"In Advising His Young Patients To Abandon The Attempt At Repression And To Let Themselves Feel The Pity And Terror Their War Experience Inevitably Evoked, He Was Excavating The Ground He Stood On"

Regeneration by Pat Barker was fantastic. Just putting it out there straight up. The story of a decorated British officer serving in World War I who refuses to continue fighting, not because the war can't be won or because of pacifism, but because he feels the war could be over but the powers that be derive benefit from it continuing, in spite of the horrors experienced by the soldiers and the continuing mounting deaths. As a way around his being court martialed, he is considered mentally unstable and committed to a mental institution. 

And here in the mental institution is where we learn about all of the horrible traumas the soldiers are enduring, completely aside from physical injuries: the soldier who was launched into the air by an exploding shell and landed on a decaying body with a bloated gut that ruptured in his face, swallowing some of the decaying flesh, who now vomits continuously at any smell or mention of food. Those who have inexplicably gone mute. So many with nightmares. And Dr. Rivers is the military psychiatrist assigned to assessing and restoring the mental health of these soldiers in order to send them back to the front lines. 

While sometimes, it was hard not to feel some absurdity of a group of patients with differing types of mental illness all interacting in different ways, I assure you, there was no intention of humor here. The book was certainly a reminder of what World War I was: the war that ushered in a new era of brutality in warfare and how horribly it messed up millions of young men who fought and managed to "survive". While the book doesn't technically take place on the front lines in the trenches, the impact of what the soldiers experienced is just as terrible and impactful. I was surprised to learn that the two main characters, Siegfried Sassoon (the dissenting officer) and Dr. Rivers were based on real-life individuals.  

The book also had some very interesting themes around masculinity and overshadowing to homosexuality. Talking about how men of the time (and really, not too much different now) were raised to believe that any show of emotion was considered weakness so they all bottled up the traumas they experienced during the war. And instead, the repressed fear manifests in all of these different and terrible ways and the men feel such shame for even having these feelings. And similarly, during wartime, the soldiers are bound to each other by duty and experience the most intense moments together as possible, and are taught to protect each other like brothers. So a certain type of love develops there. But where is the line in how acceptable that love is? It's ok in the moment, but is then considered unacceptable once they return to civilian life. How are these two very different manifestations of love reconciled? 

Pat Barker went on to write two additional books on World War I, the third of which, The Ghost Road, went on to win the Booker Prize in 1995. Even though I haven't read the second two books yet, just based on my experience with Regeneration, I could definitely see how this was possible. I wish that this book (and the rest of hers) got more notoriety in today's time because it was quite brilliant in it's storytelling and writing. 

So, I'm actually back dating this post by a couple weeks, because I finished Regeneration about a month ago and moved on to Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee, which I also finished a week or so ago. And booooyyyy, do I have a LOT to say about that one. Stay tuned. Oh, and completing Regeneration put me at exactly 200 books left to go. Holla!   

"...But All Their Intercourse Had Been Made Up Of Just Such Inarticulate Flashes, When They Seemed To Come Suddenly Upon Happiness As If They Had Surprised A Butterfly In The Winter Woods..."

I'm sure this has been said many times before by many different individuals who have read works by Edith Wharton, whether it be a casual reader or a more seasoned literary expert, but damn ya'll, girlfriend has a gdamn way with words.

Ethan Frome felt more like a really long short story to me because it had that feeling of every single word being filled with intent, to convey a specific meaning and evoke an exact emotion. There wasn't anything superfluous. The story begins with a narrator telling of his discovery of and interaction with Ethan Frome and how he puts together the story or Ethan's past that has made him the way he is. The storytelling then shifts to the actual events of Ethan's life, of his "sickly" (and kind of awful) wife Zeena and her young cousin, Mattie, who has come to take care of Zeena, having no other family to turn to. Mattie becomes the shining light of Ethan's otherwise dreary life and he aches with the uncertainty of her feelings for him and it only accentuates the dismal circumstances of his own marriage to see the beauty and joy in Mattie, in spite of her own challenging upbringing. 

The longing in these two characters and trepidation in bridging a gap that could ruin them both is so well-written. You feel their heartache, most acutely, Ethan's. And you want to root for them, but there are enough foreshadows early on to alert the reader that no happy ending is going to be possible. The end was a bit of an unexpected surprise, which I very much appreciated (again, it felt like you knew exactly how things were going to end based on the portrait given of Ethan in the beginning, but Ms. Wharton had just one last surprise up her sleeve). 

