Bookgazing

The beginning of the year is always a bit of a funny time for me. First there’s an avalanche of birthdays, then as the dark descends early every evening and takes an age to leave in the morning a little bit of the January blues creeps up. The shortest month follows the loooongest moooonth poooooossible, so suddenly I’m in the third month of the year and never quite sure what I’ve done with the first two, the months when resolutions are supposed to be acted on. I’d like to suggest that in 2013 the year starts in March, the point where the year finally stabilizes and I start leaving the house regularly, instead of lying down in front of the tv most nights.

I think at 27 it’s time to admit I am officially a bit useless until March and that’s probably not going to change. I’m reading lots of books right now and I’m watching tv, but I’m not generating very many reviews or thoughtful posts. All the posts that are going up right now were written at the end of last year and have taken ages to edit into shape (brrr, brain is cold, needs Vampire Diaries at night, not computer screens). That’s just the way things are right now. Today, light was appearing while I got dressed, so maybe I’ll be more into writing full reviews soon. Otherwise there are a few pre-written YA posts that will be appearing, but nothing about what I've read this year, or at the end of last year I'm afraid.

I’m really excited about lots of the things I’ve been watching and reading though, so do you fancy a bit of my random, quick chat about them? There’s a big tv post coming soon about the tv I watched over Christmas (which I wrote over the Christmas holiday), but right now though I’m sunk deeply into ‘The Vampire Diaries’ (Series Two – four episodes left), in that delicious way that box sets make possible. DVD box sets are one of my favourite things, even if they are a total luxury item; you can watch a whole series in one big gulp and stay situated in the story until you’re ready to stop, the way you can when you’re reading, or watching films. Blissful tv control.

I still watch tv ‘live’ though. I just finished watching ‘Borgen’ (Series One) ‘live’ on BBC4, which is thick, plot heavy, satisfying stuff (and bombarded Ana with thoughts). And I like being able to watch ‘Call the Midwife’ every Sunday night. It’s perfect back to work tv. ‘The Hustle’ is the other thing I’m watching every episode of at the moment and aww it is so cute, comforting and full of smart tricks that I really don’t want this to be its last series.

On books: I’ve been so good about sticking to the rule I made at the beginning of the year (I think I just made it in my head, in case I failed, so this may be the first time you hear about it) to only buy one new book a month and read from the books already in the house. I’m making shelf space! I’m also sticking to my resolution not to ‘save’ books I’m excited about. I started the year by reading ‘Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy’ (really enjoyed it, written by just my kind of spy fiction author – one with an interest in people) and have just finished ‘The Tiger’s Wife’, which was simple and natural. It was completely different from what I was expecting and I think fantasy lovers, who like folk tales will enjoy this lit fic, award winner. Last month I used my book buying slot to buy ‘Tankborn’, which was a bit of an up and down read for me. Still, it was a piece of sci-fi by a woman, so my year has begun with me sticking to my intention to try and read more sci-fi by ladies.

There will be reviews of those later (when my brain has woken up) and I owe an SoG post about ‘The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet. For now imagine me happily reading, or watching, curled up under a blanket in the spare hours after work. It may not be an ambitious way to spend my time, but it’s comfortable.

Don’t you hate it when a book is good, very good indeed, but you don’t dig it? ‘Great House’ by Nicola Krauss is a well written narrative that unravels many deep thoughts and contains a structure of some interest....but I didn’t like it. Prepare for possibly unfair justifications.

The structure of ‘Great House’ is technically interesting, compared to the more popular linear, single narrative. The book is made of two large sections. Within the first section there are four individual chapters: ‘All Rise’, ‘True Kindness’, ‘Swimming Holes’ and ‘The Lies Told by Children’. Each of these chapters introduces a new character’s story, but there are several similarities between the individual stories. Each of the individual chapters focuses on a person who holds themselves separate from an important person in their life. Each story is told using first person narrative, although sometimes the story is told from the perspective of the person who is disconnected from those around them and sometimes it is told for the perspective of the partner, or family member who they are detached from. Three of the sections mention the presence of a desk, which contributes a menacing presence to the atmosphere.

