History: This book was published in 1984.
Plot: The novel follows Geoffrey Braithwaite, a widowed, retired English doctor, visiting France and the Flaubert landmarks therein. While visiting various sites related to Flaubert, Geoffrey encounters two incidences of museums claiming to display the stuffed parrot which sat atop Flaubert's writing desk for a brief period while he wrote Un coeur simple. While trying to differentiate which is authentic Geoffrey ultimately learns that (n)either could be genuine, and Flaubert's parrot could be any one of fifty that had been held in the collection of the municipal museum.
Although the main focus of the narrative is tracking down the parrot, many chapters exist independently of this plotline, consisting of Geoffrey's reflections, such as on Flaubert's love life and how it was affected by trains, and animal imagery in Flaubert's works and the animals with which he himself was identified (usually a bear). The only plot is Flaubert's life, both physical and intellectual, alongside that of his enthusiastic intended biographer, the doctor, Geoffrey. Geoffrey's research, notes, speculations and musings provide the book's utterly original form. Since the adultery of Flaubert's fictional Madam Bovary provided the scandal that created his fame, evidence of his attitudes towards women and sex in his own life provides a fascinating backdrop against which we can assess the author's motives and desires. The death and revealed adultery of the narrator's own wife provides motive for his obsession with Flaubert and his femme fatale, and, quite unexpectedly, this culminates in a truly moving moment of emotional empathy that the author, Barnes, not Flaubert, not the narrator, evokes in his reader.
Review: This book is a brash, footloose ramble through the life and works of Gustave Flaubert. This is literary fiction, but it swings more in the direction of academic writing. It is a clever novel, but there is 'clever' in the way that most people will identify with and enjoy and there is clever in a way that reaches out only to very few. This weakness is also perhaps augmented by the fact that the narrator is extraordinarily underdeveloped. The connections between his life and the life of Flaubert is only especially prominent in one chapter and is hardly detectable at all in the others. Being able to 'sense' the main character or narrator is important to most people when reading, even if actually liking the character is not; if you can barely even form a picture of said character or narrator, you are arguably in trouble.
Opening Line: “Six North Africans were playing boules beneath Flaubert’s statue.”
Closing Line: “Perhaps it was one of them.”
Quotes: “What was the point of scientific advance without moral advance?
“That’s the real distinction between people; not between those who have secrets and those who don’t, but between thoses who want to know everything and those who don’t. This search is a sign of love, I think.”
“Each of us possesses in his heart a royal chamber. I have bricked mine up.”
Rating: Okay
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
247. Time’s Arrow – Martin Amis
History: Published in 1991. In the reversed version of reality, not only is simple chronology reversed (people become younger, and eventually become children, then babies, and then re-enter their mothers' wombs, where they finally cease to exist) but so is morality. Blows heal injuries, doctors cause them. Theft becomes donation, and vice versa. In a passage about prostitutes, doctors harm them while pimps give them money and heal them. When the protagonist reaches Auschwitz, however, the world starts to make sense. A whole new race is created.
In reality, of course, the world goes forward, meaning that this view of Auschwitz must be again reversed by the reader. The story can thus be seen as a way of showing how the Holocaust is not merely an evil act but a complete reversal of humanity and even ordinary logic.
Plot: Dr. Tod T. Friendly dies as the book opens and the narrator is "born". The narrator of the story is an entity who lives inside a man named Tod Friendly. He is a bystander and cannot control what Tod says or does in any way... a sort of doppelganger spirit, ("the soul he should have had") imprisoned within the body and mind of Friendly, who detects Friendly's emotions, but cannot affect Friendly's actions. Oh, and the doppelganger experiences Friendly's life backwards, starting with his death, and ending with his birth.
The narrator is not exactly the protagonist himself but a secondary consciousness apparently living within him, feeling his feelings but with no access to his thoughts and no control over events. Some passages may be interpreted as hinting that this narrator may in some way be the conscience, but this is not clear. The narrator may alternatively be considered merely a necessary device to narrate a reverse story.
