Theft: a Love Story - Peter Carey

theft: a love story

peter carey

c.  2006

269 pages (102 pages read)

stopped reading 6/28/2011

read for: i want more challenge

*may contain spoilers*

I don't know if my story is grand enough to be a tragedy, although a lot of shitty stuff did happen.

Michael Boone, known affectionately as Butcher Bones by his brother Hugh, used to be a famous artist in Sydney, Australia. Now, however, after losing his wife and his son and much of his work in a nasty divorce, he's not much more than a broke, drunk has-been. Forced to leave Sydney, Boone and his brother take up residence as caretakers for an old patron's country property. Their lives are quiet until they meet Marlene, a women who lets them know their neighbor is the owner of a priceless painting, a missing Liebovitz. Just days later, the painting goes missing and, being one of the only people to know of its existence and whereabouts, Boone is accused.

And...that's as far as I got. So if this book goes on to be about something else, I'm sorry for misinforming you.

There's nothing overtly wrong with this book. I'm not throwing it down in disgust or anything. In fact, a part of me that vividly remembers how much I loved Oscar and Lucinda thinks maybe I put it down too soon. I haven't managed to take it back to the library yet, even though I stopped reading over a month ago and am even currently sitting in the UW Suzzello Library Cafe. I just got confused. There's some stuff that I don't understand and after 100 pages I'm not invested enough to see if continuing on will clear anything up. So I put it down. But I'm still not sure...we'll see...

1/5 unless I pick it up again.

The Improper Life of Bezellia Grove - Susan Gregg Gilmore

the  improper life of bezellia grove
susan gregg gilmore
c. 2010
256 pages
completed 5/9/2011

read for: i want more challenge

*may contain spoilers*

Apparently among those who consider their social standing some measure of importance, I am to be admired for I am one of the view Nashvillians who can claim with infallible certainty that a blood relative had lived in this town since its inception.

Bezellia Grove is the last in a long line of first born daughters named for their pioneering ancestor who picked up her dead husband's musket in order to fight off the attacking Chickamauga tribe (though the accuracy of the story is debatable). Growing up in an affluent and wealthy family, Bezellia's life should be breezy and idyllic. But as her mother descends into alcoholism, her father becomes more and more distant, and her younger sister enters her teens still making mud pies and clinging to her doll Baby Stella, Bezellia's life is anything but. She finds herself drawn to the family she creates from the African American help, Maizelle the family cook and Nathaniel the driver. Her life takes a turn when she develops a friendship with Nathaniel's son Samuel and Bezellia is introduced to 60s Tennessee racism first hand.

While I have to admit I enjoyed Gilmore's first novel Looking for Salvation at the Dairy Queen better, I still really enjoyed Bezellia. Southern lit like this can sometimes be dismissed as merely fluff, but she tackles some heavy topics like alcoholism and racism and inter-racial relationships in a very realistic and non sugar coated or fantastical way. I found the inclusion on some not-so-nice remarks from Bezellia's cousin, who was all for Bezellia's crush on Samuel, to be more telling of the blatant racism than any of Mrs. Grove's hysteric outburst. Mrs. Grove is portrayed throughout much of the book as a somewhat larger than life villain (before we come to see her as more complex) so it's kind of accepted that of course someone like that would be racist. But Bezellia's cousin is supposed to be a good character, someone on Bezellia and Samuel's side. For her to make those comments shows how deeply rooted the racism was.

I did find some fault (maybe that's the wrong word??) in the characterization of Maizelle and Nathaniel. In my opinion, I viewed them as a little too...perfect? Against the villainy of Mrs. Grove they were almost angelic in their long suffering and unconditional love for Bezellia and her sister. I thought they were a little too influenced by Mamie or Uncle Tom stereotypes (Maizelle a little more than Nathaniel) in their devotion to Bezellia. It wasn't super blatant or anything, just something that I picked up on. Samuel, on the other hand, was an entirely different matter, a well rounded character and equal to Bezellia.

As for the ending, I was somewhat torn. The hopeless romantic in me wished Samuel and Bezellia could have taken on the world, but the historian in me was more satisfied that they didn't.

4/5

An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro

an artist of the floating world
kazuo ishguro
c. 1986
208 pages
completed 2/26/2011

read for: i want more challenge, global challenge, historical fiction challenge, tbr challenge, 100 greatest novels, 1001 books

*may contain spoilers*

If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as "the Bridge of Hesitation,"you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two ginko trees.

Ono is a retired artist living in post war Japan. One daughter is married and the other is just beginning her marriage negotiations. Negotiations fell through for Noriko a year earlier leading Ono to look back on his involvement in World War II and attempt to understand how his actions have affected his life and the lives of those around him.

This was an interestingly structured book. I often don't like books that aren't linear and this has a lot of nonlinear elements. It jumps back in time from what's considered the present (1948-1950 Japan) to different memories before, during, and immediately after WWII. But it worked out for me since there was still one underlying linear story: Ono working towards his daughter's marriage negotiation. It was through this one linear story that Ono visits his memories. This is a story with an unreliable narrator. He remembers things differently in 1948 than he does in 1950. He goes through a period of remembering himself as someone who acted with honor during the war to someone who claims to be able to take responsibility for working in a way that now is not looked on well, creating propaganda for the country. However, he never quite comes around to understanding the real root of his dishonor and what he did to so horribly tear apart certain people's lives.

