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shadowkatWhy is it that I can remember some books regardless of how long ago that I read them or for that matter how much I liked them, vividly. To the point that I could have read them an hour ago. While others, I can barely remember the title let alone what happened? Or I'll remember the plot, the characters vividly, but not the time period in which it was set?
Memory is an odd thing. My Granny can remember what happened during the depression - in meticulous detail, as if she were watching it in front of her eyes, but she cannot remember what she had for lunch or what we just said or if we had Christmas yet.
I'm pondering this as the result of a brief discussion I had with a poster on a review I wrote of Blood & Iron. The discussion was on another book - Perilious Guard, which I can remember the name of, the plot of, the characters, what happens, even the illustrations in the novel, but for the life of me cannot remember the author or what time period it was set in, except that people lived in castles, traveled by horse and carriage, it was in Wales, and there was a King or Queen on the throne. Granted I read it over 20 years ago. But I remember it better than portions of well, Harry Potter. Or for that matter whatever book I was reading last year at this time. Tried to do a list of the books I enjoyed most in 2007 - only to realize I couldn't remember half of them. They'd somehow all blurred together in my memory. I remember snatchs here and there. Atonement - a book I despised - sticks better. I still remember snatchs of it - and no, I have not seen the film. Same with Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow - can remember that entire book as if I read it yesterday. I remember it better than the last two books I finished.
There are also fanfics I remember well - two. One by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
wisteria and one by herself_nyc. Both have cars in them. Both dealt with the complicated emotions of two people who cared deeply for one another, yet were at odds. Both are angsty. Can't remember the title of the one by wisteria, just what happens. And I get it confused at times with the one by herself_nyc. The Herself_nyc one was "Whatever She Deserves". I think what intrigued me about both stories was the difficult emotions, the messiness. They both dealt with a vampire who had attempted to rape a woman he loved and how he felt about it after he got a soul, not to mention how she felt about it. The stories were brutal.
And... when I think about it - the books that stick with me and that I have a violent emotional reaction to are much the same as the films and tv shows that stick. They are similar to the types of stories I like to write.
Years ago, a creative writing teacher that I had in college, told me something that I've never forgotten. He said - "You are an interesting writer. You want to explore and investigate the ambiguity of the messy, difficult, and nasty emotions people have and shine a light on them. Figure them out."
He said this after reading several of my stories. They dealt with: 1) a man witnesses an annoying elderly woman, who reminds him of his beloved mother, dying on a plane and struggles with his own desire for his sick and elderly mother's death and his subsequent guilt regarding that desire. The fact that his mother was kind to him and he loves her, makes the desire that much harder to deal with. But she is a problem. And it would be easier if she were gone. And he hates himself for thinking that. 2)a young girl on a road trip with her first boyfriend/first love struggles with the pressure to have sex (when she's hot, sweaty and uncomfortable and hasn't had it before) and the realization that he probably doesn't really love her and they don't work, while she's stuck in the back of a pick-up truck with him on Donner Pass. She's also struggling with her own guilt regarding the relationship. 3)a boy lonely and away from home, at college, estranged from his girlfriend who got into another school, sends notes to inanimate objects in his dorm room and to his sister. 4) a boy and his mentally challenged brother kills the boy's best friend in a gruesome manner after learning of that friend's betrayal.
The two fanfic's thatherself_nyc wrote that stuck with me - both explored self-loathing and guilt in a brutal physical manner. One disappointed me - because she appeared to give in to the desire to turn it into a romance, when it was anything but. It was almost as if she gave in to her own fantasy - the worst thing a writer can do in my opinion - but that is only because I fear that I am guilty of it and we often hate that in another's work that we hate in our own. It is admittedly my own failing. The novels I've written, often fall short, because of that tendency. Except for the last one - I did not give in to my fantasies in my most recent novel - which may be why it was the hardest for me to complete. It is easier to write one's fantasies, much harder to write one's reality, methinks.
This is true with published fiction as well - I see it all the time in genre stories, less so in literary ones. Which explains why genre isn't taken as seriously, I suppose. Blood and Iron felt at times as if the writer was giving in to her own fantasies - specifically regarding horses. And Kim Harrison's novels - also felt like that at times (except with vampires not horses). As did Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens - where the writers got carried away with their own cleveriness. Clearly this tendency does not prevent one from being published, let alone read or adored - since many readers do. Perhaps the reader likes the indulgence, the ability to fall into fantasy? Heck, Harry Potter would have been less realistic if everyone survived, but more comforting.
