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Seiichi

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  1. In 1920s New Orleans, Raziela Nolan is in the throes of a magnificent love affair when she dies suddenly in an accident. Immediately after her death, she chooses to stay beween a realm that exists after life and before whatever lies beyond it. From this remarkable vantage point, Razi narrates the story of her lost love, and life, as well as the relationship of Amy and Scott, a young couple whose house she haunts seventy years later. Their trials finally compel Razi to slowly unravel the mystery of what happened to her first and only love, Andrew, and to confront a long-hidden secret.

     

    It has never occurred to me that the word "between" could make me cringe, but this book has shown me that this is possible. Perhaps it's the rationalist in me that so objects to part of this story---the story of a ghost that exists between the living and "beyond", wherever that may be. The story of Amy and Scott, which occupies around a third of the book is compelling enough, but seemed contrived. The subject matter concerning the breakdown of their relationship deserves a weightier treatment than playing second fiddle to a ghost's story, which I found both tiresome and unconvincing.

     

    The problem with Ravi's story is that there's little tension holding it together. Her memories shift between her early memories and her love affair with Andrew with little coherence. Then there are her encounters with the others that are "between", which serve very little purpose. There's Lionel, who encourages Ravi to break the rules in her quest to discover what happened to Andrew. The encounters are few but it is difficult to erase the feeling of pointlessness once you've made that conclusion about one of them. Add to this the sometimes unbelievable manner in which the ghosts and their powers are portrayed and the justification of their reappearance becomes weaker. These are ghosts that can write letters and mail them; use computers, but also damage electrical equipment because of the electromagnetic disturbances they produce; touch and move objects but not each other; etc.

     

    Ravi's reminiscences gain some coherence as she begins to recount how she met Andrew and how their relationship developed. They are made for each other---that much is obvious from the start. Their story is more or less standard: two love birds, both with aspirations, facing a future apart as they prepare for college. In seventy years, the most Ravi does to track down Andrew is write letters to the surviving relatives of Andrew's former housekeeper. She makes little progress---no surprise there...but the plot elements are so convenient that Ravi's search comes to a satisfactory end---satisfactory for Ravi, but not necessarily so for the reader.

  2. Have you heard of his new one due out sometime this year - The good angel of death?

    Yes, you mentioned it in your own reading thread. I put it on my Amazon wishlist so I wouldn't forget about it. Just a few more months until its out.

  3. Kiev militia lieutenant Viktor Slutsky investigates the puzzling death of a distinguished genereal and presidential adviser, whose body was sent skywards on an advertising balloon. KGB officer Nik Tsensky is brought from distant Tadzhikistan to Kiev for a secret mission. Their quests, related at first in alternate chapters, ultimately convege. At stake are KGB billlions salted away somewhere in Europe, which Ukraine is bent on seizing for itself. Investigation and mission run a picaresque course through many countries. A larger-than-life hitman, bombs under furniture, a hearse, a deaf-and-dumb blonde, a tortoise, a parrot, and a backfiring automatic all play a part. Kurkov introduces the reader to a militia and a KGB not seen before in Western fiction.

    I thought this one suffered a bit because neither of the two main characters felt as fleshed out as the protagonists in Kurkov's other books. It's trademark Kurkov: a light read with comical elements. Not as good as Death and the Penguin or my favourite Kurkov novel, A Matter of Death and Life, but still a decent way of passing time.

  4. Smithson Ide's life so far has led him nowhere. He's forty-three years old, weighs too much, and keeps himself numb with food and alcohol. His only emotioinal ties are to his parents and to the memory of his older sister, Bethany, who has been missing for twenty years. Then his parents die in a car crash and he learns of Bethany's death in LA County. Suddenly there isn't enough beer in the world to keep Smithy from his feelings.

     

    Drunk and bereft, he takes his old Raleigh bicycle and starts cycling. Once he starts, he finds he can't stop and then he's riding acros America to revover his sister. Along the way he meets all sorts of people who help or hinder him. He hears the confession of a priest; he rescues a boy from a snow storm; he has a gun pointed in his face; he's hit by a truck and helps a man dying of AIDS.

