September 5, 2012 · 4:06 am

The Secret History: Whiz, Bang!

       I’m behind on my blogging by TWO books! Sincerest apologies to those of you waiting with bated breath to find out what I read on the great family cottage vacation 2012. And the scoop? I made my way first through Donna Tartt’s *The Secret History* which I finished now TWO weeks ago (and so my review will necessarily miss some of its usual punch as I find myself fiddling about in my defective memory…). 

The story opens its first scene with the murder of Bunny. And then back tracks in time to invite the reader to follow along in discovering how six young people could murder a friend. The plot proper begins with our first person protagonist arriving at his liberal arts college and finding himself – nearly by accident – enrolled in a highly selective Greek program: he will be taught all of his classes by one professor and in a class with only six other students. The plot builds slowly – the book comes in at just over 500 pages – with the layering of character motivations, complex relationship and the kinds of influences they are suspect to (the usual sorts of influences that 20 somethings should worry about – alcohol, procrastination, sleep deprivation, sexual desire – but also the more pernicious influences of their narcissistic professor, their callously indifferent classmate (psychotic?) and the danger of rationalism taken to its extreme). 

For our protagonist events and decisions seem to happen *to* him, as if by accident or change, evoking questions of free will, determinism and ethical behaviour. Indeed, that the students are all intensively studying Ancient Greek nicely aligns with the thematic concerns with the extent of individual will, the hazards of an overly rational mind, the limits of community and the perils of group persuasion. 

The novel doesn’t spend all its time in these heady philosophical questions; rather, the richly layered and complex plot pulls these questions to the fore without explicitly evoking them in a marvellous demonstration of the literary possibilities of a well crafted mystery-thriller. 

I’d strongly recommend this one to anyone interested in such a literary thriller. It comes with full character development, unpredictable – even as it is self-reflective – decision making by such characters, and an entirely suspenseful plot. Well done. 

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August 9, 2012 · 9:53 pm

The Marriage Plot: Not a plot, but a scheme

               So I’m 28. It’s true. No more hedging around with 20 something, or mid-twenties. I’m a happy, comfortable 28. And unmarried. By any measure I’m just fine with my unmarried status. Jeffrey Eugendies’ novel, *The Marriage Plot,* makes me even happier to be unmarried (would I feel differently were I single? maybe): the novel depicts the disintegration of a ‘phase one’ marriage (phase one referring to those who marry immediately after college) and implicitly suggests that this is not the time, and we are not the generation, who ought to pretend to something like a lifetime commitment.

The title of the book comes from the thesis title of the quirky protagonist, Madeline. Madeline writes this undergraduate thesis on 19th century novels, and argues for particular kinds of marriages that emerge in literature. The coy nod to the reader is, of course, that this is a novel about marriage, too. The circumstances of marriage here are not those of the 19th century courting rituals, and yet the “plot” here contains the same elements of poor timing, misplaced communications/letters, a love triangle (or two), unexpected illness (not scarlet fever here, but manic-depression) and interfering parents.

In revealing the traps of marriage – the required compromise of ‘self’ for the protection of the ‘we’; the abandonment of the lusty body in favour of the sick, wasting body; the despair/resentment that emerges from disparity in income – the novel implicitly argues that marriage is not a “plot” in the sense of a sequence of events, but rather a “plot” in the scheming machinations of society too attached to antiquated notions of how relationships ought to operate. Instead, it suggests that young people need to take time to ‘find themselves,’ – as the lovelorn Mitchell does in his spiritual and literal trip to India – before they can hope to legitimately connect with another person.

While I found the actual plot – the sequence of events, that is – compelling – shifts character perspective and overlapping and extending temporal sequencing – I wasn’t as taken with the characters as I think I needed to be in order to care one way or another whether a) Leonard recovers from his depression or whether he kills himself (I was much more concerned with whether he would shave) b) Madeline and Mitchell end up together c) Madeline works out what might make her happy. Instead I sort of hoped that things would climax in some way that would be a triumph of activity – perhaps the long hinted at suicide attempt? – because the characters are not compelling enough on their own to captivate or provoke this readers empathy.

