A tale of a young love is told through the lens of an awkward wedding night. It's a smooth and easy read, with compassion and insight into the inner struggles of the characters.
Standard men and women; in uniform batches. The whole of the small factory staffed with the products of a single bokanovskified egg.“Ninety-six identical twins working ninety-six identical machines!” The voice was almost tremulous with enthusiasm. “You really know where you are. For the first time in history.” He quoted the planetary motto “Community, Identity, Stability.” Grand words.
“If we could bokanovskify indefinitely, the whole problem would be solved.”
Solved by standard Gammas, unvarying Deltas, uniform Epsilons. Millions of identical twins. The principle of mass production at last applied to biology.
I have read a lot of dystopian fiction this year, for some reason. Brave New World is a classic of this genre. It is a quick, easy read, or in my case listen while running. The language is direct, the plot is clear, the characters are engaging. The world Huxley paints is on one hand disturbing--people gestated in bottles and conditioned and subliminally programmed to happily accept their assigned status in life, with a sort of bland pleasure induced by drugs and multisensory "feelies" (movies of a sort) to keep people entertained and peaceful--but at another level, mildly seductive--the leader of Western Europe explains why a society of all bright independent people didn't work when tried, why the inhabitants of that society begged to be let back into the fold. For me the most disturbing thing about this novel was that it wasn't more viscerally disturbing to me. 1984 gave me the creeps from the get-go, but Brave New World makes a disturbingly persuasive case, both in the illustration of the society, and in its defense by various characters, for the dystopian world it ultimately critiques. I can imagine many people wanting the world where Ford replaces God, and drugs replace disagreement and difficult emotion. In fact, it could be argued that much in our current society shows us to be quite committed to move in that direction, with only a deficit in the appropriate technologies preventing our arriving there already. Still I think I would not be able to live without literature, without meaningful human attachment, without the truth and beauty that are sacrificed for peace and commerce. With Huxley, I must argue for our current, flawed, messy world or for solutions that don't require the compromises and sacrifices of basic humanity that Huxley's dystopian world's peace relied upon.
I read this book OVER and OVER as a kid. I was fascinated by the way it dealt with time and with fate. A family of kids go to live in an old house. In the course of exploring, they meet ghosts of kids who once lived there and learn how to travel through time in order to help those kids. Just typing this, I again had chills running down my spine and goosebumps. Oddly, I had my own ghost story connected with this. I can't share the details, since it involves a past client who had died, but suffice it to say that an interaction after I re-read this as an adult in my 30s brought me closer than I have ever otherwise come to believing in an afterlife. VERY freaky.
I liked this book, but compared with some of my Africa reads from last year (Nervous Conditions, Things Fall Apart, and Devil on the Cross), it did not move me as much as I'd hoped. There was a vibrancy in all the books I have just mentioned that was missing in this book. This book had a colder, calculated, more observational tone. The former books were written by native Africans who clearly had passion for their countries and their experiences of post-colonial life. Naipal is Trinidadian, and his character is from an Islamic Indian family that had settled in earlier generations on the East African Coast, part of a wave of colonization by Asia and Islam that preceded European control of these areas. The protagonist is of Africa, and yet not, especially as he has moved inland from his coastal country of birth into an inland bush country along the river at the heart of the continent. His perspective is colored by this identity, and he struggles with questions of how he fits in the volatile fabric of life in his small river town. This book, too, explores themes of African identity, political tyranny, and European influence in post-colonial Africa, and it leaves one feeling pretty grim. Unlike the African authors who write on these themes, Naipal cannot convey the depth of tragedy or undercurrent of profound love for a troubled homeland that produced the richer experience I had with the books mentioned above. I am still glad to have read the book and to have had insight into this other world of experience, but I have not had my world transformed in any meaningful way in the reading of this book.
In 1980, Thomas Keneally was in LA looking for a briefcase. A Holocaust survivor named Leopold Pfefferberg, may or may not have actually sold him one, but he gave him something much more valuable, a tale of holocaust heroism of which he had been one of thousands of fortunate participants. Pfefferberg introduced Keneally to others who had been a part of the story, and took him to the locations critical to the tale. The result was this novel, Schindler's List also known as Schindler's Ark, and the movie which we've probably all seen (and should see, if we haven't).Most books on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die list aren't there for the plot. They are there for the amazing prose, the literary innovation, the depth of psychological insight. This one, while its prose is fine, is there for the plot. So if you know the plot, since you've seen the movie, do you really need to read the book? Yes. Definitely, yes. The book contains the level of documentation and detail, in novel form, but not fictionalized, that helps a reader begin to fully grasp the immensity of what Schindler's miraculous acts of heroism involved. The book does not paint a saint, among other things, Schindler was an unapologetic philanderer. According to Keneally, "sexual shame was, to him, a concept like Existentialism, very worthy but hard to grasp." But Schindler committed years and immense sums of money to protect over a thousand Jews from starvation, abuse, and death, all via an absurd con--a munitions factory that never produced a since useful shell. Schindler walked a high wire, using bribes, charm, and an incredible instinctive ability to read the characters of others, all to protect the Jews in his care and even to rescue his women workers from the bowels of Auschwitz when they were waylaid there on the way to his factory in Moravia. The question you have to ask yourself in reading this book is "could I have had the courage to act in this way? Faced with Schindler's choices and risks, could I have been a Righteous Person?" I wish I could confidently answer yes. I am certain of this: reading this book can only make that "yes" more likely.
