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A Passage to India

by E.M. Forster

Just a quick note on this one. I tried to read it on a very long drive. Sixty pages in, after picking it up and putting it down repeatedly, I had to give up with a sigh. If this is Forster\’s best work, it makes me wonder if I should cross Room with a View and Howard\’s End off my want-to-read list. It\’s about a bunch of people in India nearing the end of colonialism, snobs of the British ruling class trying to mix socially with native Indian people (who are well-educated themselves) but nobody understands each other and it all goes wrong. At least, I gathered that much from the back cover text and glancing at a few reviews online. I just could not picture anything in my mind, or figure out what was going on, or keep the characters straight, while reading this. So I ended up disinterested and bored. Of course, it could just have been my mood and the surrounding circumstances (long hours in the car with a restless eight-year-old in the back seat) so I am re-shelving this one to try again at a later date. Do tell me if it\’s worth the effort of another attempt.

Abandoned 335 pages, 1924

Tags: 0/5- Abandoned, Classics

Heart of Darkness

by Joseph Conrad

I had a hard time with this classic, even though I found the prose riveting. I\’m glad I knew a little about it beforehand, or I might have been thoroughly confused and not made it through. The narrative is by a seaman telling a story to his fellow sailors while waiting for a tide to turn- about a former trip via steamboat upriver into the depths of the Congo. He was hired by a trading company to travel to a remote post to collect a man named Kurtz who has a load of ivory extracted from the interior- as far as I could tell. Kurtz is strangely held in awe by many, and when the narrator finally reaches the destination, it\’s obvious he\’s been out in the jungle wilderness far too long- he has the native population (depicted in very racist, stereotypical fashion from a nineteenth-century imperialist perspective) under his thrall, raves in lunatic fashion and appears to be suffering from some awful disease.

Most of the novella is about the frustrating travel upriver through the dense jungle, suffering frequent breakdowns, lack of materials, poor management, horrific exploitation and suffering on the part of the natives. It\’s very rambling and dense, a lot of it internal monologue on the depravity of human nature and moves without description or explanation between scenes- so I often had difficulty understanding what was actually going on. In a way it is Kafkaesque, in another way the deeply visceral prose reminded me of William Golding\’s The Inheritors (which I now regret I culled out of my library- this book makes me want to read that one again, oddly enough). Many of the passages also brought to mind Lord of the Flies, and I rather wonder if Golding wasn\’t heavily influenced by Joseph Conrad. Sample of the descriptive power in the text:

Trees, trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on- which was just what you wanted it to do…

or:

The mind of man is capable of anything- because everything is in it, all the past as well as all the future. What was there after all? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, valour, rage- who can tell? – but truth- truth stripped of its cloak of time. Let the fool gape and shudder- the man knows, and can look on without a wink. But…. he must meet that truth with his own true stuff- with his own inborn strength.

It\’s a book I found hard to put down even though it was difficult to get through, and one that definitely merits a re-read (or several!) in order to understand. I read this one in e-book format.

Rating: 3/5 280 pages, 1902

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Classics, Current Reads, Travel/Adventure

The Moon and Sixpence

by W. Somerset Maugham

* * * warning there are spoilers here * * *

It is a highly fictionalized account of the life of Paul Gauguin; in this novel the character of the artist is named Charles Strickland. It is told through the eyes of a bystander, a man who happens to meet Strickland\’s wife at a dinner party and later becomes curious about the man\’s character and becomes a close acquaintance. I wouldn\’t say friend, as he never liked the man, who had a blatant lack of regard for other people\’s feelings. In this story, Strickland suddenly leaves his wife and moves to France in order to pursue his art undistracted. The narrator encounters him again through the friendship of another artist- a simple, trusting man who admires Strickland\’s then-unrecognized genius. When Strickland, often destitute, falls seriously ill, this other artist takes him in; things happen and the poor man\’s marriage is destroyed. Strickland leaves- and our narrator (willingly) looses track of him for a while. Later he conveniently happens to meet other men who have had later acquaintance with the artist, and finds out that Strickland went to live in Tahiti, where he lived among the natives, seeking out a primitive idyll. He lived with a young woman who was his unofficial wife, and died in isolation and great suffering from leprosy. All the while, to the very last trying to paint and express some ideal vision from his soul.