The narrator sees Tod's life progressing backwards-from death to birth. He comes into consciousness with Tod's death and learns to translate reverse speech. Most life events confuse him because he sees them occurring backwards. He sees Tod getting stronger and more virile as he recovers and grows noticeably younger. Tod "starts" a long-term relationship with a woman named Irene, which commences with her leaving him for good. Again, the narrator is trying to rationalize the reverse events in the tumultuous relationship. He works as a doctor and his actions to help people are viewed as hurtful by the narrator because people come to him well and leave sick and in pain. Tod seems to be a tortured man; he has nightmares about doctors and babies. He has a sordid past that he is running from. The narrator has an intuitive grasp of this and also knows that life can't be altered because suicide is not possible.
Tod's name changes to John Young. John is living in New York and is tipped off by Nicholas Kreditor that the authorities are aware of him, so he changes his identity to Tod. John's life gets better while he is still living quietly in the country. He is a popular doctor and has many friends. He is a womanizer and has many girlfriends, including Irene. The narrator is very disturbed by John's work at the hospital. He works traumatic cases which, when viewed in reverse, are interpreted by the narrator as John hurting people.
John leaves for Europe to fight in the war although in actuality, he is fleeing Europe to travel to America. His name changes to Hamilton de Souza while he lives in Portugal for a short time. He then travels through Europe to Italy, and finally back to Germany where his name is Odilo Unverdorben.
Odilo works at Auschwitz, where the narrator sees his work as magical. In his view, they are bringing thousands of people back to life. It is at Auschwitz that we see just what Amis has intended, as, rather than a mass murderer, Unverdorben appears to be a healer, his experiments, run backwards, seeming to bring his "patients" back to life and health, the camp filling with people "as good as new", the Zyklon B repackaged, the ghettos dismantled, the Jewish Laws repealed, the windows unshattered on Kristalnacht, the entire Holocaust itself being undone. And back and back until Unverdorben is unborn, crawling back into his mother, as if none of it had ever happened, a kind of cosmic do-over.
He works closely with a character named "Uncle Pepi" in the experimentation rooms. His wife Herta, does not approve of his work. Their child, Eva dies shortly after birth.
Odilo works at "lesser" facilities which "process" unwanted people like the insane and blind. The narrator is upset by the decline in "great work." His relationship with Herta grows more intense as they move towards their marriage, then fades as they get to know each other. Odilo then is back at medical school, where he meets Herta. He moves home with his family and becomes a child. The narrator is upset knowing his life will end at Odilo's birth.
Review: The hero of Time's Arrow: Or The Nature of the Offense, Tod T. Friendly (alias John Young, alias Hamilton de Souza, alias Odilo Unverdorben), is being reeled, without ever stumbling, back through a lifetime of denial, anxiety, panic, sadism, arrogance, and, finally, innocence.
Time's arrow, at least in Martin Amis' cosmology, doesn't fly from the bow to the target, but from the target to the bow — then from the bow to the quiver, from the quiver to the tree, from the tree to the acorn. The forgotten codger becomes a vigorous model citizen. Then as cars get ''fatter and fewer, and imitate animals with their fins and wings,'' he becomes a desperate fugitive. Sailing to Europe in 1948, he's a war criminal who then flees from Portugal to Italy, eventually making his way from his sanctuary in the Vatican to the camp at Auschwitz, where he serves as the assistant to Josef Mengele (called ''Uncle Pepi'' in the book). Leaving Poland, he moves to Berlin and becomes a medical student, then a schoolboy, a toddler, an infant. Then a fetus. Then nothing.
Telling a story in inverted chronology is hardly a new idea, but it's probably fair to say that nobody has taken it to such dizzying extremes: Here rain is sucked back into clouds, cigarettes are ''quenched'' of coals and returned to their packs, a wounded finger is ''healed and sealed by the knife's blade.'' Conversations begin with goodbye, end with hello. Fire creates, and a crying child is ''calmed by the firm slap of a father's hand.''
Most disturbing of all, the Jews of Auschwitz are brought to life by ''jubilant guards'' who give them hair, clothing, even gold for their teeth, then put them on trains and send them all home.
But what's the point of all the topsy-turvy? This, perhaps: That only in its unraveling, in its utter and total annihilation of itself, does history seem at all benevolent, or a person humane. This book is a real mindbender. I was completely lost. I never got the reverse thing, I was mainly trying to decipher the verbage, which was tedious.
Opening Line: “What goes around comes around. I moved forward, out of the blackest sleep, to find myself surrounded by doctors… American doctors.”
Closing Line: “And I within, who came at the wrong time – either too soon, or after it was all too late.”
Quotes: “The social standing enjoyed by doctors is of course formidably high.”
