Monthly Archives: December 2012

Charles Dickens: Great Expectations (1861)

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In Great Expectations the orphan Pip tells the story of his life. He tells us how, after having lost his parents as a small child, he was brought up “by hand” by his mean and quarrelsome sister who hit him and her husband. How his sister’s husband Joe and Biddy the teacher were the only kind people in his life. How he met a convict and helped him. How he was invited to the excentric and melancholy Miss Havisham to play at her house. How he saw the wonderous house for the first time and met the beautiful Estella who would be the love of his life. How being introduced to Miss Havisham and Estella made him long for another life and feel ashamed of his own. How finally he was made rich and hoping for great expectations from an unknown benefactor. And how in the end things turned out in a very different way.

Great Expectations offered everything I expected from Dickens and so much more. The only thing I could criticize is that it was predictable and that there were a lot of coincidences which didn’t seem all that realistic but who cares. There is so much in this novel to like that I can easily forget its flaws. The characters were, as was to be expected, quirky and over-the top, much more caricatures than portraits, but drawn which such a wonderful imagination that I loved each one of them.

I also liked the atmosphere, how with a few words, a few sentences he captures a mood, a season, the weather, a location, a house, a street. All his descriptions are highly evocative and one sees every little detail.

There were many uncanny, witty and captivating scenes and I would have a hard time picking favorites. I liked all the chapters at Miss Havisham’s house. The sorrow and grief which had made the time stand still in that place and entrapped its owner for eternity, gave the book a very gothic feel.

But I also loved all the scenes including Mr Jagger’s clerk Wemmick and his father. They made me chuckle very often. They are such an endearing couple.

To do this book justice and write properly about it, I would need more time which I don’t have. Maybe I will return to it next year and write something a bit more detailed.

For now I would just like to say, I loved it for many reasons but what stood out the most is that Dickens comes across as a writer with a huge heart who can even  make many of his villains endearing.

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Puss in Books by Catherine Britton (2012)

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I feel spoilt because I have received more than one great pre-Christmas book present from editors. One of them is Puss in Books, published by The British Library Publishing.

Catherine Britton’s richly illustrated book contains numerous examples of cats in books. It mentions  nursery rhymes, children’s books, novels and many other sources.  I thought I’ll write about it quickly as the one or the other may still be looking for a bookish present for a cat lover or anyone interested in cats in books.

The book as such is nice, with glossy paper and intense color illustrations.

Some of the earliest illustrations date back to the Egyptians but you can also find an illustration from Rudyard Kipling’s The Cat that Walked by Himself or of the Cheshire Cat, taken from Alice in Wonderland.

Fat Fredd’y s Cat has a chapter as well as Simon’s Cat and Splat the Cat.

One of the pictures I like the most is an engraving by Cornelis Vissher called The Large Cat from 1657.

As the blurb says the book is “a celebration of the feline wit, intelligence, aloofness and charm as presented in books, with examples from literature, folklore and popular culture.”

The book contains more than illustrations, it also offers a lot of information about the history of cats and how different cultures and societies saw them. It spans cultures as different as Egypt, England and Japan.

Philip Roth: Nemesis (2010)

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Nemesis

There have been a few reviews of Philip Roth books recently (on Babbling Books here and here and on Book Around the Corner here) and because I commented on the one or the other posts saying that I didn’t like him, Leroy suggested I read Nemesis. The premise of the book sounded very interesting and so I finally read it. While I cannot say I’m a convert, I can still say that this is a very fine book and one that’s topical, well written and thought-provoking too.

The first thing I noticed, was that you can feel that this is an assured writer. You can feel it for many reasons. The most important one was that the writing seemed so effortless. It’s free of artificiality, flows nicely, contains many well captured scenes and the way it is told is quite wonderful. The book is told by a first person narrator, who appears only very briefly and then disappears and blends into the background of the story he tells. It isn’t his story and we will have to wait almost until the end of the book to find out who tells it and why. This is artful, and that’s why Nemesis is a great example that it’s worth to finish books because some really need all the pages to become a whole and to fully reveal their meaning.

