Tag Archives: Wars of the 20th Century

July 26, 2013 · 4:51 pm

The Things They Carried: Spectacular

I read *The Things They Carried* about a month ago. I got a concussion (sigh) and so couldn’t read or write or post here about what I’d read pre-concussion, so my memory of the book is a bit hazy.

Not so hazy that I don’t remember that I *loved* it. A brilliant exploration of why we read, why we write stories, the purpose of stories in our personal and collective lives, the peculiarities of memory, the ways stories allow us to get a better sense of the “truth” of historical events.

All the questions unfold in a memoir-like return to the Vietnam War, but it feels inadequate to say the book is about a soldier’s experience in Vietnam because it’s really a book about why and how we remember through stories. And it’s brilliant. Brilliant! 

I didn’t think I’d like it because I’m not fond of Vietnam stories (as 10-10-12 proved) nor am I particularly keen (okay, I’m adverse) to non-fiction. But this reads like a novel, a beautiful, poetic, brilliant novel. And Vietnam *is* there, and not simply as a backdrop for these bigger questions – it has a character in its own right – but I do think that the meditations on story, history and self surpass that of the plot/character elements. Go read it!

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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. 

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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.

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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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