Review by Charles Wyrick
Years ago a friend of mine described a peculiar sensation he had while reading a book that he didn't like. He felt that he was being watched, that the author was continually peeking around a corner in order to make himself known. This image he created of the overbearing writer stuck. It resurfaced in my mind after reading Will Self's new novel "Great Apes." Self's presence is insurmountable. He gnaws at the pages and cuts peepholes through the spine. Yet unlike my friend I relish this authorial presence. I enjoy being watched.
Ironically enough "Great Apes" revolves around different types of voyeurism. It begins with Simon Dykes staring out a window watching a rowing team. Dykes is a semi-controversial painter just weeks away from exhibiting his newest work. At a midpoint in both his career and his life Simon is beginning to feel restless. Bored with the now predictable nights on the town with his young girlfriend and her friends, Dykes does not know that soon he will be the subject of another's scrutiny. Soon Dykes will be under psychiatric observation. Just as we as readers meet him, Dykes undergoes a dramatic change. After a night of heavy drinking and drug use Simon wakes up as a chimpanzee.
Using Dykes as his Gulliver, Self takes a hilarious romp through modern society. In "Great Apes" the worlds of contemporary art, academics and psychiatry fall quickly as easy prey to Self's mock sociology of chimpanzee culture. Just imagine a popular art opening crowded with chimpanzees dressed in chic chimp evening wear and you can get a peek at the novel's vision. "Great Apes" is literature's Planet of the Apes as author Self plays the role of a funhouse anthropologist, a voyeur into a world of his own warping. On waking to a world modified to satisfy chimpanzee issues, the protagonist Simon Dykes is hysterical. As readers we can only be amused. When Simon Dykes first screeches at the sight of his girlfriend's hairy chest and arms, we know we are witnessing the birth of a strange world.
What I have liked in the past in Will Self's writing is that he is blunt. In this book there is nothing easy about his characters' transformations from humanity to chimpanity. The chimpanzee world thrives on a brutal code of male supremacy. Dykes is astonished by the physicality of this society. Chimps express irritation through violent physical attacks on one another and tenderness through prolonged grooming sessions. Dykes is completely horrified by these practices. With a shrewd wit Self draws a wonderful and acerbic satire out of his character's absurd dilemma. We see chimpanzee society through the eyes of its weakest member, the spiritually weakened Dykes whose case hinges on what his psychologist sees as the completely unnatural delusion that the world should be run by humans.
There is an overreaching sense of Self's presence in these pages. He forces on us his love of the banal and the absurd. His humor is as bawdy as it is bizarre. But these profanities are not without their compliment. Self litters his work with his sublimities -- his playful yet masterful language and his gorgeous literary control. In "Great Apes" he writes with both the assertiveness of a great satirist and the dexterity of a practiced, well-tuned prose strategist. When reading "Great Apes" do not be afraid to look over your shoulder if you feel you are being watched. Try to take comfort in the intrusion because your voyeur wants to see you laugh.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Wyrick lives in Nashville and plays in the band Stella.
Showing posts with label Books for 2008. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Books for 2008. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2008
Great Apes by Will Self.....A Review......
The Ape Who Mistook Himself for a Man
By GARY KRIST
Read the First Chapter | Read Michiko Kakutani's review of "Great Apes" (September 12, 1997)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More on Will Self from The New York Times Archives
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GREAT APES
By Will Self.
404 pp. New York:
Grove Press. $24.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
r. Zack Busner -- distinguished clinical psychologist, maverick neuropharmacologist, noted television commentator and tooth-clacking, lice-picking chimpanzee -- is a figure of commanding presence. In the world of Will Self's latest novel, ''Great Apes,'' a world in which chimps rather than humans are the species cursed by the gift of advanced civilization, Busner is one of the greatest apes of all. An ''elder stateschimp of the psychiatric fraternity,'' he has achieved an Oliver Sacks-ish eminence in his field, writing about his encounters with various neurological misfits in popular books like ''The Chimp Who Mated an Armchair'' and ''Nestings.'' As a result, he is met wherever he knuckle-walks with a flurry of obsequious groveling from subordinates, reinforcing his position as an alpha male at the very top of the professional hierarchy.
But now Busner is confronted with his most puzzling case: that of Simon Dykes, a celebrated artist suffering from the bizarre delusion that he is human. Indeed, Dykes's psychosis is so comprehensive that he even regards the true reality as one in which -- get this -- humans are the evolutionarily successful primates. Evidently thinking ahead to his next book (''The Ape Who Mistook His Fur for an Overcoat,'' perhaps?), Busner takes on the unfortunate Dykes as a patient. And that's where the trouble begins, for there are subordinate males afoot who, while paying homage to Busner in public, are secretly working to undermine him, and see his handling of the deluded artist's case as just the opportunity they seek.
Such, believe it or not, is the story line of ''Great Apes,'' and if it doesn't sound like your idea of literature, you're probably not alone. In earlier books, like ''My Idea of Fun'' and the story collection ''Grey Area'' (in which both Zack Busner and Simon Dykes previously appeared, though in human form), Self made a name for himself as a defiant satirist with a peculiar mastery of the vocabulary of modern neurosis. Cultivating controversy in his life as well as in his work (during his stint as a reporter in the recent British election campaign, he was thrown off John Major's plane, accused of shooting heroin in the bathroom), he has polarized the reading public both here and in England, earning the usual iconoclast's reward of rabid denunciations and hyperbolic praise.
In ''Great Apes,'' his seventh book, Self carries this outrageousness into new realms. Taking a device that most comic writers would have dared to employ only over the space of a four-page satirical piece, he instead develops it into a 400-page novel. And although that may sound like a recipe for disaster -- like deciding to make an animated all-Simpsons version of ''Long Day's Journey Into Night'' -- the real surprise here is not only that the device works but that it works so brilliantly. What should have been the literary equivalent of a parlor trick turns out to be an utterly absorbing and affecting work of fiction.
The success of Self's feat is due in large part to the completeness with which he has imagined his alternate universe of ascendant ''chimpunity.'' Though much of the civilization depicted in ''Great Apes'' will be recognizable to human readers (there are chimp versions of Freud, O. J. Simpson and even Jane Goodall -- who, of course, has spent her career studying the wild humans of Gombe), it is the differences that are most telling. For instance, since chimps lack the vocal range necessary for complex spoken language, Self's primates have instead developed an eloquent vocabulary of hand signs punctuated by generic vocalizations. Thus the cry ''HoooGraaa!'' is the all-purpose attention getter, while ''H'huuu?'' is the question signifier and ''chup-chupp'' the inevitable accompaniment to all palliative gestures. Similarly, the human idea of the family has been replaced here by the hierarchical grouping of chimpanzees, where promiscuous copulation (even among blood relatives) is warmly encouraged and the major antisocial act is to upset the group structure by failing to groom with sufficient deference or mate with appropriate frequency and abandon. Self's grip on his extended trope is so tight, in fact, that I found only a few transmogrification errors in the entire book -- instances, for example, in which a ''bed'' is referred to instead of the more proper ''nest.'' (But then, as Alexander Pope once wrote, ''To err is chimp,'' and so on.)
What's more, all of this literary skylarking is grounded in a lush, scrupulously exact prose that can vault from the poignant to the grotesque to the ridiculous with vertiginous ease. Here, in a typical passage, Self riffs on the emotional consequences of Simon's recently failed marriage and his relationship with his children:
''No matter how much he saw them now, how many times he picked them up from school, how many times he made them oven chips and fish fingers, how many times he petted them, kissed them, told them he loved them, nothing could assuage this sense of wrenching separation, their disjunction from his life. He may not have snacked on the placenta, but somehow the umbilici still trailed from his mouth, ectoplasmic cords, strung across summertime London, snagging on rooftops, car aerials, advertising hoardings, and tied him to their little bellies.''
A few pages later, Self reprises the snacking imagery in an entirely different tone, when Simon idly imagines the crowds in Oxford Circus being ravaged by a ''post-imperial Kong'': ''These people were finger food to the god, sushi for the divinity. He disentangled them from his fur, eyed their knotted faces, and then popped them between his teeth, each of which was the size of a dentist. Mmmm . . . ! Crunchy . . . and yet chewy.''
With such reckless bravado, Self manages to turn his novel into a high-powered satirical weapon capable of blasting a wide range of targets. The circus of celebrity psychiatry, the jungle of hospital politics, the Vanity Fair of the London art scene -- all are brutally sent up in their apish reincarnations. But Self is also after bigger game. In scope, his book's obvious predecessor is ''Gulliver's Travels,'' which made similar use of anthropomorphized beasts to point up the general corruption and foolhardiness of Homo sapiens. And like Swift's book, ''Great Apes'' can be unexpectedly moving in its more ambitious moments, as in this passage, where Simon's human mind/chimp body problem takes the form of a drug-induced fever dream:
''He identified the lost infant as himself -- or to be more precise his lost body. He saw his infant's body, standing, shivering, naked of its protective coat. Little Simon, as gracile as a young bonobo; head fur blond and cropped at the back, features refined and serious. . . . Simon turned towards the lost infant, wafted across the grassy floor to get him. But as he drew nearer the infant's blue eyes widened, and his red red lips parted, and the sapling body bent in an afflatus of anguish. Then Simon heard the awful, meaningful vocalizations; so guttural -- but so just. 'Get away! Get away, Beelzebub! Foul beast! Ape man!' ''
It's in moments like this that Simon's situation -- the radical alienation he feels from his environment, his family, his own nature -- becomes more than just a clever comic device. Simon, the human-minded ape, could at times be speaking for all divided souls of the modern urban savanna, where the demands of everyday life in society often seem at odds with the inclinations of our animal selves.
Obviously, ''Great Apes'' is not a book that will delight everyone. In places, its humor caroms toward the sophomoric (not to mention the scatological), and there are times when Self's readers may feel as if they're trapped in a windowless room with a monstrously intelligent, diabolically articulate adolescent. Moreover, like some of Self's earlier work, this book ends lamely, with a reductive conclusion that seems almost intentionally to trivialize what has come before. But the value of the novel shouldn't be obscured by the inevitable skirmishes it will inspire on the battlefield of taste. With ''Great Apes,'' his most satisfying book so far, Will Self establishes himself as an alpha male in the British literary hierarchy. He deserves every thunderous ''HoooGraaa!'' we can offer him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Krist is the author of two story collections, ''The Garden State'' and ''Bone by Bone.'' His first novel, ''Bad Chemistry,'' will be published this winter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More on Will Self
From the Archives of The New York Times
REVIEWS:
Cock & Bull (1993)
"[Will Self] possesses all those gifts a satiric writer might want....Unfortunately, in this volume, these copious gifts are all too frequently put in the service of a misogynistic and ridiculously sophomoric vision."
My Idea of Fun: A Cautionary Tale (1994)
"Although he is British and this novel is set in England, it has family resemblances to the work not only of Nabokov, but also of Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Don DeLillo....Will Self belongs in their company."
The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1995)
"Mr. Self was fired as a cartoonist for The New Statesman because he was "too depressing." And he does seem very fond of that word."
By GARY KRIST
Read the First Chapter | Read Michiko Kakutani's review of "Great Apes" (September 12, 1997)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More on Will Self from The New York Times Archives
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
GREAT APES
By Will Self.
404 pp. New York:
Grove Press. $24.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
r. Zack Busner -- distinguished clinical psychologist, maverick neuropharmacologist, noted television commentator and tooth-clacking, lice-picking chimpanzee -- is a figure of commanding presence. In the world of Will Self's latest novel, ''Great Apes,'' a world in which chimps rather than humans are the species cursed by the gift of advanced civilization, Busner is one of the greatest apes of all. An ''elder stateschimp of the psychiatric fraternity,'' he has achieved an Oliver Sacks-ish eminence in his field, writing about his encounters with various neurological misfits in popular books like ''The Chimp Who Mated an Armchair'' and ''Nestings.'' As a result, he is met wherever he knuckle-walks with a flurry of obsequious groveling from subordinates, reinforcing his position as an alpha male at the very top of the professional hierarchy.
But now Busner is confronted with his most puzzling case: that of Simon Dykes, a celebrated artist suffering from the bizarre delusion that he is human. Indeed, Dykes's psychosis is so comprehensive that he even regards the true reality as one in which -- get this -- humans are the evolutionarily successful primates. Evidently thinking ahead to his next book (''The Ape Who Mistook His Fur for an Overcoat,'' perhaps?), Busner takes on the unfortunate Dykes as a patient. And that's where the trouble begins, for there are subordinate males afoot who, while paying homage to Busner in public, are secretly working to undermine him, and see his handling of the deluded artist's case as just the opportunity they seek.
Such, believe it or not, is the story line of ''Great Apes,'' and if it doesn't sound like your idea of literature, you're probably not alone. In earlier books, like ''My Idea of Fun'' and the story collection ''Grey Area'' (in which both Zack Busner and Simon Dykes previously appeared, though in human form), Self made a name for himself as a defiant satirist with a peculiar mastery of the vocabulary of modern neurosis. Cultivating controversy in his life as well as in his work (during his stint as a reporter in the recent British election campaign, he was thrown off John Major's plane, accused of shooting heroin in the bathroom), he has polarized the reading public both here and in England, earning the usual iconoclast's reward of rabid denunciations and hyperbolic praise.
In ''Great Apes,'' his seventh book, Self carries this outrageousness into new realms. Taking a device that most comic writers would have dared to employ only over the space of a four-page satirical piece, he instead develops it into a 400-page novel. And although that may sound like a recipe for disaster -- like deciding to make an animated all-Simpsons version of ''Long Day's Journey Into Night'' -- the real surprise here is not only that the device works but that it works so brilliantly. What should have been the literary equivalent of a parlor trick turns out to be an utterly absorbing and affecting work of fiction.
The success of Self's feat is due in large part to the completeness with which he has imagined his alternate universe of ascendant ''chimpunity.'' Though much of the civilization depicted in ''Great Apes'' will be recognizable to human readers (there are chimp versions of Freud, O. J. Simpson and even Jane Goodall -- who, of course, has spent her career studying the wild humans of Gombe), it is the differences that are most telling. For instance, since chimps lack the vocal range necessary for complex spoken language, Self's primates have instead developed an eloquent vocabulary of hand signs punctuated by generic vocalizations. Thus the cry ''HoooGraaa!'' is the all-purpose attention getter, while ''H'huuu?'' is the question signifier and ''chup-chupp'' the inevitable accompaniment to all palliative gestures. Similarly, the human idea of the family has been replaced here by the hierarchical grouping of chimpanzees, where promiscuous copulation (even among blood relatives) is warmly encouraged and the major antisocial act is to upset the group structure by failing to groom with sufficient deference or mate with appropriate frequency and abandon. Self's grip on his extended trope is so tight, in fact, that I found only a few transmogrification errors in the entire book -- instances, for example, in which a ''bed'' is referred to instead of the more proper ''nest.'' (But then, as Alexander Pope once wrote, ''To err is chimp,'' and so on.)