In the second section the titles of each of the chapters above are repeated in a slightly different order and each narrator’s tale continues under the appropriate heading (barring ‘Lies Told by Children’, which is replaced by ‘Weissz’ and gives a voice to a background character from ‘Lies Told By Children’). In this section real life connections are made between the four narratives, as characters from one section begin to show up in the stories of other characters. So, the subject of ‘Great House’ is personal disconnection, but connections exist between several of its separate narratives. Perhaps it is a novel of disconnection that never the less reminds us all how connected we are, no matter how we try to severe the links of human relations.

If the emotional resonance of such a small, but sustaining thread of hope exists in this book I could not grab on to it. I’ll admit that the kind of person that I am (intensely private) makes it hard to read ‘Great House’ without feeling as if it is kicking off about the way I live my life. The thesis of ‘Great House’ is that private people destroy lives. Many of the characters in ‘Great House’ retain what seems like ridiculous levels of privacy in order to remain capable of feeding a personal obsession and their behaviour often tips over into cruelty as it silences those around them. It’s hard not to feel challenged by ‘Great House’ being as attached to privacy as I am, especially when so many of Krauss’ characters are extremely punished for their behaviour.

After a deal of analysis, it’s clear that many of Krauss’ most negative characters have no direct relation to my own life. A character like Weissz, the obsessive, repressive antiques dealer determined to keep his grown children under his rule, has changed from being merely a private person to an obsessive who deliberately destroys personal connections between his children and their peers. Krauss also advances characters like Dov in ‘True Kindness’ who has become removed from those around him, but is less of a negative character (if no less sad for his inability to connect with his family, or lovers). Surprisingly this novel written by a stranger is not all about me and I don’t have to dislike it because it aims its criticism at me.

Instead I’m forced to admit to a cardinal sin amongst book readers. Part of why I didn’t like ‘Great House’ was because it was graphically, openly bleak in its depiction of human relationships. Wait, dudes and dudettes I am not getting on the ‘bring back the sunshine’ brigade’s badly soldered festival float. Lemme esplain myself.

I take no issue with any authors’ right to be bleak. The world is tough, things don’t always work out and relationships between people can turn nasty. While I am very much of the ‘little glimpse of hope would be nice’ persuasion, because I try my best to believe humanity’s goodness, if a book portrays the awful really well I am open to being persuaded that life is BAD. However, I do have a problem with the belief that all badness deserves equal punishment, that there are no extenuating circumstances for why people behave terribly.

Nadia, is a writer who works on her writing by herself all day, yet clearly shows her irritation when her partner finally returns for the day. Her irritation forces him into a home coming routine where he slowly allows her to come to terms with his return, which she sees as positive until the day he leaves her and learns how the need for that routine makes him feel:

‘I’d hardly stopped to think how S might have felt, for example, when he walked through the door of our home and found his wife silent, with back turned and shoulder hunched so as to defend her little kingdom, how he felt as he removed his shoes, checked the mail, dropped the foreign coins into their little canisters, wondering just how cold my mood would be when at last he tried to approach me across the rickety bridge.’

Once he explains, Nadia realises that she has failed to see him as a person, or to consider anyone else but herself as real in her quest to create. The truth of this realisation is backed up by the reader’s knowledge of other relationships that she has plundered for the sake of her work, without considering the feelings of others. Krauss has set up obsession with an occupation and the purposeful disconnection that can come from focusing so much on a task as the source of all evil in this particular novel. It is clear that the reader is supposed to be brought round to agree with this idea, as more and more horrendous actions are perpetrated by characters that separate themselves from full human companionship. These characters discard empathy and exact rigorous, stifling control on those around them.

Nadia’s storyline shows something about the walls that private people can create unnecessarily around themselves and the disregard for others this kind of attitude can foster. It reminds me of things that I need to work on myself and gives great insight into the ethics of the creative process. Although by the end of the book I didn’t like Nadia and I feel really sketchy about the implications of her inclusion in this story alongside so many other childless, creative female characters who come to no good (I’ll come to that later), I did feel satisfied with her storyline. I felt like she went through an appropriate level of pain for her behaviour, but that I could still find a way to empathise with her. I felt like she was capable of learning and change by the end of her story.

