The Brooklyn Follies

Title: The Brooklyn Follies

Author: Paul Auster

Number of pages: 304

Started: 24 March 2010

Finished: 31 March 2010

Opening words:

`I was looking for a quiet place to die. Someone recommended Brooklyn, and so the next morning, I traveled down there from Westchester to scope out the terrain.'

Listen to an interview with Paul Auster about the book here.

You can find a reading group guide here

Plot summary:

Set against the backdrop of the contested US election of 2000, it tells the story of Nathan and Tom, an uncle and nephew double-act. One in remission from lung cancer, divorced, and estranged from his only daughter, the other hiding away from his once-promising academic career, and, indeed, from life in general. Having accidentally ended up in the same Brooklyn neighbourhood, they discover a community teeming with life and passion. When Lucy, a little girl who refuses to speak, comes into their lives, there is suddenly a bridge from their pasts that offers them the possibility of redemption.

What I thought:

I enjoyed this book. I didn’t think it was one of Auster’s best, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It was a tale of intertwined stories and people reflecting on life and the decisions that we make. I really like Auster’s writing style and he writes in a way that you can hear the narrator’s voice – they are books that are suited to being read aloud and shared. It was a book that I would like to read again some day and I am sure that I will find things in it then that entirely passed me by this time.

I did think the very end of the book was perhaps a bit contrived (that being the reference to 11 September), but it was a thought provoking book and one that had moments that were just so well written that they had to be savoured or at least pondered. A good read.

The Count of Monte Cristo

Title: The Count of Monte Cristo

Author: Alexandre Dumas

Number of pages: 1462

Started: 18 February 2010

Finished: 23 March 2010

Opening words:

On the 24th of February 1815, the lookout at Notre-Dame de la Garde signalled the three-master, the Pharaon from Smyrna, Trieste and Naples.

As usual, a pilot put off immediately, and rounding the Chateau d'If got on board the vessel between Cape Morgion and the Isle of Rion.

Immediately, and according to custom, the platform of Fort- Saint-Jean was covered with spectators; it is always in an event at Marseilles for a ship to come into port, especially when this ship, like the Pharoon, has been built, rigged, and laden at the old Phocee docks, and belongs to an owner of the city.

Plot summary:

Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantes is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and becomes determined not only to escape but to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration. A huge popular success when it was first serialized in the 1840s, Dumas was inspired by a real-life case of wrongful imprisonment when writing his epic tale of suffering and retribution.

What I thought:

This was a big read! All 1462 pages of it. It was a decent read, but I have to say that the size of it was daunting and meant that I perhaps skimmed over some of the finer points of it. It was a book of captivity and vengeance and much more.

I have heard a few people say that this was one of the best books they have every read. I would not put it in that category, but it is certainly worth a read. Vengeance is a dish best served cold, as they say.

The Master and Margarita

Title: The Master and Margarita

Author: Mikhail Bulgakov

Number of pages: 564

Started: 7 February 2010

Finished: 17 February 2010

Opening words:

At the hour of the hot spring sunset two citizens appeared at the Patriarch's Ponds. One of them, approximately forty years old, dressed in a grey summer suit, was short, dark-haired, plump, bald, and carried his respectable fedora hat in his hand. His neatly shaven face was adorned with black horn-rimmed glasses of a supernatural size. The other, a broad-shouldered young man with tousled reddish hair, his checkered cap cocked back on his head, was wearing a cowboy shirt, wrinkled white trousers and black sneakers.

The first was none other than Mikhail Alexandrovich Berlioz, editor of a fat literary journal and chairman of the board of one of the major Moscow literary associations, called Massolit for short, and his young companion was the poet Ivan Nikolayevich Ponyrev, who wrote under the pseudonym of Homeless.


Read a longer extract here.

Plot summary:

The devil comes to Moscow wearing a fancy suit. With his disorderly band of accomplices - including a demonic, gun-toting tomcat - he immediately begins to create havoc.

Disappearances, destruction and death spread through the city like wildfire and Margarita discovers that her lover has vanished in the chaos. Making a bargain with the devil, she decides to try a little black magic of her own to save the man she loves ...

