Tagged: Margaret Atwood

re:View – The 2017 Bookshelf: June

June came and went, and I managed just two books. I don’t know what’s wrong with me this year. Ok, I do know; I’ve been on a bit of a personal roller coaster ride and just haven’t had the mental space to focus on a book for the past few months.

Well, the ride is over now and I’ve got my head screwed back on tightly, and I’m finally in a reading mood again. This month’s bookshelf is starting to look pretty good already.

But first, here are the June reviews.

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Hag-Seed by Margaret Atwood
I’m going to get flames for this, but I’ll say it as it is: Margaret Atwood has lost her edge. The Heart Goes Last from a couple of years ago was already a big missed opportunity, and let’s not even think about Angel Catbird. With Hag-Seed I again felt all the frustration of a potentially great book that just didn’t reach its full potential.
The set-up is so promising: Celebrated theatre director Felix gets betrayed and ousted by his right-hand man, loses his family and his life, and spends 12 years as a voluntary outcast plotting his revenge. (It is a re-telling of The Tempest, after all.) Working part-time as a literature teacher in a prison and staging Shakespeare’s plays with the inmates, he finally takes his stab at vengeance with a somewhat modified production of The Tempest when his former theatre enemies – who have since rise to the ranks of politicians – show up for a ministerial visit to the prison’s theatre club.
It could have been a good story and it’s so well written – the story of Felix’s fall and his lonely life as a social outcast, with only the imaginary ghost of his dead baby daughter for company, is gorgeous and heartbreaking in the best of Atwood’s signature style. But the momentum just doesn’t last. Too quickly you figure out that there’s a plot underway, and she bigs it up way too much, so that when the day of vengeance finally comes and goes you’re lost with that “Oh, that’s it?” kind of feeling. As showdowns go it’s as bland as it gets, and the resolution that follows is just too predictable and cheesy as it gets. I am the biggest fan of Margaret Atwood’s past work, but I barely made it to the end of this book and I couldn’t find much to love about it. This is no tempest; it’s barely a gentle breeze.
Pens: 3 out of 5

The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams
I picked this up completely at random in a gorgeous sci-fi room of a Hay bookshop, based on the title and the fact that it’s by Douglas Adams. I hadn’t heard of Dirk Gently but really enjoyed the Hitchhiker books. This one’s written in a similar style, beautifully observant and utterly hilarious – that very elegant form of comedy that pretends to be innocently nonsensical but actually cuts right to the bone of human nature. It’s the same style that made me fall in love with Terry Pratchett, and I think Douglas Adams is the only other author I’ve come across who’s playing in that league.
So in this book, a check-in terminal at Heathrow Airport mysteriously explodes and a random music producer mysteriously ends up minus his head. Dirk Gently investigates using his trusted holistic (i.e. completely nonsensical) methods, and before he knows it he finds himself caught between the fronts in a war of gods. Literally. It’s a fast-paced and funny story. The ending is a bit of a letdown, rather than the epic showdown I’d hoped for, and doesn’t quite make sense, but otherwise this is a really entertaining read full of little laughs and gorgeously fine-tuned language.
Pens: 3 out of 5

re:View – The 2016 Bookshelf: June

June was all about moving flats, so my contact with books was mostly limited to packing them in boxes, carrying them and buying new book storage. Managed to squeeze in a few reading hours though. You could say this edition of Bookshelf is all about monsters – human, superhuman and in between.