The terrible endings of Lotte and many other character’s stories can be seen as a punishment, or a corrective, a way for Krauss to demonstrate that not only does this type of behaviour endanger a person’s relationship with others and harm other people, but it brings bad things upon the perpetrators head. Again, ‘Great House’ is explaining something about the world to its reader, possibly in the hope that it will enlarge their understanding. However, to fully embrace Krauss’ ideas readers needs to agree with Krauss’ ideas of what constitutes estrangement, obsession and appropriate punishment when reading ‘Great House’. And while, as I said I found the punishment of Nadia appropriate, I felt saddened by the demise of Lotte and even by the death of Weissz. Both their obsessions stem from a place of serious pain. While I can see Weissz’s end is as justified as a fictional death can ever be, because his pain has caused him to mentally harm his children, Lotte’s pain has led her to push her child into the arms of someone better equipped to take care of him. Yet, it’s hard not to see her loss of memory and self, as a punishment for this action, an action which I found unbearably sad rather than the actions of a selfish person who can’t share her life with anyone. I grieved for Lotte and perhaps I was supposed to, but it didn’t feel like I was as the only has access to her is through her husband’s removed view point, which is ultimately full of judgement. There’s no room for any hope, or any real understanding when it comes to the reader’s interaction with Lotte and I find it hard to take, this blanket judgement and destruction of all people who aren’t capable of forming relationships.

I admit that the bleakness of ‘Great House’ is powerful. Krauss creates a world of moral ambiguity, where no one is right and although most of the characters perpetrate horrible crimes on each other, some are worse than others. This feeling of watching two devils fighting each other, so that the reader can judge who is the least evil is beautifully encapsulated in ‘Weissz’.

Perhaps at this point I should mention that three of the main characters who reject relationships with families and partners in favour of creative work are women. Two are childless women (Lotte and Nadia), one (Leah) is rather too young to be labelled childless, but the fact that she will never marry or have children is commented on by her father. Yep, that’s something we’ve all seen before right, the idea that creative, working women are uncaring, obsessed and usually too tied up in their work to have time for children.

Every unfeeling female character is childless, closed off from their lover and creative and ‘Great House’ seems determined to link its female character’s lack of feeling with these circumstances. In ‘Great House’ childlessness feels like a consequence of failings in these women’s emotions. If only characters like Nadia, Lotte and Leah had a child, the book seems to say, they could open up, defeat their lack of empathy and form normal relationships. And the implicit logic that if only they were less closed off they’d want a child seems to bring up the idea that only unnatural women don’t want children. The divide between the female characters who are emotionally isolated and don’t have children and characters like the nameless American woman who goes on to have a child and form a happy marriage unfortunately reinforces common negative stereotypes about women (childless women are hard, cold and uncaring, unlike mothers – creative women avoid having children). It’s a vicious circle of logic, that doesn’t allow for the possibility that women who don’t want children aren’t all closed down emotional wrecks.

You would never know that from reading ‘Great House’, as it is exclusively focused on the importance of the disconnection that can be found in romantic and parental relationships. This focus excludes the idea that a woman who is ‘bad’ at or incapable of having those kinds of relationships may find valuable ways to connect elsewhere. Not one female character in the book seems to have any serious friends, yet this missing class of relationship is not accorded the same importance as family, or romantic relationships. To me that feels like a bit of a flaw in a novel, which is trying to show how separation from human relationships can have negative consequences. I also wonder why, in a book that features so many creative women the idea of connection with an audience is never really explored. That’s another valid way of forming connections that is ignored.

I’m not levelling charges of sexism at Krauss’ novel, because there are also three male main characters that are so full of work that they can’t let anyone near them. Maybe the reader is even asked to question the relationship between childless women and estrangement issues, as two of these men have children, one does not and all do a bang up job of fucking everything up emotionally. I think an unfortunate, casual link has been made between gender, creativity and coldness as the central point of the novel (human beings are irreparably damaged, usually somehow through their parents and this leads them to damage themselves and others) is developed. Healthy, happy, lasting relationships of any kind (except apparently background relationships between the male characters and shady, dead wife characters of the past and one friendship which seems to exist purely to provide Nadia with support, would detract from this theme. It’s just unfortunate that while developing this idea ‘Great House’ reinforces traditional negative stereotypes about creative and childless women.

