Anya’s Ghost

I was excited to include a graphic novel on my reading list this year, and specifically planned to read Anya’s Ghost, the story of a teenager who falls down a well and becomes friends with a ghost, in October for its spooky Halloween qualities. I’ve been reading a lot of creepy books lately – first the vampire novel The Historian, followed by the zombie love story Warm Bodies and the supernatural Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I’m not quite sure where all of this weird sci-fi/supernatural/other-worldly stuff is coming from, but as next month I’m reading the science fiction classic Dune I’m expecting it to just get weirder. Tina Fey’s Bossypants in December is going to come as a well-deserved respite from the land of speculative fiction.

Anyway, I read Anya’s Ghost in about an hour and a half or so – it’s over 200 pages but as it’s a graphic novel it goes rather quickly, and felt like watching a short film. As I said, it’s a story about a girl who befriends a ghost (not at all like Casper, if that’s what you’re thinking), but more than that it’s about a Russian girl growing up in America and trying to deal with her family, high school, and dreaded runs in gym class. Over the course of the story she learns her lessons – that people aren’t always what they seem, that family is important, that maybe you shouldn’t walk around with a person’s bone around your neck on a string so you have your own pet ghost to help you cheat on exams. Although that last one seemed like a no-brainer to me, but to each his own.

I enjoyed this book, which reminded me a lot of Persepolis, in both it’s leading character and it’s simply drawn grayscale artwork. It’s a lovely ghost story for October, equal parts charming and creepy.

The Help

I know what you're thinking - "It's only the 8th, isn't that a little early for you to be posting the June book review?" Considering my history, where usually I'm just now getting around to posting the last month's book review, you're right.

But I've already finished The Help! I just started it yesterday afternoon and stayed up until 3 a.m. last night finishing it. I don't think I've read an entire book that quickly since Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out twelve years ago and hid out in my junior-high bedroom and gobbled up the whole thing in one sitting.

I put off reading Kathryn Stockett's The Help for a long time. It was all over the media, and the bestseller bookshelves, and everyone and their brother was reading it, which made me a little skeptical. Lots of things make the bestseller list just for being popular, and I didn't want to end up reading another Nicholas Sparks novel but set in Mississippi in the 60s.

But after it was adapted into an Oscar-award-winning movie and was still on the charts long after it's debut, I figured it was time to give it a chance. Last June I decided to give Eat Pray Love a chance and ended up loving it - and the same thing happened with The Help. It's a great novel, full of poignant stories and characters that you grow to love/hate. A quote on the cover compared it to To Kill A Mockingbird, which was a little much for me - sure, it deals with the same issues of race relations in the south, but The Help just didn't have the timeless quality that TKAM does, at least in my opinion. It's a great summer beach or book club read that shows what it's like to be a black woman working as a domestic during the tumultuous 1960s. It reminded me a little of the musical Hairspray, a kind of light-hearted and easy-to-grasp story of racial tension. Not that it was completely sugar coated; there were plenty of sad and horrible things that happened to these women, but for me, it was predicable. Of course women were going to eventually open up, of course the book would get published, of course Stuart wouldn't be as perfect as she expected, of course the ladies would gain some ground.

I know the book has gotten some flak for being a feel-good version of the south, "written by a white woman to make other white women feel better about how blacks were treated," to paraphrase some reviews I've heard. But you know, it got people thinking about racism both then and now, and the movie earned Octavia Spencer an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress - making her one of only 6 black women to ever earn an Academy Award acting. And even if it wasn't on the same level as TKAM, I know I sure couldn't put it down. I would recommend it to anyone looking for a good novel to enjoy and think about over their summer vacation.

The World According to Garp

Admittedly, when I read the description of this book, I knew it was going to be weird. I’m used to weird. Last year I read Slaughterhouse-Five and A Handmaid’s Tale, I am prepared for strange. But The World According to Garp was a whole new kind of weird.
  
When people fell from the sky and turned into animals in The Satanic Verses, it wasn’t a problem because you could tell Rushdie was using magical realism to prove a point. When Alex and his gang broke into houses and raped women in A Clockwork Orange it was disturbing but made sense in a dystopian novel. When Chief started talking about listening machines in the walls in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest it didn’t phase me because he was in an asylum at the time. But with Garp, all the characters are basically normal people but have the most messed-up lives of just about any book I have read.

