I wasn’t a big fan of this book. I disliked Caulfield, but my overwhelming emotion reading this book was boredom. I just didn’t care what Caulfield got up to and considered giving up at several points. As the book was a classic, fairly short and not too difficult to read I persevered, but I’m not sure that was the right decision. I don’t feel I gained anything by reading it and wouldn’t be tempted to try any of his other books.

I had heard that several people disliked the stream of conscious writing style, but I didn’t have a problem with that. I think that I may have enjoyed this more as a teenager, but as an adult I failed to connect with Caulfied. Most of the time I flipped between wanting to slap him and wanting him to shut up so I could get on with something else!

I’m afraid that this book just wasn’t for me, but see the other read-along participants for more discussion: Book Nut, Steph & Tony Investigate, Serendipity and The Zen Leaf

 

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Did you enjoy Catcher in the Rye?

Did you have any stupid preconceptions about this book?

Categories
Books in Translation Chunkster Classics Historical Fiction Really Old Classics

The Tale of Genji: Chapters 18 – 20

It has been a long time since I last picked up The Tale of Genji, but I am not going to let it defeat me! Six months may have passed since I last made the effort to read it, but I have promised myself that I will finish it and so although my progress may be slow, I will get there in the end!

Chapter 18: Wind in the Pines

Genji has just finished building the east pavilion of his Nijo mansion and brought the lady Falling Flowers to live there. He has reserved the east wing for Lady Akashi, but she is reluctant to move in as she is worried about her low position within the aristocracy. Lady Akashi has decided to live in an old property in Oi, owned by her father. Eager to visit her, Genji decides to build a retreat on a plot of land that happens to be nearby.

There he sees his three-year-old daughter for the first time:

The girl was a little shy with him at first, being so small, but she soon came round, and the more she snuggled up to him, chattering and laughing, the more exquisitely lovely she became.

Genji is keen to bring his daughter back to Nijo and discusses the possibility with Murasaki. She is reluctant at first, but she loves children and agrees to look after her.

Chapter 19: Wisps of Cloud

Genji tells Lady Akashi of his plans to bring their daughter back to Nijo. Lady Akashi is distraught, but agrees that it is the best thing for their child.

Genji returns one snowy day and takes his daughter back to Nijo where she is well looked after, but homesick.

In the New Year His Excellency the Chancellor dies, as does the Imperial Lady Fujitsubo. Genji is stricken with grief and withdraws to the chapel in tears.

Chapter 20: The Bluebell

The Asagao princess resigns as Kamo priestess after the death of her father. Genji has been interested in her for a long time, so goes to pay a visit.

Murasaki hears of Genji’s interest in Princess Asagao and is worried about losing her position.

One snowy day Genji talks to Murasaki about the princess, but that night the Lady Fujitsubo appears to him in a dream, cross at him for his discussion.

Thoughts on reading Genji

It took me a long time to get used to reading Genji again. My progress was painfully slow at first, as I had forgotten much of what I’d already read. I had to spend a long time reacquainting myself with the plot, the characters and the writing style. Now that I’ve made the effort to read and understand these three chapters I am going to try to ensure that I keep on reading Genji. Hopefully I’ll make it to the end sometime soon!

I know that several of you were also reading The Tale of Genji. Have you given up?

Are you planning to read The Tale of Genji?