Freewheeling Andy
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Snow by Orhan Pamuk
I wanted this review to just go like this: "Aaaaaaaaargh!"
Because that's how I felt.
But decided that would probably be unhelpful to those interested in reading the book.
My second thought was to write the review as follows "Zzzzzzzzz...."
But, although that's more helpful, it's probably not enough.
Both "aaaaargh! and "zzzzz..." describe my thoughts about this book, though, which took me three months to read. It's dense, and heavy and therefore does take a long time to read. But it's also utterly dull and un-gripping, and (if I'm allowed to use the word here), shhhhhhh. So I never wanted to pick it up to battle my way through seven long, turgid, dull, badly translated sentences.
As for the book itself? It should be brilliant. Pamuk has just won the Nobel Prize for Literature, and is surely, therefore, a great author (although I've seen no sign of it in the two books of his I've read).
This book is a tale of a revolution and coup in a city in eastern Turkey which has been cut off by snow.
The central themes of the book are how secularism and religious fundamentalism clash, with the extremely topical subject of whether it's fine to wear a headscarfe in secular society (although we've gone beyond that and are arguing about the veil now).
It's also a love story, the tale of a man infatuated and and trying to get a girl to reciprocate and run away with him.
These are elements of what should be a brilliant book. If the brilliant book exists, though, it's not this one.
The main protagonist is annoying, irrational, impossible to follow, spectacularly emotional and fragile. As, it seems, are all poets and authors in literature. I have a strong feeling that writers should never write about writers, or poets (or, for that matter, academia), because it shows a desperate lack of imagination, of ability to see anyone other than themselves, a lack of empathy.
But this character is worse, and we get 500 dense pages of his agonising.
Perhaps there's a deliberate, but I suspect it's accidental, irony that the protagonist is agonising, so Pamuk makes reading the book agonising for us.
My feeling is, though, that the book is just rubbish.
Some people love it, I will add. People whose tastes I trust. But my advice is to steer well, well, clear. There are better Turkish writers, there are better tales of extremism, there's a load of great literature written, and I'm sure more great literature to be written, on the clash between East and West, and Turkey is the center of the battleground. But this doesn't belong in the pantheon. It belongs in the bin.
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Well, I've finally finished Snow. Good grief. It's a book that should have fascinated me. The subject matter itself is great. But they style of the book is horrible, the way the author imposes himself more and more into the book, but does it in such a clunky way. The long, tedious, moping descriptions of emotions, of the tender, oh so tender and delicate and fragile emotions. Please. ****ing please. Gah! And, instead of being a fun tale of a revolution or coup, it's all about a bloody poet. And the bloody poet has poems "come to him" yet we never get to see them. It's all created by deus ex machina, but with no explanation, and no point. It's meaningless. Bleh! And the bloody hyperemotional poet/main protagonist annoys me so much, with a page of "oh, how miserable he felt when he saw in her eyes that she didn't truly love him but wanted instead to show him compassion" followed by him doing something on impulse with no explanation. Book moved on by "He suddenly saw a man and felt he had to follow him".
Aaaaaaargh!
Thank god its over.
I'm reading Yes Man by Danny Wallace now. Thank god for fluffy books.
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I actually don't know what section it would be in. I guess if you have a dessert wine/sweet wine section, it would almost certainly be in there.
It's definitely something worth trying once, because it's so different to anything else, but as muggle says it may not be to everyone's taste.
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a friend recommended a german or canadian 'ice wine'...aanybody ever try any? How about you Muggle?? Dogmatix??
I've drunk quite a few Eisweins recently. The Canadian ones are expensive, as are, generally, the German ones you get abroad. But if you're in Austria or Germany you can pick up a half bottle for around 15 or 20 euros (which seems like a lot until you realise the Canadian stuff sells for $50 or so).
It's incredibly powerful and sweet and rich and full. Don't drink it with anything savoury, really. It's dessert wine, and powerfully flavoured dessert wine at that.
Sometimes it's truly lovely. Sometimes, though, it loses to subtlety of the best normal botrytis dessert wines.
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My favourite breakfast is a Germanic one, with lots of nutty and seedy breads, butter, cheese and fantastic range of cured hams and salamis. And orange juice. And lots and lots of coffee.
My normal breakfast is nothing, or bread and butter.
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I think that probably backs up my opinion. There's enough in there to have made it into an interesting book, but the narrative is just completely flat, I think. The whole book should have fizzed, but was flat. My ongoing hatred for books about authors, and books, and poets remains thoroughly in place, with the exception of At-Swim-Two-Birds.
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Ah-ha! Here's the review.
I'll just add my tuppence worth:
As Kell says, this is a really good book, all the more interesting for being a fun book with a basically optimistic positive message; and yet it covers some pretty grim ground. There's a brutality and shockingness to the India that appears in the book, yet the book is one of luck and good fortune and "things turning right in the end".
It's a bit Forrest Gump, which annoys me; and perhaps the overarching "everything turns out wonderful" side is irritating.
But it's easy to read, it's actually fun, and I kept wanting to read the next chapter.
The conceit is marvellous, too, as it allows the use of a fairly post-modern structure, flitting around with time, yet it's actually key to telling the story.
The very end, after the last question has been answered, does seem very simplistic, though, and could perhaps have been left more vague.
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Was there a general concensus that the last chapter was just a bit too glib, or was it just you against a tide of other people happy with the happinness?