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The Robber Bride by Margaret Atwood
This was my first book by Atwood outside the realms of sci-fi / dystopia and I struggled a bit initially when I realised this was all going to be about relationships – but Atwood’s brilliant style soon won me over. In many ways this is a long and mostly sad story of three women who didn’t have a lucky start in life and put themselves on an even unluckier path by choosing the wrong kind of men. Initially we are led to believe it’s all the fault of the mysterious Zenia – the Robber Bride, the Jezebel, morally decayed to the bone, seemingly born without a conscience, without any sense of female camaraderie – who lies and cheats her way through the lives of these three, bent on stealing their men and ruining their happiness. But as the story of each woman unfolds you can’t help but wonder if Zenia didn’t indeed do them a favour by relieving them of cheating husbands that were only preying on their gullible nature, helplessness or financial security. I still can’t decide whether I found this book uplifting or depressing. True, the women all come out of the encounter with Zenia stronger, if not necessarily happier, but all the female characters are either infuriatingly gullible and spineless, or else the embodiment of all female evil. It’s a bit like a war of different types of femininity in which nobody wins. However, Atwood’s writing style and world view is delightful and irresistible as always, so I still loved this book overall.
Pens: 4 out of 5

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re:View – The 2016 Bookshelf
March: Myths, Magic, Aliens and Killer Ants

This year’s March bookshelf was filled with surprises (both pleasant and nasty), some disappointments, a cast of weird creatures and a bit of a song and dance. From dead semi-goddesses to talking war cats, from magicians travelling between worlds to plant-based alien TV executives, this is certainly a mixed bag of books. And mostly wonderful.

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The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood

“It’s always an imprudence to step between a man and the reflection of his own cleverness.”

After reading this book I love Margaret Atwood more than ever. She basically takes Homer’s Iliad and lets Penelope tell her version from the underworld, thousands of years later, to set the record straight. Penelope’s down-to-earth, delightfully no-nonsense style is at the same time hilarious and tragic, describing her father’s attempt to drown her as a child, her arranged marriage, the long years of waiting for Odysseus and her loneliness among the hostile members of his court, the struggle of fighting off the suitors trying to wriggle their way into her husband’s, and earning nothing but suspicion and scorn for remaining faithful all these years. If you think Odysseus had a hard time, try being a woman in his story. A particularly morbid and wonderful device in Atwood’s storytelling is the chorus line of Penelope’s twelve dead teenage maids, who were cruelly murdered for no apparent reason after Odysseus’ return, and share their version of events here in a number of interludes, from mournful poems to naughty songs and anthropological lectures analysing their own significance. Basically, this is a wickedly clever celebration of feminism and womanhood told by the master of her genre with a ton of wit and soul.
Pens: ELEVEN out of 5!

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re:View – The 2015 Bookshelf
December: A life less ordinary

December came and went and I was so busy working ridiculous overtime that I just made my 2015 Goodreads reading challenge by squeezing in a couple of graphic novels and short reads. So here’s the final batch of the 2015 Bookshelf. More dystopia, more Sin City and more cats.

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The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
I love dystopia so of course I picked this one up. Set in the the what-if scenario of Germany and Japan winning the Second World War and splitting up the US between them as occupied territory, this book follows a cast of characters from each side of the fence. There’s the American art dealer living in oppression, the Jewish US citizen just trying to survive, a range of German political leaders locked in a bitter power struggle, a Japanese government official struggling to stomach the doctrine of his Nazi allies, and a few shady characters of dubious allegiance working their various plots to stir up the system. I enjoyed this in much the same way as I enjoyed Nineteen Eighty-Four, hooked by the story but impatiently skimming through the lengthy political and philosophical ramblings. It’s a good book with a very clever meta level; the eponymous man in the high castle and the outrage he causes with his book speculating on what had happened if America had won the war is endlessly delightful in its irony. Obviously a classic of modern literature.
Pens: 4 out of 5

