This novel took me forever to read even though every time I picked it up it delighted me more. I kept starting over, or sometimes not going all the waThis novel took me forever to read even though every time I picked it up it delighted me more. I kept starting over, or sometimes not going all the way back to the beginning but halfway-back, or three-quarters...I read the first chapter many times and kept coming back to it like a poem, and basically read the thing more like it was a dollhouse filled with tiny perfect facsimiles of a long-ago man and his history, and about pain, too, the idea of it, and the reality of it. There is a buffoon-y exaggeration in the story--the long backstory interlude of the titular character as a boy was one of my favorite tall tales in the novel but there are so many places where the book seems to be skating along on a level of verisimilitude and then skips several levels higher into the surreal. The storytelling is a magnificent braid of metafictional wanders plus historical fact plus actual linear story, of a man of his times, remarkable, long forgotten, now re-remembered. I loved it....more
I read and loved Fiona McFarlane's THE NIGHT GUEST when it came out and it was a tense and terrifically claustrophobic read, one that focused on the fI read and loved Fiona McFarlane's THE NIGHT GUEST when it came out and it was a tense and terrifically claustrophobic read, one that focused on the fate of just one character. This next novel by McFarlane is written with the same loving attention to human happenings, but with a much broader focus. It is one of those rare novels that succeeds in making the 'main character' an entire community. The novel begins with a singular incident--a boy is lost in a dust storm--and uses this incident to braid a complex story involving human beings who happen to share the same geographic territory and historical moment. MacFarlane is less interested in the kinds of questions that would preoccupy most authors who begin with the premise of a lost child--'will the child be all right?'--'will the child be reunited with his parents?'--and is far more interested in exploring how many people from many walks of life respond to the crisis, each in their own way. ...more
What an extraordinary novella, not only for the gorgeous prose on every level but also for the feeling it gave me. I felt lifted. I felt wiser. The naWhat an extraordinary novella, not only for the gorgeous prose on every level but also for the feeling it gave me. I felt lifted. I felt wiser. The narrator is intensely observant of both her environment and her inner worlds. She describes her family in ways that aren't always complementary, but are always full of love. The descriptions of mood and place are outstanding and revealing. Au perfectly channels the sensibility of a young person trying to understand the world in a deeper way.
Cold Enough for Snow reminds me of other recent favorites including Three O'Clock in the Morning by Gianrico Carofiglio and Optic Nerve by María Gainza--if you loved those, then you will love this--but it has a, well, the best word for it really is 'love'--it has a love of life and language that, for me, catapulted it beyond even these great favorites....more
There is something wonderful and sincere and yet elusive about this novel for me. There were aspects about the author's style and storytelling that maThere is something wonderful and sincere and yet elusive about this novel for me. There were aspects about the author's style and storytelling that made it difficult for me, the first time I read it, to immerse myself in the story. After a couple of re-reads, though, my mind has become accustomed to the rhythms of this novel. I've learned to appreciate its idiosyncrasies, and to let go of my own.
Here is the kind of sentence that comes along fairly frequently in the novel:
He didn't wear any small, expensive hats, but he seemed like the sort of man that would.
This sentence at first reminded me glancingly of the opening of Middlemarch:
Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress.
But Dorothea actually does wear plain things and people see her wearing them and still find her beautiful...Elliot's sentence reflects an actual state of reality in the novel. Whereas Arnott is describing something about a character's dress that isn't there, and that's quite specific: the narrator remarks on the absence of "any small, expensive hats." What I get from it is that Arnott is constantly reaching for something good and new in his writing, and quite often his looseness with semantic sense leads to some very beautiful things happening on the page, in particular when he's describing something as illusive as The Rain Heron.
