Tag Archives: Wars of the 20th Century

March 28, 2013 · 2:46 am

Deafening: Another WW1 Story that Should be a Bildungsroman

Unfortunately Frances Itani didn’t have good editorial advice. If she’d had good editorial advice she might have written two good novels instead of this one weak novel. The problem for Itani is that she wanted to tell two stories: one of the experience of a young girl growing up deaf at the turn of the century and one of WW1 trenches (because what Canadian literature needs is *another* WW1 Western Front narrative…). How are these stories connected you ask? Very, very tenuously and not at all in a way that might be loosely construed as interesting. The deaf girl, Grania, meets and falls in love with Jim in the span of six or seven pages and then he’s off to war. This rapid courtship isn’t a historical problem – certainly many couples married and separated for the duration of the war – the problem is that the reader spends the first two hundred odd pages with Grania as she grows up, figures out deaf culture, finds herself,  and then with unconvincing speed and heavy-handed touches of intimacy (she says his name “Chim” instead of “Jim” and this is supposed to be satisfactory evidence of their love) she falls in love. Unconvincing I say because the decent into love isn’t depicted. We lose a year or two of Grania’s life and those years just happen to be when she meets and falls in love with Jim. So while the reader cares very much about Grania having experienced her difficult and painful maturation, we care not a whit for her relationship with Jim.

This lack of concern is a problem because the rest of the book – the second half that is (or the second novel as it should have been) – is taken up with Jim’s experiences on the Front (the occasional return to the home-front is even more trying as we try to believe Grania’s misery and longing, but can’t because we don’t believe she fell in love in the first place). Cue the usual descriptions of rats, shell holes, dead and dying best friends, whores and friendly Belgian farmers. There’s no defense for terrible WW1 writing: if it’s going to be poorly written, just don’t bother. It’s not exactly a genre lacking in nuanced exploration or thoughtful consideration. 

And so when Jim returns (and of course he returns: this is a Love Story!) and reunits with Grania I felt not relief or joy, but a frustration and annoyance. This book could have been a unique and compelling exploration of the history of deaf culture in Ontario and the consequences of deafness on identity and relationships. Instead it’s a jammed together mess that doesn’t bear reading. 

Leave a comment

Filed under Book I'll Forget I Read, Fiction

Tagged as , , ,

February 22, 2013 · 6:36 pm

Half of a Yellow Sun: Historical Fiction Makes me Happy

I really do love historical fiction. I’ve imagined and theorized why I love it in other places, so let me just say here that I love it a whole lot as a genre. And so when a great book in my favourite genre comes along, there’s naught to do but enjoy the experience of encountering a historical story turned fiction as history. 

*Half of a Yellow Sun* follows a (loosely constituted) family of five as Nigeria separates into Biafra and the attendant starvation, war crimes and crisis of identities that attended the separation and then reunification. It’s embarrassing (but also revealing) to realize how little I knew of the history of the region and the conflict, and a testament to the strength of the novel and the genre that I left the book feeling as though I know more, but also that I really must know much more – need to find out much more.

I should note a dissatisfaction in the narrative voice. The narrative moves through third person limited narration in the different chapters as the reader is invited to experience the conflict through different gendered, class and national points of view. The purpose of this shift and its effect are well executed, but the voices themselves miss the unique quality that make them distinct “voices,” rather they read as a single authorial voice attempting to thread the particular character. So I praise the intent and the effect of the different perspectives, but suggest that the different perspectives themselves could have been (much) better developed.

1 Comment

Filed under Fiction, Historical Fiction, Prize Winner

Tagged as , , , ,

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.

Leave a comment

Filed under British literature, Fiction, Mystery

Tagged as , , , , ,

November 27, 2011 · 9:15 pm

The Anatomy of a Moment: Delightful (and dense) (like so much good cake)

                         So P. suggested that N.’s suggestion of Javier Cercas’ Anatomy of a Moment might have been an instance of 10-10-12 sabotage. Here I am, seven books from the end, and N. suggests at 450 page (dense) history of the 1981 failed Spanish coup. And I, ever the sucker for recommendations from those I trust, took the bait. Almost two weeks later I’ve finished the thing, so glad I read it, so glad for the recommendation, but not entirely without suspicion. Were these two weeks meant to be gobbled up in order to thwart my success in 10-10-12? Was N. in cahoots with others? Did reading a book detailing the myriad of motivations for taking down a leader leave me deeply suspicious of everyone around me and feed in to my paranoia that other people care less about this reading project than I do? Maybe.

That said, I’m glad I didn’t exchange Anatomy of a Moment for another, much shorter, much more accessible book, in the interests of a speedy read. Because this book needed to be dense, and does so very well in the layering of character, plot sequence, motivation and thematic interest. What, who, and how, does pure politics operate? What investments do public figures have in their legacy? What separates the historical from the fictional (not a question I’m indifferent to!)? For what ought we to blame the leaders of the coup? Anything? What counts as loyalty? What/Are there limits to the function of (the) image in politics?

The book opens and closes with the consideration of Adolofo Suarez’s decision (was it a decision?) not to cower under his seat when the leaders of the coup entered the Spanish Cortes on February 23 1981. Why, Cercas, asks does he remain in his seat? From here, the book widens its scope to consider why General Mellado and Santiago Carrillo also remain in their seats. And then from there, widens further to consider the likely suspects for orchestrating and supporting the coup, and what motivated them. This organizational decision – to focus on characters rather than a chronological sequence – was at first a little disorienting. I felt, perhaps, that I lacked enough basic Spanish history to make sense of the scenes – not knowing enough about Franco, or missing enough of a grounding in Communist history – but as the book unfolds by way of intensive character (and institutions, too, I suppose) studies, these historical threads come together and the disorientation dissolves.

That Cercas initially planned this book as a novel makes these organizational choices somehow read as more appropriate, or less surprising, then had the book set itself out as a traditional history. Maybe that’s my historical fiction bias speaking, but I did appreciate his attention to character, and his willingness to include some absolutely jaw-droppingly gorgeous metaphors and descriptions. And to speculate on psychology. And to allow for the moments that cannot be known by history, but to nevertheless pose the most probable cause/effect. As a good novelist (and good historian!) will do. I think. Here’s one of my more favourite passages, that gives a sense of this kind of poetic of history writing:

“Sometimes you can be loyal to the present only by betraying the past. Sometimes treason is more difficult than loyalty. Sometimes loyalty is a form of courage, but other times it is a form of cowardice. Sometimes loyalty is a form of betrayal and betrayal is a form of loyalty. Maybe we don’t know exactly what loyalty is or what betrayal is. We have an ethics of loyalty, but we don’t have an ethics of betrayal. We need an ethics of betrayal. The hero of retreat is a hero of betrayal” (237).

(Also: what might this ethics of betrayal be? I want to have that conversation.)

Finally, I didn’t believe N. when he told me I was reading a translation. Anne McLean has does a simply tremendous job with the translation. Granted I don’t know Spanish to compare it with, but I do know that this book has an exquisite tone and voice, so in my mind, she’s done very well.

If you’re at all interested in the boundaries of history and fiction, or Spanish history, or the great men of history, or the visual in history, or the outcome of individual acts of rebellion then get yourself a copy of Anatomy of a Moment. (I do stress OR here, any one of those interests would be more then enough to justify reading this book. Or none of those interests. It’s really just worth a read.)

Leave a comment

Filed under 100 Books of 2011, Book I'll Forget I Read

Tagged as , , , ,