The Prestige by Christopher Priest (audio)

Posted on June 14, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I felt confident in choosing this audiobook because – while I can’t remember who recommended it – I recall that two sources I respected (book blogs, I think) both praised it around the same time. Safe, I thought. Well, I am reminded again: we cannot all like the same things.

The Prestige opens with a first-person narrator named Andrew, embarking on a trip to cover a story for his newspaper job which he finds generally uninteresting. Andrew is adopted, and cares nothing for the truth of his birth family except for the all-consuming feeling he has that he has a twin. What he has managed to learn about his birth parents indicates that there was no twin, but he feels the presence of that other person too strongly to entertain any other explanation. So he arrives in search of the newspaper story – and if this already sounds disjointed, then right ho, that’s how I found it too – and what do you know, the story he’s pursuing turns out to be related to the mystery of his family’s past. Apparently Andrew’s great-grandfather was a magician, one of the very best in Britain and in the world, and his nemesis – the other greatest magician in Britain and in the world – was the great-grandfather of this young woman from whom he finds himself sitting across a table. In pursuit of, um, a newspaper story. But there is no story, really it’s about getting these two together.

And then the story of Andrew (and Kate, the young lady descended from the other magician) breaks off, and we are treated to the diary of Alfred Borden, Andrew’s predecessor. Now the story of Borden’s life, magical career, and lifelong enmity with the Great Danton is presented from Borden’s point of view; after which we break off and view the corresponding histories from the Great Danton’s perspective, via his own diaries. Finally we come back around to Andrew’s narrative.

The overarching mystery of the book is the question of how each of these magicians performs his great iconic stage act. The two illusions are similar, but apparently are performed in different ways, which are not made clear to us until the final few chapters. It is an interesting mystery, and frankly it is that that kept me going until the end of this book. Andrew, and his desire to discover the truth about the mysterious twin, interested me. But the flashback stories (in diary form) of the rival magicians really failed to compel me, and dragged on too slowly. The mysteries of the magic trick, and of the questionable twin, I must confess were so engrossing that I wanted to continue and learn the truth. But the path there was more frustrating in its pace than enjoyably anticipatory, and I cannot give this book much of an endorsement. I was interested enough in the overall story to finish the book, but almost constantly impatient to get to the big reveal. And, worse, I was disappointed in the big reveal; but no more should be said about that in case you check it out yourself. I suppose you’re unlikely to do so on my recommendation! But I assure you there are positive reviews out there.

I wonder if it wasn’t the frame element of stage magic that failed to grab me. I don’t find myself particularly interested. (Despite all the excitement over The Night Circus, I am unlikely to pick that one up.) The pacing was a lot of what did this one in for me, and the personalities of the two magicians, Borden and Danton: they weren’t terribly sympathetic or likeable. I was frustrated and exasperated with them for most of the book. What can I say, this review has descended into a litany of complaints. Sometimes they don’t work for us. Better luck in the next book, yes?

Rating: 3 magic tricks.

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A Visitor’s Guide to the Ancient Olympics by Neil Faulkner

Posted on June 11, 2012 by pagesofjulia

What an odd mix of genres this book is. It sets itself up as a travel guide: eat here, sleep here, don’t forget to pack this – but to a destination that would require time travel. As Faulkner says in his introduction, this is necessarily (by its fantastical nature!) not an entirely academic book; but he does have an academic background, and rather than wildly making things up, he does follow history & research. He just uses his imagination where it makes sense to do so, and in a way that makes sense: he makes educated guesses. (As he points out in the intro, again, he has to pick a day for each event; it is unrealistic that a guide to an Olympic festival would be unable to say when the footraces would be held.) So, note my tags for this post: travel guide; sports; historical fiction; nonfiction. It is a puzzle. A uniquely styled book.

And an enjoyable one, too. At just under 250 pages, it’s an easy read. The sections are short. There is an emphasis for most of the book on ancient Greek culture in general, and on what the Olympic Games represent in that culture (in a nutshell: this is a religious festival; sport is merely a form of religious ritual). The sport itself comes in only late in the book, and I confess that this was a slight disappointment to me: that section of the book that describes the athletic contests was very interesting to me and I wanted more of the same. But the detail on ancient Greece was intriguing, too; I have an interest in ancient Greek mythology & literature, and there were plenty of references that I was pleased to connect.

