Tag Archives: Wars of the 20th Century

July 18, 2011 · 11:01 pm

A Gate at the Stairs: Sort of unbelievable

                I say “sort of unbelievable” not because any of the events in A Gate at the Stairs are unbelievable, but rather because there are sentences in this book, full paragraphs really, that so capture some essence of the world or of worldly experience in ways that would be, well, unbelievable, were they not regularly happening. Each page, each paragraph offer up gems – what is it when gems are not rare, but simply precious? – that left me feeling like I had been punched (such accuracy in describing (my) human experience does feel, for whatever reason, visceral) and hugged (such palpable beauty cannot but feel like an embrace?).

Suspending (however difficultly) my adoration of the descriptions in the text, the plot and characters are closer to pretty good than to outstanding. The protagonist, Tassie, does not always behave in ways I might expect her to, and I suppose this might be meant to get at the unpredictability of human behaviour, and yet, it didn’t feel like a reasonable level of variability, and more an unevenness in character development. (SPOILER: This was particularly the case in the scene when Tassie climbs in the coffin – while her decision to do so allows for a captivating description of Robert and a thoughtful meditation on grief and uncertainty, her action does not properly align with Tassie as we know her. This sort of “surprise” character decisions extend to secondary characters like Sarah and Edward, and are, for this reader, distracting and disappointing (as the text is otherwise… brilliant).

I sat for a few minutes with the conclusion of the book. I felt at the point that Mary-Emma leaves that the book ought to end with her departure. My sense that the book could have concluded there asked me to reconsider the central themes and foci (yeah! foci!) of the novel: was the book to be about the relationship between Tassie and Mary-Emma or about the relationships Tassie has (and ignores) more generally? Given that the book does *not* end with Mary-Emma’s departure we must give credit to the latter idea that this is a book about Tassie and her interactions with the world – with her family, with her roommates, with her ridiculous (and poorly constructed) boyfriend. If that’s the case I might have liked fuller, and earlier, development of her relationship with her family. Except that perhaps the poignancy of the conclusion might be lost had she “attended” to her family better. Ah… let it be that I am unsettled by the conclusion both for the material it contains and for its impact on how the rest of the novel reads.

I’ll suggest reading this book because of its forceful beauty in capturing the essence of moments, places and people. With the caveat that the plot and character may leave you frustrated – not because they are (in any way) bad, but because they are only very good.

Leave a comment

Filed under 100 Books of 2011, American literature, Erin's Favourite Books, Fiction, New York Times Notable, Prize Winner

Tagged as , , , , ,

April 17, 2011 · 12:20 am

Gorazde: Difficult

           War correspondent Joe Sacco’s graphic novel, Gorazde, is difficult to read. It reports on the experiences of Edin, a Bosnian Muslim, during the siege of Gorazde and describes in text and image the atrocities committed during the siege of the city and of neighboring towns, and of the violence of diplomatic decisions that favoured political expediency over human life and well-being.

As I read the book (in a single sitting, it’s entirely captivating) I asked myself what made the graphic form so effective in expressing the individual and collective suffering as compared to text-based reportage. I’m not sure I have a good answer (again, see my comments on my new-to-graphic-novels) though I suspect that it has to do with pacing. Sacco does well to slow down the pace of reading in scenes of high tension and great suffering, and in so doing required this reader to pay – uncomfortable – attention to scenes I might have more readily surged through in a text-based version. With little choice but to read snippets of sentences set against black-and-white images of intense action, the graphic version demanded my investment in each character, and in each scene that I certainly wanted to avoid reading about.

While I found Sacco entirely effective in using graphics to describe and pace his narrative, I also admired the text of the book, which did an admirable job contextualizing the conflict, while also attending to individual stories and experiences (one two-page spread, in particular, featured a compendium of “interviews” which aptly captured shared and different responses to the return of Serbs to Gorazde).