It's not that I don't like those types of stories. I obviously do. The mere fact that I've read so many of them is certainly evidence of it. We all need to escape once and awhile after all. And for me, the best escape hatch has always been through a story regardless of its medium, although books remain my favorite. But, but... I remember better the stories that explore something a bit deeper. Those difficult emotions. Stories that are uncomfortable or are comfortable because the characters in them share and act on difficult/nasty/uncomfortable emotions we ourselves feel. Make mistakes, we would make , because of them. And suffer consequences that we suffer, yet somehow still survive intact like we do. Not dysfunctional family stories - such as the one's Oprah has made famous and unfortunately are all too prevalent, but smaller stories, ones that examine these emotions in people who do not have dysfunctional families per se.
This desire - often places me in a minority when it comes to reading. I found that I was the only one online for example that enjoyed Herself's creation of a squicky, self-loathing Spike in Vietnam, a vampire who had become human and despised himself as well as Buffy. And a Buffy, who did not know how to handle this creature. Or even if she loved it. The ambiguity of the relationship, the squickiness of it. It was uncomfortable. Atonement - a book I hated, at the same time haunts me, because it deals with the difficult emotion of guilt and the attempt to not feel it, to make oneself better, to hide. It is a haunting book because it talks about how one uses fantasy to lie to oneself, to shroud the truth, and the effects of doing it. Great Gatsby also haunts me - because it is about a man who much like the female writer (Briony) in Atonement, attempts to reinvent himself and retell his life through comforting lies with quite different yet similarily tragic results. Neither it seems are entirely able to escape themselves. The best they can do is somehow blur the line between fantasy and reality in their own and others memories. It is also, like Atonement, about class and the impossibility of ever quite fitting in. Both take place during similar time periods, but one is in the US and one is UK.
The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell - is about a priest who has lost all faith in God, and in people, and in himself. Which wouldn't be so startling, if he hadn't started out as a "true believer" or incredibly devout. Devoted. The story is about how he changed and why. It is also about how cultural anthropologists can destroy the culture they are studying with the best of intentions. But most haunting of all - it discusses a cultural practice that we may find horrendous (eating sentinent life forms), but may not be so horrendous in that other culture - since it keeps everything in balance on that world. The book never answers the question - what is morality? And is it right to impose our own sense of morality onto someone else - is that moral?
Each of these books asks what does it mean to be human. How do we handle these emotions? How do we deal with the contradiction of being alone in our bodies yet social animals? How do we handle being self-absorbed and selfish creatures by necessity yet at the same time in denile over it, hating the fact that we are selfish? How do we determine meaning? And how do we determine right from wrong? What makes one person a killer and another a savior? How do we handle our imperfections?
I've always for some reason or other been more interested in reading about the imperfections than the perfections. Perfect characters seem to either bore me or I forget them. I like deeply flawed ones. The character of Spike intrigued me for all the reasons other's appeared to despise him. I found him a mass of contradictions. Yet, I'm inconsistent. I found I could not tolerate the character of Briony in Atonement. And I wonder if perhaps her villainy hit too close to home? While Spike's felt like discovering an unknown orgasism? I don't know.
I don't know. Time to go to bed. I've rambled here long enough.
Memory is an odd thing. My Granny can remember what happened during the depression - in meticulous detail, as if she were watching it in front of her eyes, but she cannot remember what she had for lunch or what we just said or if we had Christmas yet.
I'm pondering this as the result of a brief discussion I had with a poster on a review I wrote of Blood & Iron. The discussion was on another book - Perilious Guard, which I can remember the name of, the plot of, the characters, what happens, even the illustrations in the novel, but for the life of me cannot remember the author or what time period it was set in, except that people lived in castles, traveled by horse and carriage, it was in Wales, and there was a King or Queen on the throne. Granted I read it over 20 years ago. But I remember it better than portions of well, Harry Potter. Or for that matter whatever book I was reading last year at this time. Tried to do a list of the books I enjoyed most in 2007 - only to realize I couldn't remember half of them. They'd somehow all blurred together in my memory. I remember snatchs here and there. Atonement - a book I despised - sticks better. I still remember snatchs of it - and no, I have not seen the film. Same with Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow - can remember that entire book as if I read it yesterday. I remember it better than the last two books I finished.