Since my first read of the novel I've learned to appreciate this kind of writing. Such is the power of re-reading. Sometimes my first read of a novel is an exercise in fighting with authors about their choices, especially when these choices seem out of sync in some way, with my idea of how the story should go. This is a 'design flaw' in my reading that I'm trying to get over. Writing is not a promise. Authors aren't in a contract with me to deliver what I want to read. The more I let go of expectation, and the more I let go of trying to figure out the 'why' of an author's intentions, the better I'm able to immerse myself in conversation with a given book....more
A woman gets pregnant unexpectedly, just as the world careens toward a the most horrific eco-disaster you can imagine. The writing was great, the emotA woman gets pregnant unexpectedly, just as the world careens toward a the most horrific eco-disaster you can imagine. The writing was great, the emotional landscape was truthful, and I'm going to read everything Naomi Booth writes from now on.
My fondest delight, when it came to my reading experience with this book, was the birth scene. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say there is a birth scene, since the whole book before then is the story of a ponderously pregnant woman searching for a safe place to give birth, while simultaneously coping with some seriously creepy eco-disaster action.
This birth scene, when it comes, is magnificently done. Ok, it ignores the way that every contraction, in actual birth, is a peak experience of sorts...but even without that explicit kind of veracity, the scene captures the deep-heart horrific truth about birth. It captures what it's like to have your body taken over by a primal force over which you have no control. No matter how great a woman's individual birth experience might be (or how great she happens to remember it being, later, when it's over), every laboring woman comes to understand at some point (unless she is utterly etherized), that her body is no longer hers...and that realization can be momentarily disorienting, or completely terrifying, depending on how you feel in general about experiencing a total loss of control of your body. Naomi Booth nails it.
So at the heart of this eco-horror-fiction Naomi Booth has slyly written the best metaphor for birth-terror that I've ever read.
The Museum of Modern Love is a novel populated with intensely-feeling people, with Marina Abramovic’s performance piece “The Artist Is Present” actingThe Museum of Modern Love is a novel populated with intensely-feeling people, with Marina Abramovic’s performance piece “The Artist Is Present” acting as a focal point that reveals to the characters their true and deep emotional selves. I loved it a lot, and then I didn’t. It’s because about a third of the way through I stopped buying it. The people no longer felt real to me. Throughout the novel these characters are constantly feeling and regretting; feeling and regretting; feeling and regretting. I began to resent their constant feeling and regretting. And all at once my resentment carried me back to a similar resentment I'd felt many years ago when a friend took me to see a lecture by Werner Erhard, father of EST. My friend was transported. I was alarmed at all the emoting going on in the crowd. I became skeptical of the genuineness of what people said they felt. And the characters in this novel are likewise transported in ways that I'm meant to take as genuine. But I couldn’t. I became skeptical. The ending felt a cheat. Oof, this has turned out to be a very bad review. For balance please see my friend Robin's review here and my friend Jenny (Reading Envy)'s review here....more
Combine a bright-and-peppy narrative voice, something like Sandra Bullock in "Miss Congeniality," with a stark horrific existential life-threatening aCombine a bright-and-peppy narrative voice, something like Sandra Bullock in "Miss Congeniality," with a stark horrific existential life-threatening and mysterious force, something like what Sandra Bullock experiences in "Bird Box," and there you have it.
Or maybe the stark horrific existential life-threatening and mysterious force here is cancer, because, until the book becomes populated by demons about half-way through, the first scenes are all about cancer and its indignities, and the book recalls the jarringly peppy tone of "People Like That Are the Only People Here" by Lorrie Moore.
I loved the zany wildness of this book and the willingness of the author to explore many possible vectors of outcomes, once she had established the horror-story setup of a woman alone in a mysterious and isolated environment. I felt the story went in a few too many directions a little too quickly, though, to be an entirely satisfying read....more
Gorgeous writing, utterly heartbreaking. The sentences gallop. They left me breathless. They left me so sad. There is a continuous sadness to the storGorgeous writing, utterly heartbreaking. The sentences gallop. They left me breathless. They left me so sad. There is a continuous sadness to the story, actually, almost unbearable, where each page is full of the pity of humanity. The story combines the very harsh with the very tender, the two of them balanced together exquisitely, and the two of them also in conflict with one another. Harsh and tender tough it out, sometimes in the same sentence.