It’s the summer of 1944. A scorching summer in Newark, New Jersey. Bucky Cantor is a young man, a physical education teacher who just graduated and starts his first job as a playground supervisor in the Jewish neighbourhood of Newark. It’s a summer job to which he has been looking forward to and which he executes with a lot of energy, enthusiasm and passion. Bucky is a small but strong and muscular man and if he wasn’t so terribly short-sighted he would be off fighting against the Germans like his best buddies Jake and Dave.

Bucky lives with his grandmother. His mother died in childbirth, his father, a thief, disappeared and the beloved grandfather has just passed away. But Bucky is by no means lonely as he has a fiancé, Marcia,  who comes from a rich Jewish family who accepts him and loves him just as much as Marcia herself does. Things look promising for Bucky if it wasn’t for a nasty, evil God, as Bucky sees it,  who decides to send the plague, in form of a polio epidemic, on Newark and the Jewish neighbourhood in which Bucky lives and works.This is 11 years before the vaccine is invented and Polio is a devastating disease. It’s not entirely clear how you contract it and while some forms are mild, most are not only crippling but can lead to death.

Roth does a great job at describing the panic, sadness, shock and horror that follow the outbreak of this epidemic. It has an absolutely devastating effect on the community of Newark and underlying racial and social tensions break out with a horrifying force.

While Nemesis tells the story of a disaster which strikes a whole community it also tells one man’s story and how he copes with disaster.

What I found amazing is the way Roth showed that in the end it’s far less important what befalls us but what really counts is how we deal with it. I can’t reveal too much or the book would be spoilt, let’s just say, that when guilt and blame come into the equation a bad situation can turn into a nightmare.

Disaster and how we cope with it isn’t the only theme in the novel. There are others like loss, regret and guilt which are all equally well illustrated.

Nemesis is a book which takes a while to develop its full aroma. I could imagine that the one or the other reader would find it a bit slow at first but it’s worth reading until  the end. While I’m still no Philip Roth enthusiast, I really liked this book and think I might pick up another of his novels some day.

A Christmas Carol (2009) The Kitty Scare Version

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Of all the possible movies based on A Christmas Carol I had to pick one of the more recent ones, the animated Disney version from 2009. I had already seen the one with Alistair Sims which is absolutely great and wanted to watch a modern one this time.

I suppose this intro has already  told you what you wanted to know, namely whether I liked it or not. Obviously I didn’t and that’s actually quite sad because it had such a lot of potential. The beginning of this movie is stunning. It really gets you into a white Christmas mood, is atmospherical and appealing. I liked the way they showed the streets of London, up close and from above. The first half is equally good but as soon as the second spirit appears it wasn’t good anymore but extremely annoying. The second spirit is a jovial, bulky man, sitting on the top of a Christmas tree and laughing the most annoying laugh in movie history. It even made the cat run. I tell you, nothing makes that cat run once she is installed on my lap, on top of that, nothing usually scares her. Not even the Hoover. But that mad laugh did it. She fled to her basket behind the TV, far away from the speakers and half an hour later, when there was wild screaming and drama in the final moments of the movie, I had to go see what was happening as the poor little thing was having the mother of all nightmares and squeaking like a piglet.

The cat, I’m happy to report, has recovered but she is a bit grumpy. 

Don't mess with me

I hope others were luckier in their choices or found a more kitty friendly version of A Christmas Carol. I would have watched Great Expectations but I have still 250 pages left to read and will not watch it before I finished the book.

Literature and War Readalong 2013

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The Yellow BirdsThe Flowers of WarThe WarsThe Heat of The Day

Children of The New WorldThere Is No TimeDeath of the AdversaryGrey SoulsEverything FlowsThe Sorrow of WarAll That I AMWinter in Wartime

It took a long time to compile the reading list for the Literature and War Readalong 2013 but I must say, I’m pleased with the result.