What's more, all of this literary skylarking is grounded in a lush, scrupulously exact prose that can vault from the poignant to the grotesque to the ridiculous with vertiginous ease. Here, in a typical passage, Self riffs on the emotional consequences of Simon's recently failed marriage and his relationship with his children:
''No matter how much he saw them now, how many times he picked them up from school, how many times he made them oven chips and fish fingers, how many times he petted them, kissed them, told them he loved them, nothing could assuage this sense of wrenching separation, their disjunction from his life. He may not have snacked on the placenta, but somehow the umbilici still trailed from his mouth, ectoplasmic cords, strung across summertime London, snagging on rooftops, car aerials, advertising hoardings, and tied him to their little bellies.''
A few pages later, Self reprises the snacking imagery in an entirely different tone, when Simon idly imagines the crowds in Oxford Circus being ravaged by a ''post-imperial Kong'': ''These people were finger food to the god, sushi for the divinity. He disentangled them from his fur, eyed their knotted faces, and then popped them between his teeth, each of which was the size of a dentist. Mmmm . . . ! Crunchy . . . and yet chewy.''
With such reckless bravado, Self manages to turn his novel into a high-powered satirical weapon capable of blasting a wide range of targets. The circus of celebrity psychiatry, the jungle of hospital politics, the Vanity Fair of the London art scene -- all are brutally sent up in their apish reincarnations. But Self is also after bigger game. In scope, his book's obvious predecessor is ''Gulliver's Travels,'' which made similar use of anthropomorphized beasts to point up the general corruption and foolhardiness of Homo sapiens. And like Swift's book, ''Great Apes'' can be unexpectedly moving in its more ambitious moments, as in this passage, where Simon's human mind/chimp body problem takes the form of a drug-induced fever dream:
''He identified the lost infant as himself -- or to be more precise his lost body. He saw his infant's body, standing, shivering, naked of its protective coat. Little Simon, as gracile as a young bonobo; head fur blond and cropped at the back, features refined and serious. . . . Simon turned towards the lost infant, wafted across the grassy floor to get him. But as he drew nearer the infant's blue eyes widened, and his red red lips parted, and the sapling body bent in an afflatus of anguish. Then Simon heard the awful, meaningful vocalizations; so guttural -- but so just. 'Get away! Get away, Beelzebub! Foul beast! Ape man!' ''
It's in moments like this that Simon's situation -- the radical alienation he feels from his environment, his family, his own nature -- becomes more than just a clever comic device. Simon, the human-minded ape, could at times be speaking for all divided souls of the modern urban savanna, where the demands of everyday life in society often seem at odds with the inclinations of our animal selves.
Obviously, ''Great Apes'' is not a book that will delight everyone. In places, its humor caroms toward the sophomoric (not to mention the scatological), and there are times when Self's readers may feel as if they're trapped in a windowless room with a monstrously intelligent, diabolically articulate adolescent. Moreover, like some of Self's earlier work, this book ends lamely, with a reductive conclusion that seems almost intentionally to trivialize what has come before. But the value of the novel shouldn't be obscured by the inevitable skirmishes it will inspire on the battlefield of taste. With ''Great Apes,'' his most satisfying book so far, Will Self establishes himself as an alpha male in the British literary hierarchy. He deserves every thunderous ''HoooGraaa!'' we can offer him.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gary Krist is the author of two story collections, ''The Garden State'' and ''Bone by Bone.'' His first novel, ''Bad Chemistry,'' will be published this winter.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More on Will Self
From the Archives of The New York Times
REVIEWS:
Cock & Bull (1993)
"[Will Self] possesses all those gifts a satiric writer might want....Unfortunately, in this volume, these copious gifts are all too frequently put in the service of a misogynistic and ridiculously sophomoric vision."
My Idea of Fun: A Cautionary Tale (1994)
"Although he is British and this novel is set in England, it has family resemblances to the work not only of Nabokov, but also of Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis and Don DeLillo....Will Self belongs in their company."
The Quantity Theory of Insanity (1995)
"Mr. Self was fired as a cartoonist for The New Statesman because he was "too depressing." And he does seem very fond of that word."
Here's a review I saw on the internet of Great Apes
Will Self has always had an ambivalent relationship with the novel. He doesn't write about character and admits that he finds plot 'boring', as a result his novels usually work off a single comic device or absurd concept, stretched to the limit through a vast vocabularly, endless metaphors and a scatological humour. Self's is a style that can be very visceral, funny and incisive, however, over the course of an entire novel it can become nauseous, tedious and dull. Self is better suited to short stories and journalism, forums where his flamboyant, potent prose and wild premises still have the ability to be shocking rather than tired and worn.
'Great Apes', Self's 1997 work released shortly after the scandal over the author taking heroin on John Major's private jet, combines both these aspects of his work into a great, fierce piece of satire.
Taking the Kafkaesque premise of a London artist, Simon Dykes waking from a night of bad coke and worse sex to find himself in a world where chimps have reversed roles with humans, the novel works best when describing the social hierachy of the chimps and their bizarre behaviour, using it as a device to show how similar the two species are.
Dykes finds himself in a secure unit under the supervision of emenient primate psychiatrist Zack Busner, the titular 'great ape'. Self goes to great lengths to describe Dykes' anguish and how insane he seems in contrast to the rest of the world. As the book progresses Dykes' belief in his own humanity is shown to be nothing more than the workings of delusional mind- chimps do indeed have global supremacy.
Mental illness and the problems of medicine are common Self themes and the book does raise interesting questions about the nature of madness and drug abuse, but here they feel thinly developed, as if Self is writing for his own amusement. For every funny line or comic invention there are vast amounts of unecessary and flabby writing, either concerning psychiatry, sex or divorce, that just come across as dull. Self has an incredible mind, at his best recalling, all at once, Martin Amis, Celine, Kafka and Carroll, but here he comes across more as a man writing really just to waste time, as if the novel was a bit of filler between magazine assignments and taking drugs. The satirical comment Self hoped to make, on modern art, on coke, on humanity, on whatever, never fully translates or is fully concluded. Self started writing, kept going and then finished, whether what he wrote was of real substance wasn't obviously of much concern to him.
'Great Apes', Self's 1997 work released shortly after the scandal over the author taking heroin on John Major's private jet, combines both these aspects of his work into a great, fierce piece of satire.
Taking the Kafkaesque premise of a London artist, Simon Dykes waking from a night of bad coke and worse sex to find himself in a world where chimps have reversed roles with humans, the novel works best when describing the social hierachy of the chimps and their bizarre behaviour, using it as a device to show how similar the two species are.
Dykes finds himself in a secure unit under the supervision of emenient primate psychiatrist Zack Busner, the titular 'great ape'. Self goes to great lengths to describe Dykes' anguish and how insane he seems in contrast to the rest of the world. As the book progresses Dykes' belief in his own humanity is shown to be nothing more than the workings of delusional mind- chimps do indeed have global supremacy.
Mental illness and the problems of medicine are common Self themes and the book does raise interesting questions about the nature of madness and drug abuse, but here they feel thinly developed, as if Self is writing for his own amusement. For every funny line or comic invention there are vast amounts of unecessary and flabby writing, either concerning psychiatry, sex or divorce, that just come across as dull. Self has an incredible mind, at his best recalling, all at once, Martin Amis, Celine, Kafka and Carroll, but here he comes across more as a man writing really just to waste time, as if the novel was a bit of filler between magazine assignments and taking drugs. The satirical comment Self hoped to make, on modern art, on coke, on humanity, on whatever, never fully translates or is fully concluded. Self started writing, kept going and then finished, whether what he wrote was of real substance wasn't obviously of much concern to him.
Review of Piano in the .........
Sean McManus's Blog
Book review: A piano in the Pyrenees by Tony Hawks
21 June 2006
After lugging a fridge around Ireland, chasing Moldovan footballers to challenge them to play tennis, and increasingly desperate attempts to have a hit single, life's slowed down a bit for Tony Hawks. His latest book 'A Piano in the Pyrenees' tells the story of how he bought a nice holiday home in France, moved a piano over there and chilled out with his friends.
He still has a flair for character sketches and for humorous writing. It's just that the material's a bit weak. There is a 15 page section about a village event where everyone follows the cows up into the mountains. It's a gruelling journey and a long day, but it all falls a bit flat when Hawks ducks out early and ends up committing a minor faux pas in front of the mayor: not really the kind of punchline you'd expect after such a big build-up.
Most of the book's pretty hum-drum: Buying houses abroad, wrangling with foreign bureaucracy, moving house, and building a swimming pool are common enough experiences that you'd never get an autobiography commissioned on the back of them. Reading the book is a gentle and pleasant enough journey - it just doesn't feel structured or particularly special at the end. Put it this way: you or I could never get this book commissioned on its outline, and probably not on the strength of any of these chapters either.
If you've lived in the region he writes about, it might be a lot funnier for you. If you enjoyed his other books, you'll probably like reading his style again. For me, it was an enjoyable but lazy read. After all his previous madcap stunts, I was pleased to read a book in which he seems to be content, rather than just jolly. But I'd be surprised if the market will be as tolerant and it seems unlikely this book will recapture the commercial success of his debut.
Book review: A piano in the Pyrenees by Tony Hawks
21 June 2006
After lugging a fridge around Ireland, chasing Moldovan footballers to challenge them to play tennis, and increasingly desperate attempts to have a hit single, life's slowed down a bit for Tony Hawks. His latest book 'A Piano in the Pyrenees' tells the story of how he bought a nice holiday home in France, moved a piano over there and chilled out with his friends.
He still has a flair for character sketches and for humorous writing. It's just that the material's a bit weak. There is a 15 page section about a village event where everyone follows the cows up into the mountains. It's a gruelling journey and a long day, but it all falls a bit flat when Hawks ducks out early and ends up committing a minor faux pas in front of the mayor: not really the kind of punchline you'd expect after such a big build-up.
Most of the book's pretty hum-drum: Buying houses abroad, wrangling with foreign bureaucracy, moving house, and building a swimming pool are common enough experiences that you'd never get an autobiography commissioned on the back of them. Reading the book is a gentle and pleasant enough journey - it just doesn't feel structured or particularly special at the end. Put it this way: you or I could never get this book commissioned on its outline, and probably not on the strength of any of these chapters either.
If you've lived in the region he writes about, it might be a lot funnier for you. If you enjoyed his other books, you'll probably like reading his style again. For me, it was an enjoyable but lazy read. After all his previous madcap stunts, I was pleased to read a book in which he seems to be content, rather than just jolly. But I'd be surprised if the market will be as tolerant and it seems unlikely this book will recapture the commercial success of his debut.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
A few comments on Grasshopper........
Sunday, 11 March 2007
Review: Grasshopper, by Barbara Vine
Personal Rating: 4/5
Having said I'm going away (which I have done) unfotunately I haven't managed to stay away from the internet altogether, so here I am (but maybe for the last time this week - honest!
Anyway, I seem to have gone from one Barbara to another with my reading. This novel is the story of Clodagh Brown, who has a great love of heights and an equally great fear of underground and enclosed spaces. Her love of heights has resulted in two major events in her life, both of which end with tragic consequences, and this story primarily focusses on the second one.
Much of this story takes place skipping across the rooves of terraced houses in Maida Vale, an area of London, although this light airy spirit is not carried through into the writing. The plot cleverly reveals little bits at a time, and although this can be intriguing, it does also drag along in places.
What saves the day are the main characters, Clodagh and Silver, and their young simple naive spirits as they try to help underdogs. The characters and the intriguing plot kept me reading through to its fairly inevitable tragic end, and the way the story flipped between the present day, and earlier events, kept giving little clues about the outcome.
Although this book was hard work at times, I would still say it was worth it, and I'm glad I persevered. I read one of her other books, The Dark Adapted Eye, a few years ago, which I remember thinking was an amazing psychological novel and, although this wasn't on a par with that, it was still a thrilling read which I would highly recommend.
Posted by heidijane at 19:36
Labels: Barbara Vine, holiday, Recommended, reviews
4 comments:
jenclair said...
I haven't read this one, but have enjoyed all of the novels I've read by Barbara Vine (and all of those she writes under her own name, Ruth Rendell).
13 March 2007 12:24
nessie said...
I remember when I worked in a bookstore that she had a small but devoted following.
13 March 2007 21:48
Lesley said...
Hmm, this sounds interesting. I just finished a Barbara Vine book that I did not really like all that much (The Minotaur), and that was my first experience with her writing (either as BV or Ruth Rendell). Not sure whether I want to give her another try or not ...
14 March 2007 18:09
Anonymous said...
Yeah I read this one as well and I admit that it dragged along at times for me.
I must say though that I love all Barbara Vine and Ruth Rendell novels. I love the settings and the deep and sometimes very dark psychological intrigue.
http://twitter.com/RedPenAnni
Review: Grasshopper, by Barbara Vine
Personal Rating: 4/5
Having said I'm going away (which I have done) unfotunately I haven't managed to stay away from the internet altogether, so here I am (but maybe for the last time this week - honest!
Anyway, I seem to have gone from one Barbara to another with my reading. This novel is the story of Clodagh Brown, who has a great love of heights and an equally great fear of underground and enclosed spaces. Her love of heights has resulted in two major events in her life, both of which end with tragic consequences, and this story primarily focusses on the second one.
Much of this story takes place skipping across the rooves of terraced houses in Maida Vale, an area of London, although this light airy spirit is not carried through into the writing. The plot cleverly reveals little bits at a time, and although this can be intriguing, it does also drag along in places.
What saves the day are the main characters, Clodagh and Silver, and their young simple naive spirits as they try to help underdogs. The characters and the intriguing plot kept me reading through to its fairly inevitable tragic end, and the way the story flipped between the present day, and earlier events, kept giving little clues about the outcome.
Although this book was hard work at times, I would still say it was worth it, and I'm glad I persevered. I read one of her other books, The Dark Adapted Eye, a few years ago, which I remember thinking was an amazing psychological novel and, although this wasn't on a par with that, it was still a thrilling read which I would highly recommend.
Posted by heidijane at 19:36
Labels: Barbara Vine, holiday, Recommended, reviews
4 comments:
jenclair said...
I haven't read this one, but have enjoyed all of the novels I've read by Barbara Vine (and all of those she writes under her own name, Ruth Rendell).
13 March 2007 12:24
nessie said...
I remember when I worked in a bookstore that she had a small but devoted following.
13 March 2007 21:48
Lesley said...
Hmm, this sounds interesting. I just finished a Barbara Vine book that I did not really like all that much (The Minotaur), and that was my first experience with her writing (either as BV or Ruth Rendell). Not sure whether I want to give her another try or not ...
14 March 2007 18:09
Anonymous said...
Yeah I read this one as well and I admit that it dragged along at times for me.
I must say though that I love all Barbara Vine and Ruth Rendell novels. I love the settings and the deep and sometimes very dark psychological intrigue.
http://twitter.com/RedPenAnni
Review of Grasshopper by K. Kimbrough
by Kay Kimbrough
GRASSHOPPER
Barbara Vine
Harmony Books, New York, 2000, $25.00.
Clodagh Brown is nineteen when she goes to London to attend a technical college and recover from a depression caused by a tragic accident for which she feels responsible. She lives in a basement flat provided by her mother's cousin and his wife. Unable to ride the London subway because of claustrophobia, she takes the bus to school on the days she does not skip classes altogether to investigate the architecture of London, which fascinates her. On one occasion she is directed to an underpass because of a blocked-off crime scene, and she collapses in terror while trying to reach the end of the tunnel.