The Heart Goes Last by Margaret Atwoood
Being a massive Atwood fan I almost feel like a traitor saying this, but I’m seriously underwhelmed by her latest novel. It starts out so promising: A young couple living in a post-financial crash landscape of unemployment and poverty gets a chance to improve its desperate circumstances by signing up to a social experiment. The twin city of Positron/Consilience works on the principle that every resident alternates each month between living and working in the community and doing time in the town’s prison. The promise is a life in comfort and security; the price is total commitment for life: the city is sealed off from the rest of the world, and surveillance is everywhere. This highly regulated life soon takes its toll on Charmaine and Stan’s relationship, and as they start breaking the rules they uncover a sinister underworld in their perfect town, where disruption is dealt with silently and absolutely, where life-like robots are created in secret labs and where their friends disappear and come back not quite the same…or quite human. So far, it has all the elements of a breathtaking Atwood dystopia, very much along the lines of The Handmaid’s Tale. The problem is, you just don’t care. Stan’s a bit of an arse, Charmaine’s a bit of a bitch, there’s not a single character I actually felt for in this book, which meant I really couldn’t care less what happened to them. And all the dystopian elements just feel a little bit sold under value – there are a lot of very good ideas in this book, they just aren’t developed to the point where they become really spectacular. Instead the plot just kind of fizzles out. I wanted it to strike me and leave my head spinning, like when I read Handmaid. Instead I closed the book and went: Meh.
Pens: 3 out of 5 (More like 2.5, and only because there are so many good ideas hidden in there! Argh!)

Sin City, Vol. 4: That Yellow Bastard by Frank Miller
This is by far my favourite Sin City story, probably because it features so prominently in the first movie (one of my absolute favourites) and also because John Hartigan is just the most heartbreaking character in the entire series. On the last day of his career in the police department, Hartigan saves Little Nancy Callahan from a deranged killer who operates under police immunity, and spends the rest of his life paying for it. And then, just because he cares for what’s become of her, he ends up paying a little more. So, there’s the heart-wrenching story of those tow and their fragile relationship, plus the artwork in this volume is the absolute highlight of the entire series – especially Nancy’s iconic dance routine. Seriously one of the most gorgeous graphic novels and one I keep coming back to again and again.
Pens: 5 out of 5

Sin City, Vol. 5: Family Values by Frank Miller
A very short volume of much smaller scale than the previous stories, this book basically follows Dwight and Miho on a revenge killing spree. It’s fast paced and full of delightfully choreographed and captured fights – but what else would you expect when Deadly Little Miho goes to battle. More of a snapshot than a story, this volume may lack the depth of the other books, but it’s a quick and entertaining read for when you’ve got an hour to kill and are feeling a bit noir.
Pens: 3 out of 5

The Guest Cat by Takashi Hiraide
I tried. I really tired! I love Japanese literature and I love cats, but I really struggled through this little book. It’s basically a story of a couple living in a little house and a neighbour’s cat who comes to visit. Now, while this sounds promising to a Japanophile cat lady, sadly the story stops there. Aside from endless, slightly repetitive descriptions of the house and its surroundings, and the progression of the cat from “peeking through the window” to “owning the place” there’s very little here in terms of story or character development, or anything actually happening. (Until the end, which is sad and then a little less sad.) This book is currently being hyped as “poetic” by the booksellers, so maybe it’s poetry and I’m just not getting it. But overall, I feel I would have been better off snoozing for two hours with the cats than spending my time on reading it.
Pens: 1 out of 5

re:View – The 2015 Bookshelf
February: the apocalypse and beyond

Perhaps unsurprisingly, January’s reading journey to dystopia has led me on into the apocalypse. I guess the two often go hand in hand – certainly in the case of Maragret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy, which forms the central part of my February reading.

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re:View – The 2015 Bookshelf
January: a journey to other worlds

New year, new bookshelf! After finally picking up The Handmaid’s Tale I fancied some more alternative reality kind of stuff, so my reading journey throughout January took me from dystopian to prehistoric to post-apocalyptic worlds…and back again. Also as a new feature this year I’m trying to do Bookshelf on a monthly basis. I’ve still got quite a bit of otherworldly reading lined up so expect a similar theme for February.

As well as the books below I also read Emily St John Mandel’s Station Eleven, which has certainly been my book of the month and is, quite possibly, already my favourite book of the year. It’s so good it has earned its own dedicated review post. Check it out here – I really can’t recommend this book enough.

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