There really isn't anything I can fault about this book. It's so carefully well-crafted, it makes me appreciate Edith Wharton even more than I already did (cos I sure did love me some Age of Innocence). She is certainly an author I would want to read more of after I finish her one remaining title on my list. 

Next up is Regeneration by Pat Barker. A British officer refusing to continue in World War I being treated as psychologically insane? Sounds like something I'm going to enjoy. 

201 to go! (Almost going to break under that 200 barrier!!).    

"The White Man Is Very Clever. He Came Quietly And Peaceably With His Religion. We Were Amused With His Foolishness And Allowed Him To Stay. Now He Has Won Our Brothers, And Our Clan Can No Longer Act Like One. He Has Put a Knife On The Things That Held Us Together And We Have Fallen Apart."

The title quote for this post, to me, was the most important and impactful couple sentences in the entire book of Things Fall Apart. And was exactly what I was thinking about when I came to it in the novel. And I'm sure it is representative of the entire experience of white colonization of Africa. That on the surface there seemed to be this need on the part of white Christian Europeans to convert the "godless" natives of Africa, and that was how they initially made their inroads to the continent, but forced government was not far behind, and by then it was too late for the African tribes. 

The story is about Okonkwo, a strong and powerful leader of the Umuofia tribe in Nigeria, who is known as a fearless warrior. Okonkwo respects all of the traditions of his tribe and honors the spirits and gods that his tribe believes in. Suffice it to say that Okonkwo is a hyper-masculine individual and views any deviation from this as a sign of weakness, which, in his eyes, is not acceptable. He beats his wives and children, he works tirelessly to accumulate more wealth, and to rise to the highest possible rank within his tribe. After an unfortunate incident where Okonkwo's gun, fired during an animated tribal ritual, accidentally kills the son of one of his fellow tribal leaders, Okonkwo and his entire family are banished from the tribe for a duration of 7 years. They go to reside with his mother's tribe, the Mbanta. During this time, white missionaries arrive and set up a church on the outskirts of Mbanta. Little by little, they recruit more members from the tribe to believe in the one Christian god (a lot of those converting do so because they see things about their own gods that they don't like and don't agree with, and so prefer this new option). By the time Okonkwo returns to Umuofia, his oldest son has converted and his former tribe has also become significantly transformed by the presence of the white missionaries and government officials - the progress in Umuofia is even more advanced than it was in Mbanta. Things don't go well for Okonkwo, as he still has the heart of a warrior and is not willing to follow the new laws imposed on him by the white colonists. 

I found it interesting that the white colonists didn't show up until about pg 140 of 209 pages of the book. So the first two-thirds of the book detailed the life of Okonkwo, his tribe, and their customs and beliefs. It felt like once the white missionaries arrived, the rest of the book moved along very quickly, with less time devoted to presenting the dynamics of the white men with the tribesmen. But I guess it didn't bother me that much, because in the overall context of the story, it worked. 

Okonkwo was not a very sympathetic character. I felt like you could see how he was the embodiment of where things went wrong and he was, in some ways, a contrast to the white missionaries. For example, he had a ward in his care for 3 years as a punishment to another tribe after a wife is killed and came to care and respect the kid. But once the clan determined that the retribution should be the death of the ward, Okonkwo sets his feelings aside and kills the kid himself. He beats his wives and children, and then is surprised when his son turns his back on him and converts to Christianity. His tribe isn't all that different either. For example, whenever a woman in the tribe gives birth to twins, they throw the children away into the forest to die. And instead of wondering if it could be something that he/they did to have wrought such bad fortune upon him/them, he/they keeps his/their hyper-masculine warrior attitude. And I'm not criticizing this. This was the way of African tribes and who am I to criticize their way of life and how they believed the gods guided their good or bad fortune?

And the slow-takeover by the white colonists was presented in the most honest and seemingly accurate way I've ever read. That it wasn't necessarily tanks and guns and forced indoctrination straight out of the gate, but coming in peace and offering a new option and there were enough clansmen who were doubting their own way of life and their own gods to embrace this new approach. And by the time they realized that they didn't want white men controlling their lives in every facet, it was far to late to make a stand. 

I would highly recommend this book. It has been an interesting contrast to have read Things Fall Apart and Out of Africa so close together - one written from the perspective of a white woman living in Africa and one from the perspective of a black African. There were some perspectives about native Africans that were very similar, but Out of Africa feels very glamorized now, compared to the life the people led in Things Fall Apart. And of course no space was given to the wrongful colonization and enslavement in Out of Africa. 