While the book has a rather pessimistic view of human nature- at least, as far as the character of Strickland is concerned- it is so well-written I did enjoy it. Being told as a second-hand account, it has a lot of other characters and little side-stories. The writing style and descriptions of life in Paris, reminded me somewhat of George Orwell\’s work, Down and Out in London and Paris.

It did spur me to look up more about Gauguin, so I learned how many liberties this story actually takes. While a lot of it is roughly true to case, he didn\’t, for example, leave his wife in the way described. He did have quite a number of sales during his artistic career, had a dealer, didn\’t die in complete obscurity – nor of leprosy- and lived on a few south sea islands in succession, not just Tahiti. He had a different, young \”wife\” at each tropical locale- quite arguably the man was a pedophile. One of the scenes in the book which I found most moving, where he painted the entire walls of his house in a mural considered a masterpiece, and then his young wife burned it to the ground at his request after his death, was completely fabricated. I did wish more of the story covered his life in the tropics- that was such a short segment at the end of the novel.

The idea of a man driven to express something, having no desire for anything but to paint, and forsaking everything in his comfortable life to pick this up at age forty, facing the ridicule of those in polite society around him- well, there is something admirable in that. I know what it is like to be enthralled by the act of creation with your hands, even if the resulting product is not so great- to want to keep doing it just because you feel so alive when you do.

Does anyone know what the title refers to? I could not quite figure that out. I\’m now curious to read a travelouge Gauguin himself wrote, about his time in Tahiti, called Noa Noa, and perhaps another fiction loosely based on his life by Mario Vargas Llosa, The Way to Paradise.

Borrowed from a family member.

Rating: 4/5 264 pages, 1919

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Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Art, Classics, Current Reads, Historical Fiction

How Green Was My Valley

by Richard Llewellyn

I can\’t remember the last time it took me a month to read one book. I have simply been busy- all the regular stuff plus a basement remodel, guests for the holidays and a very large project at work that has gone way past the deadline, have eaten up all my free hours. I\’m still trying to wrap up stuff at work, often too tired at the end of the day to focus on more than a magazine article before sleep…

Well, this is a book that sat a very long time on my shelf- for over eight years. I can\’t recall what prompted me to first pick it up at the Book Thing, except perhaps the title caught my eye. Reading it at once I was reminded of Germinal, because of the similar theme. How Green Was My Valley is set in a coal-mining village on a mountaintop in Wales. It is told from the viewpoint of a younger son in a large family, Huw Morgan. Most of this bildungsroman is about family centeredness- the strong moral code, the younger son learning skills from his father and older brother. There is an incident in his childhood which leaves him weakened and bedridden for several years, so he studies a lot and becomes well-versed in classical literature. It is baffling later on when he is sent to receive formal schooling, but the school is run by the English and they look down on him and think he is ignorant, just because he is Welsh. Huw learns carpentry from the local preacher and boxing from a group of prizefighters- and there are lots of ins and outs in the story about love- his brothers wooing different women and getting married, the unrest some of these pairings cause in the family, his long infatuation with his brother\’s wife, his curiosity about \’the facts of life\’ and final realization with a girl from the next valley over- this part of the story was actually quite funny, as he didn\’t like the girl at first but she weaseled her way into his company. For some reason I never really connected with the main character- nothing about him really stood out to me, except that he had a strong sense of right and wrong, curiosity about how the world works, and didn\’t hesitate to question the actions of those around him when they seemed senseless.

The parts about mining and its effect on the valley loom in the background- slag heaps piling up to nearly topple over the houses, grime slowly covering everything, the meadows of flowers suffocating, the streams devoid of fish- but it all occurs so gradually people don\’t notice until it seems too late. Most of their concern was keeping their livelihood- Huw\’s brothers are involved in creating a union and there is a lot of unrest, times of suffering and famine. The ending, when Huw\’s father goes down into the mine to find one of their men who didn\’t come back after going down to see why the tunnels are flooding- well, it ends in tragedy as you might expect. All the fighting and suffering and despoiling of the mountain, to end in loss and sorrow.

The language is beautiful. Throughout the entire book there is a unique pattern of phrasing that comes from the Welsh language- it took me a while to get used to it, and then I loved the way the descriptions would put images in my mind. Huw\’s thoughts on the nature of the land and the depth of relationships in people around him are quite eloquent. It is for this I might keep the book on hand to read again, or look for others by this author- although from reviews I glanced at, the sequels to How Green Was My Valley aren\’t as good.

