Category: 1001 books

As I revamped my Around the World in 52 Countries challenge to better fit with the 1001 Books list, the Paulo Coelho book that came off was The Zahir, which was replaced by his The Devil and Miss Prym simply to kill two goals with one stone. More parable than novel, The Devil and Miss Prym was intended to be the Brazil stop in my reading around the world, but as it’s set in a small, mountainous French village named Viscos, it again proves the point that so many of my books are not set in the countries where the author themselves was born, and don’t really tell me a whole bunch about life in his or her original setting.

Regardless, it’s a short, swift read that focuses on the battle between good and evil. The devil, a fallen businessman who propositions the tiny enclosed town (population 281) into testing not only their faith but their very humanity, walks into Viscos and chooses the local barmaid Chantal (Miss Prym) to be his messenger. At once the entire town becomes aware of the man’s plot: to prove that human beings are essentially bad by forcing them to murder a member of their village in exchange for gold.

A philosophical debate charges back and forth through the pros and cons of taking some one’s life in exchange for the social and financial security offered by the gold. As the centre of the town’s focus (blamed for bringing the terrible decision to them; gossiped about for the choices in her life; and sleepless over the problems her role in the decision creates in her life), Miss Prym moves through various emotions before coming to her own conclusions about the morality offered by this businessman haunted by the devil and his own tragedy.

It’s been a while since I’d read anything where philosophy and theology were so cleanly mixed up in fiction. In fact, the last time I remember thinking about “big picture” ideas not over beer or cards, honestly, was in university, when I took quite a few philosophy classes. I’m not going to give away the ending but I would like to add that Coelho’s simplistic prose and straightforward storytelling made this slim novel extremely compelling, even if I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced of the story’s moral and religious underpinnings.

Should it be included on the 1001 Books list? Well, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did The Alchemist, when I read it all those years ago after finishing my undergrad degree (you know that fairy tale time when you rediscover reading for reading’s sake, sigh.) and I certainly think that there are far better novels out there (why is Margaret Laurence not on that list, seriously?), but I think I’m richer for having read it, if only to have done some thinking about the great never-ending battle between good and evil in my own infallibly human mind.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: The cover of this book is grand, isn’t it? Anyway, it’s a close up snapped on the sun deck before leaving the cottage to come back to the city in a panic of “is it really over my extra-long weekend?”

I find it perfectly fitting to be writing about Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece, Love in the Time of Cholera, while I have a fever. As there’s nothing new that I can possibly add to the world’s discussion of this text other then to say that I came to it for many reasons: the first of which would have to be its inclusion on the 1001 Books list; the second, because I’d read One Hundred Years of Solitude after finishing my undergrad at Queen’s and fell hard for it; and I read Ben McNally’s Valentine’s Day column over at Booklounge.ca where he said it was the ultimate book to read for that holiday. See, lots of good reasons to pick up this book.

Regardless, could there be a more expressive book about love ever written? Probably, but this book took my breath away more times then I could possibly count. Full of every single type of love story, from an unrequited affair that lasts the length of the book itself to the hills and valleys of a long, successful marriage, from the physical to the spiritual, from the epistolary to the serenade, it’s impossible not to appreciate love in all its forms after finishing this novel. The sentences are exquisite, complex and meandering, almost to the point of getting lost down the cobblestones of the author’s mind, until he brings you back to the apex, which lands in exactly the right place.

The Columbian port in of call for my Around the World in 52 Books, I can’t think of another novel I could savour like this, as if it’s a sweet cheese or a fine glass of wine. I was all rosy for love after finishing this book up north, and ended up watching Before Sunset for the fourth or fifth time. My own story ended up with a lot of long sentences as I thought about the main love affair that forms the center section. Of course, I ended up editing half of them down over the last few days I was there because they didn’t make much sense, as I was all drunk on Columbia, the Caribbean, the food, the smell of almonds, and the like. Ahem.

In the end, the craziest analogy I can come up with that describes the reading experience of Love in the Time of Cholera is this: a few years back when I was still working at the evil empire, I was having a discussion with my coworker Lynne, where we were imagining what life would be like if we were cats. Go with me here. It’s okay as it’s not as kooky as it sounds. Beyond the pale ass licking jokes we got from the cheap seats, we were thinking of how cats don’t really know time as we do, how their days are measured by their senses, by things that they smell, by places they visit. In a way, Márquez’s novel is set out by the senses as well, but it’s also defined by one emotion, in a way, it’s all measured out by love. Love sets the pace and brings the action. Love defines the characters and their motivation. Just like a cat smelling its way through the day, this novel imagines an entire book not set about by the plain, banal chronology of the weeks, days, months, years in a life, but by love itself, as real as the grass, the trees, and yes, the ass, that my cat uses to define her day. In a way, it’s the essence of everything. And aren’t we just dumb enough never to realize it.