In 2013 we will be reading 12 books  from 12 different countries, written in 8 different languages and covering 6 different wars.

I think it’s the most diverse list so far. I also tried to take different events into account which should allow people to pick a book for the readalong which will also count towards other events. There is an Irish author for March, a Dutch author for June, German for November, and a Canadian and an Australian choice for the respective challenges.

And here goes the final list

The Yellow Birds

January, Monday 28

The Yellow Birds by Kevin Powers (2012), 240 pages – US – Iraq war

LONGLISTED FOR THE GUARDIAN FIRST BOOK AWARD 2012 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER An unforgettable depiction of the psychological impact of war, by a young Iraq veteran and poet, THE YELLOW BIRDS is already being hailed as a modern classic. Everywhere John looks, he sees Murph. He flinches when cars drive past. His fingers clasp around the rifle he hasn’t held for months. Wide-eyed strangers praise him as a hero, but he can feel himself disappearing. Back home after a year in Iraq, memories swarm around him: bodies burning in the crisp morning air. Sunlight falling through branches; bullets kicking up dust; ripples on a pond wavering like plucked strings. The promise he made, to a young man’s mother, that her son would be brought home safely. With THE YELLOW BIRDS, poet and veteran Kevin Powers has composed an unforgettable account of friendship and loss. It vividly captures the desperation and brutality of war, and its terrible after-effects. But it is also a story of love, of great courage, and of extraordinary human survival. Written with profound emotional insight, especially into the effects of a hidden war on families at home, THE YELLOW BIRDS is one of the most haunting, true and powerful novels of our time. ‘THE YELLOW BIRDS is the All Quiet on the Western Front of America’s Arab Wars.’ (Tom Wolfe, author of The Bonfire of the Vanities ) ‘Kevin Powers has conjured a poetic and devastating account of war’s effect on the individual.’ (Damian Lewis, star of Homeland and Band of Brothers ) ‘Inexplicably beautiful’. (Ann Patchett, Orange Prize-winning author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder)

February, Thursday 28

The Flowers of War aka Jingling Shisan Chai by Geling Yan (2006), 256 pages, China – Chinese/Japanese war

December 1937. The Japanese have taken Nanking. A group of terrified schoolgirls hides in the compound of an American church. Among them is Shujuan, through whose thirteen-year-old eyes we witness the shocking events that follow. Run by Father Engelmann, an American priest who has been in China for many years, the church is supposedly neutral ground in the war between China and Japan. But it becomes clear the Japanese are not obeying international rules of engagement. As they pour through the streets of Nanking, raping and pillaging the civilian population, the girls are in increasing danger. And their safety is further compromised when prostitutes from the nearby brothel climb over the wall into the compound seeking refuge. Short, powerful, vivid, this beautiful novel transports the reader to 1930s China. Full of wonderful characters, from the austere priest to the irreverent prostitutes, it is a story about how war upsets all prejudices and how love can flourish amidst death.

March, Thursday 28

The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen (1949), 336 pages, Ireland – WWII

It is wartime London, and the carelessness of people with no future flows through the evening air. Stella discovers that her lover Robert is suspected of selling information to the enemy. Harrison, the British intelligence agent on his trail, wants to bargain, the price for his silence being Stella herself. Caught between two men and unsure who she can trust, the flimsy structures of Stella’s life begin to crumble.

April, Monday 29

The Wars by Timothy Findley (1977), 240 pages, Canada – WWI

Robert Ross, a sensitive nineteen-year-old Canadian officer, went to war – the War to End All Wars. He found himself in the nightmare world of trench warfare; of mud and smoke, of chlorine gas and rotting corpses. In this world gone mad, Robert Ross performed a last desperate act to declare his commitment to life in the midst of death.The Wars is quite simply one of the best novels ever written about the First World War.

