Archive for May, 2023

30 May

‘The Eyes & the Impossible’ by Dave Eggers – Where All the Main Characters are Animals.

Posted by Anokatony in Book Reviews. Tagged: .

 

‘The Eyes & the Impossible’ by Dave Eggers   (2023) – 249 pages

 

There is Sonya the squirrel, Angus the raccoon, Bertrand the sea gull, Yolanda the pelican, Helene the goat, and of course, Johannes the dog who narrates this story of this group of animals, each with their disparate skill, working together to accomplish a critical goal.

“Yolanda landed with her usual chaos-clatter of wings and feet. Yolanda is a pelican, and a clumsy one, which is saying something, given all pelicans are clumsy, ungainly, unlikely in their shape and ludicrous in their flight.”

Freya, Meredith, and Samuel are bison; they have ruled the park for millions of years or more But wouldn’t they be happier on the mainland instead of on this tiny island?

When I heard about ‘The Eyes & the Impossible’ by Dave Eggers, my first impulse was to compose a list of all the adult novels I had read in which all the main characters were animals. However I found there were very few of these novels. My list did not extend much beyond ‘Watership Down’ by Richard Adams and ‘Animal Farm’ by George Orwell.

It seems to me that writers are missing a good bet by not writing more of these anthropomorphizing novels for adults that we remember so fondly from our childhoods.

When I was a child there was an entire series of children’s books by Thornton Burgess called Old Mother West-Wind which included as characters Peter Cottontail (later to be known as Peter Rabbit), Jimmy Skunk, Sammy Jay, etc.

As a kid, I did not read superhero comic books; instead I read comics with Donald Duck, his girlfriend Daisy Duck, his nephews Huey, Dewey, and Louie, and his rich Uncle Scrooge McDuck. And then there was Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, and their gang.

When I became a parent, I found that many of the books for little children had animals as their main characters such as the Russell Hoban series about the badger Frances – ‘Bedtime for Frances’, ‘Bread and Jam for Frances’, etc. George and Martha in the James Marshall series are two hippos. Then there were the ‘Curious George’ books about a funny little monkey.

There is something innately humorous about having animals talk and act like humans, and ‘The Eyes & the Impossible’ captures that. They are advertising this book for readers of all ages.

I doubt that it will be a classic like ‘Watership Down’, but it was a pleasant enough time for me reading this book.

 

Grade :   A

 

 

 

23 May

‘The Possession’ by Annie Ernaux – Possessed by Jealousy

Posted by Anokatony in Book Reviews. Tagged: .

 

‘The Possession’ by Annie Ernaux   (2002) – 62 pages           Translated from the French by Anna Moschovakis

 

In ‘The Possession’, a woman tells of being possessed. Her boyfriend of six years has gone off to live with another woman. She is possessed by a profound jealousy of this other woman.

“This woman filled my head, my chest, and my gut, she was always with me, she took control of my emotions.”

As is the case with many of the works of Annie Erbnaux, ‘The Possession’ could be called a semi-fiction, part memoir and part fiction. Another phrase to describe ‘The Possession’ would be to call it an autobiographical novella.

“The strangest thing about jealousy is that it can populate an entire city – the whole world – with a person you may never have met.”

Here she goes through all the stages of jealousy. First she wants to find out exactly who this other woman is, so she plays guessing games with her ex-boyfriend who she still sees on occasion.

“He had not wanted to tell me her name. This name was a hole, a void around which I turned in circles.”

She asks him to tell her the first letter of the other woman’s first name. At one point she admits that her thoughts had turned murderous toward this other woman.

“In the self-erasure that is the state of jealousy, which transforms every difference into a lack, it was not only my body, my face, that were devalued but also my occupation – my entire being.”

However, by the end of this novella, she no longer has any desire to know anything about this other woman. She has moved on.

 

Grade:   A

 

 

16 May

‘Vera’ by Elizabeth von Arnim – Inspired by the Author’s Disastrous Second Marriage

Posted by Anokatony in Book Reviews. Tagged: .

 

‘Vera’ by Elizabeth von Arnim    (1921) – 164 pages

 

The Vera in the title of this novel is dead before the novel begins. Vera supposedly fell out of the window of her upper floor sitting room. There was an inquest.

Vera’s husband’s name is Everard Wemyss.

Lucy Entwhistle has also suffered a loss. Her widowed father has just died, quite a loss for the 22 year-old Lucy.

It is as though Everard intentionally walked by her house in order to meet and commiserate with Lucy over their losses. Everard is a take-charge guy, and he uses their shared losses as a pretext to starting a relationship with Lucy, even though it has only been days since his first wife died.