     

    Smithy's ride is an extraordinary quest, to rediscover the past and memories of Bethany, but it's also his journey back to life and love.

    It's amazing what they will write in a blurb to dress up a novel. Take that last paragraph. It couldn't be more deceptive. Smithy doesn't actually set out to rediscover his past and memories, and neither does he know he's actually embarked on a quest---it's his childhood friend and neighbour who theorises that he's on a quest. In fact, he doesn't even know what he's looking for when he embarks on his journey, or even what he's doing.

     

    There are two threads in the story: the primary one dealing with current events, the secondary with the past. One hundred and fifty pages into the book and I had had enough of the writing. The narrative structure was choppy, not helped by the fact that the writer adhered to the rigid structure of presenting past and present in alternating chapters. There's nothing wrong with this, as long as the writer can maintain a natural flow in both narratives. Unfortunately, the focus on the past was unclear and I sometimes wondered where the narrative was going. It wasn't until later that I realised that Smithson was trying to tell Bethany's story albeit in his clumsy voice. The book did become easier to read, but by that time I had lost interest and decided to speed read the last two hundred and fifty pages. I honestly don't think I missed much by doing so.

     

    On the dust jacket fo my copy, the Philadelphia Inquirer states: "Smithson Ide is one of the sweetest, most endearing losers in literature." If Smithson Ide is endearing then I must be doing something wrong in my life. Maybe I should take a leaf out of his book and begin viewing woman solely terms of their bust size and shape. Why even bother about personality? And that question can be asked about the majority of the characters that Smithson meets on his magical quest---a quest where he encounters the spectre of his deceased sister at various stages of her life. This isn't a question of whether the characters are simple and non-complex. The way the characters are written make them less engaging than they could be, nevermind the fact that some of them are walking clich

  5. On his return journey home one morning, Lord Geoffroy Loveall comes across a newborn child and recues it from the waste heap. The child is a blessing to the eccentric and heirless Geoffroy. His cousins, the Osberns, await the end of the Loveall line, ready to inherit the title and fortune of England's richest family---a distasteful prospect. This child, which fortune has presented him, will be his sole heir.

     

    There is another reason why the child is such a blessing to him. He has never recovered form the trauma of losing his younger sister, Dolores, at an early age. Now he has been given a child whom he can love with the same devotion he showed his sister. In honour of Dolores, Geoffroy names the child Rose Old. There is one problem, however: this new girl of his is not a she but a he. Fearing for their master's health, the loyal servants of Love Hall decide to keep this a secret from Geoffroy until such time that he is able to handle the truth.

     

    ----

     

    I nearly gave up on this book after the first chapter. It seemed to take the author a long time just to narrate a simple sequence of events. This was a problem that resurfaced halfway through the book and I found myself either speed reading or skimming over passages that didn't seem to convey any important information. That's not to say that this book is a bad book---it simply suffers in places where the writer could have been more terse. As a first novel, this is a commendable effort and I would not be put off reading any more of his novels.

     

    The main focus of the first half of the novel is concerned with Rose's early childhood and the strangeness she feels as she observes the similarities difference between himself and her friends. Having been kept in ignorance of both sexes, she must deal with the problems of her growing sexuality on her own by observing others, but this only adds to her confusion.

     

    As can be expected, it is only so long that the secret of her true gender can be kept. With the passing of Geoffroy, Rose becomes the next Lord Loveall, and must adjust to acting as a male, his idyllic and carefree childhood now behind him. As if dealing with his own sexuality isn't enough, he must now deal with the invasion of his home by the Osberns, who are now determined to take advantage of his circumstances to sieze control of the Loveall estate. The second half of the novel deals with how Rose comes to terms with who he is and how he attempts to protect the Loveall estate from the Osberns. This second half takes a little perseverance, and I found myself speeding through some of the passages, but in the end the perseverance pays off. It doesn't quite live up to the expectations you'd feel from reading the blurb, but it's nonetheless a decent first novel.

