Books, books, books. I am surrounded by books. Unfortunately, I have recently read very few of them, two in July, four in August. My desk is littered with volumes I have picked up and started only to cast them aside. This was not because the books themselves were unappealing or not worth reading, but because my mind was trapped elsewhere, lost in some liminal space.
In fact liminality seems to have been the theme for this year. I started the year with the idea of nesting flitting about my brain, but as the year has progressed it seems that the building of this nest consists of a series of forays through the mists of uncertainty. As soon as I find some grounding I open another door, step through, and find I am not wherever I thought I was headed.
This is not a bad thing in and of itself, just as not reading, at least for a short time, is not a bad thing, although, being a reader, I tend to be somewhat suspicious of people who never read. But I have distracted myself from writing about reading, reading during a time when I was a distracted reader. There was no particular direction to what I did read so I might as well plunge in.
I did read two long fantasy novels, although not contiguously. Those were The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson and A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin. The Sanderson came first, and I picked up the Martin specifically because I had read the Sanderson. I needed a balance, and I have been intermittently working my way through the Game of Thrones series when the mood strikes. Admittedly I struggled with Sanderson, not because it was difficult or boring but perhaps because the writing was almost too simple and the novel seemed two-dimensional at best. Oh, Sanderson carries the action well, and parts of the novel were compelling. He is obviously imaginative, and his world-building is consistent, well-thought, and even detailed. But I still found it lacking, two-dimensional even, as if reading a novel was more like reading a comic book, or looking at the set for a movie. Sanderson does not claim to be a "writer". His sentences are short and the writing is functional, technically probably only on a 3rd or maybe 4th grade level. Some of the ideas are more advanced than that of course, and there is more to reading than the actual technical portion; the ideas here are not teh ideas of childhood. But I felt the ideas were only explored and revealed on a fairly shallow level, with a lot of repetition of simple themes.
Martin, on the other hand is more complex. The use of language is still quite accessible, probably 4th grade level, maybe 5th. But most popular novels are in fact written at 7th grade level or below, and don't get me started on that subject for I crawl into a tunnel so deep I may not emerge. Martin's world-building is much more complexly layered than Sanderson's. The psychology of his characters much more deeply explored, in all their all-too human jumble of good and evil intentions, longings, fears, insights, and blind-spots. No one in Martin's novels is purely good or purely evil, although some lean further one way or another, just as humanity itself is unendingly complex. Martin manages to engage the reader not only in the action of the story, but in the minds of its participants. In fact, I much prefer Game of Thrones the novels to the televised version simply because of its deeply detailed psychology. Sanderson could just as well be a movie or a computer game, at least as far as my interests are concerned: entertaining, compelling to a point perhaps, but ultimately not satisfying. But perhaps I am missing the point of what appeals to Sanderson's many fans. Already I tend to reckon myself a dinosaur.
A few light novels were mingled in with these two tomes.
A Dress of Violet Taffeta by Tessa Arlen is a fictionalized biography of Lucy Duff Gordon, a a leading British fashion designer in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. She was the first British fashion designer to achieve international acclaim, and her story is therefore worth telling, and interesting to me. When I picked up this book, I didn't necessarily know who it was about, just that my mom enjoyed it and enjoyed reading about the dresses. Well, I always enjoy reading about fashion and color and fabric and I was hooked. I think the book is strongest in the first half. Young, divorced, with a child to support, Lucy Wallace has always enjoyed making clothes for her dolls, so she takes this interest to the next step and opens a dressmaking shop, Maison Lucille, where she is quite successful. The early portions of the novel are filled with descriptions of the qualities of silks, of colors, and of dress designs, and it is a feast of artistic and dressmaking sensibilities, co-mingled with Lucy's own personal struggles in a society that does not encourage women to be entrepreneurs. I felt the novel began to flounder after Lucy marries Cosmo Duff Gordon and the story becomes more about society, Lucy's elite clientele, and her expanding empire. I was more interested in Lucy the artist than I was in Lucy the society figure. The Duff Gordons were on the Titanic, and this episode, and the devastation it caused to their lives is included in the novel, although I felt the novel was not as rich with insight here as in the earlier chapters. The novel concludes with hints of struggles in her marriage, but Lucy in charge of a still-expanding empire. In actuality Lucille limited collapsed shortly afterward: Lucy Duff Gordon was bankrupted and lost her business once it was revealed she no longer designed the clothes sold under her name. Still the novel was light and enjoyable and has sparked an interest in learning more about the actual dresses.