“Like writing, paintings seem to hint at a topsy-turvy world in which, so to speak, times arrow moves the other way.”
Rating: Not good.
In reality, of course, the world goes forward, meaning that this view of Auschwitz must be again reversed by the reader. The story can thus be seen as a way of showing how the Holocaust is not merely an evil act but a complete reversal of humanity and even ordinary logic.
Plot: Dr. Tod T. Friendly dies as the book opens and the narrator is "born". The narrator of the story is an entity who lives inside a man named Tod Friendly. He is a bystander and cannot control what Tod says or does in any way... a sort of doppelganger spirit, ("the soul he should have had") imprisoned within the body and mind of Friendly, who detects Friendly's emotions, but cannot affect Friendly's actions. Oh, and the doppelganger experiences Friendly's life backwards, starting with his death, and ending with his birth.
The narrator is not exactly the protagonist himself but a secondary consciousness apparently living within him, feeling his feelings but with no access to his thoughts and no control over events. Some passages may be interpreted as hinting that this narrator may in some way be the conscience, but this is not clear. The narrator may alternatively be considered merely a necessary device to narrate a reverse story.
The narrator sees Tod's life progressing backwards-from death to birth. He comes into consciousness with Tod's death and learns to translate reverse speech. Most life events confuse him because he sees them occurring backwards. He sees Tod getting stronger and more virile as he recovers and grows noticeably younger. Tod "starts" a long-term relationship with a woman named Irene, which commences with her leaving him for good. Again, the narrator is trying to rationalize the reverse events in the tumultuous relationship. He works as a doctor and his actions to help people are viewed as hurtful by the narrator because people come to him well and leave sick and in pain. Tod seems to be a tortured man; he has nightmares about doctors and babies. He has a sordid past that he is running from. The narrator has an intuitive grasp of this and also knows that life can't be altered because suicide is not possible.
Tod's name changes to John Young. John is living in New York and is tipped off by Nicholas Kreditor that the authorities are aware of him, so he changes his identity to Tod. John's life gets better while he is still living quietly in the country. He is a popular doctor and has many friends. He is a womanizer and has many girlfriends, including Irene. The narrator is very disturbed by John's work at the hospital. He works traumatic cases which, when viewed in reverse, are interpreted by the narrator as John hurting people.
John leaves for Europe to fight in the war although in actuality, he is fleeing Europe to travel to America. His name changes to Hamilton de Souza while he lives in Portugal for a short time. He then travels through Europe to Italy, and finally back to Germany where his name is Odilo Unverdorben.
Odilo works at Auschwitz, where the narrator sees his work as magical. In his view, they are bringing thousands of people back to life. It is at Auschwitz that we see just what Amis has intended, as, rather than a mass murderer, Unverdorben appears to be a healer, his experiments, run backwards, seeming to bring his "patients" back to life and health, the camp filling with people "as good as new", the Zyklon B repackaged, the ghettos dismantled, the Jewish Laws repealed, the windows unshattered on Kristalnacht, the entire Holocaust itself being undone. And back and back until Unverdorben is unborn, crawling back into his mother, as if none of it had ever happened, a kind of cosmic do-over.
He works closely with a character named "Uncle Pepi" in the experimentation rooms. His wife Herta, does not approve of his work. Their child, Eva dies shortly after birth.
Odilo works at "lesser" facilities which "process" unwanted people like the insane and blind. The narrator is upset by the decline in "great work." His relationship with Herta grows more intense as they move towards their marriage, then fades as they get to know each other. Odilo then is back at medical school, where he meets Herta. He moves home with his family and becomes a child. The narrator is upset knowing his life will end at Odilo's birth.
Review: The hero of Time's Arrow: Or The Nature of the Offense, Tod T. Friendly (alias John Young, alias Hamilton de Souza, alias Odilo Unverdorben), is being reeled, without ever stumbling, back through a lifetime of denial, anxiety, panic, sadism, arrogance, and, finally, innocence.
Time's arrow, at least in Martin Amis' cosmology, doesn't fly from the bow to the target, but from the target to the bow — then from the bow to the quiver, from the quiver to the tree, from the tree to the acorn. The forgotten codger becomes a vigorous model citizen. Then as cars get ''fatter and fewer, and imitate animals with their fins and wings,'' he becomes a desperate fugitive. Sailing to Europe in 1948, he's a war criminal who then flees from Portugal to Italy, eventually making his way from his sanctuary in the Vatican to the camp at Auschwitz, where he serves as the assistant to Josef Mengele (called ''Uncle Pepi'' in the book). Leaving Poland, he moves to Berlin and becomes a medical student, then a schoolboy, a toddler, an infant. Then a fetus. Then nothing.