And there. I’ve jumped the shark now by mentioning my cat in my blog. Sigh.

PHOTO IN CONTEXT: Of course I finished this novel while in bed. If you look closely enough you can see the tip of my grandfather’s paint-by-numbers on the wall.

The romantic notions I had regarding this book stem, obviously, from seeing the film, where I assumed Out of Africa would echo the autobiographical elements of Sydney Pollack’s adaptation. For years, I’d wander past it on the shelf and think to myself, ‘man, I really do need to read that book,’ ashamed, that in six years of studying English, with a focus on post-colonial literature, I had never had the courage to actually conquer Isak Dinesen’s work. It was quite a shock, then, to discover how different the book actually is from how I built it up in my imagination.

After almost two months of reading it on and off, I’ve finally finished the real Out of Africa. Sometimes majestic, sometimes upsetting, sometimes painfully dated, and sometimes downright brilliant, the book is described in the 1001 Books as “perhaps the greatest pastoral elegy of modernism.” Telling the story of Dinesen’s time running a coffee plantation in the Ngong Hills, it’s almost anthropological in much of its intent, and the parts of the book that are so distasteful now, racist even, are contained in her attempts to categorize life in Africa. But the parts of the book that soar are when she’s exploring her very real connection to the land, to her farm, to her life as she built it around her. For example, when the book captures her very human emotions, it’s some of the most wonderful writing; yet when she attempts to “explain” away Africa to her European counterparts, perhaps her imagined audience, it’s almost painful to read it’s so offensive.

Yet something makes you hang in there, and there are subjects you almost wish that she released herself, and/or her voice, enough to write freely about: her true feelings toward Denys Finch-Hatton; her absolute heartbreak with the failure of the farm; her obvious anger toward her husband (who gave her syphilis, as we all know from the film). All of these aspects of Dinesen’s life are explored in passing, as if she could only express herself when truly looking at the landscape, as if the descriptions of Africa and the farm could somehow intuit how she felt on an emotional level about the rest of her life.

There are so many wonderful passages in the book that it would be impossible to list them all here, and as the Denmark entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, I find myself once again confronted with the fact that the author I’ve chosen has once again transplanted themselves elsewhere to tell the story of an adopted land rather than his/her homeland. Perhaps in the end, it doesn’t matter at all where you’re from, all that matters is that you find your heart in the place you choose to write about. There’s no denying Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen) left her heart behind in Africa when she was forced to return to Europe.

My own books I packed up in cases and sat on them, or dined on them. Books in a colony play a different part in your existence from what they do in Europe; there is a whole side of your life which there they are alone take charge of; and on this account, according to their quality, you feel more grateful to them, or more indignant with them, than you will ever do in civilized countries.

…I had consented to give away my possessions one by one, as a kind of ransom for my own life, but by the time that I had nothing left, I myself was the lightest thing of all, for fate to get rid of.

I’ve been wanting to write about this book all day. Last night I was about 20 pages from finishing but I was so tired after my new dance class (I’m taking a Thursday night class at the School of the Toronto Dance Theatre; it’s just a beginner class, but it’s perfect for me right now), that I finished it on the subway ride to Writer’s Group tonight. I hate that, leaving 10 or 20 pages to the next day instead of finishing a book, but sometimes your body just says that’s enough reading for now.

So, Patricia Duncker. She’s my born-in-Jamaica author, but according to the most basic Google search, Duncker now lives and teaches in the UK. Again, the theme of authors no longer living in their homelands comes up in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge. I guess, in a way, I’m not really reading as many countries as I imagined I would, trying to balance the 1001 Books list (page 856) and my quest to broaden my reading base, but I have I’ve ended up reading a lot of good books by authors writing about Europe and/or the States. Mainly, I haven’t spent as much time trapped in the lovely and deliciously wonderful world of Can Lit, and that’s actually okay.

(Oddly, I’ve been reading a lot of novels, like this one, set in Paris and in France, which makes me think the world is trying to tell me something…like it might be time to book a ticket or something?).

Regardless, Hallucinating Foucault brought up a lot of memories of undergraduate and graduate school. The book tells the story of a young man working on a thesis of an imaginary French writer named Paul Michel, who has been institutionalized and utterly forgotten by the establishment. After a particularly intense affair with a young woman called The Germanist, he sets out to save his idol from utter decay in a psychiatric institution.

The title comes from Michel’s relationship with the French philosopher, who is described by the author himself as his perfect “reader.” Intertwining all kinds of post-modern themes with a very basic coming of age story, Duncker’s prose remains sharp throughout. In fact, I’d like to note that the epistolary aspects of the novel,the letters between the novelist and the philosopher that the student uncovers while in France are especially lovely.

