The Burning Air – Erin Kelly

23 May

url-1 Our third selection in the ‘Upcoming Penguin Releases’ series is Erin Kelly’s The Burning Air. A psychological thriller set in Devon, a region southwest of London, the novel follows a dark secret that follows the Macbride family. Every year, the family departs from their homes in the city to Far Barn, a rural farm where they grew up. The area is quaint, quiet, and desolate – perfect for a crime and clean get away. While the family meetings are usually joyous, this year everyone is marred by sadness due to the passing of the family matriarch, Lydia Macbride. Sophie, Tara, and Felix, the children of the family, their spouses, as well as Rowan, their father, can not help but feel the chagrin in the air. Although this does not stop Felix from bringing his new girlfriend, Kerry, to Old Barn. Strange, but stunning, the new woman in their youngest brother’s life throws Sophie and Tara for a loop, especially since she does not seem to speak a word after arriving.

Despite the uneasiness, the Macbrides do their best to get along with the newcomer. Though after Lydia Macbride’s sweaters – a keepsake the family wanted to keep – end up burning in the family bonfire, Kerry is blamed by Sophia.  Distraught but level-headed,  the rest of the family cannot believe Kerry would do such a heartless act, thus her guilt is not put into question and the incident is deemed an accident. In an effort to get their sister out of the house, the family convinces Sophie to attend the county festival, and leave her baby daughter with Kerry. Little did she know the baby and Kerry would be missing when they returned.

What makes The Burning Air so seductively suspenseful is the vivid prose from the author. Kelly is keenly aware of the importance of setting, as shown by the frightfully descriptive passages in each location. This is most discernable in the author’s choice of switching character perspective, which, even in landscapes the narrative has encountered prior, seem like new encounters thanks to portrayal. While some of these passages may seem overwrought with detail, readers are not required to stretch their imagination for the scene:

“The road thinned to a one-track lane as they began the descent into the valley and dipped so steeply the children’s ears popped. As they came within a mile of the barn, the hedgerows themselves seemed to sequeeze their oversized car along the road like a clot through a vein. Branches jabbed witchy fingers through the windows, making the boys scream with something between terror and laughter  and Edie echo their sounds. The signpost for Far Barn, white paint on a black wooden plaque, had faded into illegibility but new visitors were rare. Will made the right turn into the rutted track that connected their land to the rest of the world.”

The Burning Air is a mystery without being mysterious. As mentioned above, the prose leaves readers with a clear idea of the setting; yet the quick summery of character history is also a welcome attribute. Dealing with a large cast – The Macbrides, their spouses, the villian, and memorable supporting players – individual history must be concise and to the point. While some characters do take time to develop, as dictated necessary by the narrative, others are wonderfully consolidated. Such stylistic choice can hamper characters by making them typical, but Kelly proves the device sets a tone as well as give reason for character action:

“‘I think it might be starting again, Mum,’ Sophie said to the urn, almost laughing because if talking to a pot of carbon dust didn’t signify that all was not well, what did? ‘What should I do? What would you do?’ The answer was as clear as if Lydia had spoken: she would have turned to her husband, as she always did. Sophie saw with piercing clarity that if she was going to survive this, if it was happening again and she was not going to be consumed by it, she needed Will on her side. They might not have the unassailable marriage of her parents, but neither was it irretrievably broken, not yet. The children were already aware of the frost between their parents, and Toby and Leo were old enough to remember what Sophie had been like last time. She could not do this to them again. Perhaps the real purpose of this weekend was not to heal the family that had made her but to save the one she had created. “

The Burning Air relies on four different perspectives to tell the story. Much like the tetrad of character books in Durrell’s Alexandria Quartet, Kelly packs a similar idea in just over 300 pages. Though the structure has been utilized before, the novel breaths fresh air. The author exhibits her ability to pull the strings of the narrative, tempting readers to the edge of their seat only to suddenly switch character. In these chapters, there is an obvious amount of information about the current narrator, but the peripheral characters share equal importance.:

“I can’t remember precisely when it became clear that the pupil had surpassed the teachers, that my education had stalled. My mother was straining at the limits of her stored knowledge. We had exhausted the literature and history she knew: before she could teach me further she had to crib it herself. Kenneth’s lessons too had been repetitive for years and we were now reduced to the study of the algorithm he was working on to predict the numbers under the latex coating on lottery scratch cards. I could not suppress the unfaithful thought that one reason Mother had been so anxious for me to gain entry to the Cath was not my advancement in the world but an awareness of the limitations of my little tutor-family.”

Be it from the voice of a madman or not, there are worthy witticisms in The Burning Air. A guaranteed way to ensnare audience, Kelly proves her personal beliefs are much more than dime-store philosophy. The anecdotes and tid-bits only court our trust in the author – giving readers the impulse to purchase other novels with their name on it. Whether the mouthpiece is vile or not, the maxims are worth considering:

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The Burning Air is a smart and, most importantly, a satisfying suspense novel. Kelly proves to be an interesting author throughout the pages. As a journalist, the author has written for such publications as The Sunday Times & The Daily Mail and magazines like Marie Clair & Elle. Also a new mother – which, consequently enough, coincided with her first publication – Kelly continues to write on women’s issues and parenting. With her previous two novels centering on familial ties like The Burning Air,  the author derives less from personal experience and more from interactions:

“I’ve always been fascinated by that kind of fractured bohemian family. Until I went to university, I didn’t meet anyone who was middleclass, solid. We didn’t really know writers or artists growing up, so I was always fascinated by the kind of warped confidence those kids seemed to have.”