Up next is Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton. I expect this to be a quick read, clocking in a 157 pages. I loved The Age of Innocence so I'm sure I'll get sucked into this one too. 

202 to go!   

       

"When You Dig Just The Tiniest Bit Beneath The Surface, Everyone's Love Life Is Original And Interesting And Nuanced And Defies Any Easy Explanation"

Boy do I love a good, quick summer read. And fortunately, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo fit that bill perfectly, cos I motored through her in 4 days while lounging in northern Michigan (ok, so I was technically still working too, but as soon as I could, I picked it up and enjoyed a nice summer breeze outside and read to my heart's content).

The book tells of Monique Grant, an underling writer at a magazine in New York who is suddenly given the opportunity to interview Evelyn Hugo, a legendary screen siren, now in her late 70s. Evelyn has been largely reclusive and out of the public eye, but from the 1960s through the 1980s, she was a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood, even winning an Oscar. But she seems to be most notorious for her 7 marriages (I know the immediate thought is to assume the character is based on Elizabeth Taylor, but it is definitely not). Evelyn ends up providing Monique with the full account of her life to be published as a posthumous biography, but Monique questions, why her? When it could have been any writer on earth to be the lucky recipient of one of Hollywood's most fascinating and sought after subjects, why did Evelyn select her? 

This does become an important element to the story late in the novel but the story really belongs to Evelyn. The book is divided into chapters/sections based on the story of each husband and while each husband is important to her life and each brings something different to her and her career, more importantly is the person who was the true love of Evelyn's life. And the reader discovers what Evelyn was willing to sacrifice to further her career. Evelyn was a complicated character for me...I both liked and disliked her. She was ruthless and prioritized her social climbing above all else, particularly when she was younger, but she was also so full of love and didn't take the people who she truly loved for granted. She was smug but devoted. Stubborn but persevered over adversity. Self-centered but loyal. 

The ending I did see coming (I may not have 100% put the exact piece together, but I sussed out the key "surprises"), but it was still satisfying nonetheless. I would say I would have liked the character of Monique to have been developed a bit more...she was given some basic characteristics (mother was white, father was black, was going through a separation/divorce) that I felt were intended to carry a lot about who she was as a person without developing those parts of her more. But as I mentioned, this was really Evelyn's story, so I can live with Monique not being as full of a portrait as Evelyn was. I'd definitely recommend this book for a quick, enjoyable read! 

And now I'm up to Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. I think this is actually the first of a 3 part series, but it's the only one that appears on my book lists. I suspect by the time I get to the end (I'm already more than halfway through), I will probably feel like there is a lot more that needs to happen and/or be explained. Because right now, the novel feels a little like Out of Africa did...with many of the chapters providing short vignettes of one man's/family's tribal life in Africa. So I'm curious how it will eventually proceed...if there will be one distinct event that will occur that the rest of the book will center around or if it will continue in the same trend. We shall see! 

Happy reading! 

"I Have Heard Of People, Who, Upon Coming Suddenly Into Happiness, Have Died From Anxiety Lest They Should Not Live To Enjoy It"

For some reason I was expecting Return of the Native to be a complicated read as far as language. It had previously seemed to me that literature that I read from the 1800s was more difficult to make my way through, but I'm beginning to wonder if I just had a hard time getting engaged in the stories, because I've certainly quickly motored through some and not others. I think Return of the Native fell somewhere in the middle. The story was enough to keep me sufficiently roped into the narrative and I didn't particularly notice any complex, antiquated language. 

The story takes place in Egdon Heath, in the south of England and tells the story of a handful of characters whose lives and fates intertwine. Side note: the setting of the heath itself is as important to the story as the actual characters and events and actually impacts the story in many important ways. As a result, I had to Google what a heath was and pour over images to really get a full understanding of what the environment looked like - a very sparse, harsh, rural land. And hey, I learned what "furze" is, so there's that. 