The novel starts with nurse Jenny Fields, a young woman who is so practical as to have almost no emotions besides a strong maternal instinct. She decides she wants to have a baby but has no interest in men or romance, so she essentially rapes a nearly-braindead and dying young soldier in her hospital in order to impregnate herself. Weird. And things start getting more strange from there.

 She raises her son – named Technical Sergeant Garp, after what was written on his father’s dog tags – on the grounds at an all-boys school where he grows up about as normal as a kid in his circumstances can. He falls in love with his wrestling coach’s daughter, whom he eventually marries after he and his mother live for a while in Vienna, where he befriends the local prostitutes (weird). During their time in Europe Jenny writes a book about her life and becomes a famous feminist in the process. It’s a really complicated storyline so I won’t go into the whole thing, but some of the highlights include Garp and his wife dating another couple, a former pro-football player who has a sex change, a horrible car accident that causes a child to loose an eye, an assassination, a crazed stalker, women who willingly have their tongues cut out as a political statement, and a story about a bear who rides a unicycle in a hotel hallway. Just to name a few.

Honestly, it is one of the more bizarre books I’ve read – probably up there with Vonnegut’s Galapagos, where over the course of a couple hundred years all humans evolve into hairy seal-like creatures on a single island. By the end of the novel I wasn’t sure if I liked it or hated it. I felt like I was watching a ridiculous soap opera full of sex, far-fetched scenes, and ridiculous familial relationships. Things that seemed to have little impact on the story (like young Garp biting a dog that once bit him) were described in great detail, while other very important events (a certain death in the story) were tiptoed around and never fully explained.

In the end, The World According to Garp read like a fictionalized celebrity tell-all rather than a novel of literary merit. Why was this popular in the 70s? I have no idea why this book was such a big deal. I will say one thing, though: this makes the third book about characters with psychological issues on my list this year.

The Hunger Games Trilogy

*Spoiler Alert: I'm going to talk about all three of the novels, so if you haven't finished them yet, don't read any further! I also ruin a couple other novels, so be careful.* 

I'm not one to give into trends just because everyone else is doing them. Just because something is popular doesn't necessarily mean that it is good, so before I read a trendy book or shell out the money to see a big-name film, I check to see what critics are saying about it and how friends with similar tastes feel. I put off reading Eat, Pray, Love because every Oprah-watching soccer mom I ever met swore by it, and I don't usually have the same tastes in books as they do; but after seeing the author speak in a TED talk, I gave the book a chance and loved it. I was anxious to read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, especially after a movie adaptation was announced, but after the advice of a similar-minded friend who said "don't waste your time," I chose not to read it.

So when everyone and their mother started talking about The Hunger Games, I was only somewhat interested. Another YA trilogy about a teenage girl? There are a million of those out right now, filling up the somewhat depressing "Supernatural Romance" shelf in the teen section at Barnes & Noble. Not worth my time. But then people started telling me I needed to read it - people I majored in English with at college, well-read people studying to be teachers, basically everyone who loved the same books I did. So I decided to give it a chance, picked up a copy at the bookstore - and read the first book in less than two days. I was hooked.

I described the first novel to my sister as a cross between Harry Potter and The Giver. Suzanne Collins writes much like J.K. Rowling, with simple fluid words, captivating characters, and forward-marching plots that leave you telling yourself, just one more chapter, then I'll stop for a while. And much like when I read Rowling's books, I couldn't put them down and devoured them almost all in one sitting. The Harry Potter series, The Giver, and The Hunger Games trilogy have one pivotal thing in common: they are using the experiences of a single character in order to teach the reader a much larger lesson about life. Potter is about friendship, loyalty, doing what's right in the face of adversity. The Giver is about remembering your past, gaining knowledge, learning what it means to be human. The Hunger Games is about protecting the innocent, ending senseless wars, and doing what is right for your community.