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I'll write a review-let in a bit, although I guess I've already covered most of it. I like the fragmentary story telling style. The only things I was slightly unhappy with were the sometimes simplistic prose - although as a conceit for an 18 year old narrator that's no problem; it'll be a problem if the style continues in Swarup's next book; and the fact that most of the chapters have a basically happy, lucky ending, although again as the point of the story is of coincidence and good luck, it's a bit of a nonsensical complaint - it's just that when it all comes out in the wash that it makes sense. Before that it's a little irritating. Oh, and a final thing, the last chapter round up happy-ever-after ending kind of annoys me; I think I'd have liked it left more vague.
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I generally Dawkins on religion tends to work along the lines of "well, religion is patently, obviously wrong, because it's based on faith and with no reason, and it's clearly utter nonsense, but dangerous and insidious nonsense.
Now, I agree with all that, but it takes a paragraph to say. To say it over and over and over again, through several books, does begin to look like a dead horse massacre.
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I kind of enjoyed Trainspotting, and Marabou Stork Nightmares has possibly the grimmest subject matter and scene in any book I've read. He definitely works the dark nasty underside of Scotland. I'm not sure, though, whether he's actually any good. The style of Glasgow/Edinburgh patois that he writes in gets very, very grating.
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No. You don't need to read it. There's something just slightly frustratingly annoying about the book. Something not quite there to make it enjoyable. I'm not sure if it's the prose, or the detachment, or the ever annoying "protagonist is an author" stuff, or what. But it's definitely not a recommendation.
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Well, the battle with Snow continues. I'm slowly becoming convinced that it is, actually, utter rubbish despite all the plaudits.And it has the other massive flaw of being about a poet, and I just can't deal with books about writers.
I did, though, also just read Vikas Swarup's Q&A, which is fun and simple and rather wonderful, and interesting structure, but one with some meaning, that allows that book to slowly fill up the life of the main character, Ram Mohammed Thomas.
He's a contestant on what is effectively Millionaire, wins, and is arrested; and how he knows the answers to the questions brings individual tales that fill out his life story. Sometimes the writing was simplistic, maybe too much so, but after Snow that was actually rather delightful.
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Done India. I'm still desperately battling through Turkey. Gah.
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I'm just back from Germany and have been drinking some lovely (and some indifferent) wine. Down in the Black Forest, near to Alsace. So the wine isn't typical German sweet white (although I like that, too). We did drink some fantastic eiswein and beerenauslese, but mainly it's crisper whites and reds, particularly weissburgunder, grauerburgunder and spatburgunder (pinot planc, pinot gris, pinot noir).
It's also harvest season, and they have the just-pressed wine, called neuer susser, which is lovely. It's unfiltered, very slightly alcoholic, and changes flavour all the time. Not subtle, and rather cider-like, but very good stuff.
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I find Dawkins to be a bit odd, because although I agree with almost everything he says, there's something in his hectoring style that really grates with me. Even when he's writing scientifically about evolution, he'll take a metaphor and thrash it to death rather than keep it within its limits.
And when he's trying to debate religion his style is so agressive and vituperative that, even though he's right, I think he just annoys anyone he's debating with rather than leaves open a place for people to change their minds.
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Normally, I'd agree with you. Celebrity chefs usually aren't the best chefs. They're the people who are best on TV, or who can write best (and there's even a distinction between those two).
But, as it happens, Gordon Ramsay is a spectacularly good cook, as you have to be to run a restaurant with 3 michelin stars.
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I read Oracle Nights a while back. It's a very, very interesting read. But somehow, it wasn't quite right for me. I'm not sure I'll go back to Auster, because the style felt, well, detached maybe, or something like that. So I guess I'm like Still here. The story's good, the writing is good, but there#'s something slightly awry.
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The limit is my bank balance and my mood. Given the right circumstances I'd pay anything.
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I always drink local beers when I'm abroad, but they're often pretty similar once you're out of the UK and Belgium and Germany. I would miss good cask conditioned English beer.
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Well you wouldn't get the kind of beer we're used to, nor cornish pasties or steak-and-kidney pies.
What brand beer are you after?
Well, all the English bitter beers, of which, almost without exception, the mass produced brands are rubbish. So on the rare occasion you find Courage or Bass or Newcastle Brown abroad, it's horrid. You can never find the good Timothy Taylor or Deuchars or Harveys and Archers beers.
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Pies. And beer.I would definately miss tea as I drink it by the bucket load. Not so sure what else.... I'm with the Hamster on the gravy thing, I lurve gravy.
Where are you going off to that you won't find pies, beer, tea and gravy? :?
Well you wouldn't get the kind of beer we're used to, nor cornish pasties or steak-and-kidney pies.
I'd also miss crumpets.
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Pies. And beer.
Other than that, it depends where I ended up. I'd probably find myself desperate for things I almost never eat now, like pork scratchings. That's what I discover happened to friends who moved abroad, who send out APBs for Branston Pickle or PG Tips when someone goes to visit.
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You do know that I'm on a mission to convince everyone to read this book, Ace. I take no responsibility. It's now beyond my control...
Top 5 books you would not recommend
in General Book Discussions
Posted
Snow by Orhan Pamuk: Dull, boring, nothing happening, dreary, over emotional pointless hard to read tosh, set in Turkey, with a poet as the main character
The Book Of Memories by Peter Nadas : Dull, boring, effete, almost impossible to read, nothing happening dreariness set in Hungary, with a playwrite as the main character
everything I've tried by James Joyce
Death in Venice by Thomas Mann : Dull, boring, effete, nothing happening dreariness
The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien : The worst of the dreadful middle earth nonense