These fractured characters are certainly within the novel, as none of them live the idyllically. Each cast member reads fleshed out in reality. Though only an observer of middle class Kelly finds so interesting, it is obvious through the characters, prose, and vivid detail her perception is not mistaken.

Doctor Zhivago – Boris Pasternak

2 May

Dr.Z1Now that New York’s long winter season has (hopefully) turned toward warmer weather, the impetus to write a review for Boris Pasternak’s Doctor Zhivago has returned. Published in 1957, the novel follows doctor and part-time poet Yuri Zhivago as he bears witness to the Russian Revolution through the Second World War. Starting as staunch supporter of the Communist cause sweeping the nation,  our acutely observant character questions if history is heading down the correct path as the movement progresses.

Doctor Zhivago opens on a somber note with the death of Yuri’s parents. Soon after his Mother’s funeral, his father, Andrei Zhivago, commits suicide by jumping from a train (possibly from the influence of his conniving lawyer Komarovsky). Now an orphan, young Yuri is sent off to live on the Duplyanka estate with his Uncle’s family. Returning to Moscow after medical school, Yuri puts practice into action when he and his friend, fellow medical practioner Misha Gordon, are called to the bedside of Amalia Guichard, a widower intent on committing suicide over fears of her daughter’s marriage. Lara, the daughter in question, has been romantically linked (begrudgingly) to Komorovsky – who was also courting her mother. The men save Amalia, but not without Yuri getting his first glance at Lara, who would play a larger role in his life than the doctor could have known.

Soon after, Yuri marries Tonya, the daughter of his recently passed foster mother, Anna. With the changing of the guard in Moscow, and throughout Russia, the economically endowed Zhivagos feel it would be best to escape from the contempt to the wealthier classes brewing in the capital. The family, including Yuri’s foster father, return to the estate where the couple grew up. There, Tonya soon gives birth to a boy, Sasha. Although the happy family is not able to stay together for long.

As World War I develops in the East, the Russian Army drafts Yuri as a medical doctor. Meanwhile Lara, who has since married the vehement Bolshevik, Pasha Antipov, finds herself in a similar situation as Tonya –  with a child and a husband conscripted to the service. When Pasha is declared missing in action, Lara volunteers as a nurse to search for her husband. Unbeknownst to Yuri or Lara, the two find themselves working in the same region, in the same town, and in the same hospital, where Zhivago decides to stay on as a doctor, even after recovery from his battle wound.

While this synopsis is clearly focused on the love story in Doctor Zhivago, the novel fails to fit within such margins. Pasternak, who was no stranger to controversy after the publication of his autobiography Safe Conduct and a “reserved” embrace of socialism in Second Birth, utilizes Yuri as a surrogate mouthpiece to explain the many stages of the Russian Revolution. Despite his contemporaries drive to consider “suicide” after strict censorship on press and religion was applied, the author felt art should persist even if spirituality did not. To excercise such hope during despair, Pasternak dabbles in polemics, letting the characters debate the changing of the tides:

“But what kind of business can there be, these days?”

“Anything you please. Old unfinished deals, business operations, breaches of contract. I’m up to my ears in it.”

“But haven’t all such activities been abolished?”

“Of course they have, nominally. But in practice people are asked to do all sorts of things, sometimes mutually exclusive. There’s the nationalization of all enterprises, but the municipal soviet needs fuel, and the Provincial Economic Council wants transportation. And everyone wants to live. There is a transitional period, when there is still a gap between theory and practice. At a time like this you need shrewed, resourceful people like myself. Blessed is the man who doesn’t see too much. Also an occasional punch on the jaw doesn’t come amiss, as my father used to say. Half the province depends on me for its livelihood. I’ll be droppoing in at Varykino about timber one of these days…

“Do you know why we are going there, what we want to do?”

“MOre or less. I have an idea. Man’s eternal longing to go back to the land. The dream  of living by the sweat of your brow.”

“What’s wrong with it? You sound disapproving.”

“It’s naive and idyllic, but why not? Good luck to you. ONly I don’t believe in it. It’s utopian. Arts and craftsy!”

“How do you think Mikulitsyn will receive us?”

“He won’t let you in, he’ll drive you out with a brookstick, and he’ll be quite right. He’s in a fine pickle as it is. Idle factories, workers gone, no means of livelihood, no food, and then you turn up. If he murders you, I won’t blame him!”

“There you are. You are a Bolshevik, and yet you yourself don’t deny that what’s going on isn’t life -it’s madness, an absurd nightmare.”

“Of course it is. But it’s historically inevitable. It has to be gone through.”