This book is probably most successful as a travel guide, which is a little awkward since as much as one might wish to, it is in fact impossible to attend the Olympic Games of 388 BC. Faulkner does a good job of elucidating the issues a person would face in attending these Games if she could. Again in a nutshell: there is no lodging, transport is difficult to arrange and expensive, food is odd and limited, and the Olympic Village would be teeming with refuse, stink, and insect activity. It would be hard to see the events on display as there are no stands; spectators 100,000 strong merely shove each other around for a view. In other words, he might have talked me out of the trip if I were planning on it. As a view into the life of ancient Greeks and especially the role of professional athletes in their society, this book was informative and fascinating. Its unique format, too, added special interest. I am bemused and intrigued. Recommended, but probably for a fairly distinct audience. I was well entertained, with my intersecting interests in sport and ancient Greece, and my tolerance for an odd format.

I read an uncorrected advance proof.
Rating: 6 events.

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book beginnings on Friday: The Prestige by Christopher Priest

Posted on June 1, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I am listening to The Prestige based on the recommendations of (I think) multiple fellow book bloggers. I am fairly sure that one of them was The Boston Bibliophile, but I am only fairly sure of that, and the other recommender(s) escape me. At any rate… I know the book involves magicians, stage magic, and I know little else, so here we are:

It began on a train, heading north through England, although I was soon to discover that the story had really begun more than a hundred years earlier. I had no sense of any of this at the time: I was on company time, following up a report of an incident at a religious sect.

I like that, “it began on a train…” reminds me actually of Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, and there are worse things than evoking the Queen of Crime! Although she’s a hard act to follow… I’ll keep you posted.

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Mary Anne by Daphne du Maurier

Posted on May 28, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Daphne du Maurier is best known for Rebecca, and Rebecca is all I knew her for before I began this book. But Mary Anne is rather a different work – the defining creepiness of Rebecca is nowhere to be seen – and absolutely entertaining and page-turning as well.

The historical figure Mary Anne is an ancestor of du Maurier’s, so this novel is based in fact. Mary Anne grows up as a girl in relative poverty in Regency London. At a young age she begins to take control of her own destiny, finding work and a benefactor, earning herself a few years’ formal education. She decides very early in life that success – money – security – are her aim above all else; she will not grow up to be poor in a London back alley like her mother. She marries young, unwisely and against all advice, a man whose claimed fortune quickly (and predictably) goes up in a puff of haughty perfumed smoke; and after a few years of unhappiness with a raging alcoholic, she takes her four children and escapes her marriage.

From here, Mary Anne begins trading on the commodity she finds at hand: her attractive self. She makes several lucrative liaisons, but none so great as her eventual relationship with His Royal Highness the Duke of York. When he tires of her and fails to support her and her family as promised, Mary Anne joins the opposition and takes HRH to court – thus becoming infamous, a symbol, a figure of notoriety, a whore or a heroine depending upon perspective.

The novel opens with the near-death musings of three men who loved Mary Anne most of their lives, their different perspectives on her and and their regrets. The rest of the story is told in a third-person voice that takes on Mary Anne’s perspective. This woman is complex, possesses a variety of virtues and flaws; she loves her children and is concerned about providing for them but doesn’t seem to do much mothering (and exposes them to her morally questionable lifestyle); she values material wealth almost above all else, but also fights for principles and for the benefits of others. She attracts great public attention and a great deal of love and admiration; even her detractors often find themselves drawn to her.

Mary Anne shares qualities with a great many iconic heroines. I rattled them off like mad as I read: her early industry to find work editing copy reminded me of Francie of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn; her determination to do whatever it takes to avoid returning to poverty screamed of Scarlett from Gone With the Wind; her enterprising sale of herself recalled Moll Flanders, and her joyful discovery of her own body, wrought with troubles, brought to mind both Lady Chatterley and Madame Bovary. By which I do not accuse du Maurier of copycatting. The hints of all these other classic heroines brought a richness and familiarity to Mary Anne that I appreciated.

At some 450 pages, this is not a small book, but it is a quick one! Mary Anne is engrossing; she holds the attention. And the pages turn: there is plentiful drama, and her future is in question repeatedly. Mary Anne is well-written, entertaining, and full of pathos. You will care what happens to the title character, and even to poor Bill Dowler. Daphne du Maurier scores again! Read her!