Telling a story in inverted chronology is hardly a new idea, but it's probably fair to say that nobody has taken it to such dizzying extremes: Here rain is sucked back into clouds, cigarettes are ''quenched'' of coals and returned to their packs, a wounded finger is ''healed and sealed by the knife's blade.'' Conversations begin with goodbye, end with hello. Fire creates, and a crying child is ''calmed by the firm slap of a father's hand.''
Most disturbing of all, the Jews of Auschwitz are brought to life by ''jubilant guards'' who give them hair, clothing, even gold for their teeth, then put them on trains and send them all home.
But what's the point of all the topsy-turvy? This, perhaps: That only in its unraveling, in its utter and total annihilation of itself, does history seem at all benevolent, or a person humane. This book is a real mindbender. I was completely lost. I never got the reverse thing, I was mainly trying to decipher the verbage, which was tedious.
Opening Line: “What goes around comes around. I moved forward, out of the blackest sleep, to find myself surrounded by doctors… American doctors.”
Closing Line: “And I within, who came at the wrong time – either too soon, or after it was all too late.”
Quotes: “The social standing enjoyed by doctors is of course formidably high.”
“Like writing, paintings seem to hint at a topsy-turvy world in which, so to speak, times arrow moves the other way.”
Rating: Not good.
246. Family Matters – Rohinton Mistry
August 2009
History: This book was published in 2002.
Plot: Nariman Vakeel is a seventy-nine-year-old Parsi widower and the patriarch of a small discordant family. Beset by Parkinson's disease and haunted by memories of the past, he lives in a once-elegant apartment with his two middle-aged stepchildren – Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. In his youth he loved a woman whom he could not marry because she was not a Parsi and his parents would never stand for it. So he marries a widow with two children and even though they have a child together and he tries to make his marriage work, it never does. The two women have a squirmish at the top of a building, and both fall to their deaths. All their lives are ruined and he remains haunted by what could have been, should have been and what-ifs for the rest of his life. But walks mean that Nariman, afflicted with Parkinson and osteoporosis, could hurt himself seriously if he has a fall – a thought that is anathema to Coomy, who yells at him daily as she watches him prepare himself. She does not help him nor does she offer to accompany him on his walks. Several times he has come home with abrasions on his elbow and foreman and a limp. One day he breaks his ankle and, with it encased in a cast, he must depend on Coomy and Jal for his most basic requirements; they must clean, shave and wash him and, since they can’t take him to the bathroom, they buy a commode which they keep next to his bed.The first few pages tell of Nariman's subjection to increasing decay in physical health and stinging insults (revolving around his cost of medicine, lack of space and privacy, the daily routine of bedpans and urinals, sponge baths and bedsores) from his stepdaughter.When Nariman's illness is compounded by a broken ankle, Coomy plots to turn his round-the-clock care over to Roxana, his sweet-tempered sister. She succeeds, but not without cost, and eventually Nariman takes up residence with Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two young sons. Very soon, the focus shifts to Roxana's household. The effect of the new responsibility on Yezad, who is already besieged by financial worries; first he gets involved in gambling, then the scheme of deception involves his eccentric, often exasperating employer at Bombay Sporting Goods Emporium. This plot eventually ends with the murder of his employer, ending his career. During this, Yezad becomes obsessed with the religion, God, and the rituals. In the end, he becomes the narrow minded Parsi he used to make fun of. As Yezad comes to centre stage for the following part of the book, the author explores the problems faced by an average middle class family. Financial problems also lure Jehangir towards greed and money. Jehangir cheats for classmates for money, and is caught, and is very ashamed.. In the epilogue, the youngest of all characters, Jehangir, becomes the narrator, describing the metamorphosis that religion, age, death, and wealth bring to his family.
Review: The first part of the novel deals mainly with the poor mans dependency on his family to help him with his functioning, toileting, and hygiene, and how much they are grossed out by it. I felt this was a realistic, and humanistic view of the tasks of taking care of the elderly, something Americans know little about. The book contains many details of the Parsis' practices, rituals, intolerances, and the concerns of native Parsis. I felt the character development was too contrasting, with the horrible Coomey, then the angelic Jehangir, there was no in between.
