Reading Wednesday
May. 28th, 2014 05:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brigdhWhat did you just finish?
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. This is a hard novel to review, as an important revelation occurs at the very end, which changes everything that came before; I think that it's probably a book that needs to be read at least twice if you want to understand the author's goal. For at least two thirds of the book, it seemed like one of those literary fiction novels were nothing much happens and there's no obvious point: our narrator is a moody, introspective boy who ruminates on his childhood and his tangled relationships with various women; the setting skips around to various points in his life, connected more by emotions than any linear relationship with time; all progress is immediately followed by set-backs, so that very little changes and the goal is more an understand than an event. But then, as I said, the end shines a new light on everything that came before, giving it new meaning.
I think (without having read it twice) it's a novel about Partition, without actually once directly mentioning Partition. But it's a novel about how the borders between countries – those "shadow lines" - are imaginary and created and yet still incredibly powerful; it's about how people become separated from their homes and are unable to ever return to what they once had; about alienation and foreignness and creating places through imagination; and about the things sacrificed or lost for ideals.
Also, it's a book with a lot of weird margin notes! Any character who discusses a topic for more than a paragraph or two gets labeled: "obsession with clothes", "obsession with food and digestion", "obsession with truth and lies". Several times two people discussing a third person is labeled with "gossip!" or "rumors!", and I get the sense that the note-taker highly disapproves. A description of a plane taking off is labeled "technology as monstrous" (someone is way enamored of their new literary criticism vocabulary), a fairly normal description of a house is "all like pictures" (I mean... I suppose it is a visual description? Like every other description in the novel, of course), one character shouting at another gets "he's insulted" (deep insight, there). I think my favorite, though, is during a memory from the narrator's childhood, when he accidentally spied on two strangers having sex and got turned on. Next to the paragraph that includes lines such as He could feel his knees trembling, with apprehension, with a longing that he couldn't udnerstand, and with a fierce, bursting pain that was running through his body and gathering in his groin, our note-taker has added "guilt at listening in". Uh, sure. That's definitely a description of guilt.
The notes even continue outside of the story itself– the last few pages of the book are summaries of the author's other books. Next to the last one is written "Solomon Rushdie". I'd like to think that it's just a (misspelled) name the note-taker wanted to look up, but it really seems like they think Rushdie wrote Ghosh's most recent book.
What are you currently reading?
Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly. Vampires are continuing to vampire, Paris catacombs are catacombing, fog is fogging. I'm enjoying it!
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold. A sort of side novel (or novella, perhaps) to the Vorkosigan saga, mostly starring new characters. Though I am very glad to see Eli Quinn again!
The Shadow Lines by Amitav Ghosh. This is a hard novel to review, as an important revelation occurs at the very end, which changes everything that came before; I think that it's probably a book that needs to be read at least twice if you want to understand the author's goal. For at least two thirds of the book, it seemed like one of those literary fiction novels were nothing much happens and there's no obvious point: our narrator is a moody, introspective boy who ruminates on his childhood and his tangled relationships with various women; the setting skips around to various points in his life, connected more by emotions than any linear relationship with time; all progress is immediately followed by set-backs, so that very little changes and the goal is more an understand than an event. But then, as I said, the end shines a new light on everything that came before, giving it new meaning.
I think (without having read it twice) it's a novel about Partition, without actually once directly mentioning Partition. But it's a novel about how the borders between countries – those "shadow lines" - are imaginary and created and yet still incredibly powerful; it's about how people become separated from their homes and are unable to ever return to what they once had; about alienation and foreignness and creating places through imagination; and about the things sacrificed or lost for ideals.
Also, it's a book with a lot of weird margin notes! Any character who discusses a topic for more than a paragraph or two gets labeled: "obsession with clothes", "obsession with food and digestion", "obsession with truth and lies". Several times two people discussing a third person is labeled with "gossip!" or "rumors!", and I get the sense that the note-taker highly disapproves. A description of a plane taking off is labeled "technology as monstrous" (someone is way enamored of their new literary criticism vocabulary), a fairly normal description of a house is "all like pictures" (I mean... I suppose it is a visual description? Like every other description in the novel, of course), one character shouting at another gets "he's insulted" (deep insight, there). I think my favorite, though, is during a memory from the narrator's childhood, when he accidentally spied on two strangers having sex and got turned on. Next to the paragraph that includes lines such as He could feel his knees trembling, with apprehension, with a longing that he couldn't udnerstand, and with a fierce, bursting pain that was running through his body and gathering in his groin, our note-taker has added "guilt at listening in". Uh, sure. That's definitely a description of guilt.
The notes even continue outside of the story itself– the last few pages of the book are summaries of the author's other books. Next to the last one is written "Solomon Rushdie". I'd like to think that it's just a (misspelled) name the note-taker wanted to look up, but it really seems like they think Rushdie wrote Ghosh's most recent book.
What are you currently reading?
Those Who Hunt the Night by Barbara Hambly. Vampires are continuing to vampire, Paris catacombs are catacombing, fog is fogging. I'm enjoying it!
Ethan of Athos by Lois McMaster Bujold. A sort of side novel (or novella, perhaps) to the Vorkosigan saga, mostly starring new characters. Though I am very glad to see Eli Quinn again!
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no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 12:18 am (UTC)Dare I ask?
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Date: 2014-05-30 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-30 11:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-31 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-30 04:59 pm (UTC)And yes, me too! Alas, I picked it up quite a while ago, so even the same second-hand store probably wouldn't have any other books of theirs.
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Date: 2014-05-29 08:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-30 04:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 04:06 pm (UTC)Ethan of Athos! I need to reread that, I hardly remember anything except that it made me realise I shipped Quinn with Cavilo for some reason??? (Cavilo is the villain from the Gregor Incognito book, I'm pretty sure she doesn't appear in Ethan of Athos at all.)
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Date: 2014-05-30 04:58 pm (UTC)That had not at all occurred to me, but I would TOTALLY read Quinn/Cavilo. Ethan of Athos is a very sweet little novel! It's much lighter than the rest of the series, though.