Touch by Alexi Zentner (audio)

Posted on June 21, 2012 by pagesofjulia

I didn’t know what this was about when I started it. I know I got this recommendation from somewhere – possibly another book blog – but the source is lost to me now. (Thank you, whoever you are.) So I went in absolutely cold, which is sometimes a really fun way to do things.

It turned out to be a great book, and a great audio version. Our narrator, Stephen, begins the story reminiscing about his childhood in Sawgamet, a fictional British Columbia town, growing up with his mother, father, and sister, and quickly leading into the tragic accident that claims half their family. Then we go back even further, to visit his paternal grandfather, Jeannot, who founded the town. It gradually becomes clear that Stephen has returned to Sawgamet after several decades’ absence, bringing along his own wife and children, to sit at his mother’s deathbed. I’m not sure if we ever learned who his intended audience is in this reminiscence, whether he’s working on a memoir or leaving a story behind for anyone in particular, but he does directly address the reader from time to time. He muses quietly, lovingly, contemplatively, on the experiences of three generations of his family scraping their livings from the bitterly cold winters and dark woods surrounding the town.

Jeannot founded Sawgamet with a gold rush, finding first one and then a second large chunk of gold, with panners and miners following on his heels; but his gold-luck ran out and he quickly turned to logging, which industry outlasted the gold by many years. The young Jeannot takes a wife and their child will become Stephen’s father, Pierre, but Pierre is but a babe when the first tragedies hit their family. No spoilers here, but my, it is a brutal place, where people are sometimes snowbound for months on end, and the woods offer not only gold, and lumber, but also a supernatural element of danger, fear, insecurity. By the time Stephen is born, gold is a distant memory and the town is employed by logging, which has its own obvious expiration date.

The story, switching between the lives of Jeannot, Pierre, and Stephen, is beautifully told, and the narrator of this audiobook, Norman Dietz, performs wonderfully. There is a wondering quality – appropriate, since much is recalled through the eyes of a very young Stephen – that makes the lyrical language feel lovely and dreamlike. The setting was quite exotic and fantastic for me, a Texas native with limited experience with snow; the cold that is described here is literally beyond my imagination. Make no mistake, there are scary, disturbing, dark moments. But there is also love, romantic as well as a loyal familial love. There is death, but also redemption and reunion. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I’m so glad I did. I highly recommend this book. It is evocative, beautiful, loving, quietly disturbing and engrossing; and I recommend this audio version, as well.

Rating: 8 trees felled.

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Kristin Lavransdatter: The Wreath by Sigrid Undset (trans. Tiina Nunnally)

Posted on June 20, 2012 by pagesofjulia

Kristin Lavransdatter is a trilogy, comprised of The Wreath, The Wife, and The Cross. My copy is all in one volume, in a new translation, that came highly recommended from Erin Blakemore of The Heroine’s Bookshelf (my review of her book here; my interview of Erin here). As that single volume runs nearly 1200 pages, I thought you might permit me three book reviews. 🙂 Here is book one.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

This book opens with a little bit of scene-setting; we first meet the parents of our title character Kristin, Lavrans and Ragnfrid (how you pronounce that, I have no idea), and learn about their properties and inheritances. That is telling in itself. It is Norway in the 1300’s, and Kristin’s circumstances and options will be in large part decided by her parents’ situation. She is a charming little girl, very close to her father, distant from her mother, who is serious and melancholy after losing three sons in infancy. Kristin lives in a small world, defined by the valley surrounding her family’s farm, and has a sweet life, despite her mother’s dampening nature, because her relationship with her father is quite fulfilling. They are an extremely pious family, fasting and observing rituals more than their peers, no small thing in a seriously Catholic community. Ragnfrid has a second daughter, who also lives out of infancy, and is even more physically beautiful and admired than Kristin; but an accident nearly kills her when she is around five years old, and leaves her permanently crippled and ill. Ragnfrid’s emotional state descends still further. There will eventually be a third daughter, treated rather as an afterthought and not highly valued, in Ragnfrid’s grief at the fate of her three dead sons and injured daughter (one wonders why she doesn’t take more comfort in Kristin’s health). Ragnfrid feels guilty, as if her sins are punishing her children: the familiar Catholic guilt.

