Book Thirty - Everything You Need

I have one thing to say to the main characters of this book, and I feel that it can best be expressed through interpretive song and dance:

Jesus Christ. You could drown in the self-pity in this book. There are entire chapters - MANY of those chapters - where the characters do nothing but sit and think about how miserable they are, how terrible their lives are, where they went wrong, when it will all be over, all the mistakes they've made, etc. etc. I am recently arrived in New Zealand and having a blast, but every time I picked up this book it killed any happy feeling I had going and then gave me another thirty pages of sad, dripping prose. This is book thirty on the list, and while I have honestly suffered during some of these, I've always been able to finish the novel. This one, I couldn't. I stopped at around 300 pages in when Nathan and his secret daughter have (yet another) stupid, silly argument which I thought would be resolved quickly. Then I turned the page and found out that the author had decided to skip a year in the narrative, a year in which the two main characters hadn't spoken a word to each other. And they live on an island together. An island which has a total population of nine people. For a year. I hate to put down books halfway, but I literally could not go on with this one. 

Brief plot rundown before I dive in here: The book centers on two characters, Nathan Staples, a successful author, and a young writer named Mary Lamb. Little known to Mary, Nathan is actually her secret father who hasn't seen her since she was a child, but they are thrown back together when Mary is accepted into the Lighthouse, a reclusive community of writers who live in a tiny, stormy island. Of course, Nathan also lives there and is her mentor, but is too chicken to tell her that he's her dad, so they just akwardly dance around each other and mope about the depression that is life. For hundreds of pages.

Some positive stuff: I actually started off really liking this one. I loved the character of Mary pre-island, the struggles of growing up, leaving home, the cute boy who wants to lick your ear, etc. I liked Mary pre-island a lot. Of course, that all got ruined when she moved there and about 90% of her dialogue became some form of "Fuck you, Nathan!". Although I don't think this particular author can string together a plotline to save her life, she does know her prose, and she had some beautiful turns of phrase that reminded me of the last book I read, the Sea. This is a weird thing to say, but her descriptions of Nathan's dog were particularly spot on and lovely, probably just because I miss my own dog so much right now. 

Onto the bad: This book went nowhere. There was no narrative thread. There was just endless misery without any chink of bright light to pull it together. And it was so melodramatic. Random indecent exposure from elderly woman and child murders and cheap plot devices that took us nowhere...it never ended. Every single gesture or careless word warranted an entire paragraph about life and mortality and God and sex, which believe me, got kind of monotonous after awhile. Also, I found the whole premise of the book kind of ridiculous; why would any girl in the prime of her life willingly go spend nine years on a secluded island in the middle of nowhere to try to write better? Girl, I don't know who forgot to tell you, but writing and living kind of go hand in hand, and being miserable on an island all day isn't living.

Oh, man, I could go on forever. I literally wanted to reach into the pages and strangle Nathan at some points, and Mary as well. I cannot believe that this book was so well received. Don't get me wrong, I don't think books should be all sunshine and rainbows all the time - I mean, I love Steppenwolf, and poor Harry is just about the most miserable son of a bitch on the planet. But even though you can't really say Steppenwolf has a happy ending, at least it has a hint of joie de vivre, a light at the end of the tunnel, a point. This book? Nada.

In Summary: If you're looking for a novel that will convince you that life is an endless misery, a torment that cannot be escaped, without a hint of bravery or love or hope involved, look no further, my friend - this is the book for you.

Book Twenty Nine - The Sea

Jesus, what is it with me and picking all the books about elderly men confronting their mortality? Seriously! Is it the List's fault? Was the List compiled by an elderly man confronting his mortality? If I have to read about someone's legacy one more time I am going to throw the book across the room.

