Categories
1970s Classics

Watership Down by Richard Adams

Watership Down

Five words from the blurb: rabbits, leave, warren, journey, danger

I wanted to read Watership Down as a teenager, but several friends warned me about how sad it was and so I avoided it. Even as an adult I’d been scared to read it or watch the film. Recently I realised how ridiculous this aversion was, especially given the number of disturbing books I read, so I bought a copy and settled down to read it in the sunshine.

Watership Down is the story of a group of rabbits who decide to leave their warren and set up home in a new field. Along the way they meet numerous dangers, including foxes, owls and people.  It is a wonderful story for children, but unfortunately it didn’t have the same impact on me as an adult.

The main problem was that it was a bit predictable. It quickly became obvious that they would encounter every threat possible, suffer mild peril, but ultimately be OK. I’m afraid I became a cynical reader and started looking for the patterns, groaning as each new predator approached and they escaped AGAIN!

I also found the plot too slow and meandering. It probably didn’t help that I already knew the ending (a sign that this classic book has become so important to our society) or that there were so many rabbits it was hard to bond to any of them individually.

On a positive note, the writing was good and there were some lovely ideas about rabbit mythology.

Rabbits (says Mr Lockley) are like human beings in may ways. One of these is certainly their staunch ability to withstand disaster and let the stream of their life carry them along, past reaches of terror and loss. They have a certain quality which it would not  be accurate to describe as callousness or indifference. It is, rather, a blessedly circumscribed imagination and an intuitive feeling that Life is Now.

I’m glad I’ve read it, but I wish I’d done so as a fourteen-year-old.

 

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Other

May Summary and Plans for June

May has been a busy month reading-wise. The slim list below hides the massive number of pages I’ve actually read. I’ve nearly finished  The Noonday Demon, which is 1000 pages long, and both Encounter with Tiber (656 pages) and A Tale for the Time Being (400 pages) were long reads. I plan to continue reading chunksters as I tend to enjoy them more.

Book of the Month

Encounter with Tiber

 This piece of science fiction felt extremely realistic. It combined Buzz Aldrin’s experiences in space with his knowledge of shuttle technology to produce a compelling insight into the future, showing what might happen if humans came into contact with alien life. It isn’t perfect, but the ideas will stay with me for a long time. 

Books reviewed in May:

Encounter with Tiber by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes 

The Son by Michel Rostain 

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki 

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima 

The Engagement by Chloe Hooper 

The Uninvited by Liz Jensen 

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra 

Did not finish: Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley, Ferney by James Long, Intrusion by Ken Macleod

Plans for June

I have no firm plans, but hope to read most of these books: 

The Dinner by Herman Koch

The Blue Fox by Sjón

The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner

Dirty Work by Gabriel Weston

My Notorious Life by Madame X by Kate Manning

The Round House by Louise Erdrich

A Man In Love by Karl Ove Knausgaard

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates

The Wall by Marlen Haushofer

Death of an Ancient King by Laurent Gaudé

Have you read any of these? Which did you enjoy most?

Have a wonderful June!

Categories
1960s Books in Translation

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea (Vintage Classics) Translated from the Japanese by John Nathan

Five words from the blurb: savage, boys, mother, affair, sailor

Yukio Mishima is an important Japanese author; infamous for committing seppuku (ritual suicide) at the age of forty-five. He was born into a samurai family and is renowned for having complete control over both his mind and body. I was keen to see this power and try one of his books for the first time.

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea was first published in 1963 and concentrates on a group of thirteen-year-old boys who commit a range of savage acts. Noboru is one of this gang. He lives with his widowed mother, but everything changes when she begins to have an affair with a ship’s officer and he observes their sexual relationship through a hole in his bedroom wall.

I was gripped throughout and completed this short book in a single day. The writing was excellent and the descriptions were particularly evocative:

He never cried, not even in his dreams, for hard-heartedness was a point of pride. A large iron anchor withstanding the corrosion of the sea and scornful of the barnacles and oysters that harass the hulls of ships, sinking polished and indifferent through heaps of broken glass, toothless combs, bottle caps, and prophylactics into the mud at habor bottom – that was how he liked to imagine his heart.

