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The Passion, Jeanette Winterson
This arresting, elegant novel by the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit uses Napoleon's Europe as the setting for a tantalizing surrealistic romance between an observer of history and a creature of fantasy. Henri is a naive French soldier who works in Bonaparte's kitchen and worships the conqueror until his starving and diseased army begins to crumble. Disillusioned and longing to escape a desolate posting in the Russian winter, the young man meets and falls in love with Villanelle, a mysterious Venetian hoping to retrieve her own heart, which has literally been stolen and imprisoned by a noblewoman she once loved. Passion described by the manipulative Villanelle as "somewhere between fear and sex" leads Henri on a desperate quest away from his beliefs and into an emotional labyrinth from which he may be unable to return. The slender story is sometimes lost in the strange brew of myth, fact and modernism, but British author Winterson's assured prose particularly her stunning evocations of a glacial Russia and a decadent nighttime Venice does much to unify her unsettling tale.
This slim story wastes few words and its fantastic elements are palpable. As an overt fantasy, I found myself entertained more than annoyed (my normal reaction to fantasies). I think the historical setting helped, though a Napoleonic scholar would likely hate this book. Then again, a Napoleonic scholar would hate most of the books I've read... The story lines cross neatly, and the characters hold up both independently and together. I would definitely try another of her novels.
The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzard
Despite this Australian writer's absence from the world's fiction stage--since the 1981 publication of The Transit of Venus, which earned her great acclaim, including the National Book Critics' Circle Award--her readers have continued to hold hands in devotion and anticipation. Their thrill over her new novel will be completed; the long days and nights of waiting will be forgotten. Time and place have always been exactly evoked in Hazzard's fiction, and such is the case here. The time is 1947-48, and the place is, primarily, East Asia. Obviously, then, this is a locale much altered--by the events of World War II, of course, and, as we see, physical destruction and psychological wariness and weariness lay over the land. Our hero, and indeed he fills the requirements to be called one, is Aldred Leith, who is English and part of the occupation forces in Japan; his particular military task is damage survey. He has an interesting past, including, most recently, a two-year walk across civil-war-torn China to write a book. In the present, which readers will feel they inhabit right along with Leith, by way of Hazzard's beautifully atmospheric prose, he meets the teenage daughter and younger son of a local Australian commander. And, as Helen is growing headlong into womanhood, this novel of war's aftermath becomes a story of love--or more to the point, of the restoration of the capacity for love once global and personal trauma have been shed.
Hazzard's previous novel, The Transit of Venus remains among my favorites. I was hesitant and excited to read this latest one; I found I was not disappointed. Hazzard takes her time writing the story and telling the story. Each word is deliberate, like each step Leith takes as he crosses East Asia. The story is dense, classic literature at its best.
Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje
Ondaatje's oddly structured but emotionally riveting fifth novel opens in the Northern California of the 1970s. Anna, who is 16 and whose mother died in childbirth, has formed a serene makeshift family with her same-age adopted sister, Claire, and a taciturn farmhand, Coop, 20. But when the girls' father, otherwise a ghostly presence, finds Anna having sex with Coop and beats him brutally, Coop leaves the farm, drawing on a cardsharp's skills to make an itinerant living as a poker player. A chance meeting years later reunites him with Claire. Runaway teen Anna, scarred by her father's savage reaction, resurfaces as an adult in a rural French village, researching the life of a Gallic author, Jean Segura, who lived and died in the house where she has settled. The novel here bifurcates, veering almost a century into the past to recount Segura's life before WWI, leaving the stories of Coop, Claire and Anna enigmatically unresolved. The dreamlike Segura novella, juxtaposed with the longer opening section, will challenge readers to uncover subtle but explosive links between past and present. Ondaatje's first fiction in six years lacks the gut punch of Anil's Ghost and the harrowing meditation on brutality that marked The English Patient, but delivers his trademark seductive prose, quixotic characters and psychological intricacy.
If you like a happy ending, or, an ending period, this novel is not for you. Multiple stories weave in and out, almost imperceptibly, and the most observant reader will note the similarities across miles and decades. Events happen chronologically for the characters, but events are revealed in a more emotional timeline--we learn when we are allowed to, keeping the characters omnipotent and the reader waiting and discovering. I read The English Patient, but never really got into the book--perhaps because of the movie, perhaps because of something else. Divisadero is the rare novel that I want to reread immediately.
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
I read about half of this book before giving up. It just wasn't interesting to me.
The Whistling Season, Ivan Doig
This is another book that I couldn't get into. I read about a third of it before I convinced myself that I didn't need to waste my time.