To accommodate such hearty exchanges in Zhivago, Pasternak divides each chapter into sections. The novel reads like a journal, with each entry confessing, chronicling, or observing, the state of the nation and/or the protagonist’s relevance within it. Such structure allows the author to utilize his poetic background  and, as John Bayley states in the Introduction, “the full panorama of Soviet life”:

“The light, sunny room with its white painted walls was filled with the creamy light of the golden autumn days that follow the feast of Assumption, when the mornings begin to be frosty and titmice and magpies dart into the bright-leaved, thinning woods. ON such days the sky is incredibly high, and there moves an icy, dark-blue radiance coming from the north. Everything in the world becomes more visible and more audible. Distant sounds reach us in a state of frozen resonance, separately and clearly. The horizons open, as if to show the whole of life for years ahead. This rarefied light would be unbearable if it were not so short-lived, coming at the end of the brief autumn day just before the early dusk. “ 

Furthermore, this structural decision grants Pasternak the space to focus on his belief in the Tolstoyian movement: a strict study of the gospel of Jesus without belonging to a specific church.  This trait would be inherited thanks to a close relationship between Pasternak’s father and Tolstoy. While Pasternak was surely influenced by his predecessor’s use of history to exhibit progression, Zhivago reads more like “dismantling” of such forces:

“Central though trains may be for the plot and sense of poignancy in the novel, Pasternak carries a thorough dismantling of the train as symbol of history. Although the train is pervasive here as a symbol of time and fate, it is remarkable how infrequently trains work!”

Though merely a sentence, Pasternak’s ability to concentrate on the train as a metaphor is powerful:

“In the train it had seemed to Zhivago that only the train was moving but that time stood still and it was not later than noon.”

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Doctor Zhivago succeeds as a harsh indictment and embrace of beauty. When Pasternak finished the novel in 1956, the literary magazine Novy Mir, (the only approved Soviet publication), refused to print on grounds it did not fit into the policy-enforced style of Socialist Realism. At that time, Soviet Writers were instructed by the Kremlin that published works must glorify the Soviet state. In a daring act of insubordination, the author gave a copy of Zhivago to Sergio d’Angelo, an agent of  the left-leaning (and soon notorious) Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, which soon beget international demand.

“You are hereby invited to watch me face the firing squard”, Pasternak quipped after handing over the manuscript.

"I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What's your crime?"

“I won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What’s your crime?”

A year later, admist protest from the USSR, who mocked the novel as “literary trash”,  the author would be awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Despite the acclaim, the long-arm of Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev still forbid the novel to be published in Russia and threatened Pasternak with exile if he accepted the award.  In dedication to his country, Pasternak would not accept the award, nor would he see the first accepted Russian publication of Doctor Zhivago in 1988.

In 1960, Pasternk would succumb to lung cancer. Notices for the author’s funeral were “posted” throughout the subway system in Moscow to avoid publicity. Despite the clandestine arrangements, travelers throughout the country attended the burial. At the culmination of the service, one speaker shouted out:

“God marks the path of the elect with thorns, and Pasternak was picked out and marked by God. He believed in eternity and he will belong to it… We excommunicated Tolstoy, we disowned Dostoyevsky, and now we disown Pasternak. Everything that brings us glory we try to banish to the West… But we cannot allow this. We love Pasternak and we revere him as a poet… Glory to Pasternak!”

While Doctor Zhivago may not be the most relevant work of fiction, it stands as an important piece of literature.

 

Unwelcome, but necessary post-script.

It is never pleasent to end on a sour note, but Pasternak’s belief  - which became more devout in later years – of the Christian-heavy Tolstoyanism produced an eschewed form of anti-semantism. After the international publication of Doctor Zhivago, the State of Israel decried ”assimionlist” views featured in the novel. Jewish himself, Pasternak produced a number of the passages in his novel before Israeli liberation; yet, it is difficult to ignore the ferocity in which the author wrote such passages:

“We also talked about mediocre publicist who have nothing to say to life and the world as a whole, of petty second-raters who are only too happy when some nation, preferably a small and wretched one, is constantly discussed – this gives them a chance to show off their competence and cleverness, and to thrive on their compassion for the persecuted. Well now, what more perfect example can you have of the victims of this mentality than the Jews? their national idea has forced them, century after century, to be a nation and nothing but a nation – and they have been chained to this deadening task all through the centuries when all the rest of the world was being delivered from it by a new force (Christianity) which had come out of their own midst! Isn’t that extraordinary? How can you account for it? Just think! This glorious holiday, this liberation from the curse of mediocrity, this soaring flight above the dullness of a humdrum existence, was first achieved in their land, proclaimed in their language, and belonged to their race! And they actually saw and heard it and let it go! How could they allow a spirit of such overwhelming power and beauty to leave them, how could they think that after it triumphed and established its reign, they would remain as the empty husk of that miracle they had repudiated? What use is it to anyone, this voluntary martyrdom? Whom does it profit? For what purpose are these innocent old men and women and children, all these subtle, kind, humane, people, mocked and beaten up throughout the centuries? And why is it that all these literary friends of ‘the people’ of all nations are always so untalented? WHy didn’t the intellectual leaders of the Jewish people ever go beyond facile Weltschmerz and ironical wisdom? WHy have they not – even if at the risk of bursting like boilers with the pressure of their duty – disbanded this army which keeps on fighting and being massacred nobody know for what? Why don’t they say to them: ‘Come to your senses, stop. Don’t hold on to your identity. Don’t stick together, disperse. Be with all the rest. You are the first and best Christians in the world. You are the very thing against which you have been turned by the worst and weakest among you.” 