I’m not sure I appreciated Sacco’s sometime self-congratulatory digs at other reporters who “only” came to Gorazde for one or two days, while he spent considerable time in the city and made multiple trips. I appreciate the difference such reporting experiences must effect in the kind and quality of writing produced, however, I nevertheless felt these comments were less effective in attacking the West’s apparent disinterest in the suffering and death of others (as was perhaps the intent) than they were in conveying Sacco’s confidence in his reportage expertise. While many of Sacco’s self-reflexive comments approach the difficult question of why he should be able to leave and return to safety with little trouble, I do not think the text goes far enough in interviewing the reporter himself.

That said, it’s an incredibly compelling story and one, oddly I suppose, made better still by the difficulty of its reading.

Leave a comment

Filed under 100 Books of 2011, Prize Winner

Tagged as , , , ,

April 16, 2011 · 1:41 am

The Madman and the Butcher: Better Butcher than Madman

                               Tim Cook’s popular history, The Madman and the Butcher tackles the biographies of Canadian WWI figures, Sir Sam Hughes and Sir Arthur Curries, respectively. For those of you not up-and-up on your Canadian history, Sam Hughes worked as the Minister of Militia and MP before/during/after WW1, and Arthur Currie served first in the war as a brigadier general and eventually as the Lieutenant General of the Canadian Corp (the first Canadian, rather than a British soldier, to command a corp of Canadian soldiers).

While Cook’s history purports to be about balancing the historical record in terms of the “reputations” of each man — Hughes and Currie, have both at various points between 1914 and the present been libeled as the titular ‘madman’ and ‘butcher’ respectively — it is tilted much in favour of redeeming, and in some respects resurrecting the fading history of, Arthur Currie.

I am not at all opposed to this move on the part of Cook, I just wondered whether the book might have benefited (a great deal) from making Currie the explicit focus, rather than including the oftentimes strained and repetitive chapters on Hughes. While I appreciate the desire to set up an opposition between the two men (an opposition mirrored by Hughes’s eventual and aapparent hatred of Currie), the chapters on Currie are by far the more engaging (particularly the section on the famous libel trial).

I admired Cook’s efforts to refract growing Canadian nationalism and the successes of the Canadian corps through biography. I’m not sure the effort was successful in the case of Hughes, as his nationalist vigour to mount an impressive Canadian civilian-soldier army is tempered by his imperialist vision and the relatively minor impact he played after 1916. In the case of Currie, however, Cook does well to demonstrate the parallel struggle of Currie to establish his individual authority and the Canadian Corps’s growing recognition both home and abroad as an identifiable (and formidable) unit.

I am less impressed by the repetition in the middle section of the book, in particular, (as mentioned) with reference to Sam Hughes’s ego, lies and slander. I do think that rather than describe each battle the Canadian corps participated in, Cook might have done better to select several battles that represented key points in Currie-cum-Canada’s development, rather than the (sometimes exhausting) description of each movement of artillery.

The last third of the book that deals with the libel trial is engaging and engrossing, and does a terrific job of getting at Cook’s purported intent of addressing the “war of reputations.” Again, this “war” has nothing to do with Hughes, and everything to do with Currie. Hence, a book that is far better at dealing with the butcher, than the madman.

Leave a comment

Filed under 100 Books of 2011

Tagged as , , , , ,

April 11, 2011 · 4:36 pm

The Spy Who Came In From the Cold: Death be Cause

       A good spy novel ought to have double agents, sacrificial women, and neat fight scenes. John le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold has these elements. It’s a really good read: well paced, brilliantly plotted, and smooth in the necessary transitions in narrative focalization that allow the reader access to pieces of information, but not quite enough (for me at least) to piece together the mystery before le Carre is ready to have it all out.

The novel grapples with questions of whether individual lives are worth sacrificing for the sake of the larger good, and then explodes this (somewhat banal) moral question by tackling whether there is such a thing as a “larger good” at all. These questions might sound overwrought, but the novel does a remarkable job of weaving these ideas into character and plot in such a way as to not read as clunky or melodramatic (with the one notable exception of Leamas’s and Liz’s conversation in the car).

A great cold war novel in its descriptions of tension along the borders and in its attention to the similarities between the two powers in both ideology and method. A great spy novel for its emphasis on plot, but with a suitable level of character development that allows the conclusion to by poignant and affecting.

Leave a comment

Filed under 100 Books of 2011, Mystery

Tagged as , , , ,