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This book was an interesting experience for me. The imagery is undeniably beautiful: it's amazing what a poet can accomplish within mostly the same format of 10 lines per poem a piece. I was soaked in fog and seawind, wended forest and field paths, and got lost in the grandness of the NYC. Against this backdrop of natural landscape and cityscape, Jackson meticulously explores the crossroads of romance, lust, hedonism, drug culture, Greek philosophy, and class with little alleyways into race, women, and more contemporary artistic thought. Holding Company is mind-bending and exploding and definitely a premiere voice and work.
HOWEVER, I think Jackson could have explored perspective more: the reader is never out of the same speaker's head, it seems. Almost every poem mentions a "she," a woman, or a veritable flock of female-identified bodies, but only one is given a voice in the last five poems. Otherwise women are treated like amorphous bunches of clouds encased in skin (which the speaker kisses a lot). A few poems seem to refer to and apologize for this, but I was expecting more.
This is my first time reading Jackson's poetry, so perhaps others not so focused on modern love culture will be different. Like I said above, it is a wonderfully lovely collection and I do intend to pass my copy on to my poet friends. Just maybe along with some Sappho.
HOWEVER, I think Jackson could have explored perspective more: the reader is never out of the same speaker's head, it seems. Almost every poem mentions a "she," a woman, or a veritable flock of female-identified bodies, but only one is given a voice in the last five poems. Otherwise women are treated like amorphous bunches of clouds encased in skin (which the speaker kisses a lot). A few poems seem to refer to and apologize for this, but I was expecting more.
This is my first time reading Jackson's poetry, so perhaps others not so focused on modern love culture will be different. Like I said above, it is a wonderfully lovely collection and I do intend to pass my copy on to my poet friends. Just maybe along with some Sappho.
A wonderful and very important read. The author's dedication to character is astounding: we are firmly inside Marcelo's head for the entire book and have no choice but to experience the world through his eyes. Not that it's a struggle. Hearing as Marcelo hears, seeing as Marcelo sees, feeling as Marcelo feels, is easy as humming. This really comes through in dialogue sections where Marcelo takes the time to pick apart each nuance. When I reached a scene with multiple characters speaking at once, I felt more overwhelmed than Marcelo did. I also liked how the other characters' reactions to Marcelo brought out extra sides of them: even Wendell, who mostly figures as the villain, is not textbook evil since he speaks to Marcelo as he would anybody else.
So, overall, a solid reading choice, and I definitely recommend to any YA fans out there.
So, overall, a solid reading choice, and I definitely recommend to any YA fans out there.
Unhesitantly, THE MARTYRED is one of the greatest war stories I have read. Philip Roth nails it on the head with "the passion of the book is perpetually beating up against its seemingly barren surface." That's exactly it. Through the ruins, through the quiet snow, the characters' hearts beat and struggle on. At once a sorrowful ode to how atheists and the religious survive the absurd meaninglessness of war, a treatise on how doubt makes us human, and a beautiful commentary on propaganda. I definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a haunting, wartime read.
So...this review will disappoint many fantasy readers and my cousin who loaned me this book in the first place. I don't often leave a book unfinished, but I barely cracked a hundred pages with THE GREAT BOOK OF AMBER. I couldn't finish it. I couldn't even finish the second book in the series, THE GUNS OF AVALON. I tried. I really tried. But I couldn't.
*cringes against oncoming horde* Okay, okay, you've probably gotten over the "whAT" reaction and are eager to hear the why, right? Maybe?
My reasoning was highly personalized and had a lot to do with me rather than Zelazny's skills. In fact, I think Zelazny's a brilliant storyteller. His austere style is unique in the high fantasy genre: no where else have I found such stark prose married so happily to a mystical concept, nor that style used so effectively to tease out a book's mystery. Even though the concept of Amber and Shadow is simple--there's one world in which all the multiverses are based on and it's ruled by Oberon and his children--it takes the reader awhile to figure this out. Zelazny has mastered the technique of telling the reader exactly what they need to keep going and absolutely no more.