Far be it for a contemporary review to deny a masterpiece it’s due, but such work is not above criticism.

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The Master and Margarita — Mikhail Bulgakov

11 Mar

“If I’m not mistaken, you were saying that Jesus never existed, were you not?”

MasterAndMargeritaOnce every year the Devil and a cadre of lesser imps, demons and witches come to earth to visit a chosen city for their annual springtime ball of the full moon; also known as the Ball of a Hundred Kings. For all manner of damned murderers, rapists, traitors and fiends it is the social event of the year and it is taking place in the most unlikely of cities: Soviet Moscow.

We come upon the prince of darkness himself in the guise of a 7ft tall foreign professor of black magic, Monsieur Woland, discussing the nature of the universe with two steadfast atheists, Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz and Ivan Nikolayich Bezdomny, of the prestigious MASOLIT literary club.

“Astounding! Forgive me for being so rude, but am I right in thinking that you do not believe in God either? I swear not to tell anyone!”

The two literary men are perturbed by this peculiar yet amicable visitor not only for his overly familiar candor but his seemingly mad ravings. The strange professor asserts quite confidently that Jesus indeed lived to be crucified by Pontius Pilate and what’s more, that he was there to witness it. Professor Woland goes on to quite accurately predict the impending death of one these men (Berlioz) which is to take place in a matter of minutes. Berlioz indeed loses his life which sets off the outrageous chain of events to come, including the institutionalization of Bezdomny to the psychiatric hospital.

Try as he may, Bezdomny is doomed to appear a raving lunatic warning the city of these bizarre characters (including a large, black, talking cat) though the damage is already done. Professor Woland and his crew proceed to systematically turn the city on its head, terrorizing everyone from police officials to theatre administrators.

Amid the chaos of the present, Bezdomny finds an unlikely ally in the mental ward who calls himself ‘the Master’. The Master has written a novel about Pontius Pilate which was ridiculed by the fascist editors and literary critics of Moscow so much he was thrown into a nervous breakdown. He burned his precious manuscript and turned his back on his great love, Margarita.

Margarita has gone the past several months believing her Master was all but disappeared into thin air when she is approached by an eccentric, fiery-haired man with a single protruding fang and an unbelievable offer. Now, if she agrees to cast off her humanity and make a deal with the devil she may have her love returned to her. The Ball of a Hundred Kings needs a hostess and Margarita needs a miracle.

How do the two lovers, the downfall of a city, and Pontius Pilate come together in this seemingly frenzied yet highly accessible story? Bulgakov paints an absurd picture which at first glance appears wrought with senseless cruelty but as it progresses we find a city in need of a little anarchy. The people of the city have grown so secure in their rationality, their fear of the state, their greed and distrust of one another Moscow has become a true source of evil in itself. In the end, Moscow could do well by a little fear of the almighty and those punished are the ones most deserving.

The story can be called absurdist satire but I saw an adventure novel with a message of love and forgiveness at its core. I felt like a kid again paging through the endless antics of Satan and his minions. It’s grotesque and fantastical and utterly hilarious. Bulgakov blurs the lines between good and evil in a society that refuses to acknowledge their existence and the result is uplifting.

You are free! Free! He is waiting for you!

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This is considered one of the greatest pieces of Russian literature ever produced and it is well-deserved. Bulgakov reflects the sentiment of Soviet Moscow expertly yet the story stretches far beyond a single piece of social commentary. The message is profound and universal; the prose is simple and exciting. I highly recommend this as a must-read classic.

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Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles – Ron Currie, Jr.

15 Feb

Ron Currie, Jr.’s Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is the latest selection in our upcoming Penguin release series. As the inside flap notes: the main character is named Ron Currie, Jr., the story is about him, he’s a lot like the author - and it’s all true. 

15811580Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles follows Ron Currie, Jr. as he drinks to deal with an undying love of a childhood sweetheart named Emma, the death of his father, and Singularity, the moment when man and machine become one. Self-exiled to a tropical island (not too bad of a banishment), full of local cerverza and rum, Currie cycles through each subject on whimsy,constructing a loose collection of thoughts, emotions and comical vignettes.