The first novel had me captivated. Katniss is a different type of heroine: tomboyish, intelligent, and brave, but views herself as no one special and has a hard time understanding what everyone else sees in her. She is compassionate, although she doesn't like to show weakness; is pretty, but in a simple way; and responsible almost to a fault. She's complicated - which makes her realistic. The first book introduced us to Panem, the country governed by the spoiled and treacherous Captial, and the Games, which were contrived to put each of the twelve Districts into their place by forcing them to watch their children fight each other to the death on live television as if it were a horrible version of Survivor mixed with American Idol. But despite the pageant-like interviews, the training, the blood-thirsty teenagers and cruel Gamemaker's twists that reminded me of The Truman Show, Katniss and her fellow tribute Peeta buck the system, getting the Capitol to let both of them survive by pretending to be in love and drawing on the emotions of the audience.

The second novel shows us just how vile the Capitol really is. In a power-play after being upstaged from a couple of teenagers from the least important district, they announce that the next Games, in honor of their 75th year, will be comprised of previous winners fighting to leave one victor alive. Think Survivor: All-Star but with people ranging from 17 to 80, many of whom have gone nearly insane after surviving their own games only to have to serve as a mentor to other young tributes and watch them die year after year. This rag-tag group of people are forced to compete and quietly bind together in order to break out of the arena and escape to the supposedly-destroyed District 13, where they start a rebellion against the Capitol.

Katniss finds herself at the center of the rebellion, as its symbol, the Mockingjay. In the third book we learn that her hometown has been destroyed and many of its people lost their lives. Kind-hearted Peeta has been captured and tortured into believing he hates Katniss. The president has a personal vendetta against her. She is injured and traumatized over the fact that she has caused all of the problems the world is now facing. I keep having to remind myself that she's only 18 and has experienced so much death, destruction and heartbreak. It's no wonder she is often hiding in closets. When she regains some strength she starts visiting other districts in hopes of rallying the troops and giving the rebellion some hope for their future. Eventually she and other members of the rebellion take the capital - but not without the loss of plenty more lives, including that of her beloved sister, which sets her over the edge. The leader of District 13 takes over as president and proposes a new version of the Games, this time pitting the survivors of the Capitol leaders against each other. Katniss, who seems to be the only one seeing the big picture, realizes that as long as someone tries to gain power by force and punishment, nothing will ever truly change. So she kills the president from 13, forever cancelling the Hunger Games as a national show of power. Finally she is sent back to her home in 12, to live out the rest of her life, knowing that despite all she did to protect her little sister, she couldn't save her in the end.

And now for the Epilogue. At the end of the series, Katniss is a mess. Her sister is dead, her mother has left her, her best friend is never coming back, and the deaths of all of those she was forced to kill or inadvertently caused to die haunt her forever. But a new Panem is emerging, one that is a much better place than the one she grew up in. And as the years go by she and Peeta come to rely on each other again, and in the end they are together, raising their children, collecting and honoring the memories of all those who fought in the Games, getting through the hard times by focusing on the good ones.

I know a lot of people were disappointed with the end of the series. I believe that it was a perfect ending in the sense that it could not have happened any other way. After everything that happened - the Games, the rebellion, the deaths - there is no way there could have been a happy white-picket-fence ending. At the end of the day, this was a tale of war and loss and coming out on the other side - it was not intended as a love story. I wanted Katniss and Peeta to live happily ever after just like everyone else, but given the life they led and the world they live in, it would have been a disservice to portray them as a perfect couple in such a broken and imperfect world. Personally, I can't think of a better way to end the book than with them, together, surviving, and happy, or at least as happy as they can be. Was it sad to see them afraid to have children, tortured by nightmares, disturbed by the world around around them? Of course. But that is what war does to people. It's not pretty. When I closed the third and final book my heart felt heavy for them, as it did at the end of 1984 when despite everything Winston does to rebel , he finds himself betraying his true love and succumbing to Big Brother. Or at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, when the Chief suffocates McMurphy for his own good. Or in Never Let Me Go, where Kath must guide her friends toward death as they are forced to donate their organs as they are were clones created for spare parts.

Have you seen the film Stranger Than Fiction with Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson? I features Ferrel as a man who finds himself to be the main character in a novel being written by Thompson. She has decided that his character will die, and doesn't want to change the ending, because as a writer, when you create a character they take on a life of their own and sometimes you have to let them do things that you don't want them to do. It's what makes them real. I remember seeing an interview with Rowling where she said how much she cried when she killed Cedric, because she didn't want him to die, but knew he had to. That's what happened with Katniss and Peeta - Collins couldn't have written them happy-go-lucky, it wasn't in their nature. And I'm glad they weren't forced into that role.