There are also fanfics I remember well - two. One by
wisteria and one by herself_nyc. Both have cars in them. Both dealt with the complicated emotions of two people who cared deeply for one another, yet were at odds. Both are angsty. Can't remember the title of the one by wisteria, just what happens. And I get it confused at times with the one by herself_nyc. The Herself_nyc one was "Whatever She Deserves". I think what intrigued me about both stories was the difficult emotions, the messiness. They both dealt with a vampire who had attempted to rape a woman he loved and how he felt about it after he got a soul, not to mention how she felt about it. The stories were brutal. And... when I think about it - the books that stick with me and that I have a violent emotional reaction to are much the same as the films and tv shows that stick. They are similar to the types of stories I like to write.
Years ago, a creative writing teacher that I had in college, told me something that I've never forgotten. He said - "You are an interesting writer. You want to explore and investigate the ambiguity of the messy, difficult, and nasty emotions people have and shine a light on them. Figure them out."
He said this after reading several of my stories. They dealt with: 1) a man witnesses an annoying elderly woman, who reminds him of his beloved mother, dying on a plane and struggles with his own desire for his sick and elderly mother's death and his subsequent guilt regarding that desire. The fact that his mother was kind to him and he loves her, makes the desire that much harder to deal with. But she is a problem. And it would be easier if she were gone. And he hates himself for thinking that. 2)a young girl on a road trip with her first boyfriend/first love struggles with the pressure to have sex (when she's hot, sweaty and uncomfortable and hasn't had it before) and the realization that he probably doesn't really love her and they don't work, while she's stuck in the back of a pick-up truck with him on Donner Pass. She's also struggling with her own guilt regarding the relationship. 3)a boy lonely and away from home, at college, estranged from his girlfriend who got into another school, sends notes to inanimate objects in his dorm room and to his sister. 4) a boy and his mentally challenged brother kills the boy's best friend in a gruesome manner after learning of that friend's betrayal.
The two fanfic's that
herself_nyc wrote that stuck with me - both explored self-loathing and guilt in a brutal physical manner. One disappointed me - because she appeared to give in to the desire to turn it into a romance, when it was anything but. It was almost as if she gave in to her own fantasy - the worst thing a writer can do in my opinion - but that is only because I fear that I am guilty of it and we often hate that in another's work that we hate in our own. It is admittedly my own failing. The novels I've written, often fall short, because of that tendency. Except for the last one - I did not give in to my fantasies in my most recent novel - which may be why it was the hardest for me to complete. It is easier to write one's fantasies, much harder to write one's reality, methinks. This is true with published fiction as well - I see it all the time in genre stories, less so in literary ones. Which explains why genre isn't taken as seriously, I suppose. Blood and Iron felt at times as if the writer was giving in to her own fantasies - specifically regarding horses. And Kim Harrison's novels - also felt like that at times (except with vampires not horses). As did Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens - where the writers got carried away with their own cleveriness. Clearly this tendency does not prevent one from being published, let alone read or adored - since many readers do. Perhaps the reader likes the indulgence, the ability to fall into fantasy? Heck, Harry Potter would have been less realistic if everyone survived, but more comforting.
It's not that I don't like those types of stories. I obviously do. The mere fact that I've read so many of them is certainly evidence of it. We all need to escape once and awhile after all. And for me, the best escape hatch has always been through a story regardless of its medium, although books remain my favorite. But, but... I remember better the stories that explore something a bit deeper. Those difficult emotions. Stories that are uncomfortable or are comfortable because the characters in them share and act on difficult/nasty/uncomfortable emotions we ourselves feel. Make mistakes, we would make , because of them. And suffer consequences that we suffer, yet somehow still survive intact like we do. Not dysfunctional family stories - such as the one's Oprah has made famous and unfortunately are all too prevalent, but smaller stories, ones that examine these emotions in people who do not have dysfunctional families per se.
This desire - often places me in a minority when it comes to reading. I found that I was the only one online for example that enjoyed Herself's creation of a squicky, self-loathing Spike in Vietnam, a vampire who had become human and despised himself as well as Buffy. And a Buffy, who did not know how to handle this creature. Or even if she loved it. The ambiguity of the relationship, the squickiness of it. It was uncomfortable. Atonement - a book I hated, at the same time haunts me, because it deals with the difficult emotion of guilt and the attempt to not feel it, to make oneself better, to hide. It is a haunting book because it talks about how one uses fantasy to lie to oneself, to shroud the truth, and the effects of doing it. Great Gatsby also haunts me - because it is about a man who much like the female writer (Briony) in Atonement, attempts to reinvent himself and retell his life through comforting lies with quite different yet similarily tragic results. Neither it seems are entirely able to escape themselves. The best they can do is somehow blur the line between fantasy and reality in their own and others memories. It is also, like Atonement, about class and the impossibility of ever quite fitting in. Both take place during similar time periods, but one is in the US and one is UK.