So if Zelazny is so great, why didn't I finish the collection?
Because style isn't enough to get me through a story. In the end, I didn't care enough about Corwin as a character to keep going. Don't get me wrong: he seems like a cool dude. I like the way he narrates things. I like his determination, his bravery, his bluffing, his resilience, his problem-solving skills. In the first book, I sympathized with him trying to get his memory back. That's a sympathetic cause, yeah? But then, BUT THEN, he totally lost my sympathy in GUNS when it became clear that for the rest of the books he was just going to try to sit on Amber's throne. After manipulating and decimating two planet's worth of population in his last attempt. After cursing his supposedly beloved forest into some weird demonic hellscape. After shunting almost all the female characters as either paragons of virtue, wiley snakes, or uncooperative, selfish simpletons. After admitting that it was really the principle of the thing that he should sit on the throne, not that he would be a better ruler than his brother. After deciding that, worse come to worse, everyone he's not related to is expendable.
What. A. D**k.
See, I don't really see the point of his need to topple Eric. What's so great about Corwin being King of Amber if he doesn't have some grand scheme to improve it? Why should I care who's on the throne of Amber if they don't give two cares about me and my "shadow" realm (and how freaking ego-centric is that: what if Amber is a shadow of Earth??). I just...what. As a person, I don't value power and influence the way Corwin does. That's not the way my ambition lies. I don't see the point of power for the sake of having power. I don't care about power-acruing stratagems enough to sit through 900 more pages of it. I'm sorry. Please enjoy Amber's world without me.
*cringes against oncoming horde* Okay, okay, you've probably gotten over the "whAT" reaction and are eager to hear the why, right? Maybe?
My reasoning was highly personalized and had a lot to do with me rather than Zelazny's skills. In fact, I think Zelazny's a brilliant storyteller. His austere style is unique in the high fantasy genre: no where else have I found such stark prose married so happily to a mystical concept, nor that style used so effectively to tease out a book's mystery. Even though the concept of Amber and Shadow is simple--there's one world in which all the multiverses are based on and it's ruled by Oberon and his children--it takes the reader awhile to figure this out. Zelazny has mastered the technique of telling the reader exactly what they need to keep going and absolutely no more.
So if Zelazny is so great, why didn't I finish the collection?
Because style isn't enough to get me through a story. In the end, I didn't care enough about Corwin as a character to keep going. Don't get me wrong: he seems like a cool dude. I like the way he narrates things. I like his determination, his bravery, his bluffing, his resilience, his problem-solving skills. In the first book, I sympathized with him trying to get his memory back. That's a sympathetic cause, yeah? But then, BUT THEN, he totally lost my sympathy in GUNS when it became clear that for the rest of the books he was just going to try to sit on Amber's throne. After manipulating and decimating two planet's worth of population in his last attempt. After cursing his supposedly beloved forest into some weird demonic hellscape. After shunting almost all the female characters as either paragons of virtue, wiley snakes, or uncooperative, selfish simpletons. After admitting that it was really the principle of the thing that he should sit on the throne, not that he would be a better ruler than his brother. After deciding that, worse come to worse, everyone he's not related to is expendable.
What. A. D**k.
See, I don't really see the point of his need to topple Eric. What's so great about Corwin being King of Amber if he doesn't have some grand scheme to improve it? Why should I care who's on the throne of Amber if they don't give two cares about me and my "shadow" realm (and how freaking ego-centric is that: what if Amber is a shadow of Earth??). I just...what. As a person, I don't value power and influence the way Corwin does. That's not the way my ambition lies. I don't see the point of power for the sake of having power. I don't care about power-acruing stratagems enough to sit through 900 more pages of it. I'm sorry. Please enjoy Amber's world without me.