Readers of a sensitive nature should be warned that some of the scenes in this book, especially one involving the murder of a kitten, were graphic and disturbing. These scenes had more impact because they were sandwiched between gentle ones observing nature and the sea.

My only problem with this book was that I didn’t see the point of it. The reader wasn’t given enough background information to understand why this group of boys became so violent. Without knowing (and so being able to sympathise with) their motivations the book lacked that extra power. This was compounded by the faceless nature of the gang – it was impossible to bond with characters known only as “Boy 2” and “Boy 3”.

This was a compelling read, but overall I wouldn’t recommend it. Perhaps those who enjoy short stories would have more luck with it?

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

…a genuinely perverse book, and worth reading because of the insight it gives into a mindset that is alien to most of us. Asylum

I didn’t really enjoy this book. WinstonsDad’s Blog

…it has a really powerful ending and it’s one I would definitely recommend. Dead Saukko

 

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Other

Three Abandoned Books

Amity & Sorrow

Amity and Sorrow by Peggy Riley

Five words from the blurb: daughters, born, cult, rural, help

Amity and Sorrow has been receiving almost universal praise from the blogging world. I was impressed by the writing quality, but unfortunately the subject matter wasn’t for me.

Amity and Sorrow are two teenage girls who escape from a fundamentalist cult with their mother, Amaranth. Amity loves her new freedom, but Sorrow longs to be back with her tyrannical father.

The writing in this book was fantastic. The characters were beautifully drawn and the descriptions were atmospheric and absorbing. I should have loved this book, but unfortunately there were two problems.

The first was that the plot was very basic. It meandered from one scene to the next with no forward momentum. As the book was quite short I could probably have coped with this, but unfortunately I have a very low tolerance for religion in books and as this content increased I became more frustrated. I wanted to slap all the characters (a good sign I was engaged with them!) but I couldn’t bear to read page after page of information about life in a cult.

I abandoned it, but if you have a higher tolerance for reading about fundamentalist religions then you’ll probably love it.

DNF

 

Ferney

Ferney by James Long

Five words from the blurb: Somerset, house, past, strange, connection

Ferney is one of those sleeper hits that occasionally crops up in conversation. It isn’t well known, but everyone who’s read it seems to love it. I bought a copy, keen to see why this was the case.

The book is set in Somerset and centres on Mike and Gally, a couple who fall in love with a dilapidated cottage that they come across by chance. They manage to persuade the owner to sell it to them and start restoring it straight away. Whilst working on their new cottage they meet Ferney, a strange old man who seems to know everything about the local area.

The book immediately reminded me of Outlander (Cross Stitch in the UK). Unfortunately I wasn’t a fan of Gabaldon’s book, but many of you are so I thought you’d like to know about this one. Ferney uses reincarnation to catch glimpses of the past, instead of the time travel present in Outlander, but the two books share the same corny romance, poor writing and unrealistic plot. If you’re looking for a light, escapist read then you’ll love this book, but I’m afraid it wasn’t for me.

DNF

Intrusion

Intrusion by Ken Macleod

Shortlisted for the 2013 Arthur C. Clarke Award

Five words from the blurb: future, pill, eradicate, genetic, defects

Intrusion is set in the near future at a time when women can take a pill during pregnancy to eradicate abnormalities in the fetus. The book follows Hope, a woman who decides not to take the pill, as her pregnancy progresses and friends, relatives and the authorities try to persuade her to change her mind.

I first heard about this book when I read an intriguing review on David’s blog. I’m drawn towards books that investigate the issues surrounding the eradication of disability and so picked up a copy from my library. Unfortunately this book failed to grip me and I abandoned it after about 100 pages.

The writing was very light and so fast paced that I felt the real issues were ignored. The book seemed to concentrate on whether it was legally possible to force women to take the pill and these discussions lacked any real weight:

‘Much as it pains me as a not very good Catholic,’ Fiona said, with a wry look, ‘I have to tell you that there are non-religious faith objections, if you see what I mean. Off the top of my head, uh, Green Humanism for one…’
Hope burst out laughing.
‘Green humanism? What’s that? Humanism for little green men?’
‘It’s about leaving nature alone, as I understand it,’ said Fiona a little stiffly.

