Posts tagged with “son”

15 May

The Road - the novel

11:12 AM
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The-road.jpg

 

I was very annoyed not to make it to the last reading group meeting at the library on Tuesday. our book for April had been “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy, about which there was quite a hoopla when a movie was brought out on the back of it.

There has been something of a zeitgeist lately for apocalyptic cinema, but this was different, this was a novel. What a novel it turned out to be too. It is not a weighty tome and when people had talked about the movie I had noticed they said “nothing much happens”. Well I suppose one could say the same of the book’s narrative, but that would be both to miss the point and to underestimate the lasting power this book and the writing in it had, at least for me.

A son is born at the moment mankind has unleashed the worst of all terrors, Armageddon in the shape of a nuclear holocaust. This becomes apparent around midway through the book, but all we are presented with is a father and a boy (we do not even realise they are related to start with) who are forced to survive in a world which is in all likelihood ending. They are travelling the road across America to follow the sun for survival.

I suspect many of my friends at the library will have found the subject matter and incidental images (like barbecued babies) a little hard to swallow (sic), but somehow when you are immersed it is possible to get past that.  Yes, at times it feels as though you are in some awful horror movie (only this time really scaring the pants of you!), but the part that is really frightening is not the dreadful images, rather the feeling this is all too real.  For some reason (God forbid) it seems quite feasible that if there were nothing to eat and no moral authority to prevent it one might find people forced to cultivate and eat other less fortunate people as food - hard to swallow in the context of a blog, but in the context of this text it briefly seems all too possible and that is SCARY!

There is a good deal of dialogue, but again not a lot is said, and yet the weight of the language is well measured. Only once did I notice Cormac using writerly prose and this was reserved for the closing paragraph if memory serves, when he talks of a trout with the world engraved in it’s scales.  This was imagery that had cropped up personally for the lead character in the book earlier and I loved the resonance.  Although I would normally have found this paragraph far too over-reaching and obscure it was very fitting in the context it was deployed.

The Pulitzer prize has it’s roots in journalism and this book has the feel to me of being written by a master of the craft of journalism - I cannot applaud too highly this novel and the way it does what it does so well - you may be horrified by the subject but the book remains a true work of outstanding literature that I think will stand the test of time.

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11 March

Home, Mudbound,and Scottsboro Boys

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Three books in one bog entry… for me there is one common theme to them too, which is race and the way it is approached in literature.  I should almost like to include Coetze’s “Friday” here, but I think that work deserves consideration alone and in any case four wouuld be, I think, a book too far!

“Home” is a sequel or follow up to “Gilead” which was highly successful for Marilyn Robinson and the January choice of my reading group.  Although I did not make it to the reading group in February it did get to feature on their new blog and I have made a comment there, one which I expect will stand alone since this book group are definitely a fan of the printed page a proper meeting.  There are plenty of other online reading communities and active blogs out there, some in the blogroll to the right.  But back to “Home” and as you will have seen if you clicked through to my comment there is one thing I was left puzzled by, which likely would not have happened to me had I started reading the works with the highly acclaimed “Gilead”.  I had formed the impression the family at the centre of the narrative were black, African Americans to be exact.  It is largely this which gives the common thread to this post so perhaps I stretched the connection.

Gilead is the name of the small, rural Idaho town where the Broughton family home is.  They are a large family and the narrative is told by the youngest daughter who returns home to care for the aging patriarch of the family.  There is a touching portrayal of the return of one of her brothers, perhaps the black sheep of the family.  What I liked best was the exploration of things they shared despite being obviously quite different siblings with different life paths.  The simple fact they had shared the same family allowed them to make connnections they would never have managed as people who were not related.  This was actually the only hopeful part in a rather bleak novel, but only bleak in a realistic sense.  There was plenty touching and encouraging and very beautifully portrayed within that.

Ms Robinson has left herself plenty of scope for another sequel exploring how life goes on for Rosalind, the youngest in my opinion.  Everything we learn about Jack is presented obliquely and in a shadey manner which is a cunning way to paint him since this is the sort of character he is.  A drifter and destined to leave the novel as he arrives, from the street with not a penny to his name and a drink problem that haunts him along with a past relationship.  It was this relationship that finally meant i Had to accept this fammily is white and not black, because Della is the daughter of another minister and definitely coloured.  I did get a little tired of the way Jack’s father tended to dominate the novel, but perhaps that was a reflection of Jack’s life too in that he always felt he had not done enough and was destined not to make his father proud of him.  One could make an interesting criticism of the novel exploring the question of predestination.

