Reviews...

Oh this is just annoying, I was halfway through a fairly decent post and accidently hit something on the favorites list on the side of my computer and lost the entire post. Did however discover rich text mode, which explains how people have been italicizing, bolding, etc without giving themselves carpal tunnel syndrom.

Yesterday read a fascinating review by coffeeandink on the recent Broadway revivial of  Sweeny Tood, which she correctly notes is more of a reinterpretation of the musical than a revival. Her review is the only review I've read, and I've read about six or seven so far [yes, I've become obsessed with reading Sweeny Todd reviews, I have no understanding why...but they fascinate me], that provides the reader with an objective overview. You are given just enough information to know whether this musical is going to be your cup of tea, no more or less. Often after reading a review, I feel I know more about the reviewer than the item being reviewed. As if they are projecting their opinion on to me and damn-it, I must agree with them. Coffeeandink's review of Todd, let's me choose for myself. She states clearly and conscisly how the musical is reinterpreted. It is neither good nor bad, and whether you like it has a great deal to do with personal taste and how you wish to view it. I'd linke to her review if I could figure out how. Have tried this linking button twice now and it does not work.

Review of "My Dream of You"

Speaking of reviews, I finally finished Nuala O'Faolain's first novel, My Dream of You.  First a bit of background on the novelist.She is a columnist for The Irish Times and lives in Dublin and County Clare. My Dream of You is her first novel. The book she published prior to this work, Are You Somebody, was a memoir - which I sort of see as a non-fiction/fiction combo, since memory embellishes and is often inaccurate. But then, fiction can also fall into that category, writer's do blend bits and pieces of their own experience, own knowledge, and those of people they've known into their fiction. So I guess making generalizations one way or the other is a bit dangerous. Actually, I'm learning that making generalizations and assumptions based on generalizations does not work. Someone will always find an exception. But I digress. Found a photo of the author on this site, along with excerpts from a radio chat on Morning Edition.Go here:

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2001/mar/010314.ofaolain.html

She states in one excerpt that her intent behind the novel was to explore a middle-aged woman's feeling of regret and difficulty with accepting the loss of the attractiveness of the body and passion of the body, and how you say goodbye to that.

In another interview - this one a written interview on Bookpage - go here: http://www.bookpage.com/0102bp/nuala_ofaolain.html

O'Faolain ( pronounced oh-FWAY-lun) states: "There's a new part of life now for women between 45 and 70," said O'Faolain. "The rest of the world is still looking on aghast -- these women are elderly -- but we're girls inside. We want love, the big thing, the wipeout, the shaking knees. A lot of other people might think it's unseemly to go 'round with their heart on their sleeves, but life's short, and I'm not going to bother my head about seemliness." She goes on to say, "the teeming regret for the end of passion and the end of being perceived sexually. It was almost shameful," said the author. "I do believe that was the deepest thing at work in me."

That at any rate is the novel's underlying theme according to the author. And having read it, I'd have to go along with that. The story is told in a somewhat defensive stream-of-consciousness narrative structure. We are completely in the protagonist , Kathleen de Burca's point of view. Stream of consciousness narrative style tends to place the reader within the head of the protagonist, literally. You see with their eyes, think with their thoughts, hear with their ears - or as close as a writer can possibly get to relaying that sensation of being inside someone else's thoughts. And thoughts don't tumble out in a straight-forward sort of way. They aren't linear in structure. We flash back to things in our distant past, then the next moment focus on something right in front of us, and the next dream of something unrelated to us altogether. The underlying pattern, if there is one, is usually around an emotion or pang we are circling around, trying to figure out. At least that is how the narrative structure works in My Dream of You. An apt title - since the books is about dreams - unrealized dreams of relationships, people, that the narrator either fantasizes about or has regrets regarding. We get bits and pieces of key events in her life, that explain why she does what she is doing now - demonstrating, like it or not, that the past or rather how we remember our past and experienced our past - influences the choices we make today.

