Books...

[shadowkat]

My mother keeps discussing Kate Atkinson's novel Life After Life with me over the phone. All I can say is the reviews online have been misleading. I thought it was a novel about a woman who keeps dying and gets born again, or something similar to Jonathan Carroll's Marriage of Sticks. But apparently not. It appears to be more in the what-if this happened instead of that vienne. At any rate, it sounds like a very confusing book.


Me: So it's like Ground-hog day?
Mother: No. It's more...a what-if scenario. See she dies of the influenza. Then in the next chapter, she doesn't die, because someone prevented her from going to London. And then in the next chapter, she drowns. Then the next chapter, she doesn't drown - because someone saved her.
Mother: And the novel starts off with her shooting someone.
Me: So, it's showing how our lives have a pattern and if changed the pattern is disrupted?
Mother: Not quite. And now, she's having issues of deja-vue. OR preminitions that cause her to avoid certain things. Her mother's sent her to a psychologist, because she's afraid of things...and the therapist thinks maybe she's been born again, but she says no it's not like that...it's more well, for instance, she avoids going to London, because she got the influenza there, or someone tripped her down the stairs to prevent her, or...
Me: So, we've gone back to the influenza bit again?
Mother: No, we're ahead of that now, but it does go back to that, and shows the different ways she could avoid it.
Me: I'm confused.
Mother: So am I. I'm trying to figure it out.

I don't know. This does not sound like the sort of book that you can read in snatches on and off subways and commuter trains, or just for an hour or two before bed. I think I'd get lost.


Margaret Atwood is getting preachy in The Blind Assassin. The men in this book are well..not likable. Which is actually my problem with Atwood. She's a bit negative on the male gender, which at times comes across as a sort of reverse sexism. Don't know why - she appears to be happily married. Maybe not?

In the latest chapter, Iris, who is now an old woman, well into her 80s, describing her weddng and wedding night to her husband, Richard Griffin, who died at 47, years ago.
She was basically sold into marriage, at the age of 18, by her father to a business associate for money in the 1930s. From her father's point of view - this guaranteed that both Iris and her sister Laura would be taken care of, and their family home not lost.
Richard, her husband, is in his 30s, and basically views her as a jewel to show off.
He's pleased that she doesn't enjoy sex, and finds it unpleasant and painful, making no effort to alter that because he was of the attitude that this prevented women from seeking sexual pleasure with other partners or straying. ie. If they are bound to think if sex is bad and unpleasant with this guy, it is with all guys.

Depressing book. Beautifully written and compelling. But also a wee bit on the preachy, strident side of the fence. An issue I have always had with a lot of the more militant feminists, such as Atwood - ladies, trust me on this point, not all men are sexist jerks. I happen to know several who aren't. Just as I know quite a few women, that ahem, are sexist jerks. Sexism like racism tends to be fairly human, not just relegated to one side or the other, no matter how much we wish it were otherwise.

Comments

[ponygirl2000.livejournal.com]

I thought of Life After Life as a bit like Doctor Who in that time can be re-written but there are certain fixed points in time. It's good, but it doesn't answer every question about what's going on. It actually is good to read in short snatches because some of her lives don't last very long - that Spanish flu is hard to avoid!

[beer-good-foamy.livejournal.com]

Life After Life is easily one of the best novels I've read in a year. And not nearly as confusing as that discussion makes it sound.