Review of The Fountainhead

This instant classic is the story of an intransigent young architect, his violent battle against conventional standards, and his explosive love affair with a beautiful woman who struggles to defeat him. (www.goodreads.com)

This novel is something else. Something else entirely. I read a few reviews before I began mine, and the overall opinion was that it's a great book when you're too young to understand the way the world works.
To be honest, I'm 29 and I loved this novel for what it was worth. I admire Howard Roarke for his unwavering principles. I realise most of the world relies on compromise and sacrifice but I still have a healthy dose of respect for someone who won't jeopardise his own beliefs so he will fit in better in society. During reading this novel I more than once wished I had once had the 'balls' to do what I wanted instead of doing what is expected. Doing what you want, as Howard Roarke does, mostly means that you have so little responsibilities that you don't have to surrender yourself to others.

In this way Howard Roarke is a lonely man, because he won't budge and he won't respect anyone who would budge for him. He doesn't want compromise, but when no one would the world would be filled with stones and no cement to put them together. Compromise is necessary.
For a novel, since the world in books doesn't always have to be a real life scene, this is a good way of exploring what someone like Roarke would be like. You see him depicted as a kind of lonely hero, but I think that he must have been lonely and somewhat despairing.

So, this novel puts me in both ends of the discussion. Admiration for the choices in his life and a certain sense of pity of leading this lonely life.

Of course more people lived in this novel besides Howard Roarke.
You have the charismatic Peter Keating, who leads the exact opposite life of Roarke. He never acts on behalf of his own desires, only lives by the standards other people set for him. This leads to a lonely and very disillusioned life. He gains everything professionally but isn't capable of enjoying his success since he never wanted it in the first place.

Elsworth Toohey, the anti-christ, sort of speak, is a katalyst who proclaims that sacrifice to others is a virtue and selfishness the greatest sin of man. He sets out to destroy men who are confident of themselves and don't live to be what others expect them to be.

Last but not least is Dominique Francon, a woman whose life never has been difficult, but who has neither respect nor love for the world around her. She sees something beautiful being defiled by people looking at it who can't understand what it means. Only in the end does she understand that nothing changes due to men's thoughts about it, and then she can begin to comprehend life and love. I have the least respect for this character. She's a woman too cunning to ever truly love someone, even Roarke.

It's a lenghty novel, it contains ideas I don't always agree with but the overall opinion I got, is that everyone should read this novel just once. And truly think about it. It's a novel to be savoured, not to be read too hastily. Rather take a month or so and let the situations, the ideas and the philosophy sink in. It's a novel that's got something for every generation.
But let me say this, to put an end to my review. Never drop out of school, even if they don't understand you or you think it's a waste of time. School isn't something you got to achieve, but it's a means to achieve greater things in life. So don't take after Roarke, because the world he lived in doesn't exist anymore.

Personal score: 4 stars

Review of The Ocean At The End Of The Lane

Sussex, England. A middle-aged man returns to his childhood home to attend a funeral. Although the house he lived in is long gone, he is drawn to the farm at the end of the road, where, when he was seven, he encountered a most remarkable girl, Lettie Hempstock, and her mother and grandmother. He hasn't thought of Lettie in decades, and yet as he sits by the pond (a pond that she'd claimed was an ocean) behind the ramshackle old farmhouse, the unremembered past comes flooding back. And it is a past too strange, too frightening, too dangerous to have happened to anyone, let alone a small boy.

Forty years earlier, a man committed suicide in a stolen car at this farm at the end of the road. Like a fuse on a firework, his death lit a touchpaper and resonated in unimaginable ways. The darkness was unleashed, something scary and thoroughly incomprehensible to a little boy. And Lettie—magical, comforting, wise beyond her years—promised to protect him, no matter what. (www.goodreads.com)

This was a great novel. It's quite short which is probably why is left such a good impression. The best way to describe this book, is that it's a children's book for adults. You get to marvel in the innocence and grandeur of the world when you were in elementary school and experience this through the eyes of a 7y old. I've read Gaiman before, but this is his best novel I've read so far. It's truly mesmerizing.

He explains in the beginning that it's a book about his childhood, the child you're following through this novel is based upon himself. We all have memories that seem too large for life, expanded from being not able to see everything in the right context. Someone we're scared of becomes a witch or a boogie man, something we can't explain becomes an adventure. What can I tell more? Read this little gem, it reads like a speed train and you'll be sorry when it's done but so much the richer for having read it and remembered some of your own adventures from way back then.

Personal score: 4 stars

Review of The Cider House Rules

A great book. Nonetheless it took me some time to finish this novel..

In short..
Homer Wells' odyssey begins among the apple orchards of rural Maine. As the oldest unadopted child at St Cloud's orphanage, he strikes up a profound and unusual friendship with Wilbur Larch, the orphanage's founder - a man of rare compassion and an addiction to ether. What he learns from Wilbur takes him from his early apprenticeship in the orphanage surgery, to an adult life running a cider-making factory and a strange relationship with the wife of his closest friend...(Goodreads)

My opinion..
I was impressed by the simple style this novel maintained. Its proze is not very easy, a lot of medical terms, me as a foreigner loving to read english, had to look up or try to translate through context. Still the general sense this novel had, was of a no nonsense way of life, where compromise had to be taken in order to survive and have the things or people one wanted.
You start out with following the life story of Dr Larch, albeit a little abbreviated. It follows his journey towards his function in the orphanage of St. Clouds and the work he performs there. Dr Larch is one of the first gyneacologists who would perform abortions as well as deliver babies depending on what the mothers wanted. In a world where abortions were still illegal, he pursues this to be made legal.
Then Homer Wells is being born and it's being noticed throughout his experiences being adopted that Homer doesn't belong anywhere else but at St.Clouds. Dr Larch learns him whatever medical experience he can be taught and Homer becomes a very good obstetrician.
But of course a young man, who hasn't have a clue what the world can bring him, it's intent to stay put at St. Clouds his whole life, a place very cut off from the world. In his twenties he sets out with a young couple who welcome him very much and he goes to work at an apple orchard. He falls in love with the girl his friend is supposed to marry. When through circumstances both Homer and the girl think that their friend is dead they grow closer together and finally become lovers. When the girl gets pregnant, they decide to have it. They both return to St.Clouds to help out and eventually deliver the baby, without anyone at home knowing.

When they return they claim that Homer has adopted baby Angel and they Candy, the girl, will help out. They have heard that their friend has survived, but is paralysed and Candy can't refuse to marry him, out of guilt. Their lives run forth, Angel not knowing that Homer and Candy are his truthful parents, Wally not knowing that Candy and Homer have a love affair, albeit a little one.
When Homers past confronts him, he knows that he has to come clean and take the place his old mentor is saving for him.

I've been very impressed by this novel. I'm not pro abortions, I had to wait a long time for my little girl, so I'm not entirely symphatizing with girls who end it abdruptly. Still, this novel got me thinking. It's indeed a choice of the mother in question to have to baby or not. It's a living being inside you, whether you terminate the pregnancy, or you raise it and doing a bad job at that.
There are so many pro ans con's, that you will have this argument forever. Right or wrong is a very tricky path. There are people having babies for the wrong reasons, as well as there are people aborting for the right reasons.

Personal rating: 4 stars