Rescued by a young eccentric, Michael Silverman, known as Silver because of his almost white hair, Clodagh begins her adventure that leads to the complications of the plot. Silver is living an experiment in goodness, consciously accepting anyone into his life and into his flat on the top floor of his parents' house in spite of criminal records or character defects. With the confidence of youth, he expects to do good to anyone who needs him, although he does prevent evil when it is happening in his presence. Clodagh recognizes that she has been longing for "goodness" for a long time, so she is attracted to Silver immediately.
She does have some doubts about Silver's generosity at times, for he seems to have no regard for his money, inherited from his grandmother, that is enough to live on, but not a grand fortune. Unable to suppress her strong pragmatic bent, she quarrels with him about this carelessness.
While carrying out his experiment in goodness, Silver has learned to enjoy climbing on the roofs of London with his friend Wim for pleasure, excitement, challenge and escape from life on the ground level. Clodagh is already in love with climbing, a practice which had led to her friend's death and her exile to London. These young people are like children climbing trees, towers, mountains or castle walls. They are still immature, enjoying spying through windows, getting away with something they shouldn't do.
Although there are several mysteries presented to throw the reader off the tract, the central plot stems from this practice of going on the roofs. An adopted mixed-race child has been abducted by his parents because the social service has decided the adoption is bad for him. He should go to a mixed-race couple, no matter how happy he is. Spotting the family, who have frequently appeared in newspapers and are in hiding in a neighboring flat, Silver and Clodagh determine to help them. Their efforts lead to the conclusion, highly improbable but no stranger than real life, solving one of the novel's mysteries.
Along the way, the two young people fall in love and discover that their powers of doing good are limited by the very people they try to help, leading Clodagh to wonder about whether one should consider the kind of people in need of help before getting involved with them. They encounter true evil, dishonesty, greed and indifference in one character after another. They are innocent, inexperienced and trusting, learning about the disguises people create and the lies they tell themselves to get their way in painful steps toward wisdom.
Writing the Wexford mysteries as Ruth Rendell or psychological thrillers as Barbara Vine, the author always has a sermon to deliver without preaching or being obvious. The treatment of children by parents is one of her typical subjects; evil people have had some form of abuse as children in her books. Sometimes the abuse is neglect, sometimes physical battering and sometimes extreme indulgence, but there is always an explanation for human behavior.
A botched illegal abortion and a child who should have been taken from sick parents cause the tragedy in this novel. Other issues surface, such as the unfairness of the class system and the increasing materialism of culture. There is one bright spot: the cleaning woman Clodagh befriends lives a contented and meaningful life. On the other hand, the successful actress who loses her husband to another woman is miserable, regretting the amount of money she spent to provide her husband with a lovely home more than she regrets the loss of him.
GRASSHOPPER opens slowly; nothing much happens for the first one hundred pages. It takes patience to get into the story. Unlike some of Vine's other books, it ends almost too quickly, leaving one story, that of Liv, unfinished. It is well worth reading, however, for its understanding of the growing-up process, its array of characters and the varieties of human dramas they perform. The character of Clodagh is created with restraint. She grows up in the book, becoming good herself without leaving behind her practical self and her refreshing honesty.
GRASSHOPPER
Barbara Vine
Harmony Books, New York, 2000, $25.00.
Clodagh Brown is nineteen when she goes to London to attend a technical college and recover from a depression caused by a tragic accident for which she feels responsible. She lives in a basement flat provided by her mother's cousin and his wife. Unable to ride the London subway because of claustrophobia, she takes the bus to school on the days she does not skip classes altogether to investigate the architecture of London, which fascinates her. On one occasion she is directed to an underpass because of a blocked-off crime scene, and she collapses in terror while trying to reach the end of the tunnel.
Rescued by a young eccentric, Michael Silverman, known as Silver because of his almost white hair, Clodagh begins her adventure that leads to the complications of the plot. Silver is living an experiment in goodness, consciously accepting anyone into his life and into his flat on the top floor of his parents' house in spite of criminal records or character defects. With the confidence of youth, he expects to do good to anyone who needs him, although he does prevent evil when it is happening in his presence. Clodagh recognizes that she has been longing for "goodness" for a long time, so she is attracted to Silver immediately.
She does have some doubts about Silver's generosity at times, for he seems to have no regard for his money, inherited from his grandmother, that is enough to live on, but not a grand fortune. Unable to suppress her strong pragmatic bent, she quarrels with him about this carelessness.
While carrying out his experiment in goodness, Silver has learned to enjoy climbing on the roofs of London with his friend Wim for pleasure, excitement, challenge and escape from life on the ground level. Clodagh is already in love with climbing, a practice which had led to her friend's death and her exile to London. These young people are like children climbing trees, towers, mountains or castle walls. They are still immature, enjoying spying through windows, getting away with something they shouldn't do.
Although there are several mysteries presented to throw the reader off the tract, the central plot stems from this practice of going on the roofs. An adopted mixed-race child has been abducted by his parents because the social service has decided the adoption is bad for him. He should go to a mixed-race couple, no matter how happy he is. Spotting the family, who have frequently appeared in newspapers and are in hiding in a neighboring flat, Silver and Clodagh determine to help them. Their efforts lead to the conclusion, highly improbable but no stranger than real life, solving one of the novel's mysteries.
Along the way, the two young people fall in love and discover that their powers of doing good are limited by the very people they try to help, leading Clodagh to wonder about whether one should consider the kind of people in need of help before getting involved with them. They encounter true evil, dishonesty, greed and indifference in one character after another. They are innocent, inexperienced and trusting, learning about the disguises people create and the lies they tell themselves to get their way in painful steps toward wisdom.
Writing the Wexford mysteries as Ruth Rendell or psychological thrillers as Barbara Vine, the author always has a sermon to deliver without preaching or being obvious. The treatment of children by parents is one of her typical subjects; evil people have had some form of abuse as children in her books. Sometimes the abuse is neglect, sometimes physical battering and sometimes extreme indulgence, but there is always an explanation for human behavior.
A botched illegal abortion and a child who should have been taken from sick parents cause the tragedy in this novel. Other issues surface, such as the unfairness of the class system and the increasing materialism of culture. There is one bright spot: the cleaning woman Clodagh befriends lives a contented and meaningful life. On the other hand, the successful actress who loses her husband to another woman is miserable, regretting the amount of money she spent to provide her husband with a lovely home more than she regrets the loss of him.
GRASSHOPPER opens slowly; nothing much happens for the first one hundred pages. It takes patience to get into the story. Unlike some of Vine's other books, it ends almost too quickly, leaving one story, that of Liv, unfinished. It is well worth reading, however, for its understanding of the growing-up process, its array of characters and the varieties of human dramas they perform. The character of Clodagh is created with restraint. She grows up in the book, becoming good herself without leaving behind her practical self and her refreshing honesty.
Robert Crone on Grasshopper.........
'Grasshopper' by Barbara Vine
Open-and-shut cases of masterful mystery writing: ‘Grasshopper’
Sunday, December 17, 2000
By Robert Croan, Post-Gazette Senior
Grasshopper
By Barbara Vine
Harmony Books
$25.00
British mystery writer Ruth Rendell uses the pseudonym Barbara Vine when writing novels in which mystery is not the primary element. Her latest effort in this genre has several mysteries woven into the plot, but the new book is essentially a coming-of-age story about a young woman afflicted with severe claustrophobia.
Clodaugh Brown, or Clo, is so claustrophobic that she cannot go through any of England’s short underground passageways to cross a street. And she will never take the tube, or what we call a “subway.”
She will walk miles out of her way or take buses and trams that might add hours to a normally brief journey. Worst of all, her claustrophobia is offset by a love of heights. As a teen-ager, Clo and her first boyfriend, Daniel, would scale the pylons -- dangerous electrical towers -- but one day Daniel was zapped by the electrical current. Clo was helpless to save him.
Her parents, the whole town, in fact, blamed Clo for Daniel’s death. As an adult, Clo blames herself as well and writes her thoughts in a diary, which -- now, more than a decade later, she is updating for a particular reader. We know that Clo has survived it all, though not without mental and physical scars. She is married and has become a successful electrician, living in a luxury apartment.
The part of her life that she (and we) are most concerned with, however, is the time -- at the age of 18 -- that she went to London to take a business course at Grand Union Polytechnic. Soon Clo finds a lover, a neighbor called Silver because he’s an albino. He makes his apartment available to a variety of occupants, including a mysterious Dutchman named Wim who has discovered the secret of traveling through the neighborhood on rooftops.
Other residents include a Swedish girl named Liv who has a phobia just the opposite of Clo’s: She cannot bear to go outdoors. Liv takes up with Jonny, a very bad egg who uses the roofs in his trade as a burglar.
Things get even more tangled when Liv becomes infatuated with Wim and Jonny takes violent steps to keep Liv for himself.
Furthermore, Clo and Silver -- in a naive attempt at altruism -- help a childless couple trying to abduct a mixed-race child who has been refused for adoption.
All this comes together in a tale that shows Vine’s mastery of plot and character. We hardly know what the mystery is until it is solved, although Clo gives us hints that one thing will work out and another will end badly. Characters develop in ways that are unpredictable but ultimately believable. Vine’s prose is quite beautiful, not only in her furthering of the plot but also the atmosphere she creates of two Londons: one class-bound and wealthy, the other Bohemian and poor.
By the end, the reader can’t help wishing it were possible to join in just once for one of those wild romps on the roofs.
Open-and-shut cases of masterful mystery writing: ‘Grasshopper’
Sunday, December 17, 2000
By Robert Croan, Post-Gazette Senior
Grasshopper
By Barbara Vine
Harmony Books
$25.00
British mystery writer Ruth Rendell uses the pseudonym Barbara Vine when writing novels in which mystery is not the primary element. Her latest effort in this genre has several mysteries woven into the plot, but the new book is essentially a coming-of-age story about a young woman afflicted with severe claustrophobia.
Clodaugh Brown, or Clo, is so claustrophobic that she cannot go through any of England’s short underground passageways to cross a street. And she will never take the tube, or what we call a “subway.”
She will walk miles out of her way or take buses and trams that might add hours to a normally brief journey. Worst of all, her claustrophobia is offset by a love of heights. As a teen-ager, Clo and her first boyfriend, Daniel, would scale the pylons -- dangerous electrical towers -- but one day Daniel was zapped by the electrical current. Clo was helpless to save him.
Her parents, the whole town, in fact, blamed Clo for Daniel’s death. As an adult, Clo blames herself as well and writes her thoughts in a diary, which -- now, more than a decade later, she is updating for a particular reader. We know that Clo has survived it all, though not without mental and physical scars. She is married and has become a successful electrician, living in a luxury apartment.
The part of her life that she (and we) are most concerned with, however, is the time -- at the age of 18 -- that she went to London to take a business course at Grand Union Polytechnic. Soon Clo finds a lover, a neighbor called Silver because he’s an albino. He makes his apartment available to a variety of occupants, including a mysterious Dutchman named Wim who has discovered the secret of traveling through the neighborhood on rooftops.
Other residents include a Swedish girl named Liv who has a phobia just the opposite of Clo’s: She cannot bear to go outdoors. Liv takes up with Jonny, a very bad egg who uses the roofs in his trade as a burglar.
Things get even more tangled when Liv becomes infatuated with Wim and Jonny takes violent steps to keep Liv for himself.
Furthermore, Clo and Silver -- in a naive attempt at altruism -- help a childless couple trying to abduct a mixed-race child who has been refused for adoption.
All this comes together in a tale that shows Vine’s mastery of plot and character. We hardly know what the mystery is until it is solved, although Clo gives us hints that one thing will work out and another will end badly. Characters develop in ways that are unpredictable but ultimately believable. Vine’s prose is quite beautiful, not only in her furthering of the plot but also the atmosphere she creates of two Londons: one class-bound and wealthy, the other Bohemian and poor.
By the end, the reader can’t help wishing it were possible to join in just once for one of those wild romps on the roofs.
October Book Choice ~ Grasshopper by Barbara Vine
This month we're discussing Grasshopper.
We'll be meeting on Friday 17th October ~ usual time and place.
I've read about 100 pages so far and find the style ponderous, the characterisation unbelieveable and the storyline uninspiring.
Perhaps things can only get better!!!!!!
We'll be meeting on Friday 17th October ~ usual time and place.
I've read about 100 pages so far and find the style ponderous, the characterisation unbelieveable and the storyline uninspiring.
Perhaps things can only get better!!!!!!
Sunday, August 31, 2008
Never Let me Go Reviews
Book Summary and Media Reviews
Never Let Me Go: Summary and book reviews of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, plus an excerpt from Never Let Me Go and a biography of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Hardcover: Apr 2005
Paperback: Mar 2006
Publication information Book Jacket & Reviews
Excerpt
Reader Reviews
Author Biography
Author Interview
Reading Guide
Read-Alikes
This Book's Themes
BookBrowse Says....
Critics' Opinion: Very Good
Readers' Rating:
(7 reader reviews)
Add to my Reading List Buy this book:
From the Jacket
A BookBrowse Favorite Book
From the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly re-imagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love.
As a child, Kathy–now thirty-one years old–lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed–even comforted–by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham's nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now.
A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonance–and takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro's finest work.
Media Reviews
Booklist - Allison Block
In this luminous offering, he nimbly navigates the landscape of emotion--the inevitable link between present and past and the fine line between compassion and cruelty, pleasure and pain.
Library Journal - Henry L. Carrigan (starred review)
Ishiguro's elegant prose and masterly ways with characterization make for a lovely tale of memory, self-understanding, and love.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives-without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have "tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn't matter." ... A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. The dystopian story it tells, meanwhile, gives it a different kind of electric charge. . . . An epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature. . . . Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics.
The Guardian (UK) - M John Harrison
This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been.
The Independent (UK) - Geoff Dyer
The problem for the reviewer, appropriately enough, is that by revealing more of what the book is about he risks going too far and unravelling its meticulously woven fabric of hints and guesses. So I'll leave it there. Suffice it to say that this very weird book is as intricate, subtly unsettling and moving as any Ishiguro has written.
The Sunday Times (UK) - Peter Kemp
Not since The Remains of the Day has Ishiguro written about wasted lives with such finely gauged forlornness. That he contrives to do so in a narrative crawling with creepy frissons is remarkable. Not the least out-of-the-ordinary feature of this novel, with its piercing questions about humanity and humaneness, is the way it affectingly moves past gothic shudders to a wrenchingly desolate ending.
The Telegraph (UK) - Caroline Moore
Never Let Me Go will probably disappoint readers for whom the solution of a mystery is all-in-all, or those who want the gratification of full-on horror. But in its evocation of a pervasive menace and despair almost but not quite lost in translation - made up of the shadows of things not said, glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye - the novel is masterly.
Never Let Me Go: Summary and book reviews of Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro, plus an excerpt from Never Let Me Go and a biography of Kazuo Ishiguro.
Never Let Me Go
by Kazuo Ishiguro
Hardcover: Apr 2005
Paperback: Mar 2006
Publication information Book Jacket & Reviews
Excerpt
Reader Reviews
Author Biography
Author Interview
Reading Guide
Read-Alikes
This Book's Themes
BookBrowse Says....