The author never allows the sadness of events, the disappointments of her characters' lives, to slide into the cynical. She loves her characters deeply, and because of her love for them, their small tragic lives are imbued with dignity, with majesty....more
it was sweet, but i was bored. I wanted it to be more like His Bloody Project and less like Pride and Prejudice, a goal not helped by there being a chit was sweet, but i was bored. I wanted it to be more like His Bloody Project and less like Pride and Prejudice, a goal not helped by there being a character named Darcy in it. i didn't buy the narrative voice--it always sounded like an author trying to sound like a character. Another problem for me was that the narrator, a woman named Mary, is not present in the most gripping scenes she is writing about (of whalers in the act of killing a whale) and must narrate from a distance.
I got to the end though thinking "what is the matter with me?" because it is a sweet tale and there was nothing in particular to make me so cranky about it except I kept wishing I was reading something else because time is short on this earth....more
Ruth is old and increasingly confused. Frida claims to be her caregiver, but takes advantage of Ruth in increasingly brutal ways. The novel is told frRuth is old and increasingly confused. Frida claims to be her caregiver, but takes advantage of Ruth in increasingly brutal ways. The novel is told from Ruth's point of view; she is aware of her memory loss; things don't always make sense to her; things happen that she knows can't be real. Her unease of not-knowing becomes the reader's main experience as the novel progresses. We're trapped in Ruth's confused perspective. We're subjected to increasingly alarming events. Like Ruth we need to rely on Frida's word rather than our own knowledge of the circumstances. The novel is both suspenseful and very sad, for the way it depicts the loneliness and vulnerability of the elderly....more
Conversations at Curlow Creek is the first novel by Malouf that I've been disappointed in, after three five-star reads--Remembering Babylon, An ImaginConversations at Curlow Creek is the first novel by Malouf that I've been disappointed in, after three five-star reads--Remembering Babylon, An Imaginary Life, and the masterfully understated Ransom. One consolation I find in the existence of Conversation at Curlow Creek, though, is that this novel, primarily a night-long conversation between two men with interstitial scenes told in flashback, most certainly prepared Malouf as an artist and writer for the task of writing Ransom, which is also story of a night-long conversation between two men, Priam and Achilles.
Here in this earlier novel, though, Malouf's elegant prose trends dangerously close to purplish, and the back story of love and rivalry doesn't hold the necessary dramatic weight to support the life-and-death conversation happening in the novel's present-day story line....more
Hmm. I had the same problem with this book as I did with Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire...they both feel like books written in 1950 and just recentlHmm. I had the same problem with this book as I did with Shirley Hazzard's The Great Fire...they both feel like books written in 1950 and just recently discovered in an old trunk somewhere. A little musty. A little moldy. Extremely sentimental. More than a little cliche', in particular when it comes to the female characters. I'm left with a sense that I've read a better version of this book already, in fact, I've seen the movie, which may be why I keep thinking Dorrigo Evans looks exactly like William Holden. ...more
What would have really got me to think and read with gusto would be if the main (female) character was self-sufficient and strong, rather than a victiWhat would have really got me to think and read with gusto would be if the main (female) character was self-sufficient and strong, rather than a victim of sexual abuse. It is my current, personal reading prejudice--I crave strong women characters who don't have sexual trauma in their past to explain their need for solitude or their interest in forging a life without a male partner. Let me say that the writing is really, really good--I hope for her next book that Evie Wyld feels confident enough in her writing to create a woman character who is genuinely strong, who is not a victim. Let me add also that the novel reminds me of Olive Kitteridge, which also was overviolent and full of female victims and which I also disliked for many of the same reasons, but if you liked that novel you will probably find much to like here, too. ...more
With wrenchingly beautiful prose Malouf offers readers another way inside the beauty of Homer's story of Achilles and Priam, these two tired men, thesWith wrenchingly beautiful prose Malouf offers readers another way inside the beauty of Homer's story of Achilles and Priam, these two tired men, these enemies, who discover together how close their grief has brought them to one another. The book is careful, vivid, perfect, not Homer, something else, something fine....more
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