Rating: 6 hearts broken.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Mary Anne by Daphne du Maurier

Posted on May 22, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Why did it take me so long to pick up another of du Maurier’s books, after I loved Rebecca so much? Ack! I ask you! Mary Anne is something rather different, but still wonderful. I see a number of other archetypal heroines (or anti-heroines) in the character of Mary Anne. The teaser I’ve selected for you rang a bell loud and clear, for me at least, reminding me very much of a certain young lady from another great book. Leave me a comment and name that other lady if it is equally reminiscent for you! Hint: the author of the other book shares the same set of initials with the author of The Song of Achilles. And without further chit-chat, here is your teaser.

She could not separate success from peace of mind. The two must go together; her observation pointed to this truth. Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of Bowling Inn Alley.

Go get ’em, Mary Anne. Check back for a review to come, but for now: I like it.

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book beginnings on Friday: Touch by Alexi Zentner

Posted on May 18, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Thanks to Rose City Reader for hosting this meme. To participate, share the first line or two of the book you are currently reading and, if you feel so moved, let us know what your first impressions were based on that first line.

I’ve just begun Touch, and I’m not entirely sure what I’ve gotten myself into – I was recommended this book, by whom I do not know, and am not sure yet even what genre to put it in. But I can say for now that it is, well, touching. It begins:

The men floated the logs early, in September, a chain of headless trees jamming the river as far as I and the other children could see. My father, the foreman, stood at the top of the chute hollering at the men and shaking his mangled hand, urging them on.

I love the setting, the woodsy northern (Canadian?) feel.

And what are you reading this weekend? Do share.

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The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Posted on May 17, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I read this book in a day, rapt and tearful and awed. Madeline Miller, I love you. Write more, please.

I expect that most people are at least vaguely familiar with the story of the Trojan War, even if you never read the Iliad, yes? The Greeks sail to Troy in pursuit of Helen, “the face that launched a thousand ships” (that’s these ships!), the most beautiful woman in the world, stolen from her king-husband Menelaus by the Trojan prince Paris. They fight at the gates of Troy for ten years before Odysseus’s characteristically clever notion of the big wooden horse (the Trojan horse of idiom) wins the war for the Greeks. Achilles is a hero of the war, on the Greeks’ side. He had been sitting the war out in protest against an offense to his pride when his close friend (and, most scholars agree, lover) Patroclus goes into battle and is killed. In the opening scene of the Iliad, Achilles is mad with grief and rage, about to rush into battle, kill Hector, and be killed by Paris.

That’s the background. Miller, a scholar of ancient languages (including Greek) and theatre has written a novel from Patroclus’s point of view. This gave her quite a bit of leeway, since Patroclus is not given much coverage in Homer or in ancient myth generally; she got to do what she wanted with him. Here, we see him grow up from a boy: he was a disappointment to his father, then was exiled in dishonor and sent away to be fostered in another kingdom, where Achilles is the prince and heir. The two boys form a decidedly unlikely friendship, with Patroclus the dishonored and weak following in the footsteps of Achilles, whose future is prophesied to be something enormous: he will be Aristos Achaion, the greatest of the Greeks.

Patroclus joins Achilles in his studies and their bond grows closer until they become lovers. They are not eager to join the Greeks and sail to Troy to fight for another king’s wife, but circumstances (and Odysseus, the crafty one) conspire to see them off. From there, you can revisit my synopsis of the Iliad, above – except that we keep Patroclus’s perspective, which actually made the Trojan War that I thought I knew so well spring fresh from the page.

And that is one of the several strengths of this book: that an ancient myth that is familiar to many readers, like me, becomes so real, new, crisp & juicy in Miller’s hands. It definitely made me want to go back and reread the Iliad, as well as other cited works. (Check out the Character Glossary, whether you think you need it or not, for background as well as mentions of other books you’ll want to go find.) The myth of the Trojan War comes alive with Patroclus as it hasn’t before.

Another great strength is the emotional impact Miller achieves. This book is moving, sweet, heartfelt, powerful, in its tragedies as in its loving moments – and the tragedies are plentiful. There is visceral wrath in Achilles’s mother Thetis and her hatred of all mortals and Patroclus in particular; that emotion comes through just as strongly as the love that makes Patroclus put aside jealousy and envy, makes him put Achilles’s needs before his own. I noticed that the first-person voice of Patroclus rarely uses the name Achilles, but just refers to his lover as “he” – thus emphasizing the extent to which Achilles is the center of his world.

