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Aug. 13th, 2006 05:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selene_13Book Revies. No more spoilers that you'd see on a book's cover, but cut for length.
The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss
A young author who has written a very astute and provoking novel about Polish immigrants in America; the lost, lonely lives of the elderly; and the quest of a young girl to find some meaning in her life by discovering the origin to a novel which obsesses her mother. From the blurb to this novel I´d have thought the story to be Austenesque, a romance novel, a recovering of a love story, but don´t let the title fool you: it is a literary novel about many issues, written in an insightful, lonely voice. This book is a true pageturner, you can´t stop until you´ve read the end, not so much because you work to the solving of a running question or mystery, but because you need to find out what will happen to these people next, and what will happen when they meet. A lovely novel that deals with the ramifications of WW2, creativity, self-discovery, self-doubt and isolation. Highly recommended.
Guards! Guards!, by Terry Prachett
What can I say, if you haven´t read Prachett yet, what are you waiting for? The man is hilariously witty while weaving a tight-knotten plot of adventure where everything comes together in the end. The characters are recognisable, outrageous and hilarious, and his constantly original tales and dry asides do not fail to make you laugh. This book begins the storyline of the Ankh-Morpork City Night Watch. If you don't enjoy it, then where did you put your sense of humour?
The Sea, by John Banville
A book I picked up because it won the Booker Prize, which I figured was as good as a recommendation a book could get. However, I didn´t care much for it. I had difficulty sympathising with the male lead, I thought the characterisation fell a bit flat (the kids were a bit too a-typical and calculating, without any explanation as to why, which made it seem a gimmick), and the ending I simply found to be too 'poetically' unrealistic. The only thing that held my attention was the subplot of the main character´s wife who is dying of cancer. This I thought was profound at least, but was snowed under by the irrelevant story of the main plot, and frankly, these ´dying of cancer´ stories never quite manage to catch the true horror of the real thing, though it did hit some very sharp notes. Still, you can safely skip this book.
The Bonesetter´s Daughter, Amy Tan
I am a big fan of Tan´s. I´ve read most of her other novels and loved them, and this one is no different. Tan places her emphasis on the relationship between mother and daughter (and the whole of the female line), which is often under strain or riddled with misunderstandings because of not just the rift between the two generations, but because of the upbringing of the parent in a totally different culture. All of Tan´s novels are structured similarly. We follow the lives of the mothers (and/or grandmothers) in a war-stricken China, in conflict with the Japanese. The ancient customs, the rise of communism, the belief in the spirit world, the patriarchal society, arranged marriages; these are some of the themes that form the lives of the mothers. Their daughters, born in America, are not familiar with their mother´s history, and do not understand why their mother acts the way she does. They do not understand the culture and history colouring their parent´s behaviour. The story is a quest for the generations to accept each other´s motives and way of life, to discover the past of the parent, and to breach the gap of misunderstanding. These novels are beautiful, poignant and captivating. Highly recommended.
The History of Love, by Nicole Krauss
A young author who has written a very astute and provoking novel about Polish immigrants in America; the lost, lonely lives of the elderly; and the quest of a young girl to find some meaning in her life by discovering the origin to a novel which obsesses her mother. From the blurb to this novel I´d have thought the story to be Austenesque, a romance novel, a recovering of a love story, but don´t let the title fool you: it is a literary novel about many issues, written in an insightful, lonely voice. This book is a true pageturner, you can´t stop until you´ve read the end, not so much because you work to the solving of a running question or mystery, but because you need to find out what will happen to these people next, and what will happen when they meet. A lovely novel that deals with the ramifications of WW2, creativity, self-discovery, self-doubt and isolation. Highly recommended.
Guards! Guards!, by Terry Prachett
What can I say, if you haven´t read Prachett yet, what are you waiting for? The man is hilariously witty while weaving a tight-knotten plot of adventure where everything comes together in the end. The characters are recognisable, outrageous and hilarious, and his constantly original tales and dry asides do not fail to make you laugh. This book begins the storyline of the Ankh-Morpork City Night Watch. If you don't enjoy it, then where did you put your sense of humour?
The Sea, by John Banville
A book I picked up because it won the Booker Prize, which I figured was as good as a recommendation a book could get. However, I didn´t care much for it. I had difficulty sympathising with the male lead, I thought the characterisation fell a bit flat (the kids were a bit too a-typical and calculating, without any explanation as to why, which made it seem a gimmick), and the ending I simply found to be too 'poetically' unrealistic. The only thing that held my attention was the subplot of the main character´s wife who is dying of cancer. This I thought was profound at least, but was snowed under by the irrelevant story of the main plot, and frankly, these ´dying of cancer´ stories never quite manage to catch the true horror of the real thing, though it did hit some very sharp notes. Still, you can safely skip this book.
The Bonesetter´s Daughter, Amy Tan
I am a big fan of Tan´s. I´ve read most of her other novels and loved them, and this one is no different. Tan places her emphasis on the relationship between mother and daughter (and the whole of the female line), which is often under strain or riddled with misunderstandings because of not just the rift between the two generations, but because of the upbringing of the parent in a totally different culture. All of Tan´s novels are structured similarly. We follow the lives of the mothers (and/or grandmothers) in a war-stricken China, in conflict with the Japanese. The ancient customs, the rise of communism, the belief in the spirit world, the patriarchal society, arranged marriages; these are some of the themes that form the lives of the mothers. Their daughters, born in America, are not familiar with their mother´s history, and do not understand why their mother acts the way she does. They do not understand the culture and history colouring their parent´s behaviour. The story is a quest for the generations to accept each other´s motives and way of life, to discover the past of the parent, and to breach the gap of misunderstanding. These novels are beautiful, poignant and captivating. Highly recommended.