I skim read a bit further and discovered the genetic difference present in Hope’s baby. This lost the book any credibility it might have had and rolling my eyes I put the book down for good.

Recommended to those who enjoy light science fiction.

DNF

Have you read any of these books?

Did you enjoy them more than I did?

Categories
Uncategorized

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

Five words from the blurb: Chechnya, soldiers, doctor, friend, responsibilities

I first heard of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena when an unsolicited review copy dropped through my letterbox. I was instantly drawn to the title and looked forward to reading it nearer its publication date. Since then this book has been getting rave reviews, especially from the US where it was published slightly earlier.

The book is set in war-torn Chechnya and takes place in the five days after 8-year-old Havaa’s father is abducted by Russian soldiers. Havaa’s neighbour, Akhmed, watches in horror as her house is burnt to the ground, but once the soldiers have left he rescues the young girl, taking her to the safety of the local hospital.

The book began really well. I loved the atmospheric descriptions of the snow-covered village and the uncertainty around Havaa’s future, but as the book progressed I became increasingly bored. The pace of the book slowed and I found myself with no real compulsion to read on. The characters lacked depth and I realised I didn’t care about them.

It was a simple gesture, no more than a flick of her fingers, performed without malice or contempt, but with complete disinterest, and it cut through Akhmed like a fin through water. In her indifference he saw the truth of a world he didn’t want to believe in, one in which a human being could be discarded as easily as pocket lint.

The plot improved in places and the last 50 pages were especially good, but overall I was disappointed. I can’t fault the vivid writing, but something about the story didn’t quite feel right. It lacked the realism produced when written by someone present during events. It’s hard to pinpoint, but I found it lacking passion and that special spark. It also seemed to be missing the Russian mindset, reading like a group of Americans placed in Chechnya.

I seem to be one of the only ones not to fall in love with this book so it is probably still worth checking it out, especially if you like slower paced literary fiction.

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The thoughts of other bloggers:

This is a beautifully wrought novel that brought tears to my eyes. CaribousMom

This book is so emotionally stunning, so beautifully written, and so elegantly painful that I could just sing its’ praises for hours on this blog. Sassy Peach

It’s not a fast-paced book, but the writing is so amazing and the story so intriguing that I couldn’t put it down. Book Hooked Blog

 

Categories
2013 Books in Translation Other Prizes

The Son by Michel Rostain

The SonTranslated from the French by Adriana Hunter

Winner of the Prix Goncourt 2011, Selected for Waterstones 11 2013

Five words from the blurb: meningitis, death, son, grief, life

Michel Rostain’s teenage son died suddenly from a virulent strain of meningitis. The Son is the fictionalised story of a family who lose their son to the same disease. It is written from the perspective of the teenage boy, Lion, and this omniscient narrator gives the book a special inquisitive perspective. The realistic nature of the text leads me to believe that much (all?) of this book is based on real events and this insight makes other books about grief seem insignificant.

This is one of the most emotionally powerful books I’ve ever read. It is one of the only books that has enabled me to completely understand what it is like to go through a devastating sequence of events. I hope I never have to experience anything like this, but if the worst happens this book has given me the comfort of knowing that life can go on afterwards.

The depth and range of emotion present in this book is breathtaking. It never becomes overly sentimental or shys away from showing the darker side of humanity. Shortcomings are open for all to see and this vulnerability only adds to emotional impact of this book.

I’ll be dead four hours later and Dad’s spending money in a supermarket. As of now, he will forever loathe the inevitable stop-off for the weekly shop. He’d always been disparaging about those nowhere-land places – shitty music, mediocre products, insidious layout, stooped ghost figures trundling from one shelf to another. But he still went every week, one of many contradictions. To think he lost some of the last few moments he could have spent with me alive – the memory of it destroys him.

The deep sadness is layered with hope; showing how friends and family can help each other through grief. It is a roller-coaster of emotion, and does have more downs than ups, but I think it is worth the emotional investment. The ending is beautiful and I only hope that Michel Rostain and his family had a similar outcome to their own tragedy.

Highly recommended.