Category Archives: British literature

October 11, 2011 · 10:18 pm

Fanny Hill: *blush* *blush* *yawn*

      Gosh but Fanny Hill has A LOT of sex in it. Sex between men and women, women and women, men and men, partners of varying ages, mental and physical abilities, in different positions and in different environmental conditions. It is in short, a novel without a plot, but instead a collection of events that allow for the graphic narration of sex. So many mentions of exploits, things gorged and red, thrusts, sighs and wetness. In fact, I’ve included a word cloud so you can see just how much of the text (all of it!) is given over to narrating sex.

Yep, it’s not one to read/listen to out in public. Such blushes.

But despite the titillation and *cough* excitement of the first few chapters of Fanny Hill, I admit I quickly became bored of yet another sex scene with yet another virgin or yet another “mistaken” attempt at anal sex. Which isn’t to say that I’m a virtuous or prudish reader, rather, that 250 pages of the same plot events would be boring no matter what was being narrated! Yawn.

As for the limited character development… well, I was disappointed. Fanny is principally awesome because she isn’t at all embarrassed or ashamed of her wanton behaviour, rather she relishes pleasure and seeks it out for herself. But the conclusion of the text sees her marrying her one true love and renouncing the wanton life in favour of riches and monogamy. Yawn. Given just how scandalous the rest of the book is, I can see little reason to end it with such convention. I had rather hoped she’d die of venereal disease… Perhaps one of my 18th century scholar-friends can provide me an answer to why such a conventional and annoying ending?

So while I’ll recommend Fanny Hill if you’re looking to diversify your personal pleasure reading, I can’t recommend it well if you’re at all interested in anything approximating plot, character or thematic development.

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October 6, 2011 · 9:56 pm

Knots and Crosses: Smoking Kills

         So I’m reading a proper novel right now (stay tuned for the report), but in the interest of my pressing reading schedule, I downloaded the audio book of Ian Rankin’s Knots and Crosses to listen to while cooking, commuting, and doing chores. In discussion with N. last night I argued that listening to the audio book is *not* cheating in 10-10-12 both because I make the rules in this absurd contest and because and audio book isn’t abridged or fiddled with as a movie adaption might be, and it takes just as long (or longer, I think) to listen as it odes to read. So there.

Guilt assuaged, let me tell you what I gleaned from the book: Edinburgh is an exceptionally safe city for tourists, women are sexy tarts unless proven otherwise, and smoking may kill you, but you’ll enjoy your life more because of it.

I wasn’t much taken with Inspector Rebus, maybe because the only thing that humanizes him is his addiction to smoking. We know he’s divorced, but not why; we know he has challenges with his daughter, but not what those challenges might be. I accept this is the first book in a series, and so I’ll allow that his character development might take place over the course of the series, but as it is, I found myself largely indifferent when his daughter is kidnapped. I like to think I’m a better person than indifference at a 12 year old girl being kidnapped (though my reaction to The Lovely Bones suggests otherwise…), so I’ll hold the narrative responsible for discouraging my interest in either Samantha or Rebus.

As for the “mystery,” it’s not really much of a mystery. More that Rebus is a detective. The reader could not follow clues and guess who the killer is because the narrative doesn’t leave any clues, it just reveal all when Rebus is hypnotized. Yes, that handy plot device where the Inspector knew everything all along, he just had to be put under to remember – as in a dream! – what he already knew.

All this makes it sound like I didn’t enjoy Knots and Crosses, which isn’t strictly speaking true. In fact, I enjoyed it a great deal, and am perhaps struggling against admitting this by demonstrating the manifold ways the book fails. So why did I like it? For the same reasons I like Law & Order, I guess. I like watching the forces of law and order methodically, if ploddingly, go about the business of protecting the status quo. I like plot lines that are reassuringly simple, that promise without the shadow of a doubt that everyone (save the first four murdered girls…) will be just fine. That a neat resolution will be reached. And it was. Am I a shallow or weak reader for liking the book for these reasons? Maybe. But it’s a welcome dose of predictability when set against some of the other books I’ve read. Including the book I’m reading right now. More on that to come. Soon.

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September 18, 2011 · 9:00 pm

Lady Chatterly’s Lover: Sex and Coal

         I find great similarity between knowing nothing about a book before reading it, and thinking I know everything about a book before reading it: in both cases I’m surprised, though in the latter case, perhaps less pleasantly so. I approached D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover with the conviction that it was a sexy book. Not just gleaned from the title, but from years of being told by those I know personally, and by the wider literary world, I felt sure when I first sat down with the book that I would be reading in the vein of erotica.

To be fair the novel does narrate some steamy, and deeply arousing, sex scenes. But if I were made to describe what this book is “about,” I’d find myself pressed to say “sex” or even “an affair.” Instead I might have to say that it is about class conflict, industrialization, the animality of humans, and the alienation of the post-war period. Hardly the stuff of sexy drama.

How then does Lawrence succeed in making coal something sexy? Well, the illicit cross-class affair between Lady Chatterly and her plebeian lover – the gamekeeper of all people! – ground the thematic questions in their respective characters and I suppose trick the reader into suffering through long passages on the plight of colliers with the promise of wet thighs. I shouldn’t say ‘trick,’ because the affair stands as synecdoche for the post-war, industrial age, and we’re likely meant to be as titillated by the violation of class strictures as we are by the descriptions of variously flaccid and erect penises.

And perhaps I would have been, had I not been expecting a book banned and talked up for its sexiness. Rather, when confronted with long passages on the utility of coal I found myself wondering whether everyone else had been reading a different version of the text, or were perhaps better at skimming, or whether I might have, in my terrible expectation, done the book a terrible injustice. And this, I think, is most likely the case. Had I not been turning each page waiting for the affair to begin, and then waiting for the affair to get steamier, and then waiting for the affair to be over, I might have better appreciated the rich and provocative descriptions of class conflict and a society coming to terms with loss and bewilderment. In the few moments when I put aside my adolescent preoccupations, I was moved by the clarity with which Lawrence captures suffering and loneliness. It’s my suggestion then, that if you do decide to read, or re-read, Lady Chatterly’s Lover that you do so draped in a cold, wet towel after watching scenes from a factory farm documentary. For the book isn’t (only) sexy, and you’ll spoil it something awful if, like me, you try to read it that way.

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September 6, 2011 · 12:44 am

Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: Cute

                            Not your classic who-done-it (whodunnit?), but somehow formulaic (in the manner of a Law and Order episode, where you’re certain the first few suspects are not the killer, and then when the killer is revealed, you’re pretty sure some elaborate withholding was necessary for you to miss the plot point that made the killer’s motive make sense), I understand the success of Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Complete with a precocious eleven year old narrator – and who doesn’t love a precocious child narrator who let’s us feel like we, too, were once bright and loquacious youth? – and a wry British humour, the book reads easily.

I say cute, recognizing how I bristle when the adjective is applied to myself, because the book seems to simply want to entertain: a straightforward mystery plot, an engaging – however poorly fleshed out – protagonist, and a sensible tone. Maybe I ought to reconsider my response to ‘cute’ when applied to me, as I see now that the descriptor is not always meant in a pejorative sense (though it does carry those connotations) but rather in the sense of harmless, endearing, and altogether delightful (I’ll assume that’s what people mean when they call me cute…).

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