  6. Who ever loved, that loved not at first sight? In Hero and Leander, Marlowe philosophises about the nature of love. Love, if it is real, is involuntary. To decide to love someone is not to love them. "Love at first sight" is a subject that fascinates Bron, who is attempting to write a book he has called The Book of True Love. It's as much a personal undertaking as something he's been commissioned to write. His sentiments echo Marlowe's. His previous relationships have fizzled, leaving him feeling that there must be something more. What he needs is, to break the cycle of doomed relationships, to experience that involuntary feeling that overcomes reasoning: in short, to fall in love. And then it happens... A brief encounter with a beautiful stranger sees him experience for the first time love---love at first sight.

     

    Flora, the target of his affections, is elusive, at times receptive to his advances, but ultimately evasive, warning him away from her. Bron contemplates the nature of love, deviating from his original research. Hoping to convince Flora to accept him---and to accept love---he enters into a "trial of love", where he attempts to defend the truth of his feelings.

     

    Is it possible to fall in love at first sight? As far as Bron is concerned, following his encounter with Flora, it is, yet is this the true love that he seeks? The question lingers throughout the book. Bron, blinded by his feelings, loses sight of the questions he originally intended to pose---questions concerning Paul Marotte, a doctor who, after himself experiencing the phenomenon, turned artist, making his own experience the focus of his art. What was the doctor's state of mind when he saw his wife for the first time? What was it about her that he found so enrapturing? Did the circumstances of his life influence his feelings? The same questions can be asked of Bron, which makes his trial all the more difficult. Flora is the type of woman who easily attracts the attention of men. To win her heart, Bron must prove to her that he is different, and that his love is not borne from impulse---that he is not clinging to the same feeling he experienced when he first met her, but has allowed his feelings to mature over time.

  7. Does anyone have the link to the BBC article in which this list appeared?

     

    I fail to see what criteria were used. How could anyone put The Da Vinci Code and Ulysses on the same list?! War and Peace and Bridget Jones' Diary?! Also, number 14 is the Complete Works of Shakespeare and 98 Hamlet.

    My post explaining the poll can be found here. This wasn't a BBC poll. The BBC poll was The Big Read, which has its own microsite.

  8. It's not late, but Teena Maguire and her daughter decide to head home from a hot and heady Fourth of July party. They leave the heat of the crowd and take the cooling walk home through the park. Teena feels uneasy. A group of boys catch sight of the pair from across the lake. The boys scent blood. They tease Teena, chase her and corner her in front of her daughter.

     

    Rape begins with what is almost unspeakable and tells of the brutality and cowardice that overtakes a small town in the aftermath of the attack. A diamond-hard dissection of modern mores, this is not only the story of Teena and Bethie and their insolent assailants but also the tale of their silent champion---a man who knows the meaning of justice. And love.

     

    The book is a retrospective look at events from the perspective of the twelve-year old daughter, now grown up with some normalcy returned to her life. A matter-of-fact tone is used to tell events as if Bethie is trying to distance herself from them. Once the three main characters are introduced, the rest of the book---from the way the plot unfolds to the reactions of characters in the story---is more or less predictable. For the informed reader, there are no surprises in store. The only thing the book does is state the issues involved and the need to ensure the protection and welfare of victims of crime.

  9. Following the death of his mother Lydia, Edmund returns to the family home. There he finds the remnants of the family he left behind: his older brother, sister-in-law, and niece---a dysfunctional family no longer in communication with each other, each living out a confused existence. Having escaped the poisoning influence of Lydia many years ago, the expectation is that Edmund will be able to bring some semblance of good back into the lives of the family. Unwilling, and powerless to do anything of use, Edmund is dragged into the family's scandalous affairs. Among the chaos, the only person he finds unchanged is the Italian Girl, the former nurse to the brothers, who has silently witnessed the disintegration of the family.

