Book Review: Gilead and Mrs. Dalloway
And here's the continuation of my January reads:
2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
I like Marilynne Robinson a lot. I delighted in the beauty and grace of her prose in Housekeeping, I marvelled at her deep insights about nature, and I was in total awe at how her sentences sing---they are lyrical even if at times they tackle just mundane things.
Robinson is heavily admired by creative writing folks, and she has received many accolades that mere mortals like me could only dream of. It is therefore with such high expectation that I started reading her most celebrated oeuvre the Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead. On my first day though, I could not go beyond a few pages and I thought perhaps I was still too deep into the holiday spirit. However, even when the holiday was over, I was still struggling. Because it is not plot-driven, the story lacks action to carry it along. Moreover, because the characters are almost uni-dimensional (or as one reviewer puts it, boring), there is not much to keep me going. To be fair, it is always tricky to handle delicate issues and in this novel Robinson does it very subtly---she carefully tackles racial prejudice from the perspective of a deeply white middle America. She treats the issue quietly (no big dramas) without losing the weight and gravitas. But while the unique angle and treatment is to be admired, the reveal comes too late. By the time it is unwrapped, I have long concluded that it is a "difficult to read" book, and by then the twist could not alter this deeply ingrained impression anymore. But had it been written in the same stylistics as and the more lyrical sentences of Housekeeping, perhaps it would have been easier to finish the book.
Having said all these, I still like Marilynne Robinson and I have Home in my next reading list - though I'm hoping that this one will be a better read.
2. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
I like Marilynne Robinson a lot. I delighted in the beauty and grace of her prose in Housekeeping, I marvelled at her deep insights about nature, and I was in total awe at how her sentences sing---they are lyrical even if at times they tackle just mundane things.
Robinson is heavily admired by creative writing folks, and she has received many accolades that mere mortals like me could only dream of. It is therefore with such high expectation that I started reading her most celebrated oeuvre the Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead. On my first day though, I could not go beyond a few pages and I thought perhaps I was still too deep into the holiday spirit. However, even when the holiday was over, I was still struggling. Because it is not plot-driven, the story lacks action to carry it along. Moreover, because the characters are almost uni-dimensional (or as one reviewer puts it, boring), there is not much to keep me going. To be fair, it is always tricky to handle delicate issues and in this novel Robinson does it very subtly---she carefully tackles racial prejudice from the perspective of a deeply white middle America. She treats the issue quietly (no big dramas) without losing the weight and gravitas. But while the unique angle and treatment is to be admired, the reveal comes too late. By the time it is unwrapped, I have long concluded that it is a "difficult to read" book, and by then the twist could not alter this deeply ingrained impression anymore. But had it been written in the same stylistics as and the more lyrical sentences of Housekeeping, perhaps it would have been easier to finish the book.
Having said all these, I still like Marilynne Robinson and I have Home in my next reading list - though I'm hoping that this one will be a better read.
3. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
I started reading Virginia Woolf with Lighthouse sometime back, but I never got to finish it, mainly because I kept getting lost with her stream of consciousness approach. This kept me away from Virginia Woolf for awhile. When I took a novel writing course though, my teacher suggested I read Mrs. Dalloway because a short story I've written somehow resembles Mrs. D. I then bought a nice edition of the book (from Shakespeare and company no less!!!), and as luck would have it, I finally found the time to read and finish it in January. While it is not the most engaging book I've read so far, I was hooked enough to finish it in just a matter of days. Woolf's approach is very cinematic, and I kept that cinema mindset as I went into the different points of view, from scene to scene. The parallelism and contrast in the lives of two people - Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus - is fascinating. Mrs. Dalloway, a politician's wife, lives at the core of high society, whereas Septimus is a young soldier traumatised by the most recent war. Their paths are unlikely to meet given the big discrepancy in their stations. But on this single day in June, all the roads lead to Mrs. Dalloway's big event and all the important people in society converge in her drawing room. And somehow, Septimus, who is not important enough to be there physically, gets to be part of her party (albeit not physically). And the mention of Septimus' state is such that it dampens Clarissa Dalloway's mood and leaves her less gratified after all the effort she has put forth for the party.
The story deftly tackles flashbacks of the many decades that culminate in that one June day. In less experienced hands this can get confusing, but with Woolf, the flashbacks and shifting but intertwining POVs look very seamless.
After finishing the book, I went back and re-read the thick introduction. This gave me fresh perspective but also made me realise how difficult it was for writers in the pre-computer era to check the logical flow of their stories. The introduction mentions a couple of issues with the first edition, due perhaps to Woolf's missing out on consistency checks. But given the technology-challenged era, this is something that can easily be forgiven, and these lapses do not stop Woolf's genius from shining through.
#Gilead #MarilynneRobinson #MrsDalloway #VirginiaWoolf #BookReview #MigsReads2015
I started reading Virginia Woolf with Lighthouse sometime back, but I never got to finish it, mainly because I kept getting lost with her stream of consciousness approach. This kept me away from Virginia Woolf for awhile. When I took a novel writing course though, my teacher suggested I read Mrs. Dalloway because a short story I've written somehow resembles Mrs. D. I then bought a nice edition of the book (from Shakespeare and company no less!!!), and as luck would have it, I finally found the time to read and finish it in January. While it is not the most engaging book I've read so far, I was hooked enough to finish it in just a matter of days. Woolf's approach is very cinematic, and I kept that cinema mindset as I went into the different points of view, from scene to scene. The parallelism and contrast in the lives of two people - Mrs. Dalloway and Septimus - is fascinating. Mrs. Dalloway, a politician's wife, lives at the core of high society, whereas Septimus is a young soldier traumatised by the most recent war. Their paths are unlikely to meet given the big discrepancy in their stations. But on this single day in June, all the roads lead to Mrs. Dalloway's big event and all the important people in society converge in her drawing room. And somehow, Septimus, who is not important enough to be there physically, gets to be part of her party (albeit not physically). And the mention of Septimus' state is such that it dampens Clarissa Dalloway's mood and leaves her less gratified after all the effort she has put forth for the party.
The story deftly tackles flashbacks of the many decades that culminate in that one June day. In less experienced hands this can get confusing, but with Woolf, the flashbacks and shifting but intertwining POVs look very seamless.
After finishing the book, I went back and re-read the thick introduction. This gave me fresh perspective but also made me realise how difficult it was for writers in the pre-computer era to check the logical flow of their stories. The introduction mentions a couple of issues with the first edition, due perhaps to Woolf's missing out on consistency checks. But given the technology-challenged era, this is something that can easily be forgiven, and these lapses do not stop Woolf's genius from shining through.
#Gilead #MarilynneRobinson #MrsDalloway #VirginiaWoolf #BookReview #MigsReads2015