Opening Line: “A splash of light from the late afternoon sun lingered at the foot of Nariman’s bed, as he ended his nap and looked towards the clock.”
Closing Line: “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I’m happy.”
Quotes: “And he, when he looked back on it all, across the wasteland of their lives, despaired at how he could have been so feeble-minded, so spineless, to have allowed it to happen”
Rating: Good.
History: This book was published in 2002.
Plot: Nariman Vakeel is a seventy-nine-year-old Parsi widower and the patriarch of a small discordant family. Beset by Parkinson's disease and haunted by memories of the past, he lives in a once-elegant apartment with his two middle-aged stepchildren – Coomy, bitter and domineering, and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and acquiescent. In his youth he loved a woman whom he could not marry because she was not a Parsi and his parents would never stand for it. So he marries a widow with two children and even though they have a child together and he tries to make his marriage work, it never does. The two women have a squirmish at the top of a building, and both fall to their deaths. All their lives are ruined and he remains haunted by what could have been, should have been and what-ifs for the rest of his life. But walks mean that Nariman, afflicted with Parkinson and osteoporosis, could hurt himself seriously if he has a fall – a thought that is anathema to Coomy, who yells at him daily as she watches him prepare himself. She does not help him nor does she offer to accompany him on his walks. Several times he has come home with abrasions on his elbow and foreman and a limp. One day he breaks his ankle and, with it encased in a cast, he must depend on Coomy and Jal for his most basic requirements; they must clean, shave and wash him and, since they can’t take him to the bathroom, they buy a commode which they keep next to his bed.The first few pages tell of Nariman's subjection to increasing decay in physical health and stinging insults (revolving around his cost of medicine, lack of space and privacy, the daily routine of bedpans and urinals, sponge baths and bedsores) from his stepdaughter.When Nariman's illness is compounded by a broken ankle, Coomy plots to turn his round-the-clock care over to Roxana, his sweet-tempered sister. She succeeds, but not without cost, and eventually Nariman takes up residence with Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two young sons. Very soon, the focus shifts to Roxana's household. The effect of the new responsibility on Yezad, who is already besieged by financial worries; first he gets involved in gambling, then the scheme of deception involves his eccentric, often exasperating employer at Bombay Sporting Goods Emporium. This plot eventually ends with the murder of his employer, ending his career. During this, Yezad becomes obsessed with the religion, God, and the rituals. In the end, he becomes the narrow minded Parsi he used to make fun of. As Yezad comes to centre stage for the following part of the book, the author explores the problems faced by an average middle class family. Financial problems also lure Jehangir towards greed and money. Jehangir cheats for classmates for money, and is caught, and is very ashamed.. In the epilogue, the youngest of all characters, Jehangir, becomes the narrator, describing the metamorphosis that religion, age, death, and wealth bring to his family.
Review: The first part of the novel deals mainly with the poor mans dependency on his family to help him with his functioning, toileting, and hygiene, and how much they are grossed out by it. I felt this was a realistic, and humanistic view of the tasks of taking care of the elderly, something Americans know little about. The book contains many details of the Parsis' practices, rituals, intolerances, and the concerns of native Parsis. I felt the character development was too contrasting, with the horrible Coomey, then the angelic Jehangir, there was no in between.
Opening Line: “A splash of light from the late afternoon sun lingered at the foot of Nariman’s bed, as he ended his nap and looked towards the clock.”
Closing Line: “Yes,” I say. “Yes, I’m happy.”
Quotes: “And he, when he looked back on it all, across the wasteland of their lives, despaired at how he could have been so feeble-minded, so spineless, to have allowed it to happen”
Rating: Good.
245. The House of the Spirits – Isabel Allende
History: Published in 1982. The book was first conceived by Isabel Allende when she received news that her grandfather was dying, and she began to write him a letter that ultimately became the starting manuscript of The House of the Spirits. Niece of deposed Chilean premier Salvador Allende, Isabel was persona non grata in her native Chile and made her escape to Venezuela. Her father was a Chilean diplomat.
Plot: The House of Spirits chronicles the lives of three generations of Trueba women of Chile.