Critics' Opinion: Very Good
Readers' Rating:
(7 reader reviews)
Add to my Reading List Buy this book:
From the Jacket
A BookBrowse Favorite Book
From the acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day and When We Were Orphans, a moving new novel that subtly re-imagines our world and time in a haunting story of friendship and love.
As a child, Kathy–now thirty-one years old–lived at Hailsham, a private school in the scenic English countryside where the children were sheltered from the outside world, brought up to believe that they were special and that their well-being was crucial not only for themselves but for the society they would eventually enter. Kathy had long ago put this idyllic past behind her, but when two of her Hailsham friends come back into her life, she stops resisting the pull of memory.
And so, as her friendship with Ruth is rekindled, and as the feelings that long ago fueled her adolescent crush on Tommy begin to deepen into love, Kathy recalls their years at Hailsham. She describes happy scenes of boys and girls growing up together, unperturbed–even comforted–by their isolation. But she describes other scenes as well: of discord and misunderstanding that hint at a dark secret behind Hailsham's nurturing facade. With the dawning clarity of hindsight, the three friends are compelled to face the truth about their childhood–and about their lives now.
A tale of deceptive simplicity, Never Let Me Go slowly reveals an extraordinary emotional depth and resonance–and takes its place among Kazuo Ishiguro's finest work.
Media Reviews
Booklist - Allison Block
In this luminous offering, he nimbly navigates the landscape of emotion--the inevitable link between present and past and the fine line between compassion and cruelty, pleasure and pain.
Library Journal - Henry L. Carrigan (starred review)
Ishiguro's elegant prose and masterly ways with characterization make for a lovely tale of memory, self-understanding, and love.
Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
With perfect pacing and infinite subtlety, Ishiguro reveals exactly as much as we need to know about how efforts to regulate the future through genetic engineering create, control, then emotionlessly destroy very real, very human lives-without ever showing us the faces of the culpable, who have "tried to convince themselves. . . . That you were less than human, so it didn't matter." ... A masterpiece of craftsmanship that offers an unparalleled emotional experience.
Publishers Weekly (starred review)
So exquisitely observed that even the most workaday objects and interactions are infused with a luminous, humming otherworldliness. The dystopian story it tells, meanwhile, gives it a different kind of electric charge. . . . An epic ethical horror story, told in devastatingly poignant miniature. . . . Ishiguro spins a stinging cautionary tale of science outpacing ethics.
The Guardian (UK) - M John Harrison
This extraordinary and, in the end, rather frighteningly clever novel isn't about cloning, or being a clone, at all. It's about why we don't explode, why we don't just wake up one day and go sobbing and crying down the street, kicking everything to pieces out of the raw, infuriating, completely personal sense of our lives never having been what they could have been.
The Independent (UK) - Geoff Dyer
The problem for the reviewer, appropriately enough, is that by revealing more of what the book is about he risks going too far and unravelling its meticulously woven fabric of hints and guesses. So I'll leave it there. Suffice it to say that this very weird book is as intricate, subtly unsettling and moving as any Ishiguro has written.
The Sunday Times (UK) - Peter Kemp
Not since The Remains of the Day has Ishiguro written about wasted lives with such finely gauged forlornness. That he contrives to do so in a narrative crawling with creepy frissons is remarkable. Not the least out-of-the-ordinary feature of this novel, with its piercing questions about humanity and humaneness, is the way it affectingly moves past gothic shudders to a wrenchingly desolate ending.
The Telegraph (UK) - Caroline Moore
Never Let Me Go will probably disappoint readers for whom the solution of a mystery is all-in-all, or those who want the gratification of full-on horror. But in its evocation of a pervasive menace and despair almost but not quite lost in translation - made up of the shadows of things not said, glimpsed out of the corner of one's eye - the novel is masterly.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
August, September, October & November Meetings
Hi Everyone in the Book Club & potential new members
The Book club will meet at the usual venue at the hotel.
Under discussion for the next few months will be:
August
Last King of Scotland
Giles Foden
September
Never Let Me go
Kazuo Ishiguro
October
Grasshopper
Barbara Vine
November
A Piano in the Pyrenees
Tony Hawkes
Reviews of the Book and information about the author are available on the St Yrieix Book club Blog. http://vernonboy.blogspot.com
Please let Pat Dixon know of your coffee/lunch requirements a few days before the meeting.
Pat Dixon ~ 0553552185
Vernon Goddard ~ 0555099490
All welcome ~ but if you are a new member, please contact us to let us know you’re joining. _________________
Gorseinonboy................
The Book club will meet at the usual venue at the hotel.
Under discussion for the next few months will be:
August
Last King of Scotland
Giles Foden
September
Never Let Me go
Kazuo Ishiguro
October
Grasshopper
Barbara Vine
November
A Piano in the Pyrenees
Tony Hawkes
Reviews of the Book and information about the author are available on the St Yrieix Book club Blog. http://vernonboy.blogspot.com
Please let Pat Dixon know of your coffee/lunch requirements a few days before the meeting.
Pat Dixon ~ 0553552185
Vernon Goddard ~ 0555099490
All welcome ~ but if you are a new member, please contact us to let us know you’re joining. _________________
Gorseinonboy................
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
Book Club Choices for the rest of the year ~ 2008
July
Firelight and Woodsmoke
Claude Michelet
August
Last King of Scotland
Giles Foden
September
Never Let Me go
Kazuo Ishiguro
October
Grasshopper
Barbara Vine
November
A Piano in the Pyrenees
Tony Hawkes
Firelight and Woodsmoke
Claude Michelet
August
Last King of Scotland
Giles Foden
September
Never Let Me go
Kazuo Ishiguro
October
Grasshopper
Barbara Vine
November
A Piano in the Pyrenees
Tony Hawkes
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Claude Michelet
Firelight and Woodsmoke, Applewood, Scent of Herbs by Claude Michelet
Written from personal experience by French writer Claude Michelet this is a wonderful epic of one family – the Vialhe Family – set in rural France from the turn of the twentieth century up to the 1980s. It follows the fortunes of the family as they live out their lives in the village of Saint Libéral in the southern Corrèze region, close to the Dordogne. As an example of a social history written in narrative style it is first class. The first book sees the family begin to fall apart as the younger generation rebel against the ‘old ways’ and the terror of WW1 takes its toll.
The second book continues from the 1930’s through to the early 70’s taking in the horrors and after-effects of WW2. The final book in the trilogy shows how the Vialhe family and the villagers have to move with the times if they are to survive in modern day France. This comes highly recommended.
Written from personal experience by French writer Claude Michelet this is a wonderful epic of one family – the Vialhe Family – set in rural France from the turn of the twentieth century up to the 1980s. It follows the fortunes of the family as they live out their lives in the village of Saint Libéral in the southern Corrèze region, close to the Dordogne. As an example of a social history written in narrative style it is first class. The first book sees the family begin to fall apart as the younger generation rebel against the ‘old ways’ and the terror of WW1 takes its toll.
The second book continues from the 1930’s through to the early 70’s taking in the horrors and after-effects of WW2. The final book in the trilogy shows how the Vialhe family and the villagers have to move with the times if they are to survive in modern day France. This comes highly recommended.
Next Book for July.......
The next book we are studying is "Firelight & Woodsmoke" by Claude Michelet. It is a powerful saga of one family at the heart of rural France.
Should go down well in rural Limousin then!!
Meeting usual place.
Should go down well in rural Limousin then!!
Meeting usual place.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
The "Complete" review ~ Atonement
The complete review's Review:
The first half of Atonement -- the long first part of the book -- is set in 1935, at the Tallis home in the English countryside. It begins with Briony Tallis, a bright but still very childish thirteen year-old, preparing a play, The Trials of Arabella. Briony seems a budding dramatist, enjoying this staging of events and putting words into people's mouths, but the events of just those days will change her from potential playwright to novelist, a very different kind of fabulist. A great deal goes on in the brief time covered in this first part of the book, but most of it is relatively mundane stuff. The highlight is meant to be the return of Briony's brother, Leon, from school; it is to impress him that Briony writes her play. McEwan slowly sets the stage and introduces the players -- also more dramatist than novelist at the beginning. The house is fairly full -- though, in the terrible heat, not exactly bustling with activity. There is another sibling: Briony's considerably older sister, Cecilia. The parents are weak presences: the mother, Emily, isn't a very strong woman and the father is almost entirely absent (away working in London). Other figures of note include Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's son who shows great promise and whose education has been paid for by the Tallises. He and Cecilia both attended Cambridge at the same time, and while they didn't associate much there they suddenly find themselves closer than expected back home. Then there are the cousins -- nine-year-old twin boys and the fifteen-year-old Lola. Their parents have split up and the children have just been sent here, where Briony immediately ropes them into participating in her play. Lola, adept at some manipulation, turns out to be a bit much for Briony to try to control -- but Briony seems to manage to twist most situations to her satisfaction. Then there's the wealthy industrialist, slick Paul Marshall, also staying over ..... McEwan takes his time, allowing the story to unfold. There are ominous signs and small warnings all along. There are accidents -- a child wetting the bed, a chipped vase -- and then things seen and overheard and possibly misinterpreted (and possibly missed). There are more dramatic slips -- Robbie pens two letters and has Briony deliver the wrong one. It becomes ever clearer: something bad is bound to happen, something terrible, even. Briony is at the centre of most of it. The novel wanders farther afield, focussing on others, too, but Briony is the key. She alone might have been able to change the course of events. McEwan makes it clear: there were opportunities:
She could have gone in to her mother then and snuggled close beside her and begun a résumé of the day. If she had she would not have committed her crime. So much would not have happened, nothing would have happened, and the smoothing hand of time would have made the eveing barely memorable But throughout there is also always a sense of inevitability to the story. Briony does do something very, very bad -- but the true crime (and there is one) is committed by another. It's one of the few weaknesses in the book (though in a book of such strength weakness too is relative, and it is not that much of a blemish): the evil-doer is too strongly depicted as such, the character's villainy too obvious, even the deed itself foreshadowed in almost every detail (there was no doubt what the crime would be, or who the victim). The suspense, however, is in Briony's crime -- to see what her betrayal will be, and how McEwan will manage it. It is a horrible betrayal, ruining two lives. It comes almost exactly halfway through the book -- a long buildup just for this, but at no point does McEwan disappoint along the way. The reader has been prepared for it, and it is still shocking and wrenching -- a neat, tragic climax smack in the centre of the novel. The first part of the novel ends with Briony's crime -- allowing for only a few bits of the consequences to unfold. What really happens in the hours and days and months and even years after isn't made immediately clear. The second part of the novel jumps ahead a few years, focussing on Robbie Turner, now soldiering in France -- in fact, fleeing from the oncoming Germans. It's a complete change of pace and scene -- and story. It might be a bit too much -- McEwan showing he can write war-scenes, while the reader constantly wants to know: but what of all the others. But McEwan sticks with Robbie, allowing only a few more details to come out that reveal what transpired in the intervening years, and ultimately that too works. The third part focusses on Briony, studying to become a nurse in wartime London -- the same job her estranged sister, Cecilia, has. Briony is also still writing, and at one point sends a manuscript to Cyril Connolly at Horizon -- receiving an encouraging rejection letter. McEwan presents the entire three-page letter, and from Connolly's comments it becomes clear that Briony submitted what amounts to a first draft of the first part of Atonement (reading slightly differently now in part because some of Connolly's suggestions have been incorporated into it) ...... It dawns on readers: Briony's atonement is not her forsaking Cambridge to become a nurse, or trying to be forgiven by those she wronged, but rather it is the writing of this novel. This is confirmed, soon enough. The book closes with a short last section set in the present, in London, 1999 -- a final summing up. There appear to have been readers who were disappointed by what has been perceived as an unfair final authorial twist here. Briony even anticipates them:
I know there's always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened ? "The answer is simple", McEwan has Briony write -- and it is. McEwan shows here, with a crystal clarity that few novelists have achieved in recent times: fiction triumphs. The author decides what "really happened". That's always the case. That is what fiction is. And here, for once, the author has presented his decision in a near-perfect manner -- in particular because he shows so well how this particular reality (or un-reality) came about (and leaves the inevitable lingering questions of what can be believed, of what is truth and what is wishful thinking and what pure invention). Questions remain -- but McEwan makes a convincing case for their needing to remain, and for readers needing to confront them. Trust us: neat endings, tied up with a bow, aren't nearly as satisfying as what McEwan has to offer. Fiction doesn't offer certainty, or absolute answers. It is nothing like factual, literal truth. But McEwan here shows why this fiction-truth is better, and what amazing power fiction has It hardly plays a major role until near the end, but Atonement is a convincing example of why authors write novels -- indeed, of how (and why) we all create our own realities (be they in book form, or merely mind-games that allow us to bear the enormity that is life itself). Both Briony-as-author and, much more significantly, McEwan-as-author make a very impressive case for the continued role and need for the novel. And Atonement is a also a very good novel even without these writerly concerns. The first part is exceptional, a large cast of characters and many events adeptly interwoven, all culminating in a terrible but understandable betrayal. The other parts, too, are very well done -- the horrors of war, the scenes of the wounded, and the lives of Briony, Cecilia, and Robbie. A marvelous read, highly recommended.
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Links: Atonement:
Random House publicity page
Profile in The Observer
Interview in the San Francisco Chronicle Reviews:
BBC
Blogcritics.org
The Book Blog
BookPage
Bookreporter.com
BooksILoved.com
BR-online (German)
Brigitte (German)
Buchkritik.at (German)
carpe librum (German)
The Center for Nursing Advocacy
Christian Science Monitor
CritiquesLibres.com (French)
culturevulture.net
Entertainment Weekly
L'Express (French)
Falter (German)
fictions
Brian Finney
Free Williamsburg
Freitag (German)
girlfriendbooks.com
Good Books Lately
goodreports.net
The Guardian
A Guy's Moleskine Notebook
Anne Hanik (German)
Indian Express
Jowebzine (French)
Jungle World (German)
Leselust (German)
Tom Liehr (German)
Lire (French)
London Review of Books
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
My Favourite Book
My Spiritual Journey
Neue Szene (German)
New York
The New York Times
The New York Times Book Review
The Observer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Christopher Priest
Rhein Zeitung (German)
Salon
San Francisco Chronicle
satt.org (German)
Sitartmag (French)
Steep Stairs
Sunday Times
taz (German)
James Tata
3M's Reviews
titel (German)
The Washington Post
Women's Day
Steven Wu's Book Reviews
Yale Review of Books
Die Zeit (German) Atonement - the film:
Official site
IMDb page Ian McEwan:
The Official Website of Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan at Contemporary Writers
Ian McEwan at BooksUnlimited Other books by Ian McEwan under review:
Amsterdam
On Chesil Beach
Saturday Other books of interest under review:
See the index of Contemporary British fiction at the complete review
- Return to top of the page -
About the Author:
British author Ian McEwan is the author of many fine novels. He won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam in 1998.