You could not say the same of “ Mudbound” the firstl novel by Hillary Jordan which is very directly concerned with the quesiton of race in the American past, but also has a strong element of family drama and patriarchy.  This time the patriarchy is rather less benevolent, althought the elder son of the family whom our “heroine” narrator marries does present a more positive image, perhaps.

Set between the wars in the deep South of America this has many historical scenes directly concerning race - I should love to know if the auther os black and if not I am impressed by her research an ability to portray things convincingly fromt he point of view of Ronson and his family.  She did seem to me to have a very convincing way of speaking from a male viewpoint and understanding his friendship with the younger brother.  I commonly admire it when a male author can convincingly write from a female viewpoint, so here is a counterpoint for a woman author.

Last but not least Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman is a ficitional work of a very real hisorical event.  The reading group by large had not heard of the eventpersonally I was also surprised that it has faded from modern consciousness.  So as a work that reminds one of the historical sweep of the case and the historical background perhaps this book has some merit.  But as a work novel in it’s own right I found it extremely lacklustre, the characters felt very thin, almost to the extent of being cardboard cutouts.  We are only really presented with two protagonists, both female.  Everyone else is a walk on character and it seemed to me there were few and far between strong male roles here, which somehow seemed a lack when the tragedy of Scottsboro is the prejudice and biggotry leading to the wrongful arrest of nine black men whose lives were effectively ended thereafter.  I found myself far more interested in how events may have affected those men and frustrated by the way the novel would not go there.

If you are interested in the journalistic process and dilemmas it throws up then perhaps this book my hold more for you, since the leading lady is presented almost solely in the light of what was no doubt quite a pioneering career for a woman in those times as she works for a left wing journal covering events.  The role of the communist party is mildly interesting too and no doubt informed somewhat by the figure of Ruby Bates who seems really rather a stereotype of underclass suffering an dmakes me feel the book is almost parodying the liberal feelings of our protagonist.

All in all I did not really enjoy it, although the story if made somewhat compelling.  Others might get more form it though and no doubt it suffered coming after other books all of which had involved race to some degree….

I think I have also learned not to break off a posting in the midst of writing it (these last four paragraphs were written some days after the main substance).  I shall try to avoid doing that in future and hope this posting has not suffered as a result.

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16 January

The Secret Scriptures

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One could be forgiven for thinking that this book might fall into the Dan Brown/Da Vinci code “genre” to go by the title, but you’d be wrong.  There is a narrative device of two journals which alternate and one of these is necessarily hidden away and secret.  Perhaps secret is the wrong word, but there is a big “secret” which is only revealed towards the end of the book.  It is hard for me to talk about plot specifics without revealing this secret without “spoiling” the plot.

I was really quite taken with the way this book covers the sweep of an entire century, yet does so in a very engaging way by literally covering the life story of a woman from the last century to this.  All this in the context of Ireland.  There always seem to be questions I am left asking myself after reading a book, and I think the more of them I have usually is a pretty reliable indicator as to how good the book is or at least how much it engaged me.

For this book one question was if Sebastian Barry were Irish and another was whether he started the book with the ending in mind and some sort of plot outline.  For the former a quick google has revealed that he was Dublin born and is indeed Irish, as I expected since the book is immersed in Irish culture and history which was one of the reasons I so enjoyed it.  This also enabled me to learn a lot of history and background both of the troubles and of the recent revelations of abuse cases endemic in Ireland and a few other island nations (such as the island of Jersey where a residential childrens’ facility apparently had many many historic abuse cases).

As to where he started his planning of the book - well Google is less revealing of course and we can likely only speculate.

But this does lead me to the last thing I am curious about, which is how many readers are surprised by the final “twist” to the plot.  As the interleaving narratives progress we are left wondering if they will overlap in any other way than their perspectives on Roseanne’s life (it is told in the first person from the beginning and in third person from the end).  The third person is not the narrator per se, but another character in the book.  I found this plot device immensely satisfying and it gave Mr Barry a lot of opportunity to show what a fine writer he is.

To conclude - thoroughly recommended!  And please please do leave a comment to let me know if you were totally surprised as you finished the book or if you, like me, had intimations as to what was to be revealed before it was!

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