Eustacia, a lovely young girl who is perceived by others on the heath as a dark and tempestuous, is in the midst of a love affair with Wildeve, who she discovers will be marrying another, Thomasin. Thomasin by contrast is a kind, fair and more angelic being, almost above reproach. And then returning from living in Paris is Thomasin's cousin, Clym, who instead of wanting to make a living in the exciting city is more interested in living simply on the heath and starting a school to provide insight and critical thinking to the simple folks and farmer's children. Eustacia falls madly in love with Clym, partly because he represents something new and exotic, partly to spite Wildeve, partly because she is certain she can use her feminine wiles to convince him to take her away to Paris to live, and partly because she truly does love him. And also thrown into the mix is Clym's mother, Mrs Yeobright, who has strong opinions about everything and feels that as a mother, she should be able to call the shots for her son and niece. 

Of course Eustacia and Mrs Yeobright don't get along. This quite annoyed the hell out of me, mostly on the side of Mrs Yeobright because she had never actually met Eustacia and formulated all of her very negative opinions of her just based on hearsay of the other heath residents. In fact, Mrs Yeobright bugged the crap out of me all the way around. She was very smug, selfish, and insistent about her way being how everyone else (her son in particular) should behave, and went about it in passive-aggressive way, always the victim. When Clym and Eustacia marry and Eustacia discovers his steadfast desire to remain at Edgon Heath, her feelings for Wildeve are rekindled and reciprocated. From here, things go south for just about everyone involved. 

I think what I enjoyed the most about the book was how well different, unfortunate situations were set up. There were so many ways in which all of the tragic events could have been avoided. Interventions from other side characters impacted the main characters in significant ways; interventions that were unintentional, happenstance, accidental, and just bad timing. The slightest modification in one person's behavior here and there could have changed the entire course of many lives. It felt quite Shakespearian, but I suppose those are elements of a good tragedy (is there such thing as a good tragedy?). And tragedy it is indeed. Good fortune does not smile down on anyone. 

The one thing I did struggle with, was the fact that none of the characters were very likeable. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that all of the characters were very complex and had redeeming and dislikable characteristics, and I while I liked them being multi-faceted and more human, I still had a hard time rooting for anyone. Even characters like Clym and Thomasin who seemed designed to be contrasts to Wildeve and Eustacia (more good-hearted than wicked) just annoyed me. Is it strange that I disliked the "nice" characters? Maybe that says more about me than them. 

Next up, I'm taking a brief break from the lists to pick up The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid. It seems to be a popular read and I've gotten a few recommendations for it. 

Other random notes:

• There is a feature on Goodreads that allows you to set a goal for the number of books you want to read for the year. I have set mine at 25, even though I'm only at 10. But I've significantly picked up my reading since years past, so I'm hoping to get pretty close to that number if not reach it. 
• I discovered in my tracker of the number of books I have left to read that I was missing Return of the Native (grrr...). So as a result, I am still stuck on 203 books left to go. Boooo. 

Happy Saturday of reading!    

"And Before We Judge Of Them Too Harshly We Must Remember What Ruthless And Utter Destruction Our Own Species Has Wrought, Not Only Upon Animals, Such As The Vanished Bison And The Dodo, But Upon Its Own Inferior Races"

Well I guess it's fair to say I enjoy a book when I motor through it in 4 days. But man, did I just love War of the Worlds. Everything I knew about the book/story was only from the Tom Cruise movie and from the Orson Wells radio version that shared the bejeezus out of people (apparently, there have even been tv movies re-telling the panic that ordinary citizens experienced that night). So I didn't really know for sure what the real War of the Worlds story was and where artistic license for the other versions kicked in. 

I won't go into details about the plot because I'm sure most are at least somewhat familiar with the concept of aliens landing on earth and being bent only on complete annihilation of humans. But the book gives GOBS of details about what their "cylinders" look like, their activity once they arrive, what they look like, and a moment-by-moment description of what the townspeople are doing, and how things progress. The story is told through a narrator (whose name is not given) who lives in close proximity to the first cylinder that arrives, and chronicles his activities and movements to try to save his wife and his own life. 

First off, it's astonishing to me that this book was written in 1898. And there is unique benefit/insight to reading this book over 120 years later. Because there are so many very astute observations and predictions about the world and about humans that are achingly on point. For example, the quote making up the title of this post. In reading the Introduction that came with the book, I was fascinated to learn about the scientific and philosophical proclivities of H.G. Wells and how he would ascertain things from history to try to advise against repeating them in the future. One quote notes that "...Wells saw history as a 'race between education and catastrophe.'" Many of his works were warnings about the consequences of the actions of humans. And while at its core, the book is a simple story of "What If," it's hard not to let other themes creep in like, Why do humans feel that we are allowed to trounce all over other species/races? Or, We really are that foolish to think we're the greatest in the universe? I felt like these thoughts in the background, hinted at here and there, give the book a much weightier feel beyond just a scary alien attack. 