Rating: 4/5 497 pages, 1940

Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Classics, Current Reads

Julie of the Wolves

by Jean Craighead George

The pains of growing up and culture clash meld into a story of animal communication and survival skills with some beautiful nature writing. No wonder this book is a classic. It is told in three parts, and the first one is about Julie\’s interactions with a wolf pack, which hooked me from the beginning. In the opening scene Julie, a thirteen-year-old Inuit (or Eskimo as they are called in the book) is lost on the Arctic tundra. She had run away from home, trying to reach the coast where a ship would take her to San Francisco. She ran out of food and in spite of finding ways to hunt and forage, is slowing starving. She comes across a small wolf pack and decides that her only hope is to gain their trust and share their food. Incredible patience and close attention to the subtle ways the wolves communicate allows her to do this. I really loved reading about how Julie integrated herself into the wolf pack, and how she lived alongside the animals. It felt quite plausible.

The second part of the book is a flashback to Julie\’s childhood, which tells how she got into her present predicament. Her father, a great hunter who taught her many traditional skills, disappears one day on a trip and is presumed dead. She is forced to move away and live with an aunt who only seems to want Julie in her household as a source of free labor. Julie escapes this situation via an arranged marriage to an Inuit boy, but this new home is also insufferable. Having run away, got lost in the wilderness and found ways to survive, Julie (whose Eskimo name is Miyax) gradually discovers that she loves living close to the land, that she has a deep appreciation for nature and finds satisfaction in using her skills (not without some major challenges, though). When she finally reaches populated areas again, she\’s no longer sure if she wants to live among men. Her value system is different now. She directly sees the threat modern man poses to her wolves (who follow along towards the village). And when she makes contact with people, she discovers that far more has changed than her own perceptions. I really felt like the ending was too quick, and I had forgotten what sad notes it contained.

But it does make me more eager to pick up the second book and see where the story goes. Julie of the Wolves was a re-read for me. I\’m not sure if I read the sequel before. I have a dim memory of abandoning it, but will see how much is familiar.

Rating: 4/5 170 pages, 1972

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Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Animals Fiction, Classics, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic, Nature, Re-reads

The Time Machine

by H.G. Wells

This was a strange view of the far, distant future. It’s projected from the Victorian era, where an eminent scientist announces to his friends and colleagues that he has built a machine which can travel through time. They are skeptical and the first chapter of the book is a detailed discussion between them about the nature of time and space, physical matter etc- a lot of it over my head, frankly. At the end of the discussion the Time Traveller (as he is identified throughout the novella) announces that he is going to experiment with his machine. When all the men arrive for a dinner party the following week, the Time Traveller arrives late for the meal, looking disheveled and shaken. He relates a detailed story about where he has been- to the year 800,701 and beyond.

It is a very strange report that he makes. The world he visited is practically unrecognizable. The people he encounters are small, mild-mannered and apparently unintelligent. They seem to live at ease in a world without disease, animals or any conflict. Of course he can’t understand their language, and his first attempts at understanding the situation turn out to be greatly mistaken. He’s only there for eight days but soon finds out that there is another population living underground- that, in effect, the human race evolved into two very distinct groups. Alarmingly, the Time Traveller discovers that his machine is missing- and he thinks that the underground people have stolen it…

I can’t think of another story or premise that shows mankind becoming less advanced in the future. The idea that Wells posited of human abilities becoming atrophied and the entire population slowly falling into decline made sense when finally explained, but I also found it odd. And although the book is quite short, it feels very dense- full of ideas and theories and speculations.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 3/5

122 pages, 1895

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Classics, Current Reads, Fantasy / Sci Fi

Tom’s Midnight Garden

by Philippa Pearce

I really enjoyed this story. Tom is sent to spend the summer with his aunt and uncle when his brother has the measles. His aunt and uncle live in a small flat, part of a larger house. There is very little to entertain Tom- the small walled yard has only dustbins and a parked car, and he can’t go out because he might be contagious. He thinks he’s going to die of boredom until he makes a wonderful discovery. When the grandfather clock downstairs chimes thirteen, the back door opens into a vast, manicured garden. Pretty soon Tom is sneaking out every night to explore the garden. He meets other children there, catches glimpses of the gardener and a few adult members of this other household. Only one little girl can see him, and they strike up a friendship. Eventually Tom puzzles out that the children in the garden are from the Victorian era, and also that time moves differently for them. His life becomes so enmeshed in the happenings of the garden that he never wants to leave it.