May, Friday 31

All That I Am by Anna Funder (2011), 384 pages, Australia – WWII

Anna Funder, winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize and author of Stasiland, offers a thrilling tale and powerful love story that tells the heroic and tragic true story of the German resistance in World War II in All That I Am.

When Hitler comes to power in 1933, a tight-knit group of friends and lovers become hunted outlaws overnight. United in their resistance to the madness and tyranny of Nazism, they must flee the country. Dora, passionate and fearless, her lover, the great playwright Ernst Toller, her younger cousin Ruth and Ruth’s husband Hans find refuge in London. Here they take breath-taking risks in order to continue their work in secret. But England is not the safe-haven they think it to be, and a single, chilling act of betrayal will tear them apart…’The strengths of Funder’s writing are emotional and imaginative. In what she has to say about love, loss and betrayal there is profound truth’ The Times

June, Friday 28

Winter in Wartime akak Oorlogswinter by Jan Terlouw (1972), 220 pages, Netherlands – WWII

Near the end of World War II, 14-year-old Michiel becomes involved with the Resistance after coming to the aid of a wounded British soldier. With the conflict coming to an end, Michiel comes of age and learns of the stark difference between adventure fantasy and the ugly realities of war.

July, Monday 29

Children of the New World aka Les enfants du nouevau monde by Assia Djebar (1962), 233 Algeria – French/Algerian war

Assia Djebar, the most distinguished woman writer to emerge from the Arab world – and a top candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature – wrote “Children of the New World” following her own involvement in the Algerian resistance to colonial French rule. Djebar’s novel sheds light on current world conflicts as it reveals a determined Arab insurgency against foreign occupation, from the inside out. However, Djebar focuses on the experiences of women drawn into the politics of resistance. Her novel recounts the interlocking lives of women in a rural Algerian town who find themselves joined in solidarity and empower each other to engage in the fight for independence. Narrating the resistance movement from a variety of perspectives – from those of traditional wives to liberated students to political organisers – Djebar powerfully depicts the circumstances that drive oppressed communities to violence and at the same time movingly reveals the tragic costs of war.

August, Friday 30

Grey Souls aka Les âmes grises by Philippe Claudel (2003), 208 pages, France  – WWI

This is ostensibly a detective story, about a crime that is committed in 1917, and solved 20 years later. The location is a small town in Northern France. The war is still being fought in the trenches, within sight and sound of the town, but the men of the town have been spared the slaughter because they are needed in the local factory. One freezing cold morning in the dead of winter, a beautiful ten-year old girl, one of three daughters of the local innkeeper, is found strangled and dumped in the canal. Suspicion falls on two deserters who are picked up near the town. Their interrogation and sentencing is brutal and swift. Twenty years later, the narrator, a local policeman, puts together what actually happened. On the night the deserters were arrested and interrogated, he was sitting by the bedside of his dying wife. He believes that justice was not done and wants to set the record straight. But the death of the child was not the only crime committed in the town during those weeks.

September, Monday 30

There’s No Home by Alexander Baron (1950), 288 pages,  UK – WWII

‘An unqualified masterpiece … as acute a study of the psychology of war as fiction offers us’ Guardian It’s 1943. The allied invasion of Sicily. In a lull in the fighting, an exhausted British battalion marches into the searing summer heat of Catania, to be greeted by the women, children and old men emerging from the bomb shelters. Yearning for some semblance of domestic life, the men begin to fill the roles left by absent husbands and fathers. Unlikely relationships form, tender, exploitative even cruel, but all shaped by the exigencies of war. Centred around a love story, between Graziela, a young mother, and Sergeant Craddock, whose rough attempts at seduction are vindicated by his sympathy and the care he shows for her malnourished child, There’s No Home offers an unerringly humane and authentic portrayal of the emotional impact of war.
Everything Flows
October, Monday 28
Everything Flows by Vasily Grossman (1961), 320 pages, Russia – Post-War

Ivan Grigoryevich has been in the Gulag for thirty years. Released after Stalin’s death, he finds that the years of terror have imposed a collective moral slavery. He must struggle to find a place for himself in an unfamiliar world. Grossman tells the stories of those people entwined with Ivan’s fate: his cousin Nikolay, a scientist who never let his conscience interfere with his career, Pinegin, the informer who had Ivan sent to the camps and Anna Sergeyevna, Ivan’s lover, who tells of her involvement as an activist in the Terror famine of 1932-3.