The story starts, however, with the del Valle family, focusing on Clara and Rosa, mainly. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary of her life. Using her powers, Clara predicts a death in the family. Shortly after this, Clara's green-haired sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is accidentally poisoned and dies as a result. Clara accidentally watches her sister's autopsy and afterwards, terrified, stops speaking, believing her words caused her sister's death. Rosa's fiance, a poor miner named Esteban Trueba, is devastated and attempts to mend his broken heart by devoting his life to uplifting his family hacienda, Las Tres Marías. He quickly earns/forces respect from the fearful peasants and turns Tres Marías into a model hacienda. However, he has needs, and he lacks compassion and respect for women. His first victim, Pancha García, becomes the mother of his bastard son Esteban García.
After his mother's death, Esteban decides to fulfill his mother's dying wish: to marry and have legitimate children. He goes to the del Valle family to ask for Clara's hand. Clara accepts Esteban's proposal, thus speaking for the first time in years. Esteban's sister Férula comes to live with the newlyweds in their mansion. Férula develops a strong dedication to Clara which fulfills her need to serve others. However, Esteban's wild desire to possess and be loved by Clara causes him to throw Férula out of the house. She curses him, telling him that he will shrink in body and soul, and die like a dog. Although she misses her sister-in-law, a passive and dreamy Clara finds happiness in developing her psychic powers. Spirits, artists, and spiritualists flock to the Trueba's big house in the city.
Clara gives birth to a daughter named Blanca and later, to twin boys Jaime and Nicolás.The family, which resides in the capital, stays at the hacienda during the summertime, and Blanca eventually befriends a young boy named Pedro Tercero, who is the son of her father's foreman. Blanca and Pedro Tercero eventually become lovers. After an earthquake which destroys part of the hacienda and leaves Esteban injured, the Truebas move permanently to Las Trés Marias. Clara spends her time teaching and helping peasant children, while Blanca, is sent to a boarding school in the capital and the twin boys back to the boarding school in England where they are educated. Blanca fakes an illness so as to be sent back to Las Trés Marias, where she can be with Pedro. Life runs smoothly until Pedro Tercero is banished from the hacienda by Esteban, on account of his revolutionary communist/socialist ideas.
A visiting French count to the hacienda, Jean de Satigny, reveals Blanca's nightly romps with Pedro Tercero to her father. Esteban furiously goes after his daughter and brutally whips her. When Clara expresses horror at his actions, Esteban slaps her, knocking out her front teeth. Clara decides to never speak to him again, reclaims her maiden name and moves out of Tres Marías and back to the city, taking Blanca with her. Esteban, furious and lonely, blames Pedro Tercero for the whole matter; he tracks Pedro Tercero to make him pay for taking Blanca's virginity. He only succeeds in cutting-off three of Pedro's fingers, and is filled with regret for his uncontrollable furies.
Jaime becomes an empathetic doctor while crafty Nicolás concocts money-making schemes. The two develop a strange relationship with a woman named Amanda. Nicolas and Amanda are originally introduced to the story together, but split later on due to her pregnancy. Jaime loves Amanda dearly at this point but will never admit to such around her. He agrees to help terminate her pregnancy not because his cowardly brother asked him to, but for the woman he cannot have. Years later Jaime and Amanda meet again and Jaime saves her from near death. Amanda remembers Jaime as the tender doctor and falls in love with him, but he realizes that she is not the same beautiful woman that bewitched him originally. He continues to have a relationship with Amanda though he does not love her.
Blanca finds out she is pregnant with Pedro Tercero's child. Esteban, desperate to save the family honor, gets Blanca to marry the French count by telling her that he has killed Pedro Tercero. At first Blanca gets along with her new husband, but she leaves him when she discovers his secret collection of disgustingly perverted pictures. Blanca quietly returns back to the Trueba household and names her daughter, who has inherited Rosa's shocking green hair, Alba. Clara predicts that Alba will have a very happy future and good luck. Her future lover, Miguel, happens to watch her birth, as he had been living in the Trueba House with his sister, Amanda. They move out shortly after Alba's birth.
Esteban Trueba eventually moves to the Trueba house in the capital as well, although he continues to spend periods of time in Trés Marias. He becomes isolated from every member of his family except for little Alba, who he is very fond of. Esteban runs as a senator for the Conservative Party but is nervous about whether or not he will win. Clara speaks to him, through signs, informing him that "those who have always won will win again" - this becomes his motto. Clara then begins to speak to Esteban through signs, although she keeps her promise and never actually speaks to him again. A few years later, Clara dies peacefully and Esteban is struck with grief.