Like I said, ‘Great House’ is impressive and very good. The digressionary wending that each narrator deals in as they work their way through their section is detailed and interesting. It is insightful about the negative flip side of dedication to work. Many places in the novel felt true and painful. Oh and it contains the outline of a sci-fi story, that is being written by one of the characters, which I’d love to see as a novel.

I just didn’t enjoy it at all. Sorry. Maybe ‘Memory of Love’ will be more my kind of thing.

Other Reviews

dovegreyreader
Bookslut
Iris on Books

There are a couple of projects I’d like to mention quickly, because I’m involved in them and this blog is nothing if not all about me : D

I’m sure lots of you took part in 2011’s ‘Year of Feminist Classics’. If you did hopefully you’ll want to play along again and if you didn’t, perhaps you’d like to add a feminist reading project to your 2012 schedule. This year a host and a group of co-hosts will read and talk about one book every month, starting in February. Check out the list of books below to see what the group will be discussing:

February: ‘Feminism is for Everybody’ - bell hooks (Amy)
March: ‘The Book of the City of Ladies’ - Christine De Pizan (Jean)
April: Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity - Julia Serano (Cass)
May: Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë read alongside Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Iris)
June: Stone Butch Blues - Leslie Feinberg (Emily)
July: Little Women - Louisa May Alcott (Nancy)
August: The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison (Lauren)
September: Borderlands/La Frontera - Gloria Anzaldua (Melissa)
October: The Feminine Mystique - Betty Friedan (Jodie)
November: Beyond the Veil - Fatema Mernissi (Ana)
December: Women, Race, and Class - Angela Davis (Emily Jane)
January 2013 – Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practising Solidarity by Chandra Talpade Mohanty (Eva)

You can read all twelve (ohho, aren’t you ambitious?), less than twelve, or if you’ve got a spot of time for a just one feminist classic in, oh, I don’t know, let’s say October, you can join in for the one readalong. Whatever your participation level you’ll be very welcome. Full details at the ‘Year of Feminist Classics’ website.

The Indie Lit Awards Shortlists have been also been announced and here are the books I’ll be reading for the GLBTQ panel.

’Well With My Soul’- Gregory Allen
’Swimming to Chicago’ - David Matthew Barnes
’Songs of the New Depression’ - Kergan Edwards-Stout
’Nina Here Nor There: My Journey Beyond Gender’ - Nick Krieger
’Huntress’ - Malinda Lo

I’d read ‘Huntress’ before this list was finalised and you can read my review of it at ladybusiness.

Happy week everyone – January blues time is almost over!

Eva from 'A Striped Armchair' has kindly said that I can try out her useful one sentence review style in this post, so that I can catch you up on my thoughts about some of the books I never quite got around to reviewing in 2011. Time for me to let loose with one of my favourite, forbidden, forms of writing (the run on sentence).


Books I Loved and Found Every Page a Delight



Read 'A Fine Balance' by Rohinton Mistry if you enjoy big family saga narratives, set in India, that have multiple storylines, like 'A Suitable Boy', but you want a novel that looks at the realities of being a poorer member of Indian society.



Reread 'Persuasion' by Jane Austen if you need a reminder that even in Austen's time quiet but strong, on the shelf heroines could get the guy ;) For a more in depth look at one of the greatest stories ever told you should check out the series of posts Book Snob put up during the Persuasion readalong that she held last year: First Impressions, Emotion and Persuasion's Men



Reread 'Jazz' by Toni Morisson if you're looking for a literary novel full of drama, with a distinctive narrative style, which successfully calls forth empathy for people who can at times be rather unpleasant.


Books I Would Have Loved, Except for One or Two Little Quibbles or Books I Really, Really Liked



Read 'The Locusts Have No King' by Dawn Powell if you liked Powell's 'The Happy Island', or you enjoy satires about people who may have taken a wrong turn and reached bittersweet endings.



Read 'Miss Hargreaves' by Frank Baker if you fancy a fun farce mixed with fantasy, populated by a set of characters who sometimes test a readers' patience.



Read 'Iceland' by Betsy Tobin if you love straight mythic retellings, written in modern language, that are told from a female perspective and are in the mood for a rather breezy read.


