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November 26, 2005
Books I Started and Then Abandoned (with no guilt)
Housekeeping : A Novel
by Marilynne Robinson
From Publishers Weekly: Their lives spun off the tilting world like thread off a spindle," says Ruthie, the novel's narrator. The same may be said of Becket Royce's subtle, low-keyed reading. The interwoven themes of loss and love, longing and loneliness—"the wanting never subsided"—require a cool, almost impersonal touch. Royce narrates natural and manmade catastrophe and ruin as the author offers them: with a sort of watery vagueness engulfing extraordinary events. Occasionally this leads Royce to sound sleepy or to glide over humor. But she expresses Ruthie's story without any irksome effort to sound childlike, and she avoids the pitfall of dramatizing other characters, such as the awkward sheriff, the whispery insubstantiality of Aunt Sylvie or the ladies bearing casseroles to lure Ruthie away from Aunt Sylvie and into their concept of normality. Originally published in 1980 and filmed in 1987, Housekeeping is finally on audio because of Robinson's new Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Gilead. The novel holds up remarkably and painfully well, and the language remains searching and sonorous. Anatole Broyard wrote back then: "Here is a first novel that sounds as if the author has been treasuring it up all her life...." And because the author's rhythms, images and diction are so original and dense, this audio is a treasure for listeners who have or haven't read the book.
My Review: Yawn. While some of the language is exquisite, NOTHING happens. After trying to read this book for three months, I've finally put it aside with no regrets.
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The Kite Rider
by Geraldine McCaughrean
From Publishers Weekly: With her exuberant, nonstop plotting and supremely colorful setting, McCaughrean (The Stones Are Hatching) grabs hold of readers' imaginations and doesn't let go. In 13th-century China, a 12-year-old boy prepares to say goodbye to his father, who is about to put to sea as a crew member of the Chabi, and to watch the testing of the wind, which involves strapping a man to a huge kite and seeing if it flies straight up (a good omen for the Chabi's voyage) or at a certain angle (foretelling danger). But almost before Haoyou knows what is happening, the first mate makes his father the wind-tester, and Haoyou looks on in horror as his father becomes a speck in the distant sky, then returns, lifeless, to earth. All this McCaughrean accomplishes in less than 10 pages, establishing a breakneck pace, which she maintains with seeming ease. The story takes Haoyou from his determined efforts to prevent the evil first mate from marrying his beautiful mother to his joining a traveling circus as a kite rider, mastering his father's tragedy as he himself flies skyward into what the circus-goers take to be the spirit world. Eventually the circus reaches the court of the Kublai Khan, evoked here in splendor and awe. While Haoyou never becomes as compelling a character as those around him a spirit medium cousin, the circus master, Kublai Khan McCaughrean offers more than enough adventure, plot twists and exotic scenery to keep the audience fully engrossed.
My review: Unlike the book reviewed above, in The Kite Rider stuff happens. I jus didn't care. Kill the father! Burn down the house! Marry an abusive man! Whatever, just make it end!!
