Stone Diaries, Sharpe's Triumph

While I was at my parents this weekend, I read The Stone Diaries on Jenna's recommendation.

The writing was definitely beautiful, and Shields rings the changes on the different styles of writing. One section is epistolary, one is written from the points of view of many characters, and so on. On the other hand, it was all in the service of a void.

I felt like the point of the novel is the difficulty people have understanding each other, or even themselves. To illustrate this idea, Shields very rarely gives us any insight into her main character, but only gives us the fragmentary impressions of others (it's telling, for example, that the above-mentioned epistolary section contains no letters by the main character, only letters to her and about her). I think that having a vacuum at the center can be done (though no examples spring to mind right now), but Daisy, the main character, is too slender a reed to stand up to the task.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from the passive Daisy is Richard Sharpe, hero of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe's Triumph. Set during the British conquest of India, the novel is about Richard Sharpe's rise from sergeant to ensign, which was apparently a difficult feat in those times (ensigns were the lowest rank of officer, and getting promoted to that rank allowed a man to become a gentleman). It's one of those historical novels where the parts that are hardest to believe are also the most accurate -- in this case, Sharpe is involved in the battle of Assaye, in which 10,000 British troops beat a force 5 times their size and with superior firepower.

It was a fast-paced read and gave me a feel for the time and place -- in the end, that's what I was looking for, and I'm sure I'll be reading more of Sharpe's adventures in the near future.