Despite mentioning in the Introduction of Miracles that he “knows more Mick from Rocky than Cicero”, Currie shows strength as a young novelist. What is so admirable, and certainly discernable reading the novel, is the emotion emitted from the author. Though this works much like a double-edged sword for Currie, it is easy to appreciate when an accomplishment is made:

If corporations are people, then maybe that means people can, or even should, have trademarks. With Emma, her trademark is the distance she creates. It’s as natural to her as drawing breath, and therefore something for which she cannot be blamed. The thing about her – and this is something I realized on the island, in her absence  with clarity as abrupt as a punch in the throat- was that no one could ever really have her. The woman is a fighter, has been her whole life, had to be, and she does what finesse fighters do: japs and feints, circles away from your power hand, makes you commit right then shifts to your left, never stands still, bounces about tirelessly on her legs like steel coils, just wears you down. No one could have her. Her first husband Matty never did, not really, and nobody who came before him did either. I think we all intuited that she was impossible to have, and paradoxically that’s why every man who happened into her orbit kept trying. Married, engaged, otherwise committed, single, even gay. We all tried, and tried again, steering shift after ship into the rocks, and if you asked us to explain why we’d be unable to give you an answer, except for maybe this one: because we knew, deep down, that we would fail.“

As Miracles continues on, it becomes increasingly hard to believe Currie is the extravagant character he pens, despite the disclaimer proclaiming the narrative’s validity. Readers will discern that some of the author’s stories cause eyes to droop and are burdened by adolescent yearning – in other words, flimsy, little, and plastic. Though, certain truths are undeniable and can only be told by personal involvement:

“The week before my father died he tried to write me a note. I didn’t find out about this until after he was gone and my mother showed the paper to me. A single page. Scrawled at the top of the page were the first five letters of my family nickname. That’s how we knew he meant it for me. He didn’t have enough energy to write the last letter, and gave up in what I imagine was a fit of frustration. He was frustrated by just about everything at that point. His handwriting had always been a bit messy, but now it looked like a kindergartener’s first efforts. The lines on the ‘R’ didn’t quite connect, and the ‘o’ was a big bumpy loop, outsized when compared with the rest of the script. That was it: five letters followed by the silence of blank ruled lines. And so it goes without saying, probably, that whatever he wanted to communicate died with him. All he left behind was a five-sixths of my name.”

While Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is a fine novel, Mr. Currie lacks a knack for suspense. The narrative certainly has intriguing and novel-worthy thoughts – we’re talking Singularity here – yet there is a lack of force behind such serious subjects. The author has obviously considered the ideas within his novel but tends to asses them like a fly on the wall. In the end, readers feel that such frankly emotional observation overrides the moments of true sentiment.

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Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles is the second novel from Ron Currie Jr. and his third publication. His debut  God is Dead, a collection of short stories centered around if God, were humanized only to be killed by, well, humans, has been compared with Kurt Vonnegut and Raymond Craver. Everything Matters, his second effort and first novel, Everything Matters! was the winner of the Alex Award from the American Library Association and made several best-of list in 2009, including the Los Angeles Times, Amazon, and NPR. As mentioned above, Currie is a talented writer who dives into serious subjects and divulges whatever is in his heart, and luckily for us, has a lot of time to grow.

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To the Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf

13 Feb

To the Lighthouse stands as Virginia Woolf’s masterpiece. Published in 1927,  two years after the notable Mrs. Dalloway, her novel is composed in typical Modernist fashion, dealing more with authorial philosophy and self-analysis than narrative.  Following the prose of the genre (as well as her unique style), the author fills the pages with stream-of-consciousness. Once again, the question is, does To the Lighthouse hold up to today’s standard?

pp.401Ð450.inddTo the Lighthouse follows the lives of the Ramsey family and close acquaintances in three passages; before (The Window), during (Time Passes), and after (The Lighthouse) the first World War. Centered on a summer home in the Hebrides, on the Scottish Island of Skye, the novel examines the passage of time through a multitude of their perceptions. By utilizing this approach, Woolf examines the depth and elasticity of opinion through surface level actions, allowing a complex view of simplicity:

“Looking at the far sand hills, William Bankes thought of Ramsay: thought of a road in Westmorland, though of Ramsay striding along a road by himself hung round with that solitude which seemed to be his natural air. But this was suddenly  interrupted, William Bankes remembered (and this must refer to some actual incident), by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection of a covey of little chicks, upon which Ramsay, stopping, pointed his stick and said ‘Pretty-pretty’, an odd illumination in to his heart, Bankes had thought it, which showed his simplicity, his sympathy with humble things; but it seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased, there, on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay had married. After that, Ramsay had married. After that, what with one thing and another, the pulp had gone out of their friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say, only after a time, repetition had taken the place of newness. It was to repeat that they met. But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained that his affection for Ramsay had in no way diminished but there, like the body of a young man laid up in peat for a century, with the red fresh on his lips, was his friendship, in its acuteness and reality, laid up across the bay among sandhills.”