  10. Does anyone know why there's not one Stephen King on their list? Not one :) my friend said that some consider him to be 'low brow'! As if!

    Well, the first thing to note is that this isn't result of the BBC Big Read poll that surveyed the nations top x hundred best loved books. It's actually from a World Book Day survey from 2007. This means that out of the sample of 2000 who took the online survey to nominate their top 10 books, none of those were Stephen King fans, or so the results would have you believe.

     

    Let's say that there were a few Stephen King nominations. It's still unlikely that one of his books would have made it into the top 10 (in a sample that small) because for that to happen, the voters would have had to agree on one or two of his books they thought would stand out against the rest. The split vote between books would mean that the selected books would see him pushed out of the top 100. His chances of being listed would increase if the voters opted for a series he had written, instead of individual novels. If I remember correctly, the reason why J.K. Rowling didn't come top in the BBC Big Read was because each Harry Potter book was nominated individually, whereas in this poll the books are considered as a series.

     

    There was one Stephen King book that made the top 200 in the BBC poll: The Green Mile. I'll let people decide for themselves why, out of all his books, that one would have made the top 200.

     

    The Guardian report on the poll is here if anyone's interested.

     

    Edit: I remembered this Guardian list that was assembled earlier this year, which included a couple of Stephen King books.

  11. in mathematics we use imaginary numbers and they helps us to solve a lot of problems without us being bothered by their unreality. So if even a mathematician can believe in unreal things, why can't we who sail in the world of immagination?
    Well, mathematicians work with abstract concepts. Complex numbers are no more unreal than the number zero, or negative numbers, concepts which were considered absurd when they were first suggested.

     

    ... but look at the classics, the biggies. Without the ghost of Hamlet's father (whether you take him to be a real apparition or a nice mass hallucination), there would be no indecisive, inactive hero, there would be no "O what a rogue and peasant slave am I", no "To be or not to be, that is the question". Without the witches' predictions, Macbeth would never kill Duncan, and if he never heard voices inside his head (again, whether you take them to be real or a concretisation of his feelings of guilt) then the play would lose so much psychological death.

     

    Plus I find the distinction between fantasy and not-fantasy, in this case, to be unnecessary. Granted, in fantasy supernatural elements are "expected" in a way that they are not necessarily in other types of fiction, but the way I see it is that such elements are usually employed for the same reasons: ghosts, for example, can be used to explore metaphysical questions about the afterlife, or show the immortality of certain sentiments/values i.e. love, or force a character to resolve their past, etc.

    He's not complaining about the supernatural phenomena occurring in books where, due to the genre or the beliefs people held at the time, this kind of tale could be expected. If I understood correctly, he's talking about books which are grounded in modern reality, where the reader doesn't expect a supernatural element to be part of the story, yet the author decides to put one in. E.g., a man is found murdered (stabbed) in his home, his past is revealed, and none of the suspects is the murderer because the author has decided at the very end of the book to reveal that it was the ghost of his wife that killed him. It's just nonsensical.

     

    As I said in the opening thread, I'm sure I'm pretty much alone with this. But I like my novels to be plausible, basically. And the presence of the mystical or supernatural elements really bug me.

     

    It's not a very good explanation, is it?

    You got your reply in before me.

  12. THE GOING

    Thomas Hardy

     

     

    Why did you give no hint that night

    That quickly after the morrow's dawn,

    And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

    You would close your term here, up and be gone

    Where I could not follow

    With wing of swallow

    To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

     

    Never to bid good-bye,

    Or lip me the softest call,

    Or utter a wish for a word, while I

    Saw morning harden upon the wall,

    Unmoved, unknowing

    That your great going

    Had place that moment, and altered all.

     

    Why do you make me leave the house

    And think for a breath it is you I see

    At the end of the alley of bending boughs

    Where so often at dusk you used to be;

    Till in darkening dankness

    The yawning blankness

    Of the perspective sickens me!