The Sparrow by Maria Doria Russell - is about a priest who has lost all faith in God, and in people, and in himself. Which wouldn't be so startling, if he hadn't started out as a "true believer" or incredibly devout. Devoted. The story is about how he changed and why. It is also about how cultural anthropologists can destroy the culture they are studying with the best of intentions. But most haunting of all - it discusses a cultural practice that we may find horrendous (eating sentinent life forms), but may not be so horrendous in that other culture - since it keeps everything in balance on that world. The book never answers the question - what is morality? And is it right to impose our own sense of morality onto someone else - is that moral?
Each of these books asks what does it mean to be human. How do we handle these emotions? How do we deal with the contradiction of being alone in our bodies yet social animals? How do we handle being self-absorbed and selfish creatures by necessity yet at the same time in denile over it, hating the fact that we are selfish? How do we determine meaning? And how do we determine right from wrong? What makes one person a killer and another a savior? How do we handle our imperfections?
I've always for some reason or other been more interested in reading about the imperfections than the perfections. Perfect characters seem to either bore me or I forget them. I like deeply flawed ones. The character of Spike intrigued me for all the reasons other's appeared to despise him. I found him a mass of contradictions. Yet, I'm inconsistent. I found I could not tolerate the character of Briony in Atonement. And I wonder if perhaps her villainy hit too close to home? While Spike's felt like discovering an unknown orgasism? I don't know.
I don't know. Time to go to bed. I've rambled here long enough.
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This post struck a chord with me...so pardon while I ramble on.
Date: 2008-01-23 04:40 pm (UTC)Weirdly, what angers me the most about my carelessness is the loss of a spreadsheet wherein I'd tracked every book, fanfic, and video I've read over the past decade (partly so that I didn't accidentally start re-reading things when my memory was poor...which is often). Losing it felt like a negation of all those years of media engagement. Silly, but that's how I feel.
What if I want to recreate >10 years' worth of fanfic memories? It's not that I had so many stored (maybe 50?) but I've read (or begun to read) thousands. I know I'll eventually remember and regather my favorites, but it IS interesting that I have vivid memories of plenty of fanfic that I don't actually like all that much; Herself is a great example...she writes, with memorable power and skill, stories that I often actively dislike. This doesn't negate the fact that, as you say, "Lovingkindness", "What She Deserves", and that human-Spike-in-Vietnam story burn in the memory. You've just gotta salute that level of skill.
As you say, it's a mystery how it all works for the reader. And what about for the writers? Would you rather be read, remembered, and hated? Or read, forgotten, and liked?
Yet I know that I had fic saved for which I have no memory of author or title, only that when I would occasionally re-read it, I'd love it. Then it would fade out of my mind until the next time I noticed it in my fanfic file. Weird.
I read about 45 books this past year and, of course, can now remember only half of those, and that bugs the CRAP out of me. It's funny you mention "Atonement"; I read it this year in prep for the movie and it blew my mind. Haunts me. Author had control of every tiniest nuance...pitch-perfect writing, IMO. But did I like it? Hard to say. Structurally, it's very odd and disjointed(purposefully so) and it's totally unsatisifying as a story. Did it do what the author intended? I suspect, yes.
I have no idea why some things resonate. I first read "The English Patient" about 5 years prior to the film being made. I was busy in college, distracted, not really in the mood for such a poetic and structurally challenging book. I was confused for the first half, not really engaged, then began to fall under the spell of the book. Finished it thinking, "really interesting" not "I loved it". Yet I could NOT forget it. Months went by and I found lines and images burning in my head. Re-read it, and fell madly in love. Rec'd it to everyone I knew, and most of them had the same reaction.
How does that happen? Why does it happen? It's not like that book knocked me on my ass within 5 pages, like "Atonement" did?
Re: This post struck a chord with me...so pardon while I ramble on.
