Flawed Masterpieces

Of course, there's no such thing as a perfect book. But there's some great, great books with significant flaws in them - the kind you can't just overlook. They're there, and you just skirt around them, accept them, just like you accept a flaw in a human being whom you love. And in the same way, the flaws make the masterpiece just as the other parts do.

Take Dorothy L Sayers' novels. The more I re-read them, the more I get from them. Her major flaw is that the actual mystery is usually silly or unlikely, and the murderer/criminal can be seen from about page 2. Who cares? They're books of ideas, and you can eat those ideas for breakfast lunch and dinner. It's like she's above working on the actual plot - she's too busy with higher things.

The Sunday Philosophy Club, which I just read, has the same flaw - the actual plot is ridiculous. And the title doesn't relate at all to any part of the book. Again - who cares? All you want to do is sit in Isabel Dalhousie's mind and listen. What does the rest of the world matter?

Dr Zhivago, fast becoming my favourite book of all time, has different flaws. He has segments that go nowhere. He has segments which don't relate to anything at all. He gets Yuri with Marina when he should be focusing either on Tonya or Lara. But each sentence is perfect, even if the paragraphs don't quite work. You need to read the words, each word, to love this book - which is a good exercise for me, seeing that's not the way I usually read a book. Unless it's a reread. All these books are rereads.

And Diana Wynne Jones' books have wierd endings that are totally confusing. Look at Fire and Hemlock, probably my favourite YA book ever. I bet no one on earth could explain that ending. Well, so what. Polly and Tom get to kiss and live happily ever after. Even if, really, they shouldn't, because the ending doesn't work. You can see the intention, and you hang onto it, because you want it to work.

I suppose that's why some people hate all the above books, and I love them. The flaws make them homely and familiar and comforting books. I have read all of them above about a hundred times, or at least ten. They're great.

The Book Thief

Wouldn't it be good if the hype was just a preliminary to a really good read? Doesn't happen in this book by Markus Zusak. It's not a bad book, and it's an easy read (originally written for YA, it's been remarketed for adults). But it's not all it's cracked up to be. Narrated by Death, it's self-conscious, and the constant foreshadowings are irritating. By the time Rudy dies, you've heard about it half a dozen times already. Anyway, everyone in the whole book dies, so it's really no big deal . . .

It's set in WW2 in Nazi Germany. A girl lives with a foster family after her communist parents are taken away and her brother dies. They end up hiding an escaped Jew. She loves books but as she is poor, she steals them from book-burning parades and other people's libraries. Her friend is also against the Nazis and dresses up as Jesse Owens at his Hitler Youth sports day (it's that sort of unrealistic detail which makes it all slightly ridiculous). Zusak uses deliberate Australianisms, such as "lollies", in order to make the story more relevent to the readers, but I think it just distances it and highlights how little Zusak seems to understand about life back then.

The last two pages, however, are excellent. What a pity Zusak couldn't write the whole book in the same way, quiet, subtle, and without staring the reader boldly in the face - so you just want to look away.

Emergency Sex

This memoir by three UN workers, Kenneth Cain, Heidi Postlewait and Andrew Thomson , was very difficult for someone like me to read. It covers most of the horrors of the 'nineties - Cambodia, Somalia, Haiti, Liberia, Rwanda and Bosnia - and the reality of what happens in the UN and how the UN workers survive it.

The book is divided into the three narrator's, but the voice is so similar I would guess that Ken Cain (who is a writer) did the actual putting to paper. It's well-written, in that clear, blunt, TV-timing kind of American way. It's also structured well, beginning with each character's background, their journey from naivety to stunned disbelief, and from difficult situations (a murder in Cambodia) to outright horror (stepping on fields of bodies in Rwanda). The three characters are very different - Ken's an idealist who wants to change the world, Andrew a MK who believes in what he's doing, and Heidi a divorcee who wants to change her life. That's where the sex comes in; she seems to sleep with everyone in the entire world, and the disconcerting part is not her own descriptions of herself as a sexual being, but her two mates' view of that as well. If that's post-feminism, I wish we were past it.

I'm sure it's all controversial to people who don't realise what the UN is like - and not just the UN of course, all large humanitarian aid organisations - but for people like me it's more of a difficult vindication of one's own opinions. I particuarly liked, and wanted more of, the personal doubts and psychological difficulties, including suicide ideation, the sense of being separate from the rest of the world, and needing to go back despite everything. I think it could have had a little more of that, but I suppose the three writers did need to keep back something of themselves. A very important and very good read.

Shadows in the Mirror

This Australian YA novel by Cameron Nunn focuses on the topical issue of bullying in a top boys’ boarding school. It’s written in the first person, and follows the story of one boy, David, joining the boarding house in Year Eleven and seeing bullying occur – not so much towards himself, but towards his room-mate, a scholarship boy from an Aboriginal background. The two boys discover that the bullying is not a recent occurrence – in fact, the current teachers and principal who all attended the school as boys were also involved in bullying. In the end, David has to decide whether to keep silent, as generations of boys have before him, or to speak out.

The reason this is interesting at all is, of course, the recent events at Trinity Grammar School, where boys were systematically beaten and raped by other boys, with the full knowledge of the school staff. Despite the massive media scandal which followed when some boys did speak out, the majority of the staff – including the principal – have stayed on, as has the majority of boys. That situation revealed a school-wide culture of accepted bullying which is probably not uncommon.