That being said, this book wasn't as terrible as the other two. Banville sure knows his way around words; his prose is beautiful and at times caused me to re-read sentences and passages over and over again, just to appreciate the language. The parts about the main character's wife dying are really poignant and struck a true chord for me. Dying, after all, isn't all about the moment of death - sometime it's a long, slow process where you don't know quite how to behave. As Banville nicely points out, death can be tragic and terrible, but death can also be awkward, and that's something the book deals with quite deftly. However, the whole story with the Graces feels way of place for me. It makes sense that the main character should be reminiscing about them, given that he's returned to the scene of the crime, as it were, but I wasn't sure what the reader was supposed to get out of his memories. Wasted life? The suddenness of death? I thought pretty early on that he was building to some kind of crazy twist with that story, and when it came, I was disappointed. The conclusion felt simultaneous contrived and underdone, and I gotta say, if I was supposed to feel a shred of emotion about it, Banville's gonna have to be a bit more original.

A couple other things: I don't know if it's deliberate on Banville's part of a reflection of his own sensibilities, but the main character does not understand women in the slightest. His treatment and thoughts about his own daughter, Chloe Grace, and Rose are all full of errors in judgement and gross mischaracterizations, and the fact that any of them will even associate with him is kind of remarkable. I think it has to be on purpose - otherwise, I'd be really concerned for Banville as a human being. Secondly, I did really like the undertone of malice throughout the book, especially when the Graces were concerned. The picnic scene especially hit that home for me; I mean, what could be more innocent than a family picnic by the seaside? But the way he writes it, every the most innocent of actions are full of hidden intent and foreshadowing, and in the end, it's a sense of uneasiness that prevails, not a sense of joy. 

In Summary: A hit and miss book that manages to be almost painfully evocative at some points and pointless in others, but I would say it's worth a read for the prose alone.

Book Twenty Eight - Cloud Atlas

I've read this book about a million times, but it was on the list and I needed something to comfort me on a thirteen hour plane ride to New Zealand, so this seemed the obvious choice. This book is definitely in my top three - I can't pinpoint the exact ranking, it's way too hard. This novel is just transcendent. David Mitchell must have made a deal with the devil or something, because no one should be this good. I love all his other books almost as much, but this was my first introduction to him, and in my opinion, it's still his masterpiece. 

Cloud Atlas is a novel told by six different people in in six different places, spanning from the 1700's to a post-apocalyptic wasteland. If this sounds like a cheap plot trick to you, it is most definitely not. Every single character he writes is unique and interesting and deserves their own freaking novel, but it's enough just to get the taste. The stylistic differences between sections are so pronounced that the story might suffer from disconnect if it was in the hands of a lesser author, but Mitchell ties them all together masterfully. Each novella deals with the themes of human cruelty and human freedom, and way history repeats itself endlessly through the centuries. The scope of this book aims really high, but luckily, Mitchell hits the mark. Some of the parts are hard to read (Timothy Cavendish, jesus, I felt like I was trying to read egyptian at some points), and some seem to drag on (Zachry, for example) but in the end you will put down this book and feel like you've pulled aside the veil of history and gotten a glimpse of a staggering pattern that stretches across the centuries. It really is a beautiful book, and I can't speak more highly of it. My biggest complaint is that I want entire novels - series of novels, even - about Robert Frobisher and Somni, but alas, this book will have to do. 

One last thing about the book: This is one of those books that is so varied and rich that you can't help but notice new things with every re-reading, or be struck by different passages. This time, the passage where Robert is trying to find his brother's grave and thinking about the young soldiers under the earth hit me like a punch to the gut. "Another war is always coming, Robert." 

In other news, apparently they are making a movie of this book?! I am cautiously optimistic...I just don't see how they can do all six stories justice in under two hours, but I'll reserve judgement until I see it. My opinions are split on books-to-movies...Lord of the Rings improved the books, I think (but of course, I'm only talking about the extended editions) but I was forever saddened to see the mess they made of the Golden Compass. Tom Hanks is already in it, so that's promising! I can't wait to see how this goes. 

In Summary: "'He who must do battle with the many-headed hydra of human nature must pay a world of pain & his family must pay it along with him! & only as you gasp your dying breath shall you understand, your life amounted to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean!'

Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?"