- Return to top of the page -
© 2002-2007 the complete review Main the New the Best the Rest Review Index Links
The first half of Atonement -- the long first part of the book -- is set in 1935, at the Tallis home in the English countryside. It begins with Briony Tallis, a bright but still very childish thirteen year-old, preparing a play, The Trials of Arabella. Briony seems a budding dramatist, enjoying this staging of events and putting words into people's mouths, but the events of just those days will change her from potential playwright to novelist, a very different kind of fabulist. A great deal goes on in the brief time covered in this first part of the book, but most of it is relatively mundane stuff. The highlight is meant to be the return of Briony's brother, Leon, from school; it is to impress him that Briony writes her play. McEwan slowly sets the stage and introduces the players -- also more dramatist than novelist at the beginning. The house is fairly full -- though, in the terrible heat, not exactly bustling with activity. There is another sibling: Briony's considerably older sister, Cecilia. The parents are weak presences: the mother, Emily, isn't a very strong woman and the father is almost entirely absent (away working in London). Other figures of note include Robbie Turner, the housekeeper's son who shows great promise and whose education has been paid for by the Tallises. He and Cecilia both attended Cambridge at the same time, and while they didn't associate much there they suddenly find themselves closer than expected back home. Then there are the cousins -- nine-year-old twin boys and the fifteen-year-old Lola. Their parents have split up and the children have just been sent here, where Briony immediately ropes them into participating in her play. Lola, adept at some manipulation, turns out to be a bit much for Briony to try to control -- but Briony seems to manage to twist most situations to her satisfaction. Then there's the wealthy industrialist, slick Paul Marshall, also staying over ..... McEwan takes his time, allowing the story to unfold. There are ominous signs and small warnings all along. There are accidents -- a child wetting the bed, a chipped vase -- and then things seen and overheard and possibly misinterpreted (and possibly missed). There are more dramatic slips -- Robbie pens two letters and has Briony deliver the wrong one. It becomes ever clearer: something bad is bound to happen, something terrible, even. Briony is at the centre of most of it. The novel wanders farther afield, focussing on others, too, but Briony is the key. She alone might have been able to change the course of events. McEwan makes it clear: there were opportunities:
She could have gone in to her mother then and snuggled close beside her and begun a résumé of the day. If she had she would not have committed her crime. So much would not have happened, nothing would have happened, and the smoothing hand of time would have made the eveing barely memorable But throughout there is also always a sense of inevitability to the story. Briony does do something very, very bad -- but the true crime (and there is one) is committed by another. It's one of the few weaknesses in the book (though in a book of such strength weakness too is relative, and it is not that much of a blemish): the evil-doer is too strongly depicted as such, the character's villainy too obvious, even the deed itself foreshadowed in almost every detail (there was no doubt what the crime would be, or who the victim). The suspense, however, is in Briony's crime -- to see what her betrayal will be, and how McEwan will manage it. It is a horrible betrayal, ruining two lives. It comes almost exactly halfway through the book -- a long buildup just for this, but at no point does McEwan disappoint along the way. The reader has been prepared for it, and it is still shocking and wrenching -- a neat, tragic climax smack in the centre of the novel. The first part of the novel ends with Briony's crime -- allowing for only a few bits of the consequences to unfold. What really happens in the hours and days and months and even years after isn't made immediately clear. The second part of the novel jumps ahead a few years, focussing on Robbie Turner, now soldiering in France -- in fact, fleeing from the oncoming Germans. It's a complete change of pace and scene -- and story. It might be a bit too much -- McEwan showing he can write war-scenes, while the reader constantly wants to know: but what of all the others. But McEwan sticks with Robbie, allowing only a few more details to come out that reveal what transpired in the intervening years, and ultimately that too works. The third part focusses on Briony, studying to become a nurse in wartime London -- the same job her estranged sister, Cecilia, has. Briony is also still writing, and at one point sends a manuscript to Cyril Connolly at Horizon -- receiving an encouraging rejection letter. McEwan presents the entire three-page letter, and from Connolly's comments it becomes clear that Briony submitted what amounts to a first draft of the first part of Atonement (reading slightly differently now in part because some of Connolly's suggestions have been incorporated into it) ...... It dawns on readers: Briony's atonement is not her forsaking Cambridge to become a nurse, or trying to be forgiven by those she wronged, but rather it is the writing of this novel. This is confirmed, soon enough. The book closes with a short last section set in the present, in London, 1999 -- a final summing up. There appear to have been readers who were disappointed by what has been perceived as an unfair final authorial twist here. Briony even anticipates them:
I know there's always a certain kind of reader who will be compelled to ask, But what really happened ? "The answer is simple", McEwan has Briony write -- and it is. McEwan shows here, with a crystal clarity that few novelists have achieved in recent times: fiction triumphs. The author decides what "really happened". That's always the case. That is what fiction is. And here, for once, the author has presented his decision in a near-perfect manner -- in particular because he shows so well how this particular reality (or un-reality) came about (and leaves the inevitable lingering questions of what can be believed, of what is truth and what is wishful thinking and what pure invention). Questions remain -- but McEwan makes a convincing case for their needing to remain, and for readers needing to confront them. Trust us: neat endings, tied up with a bow, aren't nearly as satisfying as what McEwan has to offer. Fiction doesn't offer certainty, or absolute answers. It is nothing like factual, literal truth. But McEwan here shows why this fiction-truth is better, and what amazing power fiction has It hardly plays a major role until near the end, but Atonement is a convincing example of why authors write novels -- indeed, of how (and why) we all create our own realities (be they in book form, or merely mind-games that allow us to bear the enormity that is life itself). Both Briony-as-author and, much more significantly, McEwan-as-author make a very impressive case for the continued role and need for the novel. And Atonement is a also a very good novel even without these writerly concerns. The first part is exceptional, a large cast of characters and many events adeptly interwoven, all culminating in a terrible but understandable betrayal. The other parts, too, are very well done -- the horrors of war, the scenes of the wounded, and the lives of Briony, Cecilia, and Robbie. A marvelous read, highly recommended.
- Return to top of the page -
Links: Atonement:
Random House publicity page
Profile in The Observer
Interview in the San Francisco Chronicle Reviews:
BBC
Blogcritics.org
The Book Blog
BookPage
Bookreporter.com
BooksILoved.com
BR-online (German)
Brigitte (German)
Buchkritik.at (German)
carpe librum (German)
The Center for Nursing Advocacy
Christian Science Monitor
CritiquesLibres.com (French)
culturevulture.net
Entertainment Weekly
L'Express (French)
Falter (German)
fictions
Brian Finney
Free Williamsburg
Freitag (German)
girlfriendbooks.com
Good Books Lately
goodreports.net
The Guardian
A Guy's Moleskine Notebook
Anne Hanik (German)
Indian Express
Jowebzine (French)
Jungle World (German)
Leselust (German)
Tom Liehr (German)
Lire (French)
London Review of Books
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
My Favourite Book
My Spiritual Journey
Neue Szene (German)
New York
The New York Times
The New York Times Book Review
The Observer
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Christopher Priest
Rhein Zeitung (German)
Salon
San Francisco Chronicle
satt.org (German)
Sitartmag (French)
Steep Stairs
Sunday Times
taz (German)
James Tata
3M's Reviews
titel (German)
The Washington Post
Women's Day
Steven Wu's Book Reviews
Yale Review of Books
Die Zeit (German) Atonement - the film:
Official site
IMDb page Ian McEwan:
The Official Website of Ian McEwan
Ian McEwan at Contemporary Writers
Ian McEwan at BooksUnlimited Other books by Ian McEwan under review:
Amsterdam
On Chesil Beach
Saturday Other books of interest under review:
See the index of Contemporary British fiction at the complete review
- Return to top of the page -
About the Author:
British author Ian McEwan is the author of many fine novels. He won the Booker Prize for Amsterdam in 1998.
- Return to top of the page -
© 2002-2007 the complete review Main the New the Best the Rest Review Index Links
Here's a consensus of views on Atonement
Review Consensus: Only a few with a few reservations -- but most are very, very impressed.
From the Reviews:
"The extraordinary range of Atonement suggests that there's nothing McEwan can't do. (…) We're each of us, McEwan suggests, composing our lives." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
"A challenging and brilliant work, it rewards careful attention to the writer's art. (…) The careful structuring of the work calls attention to its artifice and reminds us of two alternate assertions about what art does: Keats's Romantic assurance that artistic beauty is truth and Auden's disclaimer that poetry makes nothing happen. This novel shows how such seemingly contradictory statements can both be true at once. Atonement is a most impressive book, one that may indeed be McEwan's finest achievement." - Edward T. Wheeler, Commonweal
"It is rare for a critic to feel justified in using the word "masterpiece", but Ian McEwan's new book really deserves to be called one. (…) Atonement (…) is a work of astonishing depth and humanity." - The Economist
"Refracting an upper-class nightmare through a war story, McEwan fulfills the conventions he's playing with, and that very play -- in contrast to so much fashionable pomo cleverness -- leads to genuine heartbreak." - Troy Patterson, Entertainment Weekly
"Avec des pages d'une subtilité époustouflante: spéléologue de nos abîmes intérieurs, McEwan nous offre une magistrale autopsie de la fragilité humaine, au fil d'un roman qui chatoie comme de la soie. Et qui brûle d'une lumière noire, lorsqu'il explore les inextricables ténèbres de l'âme." - André Clavel, L'Express
"In Abbitte widmet sich Ian McEwan seinen alten, den großen Themen -- Liebe und Trennung, Unschuld und Selbsterkenntnis, dem Verstreichen von Zeit --, und er tut dies souveräner, sprachmächtiger und fesselnder denn je." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"If Atonement tells an engrossing story, supremely well, it also meditates, from start to end, on story-telling and its pitfalls. (…) McEwan has never written into, and out of, literary history so brazenly before." - Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
"Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style -- any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -- all play their part in his larger purpose. On the one hand, McEwan seems to be retrospectively inserting his name into the pantheon of British novelists of the 1930s and 1940s. But he is also, of course, doing more than this" - Geoff Dyer, The Guardian
"All this is at the same time an allegory of art and its moral contradictions. (…) (I)t is not hard to read this novel as McEwan's own atonement for a lucrative lifetime of magnificent professional lying. I haven't yet read Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang that beat this novel to the Booker Prize. But it must be stupendous." - Terry Eagleton, The Lancet
"Ian McEwan's new novel (…) strikes me as easily his finest (…..) McEwan's skill has here developed to the point where it gives disquiet as well as pleasure. (…) It is, in perhaps the only possible way, a philosophical novel, pitting the imagination against what it has to imagine if we are to be given the false assurance that there is a match between our fictions and the specifications of reality. The pleasure it gives depends as much on our suspending belief as on our suspending disbelief." - Frank Kermode, London Review of Books
"Il n'est pas sûr qu'Expiation soit, comme on l'a dit, le livre le plus abouti de Ian McEwan. Des longueurs (les scènes de guerre), l'artifice final (le roman dans le roman) peuvent justifier qu'on continue de lui préférer l'étonnant thriller psychologique qu'était Délire d'amour. Mais, pour la première fois, McEwan s'aventure sur les terrains intimes de la nostalgie, du souvenir, de l'extrême fragilité des liens entre les êtres." - Florence Noiville, Le Monde
"Abbitte gehört zu den seltenen Romanen, die so makellos komponiert sind, dass man sie kaum aus der Hand legt, bevor nicht die letzte Seite umgeblättert ist. Über weite Strecken ist er geradezu ein Roman comme il faut. (…) Daran wird auch wenig ändern, dass ihm -- typisch McEwan -- wieder einmal eine Kleinigkeit gründlich missraten ist. "London 1999", der knapp dreissigseitige Schlussteil, hat das Zeug, als einer der verunglücktesten Romanschlüsse in die englische Literaturhistorie einzugehen." - Uwe Pralle, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
"(C)ertainly his finest and most complex novel. (…) Atonement is both a criticism of fiction and a defense of fiction; a criticism of its shaping and exclusive torque, and a defense of its ideal democratic generosity to all. A criticism of fiction's misuse; and a defense of an ideal." - James Wood, The New Republic
"On one level, it is manifestly high-calibre stuff: cool, perceptive, serious and vibrant with surprises. (…) So it is probably silly to waste time pointing out that the most glaring aspects of the book are its weaknesses and omissions. As usual, McEwan has contrived a good story; but he seems weirdly reluctant to tell it." - Robert Winder, New Statesman
"(T)his book, McEwan's grandest and most ambitious yet, is much more than the story of a single act of atonement. (…) It isn't, in fact, until you get to the surprising coda of this ravishingly written book that you begin to see the beauty of McEwan's design -- and the meaning of his title. (…) (T)rust me, Atonement's postmodern surprise ending is the perfect close to a book that explores, with beauty and rigor, the power of art and the limits of forgiveness. Briony Tallis may need to atone, but Ian McEwan has nothing to apologize for." - Daniel Mendelsohn, New York.
