Saturday, May 31, 2014

In One Person


I'll begin with my score:
This novel scores a 9 out of 10 in my humble opinion. I loved it!

I'v read other novels of John Irving, and they were good, but not as dead on as this story.
William Abott is the main character in this novel, he tells the story and we see the world momentarily through his eyes only. We know what he knows, nothing more, and certainly nothing less.
William is very straightforward. It's very early in the novel that we come to understand that William has peculiar crushes. For instance he falls in love with the new husband of his mother, and later on, with a librarian who's double his age and who has exceptionally large hands. Even his fascination with teenage bra's and the breasts they contain are very visually and verbally explained.
With so much infomation, this novel never feels tedious. The manner in which Irving spins the story is as frightening and beautiful as a spider weaving its web. It's a thick novel, but I've been neglecting sleep a lot just to read another chapter (I read mostly in bed) before I turn out the light. Maybe the sleep deprevation made me look into this novel another way.
As William grows up, we follow his path on how to live being bisexual, because he both likes men and women, especially those with small breasts. He experienced gay sex before he had sex with a woman, and you'll love his anecdote about his first sexual experience entering a woman's vagina. I'm putting it in these words, if you'll read the novel you'll understand why.
William also has a inclination towards transsexuals (aka transgenders). As we heterosexuals and homosexuals may think he has the best of both worlds, being bisexual, but think about it. The novel definitely made me think about it. Being bisexual actually means that you'll never be fully contented with either sex. You can never have both. Of course William's partners don't trust him fully either and he never has a relationship that lasts.
Elaine, William's best friend, from the days he was still finding out who he was, stands by him and they even try living together but they wait too late and can't seem to fall into the familiar pattern of being lovers. Still, they maintain their friendship. They both used to love a guy who was on the wrestling team, who (in my words) gave them a total mindfuck.
We follow William through his live, he tells it while he's already experiencing old age. He grows up to become a known writer and his books support more sexual diversity and acceptance.
Then the AIDS-epidemic strikes and everything takes a dark turn. I didn't know that NY lost more souls in that period of time than America lost in Vietnam. It took place when I still watched toddler tv and enjoyed being read to. The novel takes on a glum vibe, and as William watches his friends and friends of his friends die one by one, he needs to think about what the past life has been like for him. It was filled with a sexual awakening amongst the gay scene, from a single bar opening towards a movement they fights for gay rights. Hand in hand with that awakening was a kind of irresponsibility. AIDS brought terror as well as death. Being gay wasn't considered awkward anymore, but people began to avoid them and putting labels on them, for instance that they brought the disease on them themselves.
Ignorance reigned in that era, and William eventually makes the decision of moving back to Vermont and live in his grandfathers house. The third part of the novel is kind of how the plague must have felt in the old days. Williams sees so many around him dying, not only of AIDS, but also many of his family die. His mother dies in a car crash and later on his grandfather shoots himself through the head because he misses his girls. William goes back to his roots and teaches in the school he went to himself, seeing the world anew after the worst of the AIDS-epidemic has come and gone. He sees a new revival of the gay scene, but more responsible, more targeted towards getting the same rights as heterosexuals instead of hoping not to get beaten when coming out of the closet.
I can go on and on telling you about this novel, and I congratulate myself I've told so much already without giving much plot away. This is a gem of a novel, about a very unusual topic. Everyone with an open mind is going to love it.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Inbetween: The Time Traveler's Wife


I've read this a while ago.. 

The time traveler's wife is a love story set in different times, seen from different angles and experienced from different ages. 

The story revolves around Clare and Henry, lovers through all time, and the story is told from their respective angles. 
The first half of the novel, Clare is trying to keep up with the memories future-Henry already has and once they meet when she's 20, Henry does the same. 
She at first waits for him to show up, and when she's the one left behind in the present, she reluctantly lets him go, even though she knows a younger self is depending on his visits. 

They try to lead a normal life, each having jobs, getting married, eventually trying to have children, which become a barrier between them but hope prevails until the end. His lapses in time complicate things, but together they make the most of things. 