Lucy's exploration of color and the qualities of silk was followed by another installation in Daniel Silva's series of novels about Israeli spy, Gabriel Allon. The Defector may not be my favorite of these books, but it was still intricately detailed and well-plotted. The story line is formulaic and I noticed a fair amount of repetition, but this could be that I am just deeply into this series by now. The characters are complex, intelligent, and flawed but thoroughly human. Assassins are what we generally categorize as "bad guys" but Allon is complex and often even likable. I like the way Silva takes recent political events (at the time the novels were written) and uses them as a jumping off place to explore both politics and human relations with a deft mix of actual news with fictional supposition that makes this reader think.
Finally, as August came to a close, I found myself reaching for more something more literary. The Booker Prize longest had been announced but I found myself strangely ambivalent, for the first time in many years. Still, I happened upon a copy of one of the novels, Western Lane, by Chetna Maroo, and picked it up. This is a debut novel told in the retrospective voice of an adult looking back at a critical time in her youth. It is a novel of grief, of coming of age, and of the complicated expectations and negotiations involved as children grow into adulthood navigating complex cultural expectations. Here, the Gujarati culture of the parents generation, with the competing worldly reality experienced by second-generation immigrants in Luton and Edinburgh, neither purely English nor Indian in their perceptions. I thought the book was charming and touching, which sounds strange for a book about grief. But most of the depth here, the connection between the characters, occurs in the background, behind the words, in hinted-at gestures and glances. The title of the book, and much of the action revolves around the game of squash, and the opening passages of the book, where the narrator, Gopi, explores the sound of a ball on the squash court as a metaphor, is quite well done. It is not a book that strives to resolve anything; it is a snapshot of a time, of a state on the cusp between childhood and adulthood. Despite profound moments, the prose is more serviceable than beautiful and the characters remain somewhat shadowy. Yet I do feel the author's way of using squash to further the story, of dealing with rather profound and intense emotions in a rather veiled way works in a way I found moving. I'm not sure this novel is what I would have called "Booker level" but the author shows great talent and promise and I would love to read more of her work.
Lastly, I read (reread actually, although at first I didn't recall that) Mansfield Park by Jane Austen. I didn't give it the attention it deserves, what with my general ennui concerning all things reading. I find Fanny fascinating, although I do understand how she is the least accessible of Austen's heroine's to modern sensibilities. And I was equally fascinated by the scenes revolving around the play and its immorality, which seem inconceivable to modern sensibilities, but which play out in rather shocking detail later in the novel. In the end I only decided to put the book back on my reading list, perhaps following Pride and Prejudice. The idea has lodged itself in my brain that perhaps Mansfield Park was written as the antithesis to Pride and Prejudice, as a very polemical attempt to explore these very same moral issues that are portrayed in both novels in very different ways. I now think the latter may be the most abstract of Austen's novels, and perhaps the most overtly ironic and political. Or I may be imagining this. I will have to read both novels.
More reading ahead it appears. I've always known this to be true. But when I continue reading, will I look back on what I've written here and wonder about my own understandings? Be embarrassed even at what I missed or did not see? Perhaps so, perhaps that is best, or perhaps not. I am a fan of rereading; anything worthwhile reveals new depths, just as any journey through life doesn't so much take us to new places, as it leads us to see familiar things in new ways.