"Atonement will make you happy in at least three ways: It offers a love story, a war story and a story about stories, and so hits the heart, the guts and the brain. It’s Ian McEwan’s best novel (…..) Atonement is the work of a novelist at peak power; we may hope for more to come." - Adam Begley, The New York Observer
"(I)f it's plot, suspense and a Bergsonian sensitivity to the intricacies of individual consciousnesses you want, then McEwan is your man and Atonement your novel. It is his most complete and compassionate work to date." - Tom Shone, The New York Times Book Review
"The writing is conspicuously good (…) it works an authentic spell." - John Updike, The New Yorker
"(I)mpressive, engrossing, deep and surprising (…..) Atonement asks what the English novel of the twenty-first century has inherited, and what it can do now." - Hermione Lee, The Observer
"Ian McEwan's latest novel is a dark, sleek trap of a book. (…) Lying is, after all, what Atonement is about as much as it is about guilt, penitence or, for that matter, art." - Laura Miller, Salon
"(F)lat-out brilliant (…..) McEwan's writing is lush, detailed, vibrantly colored and intense." - David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle
"Whether Briony’s conscience can ever be clear, and, more important, whether McEwan’s purpose can be adequately served by such a device, is open to question. That these are troubling matters is certainly well established. The ending, however, is too lenient. (…) Here his suave attempts to establish morbid feelings as inspiration for a life’s work -- and for that work to be crowned with success -- are unconvincing." - Anita Brookner, The Spectator
"It might almost be a novel by Elizabeth Bowen. (...) Both sections are immeasurably the most powerful that McEwan, already a master of narrative suspense and horror, has ever written. (...) Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book. Unshowy symmetries and patterns underlie its emotional force and psychological compulsion." - Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
"So much for the virtues of the imagination. But McEwan is crafty. Even as he shows us the damages of story-telling, he demonstrates its beguilements on every page." - Richard Lacayo, Time
"Even by his exacting standards his latest novel is extraordinary. His trademark sentences of sustained eloquence and delicacy, which have sometimes over-rationalised the evocation of emotion, strike a deeper resonance in Atonement." - Russell Celyn Jones, The Times
"My only regret is that because he uses rapid editing and time shifts, too many of the dilemmas and tensions that are established in the first half of the book are left unresolved. (…) Still, the first part of the book is magically readable and never has McEwan shown himself to be more in sympathy with the vulnerability of the human heart." - Jason Cowley, The Times
"McEwan continues to describe, with characteristic limpidity, the house and the dynamics of its inhabitants. His patience is doubly effective, for it generates not only an authentic environment in which the tragedy can eventually unfurl, but also an ever-burgeoning sense of menace. It would devastate the novel's effect to reveal what does in fact occur. (…) Probably the most impressive aspect to Atonement, however, is the precision with which it examines its own novelistic mechanisms." - Robert McFarland , Times Literary Supplement
"Whether it is indeed a masterpiece -- as upon first reading I am inclined to think it is -- can be determined only as time permits it to take its place in the vast body of English literature. Certainly it is the finest book yet by a writer of prodigious skills and, at this point in his career, equally prodigious accomplishment." - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"Ian McEwan hat einen Roman über die Literatur geschrieben, der gleichzeitig ein Roman über den Menschen ist. Gleichzeitig -- darin liegt die Kunst. Kein Buch, in dem neben diversen Figuren auch einige literaturtheoretische Überlegungen vorkommen, sondern ein Buch, das nach der Moral des Schreibens fragt und Schreiben, also Imaginieren, als besonders heikle Form sittlichen Handelns betrachtet." - Evelyn Finger, Die Zeit
From the Reviews:
"The extraordinary range of Atonement suggests that there's nothing McEwan can't do. (…) We're each of us, McEwan suggests, composing our lives." - Ron Charles, Christian Science Monitor
"A challenging and brilliant work, it rewards careful attention to the writer's art. (…) The careful structuring of the work calls attention to its artifice and reminds us of two alternate assertions about what art does: Keats's Romantic assurance that artistic beauty is truth and Auden's disclaimer that poetry makes nothing happen. This novel shows how such seemingly contradictory statements can both be true at once. Atonement is a most impressive book, one that may indeed be McEwan's finest achievement." - Edward T. Wheeler, Commonweal
"It is rare for a critic to feel justified in using the word "masterpiece", but Ian McEwan's new book really deserves to be called one. (…) Atonement (…) is a work of astonishing depth and humanity." - The Economist
"Refracting an upper-class nightmare through a war story, McEwan fulfills the conventions he's playing with, and that very play -- in contrast to so much fashionable pomo cleverness -- leads to genuine heartbreak." - Troy Patterson, Entertainment Weekly
"Avec des pages d'une subtilité époustouflante: spéléologue de nos abîmes intérieurs, McEwan nous offre une magistrale autopsie de la fragilité humaine, au fil d'un roman qui chatoie comme de la soie. Et qui brûle d'une lumière noire, lorsqu'il explore les inextricables ténèbres de l'âme." - André Clavel, L'Express
"In Abbitte widmet sich Ian McEwan seinen alten, den großen Themen -- Liebe und Trennung, Unschuld und Selbsterkenntnis, dem Verstreichen von Zeit --, und er tut dies souveräner, sprachmächtiger und fesselnder denn je." - Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
"If Atonement tells an engrossing story, supremely well, it also meditates, from start to end, on story-telling and its pitfalls. (…) McEwan has never written into, and out of, literary history so brazenly before." - Boyd Tonkin, The Independent
"Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style -- any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -- all play their part in his larger purpose. On the one hand, McEwan seems to be retrospectively inserting his name into the pantheon of British novelists of the 1930s and 1940s. But he is also, of course, doing more than this" - Geoff Dyer, The Guardian
"All this is at the same time an allegory of art and its moral contradictions. (…) (I)t is not hard to read this novel as McEwan's own atonement for a lucrative lifetime of magnificent professional lying. I haven't yet read Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang that beat this novel to the Booker Prize. But it must be stupendous." - Terry Eagleton, The Lancet
"Ian McEwan's new novel (…) strikes me as easily his finest (…..) McEwan's skill has here developed to the point where it gives disquiet as well as pleasure. (…) It is, in perhaps the only possible way, a philosophical novel, pitting the imagination against what it has to imagine if we are to be given the false assurance that there is a match between our fictions and the specifications of reality. The pleasure it gives depends as much on our suspending belief as on our suspending disbelief." - Frank Kermode, London Review of Books
"Il n'est pas sûr qu'Expiation soit, comme on l'a dit, le livre le plus abouti de Ian McEwan. Des longueurs (les scènes de guerre), l'artifice final (le roman dans le roman) peuvent justifier qu'on continue de lui préférer l'étonnant thriller psychologique qu'était Délire d'amour. Mais, pour la première fois, McEwan s'aventure sur les terrains intimes de la nostalgie, du souvenir, de l'extrême fragilité des liens entre les êtres." - Florence Noiville, Le Monde
"Abbitte gehört zu den seltenen Romanen, die so makellos komponiert sind, dass man sie kaum aus der Hand legt, bevor nicht die letzte Seite umgeblättert ist. Über weite Strecken ist er geradezu ein Roman comme il faut. (…) Daran wird auch wenig ändern, dass ihm -- typisch McEwan -- wieder einmal eine Kleinigkeit gründlich missraten ist. "London 1999", der knapp dreissigseitige Schlussteil, hat das Zeug, als einer der verunglücktesten Romanschlüsse in die englische Literaturhistorie einzugehen." - Uwe Pralle, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
"(C)ertainly his finest and most complex novel. (…) Atonement is both a criticism of fiction and a defense of fiction; a criticism of its shaping and exclusive torque, and a defense of its ideal democratic generosity to all. A criticism of fiction's misuse; and a defense of an ideal." - James Wood, The New Republic
"On one level, it is manifestly high-calibre stuff: cool, perceptive, serious and vibrant with surprises. (…) So it is probably silly to waste time pointing out that the most glaring aspects of the book are its weaknesses and omissions. As usual, McEwan has contrived a good story; but he seems weirdly reluctant to tell it." - Robert Winder, New Statesman
"(T)his book, McEwan's grandest and most ambitious yet, is much more than the story of a single act of atonement. (…) It isn't, in fact, until you get to the surprising coda of this ravishingly written book that you begin to see the beauty of McEwan's design -- and the meaning of his title. (…) (T)rust me, Atonement's postmodern surprise ending is the perfect close to a book that explores, with beauty and rigor, the power of art and the limits of forgiveness. Briony Tallis may need to atone, but Ian McEwan has nothing to apologize for." - Daniel Mendelsohn, New York.
"Atonement will make you happy in at least three ways: It offers a love story, a war story and a story about stories, and so hits the heart, the guts and the brain. It’s Ian McEwan’s best novel (…..) Atonement is the work of a novelist at peak power; we may hope for more to come." - Adam Begley, The New York Observer
"(I)f it's plot, suspense and a Bergsonian sensitivity to the intricacies of individual consciousnesses you want, then McEwan is your man and Atonement your novel. It is his most complete and compassionate work to date." - Tom Shone, The New York Times Book Review
"The writing is conspicuously good (…) it works an authentic spell." - John Updike, The New Yorker
"(I)mpressive, engrossing, deep and surprising (…..) Atonement asks what the English novel of the twenty-first century has inherited, and what it can do now." - Hermione Lee, The Observer
"Ian McEwan's latest novel is a dark, sleek trap of a book. (…) Lying is, after all, what Atonement is about as much as it is about guilt, penitence or, for that matter, art." - Laura Miller, Salon
"(F)lat-out brilliant (…..) McEwan's writing is lush, detailed, vibrantly colored and intense." - David Wiegand, San Francisco Chronicle
"Whether Briony’s conscience can ever be clear, and, more important, whether McEwan’s purpose can be adequately served by such a device, is open to question. That these are troubling matters is certainly well established. The ending, however, is too lenient. (…) Here his suave attempts to establish morbid feelings as inspiration for a life’s work -- and for that work to be crowned with success -- are unconvincing." - Anita Brookner, The Spectator
"It might almost be a novel by Elizabeth Bowen. (...) Both sections are immeasurably the most powerful that McEwan, already a master of narrative suspense and horror, has ever written. (...) Subtle as well as powerful, adeptly encompassing comedy as well as atrocity, Atonement is a richly intricate book. Unshowy symmetries and patterns underlie its emotional force and psychological compulsion." - Peter Kemp, Sunday Times
"So much for the virtues of the imagination. But McEwan is crafty. Even as he shows us the damages of story-telling, he demonstrates its beguilements on every page." - Richard Lacayo, Time
"Even by his exacting standards his latest novel is extraordinary. His trademark sentences of sustained eloquence and delicacy, which have sometimes over-rationalised the evocation of emotion, strike a deeper resonance in Atonement." - Russell Celyn Jones, The Times
"My only regret is that because he uses rapid editing and time shifts, too many of the dilemmas and tensions that are established in the first half of the book are left unresolved. (…) Still, the first part of the book is magically readable and never has McEwan shown himself to be more in sympathy with the vulnerability of the human heart." - Jason Cowley, The Times
"McEwan continues to describe, with characteristic limpidity, the house and the dynamics of its inhabitants. His patience is doubly effective, for it generates not only an authentic environment in which the tragedy can eventually unfurl, but also an ever-burgeoning sense of menace. It would devastate the novel's effect to reveal what does in fact occur. (…) Probably the most impressive aspect to Atonement, however, is the precision with which it examines its own novelistic mechanisms." - Robert McFarland , Times Literary Supplement
"Whether it is indeed a masterpiece -- as upon first reading I am inclined to think it is -- can be determined only as time permits it to take its place in the vast body of English literature. Certainly it is the finest book yet by a writer of prodigious skills and, at this point in his career, equally prodigious accomplishment." - Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
"Ian McEwan hat einen Roman über die Literatur geschrieben, der gleichzeitig ein Roman über den Menschen ist. Gleichzeitig -- darin liegt die Kunst. Kein Buch, in dem neben diversen Figuren auch einige literaturtheoretische Überlegungen vorkommen, sondern ein Buch, das nach der Moral des Schreibens fragt und Schreiben, also Imaginieren, als besonders heikle Form sittlichen Handelns betrachtet." - Evelyn Finger, Die Zeit
Guardian Review.....Atonement.......
In his latest book Atonement Ian McEwan brings the British novel into the 21st century, says Geoff Dyer Saturday September 22, 2001The Guardian
Atonement Ian McEwanJonathan Cape£16.99
The twists and turns of Ian McEwan's fiction are built on a knack for sustained illusion. When he writes "a glass of beer" we do not just see it; we are willing to drink from it vicariously. The ballooning accident (imaginatively derived from footage of an actual incident) that opens Enduring Love is a spectacular example, but the ability to make the invented seem real animates every page of his work.
The novels' psychological acuity derives, always, from their fidelity to a precisely delineated reality. Needless to say, the more disturbing or skewed that reality (in the early stories and novels, most obviously), the more finely McEwan attunes his readers to it. Moral ambiguity and doubt are thereby enhanced - rather than resolved - by clarity of presentation. This is why the themes of the novels (with the exception of the enjoyably forgettable Amsterdam ) linger and resonate beyond the impeccable neatness of their arrangement. McEwan is, in other words, a thoroughly traditional original.
Atonement does not feel, at first, like a book by McEwan. The opening is almost perversely ungripping. Instead of the expected sharpness of focus, the first 70 or so pages are a lengthy summary of shifting impressions. One longs for a cinematic clarity and concentration of dialogue and action, but such interludes dissolve before our - and the participants' - eyes.
Unlike Martin Amis, say, or Salman Rushdie, McEwan is an invisible rather than a flamboyant stylist. Even so, the pallid qualifiers and disposable adverbs (a "gently rocking" sheet of water, the "coyly drooping" head of a nettle) come as a surprise. The language used to distil the scene - a gathering of the Tallis family at their country house on a sweltering day in 1935 - serves also as a wash that partially obscures it.
Various characters come and go but the novel, at this point, seems populated mainly by its literary influences. Chief among these is Virginia Woolf. The technique is not stream of consciousness so much as "a slow drift of association", "the hovering stillness of nothing much seeming to happen". The book later contains a critique of its own early pages - or at least of the draft from which they derive - in the guise of a letter from Cyril Connolly, editor of Horizon , who advises that "such writing can become precious when there is no sense of forward movement". The requisite propulsion is provided by the unexpected intrusion, as it were, of two other novelists from the interwar years.
Cecilia, the eldest daughter of the family in whose house we are imaginatively lodged, was at Cambridge with Robbie, the son of the Tallises' cleaning lady, whose education was funded by Cecilia's father. They become aware, on this sultry day, of some kind of current - animosity? irreconcilable attraction? - passing between them. Robbie tries to articulate this in a letter, at the bottom of which he scribbles the naked truth: "In my dreams I kiss your cunt." He discards that draft and intends to send another, blander one but, in keeping with Freud's analysis of such slips, accidentally sends the shocking letter to Cecilia via her adolescent sister, Briony, who opens and reads it.
The consequences of the go-between blundering in like this are liberating and incriminating in unequal measure. What Lawrence called the "dirty little secret" of sex besmirches the Tallises' world, or - as Lawrence insisted - reveals how besmirched that world really is. It is as if Mellors from Lady Chatterley's Lover has gatecrashed the exquisitely rendered world of Mrs Dalloway . Or as if the contents of McEwan's stories had been explicitly daubed on the walls of Brideshead.
Another crisis soon follows, this one imported from EM Forster's India. Cecilia's young cousin, Lola, is sexually assaulted in the grounds of the house. Lola does not know by whom, but Briony - an aspiring writer - compounds her earlier transgression by convincing her and everyone else (except Cecilia) that Robbie is the culprit. Unlike the incident in the Marabar caves, this one does not end in a retraction and Robbie, the proletarian interloper, is convicted.
In the second section of the novel, the pastel haze of the first part gives way to an acrid, graphic account of Robbie's later experiences in the British rout at Dunkirk. McEwan is here playing more obviously to his strengths. The highly decorated novelist deploys his research in an effective if familiar pattern of narrative manoeuvres. Refracted through Robbie's exhausted, wounded view of history in the making, the retreat unfolds in a series of vividly realised details and encounters. In the atrocious context of battle, Briony's apparently motiveless crime is rendered almost insignificant. "But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was."
In similar fashion, the partial democratisation of Britain that results from the social upheaval of war is prefigured by Cecilia's turning her back on her family and allying herself with Robbie, the working-class graduate (whose smouldering sense of grievance and displacement would be vehemently embodied on the postwar stage by Jimmy Porter).
Part three shifts back to London, where Briony is training as a nurse, struggling to cope with the influx of casualties from Dunkirk. McEwan's command of visceral shock is here anchored in a historical setting thoroughly authenticated by his archival imagination. The elliptical style of the opening part has no place in these pages, as the graphic horrors of injury, mutilation and death pile up before Briony's eyes. She loosens the bandage around a patient's head and his brain threatens to slop out into her hands. Does this devotion to the victims of war wash her hands of her earlier guilt? Does her atonement depend on Robbie's survival? Or can it be achieved through the eventual realisation of her literary ambitions - through a novel such as the one we are reading? Who can grant atonement to the novelist, whose God-like capacity to create and rework the world means that there is no higher authority to whom appeal can be made?
It is a tribute to the scope, ambition and complexity of Atonement that it is difficult to give an adequate sense of what is going on in the novel without preempting - and thereby diminishing - the reader's experience of it. Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style - any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -all play their part in his larger purpose.