Everything Flows is Vasily Grossman’s final testament, written after the Soviet authorities suppressed Life and Fate.

November, Friday 29

Death of the Adversary aka Der Tod des Widersachers by Hans Keilson (1942), 224 pages, Germany – WWII

My enemy – I shall refer to him as B. – entered my life about twenty years ago. At that time I had only a very vague idea of what it meant to be someone’s enemy; still less did I realise what it was to have an enemy. One has to mature gradually towards one’s enemy as towards one’s best friend.

1930s Germany; the shadow of Nazism looms. Pictures of the new dictator, ‘B.’, fill magazines and newspapers. Our hero is ten when his world begins to change dramatically. Suddenly, the other children won’t let him join in their games. Later, he is refused a job on a shop-floor. Later still, he hears youths boasting of an attack on a Jewish cemetery. Both hypnotised and horrified by his enemy, our hero chronicles the fear, anger and defiance of everyday life under tyranny.

Written while Hans Keilson was in hiding during World War II, this novel is a powerful account of what he outlived. Painful, trenchant and streaked with dark humour The Death of the Adversary is a rediscovered masterpiece.

December, Monday 30

The Sorrow of War aka Thân phận của tình yêu by Bao Ninh (1991)  240 pages, Vietnam – Vietnam war

Kien’s job is to search the Jungle of Screaming Souls for corpses. He knows the area well – this was where, in the dry season of 1969, his battalion was obliterated by American napalm and helicopter gunfire. Kien was one of only ten survivors. This book is his attempt to understand the eleven years of his life he gave to a senseless war.

Based on true experiences of Bao Ninh and banned by the communist party, this novel is revered as the ‘All Quiet on the Western Front for our era’.

Kevin suggested this book and I think after having read a few US novels on the war in Vietnam it’s about time to read one written by a Vietnamese writer.

The rules are still the same. At the beginning of the month, I will post a quick introduction to the book and who likes, can readalong, and either just join the discussion or post a review on his/her blog as well. I will, as usual link to all the reviews.

Dickens in December- Giveaway – The Dickens Dictionary

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dickens-f

Earlier this year I reviewed John Sutherland’s The Dickens Dictionary and it was this book which started the whole idea of Dickens in December. That’s why we are particularly pleased that Icon Books have offered us two copies  of the Dictionary for our first giveaway. We are giving a way one book per blog.

I really like this book, it’s informative, interesting and contains a lot of illustrations. Here is the blurb

For fans old and new, a fascinating tour through Charles Dickens’ novels in the hands of a master critic.
Oliver Twist … Great Expectations … David Copperfield – all contain a riotous fictional world that still leaves and breathes for readers the world over today.But how much do we really know about Charles Dickens’ dazzling imagination, which has brought this all into being?
To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Dickens – 2012 – Victorian literature expert John Sutherland has created a gloriously wide-ranging alphabetical companion to Dickens’ novels, excavating the hidden links between his characters, themes, and preoccupations, and the minutiae of his endlessly inventive wordplay.
Covering America, Bastards, Childhood, Christmas, Empire, Fog, Larks, London, Madness, Murder, Orphans, Pubs, Punishment, Smells, Spontaneous Combustion and Zoo to name but a few – John Sutherland gives us a uniquely personal guide to Charles Dickens’ books.

If you’d like to win a copy of this book, just leave a comment. If you want to improve your chances of winning you can leave a comment on this and one on Delia’s blog. That way your name will  be in both draws but you can only win once.

The giveaway is open internationally. The winners will be announced on Tuesday 11 December.