The story is very much about the insular life of a student studying for an advanced degree. Not unlike Possession but without the Victorian overtones (Byatt even blurbs the book), Hallucinating Foucault has a central literary mystery to solve: why did Michel stop publishing books? And is he really, truly crazy? Part love story, part philosophical tribute to the work of Foucault, it’s a short, intense novel that I feel lucky to have discovered.

However, it’s told me nothing of life in Jamaica. I have to admit that I would have much preferred to read Michelle Cliff, oh how I loved No Telephone to Heaven, but my challenge isn’t about re-reading books I already know I like, but about finding gems I never would have noticed had it not been for a little guidance.

My favourite quote is from one of the letters that Michel has sent Foucault:

My writing is a craft, like carpentry, coffin-building, making jewelry, constructing the walls. You cannot forget how it is done. You can adjust, remake, rebuild what is fragile, slipshod, unstable. …You can say anything, anything, if it is beautifully said.

I’ve been listening to Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black, one of the girls in the car up to conference brought it along, and it’s lovely, aching, heartfelt, broken, all the things a good record should be (there are a couple of songs that are just okay but for the most part, the whole album is really crisp). And I just finished reading Good Morning, Midnight by Jean Rhys. For some reason, the two fit so well together, the lonely, rough voice of Amy’s music echoes exceptionally well the narrative voice of Sophia Jansen, the protagonist of this strange little novel.

Rhys wrote Wide Sargasso Sea, which is one of my favourite books, and I’ve also read Voyage in the Dark, but years ago, so it’s not as fresh as the latter, which I’ve read three or four times in my lifetime now. But this novel isn’t as coherent as the other two, Good Morning, Midnight‘s stream of consciousness narrative is hard to follow sometimes; it’s as confused, pained and as troubled as the narrator herself.

Faintly the story of a struggling single girl who has escaped a tragedy only to attempt and drink herself to death, there’s little in Paris for Sophia (or sometimes Sasha) beyond the cafes and the chicken scratches of an everyday existence to keep her alive. Abandoned by life itself, she wanders through the days in a wine-soaked state and drowns her dreams in Luminol in the evenings. Profoundly sorrowful, Rhys’s novel vacillates between the utter beauty of modernism and a very true feeling of drowing. French inter-mixed with English, past mingled with present, real life confused with the stuff of dreams, it’s hard not to ache when following Sophia stumbling down the street or listening to her rant hysterically to the men who become her companions.

As with all the books I read in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, a trend seems to be evolving, where displaced (or replaced, or happily emigrated?) authors tell stories not of their native land (in Rhys’s case, Dominica) but of their adopted homelands or even of places wild in their own imaginations. The setting for this novel is post-First World War Paris, just before the onslaught of the next devastating conflict. There’s evidence of many displaced persons within the book, refugees from life like Sophia herself, who find themselves all searching for money and acceptance. But all in all it’s the ache in Rhys’s writing that holds me tight in my place, her delicate way of describing situations, and her flighty use of metaphor, which makes me want to give up writing all together, find a bottle and romantically walk the streets of Paris wearing chunky heels and a new coat, and then fall into a shabby hotel only to wake up the next day and do it all over again.

Wholly deserving being found on page 402 of my 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. Fully captured in the feeling of heartbreak and ideal reading on the plane ride to Paris.

There’s a bookshop next door, which advertises second-hand English novel. The assistant is Hindu. I want a long, calm book about people with large incomes – a book like a flat green meadow and the sheep feeding in it. But he insists on selling me lurid stories of the white-slave traffic. ‘This is a very good book, very beautiful, most true.’

Wow. Is it hot in here or is it just me?

Ahem.

Don’t look now but I’m probably blushing bright red and feeling somewhat uncomfortable to be seen in public having just finished Michel Houellebecq’s Platform. It’s the French entry in my Around the World in 52 Books challenge (changed from Nemirovsky) and it’s also on the 1001 Books list, which is also why I made the swap, I don’t mind killing two lists with one title.

Platform is a spicy, sensual, almost-porn-like novel about, well, a man named Michel who finds himself completely cut off from life after his father’s death (he was murdered). Despite the fact that he has very little in the way of human contact, no friends, etc., he has a lot of very graphic sex between these covers. Just after his father’s murderer is caught, Michel leaves Paris and takes a trip to Thailand, where he sleeps with many nubile prostitutes and also meets Valerie, who will later become his lover, then the love of his life, and then a catalyst for the rest of the story.

It is through this relationship with Valerie, who works for the travel company arranging the tours, that Michel redeems himself. They are well suited: he loves getting pleasure; she loves giving it. Aw, a match made in heaven. Oh, and she’s into women, so my goodness, it’s one steam room fantasy away from Pay-Per-View. Yawn.