On the one hand, McEwan seems to be retrospectively inserting his name into the pantheon of British novelists of the 1930s and 1940s. But he is also, of course, doing more than this, demonstrating and exploring what the mature Briony comes to see as a larger "transformation... being worked in human nature itself". The novels of Woolf and Lawrence did not just record this transformation; they were instrumental in bringing it about. McEwan uses his novel to show how this subjective or interior transformation can now be seen to have interacted with the larger march of 20th- century history.
While John Fowles was working on The French Lieutenant's Woman, he reminded himself that this was not a book that one of the Victorian novelists forgot to write but, perhaps, one that they had failed to write. A similar impulse underwrites Atonement. It is less about a novelist harking nostalgically back to the consoling uncertainties of the past than it is about creatively extending and hauling a defining part of the British literary tradition up to and into the 21st century.
Atonement Ian McEwanJonathan Cape£16.99
The twists and turns of Ian McEwan's fiction are built on a knack for sustained illusion. When he writes "a glass of beer" we do not just see it; we are willing to drink from it vicariously. The ballooning accident (imaginatively derived from footage of an actual incident) that opens Enduring Love is a spectacular example, but the ability to make the invented seem real animates every page of his work.
The novels' psychological acuity derives, always, from their fidelity to a precisely delineated reality. Needless to say, the more disturbing or skewed that reality (in the early stories and novels, most obviously), the more finely McEwan attunes his readers to it. Moral ambiguity and doubt are thereby enhanced - rather than resolved - by clarity of presentation. This is why the themes of the novels (with the exception of the enjoyably forgettable Amsterdam ) linger and resonate beyond the impeccable neatness of their arrangement. McEwan is, in other words, a thoroughly traditional original.
Atonement does not feel, at first, like a book by McEwan. The opening is almost perversely ungripping. Instead of the expected sharpness of focus, the first 70 or so pages are a lengthy summary of shifting impressions. One longs for a cinematic clarity and concentration of dialogue and action, but such interludes dissolve before our - and the participants' - eyes.
Unlike Martin Amis, say, or Salman Rushdie, McEwan is an invisible rather than a flamboyant stylist. Even so, the pallid qualifiers and disposable adverbs (a "gently rocking" sheet of water, the "coyly drooping" head of a nettle) come as a surprise. The language used to distil the scene - a gathering of the Tallis family at their country house on a sweltering day in 1935 - serves also as a wash that partially obscures it.
Various characters come and go but the novel, at this point, seems populated mainly by its literary influences. Chief among these is Virginia Woolf. The technique is not stream of consciousness so much as "a slow drift of association", "the hovering stillness of nothing much seeming to happen". The book later contains a critique of its own early pages - or at least of the draft from which they derive - in the guise of a letter from Cyril Connolly, editor of Horizon , who advises that "such writing can become precious when there is no sense of forward movement". The requisite propulsion is provided by the unexpected intrusion, as it were, of two other novelists from the interwar years.
Cecilia, the eldest daughter of the family in whose house we are imaginatively lodged, was at Cambridge with Robbie, the son of the Tallises' cleaning lady, whose education was funded by Cecilia's father. They become aware, on this sultry day, of some kind of current - animosity? irreconcilable attraction? - passing between them. Robbie tries to articulate this in a letter, at the bottom of which he scribbles the naked truth: "In my dreams I kiss your cunt." He discards that draft and intends to send another, blander one but, in keeping with Freud's analysis of such slips, accidentally sends the shocking letter to Cecilia via her adolescent sister, Briony, who opens and reads it.
The consequences of the go-between blundering in like this are liberating and incriminating in unequal measure. What Lawrence called the "dirty little secret" of sex besmirches the Tallises' world, or - as Lawrence insisted - reveals how besmirched that world really is. It is as if Mellors from Lady Chatterley's Lover has gatecrashed the exquisitely rendered world of Mrs Dalloway . Or as if the contents of McEwan's stories had been explicitly daubed on the walls of Brideshead.
Another crisis soon follows, this one imported from EM Forster's India. Cecilia's young cousin, Lola, is sexually assaulted in the grounds of the house. Lola does not know by whom, but Briony - an aspiring writer - compounds her earlier transgression by convincing her and everyone else (except Cecilia) that Robbie is the culprit. Unlike the incident in the Marabar caves, this one does not end in a retraction and Robbie, the proletarian interloper, is convicted.
In the second section of the novel, the pastel haze of the first part gives way to an acrid, graphic account of Robbie's later experiences in the British rout at Dunkirk. McEwan is here playing more obviously to his strengths. The highly decorated novelist deploys his research in an effective if familiar pattern of narrative manoeuvres. Refracted through Robbie's exhausted, wounded view of history in the making, the retreat unfolds in a series of vividly realised details and encounters. In the atrocious context of battle, Briony's apparently motiveless crime is rendered almost insignificant. "But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was."
In similar fashion, the partial democratisation of Britain that results from the social upheaval of war is prefigured by Cecilia's turning her back on her family and allying herself with Robbie, the working-class graduate (whose smouldering sense of grievance and displacement would be vehemently embodied on the postwar stage by Jimmy Porter).
Part three shifts back to London, where Briony is training as a nurse, struggling to cope with the influx of casualties from Dunkirk. McEwan's command of visceral shock is here anchored in a historical setting thoroughly authenticated by his archival imagination. The elliptical style of the opening part has no place in these pages, as the graphic horrors of injury, mutilation and death pile up before Briony's eyes. She loosens the bandage around a patient's head and his brain threatens to slop out into her hands. Does this devotion to the victims of war wash her hands of her earlier guilt? Does her atonement depend on Robbie's survival? Or can it be achieved through the eventual realisation of her literary ambitions - through a novel such as the one we are reading? Who can grant atonement to the novelist, whose God-like capacity to create and rework the world means that there is no higher authority to whom appeal can be made?
It is a tribute to the scope, ambition and complexity of Atonement that it is difficult to give an adequate sense of what is going on in the novel without preempting - and thereby diminishing - the reader's experience of it. Suffice to say, any initial hesitancy about style - any fear that, for once, McEwan may not be not in control of his material -all play their part in his larger purpose.
On the one hand, McEwan seems to be retrospectively inserting his name into the pantheon of British novelists of the 1930s and 1940s. But he is also, of course, doing more than this, demonstrating and exploring what the mature Briony comes to see as a larger "transformation... being worked in human nature itself". The novels of Woolf and Lawrence did not just record this transformation; they were instrumental in bringing it about. McEwan uses his novel to show how this subjective or interior transformation can now be seen to have interacted with the larger march of 20th- century history.
While John Fowles was working on The French Lieutenant's Woman, he reminded himself that this was not a book that one of the Victorian novelists forgot to write but, perhaps, one that they had failed to write. A similar impulse underwrites Atonement. It is less about a novelist harking nostalgically back to the consoling uncertainties of the past than it is about creatively extending and hauling a defining part of the British literary tradition up to and into the 21st century.
Frank Kermode on Ian McEwan.....Atonement......
Point of View
Frank Kermode
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Minor resemblances between this novel by Ian McEwan and Henry James’s What Maisie Knew have already been noticed and are of some interest. James left a quite full record of the development of his story, which described modern divorce and adultery from the point of view of a young girl. It had its roots in Solomon’s offer to satisfy rival maternal claimants by cutting the disputed child in half, but it grew far more complicated in the years between the first notebook entry on this topic and the completion of the novel about ‘the partagé child’. First there was a plan for a 10,000-word story, which, in prospect, set delightful technical problems: about ‘the question of time’ – ‘the little secrets in regard to the expression of duration’ – and about the need to use the ‘scenic method’. In the notebooks James prays that he not be tempted to ‘slacken my deep observance of this strong and beneficent method – this intensely structural, intensely hinged and jointed preliminary frame’. Only when the frame was built was he ready to start what he called the ‘doing’.
Ian McEwan’s new novel, which strikes me as easily his finest, has a frame that is properly hinged and jointed and apt for the conduct of the ‘march of action’, which James described as ‘the only thing that really, for me at least, will produire L’OEUVRE’. Not quite how McEwan would put it, perhaps, but still the substance of his method, especially if one adds a keen technical interest in another Jamesian obsession, the point of view. His central character is a 13-year-old girl called Briony, already a maker of stories and plays, and so already a writer of fictions that have only their own kind of truth and are dependent on fantasies which readers are invited to share, with whatever measure of scepticism or credulity they can muster.
Briony is the daughter of an important civil servant who has a grand though ugly country house. The year is 1935 and, since a war is threatening, he has exhausting responsibilities in Whitehall. Along with other more genial preoccupations, his London duties keep him off the scene, even on the special occasion during which the story begins. On the hot summer’s day of this celebration, Briony, in one of those strange moments that chance or fate delivers into the hands of the novelist, or more specifically into Ian McEwan’s, happens to see her elder sister, Cecilia, just down from Girton, take off her outer clothes and jump into a fountain – this in the presence of Robbie Turner, the son of the family’s faithful cleaning lady, who has also been sent, at the expense of the girls’ father, to Cambridge. Robbie did well there, but has now decided to start again and qualify as a doctor – one who ‘would be alive to the monstrous patterns of fate, and to the vain and comic denial of the inevitable’: much as if he had decided to be a novelist. However, the monstrous patterns of fate begin to involve him now, at the fountain, before he can even start a medical career. The episode at the fountain changes his plan, as it changes everything.
McEwan’s readers will remember other random and decisive changes of this kind, violent or subtle interruptions of everyday time and behaviour, intrusions of dream-like horror, like the snatching of the three-year-old girl in The Child in Time or the rogue balloon in Enduring Love. The trick works less well, I think, in the more recent Amsterdam, with its slightly ostentatious symmetries, its carefully laid clues concerning euthanasia and crooked Dutch doctors – these give the book structure, but the ‘doing’ is less interesting. The failure of the composer’s final symphony, after we have heard so much about the process of composition, might uncharitably be seen as an allegory of the novel it occurs in. There is, however, a finely written scene in which the composer, hiking in the Lakes, declines to help a woman walker when she is violently assaulted; this nasty bit of reality is interfering with the musical thought he had come to work out, and he decides that the music comes first, as his story might to a novelist.
The fountain scene in this new book has as much force, and has also that touch of the grotesque which is one of this author’s special talents. Cecilia has been half-playfully disputing with Robbie the right to fill a valuable vase with water from the fountain. He wants to do it for her. Their little struggle proves more serious than it should have been; as they wrestle for the vase two triangular pieces break off its lip and fall into the fountain. (Triangles, by the way, form a minor leitmotif for readers to puzzle over.) Robbie prepares to plunge in and recover the pieces; but Cecilia gets her clothes off and plunges first. The wounded vase will later meet an even worse fate, and this premonitory damage echoes what happens to other fragile objects highly valued but easily ruined, such as Cecilia’s virginity, and indeed life itself.
A numerous company is preparing for dinner when Briony, happening to go into the library, finds Robbie and Cecilia violently engaged in the act of sex. Robbie had written Cecilia a harmless letter, but accidentally sent in its place a coarse little meditation on his lust for her, and specifically, the message insists, for her cunt. The letter had been delivered to Cecilia by the hand of Briony, who, being a writer, naturally had a look at it. It was this letter that turned Cecilia on and, when circulated, turned everybody else off.
Meanwhile some young cousins, derelict because of a divorce, were staying with the family, and at the awful dinner that evening the unhappy nine-year-old twin boy cousins, one with a triangular piece missing from his ear, ran away. During the search for them their sister, Lola, a bit older than Briony, is sexually assaulted, and despite the darkness Briony thinks she is able to identify the assailant as the lustful Robbie. Hence his imprisonment. He is released to the Army, and, in a deeply researched and imagined episode, takes part in the Dunkirk evacuation. A point of interest here is that Robbie and his associates, heading for the coast with a demoralised remnant of the BEF, are surprised to see brisk, disciplined Guards regiments going in the opposite direction, presumably to serve as a doomed rearguard. Here as elsewhere we are left to wonder who picked up this point and put it into the story. Did it, in fact, happen? Who will vouch for its truth? Has the author a patriotic weakness for the Guards? It’s a small point, but it raises the sort of question that comes up over and over again in this novel. By way of ambiguous answer the narrative, when it ends, is signed ‘B.T.’, Briony’s initials.
Briony’s play, The Trials of Arabella, written for the house party, but for various reasons not then performed, was the fantasy of a very young writer enchanted by the idea that she could in a few pages create a world complete with terrors and climaxes, and a necessary sort of knowingness. The entire novel is a grown-up version of this achievement, a conflict or coalescence of truth and fantasy, a novelist’s treatment of what is fantasised as fact. Briony is the novelist, living, as her mother is said to have perceived (or the author, or Briony, says she had perceived), in ‘an intact inner world of which the writing was no more than the visible surface’. We merely have to trust somebody to be telling something like the truth. In the scene where Robbie and Cecilia make love in a corner of the darkened library (a key scene, terribly difficult for anybody to write) Briony, entering, sees her sister’s ‘terrified eyes’ over Robbie’s shoulder. Who is saying she is terrified? Who is saying Cecilia ‘struggled free’ of her heavy partner? Surely she was carried away by lust and henceforth became Robbie’s devoted lover? We can only suppose that Briony, writing at the very end of the complex affair, is imagining what she would have made of the scene at 13. She must have read the scene wrongly, for we learn that the lovers were actually ‘in a state of tranquil joy’ as they ‘confronted the momentous change they had achieved’. At this moment Cecilia is overwhelmed by the beauty of a face she had taken for granted all her life. Can she also have had terrified eyes? Or could Briony have taken for terror an expression that meant something quite different?
For contrivances such as these the novelist could be forgiven a Jamesian note of self-congratulation and self-encouragement, usually, in the Master’s case, expressed in French: voyons, voyons, mon bon! Let us see what I, and later what they, can make of this treatment. When Briony comes to the rescue of her cousin Lola the explanation of what happened is not Lola’s but Briony’s: ‘It was her story, the one that was writing itself around her.’ Her positive identification of the rapist is not explicitly endorsed by Lola; we are even allowed to suspect that this flirtatious child knew perfectly well the attacker wasn’t Robbie, that it was really a friend of Briony’s brother, down there only for a visit but destined to play a heavy part in the sequel. But the less willing Lola was to admit the truth the greater Briony’s confidence in her own story, whose impact on reality was so disastrous to Robbie. Her version of the truth was reinforced by that letter and the terrible word it contained. And the girl persisted in it beyond the point where her testimony could be revoked.
To write about the virtuosities of the later pages – what happens to Lola and her assailant, whether Cecilia and Robbie get together, what became of the grand ugly house – would be to deprive readers of satisfactions to which they are entitled; but it leaves the reviewer in a quandary. To discuss the ‘doing’ properly it would be essential to allude to the whole book. It might reasonably be revealed that both Cecilia and Briony, now estranged because of the success of the younger girl’s evidence against Robbie, serve in the war as nurses (again the enviable specificities, the sometimes apparently absurd hospital discipline, the drawing on reserves of endurance, the hideous and hopeless wounds).
The title of the book seems to suggest that Briony will do something by way of atonement, but nothing quite fitting that description seems to occur. The problem, we finally learn, and as might have been expected, was this: ‘how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. No atonement for God, or novelists . . .’