In the end, I'm glad I read these books, and highly recommend them. They're hard to read, but equally hard to put down. 

Jurassic Park

I am a Michael Crichton fan, so it wasn't hard to decide to put this classic on my 2012 reading list. I was first introduced to him the summer before my junior year in high school. My English teacher for the next year gave us a reading list for the summer, which included The Grapes of Wrath, The Crucible, and inexplicibly, Crichton's recently published Timeline (I was a junior in 2003, it was released in 1999). Seeing as the rest of our list was classic novels written during or about American history, this one seemed a little out of place. But my friends and I read our books anyway, writing the required 1-page reflection on each one, and brought them to the first day of class like we were told. When we asked our teacher later why it had been required reading, she said something along the lines of "I thought it was a fun book and that you guys would enjoy a break from the heavier stuff." I have to give her credit, she was probably the teacher who influenced me the most when it came to enjoying and analyzing literature. She also introduced us to The Goonies, for which I am forever grateful.

Anyway, after my first brush with Crichton's work then, I scoured my mom's bookshelves for his other novels. I loved his techno-thriller genre mixing and detailed scientific information infused with fiction. Not literary fiction, by any stretch of the imagination, but definitely a fun and engaging read.

You would have thought that by now I'd have seen the movie version of Jurassic Park, but truth is I never have. It came out in 1993 and was a huge hit - but unfortunately I was 7 at the time and way too young to see it. I remember going to California to visit my Aunt and Uncle a few years later and during our trip to the Universal Studios park seeing the dinosaur attraction, but that and clips shown on TV of people running from velociraptors were all I knew about the book before reading it.

The beginning of the novel was positively creepy. Like young dinosaurs sneaking into nurseries and eating newborn babies creepy. I quickly decided not to read it at night (yes, I'm a chicken, I'm aware of this). Dinos eating humans aside, I really enjoyed this novel. It was a fast an interesting read, and fairly believable as far as technology and cloning goes (man, computers were simple in the early 90s!) I'm pretty sure the first half of the book was entirely made up of foreshadowing, or at least it felt that way. I was able to make a lot of predictions as to what would happen later in the book. (Metal bars on the skylights? All the electricity on the island is controlled by one computer? They accidentally planted poisonous ferns by the pool? Sure, sounds like everything is going to be fine...)

I loved that one of the most informed characters in the story was a nerdy little boy who not only knew how to act around dinosaurs but how to fix the computer. And that almost none of the adults wanted to listen to him. It just goes to show you, kids really do know more about what's going on around them than grown ups give them credit for.

I would recommend this book to anyone who loves a good thriller that will keep them on the edge of their seats for a while. The characters weren't developed a lot, but there is plenty of action to make up for it, which is what made it such a great film (not to mention the Steven Spielberg direction and John Williams score). Just don't read or watch it if you're squeamish - there are way too many half-eaten bodies for the weak of stomach.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

I've finished my final book of the year! And with two days to spare, too.

I decided to finish out the year with Michael Chabon's The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay because compared to the rest of the books on my 2011 list, it seemed a little less serious. Over the past 12 months I've read heavy-handed titles like Atlas Shrugged and Satanic Verses so in contrast a novel about a couple of young men in the comic book business seemed easy.

I really enjoyed this novel. Spanning close to 20 years in the lives of cousins Sam Clay and Joe Kavalier as they start drawing The Escapist in the late 1930s/early 1940s, it gives us a glimpse into the golden age of comics. This is the time when Superman and all of the rest of the big name heroes were selling hundreds of thousands of copies, comics were being shipped to soldiers overseas along with their chocolates and cigarettes, and every kid wanted to grow up to be a masked man in tights. Comic books have never really left since they were first introduced into American culture, and although they are growing in popularity again it is nothing like what they had after WWI.

While a lot of the story revolves around the comic business, the story is essentially about the lives of the two young Jewish men. Sammy was raised by a single mother, his father a traveling performer who only visited when it was convenient. Joe lived with his parents and younger and brother in Prague, but was able to escape before the Nazis invaded, and came to live with Sammy. The two become fast friends after realizing that Sam excels at storytelling while Joe is an excellent artist and can partner up to create wonderful comic books. They create The Escapist based on Joe's experiences as an apprentice to a magician back in Prague, which goes on to become a best-selling character.