Date: 2008-01-24 02:28 am (UTC)Atonement was a book I had to read for a book club I'd been doing at the time, which has long since disbanded. I remember having the same reaction to its first fifty pages that I did for another book club selection House of Sand and Fog. I threw it across the room and into the wall, rather violently. Ranted at the characters. And ended up scanning the book to see if it got better, if I got my satisfaction. It didn't.
So...I think I skimmed the middle section and read the beginning and last sections thoroughly. (The part about the war just did not work for me.) I left the book, annoyed and angry. Never wanting to look at it again.
Meanwhile - everyone in the book club adored it. Loved the character of Briony. Who I wanted to see dead. I hated her that badly.
I have no idea what it was in the author's prose that caused this reaction. But, I find it interesting that of all the books we read that year - and we read quite a few, not to mention the books in the years after that one...this book is amongst the few that I remember.
A friend of mine had a similar experience with The Sparrow - she hated the book, but could not stop reading it or thinking about it. And it haunts her to this day.
Yet, the Harry Potter novels that always leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling after I've read them? I forget. I call them happy books.
Much like the fanfic you reference that you read to make you happy, but can't seem to remember.
I don't know why that is?
Odd, I did like the Herself stories that you listed. I think because they were *anti-romances* or *offensive romances*. Also, she is adept at describing physical pain, which is a skill I admire and like in writing. She's also an interesting writer - she often, or at least she used to, focus on the body's flaws, its ickiness, the ugly part of sex. I'll never forget a scene in her fanfic - "Where They Always Have To Take You In" - where Spike is briefly made human and literally throws up on Buffy while they are having sex. It is amongst the most disgusting sex scenes I've read, yet at the same time amongst the most intriguing. It's also a brave scene for a writer to write - akin to walking on a tightrope.
Re: This post struck a chord with me...so pardon while I ramble on.
Date: 2008-01-24 04:25 am (UTC)I could totally understand you hating "Atonement." Unlikeable main character plus totally manipulative meta-type story resolution. As I said, I'm not sure I liked it, exactly. But it's definitely unforgettable; in fact, as soon as I was done with it I turned to page 1 and re-read most of it a second time.
I also don't think it's odd you liked the listed fanfics; just as I found much to intrigue me in "Atonement" there is much to admire in Herself's writing. Frustration with, or dislike of, her work only illustrates a bigger conundrum: from a writer's perspective, is it better to produce polarizing work that a good portion of the potential audience reads, even if they find it "difficult" or flawed? Or is it better to produce benign, unchallenging, pleasant text with which only a sliver of the potential audience engages, while everyone else forgets it within minutes of reading it? And what is more satisfying for the reader? It varies by the moment, I suspect. Although, I know that I certainly engage much more with challenging text, whether that challenge is positive or negative. Sometimes the challenge ends with the old "throw the thing across the room and curse" response, and sometimes with a passionate love affair.
Ah, reading. Good times, good times.
Been meaning to read "The Sparrow" for years. Will have to check it out.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-26 03:55 am (UTC)Painful sticks in my mind too. Fluffy things blend and are forgotten so easily that I occasionally buy a book I find I've already read when I get home. I lack an organized list like wenchsenior. Condolences on the loss of that. I can imagine how awful that must be.
It's not a book that came to mind when I was reading your post about difficult emotions, however, but a play.
"Wit" was hard to watch but I couldn't tear my eyes away from it. I'm so glad I didn't see the play when it was near me, because had I taken my husband he'd have killed me. As it was, after the movie, which I watched alone, I think I curled up in a ball on the couch and responded in monosyllables for the rest of the evening.
The journey from analyzing Donne to (I think it was and won't watch again to check) listening to The Runaway Bunny being read aloud was so intense. It's true, when you're terribly sick, the last thing you want is to have to think. You crave the simple and the comforting. I think I've forgotten some of the movie as self preservation, but the bunny book sticks with me.
Sorry, I've been carrying that play with me ever since I saw it and never had anyone to talk to about it.
ANYWAY. I need the Kim Harrisons to give in to their fantasies and create something escapist (Note: I haven't read all of her books so I don't know if they've gotten really silly...well...sillier). I need the fluffy, brain candy to counterbalance the serious stuff. Those purely entertainment books are as necessary and valuable as the memorable, thoughtful ones because they enable me to read the tough ones without lingering too long in the mindset afterwards. Um...like palate cleansers for the brain. Yummy, sweet sorbet nothings that melt away on the tongue.
But I can understand your disappointment at something that starts out deep and later wades into shallow waters for a happy, and disjointed, ending.