When Kristin is 15, she is betrothed to a young man, Simon, she does not know well but seems a suitable match and to whom she has no real objections, at first. But she is young and pretty, and things are complicated: first, a servant boy she’s grown up with declares his love, which tweaks her heartstrings. It does not seem likely that she feels “true love”, at that age and triggered by his own declaration, but it causes her first doubts about marrying Simon. There is a nasty episode involving a clandestine meeting with the servant, Arne; Kristin narrowly escaping rape at the hands of another man; and Arne’s death, which ends up implicating Kristin as possibly possibly having slept with her attacker, which is made no easier by the fact she’d kept the attempted rape a secret. Her reputation receives its first bruises, and this is a society where a young lady’s reputation cannot afford dark spots.

Kristin goes off to live in a convent for a year before marrying Simon, hoping to work through the trauma of Arne’s death and the almost-rape. And here things get even more sordid, because she meets another man with a bad reputation (in another time and place he would most definitely be called a rake). One thing leads to another (use your imagination) and although it takes years and much heartbreak and dishonor and dishonesty, Kristin is able to break her betrothal to Simon and marry Erlend. When they marry, she is secretly pregnant. And the first book ends.

The religious implications weigh heavier as this book proceeds. The breaking of the betrothal, the premarital sex, and the lying to her parents, Simon, and the world in general that these feats, require are very problematic. Despite all her sinning, Kristin is a religious woman, and she suffers inside for her sins. Her parents are enormously religious, and her father does a bit of freaking out over the entire Erland situation. Lavrans was close to Simon, liked him very much for a son-in-law, and has difficulty being anywhere near Erland, who he does not like and does not trust to keep his daughter secure. Lavrans seems to fear subconsciously that Kristin may have slept with Erlend, but he won’t allow anyone else to put this theory forward. At the end of the book, he doesn’t know about the pregnancy; but the timing is far enough off that it is inevitable that he will know she was pregnant before she was married (barring miscarriage or, I don’t know, Kristin hiding a baby somehow from… everyone?). I don’t know if it’s necessary to point this out, but premarital sex is a serious thing in this society.

This reading flew by. I love the medieval Norway that Undset paints. The early part, when Kristin is a small girl, and we get an intimate picture of her life on the farm and her relationship with her father, might be my favorite; I love the simplicity and the evocation of another time. I am not a great appreciator of religion, and Lavrans’s version is a particularly cumbersome one, but these are good, simple, virtuous people, and that is easy to appreciate. As Kristin becomes a teenager and begins to encounter *boys*, she becomes very recognizable: her interest in her new betrothed, Simon, and then Arne’s sudden appearance in a new light, and then meeting the dashing Erlend, would work just as believably in modern-day junior high or high school. But I found her a little exasperating. This, too, is recognizable; her flightiness and poor decision making are highly realistic. I wasn’t always entirely pleased with her. But I remain invested. As she marries, hiding her pregnancy from her decidedly oblivious new husband, and gets ready to move to a different part of the country, I am wholeheartedly along for the ride.

I knew nothing coming into this book (other than a tagline that went something like, “epic trilogy of woman’s life in ancient Norway”) and have no idea what is to come. The religion comes on a little stronger than I typically want in my reading, but I’m involved with Kristin and I shall continue. Stay tuned for reviews of the next two books.

A note on translation: this translation came recommended to me specifically; I was told earlier ones were poor, and it turns out that my father tried to read one of those and found it unreadable. Tiina Nunnally’s translation won the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize and is lovely. (Perhaps I should mention that Sigrid Undset won a Nobel Prize in Literature, before Nunnally’s help! I wonder if the prize committee read her books in Norwegian??) In other words, use this translation and no other, and thank you, Tiina, for bringing this book back to life. We’ll see if Pops wants to try again when I’m done with my copy.

Rating: 5 rosaries.

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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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