“That settles it. We two stricken ones must fall together.”

Everard Wemyss is 45 years old.

From the beginning Lucy has doubts about Everard and his previous wife Vera, but Everard presses on with their relationship.

Here are some words that describe Everard : ruthless, domineering, merciless, cruel, without pity or compassion, malevolent, unrelenting, vindictive, demanding, trying. There is also “his extraordinary capacity for being offended”.

“for she had offended him again, and this time she couldn’t even remotely imagine how”

Still, he talks Lucy into marriage, although her friends express their doubts. Lucy is vulnerable, “unquestioningly acquiescent”.

After the wedding, Lucy must sleep in the bed Vera slept in and even use the sitting room where Vera met her tragic fate. Lucy begins to question if it was an accident.

Everard has an extensive library, but he doesn’t want anyone else, including his young wife, to read or mess up his books. If she wants to read one of his books she must ask him for the key, tell him what books she plans to read, and read them in the library itself.

In ‘Vera’, there is an undercurrent of laughing at this cruel fool, Everard Wemyss, who is so proud of himself, yet has no real understanding of what life is like. That is why ‘Vera’ is often called a dark comedy. Elizabeth von Arnim herself considered ‘Vera’ her “high water mark” as a writer, even higher than her widely read ‘The Enchanted April’.

‘Vera’ is very well-written and a scarily effective depiction of a very bad marriage. This one is vivid and you will remember it.

 

Grade:   A

 

 

11 May

‘The Getaway’ by Jim Thompson – A Bank Robbery and a Getaway by an Adept Career Criminal and his Wife

Posted by Anokatony in Book Reviews. Tagged: .

 

‘The Getaway’ by Jim Thompson   (1959) – 205 pages

 

In ‘The Getaway’, Doc McCoy is a very smart dedicated career criminal.

“Doc was made for crime, the truly big operations which he rapidly moved into.”

Doc McCoy can even see the up side of getting caught and being put in prison.

“He liked his work. Beginning a stiff sentence at age twenty-five, he still remained committed to it. His take for the last five years was more than a hundred thousand a year. For that kind of money, a man could afford to sit it out for awhile. He could use his enforced leisure to relax, make new contacts, improve his criminal knowledge, and plan new jobs. Doc’s ensuing eight years were entirely comfortable and often enjoyable.”

However when Doc gets caught a second time, they give him a longer sentence. He asks his wife Carol to meet with the warden and bribe him to get him out of prison. The warden and Carol agree to a deal where Doc is released from prison and then Doc will plan and execute a large bank robbery with the warden getting a share of the loot. Doc wonders what else was part of the deal between his wife and the warden.

The bank robbery is successful, although a bank guard is murdered. Doc also shoots one of his accomplices, Rudy Torrento, who is no longer useful to Doc. Doc also shoots the driver of a car which he then steals, and Doc and Carol begin their getaway. Unknown to Doc, Rudy is still alive and when he recovers, he trails after Doc for revenge and murder.

‘The Getaway’ is written from the point of view of the criminals rather than law enforcement. I believe the secret to the success of Jim Thompson is that he can think like an adept criminal. Several times I was impressed with Thompson’s understanding of the details of crime. Since we are seeing events through the eyes of the criminals, we begin to root for them. It requires a lot of knowledge to pull off a successful bank robbery and get away with it. Doc and Carol become the most-wanted criminals in the country.

‘The Getaway’ is most cynical like a good crime novel should be. Even Honest Johns can be bought if you approach them the right way.

However I found the ending of ‘The Getaway’ somewhat questionable. Up until that point we have a quite straightforward crime story, albeit with quite a few murders. However the ending is quite surreal, and this ending was scrapped for the famous movie version of ‘The Getaway’ directed by Sam Pekinpah and starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw in 1972. I don’t blame them for scrapping the ending.

 

Grade:   B+

 

 

9 May

‘Case Study’ by Graeme Macrae Burnet – On the Psychiatric Couch

Posted by Anokatony in Book Reviews. Tagged: .

 

‘Case Study’ by Graeme Macrae Burnet   (2022) – 271 pages

 

The decade of the 1960s saw many of the old established ideas of mental illness and psychiatry being challenged by younger professionals in these fields. At that time there were still large facilities called insane asylums for the severely mentally ill. Electroshock therapy, insulin shock, and lobotomy were still routine “treatments” being used on mental patients to adjust their mental states. One of the leading proponents of new less drastic and less harmful methods of dealing with the mentally ill was young Scottish psychiatrist R. D. Laing. I remember being aware of Laing and his then revolutionary ideas back during my college days in the 1960s. Laing would write:

“I was beginning to suspect that insulin and electric shocks, not to mention lobotomy and the whole environment of a psychiatric unit, were ways of destroying people and driving people crazy.”

