Can I just breath a sigh of relief that this is last year that's on my list of favorites for the Aughts, and by far the best book I've read for the Cannonball up to now.
Cloud Atlas is a collection of six vaguely inter-related novellas which are split into two pieces following the order A-B-C-D-E-F -F -E-D-C-B-A. Each of the novellas is set in a different time and is written in a different genre style. Each of the individual stories is compelling on its own, but its also interesting to see how each of stories is linked to the ones around it.
If you want to find out something about each of the individual stories, you can check out basically any review on Amazon, but one of the things I liked best about the book was the sensation of being plunged into chaos for the first few pages of each novella.
Without giving away too much, these novellas range from the diary of a man living during the British Empire to a mystery/thriller set in the 70s to the tale of an apocalyptic future.
This is a book that is considered serious literature, but it doesn't read like it -- the pages fly by and while it provides plenty of fodder for serious thinking, it's also possible to just read it for fun without getting hung up on the philosophical implications. It's a fairly long book, my copy is 538 pages, but since each individual section is only about 40 pages, it's also easy to read in a short time.
The only complaint I could make is that in the mystery/thriller section, Mitchell writes not like an excellent mystery writer but a second-tier one. I'm not even sure that this wasn't intentional -- given his talents, it's entirely possible that Mitchell wanted to sound like a hack in this section.
In any case, this book is fantastic.
Showing posts with label cannonball read. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cannonball read. Show all posts
Sunday, January 03, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
Cannonball Read, Book 4: The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff
This is a daring book -- one that doesn't let you lull yourself into complacency assuming that you know what is going to happen next. When you think you're sure of what's coming, you can be even more sure that while you might be close, you'll never be exactly right.
The story is hung around Willie Cooper, a girl who comes back to her hometown (here called Templeton, but really Cooperstown), after an affair with her married professor that didn't go particularly well. Just in case she wasn't feeling badly enough, the same day she returns the city discovers a kind of Loch Ness monster washed up on the shore of the local lake, and her mother decides to inform her that her anonymous father actually lives in the town.
About half of the book is concentrated on Willie's story -- how she tries to get her life back together, and her research into who her father may actually be. The other half is told from the point of view of other people in the town - some current day, others from the distant path. Some tell their stories through letters, others through diaries, others through what seems like oral testimony. The changing narrators keeps the book interesting and energetic.
The way Groff uses different voices is clever, and although at first glance this might seem almost like a light chick lit novel, it definitely isn't. It's sometimes surprisingly dark, and certainly doesn't follow chick lit genre traditions. The twists are genuinely surprising, and the characters are not one-note.
However, there are a few passages in which Groff seems to get too caught up in aesthetic concerns. She lingers over negative descriptions of older women's aging bodies and men's balding pates. Old age is equated with ugliness.
The book also seems slightly incomplete -- I feel like if she had added on another hundred pages or so I would have liked it much better. The resolution seems a bit too cut and dry, and some of the explanations almost terse. This is the author's first full-length novel and it shows a bit. This is more than a collection of related short stories, but it doesn't feel like a whole either.
Another aspect which was slightly irritating was the inclusion of supernatural occurrences. A ghost inhabits Willie's house, and some minor characters have some rather strange powers. I'm not necessarily against ghosts and such -- for example, in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits they work perfectly --but here they seemed more like a loophole for Groff to explain the mystery without having to work too hard to come up with a more plausible explanation.
In the end, I'd give this book a C+. I'll probably take a look at her next book, to see if she's matured as a writer. She's definitely got talent, but it needs honing.
The story is hung around Willie Cooper, a girl who comes back to her hometown (here called Templeton, but really Cooperstown), after an affair with her married professor that didn't go particularly well. Just in case she wasn't feeling badly enough, the same day she returns the city discovers a kind of Loch Ness monster washed up on the shore of the local lake, and her mother decides to inform her that her anonymous father actually lives in the town.
About half of the book is concentrated on Willie's story -- how she tries to get her life back together, and her research into who her father may actually be. The other half is told from the point of view of other people in the town - some current day, others from the distant path. Some tell their stories through letters, others through diaries, others through what seems like oral testimony. The changing narrators keeps the book interesting and energetic.
The way Groff uses different voices is clever, and although at first glance this might seem almost like a light chick lit novel, it definitely isn't. It's sometimes surprisingly dark, and certainly doesn't follow chick lit genre traditions. The twists are genuinely surprising, and the characters are not one-note.
However, there are a few passages in which Groff seems to get too caught up in aesthetic concerns. She lingers over negative descriptions of older women's aging bodies and men's balding pates. Old age is equated with ugliness.
The book also seems slightly incomplete -- I feel like if she had added on another hundred pages or so I would have liked it much better. The resolution seems a bit too cut and dry, and some of the explanations almost terse. This is the author's first full-length novel and it shows a bit. This is more than a collection of related short stories, but it doesn't feel like a whole either.
Another aspect which was slightly irritating was the inclusion of supernatural occurrences. A ghost inhabits Willie's house, and some minor characters have some rather strange powers. I'm not necessarily against ghosts and such -- for example, in Isabel Allende's The House of the Spirits they work perfectly --but here they seemed more like a loophole for Groff to explain the mystery without having to work too hard to come up with a more plausible explanation.
In the end, I'd give this book a C+. I'll probably take a look at her next book, to see if she's matured as a writer. She's definitely got talent, but it needs honing.