This novel could therefore have been very powerful and quite controversial. The mediocre writing style has prevented that, unfortunately, leading to this story being published by a small Australian press which means it will reach a limited audience. It has a good plot, but the characterisations are shallow and the dialogue unrealistic. There’s no real sense of place, either. Compare this with, say, Eleanor Spence’s “A Candle for St Anthony”, written years ago now but still powerful and extremely relevant – and far more subtle. Or “The Gathering” by Isobelle Carmody – that’s really terrifying. There’s a lot of books about bullying out there – I wonder how many are read at schools such as Trinity, however.

The Idiot

I think I love Prince Myshkin, the hero of this novel by Dostoevsky. He’s a heroically good, heroically innocent man who doesn’t follow the ordinary patterns of life in Russia, nor the ordinary way of speaking – and so he alters everyone around him. Such uniqueness can’t survive forever, though. He is insulted, cheated and laughed at. Everyone in this story is either laughing hysterically or getting really angry. In the end, he goes back to the asylum from whence he came; because there is no place for a good man in that society.

Dostoevsky is of course a writer and a half. I love his sympathetic and simple description of an epileptic seizure, clear because he suffered from epilepsy himself. I love Myshkin’s quiet defence of himself when someone calls him an idiot. The humour in portraying Russian upper-class society, as well as its ugly tragic nature, is deftly portrayed. There are a lot of small stories within this larger picture, from one character or another, and they’re all engaging and vivid. There’s nothing simplistic about the people or the incidents, even though they are ordinary people and ordinary incidents.

There are some very funny moments – like Aglaia demanding, “Did you get my hedgehog?” – and then, soon after, you’re brought to tears by Ippolit’s simple question on the best way to die, and Myshkin’s perfect answer: “Pass us by, and forgive us for living.” There are all sorts of digressions on nature and death and life and different philosophies like nihilism, and then there’s stories about eating Catholic monks . . . the women in the story are incredible, Shakespearean characters, and so are half the odd generals who wander in and out. The love story is beautiful and yet the strangest you’ve ever come across, and altogether this is a wonderful, incredible, amazing book, and I’m so glad that it exists and I’ve found it.

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane

This book by Kate DiCamillo makes you shudder in horror at the depths to which children’s literature has fallen. It is a really bad book. The dialogue makes you cringe. The characters are caricatures. Not only is it poorly written, but the message – that you deserve whatever horrors come upon you in life, because it means you’re not grateful enough – is truly terrifying. Basically it’s the story of a toy rabbit who doesn’t appreciate his owner enough, so gets tossed from one owner to another until his spirit is utterly broken. At that point, his original owner turns up again and he is therefore chastened and grateful. If anyone did give this book to a child, they’d deserve to have DOCS called up on them. Of course, all you need to do is read the back cover. It’s written by the same woman who wrote a story about a town being saved by a dog – Because of Winn-Dixie. Why, why, why do books like this get published? Let me say that this edition was beautifully illustrated which is why the person bought it and gave it to me (without reading it, I’m sure). I really hope that if any parent does the same, they put it away after the first misguided reading of the first terrible sentence.

A Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language

I have been enjoying this book ever since I came across it earlier this year. It was first published in 1882, but the edition Ι have says 1963, although I assume the Rev. Walter W Skeat was not around to see it! It was very useful during my Anglo-Saxon course, where word origin was a constant discussion, and now that I know a little classical Greek – at least enough to decode the words and work out if it’s a noun or verb – I can read the derivations Skeat doesn’t bother to translate.

It has been fascinating to discover that most of our words come from Anglo-Saxon rather than Latin or Greek as I had once assumed. It’s also interesting to find out how many words come from Gothic, Old Irish, or other unusual sources. Because it’s so old, there are a fair few words I have never heard of before, and a few words missing that we use today. For example, under kidnap, it states that kid was Tudor slang for child, and that’s where the phrase originates. Evidently it wasn’t slang for kid at the time or in the part of the world that Skeat was writing.

It would be interesting to compare this dictionary with a more modern source – I assume there’d be quite a few differences since 1882 and a fair few advances in the field of etymology! Still, this version has the benefit of Skeat’s opinion every so often – “the spelling of this is absurd” or “there are many Englishmen who are accustomed to derive English, of all things, from Modern High German!” It’s fun to be able to agree with how ridiculous that is, after reading this dictionary.

A Great and Terrible Beauty

Good title, isn’t it? There are some good things about this book by Libba Bray. It’s a gothic horror story for teens, with a well captured historical background and some sharp characterisations. Gemma Doyle is sent from India to an English boarding school after her mother dies, and discovers some friends and some magical powers in a kind of dark fairyland.

It’s a well-told story, but . . . But. Firstly, you can tell immediately it’s written by an American. I’m sure someone wiser than me can pinpoint what exactly that means, but I think it’s partly the lack of subtlety. I have a feeling I have written about this before. It’s as though the writers feel today’s readers are too stupid to get it without being spelt out, without realising this is how today’s readers become stupid – they never need to learn how to read properly. This is a very Feminist novel, where women are shown in every conceivable trap or prison possible, and consistently compared with the Lady of Shalott – in fact, the book opens with that poem. It’s also a Coming of Age novel, where the teens discover sexuality and the darker realities of the adult world. I wonder if anyone really does develop a surge of great wisdom at age sixteen and thereby never has to learn anything ever again? Rather terrifying.

How does a novel move from mediocre to brilliant? This is written well, and it has a pretty good plot. Why does it miss out on being great? There’s something missing. Some kind of depth – some kind of wisdom or understanding. Or maybe it just has the kind you get in a flash at the age of sixteen.