Alba is a solitary child who enjoys playing make-believe in the basement of the house and painting the walls of her room. Blanca has become very poor since leaving Jean de Satigny's house, getting a small income out of selling pottery and giving pottery classes to mentally handicapped children, and is once again dating Pedro Tercero, now a revolutionary singer/songwriter. Alba and Pedro are fond of each other, but do not know they are father and daughter, although Pedro suspects this. Alba is also fond of her uncles. Nicolás is eventually kicked out by his father, moving, supposedly, to North America.
When she is older, Alba attends a local college where she meets Miguel, now a grown man, and becomes his lover. Miguel is a revolutionary, and out of love for him, Alba involves herself in student protests against the conservative government. After the victory of the People's Party (a socialist movement), Alba celebrates with Miguel.
Fearing a Communist dictatorship, Esteban Trueba and his fellow politicians plan a military coup of the socialist government. However, when the military coup is set into action, the military men relish their power and grow out of control. Esteban's gentle son Jaime is viciously and pointlessly killed by power-driven soldiers along with many others. The government goes from being very conservative (the side Esteban is on) to liberal (with the majority rule, popular support, democratic election) to a full military dictatorship. People are kidnapped during the night and torture becomes the weapon of choice. Esteban helps Blanca and Pedro Tercero, now being persecuted, to flee to Canada, where the couple finally finds their happiness.
The novel takes a gruesome turn and documents the violent atrocities that the wealthy try to ignore throughout the country. The military regime attempts to eliminate all traces of opposition and eventually comes for Alba. She is made the prisoner of Colonel Esteban García, Esteban Trueba's and Pancha García's illegitimate grandson. García got in to the military school with Trueba's help, although Trueba did not realize that García was his grandson, and thought he was just helping one of his hacienda's peasants. During his visits to the Trueba house, García molests Alba as a child and forces a kiss on her when she is older. He seems to enjoy Alba's discomfort/pain and in these ways expresses his hatred for her and the legitimate children and grandchildren of Trueba.
In pure hatred of her privileged life and eventual inheritance, García tortures Alba repeatedly. He rapes her, thus completing the cycle which Esteban Trueba put into motion when he raped Pancha García. Alba is also beaten and tortured for information on Miguel. When Alba loses her will to live, she is visited by Clara's spirit who tells her to not wish for death since it can easily come, but to wish to live since that would be a miracle.
Esteban Trueba manages to free Alba with the help of Miguel and Tránsito Soto, an old friend/prostitute from his days as a young man. After helping Alba write their memoir, Esteban Trueba dies in the arms of Alba, accompanied by Clara's spirit; he is smiling, having avoided Ferula's prophecy that he will die like a dog. Alba explains she will not seek vengeance on those who have injured her, suggesting a hope that one day the human cycle of hate and revenge can be broken. Alba writes the book to pass time while she waits for Miguel and advances in pregnancy.
Review: So many different story lines evolved, started, stopped. There was love, death, murder, kidnapping, mutilation, war, riots, revolt, marriage, a head in a box, a car crash, magic, green hair...there was so much. This family was an absolute train wreck. It should have been interesting in the "I can't look away car crash type of way". But it wasn't. Allende is the product of the political scene of S. America and this is what this novel is full of. Yes, it’s a family saga but throughout it’s a saga of politics. There’s love and revenge and wealth and poverty and all that good sagas are made of. Permeating all this though is politics.
Opening Line: “Barrabas came to us by sea,” the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.”
Closing Line: “It begins like this: Barrabas came to us by sea…”
Quotes: “…unfortunately she turned out to be an idealist, a family disease, one of those people cut out to get involved in problems and make those closets to her suffer; that she took it into her head to help fugitives get asylum in the foreign embassies, something she did without thinking, I’m sure, without realizing that the country is a war, whether war against international Communism or its own people it’s hard to tell, but war one way or the other, and these things are punishable by law, but Alba always has her head in the clouds and doesn’t realize she’s in danger, she doesn’t do it to be mean… “
Rating: Poor.
Plot: The House of Spirits chronicles the lives of three generations of Trueba women of Chile.