The way it is written, took some getting used to, but I picked up the pace quickly. 
Although the novel jumps back and forth in time, I never lost grip on the story and the love between Henry and Clare. 

It's a well-told tale, but it never excited me as much as I thought it would do. The characters lacked meaning, imo, but somehow the novel has a certain wantonness about it, that makes it easy to ignore its flaws. 

I give this 7 out of 10. 

Thursday, May 15, 2014

An inbetweener: The Little Stranger


The Little Stranger is a multitude of books. 
It's a ghost story. 
It's a post-war epilogue of life in England and mainly life for the upper classes, the dying class of that particular day and age.
It's an unconventional love story. 
It's about deterioration and not adjusting to a changing time. 

All that combined in a unique novel is extraordinary. Waters is a master with words. She has an uncanny wit about her and with her dialogues and prose in old english style you feel like you are reading a novel from an early 20th century author. 

The whole novel is the point of view of a single character, Dr Faraday, a country doctor, who becomes entangled with the Ayres and their estate Hundreds Hall. 
His somewhat dry and dull way of seeing life somehow suits it well. 
You come to love him and you come to want to smack his head against a brick wall as well. 

In what seems at first to be a struggling upperclass family, Faraday soon realises more is underneath the surface. 
For not wanting to share too many details for those who still are to read this book, I'll be brief and hopefully as spoilerfree as can be. 

This is a ghost story, I said earlier, but ask me later and I'd say it's not. 
This novel made me change my mind over and over. 
Sometimes I wholeheartedly agreed with Faraday, stating that mental decay was the seed that brought on everything. 
And other times I knew there had to be something, that there had to be a presence of some kind, haunting the inhabitants of Hundreds. 

I can't put my finger on it quite yet, I may need a reread before I'm absolutely positive which of these former statements is true. 
For now.. I don't think there was a ghost as such, but that the presence of Faraday himself, set a lot in motion. 
This may sound very eary, but when reading the novel, you'll know what I mean. 

Characterwise, this is a gem, but it needs adapting to the prose, I do warn you for that. Don't put it aside, because of it, I promise, once used to it, you'll feel the eariness and chills this book will definitely give you. 
In many ways, it reminded me of a movie, The Blair Witch Project. Equally unclear, but giving goosebumps nonetheless.


My score: 8 out of 10.

Friday, May 9, 2014

Skylight


It's been a while since I've read something written by Saramago. I've read Blindness (Which I found exquisite) and Death with interruptions (which wasn't as good as Blindness, a little difficult to get through).

I regularly visit the library as most of you probably do, and this one was standing so invitingly in the NEW section. I hadn't realised something new could come out from Saramago, but yet here it is, the very proof that some writers can keep coming up with new novels after they've passed away. Michael Crichton did a similar feat after being torn away too early.

Of course he didn't right it post mortem. Skylight has been one of Saramago's earlier novels which has never been published. After reading it I can't tell why it never did. It's a very good novel, not with as much evident depth Blindness had, but still ringing but double entendres.
Skylight tells the story of life in one apartment building in the thriving city of Lisbon, Portugal. You rarely set foot outside the apartment and when you do you keep securely fastened to the narrative's mind. This might be a summary of a very boring novel, if it wasn't for the literary magic of Saramago.

He can paint such a realistic picture of tenants lives that you keep reading it for as much the same reason we follow a favourite TV show. The time is shortly after the second world war and most families are going through difficult time earning enough to keep their families safe. With the economic crisis we suffer today, you do realise that we are just a bunch of big babies crying because we can't go out to restaurants more often or buy a new car each two years. In Skylight most go through a real crisis, where you have to decide whether to eat well or pay the rent, where you have to keep quiet to keep working and where you have to pray that nothing illfortunate is coming your way.

I'm not telling you much of the actual content of this novel, because I can't do it justice. Summarizing the different families without going deeper isn't doing them justice. The advice I can give, is that if you never have read Saramago, this might be a good introduction and if you have read him before, you'll hear a clear voice of him long after he passed away. He may come back from the dead more often.

My opinion: 8 out of 10.

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