This is not to say this is a “bad” book, or not one worth reading. Quite the contrary, I think it’s a terrific book for its perspective on marriage, on the compromises required of self and partners to make relationships “work,” on the lengths we might be willing to go to disguise what we want from what we feel is expected of us. I just think it could have been a *better* book had the characters been more fully realized, or their complexities more believable. Yeah, that’s it. So sure, read it! but don’t mind if you don’t care whether Leonard offs himself or not. Kind of like the thematic questions are so interesting they get in the way of the characters themselves…

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July 25, 2012 · 2:47 pm

Everyone has Everything: It’s true!

I want to blog about this book – it had a neat plot (orphan parents are in car accident, leave their son (2 and a half) to newish friends, the newish friends are barren and so the child is like a trial run at being the parents they’ll never get to be) and some okay sentences, but I’m jet lagged and too sleepy to make much sense of things. So… let me say that neat plot aside, the book didn’t totally capture me. It is one of those Can lit submissions that’s trying so hard to be “serious fiction” that it reads like it’s yelling I AM SERIOUS FICTION and well, that’s just annoying. So yeah. Neat-o on plot front, but that’s not enough to hold this sleepy reader.

Note: I’m even too tired to find a picture!

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July 14, 2012 · 12:53 am

Blackout: History! War! Time travel!

        So I loved *Blackout*. Not only for the fact that its set in WW2 (is it weird to have an immediate attraction to a WW2 novel? probably.) and not only because it features historians and historical fiction and not only because it’s about time travel and the risks therein. No, I also loved *Blackout*  for its masterful use of form to play with the readers’ expectations and sympathies.

The book opens with a split chronology as the reader moves between 2060 and the Blitz. In 2060 the time traveling historians are busy planning their research trips: finding period costumes, implanting period knowledge (the dates of bombings, available technology, current cultural references) and language (American accents), determining a back story, a job and necessary papers. Throughout these sections the reader is presented with bits of information from the third person omniscient narrator that suggest all is not well with the technology of time travel; however, the historians themselves remain entirely oblivious to the potential hazards of their upcoming trips.

Meanwhile, the Blitz chapters introduce us to our three protagonists – Polly, posing as a nanny for evacuee children; Merope, posing as a shopgirl on Oxford street; and Mike, posing as an American reporter covering the evacuation at Dunkirk.

SPOILER ALERT**

As the reader becomes familiar with the general pattern of chapters – 2060, WW2, WW2, 2060, WW2, WW2, 2060, 2060, WW2 etc. –  the reader comes to expect a necessary “return” to 2060 as inherent in the structure of the book itself. So when the three characters find themselves *stuck* in their respective WW2 temporal-spatial locations and unable to access the “Drop” that is meant to return them to their own time, the reader is jarred right along with the characters as the reader too, finds herself without access to 2060. The chapters narrating this period simply stop, allowing the reader to feel the same disorientation, anxiety and bewilderment as the characters: what *has* happened to 2060? And we don’t find out! The narrative ends without letting the characters OR the reader return to 2060 and so we are all left puzzling whether the course of history has been changed such that time travel *no longer exists* or whether their colleagues in 2060 have met some unfortunate end or whether they have simply been “lost” by their 2060 protectors.

And perhaps this will be my frustration with the novel – even if it’s a necessary frustration in order for the brilliance of the book to be realized – I would have liked the book to resolve these questions. There’s a second part to this series – All Clear – where presumably the conflict is resolved or at least further climaxed, but for this reader I could have done just as well with a serious division between the two parts but the amalgamation of the two parts in one text. I suppose I’m just not a fan of the deliberate cliff hanger that requires seeking out the next book. I can easily borrow it from the library or download it, but wouldn’t it be just as easy to package it as one narrative in the first place?

Small complaint for an otherwise fascinating book that does terrific work highlighting the complexities and possibilities of formal play.

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