The reason I responded to this (besides the fact that I thought it was a very interesting post) was because coincidentally, my friend just recommended The Sparrow (I'm awful at LJ, so no italics for me) to me last week and I've been tiptoeing around getting it ever since. He said, "You know how we read some books and think oh, I could have written something like that**? Well, not this one." He was blown away by it. I'm just wondering how much candy will be needed for afterwards. I have a tight book budget at the moment and my local library is small.
Hope you don't mind a long-winded post from someone you don't know!
Thanks for your brief summary of The Sparrow. I think I'll risk it after all. You've made me curious about Atonement too. Now I sort of want to see if I'll be wishing Briony dead too. I'm wondering what she did or said to make you hate her so much. Think I'll get that one from the library and try not to dent the walls with it.
-Jane
**Neither of us has written anything published; we're just fooling ourselves :)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-26 02:49 pm (UTC)I've seen "Wit", albeit a long time ago when I still subscribed to HBO with Emma Thompson in the lead. It may be amongst her best performances. And I think I've read the play.
It is haunting and gut-wrenching. I've forgotten most of it - such as the analysis of Donne and the Runaway Bunny.
What I remember is the endless series of medical procedures, how she was treated like little more than an inanimate object to be prodded and examined than a person. And she handled that process. How impersonal the medical were. To the point in which they almost don't register, they might as well be robots. That's what I remember from it - and I
think her slow deteriotation.
The play gets across the horror of being sick and going to the hospital so well, that you cringe during it and want to turn away. The Donne poem was "Death Be Not Proud" - I think.
There's another play - a more sentimental one that uses it. Wit is better because it does not sentimentalize its subject and too often people do. It's what made that episode of BTVS, "The Body" so memorable - it lacked the sentiment that you so often find in stories of this nature. One of my favorite scenes in that episode is a simple one - Dawn is in art class being told to draw the space around the form of a woman - or the negative space, so the woman at the center become the gap - her absence from the space startling because of it. That's when Dawn is told by Buffy. But we don't hear the telling - instead we watch it with Dawn's classmates through the window, and merely see her reaction. It's how the writer/filmmaker chose to depict the scene that resonates. If he'd chosen what most people do - which is for us to hear Buffy tell Dawn in her home or a counselors office - it wouldn't resonate in quite the same way.
Also he chooses to focus on the drawing Dawn has done - of the negative space around the object as opposed to the crying Dawn as his last shot in that section of the episode. So what we see is the outline of a woman -a blank hole in stark contrast to everything surrounding her ironically bringing their need of her into sharper focus, yet at the same time who she is in less distinct focus- a perfect metaphor for death.
The Sparrow is an odd book different from her other ones. And much better than it's sequel.
Be curious to see what you think of it. Not everyone likes it. It's a bit gut-wrenching in places. Certainly memorable. Can your friend lend you their copy? Or maybe you can order through inter-library loan?
Atonement - ah. I had a lot of problems with that book. But I can't really go into them without spoiling you. What I can say is I'm in a minority regarding my problems with it.
I didn't like any of the characters, and really did not like Briony's family. At the same time - it is a book that stays with you.
And it well-written. Deftly so. Check it out from the library, don't buy it.
Thanks again for your response, Jane. I enjoyed reading it.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 04:29 am (UTC)Hmmm. Oddly, I've watched The Body only once and...I hated it. I think I know exactly why, though. I watched Buffy one after another on DVDs long after the show aired and to go from fairly lighthearted to the Joyce story arc was a weird shift. Kind of how you felt getting a happy ending in your angst! I should watch it again.
Sorry for the lateness of this reply. I was waiting for Atonement to be checked back in to the library. I could have bought it, but I'm trying not to buy books I may hate. The shelves overflow onto other surfaces and rooms as it is and yeah...budgeting now, too. Before I had my son, I lived that Desiderius Erasmus quote: "When I get a little money, I buy books. And if there's any left over, I buy food." Now, not as much. I picked up The Sparrow too, but have yet to start it.
I also read the latest two Kim Harrison books (your post reminded me I hadn't looked for new ones lately) and I didn't enjoy them as much as the first few, I have to say. Are they churning those out or what? She needs a better editor. There were a bunch of wince-worthy typos and homophone errors. Though at least she didn't go the Laurell K. Hamilton route of ridiculousness yet. I'm ashamed to say I read at least one book too many in that series. I hoped it would get better.