Saturday, November 07, 2009
Cannonball Read, Book 1: Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh
At its core, this book is about how a number of people find themselves on a boat leaving from India to bring coolies to work on plantations in the Mauritius islands, in 1838. The characters range from the owner of the ship to the ship's second mate to the coolies to the prisoners. The first half of the book concentrates on introducing us to the main characters and their initial circumstances, while the second half of the book takes place on the ship and begins to show us how they will interact together. The end of the book is a bit abrupt, a cliffhanger until the next book in the trilogy comes out.
Reviewing this book is a bit difficult, as all of the book's flaws are also strengths. For example, the main characters are interesting and come from diverse backgrounds. Reading about them you get an idea of what the various layers of Indian society must have been like at the time -- from the English plantation owner, to the comparatively wealthy Indian accountant working for the owner, to the poor poppy farmer living hand to mouth. However, while all of the characters are interesting and well-differentiated, there are a LOT of them. There are roughly a dozen main characters and something like twenty more secondary characters. I had to restart this book twice because I kept on getting confused between the various characters. Part of this is due to the fact that as an American I had difficulty remembering the various Indian names -- it's easier for me to keep Mary, Jack, Peter, and Eliza straight than Deeti, Kalua, Jodu, and Serang!*. I at least know right away that Mary and Eliza are women. Obviously, this isn't the book's fault -- it's just something that initially makes it more difficult to get into the book. Having to stop every two pages to figure out who the hell the character is can be a bit irritating. Once you get past this difficulty, though, the characters are all very interesting, and the fact that there are so many of them means that you get the enjoyment of watching them all interact in various ways.
The other good/bad aspect to this book is the combination of dialects that the book uses. I.E.:
"Launder say father-blongi-she go hebbin. That bugger do too muchi tree-pijjin. Allo time picking plant. Inside pocket hab no cash. After he go hebbin cow-chilo catchi number-two-father, Mr. Burnham."
"What'd you say we leave the steering to that badmash and find ourselves a drop of loll-shrub?"
After about the first hundred pages you kind of get used to not understanding half the things the characters say, and some of the other dialects are much easier to understand and provide some humor. I also discovered on Amazon that some editions of the book included a glossary at the back. Mine didn't, though.
One aspect that is entirely positive is the way Ghosh succeeds in teaching the reader about Indian society in the mid 1800s without ever seeming didactic. I feel like I know much more about poppy cultivation, opium manufacturing, Indian castes and Great Britain's economic and military policy but during reading I never got that at school feeling.
If you like wordplay and are willing to put in the initial work to keep roughly 30 characters with unfamiliar names straight, this is a rewarding and compelling book. If not, it's just frustrating and irritating. Now that I have met all the characters, I will definitely read the next book when it comes out.
*for the record, Deeti is an extremely poor female poppy farmer from a small Indian village, Kalua is a male ox driver from the same village, Jodu is a young boat operator from Calcutta, and Serang is a male sailor of unknown origins.
Reviewing this book is a bit difficult, as all of the book's flaws are also strengths. For example, the main characters are interesting and come from diverse backgrounds. Reading about them you get an idea of what the various layers of Indian society must have been like at the time -- from the English plantation owner, to the comparatively wealthy Indian accountant working for the owner, to the poor poppy farmer living hand to mouth. However, while all of the characters are interesting and well-differentiated, there are a LOT of them. There are roughly a dozen main characters and something like twenty more secondary characters. I had to restart this book twice because I kept on getting confused between the various characters. Part of this is due to the fact that as an American I had difficulty remembering the various Indian names -- it's easier for me to keep Mary, Jack, Peter, and Eliza straight than Deeti, Kalua, Jodu, and Serang!*. I at least know right away that Mary and Eliza are women. Obviously, this isn't the book's fault -- it's just something that initially makes it more difficult to get into the book. Having to stop every two pages to figure out who the hell the character is can be a bit irritating. Once you get past this difficulty, though, the characters are all very interesting, and the fact that there are so many of them means that you get the enjoyment of watching them all interact in various ways.
The other good/bad aspect to this book is the combination of dialects that the book uses. I.E.:
"Launder say father-blongi-she go hebbin. That bugger do too muchi tree-pijjin. Allo time picking plant. Inside pocket hab no cash. After he go hebbin cow-chilo catchi number-two-father, Mr. Burnham."
"What'd you say we leave the steering to that badmash and find ourselves a drop of loll-shrub?"
After about the first hundred pages you kind of get used to not understanding half the things the characters say, and some of the other dialects are much easier to understand and provide some humor. I also discovered on Amazon that some editions of the book included a glossary at the back. Mine didn't, though.
One aspect that is entirely positive is the way Ghosh succeeds in teaching the reader about Indian society in the mid 1800s without ever seeming didactic. I feel like I know much more about poppy cultivation, opium manufacturing, Indian castes and Great Britain's economic and military policy but during reading I never got that at school feeling.
If you like wordplay and are willing to put in the initial work to keep roughly 30 characters with unfamiliar names straight, this is a rewarding and compelling book. If not, it's just frustrating and irritating. Now that I have met all the characters, I will definitely read the next book when it comes out.
*for the record, Deeti is an extremely poor female poppy farmer from a small Indian village, Kalua is a male ox driver from the same village, Jodu is a young boat operator from Calcutta, and Serang is a male sailor of unknown origins.
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