octavia_cade's Reviews (2.64k)

It's easy to see that this is written by the author of The Grass is Singing. Both of Lessing's first two novels have a real focus on the sort of hideous, stifled ennui of the major characters, though Martha's breaking out of hers somewhat.

I think it was better done in Grass, to be honest, although that's possibly because that book is a complete thing in itself - the tension there is stretched to breaking point and break it does. This is only the first of the Martha books, though, and whether or not Lessing planned to write a sequel at the time (I've no idea), there's never really a point in this book where it all comes together. Martha's gotten married, yes, but she's still searching and stifled (both by her community and herself) and if war is looming on the horizon, well, it's been a book of looming, and without the thunderstorm.

I can't honestly say that I enjoyed this book, though I did gobble it down, fascinated, within a few hours. It was rather like watching a morbid, horrifying train wreck, as Mary is ground down (and actively grinds down the people around her) in her obedience to expected social, sexual, and above all racial behaviour.

It is brutally, deeply, hideously observant. As much slow horror as literary fiction, I reckon.

Worthy but dull. The structure is the most interesting thing about it. Some chapters are first person, some are third, and they all jump around to different characters. It's disorientating, but it's clearly meant to be so, which makes that aspect of it really very well done.

It's also reasonably well-written. It is, however, dragged out to the nth degree, which made the entire reading experience somewhat tedious. I can't help but think it would have been more effective as a novella.

It has to be said, not a lot actually happens in this book. Tike and Ella May Hamlin have sex and have a baby, all the while bitching - with ample justification, it must be said - about their economic situation and the potential benefits of adobe housing. This is sort of an alternate view to The Grapes of Wrath - while the Joads leave their dustbowl home to seek a better life in California, the Hamlins stay where they are, dragging an ever more precarious living out of dust storms and poor soil.

The plot isn't complex, the characters are really there only to hammer Guthrie's message (he was a big fan of adobe houses; thought that their use would improve living conditions for the poor, who lived in genuinely terrible wooden shacks that were totally unsuited to the landscape). In that sense the book is quite one-note. The language, however, is extraordinary - and when push comes to shove, I care more for language than plot or character.

Well-written literary fantasy, on the voyage of Saint Brendan. It's main appeal to me was the interesting structure, and the truly beautiful illustrations by Junko Azukawa.

Lovely.

One of my favourites, I've just finished rereading. What I like best about it - and what I'm most envious of, to be truthful - is the sheer weight of imagination in the pages. Each prose poem, each invisible city (including my own, the city of spider-webs) contains enough material to make an entire book in itself... and that book would be strange and beautiful and original.

Calvino, though, takes these tiny miraculous things and puts them all together, because when you're a genius like he is you don't have to hoard your inspiration, you can just let it spill out and over because there's always more where that came from. Wonderful, confident, trusting writing.

Hands down the finest novel I've read in 2014. Deeply original, and the language is just so beautiful. Words you can sink into, words you can dream about. Climate change and swan stories and race relations in future Australia. Dense and ambiguous and challenging. I was sorry when it ended.

3.5, rounding up to 4. After Mansfield Park it is a relief to have an Austen heroine who is not a weeping ninny, and Anne, the oldest of the Austen heroines, is an entirely sensible creature. She is also just a little deficient in personality. That's not necessarily a bad thing - Fanny had a personality, mostly wet, and I could not get on well with her because of it. Anne is just stolidly admirable, like a sort of worthy statue, and for once it is the love interest who is the more interesting. I liked Captain Wentworth from the moment he rescued Anne from her spoilt brat nephew; he's certainly the most dynamic of the bunch, having to make his own way without falling back on an estate of some description, and it's done wonders for his character.

An utterly charming account of the author's local urban wildlife, and a wonderful inspiration for people to interact more with their neighbourhood environment. The science communication here is excellent. I think it helps that Johnson isn't a scientist himself, as while he folds in science with his nature-watching it's leavened with a lot of other things - such as foraging for edible weeds.

The book does lose a point for the absolute irritation of three separate introductions; I actually shouted "Oh come on! Just get the fuck on with it!" this morning, turning the page after the second one. (The literary equivalent of watching the end of Return of the King.) I think perhaps the author may be using his introductions as a means of emphasising his argument that we should slow down and pay more attention to the world around us, but I'd have more time to pay attention to the world around me if I weren't spending all of it reading bloody introductions.

3.5 stars, rounding up to 4. This is the first Mary Robinette Kowal book I've read, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Will definitely be reading more in the future! I thought the idea of it was excellent, and I really liked Ginger and the focus on the role of women in the war. That being said, I figured out who the traitor was pretty much exactly at the halfway point and couldn't understand why Ginger didn't. Yes, she is under a lot of emotional strain but under the circumstances it wouldn't have hurt her to think a little bit about why the people around her are reacting as they do.