(Continued in next post. Hmm. How to know you said too much...exceed the word count.)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-04 04:30 am (UTC)Even supposedly repentant, older and wiser Briony, changes the ending to one that better suits her (whatever reasoning she gives for it). The letter of events of that night that she has Robbie assign to her character struck me too; I think it's the fact that it's a task of words and so a reiteration of how she, God-like while writing, thinks she can wrest her world back into perfection (her version). Even the thought of her masterful letter-to-be softens book-Robbie into the hint of possible forgiveness to come, or at least lessens his anger.
I hadn't been at all spoiled for the story, so I didn't know what was coming. I honestly thought she might murder someone to have a wonderful dramatic centerstage moment or to fix/adjust something in her perfect world. I was worried about something happening to the twins if they messed up the play!
I found the war section jarring and read through it pretty quickly. All of a sudden the reader is taken out of this family drama and into the horrors of war and a journey of unlikely companions. Seemed like most of it belonged in a different book to me, at least at the length and detail that it was, but what do I know. :)
I agree with wenchsenior that it was unsatisfying as a story. Are we supposed to like Briony at the end? Are we supposed to think that growing up and the experiences she had as a nurse changed her that much as a person? Are we supposed to forgive her because she wishes they'd lived happily ever after and makes it so in her version? I didn't. I still saw her starring in her own self-created dramas at the hospital (as the poor, penitent nurse) and in the epilogue (as the respected novelist at the family gathering). The scene with the young soldier was touching though. But I wanted her to at least face down Lola and make her admit her part in the whole thing and she backed off both times she saw her, which was...yeah...unsatisfying.
I liked Robbie. Maybe because, of course, I felt sorry for him. I didn't like the family much at all either, barring the twins, but I don't think we're supposed to, are we? I mean, Cecilia is the only sort of likeable one and I'm not sure I forgave her for not beating the truth out of Briony! Not literally...well...maybe even literally. Or doing SOMETHING. The skip in time after the arrest was frustrating to me; I pictured Cecilia fluttering her hands in dismay, giving up and resigning herself to letter writing. Loyal maybe, but not someone I'd necessarily want in my corner in a horrible situation. I'd say that's my modern mindset, but she's not entirely conventional at least according to her mother, so... Even the ever so amiable Leon drops his friend in a hurry.
Thanks for intriguing me enough to read it. It was worth reading. Let me know if it's bad LJ etiquette to reply to old posts and I won't ramble about The Sparrow when I'm done. :)
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Date: 2008-02-05 01:55 am (UTC)Regarding Atonement - I had more or less the same response you did to the characters. And while I think the book is well-written, I consider it over-rated. I've seen the "unreliable" point of view gimmick done before. And the concept of a writer rewriting his/her own history to benefit themselves is hardly new. So the gimmick did not blow my mind or thrill me. It sort of annoyed me. I don't like "gimmicks" in story-telling - I find them to be akin to a writer showing off, as opposed to knuckling down and telling a story. Also the problem with gimmicks is often they are at the deteriment of the characters and story. The book or film or show becomes all about the gimmick, with the writer tweaking things in order to fit his/her gimmick. It's a personal pet peeve, I think.
At any rate - when I figured out the gimmick, I remember thinking - "clever. But. so what" - tell me an interesting story, give me characters I can care about, some ambiguity, as opposed to a group of unlikable people with obvious motivations.
The writer - who is clearly a good writer, is also a very cold one who does not appear to like people very much and judges them harshly. He writes Briony in such a way that I found it impossible to care about her. McEwan is not a writer that I'll read again and I felt no compulsion to re-read Atonement or see the film.
My book club completely disagreed with me. (As did the online one - a bunch of folks on a fanboard I was on back in 2003-2004 went nutty over it too.) The offline one found Briony complex and sympathetic. She was, they said, a confused imaginative and somewhat jealous girl - who did a horrible thing, and was able to rationalize it. It wasn't until later, when she saw the consequences of that action that she tried to undo it but couldn't, so wrote her story as a means of handling the guilt.
I didn't see that. But they did. And from the previews I've seen of the film - I think that is the filmmaker's perspective on the story as well. The story I saw was a lot darker. And Briony - less redeemable or likable.
It's been a while since I've read it - but your description fits the one I gave a friend, who asked me about it - but made it clear she did not want to read it or see the movie - she just wanted to know what it was about.
Curious to see what you think of The Sparrow.
That's another odd book - people either love it to pieces or really hate it.