lory_enterenchanted's Reviews (582)

Reread for #Narniathon21. Thoughts coming later on the blog.

Strange, disjointed tale with some compelling images and lines but overall not as satisfying as some of MacDonald's other works. Read because of C.S. Lewis's statement in Surprised by Joy of the powerful effect it had on him -- one of those books that can be incredible when it hits you at the right time. It was not the same for me.

Finally got through this long, absorbing but very dark and tragic historical epic. For me it picked up in the last 100 pages when the narrator finally got to the period of her own life. As a bearer of family trauma, generational and national trauma, she becomes the recording angel of unbearable, unspeakable things, attempting to pass them on in a way that will not stifle but give impetus to an unknown future.

I had a wish to reread this after the first stage in Narniathon, to understand better the spiritual process behind Lewis's writing. I found it frustratingly evasive in many ways, even as it was unusually articulate in others. Although Lewis tries his best to describe his elusive experience of "Joy" and how he was led from atheism to theism to Christianity, I was left uncertain as to what he really experiences and believes in the fullness of his soul. I suspect at the point of this writing, there was much he was unable to admit to himself, let alone to an audience. There is no wonder at Lewis being an emotionally wounded man, considering the many traumas he went through in his early years; like most of us, he covered these up and endured them as best he could, but that left him with some strange disjunctions in his inner life. It's only now that a fuller understanding of trauma is being unfolded and that new healing methods are being discovered. But even if he was unable to benefit from these, he was a seeker of healing in his own way. I still feel gratitude to him for all that he shared. 

An additional note on the e-book edition I read: the proofreading was terrible and there were many mistakes left in from the scanning process (e.g. "Fie" for "He," extraneous apostrophes, etc.) This is a disgrace for an edition of the work of a man who was meticulous with words. E-book publishers must be more careful about these errors.

"We live and learn, yes. But we die and learn, too, it appears."

Reread of what I think is Davies's weakest novel, with an interesting but awkwardly worked out premise. The idea of a recently deceased man viewing a private "film festival" of his ancestors' lives is ingenious, but hard to put into practice: describing films is the deadliest thing imaginable, and aside from a few glimpses Davies wisely doesn't try, mostly reverting to the narrative techniques that he is accustomed to using. In effect his first-person narrator becomes a third-person narrator of the scenes he is beholding, and the switching back and forth can be jarring.

I also don't feel like we get enough of Gil, the dead man - he comes to know himself through this vision of his forebears, or so he says, but who is he? Again, we get some glimpses, but then we're swept away into someone else's life, and the result just doesn't entirely satisfy. 

Along the way there were some wonderful nuggets of wisdom, even if the whole didn't quite gel for me.

"Was I really such an unreflecting, uncomprehending jackass when I was alive that I supposed the sufferings and inadequacies of humanity came for the first time in my own experience? No; not wholly. But I had never applied what I knew as general truths to the people without whom I should never have experienced life; I had taken them for granted. As McWearie used to say, one's family is made up of supporting players in one's personal drama. One never supposes that they starred in some possibly gaudy and certainly deeply felt show of their own."

In the end, the message is one of compassion and love, for the players with whom we share our little drama, but also for ourselves. And that's always worth an attempt at communication.

I can't understand the reviews that describe this book as "beautifully written." The writing is clunky, with awkward attempts at eloquence, hackneyed descriptions, and clichéd "wisdom" - here's a sample chosen at random: "The window was not so high, and he could see the tiled roofs and bare-branched trees shimmering in the orange light, and the birds singing and gliding across the sky. This, the everlasting stillness of morning, brought him unbearable joy and sorrow. Tears flowed down his cheeks raked by time. Death was such a small price to pay for life."

Besides this uninspiring prose, the POV switched so often and so rapidly between so many different characters that I had a hard time caring much about any of them. The tragic central love triangle left me completely cold, and there were long stretches where not much of anything happened. The exciting tiger hunt at the beginning was by far the best part. Oh, and the cover is gorgeous.

I read this in December 2021 for the zillionth time to join in Calmgrove's Narniathon (one book per month, in publication order). Thoughts to be posted on my blog shortly.

I used to love Tracy Chevalier's books, but of late I find them a bit "stagey." The historical details feel wedged in, with scenes and characters arranged to make them possible to mention rather than growing organically. So although this novel was well constructed and the writing was unexceptionable, I was left somewhat disappointed. I also found the resolution quite unrealistic. Louisa Pesel was my favorite character though! I wish she had been more central.

This was the rare book that was in equal parts hilarious and dismaying. The eternal human quest toward liberty and independence comes into the modern age, meeting the intractable forces of nature and raising many questions about whether we'll be able to survive the project. Most intriguing was the suggestion that the destructive, self-sabotaging behavior of both bears and humans may be related to a parasite causing damage in the brain. It's super ironic to think that the so-called "freedom" of the libertarians may be a mirage elicited by a tiny creature of which they have no knowledge, for all their pride in their own mental acuity. What is freedom anyway? It's not so simple as taking over a town, or a state, or a country, and subjecting it to your own selfish ideas. Here's hoping we can preserve some degree of mental health, and find some more workable solutions.

Reviews and more on my blog: Entering the Enchanted Castle

Beautiful, necessary, vital, honest, full of both blood and joy, this is the manual I wish I had had for the last twenty years to help me navigate the confusion and pain of a world in transition. Thank goodness we have it now, in a time that needs revolutionary love more than ever. Heartfelt thanks to Valarie Kaur, a prophet of the new world that we need to be birthing.