Throughout the novel we see Sam struggle to come to terms with homosexuality, both in his own life an in his comics (there is a huge scandal about the young male sidekicks that accompany nearly all masked heroes and what this insinuates). He spends the majority of his life unhappy after years of hiding his true identity for the sake of his friends and family. Joe, on the other hand, works hard to bring his brother and the rest of his family to America, putting all of time, effort, and money into doing so. He finds love but feels guilty being happy when his family is facing war in Prague. When he learns of his young brother's death he leaves town and joins the war in hopes of killing a German in retaliation, and endures a horrible time stationed in Antartica before coming back and hiding from everyone he knows, believing them to live a better life without him.

There are lots of levels to this novel, and it is written so it might flow together simply and easily. This book reminded me of something else I've read, although I can't put my finger on what. The Blind Assassin?  A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Special Topics in Calamity Physics? This is a wonderful, sweeping book and it is no wonder that it is a Pulitzer Prize winner. I would recommend it to anyone, especially those with a penchant for comic books and their creators.

The Road

When making my list of books to read for the year, I chose The Road by Cormac McCarthy as my October book because I thought that based on the creepy-looking trailer for the 2009 film version starring Viggo Mortensen it would be appropriate for Halloween.

I finished the book last night, and yes, it is creepy. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world where the there have been widespread fires throughout the United States, where all of the animals and birds are gone, plants don't seem to be growing, and everything is cold and dark. Much like in the film The Book of Eli, there are hordes of marauders looking for trouble. Most citizens died of starvation or tying to flee the fires, their abandoned corpses litter the highway like broken down cars. People have resorted to cannibalism, starting with the children. It's disturbing on a lot of levels.

What I didn't anticipate was how sad and heartbreaking this book would be. Essentially it is the story of a man and his son, traveling South in hopes of finding warmer weather and good people. They search abandoned homes for food and carry what little provisions they have in backpacks or in a shopping cart. All they have left in the desolate world is each other. The man does everything he can to keep his child  alive and often cries at night knowing that not only is there little hope for the boy, but that he is slowly dying. The boy tries to help, but is only about 8 years old and is frightened most of the time. Understandably - he is nearly kidnapped by a hungry passerby, has seen people chained up and kept for food, and passes melted corpses on the highways. His father has even taught him the best way to commit suicide should he be taken by "the bad guys". It's a lifestyle that would be horrific for anyone, let alone a child.

In the end, the story is sad and disturbing, but there is hope. When it comes to the sacrificial love of a parent, this book is a beautiful example. It's written simply, but with descriptions that only multiply the eerieness of the world it is set in. It leaves you with so many questions - what caused the end of modern society? What caused the fires? Are the animals gone because they fled, since there's no traces of them? What made the ocean smell of iodine? Are there "good guys" somewhere in the world?

It's okay that there are questions, though. I think one of the signs of a well-written book is that when it's over, you wonder what happened to the characters next. This book definitely left me wondering.

The Satanic Verses

First and foremost, let me say that this is not a book promoting Satan, filled with verses celebrating Satan, or even one demoralizing Christianity. People seem to get worked up when I tell them what I’m reading. This is a novel – most of the verses in question are poetry and rhymes used diabolically, and therefore are satanic in the sense of extremely evil or wicked in contrast to connected with Satanism. Yes, there is plenty of religious imagery, and yes, at times the characters question whether or not the verses came from Satan himself. This mention of the creature of Satan does not make this a Satanic (in the connected with sense) any more than the mention of him makes Milton’s Paradise Lost a Satanic poem.

As a Christian, I do believe that Satan is real and that there are dark, demonic things going on in this world. If I had had any indication that this book was associated with the occult or in some way glamorized Satan to the point of worship I would have immediately removed it from my reading list. But having read work by Salman Rushdie before and being familiar with his style of writing, in conjuction with the fact that this book is so highly acclaimed and has been for over 20 years, I was not worried. And now, having finished the novel, I have found that I was correct.