Ono is an extremely complex character and despite thinking that he's changing his perception of himself, he actually continues on in a state of denial. Ono's daughters and grandson are less complex, but instead stand to represent changing attitudes in Japan (and actually much of the rest of the world). The older daughter, subservient and always at the very least acting as if she's giving way to her father's wants, is representative of pre-war Japan. The younger daughter, who constantly butts heads with her father, and Ichiro, Ono's grandson who dreams of being an America cowboy, are indicative of the vast Americanization that occurred as a result of the end of World War II. While their characters might not be overly complex, what they represent helps to shape Ono's character.

4/5

Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

of love and other demons
gabriel garcia marquez
c. 1994
147 pages
original language: spanish
completed 2/17/2011

read for: i want more challenge, what's in a name challenge, historical fiction challenge

*may contain spoilers*

An ash-gray dog with a white blaze on its forehead burst onto the rough terrain of the market on the first Sunday of December, knocked down tables of fried food, overturned Indians' stalls and lottery kiosks, and bit four people who happened t cross its path.

Don Ygnacio de Alfaro y Dueñas is a marquis in Spanish ruled South America (what is now Colombia), fading into obscurity with a wife who has been drugged into a state of near constant delirium. The daughter neither of them wanted has been pushed out of the house to be raised in the slave quarters, growing up speaking the Yoruban language of the slaves better than her own family's Spanish. It is only after she is bit by a rabid dog that Sierva Maria really comes to the attention of her father. Though she shows no signs of having contracted rabies herself, her bizarre behavior and mannerisms lead her father to conclude she is possessed by demons. Sierva Maria is sent to a convent to by exorcised. There, she develops a close relationship with Father Cayetano Delaura, the priest sent to oversee her ordeal, who may come to be possessed by an even more powerful demon: love.

Gariel Garcia Marquez is a beautiful writer. Beautiful. The emotional aspect of the detail is amazing. I always feel (I say always, yet this is only the second work of his I've read) that he is able to incorporate so much mundane life into his prose that in less capable hands would seem both irrelevant and kinda gross (in both this and Love in the Time of Cholera there is a passage or two that goes into some detail regarding specific characters' bodily functions). Instead, Marquez is able to make passages like those seem like such natural inclusions and ones that are vital to the integrity of the story. I don't often notice an author's prose style too much unless it bothers me, but Marquez stands out.

The novel (novella really) is very short, so there's not too much room for character development, but for those characters who needed it (Sierva Maria, Father Delaura, the Marquis) it was there in spades. Sierva Maria was quite the enigma. It's never really explained what her demon possession really is. For my part, I think her possession was nothing more than a cultural clash. She had been raised in the slave quarters, completely neglected by her family, so she was raised with different values, cultural norms, beliefs, and language. While differences like these would be expected from the African slaves, these perceived peculiarities were incomprehensible in their own daughter. Plus, she was basically tortured with "cures" for rabies, and that will really mess a person up.

I enjoy books that look into the historical practice of exorcism. It's often pretty terrifying and horrific, but fascinating at the same time. There were some extremely brutal processes to get rid of demons, and it's no wonder so many of them were fatal. My sister the literature scholar and I were discussing exorcist horror movies briefly last night, and I really think sometimes they should go the other way, with the horror part not being the person who's being possessed but the exorcism itself instead. Well, maybe they already do. I'm not so much into the horror movies...Scary stuff.

4/5

Preparations for what's next...

One of my favorite things about the end of the year is making plans for the next year. I get to do a lot of that when it comes to my book blog since this is the time that people are putting out all their sign-ups for next years challenges. Last year I ended up quitting all my challenges, but I've done better this year (and by that I mean I actually have finished one). I've had my feelers out and I'm gearing up for next year. Here are my first two challenges for 2011...

I Want More Challenge...read books written by authors you've read once before and just need more of. I have an ongoing list of books that I've read that have made me want to read more by a certain author which is great for this challenge. I'm choosing the second level of participation: give me more, in which I need to read 5-8 books. I like round numbers, so I'm planning on reading 6 books (6 being a round number for how well it corresponds to 12 months of reading time). My books will be...

1. On Love and Other Demons - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
2. The Improper Life of Bezelia Grove - Susan Gregg Gilmore
3. The Know-it-All - AJ Jacobs
4. The Scent of Rain and Lightning - Nancy Pickard
5. Theft: a Love Story - Peter Carey
6. An Artist of the Floating World - Kazuo Ishiguro

Challenge number two is Back to the Classics...read 8 classics. There's a bit of a catch though, as each classic has to fit one certain parameter. But I think that makes things a little more diverse so that's good. My books will be...

1. Lady Chatterly's Lover - DH Lawrence (banned book)
2. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (wartime: Waterloo and the June Rebellion - seeing as I've known all the words to the musical since I was seven, it's surprising that I've never even tried to read this...)
3. The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (pulitzer prize winner - also surprising I've never read this considering I wrote my final paper for my 12th grade AP English class on it...)
4. Are You There God, it's Me Margaret? - Judy Blume (childrens/YA classic - maybe this is pushing it a little, but when I think of classic YA lit, Judy Blume is what immediately springs to mind even though I somehow managed to never read anything by her...)
5. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitsgerald (20th century classic)
6. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte (19th century classic)
7. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz (21st century classic - this is a little hard to predict, but all I've heard of this has made it seem like it could well be on it's way to classic-dom...)
8. Catch-22: Joseph Heller (reread from a highschool or college English class - I didn't actually finish this so only half of it will be a reread...)

I'm looking forward to 2011!!!