The story's plot is fairly simple in structure - since this not an exterior so much as an internal novel. The climatic points are not external events, but rather internal ones within the character. Choices the character makes that change her and do affect those around her. The book is what I would call, a "why" book not so much a "what" one. It's not "what" happens next that interests the author, so much as "why" and if there is any reason outside of the one we give it. How much, the author asks, do we really know about someone else? Can we know? How well can we understand what happened in the distant past? The author, herself, according to the Morning Edition chat, has little patience for historical novels - feeling perhaps much like her heroine in this novel that history is not something we can retell or remember truthfully, there will always be embellishments, gaps, uncertainites. And that is another inter-locking theme.

Kathleen de Burca returns to her native Ireland to research a legendary and somewhat infamous divorce case. The case is called the Talbot Case and involves a English woman accused by her husband of adultress relations with their driver, an Irish servant, name Mullan. It took place back in 1848 during or rather at the tail end of the Irish Potatoe Famine, which is also featured heavily in the novel. Kathleen is not interested in the class issues or really the faminine itself, so much as the romantic relationship between Mullan and Mrs. Talbot. Were they lovers? She imagines them as such and writes an erotic piece of fiction about them. She views passion as being closely associated with pleasuring the body and attractiveness of the body and how being a woman is linked to that. Also at the same time, struggling with the choices she's made in her own life, the choice not to get married, have children, live the life her mother did and instead be a single woman, working as a travel writer abroad. Struggling with the lack of a true passionate love in her life - now at 49, she worries if she will ever find it. If she can handle the idea of not finding it. Through her examination of the in's and out's of the divorce case, which does not turn out quite as one would expect - Kathleen comes to terms with her own issues regarding passion and the possible loss of it.

The book is beautiful in places but in my opinion, somewhat flawed. The narration feels almost too defensive - as if the writer is attempting to justify her own character's attractiveness. Throughout the book, Kathleen is described as beautiful or astonishingly attractive. This made it difficult for me at times to feel sympathy for the character or to identify. Since I was in her head, I found the comments more off-putting and vain then the writer may have intended. Also quite jarring at times. Almost as if the author could not imagine this woman having the life she had, if she had been anything less than drop-dead goregous, which simply isn't true. Years ago, a writing teacher once warned me about the pitfalls of writing in first person - "if you aren't careful you'll put too much of yourself in your novel and we tend to describe ourselves as either perfect/too good to be true, or horrendous. " Genre and fan-fiction writers have come up with a much quicker way of describing this pit-fall - "Mary Sue" or "Marty Sue" if a man. When it happens the narrator feels a bit on the hollow side. The reader stops identifying with them and begins to race through the prose, looking for a way out.

O'Faolain's writing, which is beautiful in places, and her other characters save the story. I was compelled to finish. And did identify with the lead, even if she annoyed me at times due to her "Mary Sueness", which may be due to the fact that this is O'Faolain's first fictional novel, her previous work being a memoir. The book haunts you with its themes - interlocking the theme of past regrets with the desire and need to move forward. The idea of letting go of old dreams and finding new ones - I found very appealing. So in part my enjoyment of it and desire to read it, had much to do with my own frame of mind.

The other flaw in the novel is O'Faolain falls into the same trap many stream of consciousness writers do - which is she goes on too long and seems to fall in love with her own prose. I scanned quite a bit of this novel, literally skimming whole paragraphs, because unlike William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, which I read shortly before this one, not every word is needed nor counts. Words seem at times to overflow the pages, much like a flood, catching the reader unawares. You want to leap ahead. This happens most when the writer focuses on what is occuring in Kathleen's present or her family life. The book settles down whenever the Talbot Case is front and center - and I will admit, it was the Talbot Case that keeps me hooked. Kathleen's own family background and own life feel somewhat cliched in comparision. And molded by the author to reflect the struggles of women in both Ireland and in the Case itself. You do sense the author's manipulation in places. Not all the time. Just here and there.

Do I recommend? Depends on what you like, I suppose. It was a fascinating book and will haunt me for a while, but a flawed one. Do not see myself reading another novel by this author. But then, I seldom read novels by the same novelist. I tend to skip around. Very eclectic reader.

Next book will either be Soul Mountain or Bridge of Birds.

( five positive things )