Rushdie is known for writing in the style of magical realism. Think about things like Big Fish or the short stories of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or even The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe where the mythological and supernatural mix in with the everyday like it is normal. We all know that you can’t literally open a wardrobe and find another world with talking satyrs, and that men don’t turn into giant fish upon their death – but when reading or watching or hearing these types of “fairy tales” you must suspend your disbelief and consider these fantastical things to be truth for the sake of the story. This is how you must read Rushdie. The main premise of this book is that two Indian actors were on board a flight that was hijacked, and as it blew up they fell towards the English channel, clutching one another, and miraculously survived. There were side effects, however – Gibreel Farishta takes on angelic qualities, believing himself to be the Angel Gibreel (Gabriel) while Saladin Chamcha takes on devilish qualities. Chamcha is taken away by police as Farishta does nothing to stop them, which causes Chamcha to become so angry that his devilish qualities overtake him and he literally turns into a cloven hoofed and horned goat of a man for a period of time. For the remainder of the novel Chamcha is plotting revenge on Farishta for abandoning him, while Farishta is diagnosed as schizophrenic and has visions of himself as the angel giving revelations to a variety characters. The novel is an interesting concoction of good vs. evil, the opposing cultures of India and England, personal relationships, and the innermost desires of men, told through magical and allegorical lenses.

This book was confusing at times – as I am neither Indian nor British, and so much of the vernacular was specific to these countries. The interweaving of storylines and the Dickensian connections between characters made it hard to follow what was going on and who was doing it, but I managed. There aren’t going to be any quizzes on it like when I read another of his novels in college, so that’s a plus.

I chose to read this book because of its cultural impact. One of the visionary side-stories is based on the story of Mohammed, and depicts him as somewhat of a false prophet who agrees to include the acceptance of the worship of certain pegan goddesses into the religious text as part of a business deal. The story of these “satanic verses” in the Qur’an caused an uproar among many Muslims, who considered it blasphemous and mocking. As a result the book is illegal in all but one dominantly Muslim country and in 1989 a fatwa was issued against Rushdie by the Iranian leader, who called Muslims to kill the author and his publishers. Rushdie was put under police protection in England and lived in hiding for nearly 10 years while riots and violent attacks surrounding the book continued. The Japanese translator was stabbed to death, multiple international publishers survived assassination attempts, and the Turkish translator was target in an event that lead to the massacre of 37 people. It amazes me that fictional writing can cause such non-fictional friction, and that a novel so revered in Western society is so hated in other parts of the world.  

Eat Pray Love

It's been six months now since I made my New Year's resolution to read a book every month and blog about it. I think I'm doing pretty well - I've finished all 6 novels for a total of over a million words (thanks to Atlas Shrugged!). I'm really enjoying this discipline of reading, I may set up a reading list for every year!

So this month the choice novel was Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by writer Elizabeth Gilbert. I've been curious about it, since it's gained so much attention in recent years - but was skeptical for the same reason. Suddenly this book comes out of nowhere and is not only a bestseller but is in Oprah's book club and is being adapted for the big screen starring America's favorite leading woman? The last book with that track record was The Da Vinci Code - and as much as I enjoyed it, I would never put it on a list of my favorite novels.

I asked around and got some mixed reviews. Some liked it, some thought Gilbert was crazy and felt less crazy by comparison. I was a bit apprehensive. I'd enjoyed all the books I'd read so far, was this one a bad decision?

I started it early in the month, just in case I hated it and it took me the entire month to finish. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I loved it, and finished it within two days. I don't know if it's because I'm partial to this type of non-fiction, or if on some level I related to Gilbert, or if she's just a really fantastic writer. Maybe it's all of those. I was enthralled by her openness and her desire to find God, no matter what it took. It was fascinating to be in her shoes and experience her growth as it unfolded.

Not to mention the descriptions, the characters she met, the beautiful locales she chose. I wish I could take a year off to travel and think and adventure and write. Oh, to be rich!

I'd love to be able to go more in-depth about the characters I loved and the wonderful concepts that Gilbert spoke about, but honestly, I read this book over a month ago (I started the first draft of this blog June 6, and ran out of time to finish it!). It was by no means a literary masterpiece but I enjoyed it nonetheless. Maybe someday I'll reread it and do an official recap blog.

Without further ado, on to next month's reading!