But don't get me wrong...alien attack there was! And every page is just chock full of suspense and devastation that to say it's a page turner doesn't do it justice. And really almost every alien anything in the last century is indebted to this book for inspiration...Independence Day, Cloverfield, A Quiet Place, etc etc. So way ahead of his time. There is also so much detail regarding the place to place activities, I was CONSTANTLY looking at a map of the London suburbs where the action was taking place to have a super accurate idea of what all of the movements were.

So yes, suffice it to say that I just loved this book. I do also have The Time Machine on my lists of books and that bad boy may have just creeped quite a bit higher up the list just because I enjoyed this one so much. I may even watch the movie again just to compare against the book (note: the narrator in the novel didn't have any kids so the addition of the obnoxiously screaming Dakota Fanning in the movie was an addition that I would have loved to have done without). 

Next up is The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy. I'm actually part way through the book already, and I'm sure I'll have a bunch to say about this one. 

One other thing that happened in the last couple weeks related to my reading is that I joined Goodreads. My sister has been bugging me to join for a while and I just never got around to it I already track my book lists painstakingly enough here that I wasn't all that eager to have yet another place to go to. HOWEVER, I am a big fan! In particular, I love the ability to have a place to track books I want to read (beyond my book lists of course); this was previously existing as a note on my phone that I would add to as books came up. I also love being able to set a yearly goal for yourself and track the progress. I've set my goal at 25 books, knowing that I'm currently at 9 books. Does that make me think I can't read 16 books in just over 5 months? Nope, it's just going to motivate me even more. I've had such a fire under my ass to read since my break between jobs, and this is just one additional motivator to keep going! 

203 to go!  

"The Grass Was Me, And The Air, The Distant Invisible Mountains Were Me, The Tired Oxen Were Me."

If I take away anything from reading Out of Africa, is how much I now want to go on a safari. I legit started looking at tours on the website of the travel company we've used before the moment that I finished reading the book. 

And I guess that's a testament to how much the book conveyed a feeling and how the descriptions gave the reader so much of a sense of place and environment. I feel like I could close my eyes and see the night air filled with stars on the grassy plains. Or that I could see the Ngong hills in the distance from the coffee plantation. 

But there's something interesting and a bit suspicious about the book. Isak Dinesen is the pen name used by Karen Blixen and her narrative in the book is largely a grouping of chapters of vignettes of situations that occurred during her time running a coffee plantation in Kenya, just outside of Nairobi. And while the vignettes are interesting and coupled with the lush, lovely descriptions of the people and landscapes, there is an impartiality of the way it is told and it felt like there was something that I wasn't understanding or something that was missing. When my boyfriend asked me if I had seen the movie and "if I knew what it was about," it made me even more suspicious. 

After doing some research about Karen Blixen, there sure was a lot that she tactfully omitted from the book. There is only mention of her husband once, briefly in passing, but no discussion of his role on the farm or the fact that he had many affairs and they ultimately got divorced. And she discusses often the character of Denys Finch Hatton as being a close friend who lived and guided safaris and who would often come stay with her at the farm, but she fails to mention that he was her love. She also doesn't mention any of the other salient details of these men in her life, like the fact that her husband gave her syphilis and that she travelled back to Europe for treatment (which sounds to be quite excruciating with long-term after-effects). 

So now thinking about the book, I don't quite know how to place it. I certainly get her desire to present the context of her life while living there in whatever way she wanted to, and if that included omitting some more scandalous details, then have at it sister. But it makes the rest of the book feel a little more contrived and makes me wonder what other kinds of liberties were taken to present herself and her experiences in the finest light possible. 

In spite of this, I did find the book to be so interesting - to have such a perspective of how life was in Africa in the early 1900s was delightful to read. Although I cannot help but read it with the disdain of colonization and how casually the "ownership" of the natives' land is treated. I know I have to acknowledge the time that this was written and hope that we have learned since then (but all it takes is to look around to see that white people certainly continue to think they're entitled to the land of natives throughout the world). 

I'm doing a complete shift in my next book choice, moving on to War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. I couldn't tell you the last time I read a science fiction book. And I'm hoping that any mention of children screaming doesn't evoke the feeling of wanting to punch Dakota Fanning in the face, because that's the main thing I can recall from the movie. 

204 to go!