Read a major analysis of the book (by an “amateur”) here

What I thought:

This book wasn’t really my kind of read. I didn’t really get into the plot very well and found it all a bit odd and unsatisfying. This might, in part, be down to the translation, particularly as there seems to be much debate about which of the many translation is “best”. Perhaps if I had read another version, I might have found it to be a different read. But, for me, I didn’t really find the book flowed, I thought the plot was odd and a bit to surreal in some places for my liking and I just didn’t find the book very coherent. Not a book that I would particularly recommend.

Lolita

Title: Lolita

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Number of pages: 309

Started: 31 January 2010

Finished: 6 February 2010

Opening words:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact, there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh when? About as many years before Lolita was born as my age was that summer. You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose style.

Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied. Look at this tangle of thorns.

Read the opening chapters of the book here.

Plot summary:

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged, fastidious college professor. He also likes little girls. And none more so than Lolita, who he’ll do anything to possess. Is he in love or insane? A silver-tongued poet or a pervert? A tortured soul or a monster? …Or is he all of these?

What I thought:

This was an interesting read and clearly one that is affected by the narrator telling the story. Humbert Humbert is the narrator and the protagonist with a liking for young girls. It’s a controversial story and one that some might feel rather uncomfortable with, not just because of the storyline itself, but because of the narrators explanations and, perhaps, because he might draw some emotion (about him as a person) other than abhorrence at times. It’s a challenging concept for a book and it starts with a foreword (that you should read before you read the rest of the book, as it is part of the plot) which gives a very strong indication of where things will end up. But the story takes some interesting paths to reach its conclusion and you see the ‘morality’ of Humbert and how the standards that he applies to other are not necessarily the same as he applies to himself.

Nabokov was a Russian, and this book, which was written in English, was an experiment in using the English language to its full extent – although he does throw in quite a lot of French too. The book at times seems to get caught up in using the most obscure words that can be found to convey the message, which does nit always enhance the book. But as a work of literature it is also a challenging read, but perfectly readable.

Did I enjoy the book? It is hard to say. I thought it was a clever story in its own way and one that was challenging on a number of levels, but I find it hard to be enthusiastic about a book that involves a subject of this nature.

A Severed Head

Title: A Severed Head

Author: Iris Murdoch

Number of pages: 208

Started: 27 January 2010

Finished: 31 January 2010

Opening words:

'You're sure she doesn't know,' said Georgie.

‘Antonia? About us? Certain’

Georgie was silent for a moment and then said, 'Good.' That curt 'Good' was characteristic of her, typical of her toughness which had, to my mind, more to do with honesty than with ruthlessness. I liked the dry way in which she accepted our relationship. Only with a person so eminently sensible could I have deceived my wife.

We lay half embraced in front of Georgie's gas fire. She reclined against my shoulder while I examined a tress of her dark hair, surprised again to find in it so many threads of a pure reddish gold. Her hair was as straight as a horse's tail, almost as coarse, and very long. Georgie's room was obscure now except for the light of the fire and a trio of red candles burning upon the mantelpiece The candles, together with a few scraggy bits of holly dotted about at random, were as near as Georgie, whose 'effects' were always a little ramshackle, could get to Christmas decorations, yet the room had a glitter all the same as of some half desired treasure cavern. In front of the candles, as at an altar, stood one of my presents to her, a pair of Chinese incense holders in the form of little bronze warriors, who held aloft as spears the glowing sticks of incense. Their grey fumes drifted hazily to and fro until sent by the warmth of the candle flames to circle suddenly dervish-like upward to the darkness above. The room was heavy with a stifling smell of Kashmir poppy and sandalwood. Bright wrapping paper from our exchange of presents lay about, and pushed into a corner was the table which still bore the remains of our meal and the empty bottle of Chateau Sancy de Paraběre 1955. I had been with Georgie since lunchtime. Outside the window and curtained away was the end of the cold raw misty London afternoon now turned to an evening which still contained in a kind of faintly luminous haze what had never, even at midday, really been daylight.