Unlike her prior publication, Woolf spreads her thesis through many characters, instead of the iconic Clarissa Dalloway. “To the Lighthouse is a book of interrelationships among people, and though they are major and minor characters, the majors ones are not, like Clarissa Dalloway, the alpha and omega of the story, but more truly the means of giving the story harmony and unity, its focal points.” While this is certaingly an admirable undertaking on the part of the author, the follow through is not always complete. In fact, Woolf’s tendency to supplant depth with excess (though surely dependent on personal preference)  reads clumsily and tiresome:

“No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut out – a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening dress- children never forget. For this reason, it was so important what one said, and what one did, and it was  a relief when they went to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of – to think; well, not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and doing, expansive glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being onself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she continued to knit, and set upright, it was thus that she felt herself; and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she, Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her limitless. There were all the places she had not seen’ the Indian plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished here something dexterous with her needles) but as a wedge of darkness. Losing personality, lost the fret, the hurry, the stir; and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity; and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one could not help attaching one to one thing especially of the things one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at-that light, for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or other which had been lying in her mind like that-”Children don’t forget, children don’t forget”-which she would repeat and begin adding to it, It will end, it will end, she said. It will come, it will come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord. “

Much like her contemporaries, Woolf is concerned with the transience of spirit in To the Lighthouse.  Throughout the novel, characters struggle with the fear of being forgotten after death, especially Mr. Ramsay, the family patriarch struggling to attain a career worthy of Shakespeare. Though unlike the macabre Under the Volcano, the Modernist masterpiece from fellow Briton Malcolm Lowry, there is a more hopeful strain running through Lighthouse.  We see, in the middle chapter ‘Time Passes’, the Ramsey’s summer home become defunct with dust and wear during the war, only to be brought alive again with the promise of the family’s return. While characters may be blessed with more fortunate circumstances, they are still ill-fated, though with clarity of mind – conscious of the rules of reality rather than a predestined demise:

“He stood stock-still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over it. How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach ‘Z’ after all? Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that, and answer, without treachery to the expedition behind him, ‘One perhaps.’ One in a generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his power, and till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long? It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how many men wil speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two thousands years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you took from a mountain top down the long wastes of the ages? The very stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still. (He looked into the hedge, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing of the stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine fingers of a solder? Mr. Ramsay squared his shoulders and stood upright by the urn. “ 

Researching To the Lighthouse is most beneficial for understanding the goals of the novel, sadly. While Woolf has noble aims, her writing is severed by such lofty ambition. The narrative primes readers for an exciting climax in ‘The Window’, a thematically lucid entre acte in ‘Time Passes’, but suddenly loses momentum in ‘The Lighthouse’, filling the final chapter with stoically paced scraps.

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Upon publication, through Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press no less, the novel outsold the author’s previous works. Virginia admitted that it was her most personal novel, mirroring many of the characters and situations from her life, including a self-carnation under the thin veil of Lily Broscoe, an artist struggling to paint the perfect representation of the Ramsay family at their summer home.

While Woolf is not my cup of tea, especially in the Modernist genre, her life and work are intriguing, especially within Bloomsbury group. Throughout her life, the author suffered with mental illness, brought on by the death of her father at an early age, and, as some biographers point out, sexual abuse from her half brothers. At 59, these symptoms climaxed after a less-than-hospitable reception of her biography on Roger Fry and destruction of her home in the Blitz, Woolf would commit suicide by drowning herself in the River Ouse.

If anything, maybe we can learn something from Magaret Atwood:“Why go to the lighthouse at all, and why make such a fuss about going or not going? What was the book about? Why was everyone so stuck on Mrs Ramsay, who went around in floppy old hats and fooled around in her garden, and indulged her husband with spoonfuls of tactful acquiescence, just like my surely boring mother? Why would anyone put up with Mr Ramsay, that Tennyson-quoting tyrant, eccentric disappointed genius though he might be,”  the author said was her opinion of the novel at 19, only to recant and reanalyze at 62, “How was it that, this time, everything in the book fell so completely into place? How could I have missed it – above all, the patterns, the artistry – the first time through?…Some books have to wait until you’re ready for them. So much, in reading, is a matter of luck. And what luck I’d just had! (Or so I muttered to myself, putting on my floppy old hat, going out to fool around in my unfathomable garden…)”

Appointment in Samarra – John O’Hara

15 Jan

Thanks to the elasticity of cultural opinion, works of art are constantly changing in popularity. Occasionally you’re in, occasionally out. Appointment in Samarra, the debut novel from John O’Hara, was quickly venerated after publication in 1934. As time wore on, and the author revelled in chilidish antics, opinions wavered. So, will Appointment in Samarra pass our test?

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Appointment in Samarra centers around the coal mining town of Gibbsville, Pennsylvania. There we find Julian English, his wife Caroline English, and their all too close-knit community. Though they belong to the ‘Latenengo Street’ country club, own a successful Cadillac dealership, and carry college education, life is far from perfect in the English household. Like all lit firecrackers, one is waiting for an explosion.

One evening at country club, Julian, after drowning himself in drinks, decides to chuck his glass at Harry Reid, an important client. Like in all small towns, word travels fast and an uproar soon fell upon Julian. The next morning, the understandably upset Caroline instructed Julian to make amends with Reid, fearing his influence throughout Gibbsville. Though he knows the right path, Julian cannot diverge from the slippery slope he’s on – and everyone feels the consequence.