As I said at the start of this review, I want more of this! It’s so well done. If you’re taking requests, Ms. Miller, I would like to read a book about what happened to the happy family of Odysseus, Penelope and Telemachus following the conclusion of the Odyssey: how does Odysseus manage to gracefully step down from power and transfer to Telemachus without sacrificing any of his machismo? Reading The Song of Achilles raised this question for me – how a king could step down and preserve his dignity and quality of life. I wonder, too, whether Penelope ever gets grumpy about all the philandering Odysseus did along his homeward journey, while she was standing strong against the suitors.

In a nutshell, this retelling of the Trojan War and the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus is lovely, loving, sweet and deeply emotional; it preserves the grand, sweeping scale and feeling of humanity and drama in the original, but brings it freshly alive in an appealingly different format. The Song of Achilles made me sigh and think and cry, and I wanted more when it was all gone. This may very well be the best book I’ve read in 2012.

Rating: a rare 10 loving caresses.

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Teaser Tuesdays: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Posted on May 15, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

Head’s up, friends: expect a wildly raving review of The Song of Achilles in the next few days. I am mad for this book. I’ve chosen a teaser for you today that I especially enjoyed.

This was no slouchy prince of wine halls and debauchery, as Easterners were said to be. This was a man who moved like the gods were watching; every gesture he made was upright and correct. There was no one else it could be but Hector.

I reread this passage a few times, it made me so happy. Run out and get you a copy.

What are you reading this week?

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Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis (audio)

Posted on May 6, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Saturnalia is book 18 in a series, and my first, but it didn’t bother me any. I followed everything just fine. Perhaps the characters would have been richer if I’d been getting to know them progressively better for 18 books (!), but I found them rather well-drawn even in this one.

Our main man (and first-person narrator) is Marcus Didius Falco. He is employed as a “private informer”, which seems to be ancient Rome’s version of a private investigator (at least in Davis’s ancient Rome). He is called in by the government of Vespasian to try and recover an escaped political prisoner, a German woman named Veleda that Falco knew years ago; his brother-in-law Justinus, in fact, had something of a brief romance with her. Now, Veleda has gone missing, a headless corpse has been attributed to her, and in an especially personal twist, Justinus disappears at the same time. His wife is furious, thinking he’s off rekindling an old flame with Veleda. Falco is left searching for both of them – Veleda, for pay and for the sake of the empire (although in secret, as the public is unaware she’d been captured in the first place), and Justinus for the sake of family peace. Add to all this the bacchanalia of Saturnalia, the December holiday in which masters serve their slaves and everything is turned on it ear. Falco attends wild parties, hangs out in graveyards interrogating ghosts, does battle with the Chief Spy (a bumbling government employee with whom he apparently spars regularly), finds the odd lost dog… and carries on a very sweet relationship with his wife, Helena. I liked her addition to the story: she is from a social strata above Falco’s (her father is a senator), and routinely assists him in his investigations. Their relationship is well-done. She’s spunky, intelligent, not to be tamed, but also a doting wife; their home life feels very real and likeable, although I wonder if Helena is not a few centuries ahead of her time.

Which brings me to the historical question(s). I am no scholar of ancient Rome. This world felt real to me, and I was happy being immersed in it for the course of this book, but I cannot speak to the historical accuracy. It was great fun, but I make no promises.

This was a fun mystery. Falco has a great tongue-in-cheek, irreverent, dry humor, and the narrator of this audio version, Christian Rodska, represents that tone well. Saturnalia leans toward the ridiculous, with that straight face that makes such things all the more funny. The historical setting was new to me, but I had a good time with it.

Rating: 4 Roman senators.

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Teaser Tuesdays: Saturnalia by Lindsey Davis

Posted on May 1, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just open your current read to a random page and share a few sentences. Be careful not to include spoilers!

I’ve just started this audiobook, randomly selected from the new-to-me series of mysteries by Lindsey Davis set in ancient Rome. (This book opens in AD 76.) It is rather late in the series, but that never stops me. So far I’m charmed by the humorous moments, and I like the audio-narrator, Christian Rodska, too. From almost the very beginning, here’s your teaser:

Pa gazed at me with those tricky brown eyes, running his hands through the wild grey curls that still clustered on his wicked old head. He was daring me to be flippant.

I like that “wicked old head” and the “tricky brown eyes.” There’s something a little bit engrossing about Pa, and I like the main character-narrator, Marcus Didius Falco. Hope you’re enjoying whatever you’re reading this week!

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