I know I’m being flippant, and even though Michel doesn’t necessarily use the word love, his feelings for Valerie result in his happiness and in his feeling a connection for a member of the opposite sex that he has never before felt in his life. As their relationship progresses, Valerie’s career takes off as she and her boss, Jean-Yves, move companies and launch a series of high profile resort holidays. While checking out one of the hotels in their roster, Michel has a brainwave to capitalize on the sex trade aspect of vacationing in places like Thailand, among other countries, including Cuba, and a new type of resort is born.

What keeps the novel from trailing off into Harlequin romance for men territory is Houellebecq’s razor sharp prose. One part life story, and two parts love story, Platform also deals with a number of political, racial and societal issues. And while the main character seems motivated by his sexual relationships, it seems he’s also wildly aware of the problems that this brings to the human psyche. It’s a strangely prophetic novel, especially as its central tragedy comes about as a result of religious terrorism.

Houellebecq’s not afraid of saying things that may not be politically correct; it seems, he just wants to point out the odd ironies that life seems to keep throwing in his direction. And yes, there’s the sex: it’s rampant, violent, open, honest, often and sometimes even strangely compelling. It becomes a crucial way for Michel to tell his story. But in a way it’s also kind of gratuitous, often over-exposed and a little over the top. Maybe that’s just my own Western prudishness coming out, but there’s a fine line between porn and art, and maybe I’m just not one to tell the difference?

One review I read over at the Guardian (which gives away the ending, shockingly, so don’t read if you don’t want it spoiled), insists that Houellebecq is writing back to L’Etranger, in a way bringing those kind of existential concerns into the modern century, when it’s not just the human condition, but the human condition in the world that seems to result in a crisis of consciousness.

And I kind of agree, there’s a depth to this novel; it’s bookish at the same time as it’s somewhat bent. I enjoyed Platform, but I most certainly wouldn’t be giving it to my grandmother for Christmas. Or to anyone else who might blush at the mere mention of the word sex in print (fingers pointed right at me).

Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks.

Margaret Mazzantini’s critically acclaimed and prize-winning Don’t Move is an apt book to have finished today, as a great snowstorm falls upon Toronto rendering the city motionless. Well, truth be told it’s just the title that’s fitting because the guts of the novel have little to do with either snow or Toronto…

Annnywwaaay. Told in something akin to exposition, Don’t Move lets the narrator and main character, Timoteo, a successful, married surgeon tell his own story. His daughter Angela has been involved in a very serious accident while riding her scooter to school, and Timo sits and waits for her to come out of surgery. He’s a cold, exacting character; and if I were being completely honest, I’d admit that I found him utterly unlikeable.

In fact, despite the obvious and real tragedy of his daugther’s accident, I ended up feeling little for Timoteo past disgust as the main thrust of the novel involves a very abusive affair he has with a poor, thin, wisp of a woman named Italia. The two meet just after his car breaks down in a rural area of Italy, and their surreptitious affair begins shortly thereafter.

Including as selection from Italy on my Around the World in 52 Books challenge, I felt that I got little from the story about the setting. With the exception of the time Timo and his wife Elsa spend at their summer beach house, very little of his surroundings are described in detail. With the majority of the action taking place in Timoteo’s mind as he sits in a hospital waiting room, which is by its nature both cold and sterile, and uncomfortable and bland, much of the other settings take on this same atmosphere.

This is a novel that tells you everything, that leaves little to conversation, and forces the reader into the position of the dying daughter by his consistently addressing her within the story. And I really didn’t like being coerced into a sympathetic position where I had to like the main character, after all, who can despise a man who is obviously in so much pain?

“Dear Angela…let me tell you about the time I cheated on your mother and ruined a poor, desperate girl’s life…just because you don’t have anything else to worry about as you lie there on the operating table half-dead already.”

But, alas, I am paraphrasing.

On the whole, I struggled through this book, forcing myself to finish it, and wondering why Don’t Move was included in the 1001 Books list. It tells it is a “multilayered novel of love, loss, and desperation, set upon the affluent backdrop of Northern Italy.” Beside the write-up is a giant picture of Penelope Cruz, who starred in the, again award-winning, film adaptation.

For me, it’s an intensely cold novel, and a lot of the times, I had a hard time believing the character was even a man. In places, the author uses odd metaphors that just didn’t work: “A rain as fine as face powder was falling.” Not that metaphors need to be gender specific or should even be so, it just felt wrong in this case, something that this man wouldn’t notice and/or care to know. Anyway, it’s a small point, and maybe not even a relevant one, but things like that pulled me out of the novel time and time again.

Mazzantini is obviously a talented writer, and moments of the novel are really quite brilliant, but I prefer to take my cold, calculated protagonists with a bit of redemption, which should never be confused with pure confession.