Plot summary:

Martin Lynch-Gibbon believes he can possess both a beautiful wife and a delightful lover. But when his wife, Antonia, suddenly leaves him for her psychoanalyst, Martin is plunged into an intensive emotional re-education. He attempts to behave beautifully and sensibly. Then he meets a woman whose demonic splendour at first repels him and later arouses a consuming and monstrous passion. As his Medusa informs him, 'this is nothing to do with happiness'.

What I thought:

This is a book about self-deluded people who think that as long as you are “reasonable” that somehow everything is fine. This is despite some rather farce like bed-hopping, affairs and other such adverse circumstances. But as an outside observer you see how deluded the narrator and the other characters in the book truly are. It was a somewhat humorous read, but also one that did not show the middle-classes best possible light! I have never read any other books by Iris Murdoch, but my understanding is that this book is not ‘typical’. It is meant to be more humorous and more accessible, but it was an interesting introduction to her writing and I would be interested to see what sorts of themes she uses in her other novels and if they are as readable as this one because this was certainly a well written book.

Wolf Brother

Title: Wolf Brother

Author: Michelle Paver

Number of pages: 256

Started: 21 January 2010

Finished: 26 January 2010

Opening words:

Torak woke with a jolt from a sleep he’d never meant to have.

The fire had burned low. He crouched in the fragile shell of light and peered into the looming blackness of the Forest. He couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything. Had it come back? Was it out there now, watching him with its hot, murderous eyes?

Read the first chapter here

Plot summary:

Thousands of years ago the land is one dark forest. Its people are hunter-gatherers. They know every tree and herb and they know how to survive in a time of enchantment and powerful magic. Until an ambitious and malevolent force conjures a demon: a demon so evil that it can be contained only in the body of a ferocious bear that will slay everything it sees, a demon determined to destroy the world.

Only one boy can stop it - 12 year old Torak, who has seen his father murdered by the bear. With his dying breath, Torak's father tells his son of the burden that is his. He must lead the bear to the mountain of the World Spirit and beg that spirit's help to overcome it.

Torak is an unwilling hero. He is scared and trusts no one. His only companion is a wolf cub only three moons old, whom he seems to understand better than any human.

Theirs is a terrifying quest in a world of wolves, tree spirits and Hidden People, a world in which trusting a friend means risking your life.

What I thought:

Technically, this is a children’s book (despite some very long words in places!). However, it is a perfectly good read for adults – and I note it appears to be on Waterstone’s books of the decade list.

It was a good read, and very quick. It probably isn’t the kind of book that I would normally choose to read, but it came highly recommended, and I am glad I gave it a go. There were parts of it that reminded me of “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, although I am not sure I can quite explain why. I did think it rather suddenly came to its conclusion, but that didn’t detract from the book particularly, which was a decent adventure story.

Amongst Women

Title: Amongst Women

Author: John McGahern

Number of pages: 184

Started: 15 January 2010

Finished: 21 January 2010

Opening words:

As he weakened, Moran became afraid of his daughters. This once powerful man was so implanted in their lives that they had never really left Great Meadow, in spite of jobs and marriages and children and houses of their own in Dublin and London. Now they could not let him slip away.

Plot summary:

A lyric lament for Ireland, McGahern's lovingly observed family drama is dominated by an almost pathetic paterfamilias. Gruff, blustering Michael Moran, former guerrilla hero in the Irish War of Independence, is a man "in permanent opposition." Now a farmer, he vents his compulsion to dominate, his cold fury and sense of betrayal on his three teenage daughters. Yearning for approval but fearing his flare-ups, they periodically beat a path back to the farmhouse from London and Dublin, then take flight again, both proud and dependent. Moran's second wife, Rose, much younger than he, displays saintly patience in her attempts to heal this splintering family. Moran also claims a renegade son in London who is "turning himself into a sort of Englishman," and another son driven away by Moran's threats of beatings.

What I thought:

This book was an interesting read. To a degree, not a lot happened. It centred around the controlling nature of the father, Moran, who sought to guide his children (and others) in the belief that he was a decent man who only wanted what was best for them. In reality, he held his children back and they escaped him by moving to places like Dublin or London – and yet still they were drawn back at various times, and somehow all but one could not let him go. It was quite a dark book and one that did not show a good side of family life. One to ponder I think.