Though the purpose of this blog is focused on the relevancy of celebrated works, historical context is as important as prose. Published in 1930, Samarra predates the pulp novels so popular in later years. O’Hara continually used upper class life and Gibbsville – a thinly veiled construction of his own hometime, Pottsfeild – in over 30 novels. “If only through his social documentation, O’Hara firmly suits his readers to his world, conjuring up details and thought processes unti you can’t tell where reality ends and O’Hara begins.”  It’s what O’Hara is saying and how he is saying it:

“Ed had said he wouldn’t be down till around four o’clock. He had to spend Christmas with the wife and kid, God knows why. Al did not like to think of Annie Charney. The kid was swell; si years old and fat and healthy-looking. He wasn’t like Ed, but for the present more like Annie. She was fat and healthy-looking and blonde, like most Polacks. Ed didn’t care for her any more. Al knew that. Ed cared for Helene Holman, who was a torch singer like Libby Holman and sang at the Stage Coach. Ed really cared for Helene. He played around a little, but Al knew Helene was the only one he really cared for, and Helene really cared for him. With her it was slightly different, because nobody else would even look cockeyed at Helene as long as Ed cared for her, but even taking that into consideration Al knew Helene really cared for Ed. And she was good for him. You could tell when Ed and Helene were getting along. Ed was easier to get along with then. Tonight, or this after’, when Ed showed up at the Apollo, he probably would be in bad humor. That was the way Annie affected him. Whereas if he had spent the day with Helene he would have been in a good humor. But Al knew that Ed wouldn’t think of spending Christmas with Helene. Ed was a family man, first and last, and that was the only day in the year he would spend with the kid, at home.“

Though O’Hara has been compared to Fitzgerald – citing This Side of Paradise as a “sort of textbook” - the comparison seems stretched. Sherwood Anderson’s ‘Winesburg, Ohio’ is more akin to many faceted lives within Samarra. While the former author leaves the reader ambigious to personal views on small town life, O’Hara condemns it with a sharp knife. There is no doubt the author of ‘Paradise’ and ‘Gatsby’ didn’t reveal amongst the noveau-riche. Furthermore, ‘Samarra’ bothers little with discretion while Fitzgerald’s strength is spontaneous outburst of bourgeois melodrama. Lastly, O’Hara certainly wrote his debut during the “Hangover Years”, rather than the evening prior:

“He got out of bed, not caring to wait for warmth and luxury. His feet hit the cold hardwood floor and he stuck his toes in bedroom slippers and made for the bathroom. He had felt physically worse many times, but this was a pretty good hangover. It is a pretty good hangover when you can look at yourself in the mirror and  see nothing above the bridge of your nose. You do not see your eyes, nor the condition of your hair. You see your beard, almost hair by hair; and the hair on your chest and the bones that stick up at the base of your neck. You see your pajamas and the lines in your neck, and the stuff on your lower lip that look s as though it might be blood but never is. You first brush your teeth which is an improvement but leaves something to be desired. Then you try Lavoris and then an Eno’s. By the time you get out of the bathroom you are ready for another cigarette and in urgent need of coffee or a drink, and you wish to God you could afford to have a valet to tie your shoes. You have a hard time getting your feet into your trousers, but you finally make it, having taken just any pair of trousers, the first your hands touched the closet. But you consider a long, long time before selecting a tie. You stare at the ties; stare and stare at them, and you look down at thighs to see what color suit you are going to be wearing. Dark gray. Practically any tie will go with a dark grey suit.” 

After the death of O’Hara’s father, the family fortune had been squandered and without the means for an ivy-league education. This troubled the author throughout his life. In a short-lived (and hilariously sour) column for Newsday, O’Hara would comment on inner politics within Harvard and Princeton, despite having never attended. He even went so far as to “demand“ an Honorary Degree from Yale while denying several other awards. Like his column, O’Hara’s thin veil of resentment is just as obvious in his debut:

“‘That’s all right,’ said Bobby. ‘When there was a war, I was in it. I wore a uniform. I wasn’t one of these God damn slackers playing soldier boy at some college. Lafayette or Lehigh or whatever it was. S.A.T.C. Saturday Afternoon Tea Club. Yes, sir. When old Uncle Sam needed me, I heeded the call and made the world safe for democracy, and when the war was over Istopped fighting. I didn’t do like some people that put on a uniform back in 1917 and then did their fighting by throwing drinks around in the prescence of respectiable people at a country club, thirteen or fourteen years after the war was over. Nineteen-thirty. That’s what some people are. Veterens of 1930. The Battle of the Lantenengo Country Club Smoking Room. Surprise attack.’” 

 Understandable that O’Hara is most notable for his short stories. The author has a knack for the paragraph, despite now dated narratives. After the success of Appointment in Samarra, the author would have difficulty galvanizing lasting literary success, despite a slew of sex ridden bestsellers and ‘Ten North Frederick’ winning the National Book Award in 1956.

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(O’Hara, far right, with Hemingway, far left)

O’Hara’s contemporary success has been denigrated to a spot on the Time and Modern Library literary totem, despite protests. It is not the critic’s job to defy the words of others, but when the label “disdain(er) of white male authors” – amongst other sour monikers - is used as personal description, one suffers from predictability. Though O’Hara may be a well known “lout“,  we should all hope to remembered for our achievements rather than misgivings – especially when primary sources prove otherwise. While ‘Appointment in Samarra’ may not pass the test of time, it is much more than “middlebrow”.