Funny, if you think about it this book is something of a mystery. Who are the other kids in the garden? where do they come from? why can’t they all see Tom? is he a ghost in their world- or are the Victorian children all ghosts themselves? It all comes together neatly in the end. I didn’t find it sad like some other readers, I rather liked the ending. Very well written, believable characters and lots of interesting stuff to think about time, aging, how relationships change… Definitely one I’d read again, or put into my kids’ hands.

Borrowed from the public library.

Rating: 4/5 229 pages, 1958

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Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Classics, Current Reads, Juvenile Fic

Cry, the Beloved Country

by Alan Paton

This is one of those books I picked up at a used sale one day just because I recognized the title as being famous. Then it sat on my shelf for at least eight years. I chose it to read this weekend and was surprised at how intent the story was and how quickly I moved through it.

It is told in two parts. In the first half, a Zulu parson leaves his small, rural village and travels to Johannesburg in search of several family members who have dispersed there. His sister, his son, his brother. The great sprawling city at first bewilders the elderly parson, but even more bewildering and painful is what he discovers of his lost family members- they have each fallen into disreputable ways of making a living. Dispirited, he tracks them down, learning of their troubles and attempting to bring them back home. Some cannot be found, or cannot be recovered, or simply don\’t wish return. It is with a very heavy heart he returns to his village with fragments of his family and a burden of shame for the crimes his son, in particular, has committed.

Yet on his search through dark corners of Johannesburg and its skirting slums, he met with great kindness and help from strangers. And now, come home again, the parson struggles to help his village. The land is depleted, crops are failing, young people deserting the area, children dying. He carries the shame of his family back with him, and worse yet, discovers that a white man who owns farmland near the village was personally wronged by his son\’s crime. It is with the deepest sorrow that he admits this relationship to his neighbor. It seems that everything is falling to pieces, when help for the village comes from an unexpected source. I did wish this part of the story was fleshed out more- it interested me to read about the efforts to change farming methods, the villagers\’ resistance to change and new ideas even when it was obvious the old ways were failing. And while I enjoyed the simple clarity and lyrical writing, was deeply touched by the depiction of forgiveness and compassion between the characters of this story, I was also baffled at moments when the parson expressed anger. Maybe I did not read between the lines enough, but sometimes his responses seemed out of character to me.

It is a very good book, one that is difficult to put down, or stop thinking about.

Rating: 4/5 316 pages, 1948

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Tags: 4/5- Great Book, Classics, Current Reads, General Fiction

A Girl of the Limberlost

by Gene Stratton Porter

If you loved Anne of Green Gables, you\’re sure to like this book. It has a rather similar story, set in the late 1800\’s. Elnora lives with her distant, embittered mother on the edge of an Indiana swampland. Her mother has a cold, unfeeling attitude due to the father\’s untimely death when Elnora was an infant, and yet Elnora is patient, kind and understanding beyond measure. She loves the wild things of the woodlands, especially the large, beautiful moths which she collects and studies. Her greatest dream is to attend school but she has no money to pay for books and tuition, and her mother refuses to help. She doesn\’t want the assistance neighbors and friends offer, either, but finds a way to use her knowledge of the forest and her moth collection to raise money for highschool. Through many setbacks, Elnora comes through with determination and not a little cleverness in finding solutions as new problems that arise. The storyline shifts directions when a revelation about the past changes her mother\’s attitude towards her. Later Elnora is attempting to raise college funds when she meets a young man from the city who is spending time in the countryside to convalesce from an illness. You can guess right away that something will develop between these two, but it\’s complicated by the fact that the young man is already betrothed to a wealthy, primping lady who isn\’t about to let some unknown country girl disrupt her engagement. It does end well, but the route to that ending was not what I expected, and really made the moral fiber of these characters shine.