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Okay, okay, so, as a piece of art, this book deserves 5 stars every day and all the time, but as far as me LIKING this art piece, I found it draining. Perhaps if I hadn't read it during such a stressful time of my life, I would have enjoyed it more.
THE END OF THE POINT is a dense read. It's like if Virginia Woolf walked out of the river, revised/expanded TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and then proceeded to calmly walk into a New England's ocean. Alternatively, it's like Joseph Conrad and Woolf had a literary baby. The sense of nature and place is fantastic, brilliant, iridescent; the back and forth of time as easy and comforting as slipping in a warm bath; the emotional journey of generations lovingly and sadly penned: it's all here. Plus, I was lucky enough to meet the author in person and fangirl over her diligent research and methods of said research. Like, goddamn, I want to have her budget, as she traveled to literally all the locations mentioned in the book.
The book is partially an ode to her partner's family and family history, which is lovely and a bit mind-boggling at times, as they happen to be the ultimate upper crust WASPs. As I am counting pennies and worrying about student loans, they're casually building entire cabins for their children and traipsing about the most expensive hotels in Europe. Talk about culture shock. Then again, me complaining about this is a bit like going into shark-infested waters to complain about sharks. Dunno what I was expecting.
So yes, this is an amazing read, but have care for when you decide to read it. You've got to dedicate yourself and be willing to lose yourself a little. You've got to want to flit with the beach swallows and catch stardust with your bare fingers. No other way to do it.
THE END OF THE POINT is a dense read. It's like if Virginia Woolf walked out of the river, revised/expanded TO THE LIGHTHOUSE, and then proceeded to calmly walk into a New England's ocean. Alternatively, it's like Joseph Conrad and Woolf had a literary baby. The sense of nature and place is fantastic, brilliant, iridescent; the back and forth of time as easy and comforting as slipping in a warm bath; the emotional journey of generations lovingly and sadly penned: it's all here. Plus, I was lucky enough to meet the author in person and fangirl over her diligent research and methods of said research. Like, goddamn, I want to have her budget, as she traveled to literally all the locations mentioned in the book.
The book is partially an ode to her partner's family and family history, which is lovely and a bit mind-boggling at times, as they happen to be the ultimate upper crust WASPs. As I am counting pennies and worrying about student loans, they're casually building entire cabins for their children and traipsing about the most expensive hotels in Europe. Talk about culture shock. Then again, me complaining about this is a bit like going into shark-infested waters to complain about sharks. Dunno what I was expecting.
So yes, this is an amazing read, but have care for when you decide to read it. You've got to dedicate yourself and be willing to lose yourself a little. You've got to want to flit with the beach swallows and catch stardust with your bare fingers. No other way to do it.
I received an Advanced Reader Copy from my Creative Writing MFA professor, who was reading THE BAMBOO SWORD in consideration for the National Book Award.
What enticed me most about this book is the world it inhabits. Preus does an excellent job immersing the reader in the events of 1853 both through words and the included Japanese art. Background information darts in and out of the narrative like tiny silver fish. As someone who struggles with that in their own writing, I applaud. Yoshi's character is also especially compelling: I really felt his struggles and his shifting mindset. Jack's felt more typical, though his moments of poeticness where a breath of fresh air.
The language of the novel stayed relatively simplistic throughout, so I would recommend this more to MG or young YA readers than a solid YA choice. Still, a great holiday or birthday gift for others in your life! A solid, diverse read.
What enticed me most about this book is the world it inhabits. Preus does an excellent job immersing the reader in the events of 1853 both through words and the included Japanese art. Background information darts in and out of the narrative like tiny silver fish. As someone who struggles with that in their own writing, I applaud. Yoshi's character is also especially compelling: I really felt his struggles and his shifting mindset. Jack's felt more typical, though his moments of poeticness where a breath of fresh air.
The language of the novel stayed relatively simplistic throughout, so I would recommend this more to MG or young YA readers than a solid YA choice. Still, a great holiday or birthday gift for others in your life! A solid, diverse read.