At a construction site in lower Manhattan, a tunnel is unearthed beneath an old tenement which is being knocked down. Inside the tunnel, workers find bones and remains of personal objects belonging to a total of 36 people. A mysterious southern FBI agent appears at the New York Museum of Natural History in the office of archaeologist Nora Kelly. Agent Pendergast presses Dr. Kelly into service to investigate the site, and she discovers that it dates to the late 19th century. From the appearance of the remains, it is clear that the people have been murdered, but what is not clear is why, and for that matter why a southern FBI agent is investigating a century-old serial killing in New York City. The Cabinet of Curiosities is a marvelous mystery which taught me a bit about the phenomenon of cabinets of curiosities and the life of the poor in late 19th century New York. The books celebrates some gems of New York City culture, especially the Museum of Natural History. It is very much a novel of place--I searched for a street map of the city to follow the characters as they walked some of the neighborhoods I knew less well despite 10 years of living there. My brother-in-law has recommended the books of Preston and Child for a couple of years, and now I understand why. The characters in this book are fun to get to know, the atmosphere is delightfully creepy, and the action is well paced. At this point, I fully intend to read more of the Pendergast series. I definitely want to know more about Pendergast himself.
My first real experience with severe mental illness came on my psychology internship at Beth Israel Hospital in NYC in 1993-94. In the inpatient world of New York in the 1990s, most treatment for severe mental illnesses such as major depression, bipoloar disorder, and schizophrenia was delivered via short (a few days to a few weeks) inpatient stays featuring medication, group therapy and brief individual or family sessions followed by regular outpatient care in the form of ongoing medication and weekly psychotherapy and group sessions. Most of the patients lived on their own, with family, or in group homes. Newer antipsychotic medications were replacing the older more disabling sedative treatments for schizophrenia, and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) was used mainly in the elderly, with appropriate anesthesia, as it tended to be more effective and less risky than medication. When patients received ECT, it was willingly, and without fear. Thus it was somewhat heartwrenching to delve into the world of Janet Frame’s Faces In The Water, which describes the experiences of a young woman hospitalized for most of 8 years in the psychiatric hospitals of New Zealand in the 1950s. Treatment seemed to have been largely a matter of ECT (or EST as it was called in the book) with apparently little anesthetic, or lobotomy. Patients lived in their own mini-society with its own rituals and routines, with little human contact other than that of burned-out ward nurses and brief exchanges with a few fairly helpless doctors. Frame can speak realistically of this world, as she herself was incorrectly diagnosed as schizophrenic and hospitalized for years.While the world she portrays is a bleak one, Frame’s novel is a beautiful work of fiction. Here is her opening sentence: “They have said that we owe allegiance to Safety, that he is our Red Cross who will provide us with the ointment and bandages for our wounds and remove the foreign ideas the glass beads of fantasy the bent hairpins of unreason embedded in our minds.” In the prose we see both the madness that led to protagonist Estina Mavet’s hospitalization, but also the intelligence and insight that indicate how much is lost by her being trapped there. From her first hospitalization, Estina is eventually released into her sister’s care, but soon finds herself a patient at another hospital in another part of the country. In her description of a cheery demonstration unit for the least troubled patients which provides a bright facade hiding a darker warren of disturbing wards for the more symptomatic and chronic patients, I felt a horrible echo of the descriptions I have recently been reading of the public and secret sides of Nazi internment camps. When Estina finds herself reassigned to one of the less public units, she finds that she is left with little to call her own, dressed in hospital garb that may or may not even fit, and denied most personal possessions. She was a teacher before her hospitalization, and one item she does manage to keep is a volume of Shakespeare. “I seldom read my book yet it became more and more dilapidated physically, with pictures falling out and pages unleaving as if an unknown person were devoting time to studying it. The evidence of secret reading gave me a feeling of gratitude. It seemed as if the book understood how things were and agreed to be company for me and to breathe, even without my opening it, an overwhelming dignity of riches; but because, after all, the first passion of books is to be read, it had decided to read itself; which explained the gradual falling out of the pages.” She then goes on to describe moments when Shakespeare’s words come to her mind as she watches the situation of the patients around her. Estina travels back and forth between two hospitals and the cultures of the different wards within each hospital, terrified of the only treatments she can be offered, and often hopeless about the possibility of returning to the outside world.