It\’s a really good book, and I\’m a bit disappointed that I didn\’t actually love it. In the first place, I was expecting more nature writing, or at least descriptions of the swamp habitat. There\’s not much of that. In fact, there wasn\’t any of it for the first 150 pages. I almost wonder if the book I read was missing some of the original? because a few other reviews I see online mention the first few chapters of the book having wonderful descriptions of nature in the swamp and forest, whereas the first chapter I read was about Elnora going to school… And the parts about moth collecting aren\’t until the later third of the book.

It\’s really mostly about relationships and while that is interesting enough to make a good story, the people are a bit too noble and kind in these pages, a bit hard to believe. The turnaround Elnora\’s mother makes is also hard to credit, so instant and complete. I was also rather dismayed how much importance everyone put on appearances, that Elnora and all those around her were so set on getting her nice clothes to wear so she wouldn\’t be scorned and laughed at by other kids at school. I think it would have made a much bolder story if Elnora had found acceptance in spite of her old-fashioned, poverty-stricken looks. And it distressed me how much neighbors kept urging Elnora\’s mother to sell portions of her land for logging or oil drilling, so she could provide for her child. Both mother and child obviously loved the land and didn\’t want to see it despoiled, yet they couldn\’t be in accord with each other? And if she so loved the forest, why did she have so few qualms about collecting hundreds of moths and cocoons, especially the rare ones, to sell to collectors? Grated, they kept stating how important it was to educate other folks about wild things, but it seemed a hollow rationale to me.

Am I being too nitpicky? I probably would have adored this book as a younger reader, and I do love the solid message it gives of being honest and forthright, forgiving and true to yourself, kind to those in need, etc. The love story that unfolds near the end of the book is particularly well done. It shows just how true certain people can be, and how spiteful others. How some people are attracted to each other for all the wrong reasons, and how deep love can go when you approach it in the right way (at least, in my opinion). Elnora sure is an admirable character. (Oh, and did I mention she is pretty much a self-taught genius at playing the violin?)

But I do want to read more of this author\’s work, particularly Freckles, which precedes this story. Its characters and events were alluded to a lot, without enough satisfactory explanation. The author wrote as if she expected her readers already knew half her characters from before, and while I often find rehashing of previous books annoying, here I did want a little more backstory! Maybe I would have appreciated Limberlost a bit more, if I\’d read Freckles first?

Bonus material: looking for pictures of the beautiful moths mentioned in the book, I found these images of incredible moth sculptures by artist Michelle Stitzlein

Rating: 3/5 485 pages, 1991

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Classics, Current Reads, Young Adult

My Ántonia

by Willa Cather

This is the story of an immigrant family adjusting to life on the Nebraska prairie during the early 1900\’s. It\’s about one girl in particular, the oldest child of a Bohemian family. Told by their neighbor Jim, it details the family\’s early struggles and how things changed throughout the community as they grew into adulthood. The hard work on the farm, living with deprivation, struggling to learn new ways in a new country, missing the old land. I found the personalities of Ántonia\’s parents intriguing- one caustic and demanding of respect, the other gentle and longing for home. Jim describes Ántonia as a strong, curious, determined girl who worked hard. Later she moves into town to work in a rich family\’s home, but retains her love for the countryside. I won\’t tell you all what happens, but I did admire Ántonia, how she held staunch to her morals, how she made the best of a bad situation, how she was beloved by her children and esteemed by her close friends in the end. It was interesting to see the portrait Cather builds of a frontier town, and how the fortune of several characters didn\’t turn out as you might expect.

But in spite of all that, it was a book I just couldn\’t get into. Partly because I have been preoccupied of late, but also because the story felt distanced to me. Jim the narrator never really tells much about himself, he seems to be a bystander without much personality. And the story of Ántonia is told in a rather dry fashion- events reported, things described, but without much emotion (at least, it didn\’t come through to me). It\’s more the story of a town and of the wide landscapes, and I wasn\’t quite in the mood for that. In fact, the entire thing came across to me as a grown-up version of a Little House on the Prairie story. Which is not at all meant to be insulting- Wilder\’s books are very good!

This is one of those books I\’d always meant to read, and it\’s a classic, so I feel kind of bad not appreciating it more. As if I\’m missing something. I\’ve heard it\’s one of her best novels so now I have misgivings to try any more Cather, which disappoints me as well. Maybe later down the road…

Rating: 3/5 290 pages, 1918

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Tags: 3/5- Good Read, Classics, Current Reads, Historical Fiction

Tag: Classics

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