This arresting, elegant novel by the author of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit uses Napoleon's Europe as the setting for a tantalizing surrealistic romance between an observer of history and a creature of fantasy. Henri is a naive French soldier who works in Bonaparte's kitchen and worships the conqueror until his starving and diseased army begins to crumble. Disillusioned and longing to escape a desolate posting in the Russian winter, the young man meets and falls in love with Villanelle, a mysterious Venetian hoping to retrieve her own heart, which has literally been stolen and imprisoned by a noblewoman she once loved. Passion described by the manipulative Villanelle as "somewhere between fear and sex" leads Henri on a desperate quest away from his beliefs and into an emotional labyrinth from which he may be unable to return. The slender story is sometimes lost in the strange brew of myth, fact and modernism, but British author Winterson's assured prose particularly her stunning evocations of a glacial Russia and a decadent nighttime Venice does much to unify her unsettling tale.
This slim story wastes few words and its fantastic elements are palpable. As an overt fantasy, I found myself entertained more than annoyed (my normal reaction to fantasies). I think the historical setting helped, though a Napoleonic scholar would likely hate this book. Then again, a Napoleonic scholar would hate most of the books I've read... The story lines cross neatly, and the characters hold up both independently and together. I would definitely try another of her novels.
The Great Fire, Shirley Hazzard
Despite this Australian writer's absence from the world's fiction stage--since the 1981 publication of The Transit of Venus, which earned her great acclaim, including the National Book Critics' Circle Award--her readers have continued to hold hands in devotion and anticipation. Their thrill over her new novel will be completed; the long days and nights of waiting will be forgotten. Time and place have always been exactly evoked in Hazzard's fiction, and such is the case here. The time is 1947-48, and the place is, primarily, East Asia. Obviously, then, this is a locale much altered--by the events of World War II, of course, and, as we see, physical destruction and psychological wariness and weariness lay over the land. Our hero, and indeed he fills the requirements to be called one, is Aldred Leith, who is English and part of the occupation forces in Japan; his particular military task is damage survey. He has an interesting past, including, most recently, a two-year walk across civil-war-torn China to write a book. In the present, which readers will feel they inhabit right along with Leith, by way of Hazzard's beautifully atmospheric prose, he meets the teenage daughter and younger son of a local Australian commander. And, as Helen is growing headlong into womanhood, this novel of war's aftermath becomes a story of love--or more to the point, of the restoration of the capacity for love once global and personal trauma have been shed.
Hazzard's previous novel, The Transit of Venus remains among my favorites. I was hesitant and excited to read this latest one; I found I was not disappointed. Hazzard takes her time writing the story and telling the story. Each word is deliberate, like each step Leith takes as he crosses East Asia. The story is dense, classic literature at its best.
Divisadero, Michael Ondaatje
Ondaatje's oddly structured but emotionally riveting fifth novel opens in the Northern California of the 1970s. Anna, who is 16 and whose mother died in childbirth, has formed a serene makeshift family with her same-age adopted sister, Claire, and a taciturn farmhand, Coop, 20. But when the girls' father, otherwise a ghostly presence, finds Anna having sex with Coop and beats him brutally, Coop leaves the farm, drawing on a cardsharp's skills to make an itinerant living as a poker player. A chance meeting years later reunites him with Claire. Runaway teen Anna, scarred by her father's savage reaction, resurfaces as an adult in a rural French village, researching the life of a Gallic author, Jean Segura, who lived and died in the house where she has settled. The novel here bifurcates, veering almost a century into the past to recount Segura's life before WWI, leaving the stories of Coop, Claire and Anna enigmatically unresolved. The dreamlike Segura novella, juxtaposed with the longer opening section, will challenge readers to uncover subtle but explosive links between past and present. Ondaatje's first fiction in six years lacks the gut punch of Anil's Ghost and the harrowing meditation on brutality that marked The English Patient, but delivers his trademark seductive prose, quixotic characters and psychological intricacy.
If you like a happy ending, or, an ending period, this novel is not for you. Multiple stories weave in and out, almost imperceptibly, and the most observant reader will note the similarities across miles and decades. Events happen chronologically for the characters, but events are revealed in a more emotional timeline--we learn when we are allowed to, keeping the characters omnipotent and the reader waiting and discovering. I read The English Patient, but never really got into the book--perhaps because of the movie, perhaps because of something else. Divisadero is the rare novel that I want to reread immediately.
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson
I read about half of this book before giving up. It just wasn't interesting to me.
The Whistling Season, Ivan Doig
This is another book that I couldn't get into. I read about a third of it before I convinced myself that I didn't need to waste my time.
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no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 03:43 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 03:46 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-07-31 05:43 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-17 12:40 pm (UTC)From:no subject
Date: 2007-08-17 01:14 pm (UTC)From:so. i never knew i had THAT much to say about drop boxes....
as for convenient hours.... all i can say is Saturday service returns the first weekend in October and most branches are open until 8pm on mondays and wednesdays. AND, you can renew your stuff online (if you've specified a PIN for your account) or you can call any branch to renew or you can send me little gifts of local food and i'll fix your account good. :-P
no subject
Date: 2007-08-18 12:52 pm (UTC)From:In all fairness -- my schedule is so full that even mon./wed. late hours or saturday service can be hard to squeeze in, but I really do need to remember to renew online since I can do that at 2 am!
I am always happen to provide anyone with local food...speaking of which, off to the Rittenhouse market I go...