It's been a long time since I posted; lots piled up since then...
I finished Bend Sinister. I should've guessed the identity of the narrator. (I actually did, but then decided it was too meta, which was silly of me). Overall, I think it wasn't as successful as some of Nabokov's other work. The games felt separate from the core of the novel, somehow, unlike, say Pale Fire, where the game is the novel. Also, I thought the authorial hand was too heavy-handed (no pun intended).
Speaking of heavy-handed authors, F. Paul Wilson has given his plots an interesting excuse in his "Repairman Jack" series. Jack's actions are now being watched by a higher power of sorts, so there are no more coincidences in his life. This gives Wilson the option to throw in a lot of coincidences into his plotting. How does Jack happen to be in the right place at the right time? The higher power. How does every case he's involved in end up connected to the dark power? The higher power. And so on.
Fortunately, other than using this card in setting up Crisscross, Wilson doesn't otherwise invoke it. Instead, he sets Jack up in his most non-fantastic plot yet. (I don't exactly want to call it realistic, but it doesn't really have many overtly supernatural elements). His plotting is actually pretty standard fare for thrillers, maybe even a cut above many, since he doesn't rely on crazy convoluted stories. Overall, Crisscross is a decent entry in the series, even if it's not going to set the genre on fire.
Room is a sort of half-thriller, I think. Donoghue has put together the elements of a thriller (a woman kidnapped, locked into an 11 x 11 room for 6 years with a baby, trying to get out), but her emphasis isn't on plot. Instead, we look at the world through the eyes of the woman's now-5-year-old son Jack, as he tries to make sense of the world he finds himself in. I think that Jack's viewpoint is the only possible one if this story is not to be a horror novel. He's too innocent to really think about his life, and, by putting us in his place, Donoghue lets us dodge the implications of the back-story somewhat.
At the same time, I think a little bit of thriller pacing would have helped this book. After Donoghue sets up Jack's viewpoint, there's a bit of a feeling of longeurs as we sort of get used to how things are, while we wait for his mother to act. Then, again, after the escape, things are interesting for a time as we see Jack learning to cope with the much wider world. But, again, as he starts to heal, and things get to be more normal, a sense of longeurs sets in. When Jack sees the beach, he's amazed, because he's never experienced anything quite like it. But I'd imagine the same would be true if you took a 5-year-old from Ohio to the beach for the first time. By the end of the novel, seeing Jack react to stuff is really losing steam, because he feels more like an every-child. (I understand that this is by design, to show that he's becoming more normal, but I think that Donoghue should've had a better solution than just letting the book peter out).
On Book III of The Faerie Queene. I don't really have much to say about it, except that I'm really enjoying it. It's got a reputation as being the longest English poem, but I think that, even on a micro level, it's a very fine poem. There are some standout alliterations, cool chiasmus, and all the good stuff that a classical poem should have.
No comments:
Post a Comment