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Me Before You – Jojo Moyes

4 Jan

Living with Literature is happy (and fortunate) to announce a new patron.  Along with the Time and the Modern Library Top Lists, we will also review upcoming Penguin releases.  Me Before You, a complicated love story, is the first in the series.

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Louisa Clark has recently been laid off from her job at the Buttered Bun cafe.  With the economy still bad, father on the verge of losing his job, her sister Katrina moving back in, and Mother worried, the 26-year old needs to be the breadwinner.  To make matters worse, her longtime boyfriend Patrick, the former fat now Franksteinly fit marathon runner, is focused on the Xtreme Viking challenge, and has little time for Lou.  But all that is about to change.

While working the midnight shift at a chicken factory or exotic dancing would fund the bills – choices Lou had to sadly consider in her small town – they’re not first choice.  During a job assistant session, Lou hears about a personal caretaker position.  Fearful images of sponge bathing a flabby older gentleman are quickly dashed away and, much to Lou’s luck, a rather high salary is offered.  Though she takes the job, Lou knows in the back of her mind there must be a catch.

There is a castle in Lou’s small English town where the Traynor’s live.  Will Traynor, the son of the upperclass family, was involved in a traffic accident leaving him without use of his arms or legs.  He is now a quadriplegic.  The former alpha male, successful businessman, and world traveler is understandably bitter about his new way of life, and Lou gets the brunt end of this.

Of course, after a few weeks, the two start talking, and even become friends.  Will’s medical nurse, Nathan, even admits he’s never seen his patient so happy.  But there is still something strange about Lou’s situation.  Hired without any prior care experience nor schooling, the young woman wonders what the Traynor’s saw in her qualifications.  It isn’t until one evening, while trying not to evesdrop on Mrs. Traynor’s phone call, Lou realizes that she isn’t there simply to keep Will company, but to keep their son from voluntarily ending his life.

Though it is subtle, Me Before You takes into account British social hierarchy. “Britain is still incredibly hide-bound by class, and we only really notice it when we go somewhere that it doesn’t exist in the same way, like the US or Australia.”   By utilizing class mindset, and with a touch of British charm, Moyes structures Me Before You.  The Traynor’s are not only physically different from Lou and her family, but mentally as well:

“To my parents, I had in four short weeks become just a few degrees more interesting.  I was now the conduit to a different world. My mother, in particular, asked me daily questions about Granta House and its domestic habits in the manner of a zoologist forensically examining some strange new creature and its habitat. ‘Does Mrs. Traynor use linen napkins at every meal?’ she would ask, or ‘Do you think they vacuum every day, like we do?’ or ‘What do they do with their potatoes’?

She sent me off in the mornings with strict instructions to find out what brand of loo roll they used, or whether the sheets were a polycotton mix.  I was a source of great disapointment to her that most of the time I couldn’t actually remember.  My mother was secretly convinced that posh people lived like pigs – ever since I had told her, at age six, of a well spoken school friend whose mother wouldn’t let us play in their front room ‘because we’d disturb the dust.’ “

Despite revolving around Lou and Will, Me Before You can also boast a well developed (and necessary) supporting cast.  Moyes uses her characters for contrasting perspectives throughout the novel.  Thanks to cohesive and easily approachable characters, the new voices feel less like strangers, and more like friends & family.  These interims also save and serve the narrative when Lou’s bitter attitude reads too heavy-handed:

“Katrina:

Louisa didn’t come out of her room for a whole thirty-six hours after she got back from her holiday.  She arrived back from the airport late Sunday evening, pale as a ghost under her suntan – and we couldn’t work that out, for a start, as she had defnitely said she’d see us first thing Monday morning. ‘I just need sleep’, she had said, then shut herself in her room and gone straight to bed. We had thought it a little odd, but what did we know?  Lou has been peculiar since birth, after all. “

Me Before You is certainly written with an audience in mind, yet isn’t limited to a specific genre.  Moyes showcases her talent by crafting a narrative with lovable and difficult characters. “I’m not very romantic in real life”, the author admits, but her novel proves the opposite, and reminds readers how complicated, yet remarkable love can be:

“The art gallery trip lasted a shade under twenty minutes.  And that included driving around the block three times in search of a suitable parking space.  We got there, and almost before I had closed the door behind him he said all the work was terrible.  I asked him why and he said if I couldn’t see it he couldn’t explain it.  The cinema had to be abandoned after the staff told us, apologetically  that their lift was out of order.  Others, such as the failed attempt to go swimming, required more time and organization ringing up the swimming pool beforehand, booking Nathan for overtime-and then, when we got to the leisure center, after the flask of hot chocolate was drunk in silence in the car park, Will resolutely refused to go in.” 

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Moyes displays a strong spirit in her writing.  What began as a typified romance in Me Before You, blossomed into an intriguing (and creative) moral question:  should we let Will go through with his wish?  With the success of her last novel, The Last Letter from Your Lover and The Girl You Left Behind, the anticipation for this latest novel is no surprise.  Me Before You is an inspiring and heart-wrenching tale from a writer well worth your time.

Here is a book club kit for interested parties.

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