Books I Definitely Liked, Although They Didn’t Blow Me Away or Books that had Great Points Counterbalanced by Not-Great Ones



Read 'Wild Life' by Molly Gloss if you'd like to read a novel which contains a touch of sci-fi/fantasy and follows a female writer with progressive ideas, trying to carve a space to write in and you don't mind a bit of a meandering plot.


Books That Aren’t For Me but I Could Still See Some Good Points



Read 'Journey By Moonlight' by Antal Szerb if you're interested in creepy family relations, or past obsessive love, with bleeds into the present, souring life and you can put up with a bit of a self-indulgent narrator.



Read 'Have His Carcase' by Dorothy L Sayers if you loved 'Strong Poison', (which I did and you can read a bit about why in my post on 'Strong Poison') so you want to make sure you know everything that's happened between Harriet and Peter before you read 'Gaudy Night', which means you’re fine with a mystery plot that is nonsensical and takes too long to unravel.



Read 'My Legendary Girlfriend' by Mike Gayle if you're looking for a funny story about a guy in his mid twenties and you don't mind that his main focus is still the girl who dumped him two years ago, or that the comparisons between this book and 'Bridget Jones' on the back cover are mistaken, because if Bridget had spent a whole novel going on about a man who had broken up with her two years ago, who she doesn't even see for most of the book, then she would have been called a stalker, or a whiner and the book would never have sold as well because double standards exist, but also because she would have been really dull.

*Ahem*. That last one got a bit out of control, didn't it?

Thanks so much for letting me have a go at this format Eva. If I can ever do you a blogging favour just ask.

I’m back briefly to announce that tomorrow is my third blogiversary. I remembered I had to go to work Friday (for half a day, don’t weep for me and my interrupted holiday too hard will you) and would probably spend the afternoon lounging with the ‘rents. So, I am going to pretend it is perfectly acceptable to post about my blogging anniversary a day later, just like it was totally fine to open my Secret Santa present from a friend on Christmas Eve. Absolutely fine.

Spending time with my parents has been the unofficial and very nice theme of my long Christmas break. I meant to write posts. I did not write posts. I was planning to catch up on all the box sets and “free” films I have sitting around that no one else wants to watch. Instead I watched all the Christmas tv downstairs. I went out for lunch and to the pub a few times with friend, but otherwise there has been lots of family time. Although we live in the same house, work means we spend plenty of time apart and it has been nice to chill in each other presence and occasionally leave the house together.

Anyway, I’m getting away from the subject. This year has probably been the year where I blogged the least since I started Bookgazing, but it has seen the most exciting change to the place in some time: I moved to Dreamwidth. I anticipated having to do the requisite wailing and gnashing penance that everyone who moves service must endure, but instead found the transition exceptionally smooth. I had two very pleasant years at Blogger, but I must admit I do like being back in an atmosphere that has diverged from a Livejournal base. It just suits me better.

Thank you so much to everyone for sticking with me through the move. I came over here because I wanted a fresh start, but I absolutely didn’t want to lose any of the people who regularly dropped by and it looks like those I talk to regularly are managing to make themselves heard in the comments. I have heard there might be some Open ID problems (Wordpress addresses maybe?) and wanted to mention that if you fancy setting up a Dreamwidth account yourself, just to make commenting easier, Dreamwidth is currently letting new people make free accounts without an invite code until 31/12/2011. Just head over to the homepage.

To finish, I thought I’d offer up a little giveaway to you for following me to my new home, continuing to chat with me after my frequent silences this year and just for being nice people. One of my absolute favourite books this year was by someone who has been blogging and writing about books for ages, Colleen Mondor from Chasing Ray. I’ve been reading her blog for, oh, about five years now and I was so excited to get to read her book. Now I want to offer you all a chance to win a beautiful, shiny hardback copy of her creative non-fiction title ‘Map of My Dead Pilots’, which I just do not have enough nice words for (although I will try to use many in my review in the New Year).



I never read non-fiction, but I swallowed this during over several lunchtime sessions and have plans to read it again next year. You want this book.

To be in with a chance of winning simply say something pleasant in the comments on this post before midnight GMT on 3rd of Jan 2012 (the day before I go back to work properly). This contest is open worldwide.

I hope you’ve all had a lovely festive season and are looking forward to the New Year. See you in January, when I’ll have lots of reading news to regale you with.