The novel ‘Case Study’ in not about R. D. Laing but instead a fictional young Scottish psychiatrist who is also trying to make a name for himself, Arthur Collins Braithwaite.

“He (Braithwaite) declared himself to be “an untherapist”: his task was to convince people they did not need therapy; his mission was to bring down the ‘jerry-built edifice’ of psychiatry.”

Like Laing, Braithwaite has also published books suggesting new ways of dealing with the mentally ill. His books are titled ‘UnTherapy’ and ‘Kill Your Self’.

Although Dr. Braithwaite meant that second title metaphorically, one of his patients took it literally. A young woman named Veronica who was a psychiatric patient of Braithwaite has indeed killed herself. Her sister Dorothy is convinced that it was Braithwaite’s methods which caused her suicide. Dorothy decides to go under cover with an alias name of Rebecca and also become a patient of Braithwaite. She kept five notebooks detailing her experiences as a patient of Braithwaite, and these notebooks make up a large part of the novel ‘Case Study’. The rest of the novel is more or less a fictional biography of Braithwaite.

Soon this alter ego Rebecca becomes nearly a separate character from Dorothy.

I appreciated that ‘Case Study’ is about an important subject that is not often covered in the world of fiction, the treatment of mental illness. I also liked the variety of formats which make up the novel.

The main problem I had with the novel is with the five notebooks written by Dorothy/Rebecca. Much of the subject matter of these notebooks does not concern this main plot of the novel and was much less compelling for me. I found that especially the scenes of her away from the psychiatrist’s office involving just her and her acquaintances were not particularly interesting and were rather a drag on the rest of the proceedings. We also get long stretches of the conversations between Rebecca and Braithwaite that do not deal with the primary story line.

Still, the main premise of ‘Case Study’ is solid, and the variety of sources is engaging.

 

Grade :   B

 

 

2 May

‘The Queen of Dirt Island’ by Donal Ryan – Four Generations of Females Living in a Rural Irish Homestead

Posted by Anokatony in Book Reviews. Tagged: .

 

‘The Queen of Dirt Island’ by Donal Ryan (2023) – 242 pages

 

According to the author’s bio, author Donal Ryan is from Nenagh, County Tipperary, Ireland. His new novel ‘The Queen of Dirt Island’ takes place in a rural homestead near Nenagh.

There are four main characters in the novel, all of them female and each of them from a different generation. First there is great-grandmother Nana or Mary. Then there is her daughter-in-law Eileen. Then there is Eileen’s daughter Saoirse (don’t ask me to pronounce that name), and finally the very young daughter of Saoirse, Pearl.

Nana has some advice for her granddaughter Saoirse :

“You only get one life, and no woman should spend any part of it being friends with men. That’s not what men are for.”

The father of Saoirse’s daughter Pearl was only in Nenagh for one night with his rock band. Saoirse never saw him again. Saoirse cannot remember them even having sex that night. It must have happened while she was sleeping. Now she reads about him in the newspaper as his band has become quite famous.

“Always fight, Saoirse, won’t you? For yourself and for her. Don’t ever allow yourself to be trampled on.”

The men in this novel, and there are a few of them, are peripheral to the story, as these women must confront the world mainly on their own.

That the male author Ryan’s main focus is almost entirely on the women here is not the only unusual aspect of this work. Each very short chapter of this novel is close to exactly the same length, slightly less than two pages or 500 words long. Each of the 120 chapters is given a one-word title. The first chapter is titled ‘End’, and the last chapter is titled ”Beginning’. These constraints, apparently imposed by the novelist, give the novel it’s definite rhythm. And once a novel has established a rhythm, more than half the battle is won.

I happen to be one of those who believes that having constraints on the style or a restricted form, like in poetry, aids rather than hinders creativity. Having constraints to your writing makes you more creative, not less. This is definitely the case in ‘The Queen of Dirt Island’.

“The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” – Orson Welles

The short two-page chapters made for a quick comfortable read. Many of these short chapters end with a severe twist at the end of them, a sudden death or an attempted murder or a missing child, etc. Perhaps there are too many of these severe twists for ‘The Queen of Dirt Island’ to be entirely realistic, but that’s OK too.

 

Grade:   A