The Handmaid's Tale

First and foremost, you should know that I am a little biased when it comes to Margaret Atwood. The first book of hers that I read was The Blind Assassin for a course I took on contemporary literature, which I absolutely loved (both the novel and the class). Since that time I have read two more of her novels, not including this one, and own three of her collections of poetry. I am a huge fan of her writing and included her on my 2011 reading list as an excuse to read more of her work.

I chose The Handmaid's Tale because of it's popularity and the fact that the description on the back of the book made absolutely no sense. Offred? The Republic of Gilead? I love reading books that I am intrigued and confused by. As with the other books I've read so far, I made a point not to research it or read any reviews before reading it, so that I can experience it without any preconceptions.

As I started reading, I found myself in the not-too-distant future, where society is structured much like that of the Biblical Old Testament - patriarchal, with women reduced to a status significantly lower than their male counterparts. In the new Republic of Gilead, where the novel takes place, men are employed in a military-style hierarchy ranging from lowly servant types to powerful commanders. Women are categorized by the role they are expected to fill, including Wives (those technically married to the men), Marthas (serving women), Handmaids (young women whose sole job is to reproduce), and Aunts (women who teach the Handmaids). This bizarre reorganization of societal roles emphasizes the new mentality that life is only rules and regulations; no longer are emotions and individual thoughts important. It reminded me a lot of The Giver, the young adult novel where villagers must get permits to have children, jobs and marriages are assigned, and only one person in each generation can see color.

The scariest part of this novel is how quickly the new Republic of Gilead took over, and how creepily plausible the transition from typical American society to cult regime actually was. One day people were going about their lives, the next women were no longer allowed to work or spend money and the soldiers posted nearby were suspiciously wearing unfamiliar uniforms. Atwood created an authentic sense of dystopia, where in contrast to a far-fetched futuristic novel, this featured a situation that actually could happen. All of the characters in the new Gilead, even the men who seem to be in powerful positions, are under the control of some larger organization that quietly gained power and is never discussed. Other than the fact that they employ Eyes as their scouts, we (both the reader and the narrator) know nothing about them.

This unnamed, invisible leadership was a brilliant move by Atwood. They--whoever they are--created a "monotheocracy," as its called in the Historical Notes section, and used religion to back up their new laws and regulations. Biblical scripture is twisted and altered to instate the Handmaids and Marthas (both Biblical references) and to push the female population into submission. But despite the "manifest destiny"-like propaganda that God ordained this rather than the government, the people don't seem to believe it. They're simply afraid of the consequences - and rightly so, for those are also of Biblical proportion. In this new Gilead where punishments that rely on psychology are the norm (such as hangings displayed publicly as examples, or male rapists presented to groups of rallied women for group beatings reminiscent of stonings, it is easier for the characters to repress their memories of the world before and follow the rules, at least on the surface. Under the surface, however, is an entire network of people trying to escape to a life that even remotely resembles the one they knew before.

It is revealed at the end that this book, much like The Blind Assassin, is essentially a nested narrative - the entire book is a transcript of a recorded diary found much later by a society that has thankfully progressed past the "Gilead" stage. This new society, set in 2195 when the outer narrative takes place, looks back at Gilead much like we do pre-Civil War slavery or the Salem witch trials. They study it, teach courses on it in their universities, collect artifacts from the period. There is something unsettling about this future society of 2195 that comes about in their "Historical Notes" epilogue.  In one of the few pop-cultural references say that they "must be grateful for any crumbs that the Goddess of History has deigned to vouchsafe us." They also reference Eurydice, the daughter of Apollo in Greek mythology that dies but is retrieved from the underworld. Is this new society female-centric?

I have so many questions that remain unanswered. What caused the fall of Gilead? Was Offred ever reunited with her daughter? Was anything ever done to memorialize the women objectified by Gildeadeans, or are gaudy things like the "Outdoor Period-Costume Sing-Song" the only way they're remembered? And more importantly, should we stop romanticizing time periods like the Antebellum south and the European medieval era and instead look at the historical atrocities that accompanied them? Should we be careful not to let church and state get entangled so that out-of-context religious rules never become deity-ordained laws? It's been almost a week and I still find myself wondering about this book. As the professor of that contemporary lit class always said, if you find yourself thinking about a movie days after watching it, you know it was good. I think the same thing goes for great novels.