     

    You were she who abode

    By those red-veined rocks far West,

    You were the swan-necked one who rode

    Along the beetling Beeny Crest,

    And, reining nigh me,

    Would muse and eye me,

    While Life unrolled us its very best.

     

    Why, then, latterly did we not speak,

    Did we not think of those days long dead,

    And ere your vanishing strive to seek

    That time's renewal? We might have said,

    "In this bright spring weather

    We'll visit together

    Those places that once we visited."

     

    Well, well! All's past amend,

    Unchangeable. It must go.

    I seem but a dead man held on end

    To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know

    That such swift fleeing

    No soul foreseeing—

    Not even I—would undo me so!

  13. This is a story about jealousy. It is also about lies and betrayals, trysts and exiles, palace intrigues and plagues. It begins with the rant of a disgraced princess, and ends with the disappearance of the woman who wronged her. The setting is exotic: the courts and streets of Kyoto, the imperial capital of Japan, in the late tenth century.

     

    A diary is stolen, and its pages are circulated throughout the palace. It reveals a tale of rivalry and deceit. Two women, both ladies-in-waiting to the Empress, fall in love with the same conniving man. He is exiled for seducing the Vestal of Ise, a young girl who is the protectoress of the realm. The two women scheme to bring him back---and to win first place in his affections. Their rivalry reaches such a pitch that it threatens to undermine the rule of the Emperor himself.

     

    At the heart of this story is a tragedy waiting to happen. The narrator of the book has the misfortune of loving a man and allowing that love to hold sway over her. This is the story of her downfall.

     

    In trying to secure the affections of the exiled Kanesuke, the narrator plays a dangerous game and makes a move from which she can never recover. She subsequently suffers loss in many ways, but ultimately, by the end of the book, there's the sense that she had lost her sanity to love long ago. It's something that's hinted at in the disgraced princess' prologue, and something that becomes apparent as the book progresses. The princess warns that the diary is written by a woman overcome with jealousy, whose words are full of lies: the ravings of a woman whose character became corrupted when she lost the affections of a scoundrel to another.

     

    In the words of her only friend, the narrator is a liar deserving of another liar. The diary confirms her to be a spiteful woman, well-versed in intrigue. However, it becomes apparent that the narrator is not completely unlikable: she is simply a woman searching for someone she can love: someone who is genuinely able to return her feelings. She is capable of great love, yet she fears she will bring ruin to those she loves. Events she has unwittingly set into motion soon overwhelm her, and she feels the full repercussions of her misplaced love for Kanesuke. Her diary contains writings of the love, hope, jealousy, and suspicion she feels as a result of this sorry affair.

     

    The language is sparse and cold but becomes lyrical whenever the narrator thinks of her lover. The scenes the author inspires are reminiscent of those found in The Tale of Genji, revealing the culture and aesthetics of the Heian period. There is understandably little poetry, but the author manages to fill these gaps with short tales and legends that beautifully convey the narrator's thoughts. However, the writing betrays the hand of a modern western author. There is a candidness in the diary that should not be there. It is uncharacteristic, but highlights the tenderness the narrator is capable of and her vulnerability---perhaps a glimpse of the narrator's true personality before she became corrupted by spite and jealousy: a reminder of a time before her life became dominated by sadness and loss. Loss: it is on the contemplation of this word and what it means for her that the book ends.

  14. Edit: Just went to the Stephen King board, and found out he just found out about this Remake. He had no clue. So he is looking into that. So how can they option a movie from his book w/o his knowledge?
    It's probable that Stephen King (or his agent) sold the adaptation rights long ago, and it's only now that someone's attempting to make a movie. It would be a courtesy to tell him about a possible film, but not strictly necessary if that's the case.
  15. I actually quite like "Sandman" - but then I like Neil Gaiman's writing in general so I guess that helped. Particularly "Seasons of Mist" I enjoyed; its portrayal of Lucifer Morningstar vs. Dream was profound yet epic.