These words occur in the epilogue, as I call it, a final chapter dated ‘London, 1999’. Briony now, as again one might have expected, has behind her a successful career as a novelist. At 77 she is suffering from a succession of tiny strokes, and her memory, she is told, is likely to fail progressively. Like Ian McEwan, she has recently been working in the library of the Imperial War Museum. Her book is finished, like Ian McEwan’s, and it has apparently exactly the same story. There follow reports of a series of quite implausible encounters. ‘If I really cared so much about facts,’ she writes, ‘I should have written a different kind of book.’ And she wishes she could write a happy conclusion, all well and lovers alive and reunited – ‘it’s not impossible.’ In fact she has already written it and we have already read it and probably believed it.
McEwan’s skill has here developed to the point where it gives disquiet as well as pleasure. Perhaps to be disquieting has always been his ambition; the first stories were in various ways startling. By now he is such a virtuoso that one is tempted to imagine that the best readers of this book might be Henry James and Ford Madox Ford. It is, in perhaps the only possible way, a philosophical novel, pitting the imagination against what it has to imagine if we are to be given the false assurance that there is a match between our fictions and the specifications of reality. The pleasure it gives depends as much on our suspending belief as on our suspending disbelief.
For example, we are told that Briony, while still a wartime nurse, sent a novella called Two Figures by a Fountain to Horizon. It was not accepted, but the editor, Cyril Connolly (or anyway someone who signs himself simply as ‘C.C.’), wrote her a letter running to over a thousand words, with favourable comment on sentences we have already admired. The implication is that the present novel is an expansion of that early work. We can even spot changes from novella to novel (for example, Cecilia goes ‘fully dressed’ into the fountain) and might attribute the improvements to C.C.’s kindly advice. He wonders if the young author ‘doesn’t owe a little too much to the techniques of Mrs Woolf’. The novella, he claims, lacks the interest of forward movement, ‘an underlying pull of simple narrative’. He thinks the vase should not have been Ming (too expensive to take out of doors; perhaps Sèvres or Nymphenburg?) The Bernini fountain she mentions is not in the Piazza Navona but in the Piazza Barberini (the error is corrected in the novel). He complains that Briony’s story ends with the damp patch left beside the fountain when Robbie and Cecilia have gone. (It is still there in the longer version but it is there only a beginning.) Elizabeth Bowen, it seems, read the novella with interest, but thought it cloying, except when it echoed Dusty Answer. The author is invited to drop by at the office for a glass of wine whenever she has the time. Had she, by the way, a sister at Girton six or seven years ago? Given her hospital address, is she a doctor or an invalid?
In the first place parody, this brilliant invention does quite a lot of what James called structural work. It is funny because although it sounds rather like him, Connolly would never have written such a letter; it lives, like the book as a whole, on that borderline between fantasy and fact that is indeed the territory of fiction. McEwan has examined this territory with intelligent and creative attention, and it could probably be said that no contemporary of his has shown such passionate dedication to the art of the novel.
Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
Retripotent · B. S. Johnson
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
No Tricks · Raymond Carver
Maximum Assistance from Good Cooking, Good Clothes, Good Drink · Auden’s Shakespeare
The Savage Life · The Adventures of William Empson
Here she is · Zadie Smith
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
Our Muddy Vesture · Frank Kermode watches Pacino’s Merchant of Venice
Frank Kermode
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Minor resemblances between this novel by Ian McEwan and Henry James’s What Maisie Knew have already been noticed and are of some interest. James left a quite full record of the development of his story, which described modern divorce and adultery from the point of view of a young girl. It had its roots in Solomon’s offer to satisfy rival maternal claimants by cutting the disputed child in half, but it grew far more complicated in the years between the first notebook entry on this topic and the completion of the novel about ‘the partagé child’. First there was a plan for a 10,000-word story, which, in prospect, set delightful technical problems: about ‘the question of time’ – ‘the little secrets in regard to the expression of duration’ – and about the need to use the ‘scenic method’. In the notebooks James prays that he not be tempted to ‘slacken my deep observance of this strong and beneficent method – this intensely structural, intensely hinged and jointed preliminary frame’. Only when the frame was built was he ready to start what he called the ‘doing’.
Ian McEwan’s new novel, which strikes me as easily his finest, has a frame that is properly hinged and jointed and apt for the conduct of the ‘march of action’, which James described as ‘the only thing that really, for me at least, will produire L’OEUVRE’. Not quite how McEwan would put it, perhaps, but still the substance of his method, especially if one adds a keen technical interest in another Jamesian obsession, the point of view. His central character is a 13-year-old girl called Briony, already a maker of stories and plays, and so already a writer of fictions that have only their own kind of truth and are dependent on fantasies which readers are invited to share, with whatever measure of scepticism or credulity they can muster.
Briony is the daughter of an important civil servant who has a grand though ugly country house. The year is 1935 and, since a war is threatening, he has exhausting responsibilities in Whitehall. Along with other more genial preoccupations, his London duties keep him off the scene, even on the special occasion during which the story begins. On the hot summer’s day of this celebration, Briony, in one of those strange moments that chance or fate delivers into the hands of the novelist, or more specifically into Ian McEwan’s, happens to see her elder sister, Cecilia, just down from Girton, take off her outer clothes and jump into a fountain – this in the presence of Robbie Turner, the son of the family’s faithful cleaning lady, who has also been sent, at the expense of the girls’ father, to Cambridge. Robbie did well there, but has now decided to start again and qualify as a doctor – one who ‘would be alive to the monstrous patterns of fate, and to the vain and comic denial of the inevitable’: much as if he had decided to be a novelist. However, the monstrous patterns of fate begin to involve him now, at the fountain, before he can even start a medical career. The episode at the fountain changes his plan, as it changes everything.
McEwan’s readers will remember other random and decisive changes of this kind, violent or subtle interruptions of everyday time and behaviour, intrusions of dream-like horror, like the snatching of the three-year-old girl in The Child in Time or the rogue balloon in Enduring Love. The trick works less well, I think, in the more recent Amsterdam, with its slightly ostentatious symmetries, its carefully laid clues concerning euthanasia and crooked Dutch doctors – these give the book structure, but the ‘doing’ is less interesting. The failure of the composer’s final symphony, after we have heard so much about the process of composition, might uncharitably be seen as an allegory of the novel it occurs in. There is, however, a finely written scene in which the composer, hiking in the Lakes, declines to help a woman walker when she is violently assaulted; this nasty bit of reality is interfering with the musical thought he had come to work out, and he decides that the music comes first, as his story might to a novelist.
The fountain scene in this new book has as much force, and has also that touch of the grotesque which is one of this author’s special talents. Cecilia has been half-playfully disputing with Robbie the right to fill a valuable vase with water from the fountain. He wants to do it for her. Their little struggle proves more serious than it should have been; as they wrestle for the vase two triangular pieces break off its lip and fall into the fountain. (Triangles, by the way, form a minor leitmotif for readers to puzzle over.) Robbie prepares to plunge in and recover the pieces; but Cecilia gets her clothes off and plunges first. The wounded vase will later meet an even worse fate, and this premonitory damage echoes what happens to other fragile objects highly valued but easily ruined, such as Cecilia’s virginity, and indeed life itself.
A numerous company is preparing for dinner when Briony, happening to go into the library, finds Robbie and Cecilia violently engaged in the act of sex. Robbie had written Cecilia a harmless letter, but accidentally sent in its place a coarse little meditation on his lust for her, and specifically, the message insists, for her cunt. The letter had been delivered to Cecilia by the hand of Briony, who, being a writer, naturally had a look at it. It was this letter that turned Cecilia on and, when circulated, turned everybody else off.
Meanwhile some young cousins, derelict because of a divorce, were staying with the family, and at the awful dinner that evening the unhappy nine-year-old twin boy cousins, one with a triangular piece missing from his ear, ran away. During the search for them their sister, Lola, a bit older than Briony, is sexually assaulted, and despite the darkness Briony thinks she is able to identify the assailant as the lustful Robbie. Hence his imprisonment. He is released to the Army, and, in a deeply researched and imagined episode, takes part in the Dunkirk evacuation. A point of interest here is that Robbie and his associates, heading for the coast with a demoralised remnant of the BEF, are surprised to see brisk, disciplined Guards regiments going in the opposite direction, presumably to serve as a doomed rearguard. Here as elsewhere we are left to wonder who picked up this point and put it into the story. Did it, in fact, happen? Who will vouch for its truth? Has the author a patriotic weakness for the Guards? It’s a small point, but it raises the sort of question that comes up over and over again in this novel. By way of ambiguous answer the narrative, when it ends, is signed ‘B.T.’, Briony’s initials.
Briony’s play, The Trials of Arabella, written for the house party, but for various reasons not then performed, was the fantasy of a very young writer enchanted by the idea that she could in a few pages create a world complete with terrors and climaxes, and a necessary sort of knowingness. The entire novel is a grown-up version of this achievement, a conflict or coalescence of truth and fantasy, a novelist’s treatment of what is fantasised as fact. Briony is the novelist, living, as her mother is said to have perceived (or the author, or Briony, says she had perceived), in ‘an intact inner world of which the writing was no more than the visible surface’. We merely have to trust somebody to be telling something like the truth. In the scene where Robbie and Cecilia make love in a corner of the darkened library (a key scene, terribly difficult for anybody to write) Briony, entering, sees her sister’s ‘terrified eyes’ over Robbie’s shoulder. Who is saying she is terrified? Who is saying Cecilia ‘struggled free’ of her heavy partner? Surely she was carried away by lust and henceforth became Robbie’s devoted lover? We can only suppose that Briony, writing at the very end of the complex affair, is imagining what she would have made of the scene at 13. She must have read the scene wrongly, for we learn that the lovers were actually ‘in a state of tranquil joy’ as they ‘confronted the momentous change they had achieved’. At this moment Cecilia is overwhelmed by the beauty of a face she had taken for granted all her life. Can she also have had terrified eyes? Or could Briony have taken for terror an expression that meant something quite different?
For contrivances such as these the novelist could be forgiven a Jamesian note of self-congratulation and self-encouragement, usually, in the Master’s case, expressed in French: voyons, voyons, mon bon! Let us see what I, and later what they, can make of this treatment. When Briony comes to the rescue of her cousin Lola the explanation of what happened is not Lola’s but Briony’s: ‘It was her story, the one that was writing itself around her.’ Her positive identification of the rapist is not explicitly endorsed by Lola; we are even allowed to suspect that this flirtatious child knew perfectly well the attacker wasn’t Robbie, that it was really a friend of Briony’s brother, down there only for a visit but destined to play a heavy part in the sequel. But the less willing Lola was to admit the truth the greater Briony’s confidence in her own story, whose impact on reality was so disastrous to Robbie. Her version of the truth was reinforced by that letter and the terrible word it contained. And the girl persisted in it beyond the point where her testimony could be revoked.
To write about the virtuosities of the later pages – what happens to Lola and her assailant, whether Cecilia and Robbie get together, what became of the grand ugly house – would be to deprive readers of satisfactions to which they are entitled; but it leaves the reviewer in a quandary. To discuss the ‘doing’ properly it would be essential to allude to the whole book. It might reasonably be revealed that both Cecilia and Briony, now estranged because of the success of the younger girl’s evidence against Robbie, serve in the war as nurses (again the enviable specificities, the sometimes apparently absurd hospital discipline, the drawing on reserves of endurance, the hideous and hopeless wounds).
The title of the book seems to suggest that Briony will do something by way of atonement, but nothing quite fitting that description seems to occur. The problem, we finally learn, and as might have been expected, was this: ‘how can a novelist achieve atonement when, with her absolute power of deciding outcomes, she is also God? There is no one, no entity or higher form that she can appeal to, or be reconciled with, or that can forgive her. No atonement for God, or novelists . . .’
These words occur in the epilogue, as I call it, a final chapter dated ‘London, 1999’. Briony now, as again one might have expected, has behind her a successful career as a novelist. At 77 she is suffering from a succession of tiny strokes, and her memory, she is told, is likely to fail progressively. Like Ian McEwan, she has recently been working in the library of the Imperial War Museum. Her book is finished, like Ian McEwan’s, and it has apparently exactly the same story. There follow reports of a series of quite implausible encounters. ‘If I really cared so much about facts,’ she writes, ‘I should have written a different kind of book.’ And she wishes she could write a happy conclusion, all well and lovers alive and reunited – ‘it’s not impossible.’ In fact she has already written it and we have already read it and probably believed it.
McEwan’s skill has here developed to the point where it gives disquiet as well as pleasure. Perhaps to be disquieting has always been his ambition; the first stories were in various ways startling. By now he is such a virtuoso that one is tempted to imagine that the best readers of this book might be Henry James and Ford Madox Ford. It is, in perhaps the only possible way, a philosophical novel, pitting the imagination against what it has to imagine if we are to be given the false assurance that there is a match between our fictions and the specifications of reality. The pleasure it gives depends as much on our suspending belief as on our suspending disbelief.
For example, we are told that Briony, while still a wartime nurse, sent a novella called Two Figures by a Fountain to Horizon. It was not accepted, but the editor, Cyril Connolly (or anyway someone who signs himself simply as ‘C.C.’), wrote her a letter running to over a thousand words, with favourable comment on sentences we have already admired. The implication is that the present novel is an expansion of that early work. We can even spot changes from novella to novel (for example, Cecilia goes ‘fully dressed’ into the fountain) and might attribute the improvements to C.C.’s kindly advice. He wonders if the young author ‘doesn’t owe a little too much to the techniques of Mrs Woolf’. The novella, he claims, lacks the interest of forward movement, ‘an underlying pull of simple narrative’. He thinks the vase should not have been Ming (too expensive to take out of doors; perhaps Sèvres or Nymphenburg?) The Bernini fountain she mentions is not in the Piazza Navona but in the Piazza Barberini (the error is corrected in the novel). He complains that Briony’s story ends with the damp patch left beside the fountain when Robbie and Cecilia have gone. (It is still there in the longer version but it is there only a beginning.) Elizabeth Bowen, it seems, read the novella with interest, but thought it cloying, except when it echoed Dusty Answer. The author is invited to drop by at the office for a glass of wine whenever she has the time. Had she, by the way, a sister at Girton six or seven years ago? Given her hospital address, is she a doctor or an invalid?
In the first place parody, this brilliant invention does quite a lot of what James called structural work. It is funny because although it sounds rather like him, Connolly would never have written such a letter; it lives, like the book as a whole, on that borderline between fantasy and fact that is indeed the territory of fiction. McEwan has examined this territory with intelligent and creative attention, and it could probably be said that no contemporary of his has shown such passionate dedication to the art of the novel.
Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
Retripotent · B. S. Johnson
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
No Tricks · Raymond Carver
Maximum Assistance from Good Cooking, Good Clothes, Good Drink · Auden’s Shakespeare
The Savage Life · The Adventures of William Empson
Here she is · Zadie Smith
Nothing for Ever and Ever · Housman’s Pleasures
Our Muddy Vesture · Frank Kermode watches Pacino’s Merchant of Venice
Atonement......Next Book club choice......
Our next discussion is on the book "Atonement"....................by Ian McEwan.
I'm not a real fan of this guy.....found "Saturday" a turn-off!! But I'm willing to give it a try. I suppose the film was OK.
I'm not a real fan of this guy.....found "Saturday" a turn-off!! But I'm willing to give it a try. I suppose the film was OK.
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