Atonement

I love it when I finish a book and find myself loathing a character. Not just being frustrated at the outcome, or being glad that the book is over, but really, really disliking a character, no matter how empathetic you are expected to be. This doesn’t include typical villains, like Sauron from Lord of the Rings, Voldemort from Harry Potter, or Satan in Paradise Lost; but normal characters that do something so terrible that when the book is finished you really hate them.

I’ve always considered this creation of loathsome characters to be the sign of a great writer. I have a lot of respect for an author who can craft someone in such a fascinating way that in the end I dislike them as much as if they had wronged me personally. One writer I admire for her ability to make me hate her characters is Edith Wharton. The first novel of hers that I read was The House of Mirth, published in 1905. A classic novel of manners dealing with 1890s American aristocracy, the book centered around character Lily Bart, a young woman offered everything, but who causes scandal after scandal, turns her back on the man she loves because he isn’t wealthy, and finally dies of an overdose because she is unhappy. After spending an entire novel watching a spoiled brat complain that her life was too hard, I wasn’t surprised – or sad – when Lily Bart was dead. I remember my kind, grandmotherly literature professor being completely dumbfounded that I wasn’t upset that the character died at the end.


All that to say, the novel I read for February – Atonement by Ian McEwan – is another such book. Like Wharton, McEwan’s prose is beautifully written and captures the life of the upper class of a bygone era. His phrases and descriptions made even the most mundane events, like a puddle drying in the sun, seem simultaneously beautiful, delicate, shameful and heartbreaking. The point of view changed a couple of times, bringing to life the minds of an elderly woman full of regret, a young WWII soldier wrongfully accused, and a pretentious little girl with clarity and detail. All the while making me despise one of the characters.

Unlike Lily Bart, who squandered her life feeling sorry for herself, McEwan’s character Briony Tallis spends her life attemting to make atonement for a terrible mistake she made as a child. One summer as a young girl she oversees the budding romance between her sister Cecilia and Robbie, the son of a family servant. Completely misunderstanding what is going on between them, she considers Robbie a deviant and publicly blames him when a visiting cousin is raped. Because of her witness Robbie is sent to prison and later becomes an English soldier while her sister abandons the family for implicating him and becomes a nurse in spite of her prestigious college education. Eventually Briony grows up and comes back into the storyline again after a lengthy section chronicling Robbie’s war experience and his relationship with his love, Cecilia. Now Briony herself is a nurse, trying to remain tied to Cecilia and Robbie through this choice of profession, and after confronting them to apologize plans to retract her witness statement and clear Robbie’s name.


There the novel abruptly switches, and it is revealed that the entire novel to this point is actually Briony’s final manuscript, finished and ready to publish. She is now in her seventies and is preparing to print her book and set the record straight. As much as I disliked Briony for her eagerness to jump to conclusions and sticking her nose where it didn’t belong in her childhood, it was nothing compared to how much I loathed her in the final pages. There Briony confesses that the end of the novel is false – Cecilia and Robbie did not get back together, but both of them died young without ever seeing each other again. She never apologized or retracted her statement, but instead lived life as a successful writer and penned the book, with the happier ending, as an atonement for her wrongs.


Reading the end of this book I was reminded of another college professor who taught us to remember that the single narrator is action the most unreliable. Without any other testimonies they can easily fool the reader into believing whatever they want them to. Briony is that narrator. Even though in the epilogue she claims to have written in honor of Cecilia and Robbie, it seems to me that she’s really doing all of this to clear her own name. She writes the portion of her transgression so that she is at fault but we are inclined to forgive her due to her childhood innocence. She presumptuously writes about the other characters thinking of her when they are away, and punishes herself by not letting the fictional versions of them forgive her, as if this could make up for never actually telling the truth.

I liked the way this book was written – sort of like last month’s book, with great description, dialogue, and multiple point-of-view changes – but in the end I felt completely duped by Briony’s chracter and hated her; not just for fooling me but for ruining the lives of all the other characters. What is the real truth of what happened? Why was Briony such a coward as to never contact her sister and tell her she had lied? What good was it to write a nice story about them after everyone it effected was dead? 


This book exasperated me, but like I said, making me angry at the characters proves to me what a great writer the author is. Also as the above professor said, a movie or book that continues to stick with you is probably a good one. This one was definitely good.

And on a lighter note, I can finally watch the movie adaptation I bought in the $5 bin a few years ago!