    I consider the later Sandman books the best. I particularly like The Kindly Ones because all the threads from the previous books come together at last. I also liked the Lucifer vs Dream confrontation. Have you tried reading the Lucifer spin-off series by Mike Carey?

  16. The blurb:

    It is the dawn of the Twentieth Century: a time of discovery and scientific revolution, when much of the world remains a mystery, waiting to be mapped and understood. And in Germany, a reckless young man named Alfred Wegener is determined to understand it all.

     

    From the moment he nearly drowns in an icy Berlin canal at the age of three, Wegener's irresistible urge to discover the unknown takes him on an extraordinary quest. Record-breaking flights in hydrogen balloons; expeditions across the unexplored and treacherous ice of Greenland; the searing horrors of trench warfare; and journeys to the brink of volcanoes, all form part of a restless search, which eventually leads him into the arms of a remarkable woman.

     

    From the back cover:

    'Let me tell you about ice. There are a few things you should know: firstly, it's not white. Usually it's blue, almost a turquoise, almost warmly Mediterranean. Sometimes, it's not even blue, but yellow or maybe orange. That's when the sun is setting. Sometimes it seems that the sun is always on the point of setting up here. It's not of course. It's just that often it is so low, that all the light is scattered, and for a small while, just a few seconds, it is so beautiful you could forget to breathe. Stupid to forget to breathe, I know, but it happens. You forget to breathe and then you have to take a great mouthful of air and gasp at the coldness of it.'

     

    --------

    Also known as One Day The Ice Will Reveal All Its Dead, Wegener's Jigsaw is Clare Dudman's fictional account of Alfred Wegener's life. The narrator of the story is Wegener himself, his voice derived from the diaries he left behind. His story is of a child, fascinated by science, who grows up, seeking adventure and a discovery he can call his own. As if closing his eyes and seeing the images vividly in his mind, he relives each episode from his life, the most notable of which are his expeditions to Greenland to carry out scientific surveys. The writing is at its most lyrical when these expeditions are recounted, when he witnesses the frightening beauty of the Greenlandic ice. Interspersed between these events are the cherished memories of times spent with his wife and family. These passages are beautifully written and contrast with the most difficult and restless part of his life: his participation in the First World War and his attempt to settle into a quiet life with his family.

     

    The poetic language disappears as he and his growing family find themselves in an uncertain post-First World War Germany. It's during this time that he focused on refining and publicly defending the theory for which he is most well-known today: continental drift---a theory that was met with derision and scorn during his lifetime, but which now sees him honoured as one of the founding fathers of a 20th century scientific revolution. It's not an easy period of his life to read about: the attacks on his theory left him demoralized and his arguments fell on deaf ears despite the growing evidence he compiled. The theory was the discovery he obsessively sought to validate but without success. Fortunately for Wegener, he always had the support of Else, his long-suffering wife, who would try to reassure him. Else benefits from a strong characterization from Dudman, but it is one that lends a touch of both tenderness and sadness to the couple's relationship---a relationship that culminates in a feeling of regret by the end of the book when Wegener reflects on his absence from his family during his expeditions.

     

    The book is beautifully written but does become slow in places. To answer criticisms of the book, it is after all a fictional biography, which remains as close to recorded accounts as possible, and the writing reflects Wegener's mood and circumstances. The alternative is historical fiction masquerading as something well-researched, but where truth and historical evidence is disregarded for the purpose of weaving a half-decent story (see, for example, The Other Boleyn Girl, by Phillipa Gregory). When reading about a real historical figure, I know which kind of book I prefer, and it is much to Clare Dudman's credit that she has created such a believable Wegener and given him a voice that single-handledly carries the narrative until the end so compellingly.

  17. But I've never even seen a book shorter than 100 pages (not including my alphabet books as a child.)

     

    Can anybody recommend me some?

    If you don't mind reading a "children's" book, then you could try The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery...if you haven't read it already. The other book I have in mind, at 112 pages, is Too Loud a Solitude by Bohumil Hrabal.
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