I will leave you to discover where the journey ultimately takes her, but I will say that bleak as the vision of mid 20th century mental health care is in this tale, the vision of human courage and emotional depth conveyed in this novel is equally inspiring.
The Man Who Loved Children: A Novel
This novel is the dysfunctional family writ large. Dad is a civil servant naturalist with superficially benevolent ideas about the world and mankind, but with a heavy dose of sexism, a leaning toward eugenics, a disdain for literature, and most importantly a massive dose of narcissism hidden beneath the superficial shell. He looks initially like a fun dad, ring-master of "family fun day" on Sundays, and seemingly the younger kids enjoy him, but he contributes to the impoverishment of the family, belittles the children in various ways (including speaking a nauseating baby-talk to them), and has a major war going on with their mother. "Mothering" (a nickname he coined, that she hates) is a former heiress who is less self-involved than she appears in some ways, but who speaks hatefully to the kids, especially the eldest who is a step-daughter, spends much of the time withdrawn or absent, and seems incapable of a kind word about anyone. The eldest daughter Louie is the child who gets the most attention in the novel, but I had a soft spot for Ernie, the eldest boy, who is the only one in the family with financial sense. We watch the family unravel from a marginally middle-class existence in Georgetown to abject poverty and emotional chaos in Annapolis after the father becomes unemployed. The emotional toll of family life on the kids, particularly Louie and Ernie, gets clearer and clearer and leads them to desperate acts.
Voss
It wasn't until I was about 280 pages into this tale of an arrogant explorer and the woman who becomes emotionally attached to him that I wanted to be reading it. If it wasn't on the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, the author hadn't won a Nobel, and I hadn't been reading it for some challenges, I probably would have bailed on it somewhere much sooner. I didn't particularly like most of the characters and therefore had a very hard time caring about their emotional and physical struggles. Still, by the end, I was eager to keep reading. I don't entirely understand what made me begin to care about what the author was trying to say about human nature, love, society, exploration, and the country of Australia, nor am I at all sure I got what Patrick White wanted to convey, but I was glad I stuck with this book long past when most rational people would have simply abandoned the journey. Hmmm. Interesting sentence to write in a reflection on this particular book. This may be one to come back to and see what a second look would reveal.
The Cement Garden
This book is strangely compelling at the same time that it makes you think "ewww." If you ever wondered whether it would be ok just to leave a bunch of kids to fend for themselves without an adult around, this book will tell you what a bad plan it would be--in case [b:Lord of the Flies|7624|Lord of the Flies|William Golding|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51VaoqPM%2BUL._SL75_.jpg|2766512] hadn't already given you the heads up. In this case the kids don't hate each other. They love each other a bit too much. Like I said, "eww." So the puzzle is what makes you keep reading and wanting to know what happens. It's an easy book, full of spare prose. There is underlying tension--will the situation unravel around the kids, ending the world they have built for themselves? There is the fact that while much of it is disturbing, you are also saying to yourself, well, "they are really just trying to figure out how to get through this crisis..." You aren't fully convinced by this argument, but no one is actually being malicious, exactly. You get the picture. It is an interesting, disturbing book.
My Boyfriend's Back: True Stories of Rediscovering Love with a Long-Lost Sweetheart
I have been reading a lot of truly great literature lately, so it feels almost unfair to compare this book. It is a fun little read about the phenomenon of high school and college sweethearts reuniting years later. My mom got it for me 7 years ago when I was becoming one of those people, reuniting with my college boyfriend to start our wonderful marriage and family in our 40s. Now my mom herself is one of those people, head over heels with a guy she dated one summer in college. I am putting the book in the mail to her tomorrow. I enjoyed reading the stories of reconnection in the book. What I liked less was when the book veered toward self-help in suggesting this as a potential way for people to actively seek a mate. To the extent that reconnecting becomes a strategy, I have to wonder if what works when it happens spontaneously won't become too forced and a source of disappointment.
Overall, cute book, but pales when compared to most of the amazing literature that fills my life.
This is a retelling of an old Vietnamese folk tale by [a:Thich Nhat Hanh|9074|Thich Nhat Hanh|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1231009210p2/9074.jpg]. It should definitely be read as a Buddhist lesson, rather than as literature. If you read it as literature, it will be disappointing, but as an example of what the principle of loving-kindness looks like, then it is a useful read. There is an afterward, written by the a disciple of Thich Nhat Hanh, that tells of the ways in which the story of Hanh and his followers are parallel to the tale of [b:The Novice: A Story of True Love|12091036|The Novice A Story of True Love|Thich Nhat Hanh|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1347750885s/12091036.jpg|17059350]. These are stories of false accusation met by patience and compassion, with non-violence and loving-kindness. These stories are both depressing, in their illustration of the ways in which human rights abuses can play out, and inspiring in the way that the monks and nuns maintain a peaceful stance.