The story starts, however, with the del Valle family, focusing on Clara and Rosa, mainly. The youngest daughter, Clara del Valle, has paranormal powers and keeps a detailed diary of her life. Using her powers, Clara predicts a death in the family. Shortly after this, Clara's green-haired sister, Rosa the Beautiful, is accidentally poisoned and dies as a result. Clara accidentally watches her sister's autopsy and afterwards, terrified, stops speaking, believing her words caused her sister's death. Rosa's fiance, a poor miner named Esteban Trueba, is devastated and attempts to mend his broken heart by devoting his life to uplifting his family hacienda, Las Tres Marías. He quickly earns/forces respect from the fearful peasants and turns Tres Marías into a model hacienda. However, he has needs, and he lacks compassion and respect for women. His first victim, Pancha García, becomes the mother of his bastard son Esteban García.
After his mother's death, Esteban decides to fulfill his mother's dying wish: to marry and have legitimate children. He goes to the del Valle family to ask for Clara's hand. Clara accepts Esteban's proposal, thus speaking for the first time in years. Esteban's sister Férula comes to live with the newlyweds in their mansion. Férula develops a strong dedication to Clara which fulfills her need to serve others. However, Esteban's wild desire to possess and be loved by Clara causes him to throw Férula out of the house. She curses him, telling him that he will shrink in body and soul, and die like a dog. Although she misses her sister-in-law, a passive and dreamy Clara finds happiness in developing her psychic powers. Spirits, artists, and spiritualists flock to the Trueba's big house in the city.
Clara gives birth to a daughter named Blanca and later, to twin boys Jaime and Nicolás.The family, which resides in the capital, stays at the hacienda during the summertime, and Blanca eventually befriends a young boy named Pedro Tercero, who is the son of her father's foreman. Blanca and Pedro Tercero eventually become lovers. After an earthquake which destroys part of the hacienda and leaves Esteban injured, the Truebas move permanently to Las Trés Marias. Clara spends her time teaching and helping peasant children, while Blanca, is sent to a boarding school in the capital and the twin boys back to the boarding school in England where they are educated. Blanca fakes an illness so as to be sent back to Las Trés Marias, where she can be with Pedro. Life runs smoothly until Pedro Tercero is banished from the hacienda by Esteban, on account of his revolutionary communist/socialist ideas.
A visiting French count to the hacienda, Jean de Satigny, reveals Blanca's nightly romps with Pedro Tercero to her father. Esteban furiously goes after his daughter and brutally whips her. When Clara expresses horror at his actions, Esteban slaps her, knocking out her front teeth. Clara decides to never speak to him again, reclaims her maiden name and moves out of Tres Marías and back to the city, taking Blanca with her. Esteban, furious and lonely, blames Pedro Tercero for the whole matter; he tracks Pedro Tercero to make him pay for taking Blanca's virginity. He only succeeds in cutting-off three of Pedro's fingers, and is filled with regret for his uncontrollable furies.
Jaime becomes an empathetic doctor while crafty Nicolás concocts money-making schemes. The two develop a strange relationship with a woman named Amanda. Nicolas and Amanda are originally introduced to the story together, but split later on due to her pregnancy. Jaime loves Amanda dearly at this point but will never admit to such around her. He agrees to help terminate her pregnancy not because his cowardly brother asked him to, but for the woman he cannot have. Years later Jaime and Amanda meet again and Jaime saves her from near death. Amanda remembers Jaime as the tender doctor and falls in love with him, but he realizes that she is not the same beautiful woman that bewitched him originally. He continues to have a relationship with Amanda though he does not love her.
Blanca finds out she is pregnant with Pedro Tercero's child. Esteban, desperate to save the family honor, gets Blanca to marry the French count by telling her that he has killed Pedro Tercero. At first Blanca gets along with her new husband, but she leaves him when she discovers his secret collection of disgustingly perverted pictures. Blanca quietly returns back to the Trueba household and names her daughter, who has inherited Rosa's shocking green hair, Alba. Clara predicts that Alba will have a very happy future and good luck. Her future lover, Miguel, happens to watch her birth, as he had been living in the Trueba House with his sister, Amanda. They move out shortly after Alba's birth.
Esteban Trueba eventually moves to the Trueba house in the capital as well, although he continues to spend periods of time in Trés Marias. He becomes isolated from every member of his family except for little Alba, who he is very fond of. Esteban runs as a senator for the Conservative Party but is nervous about whether or not he will win. Clara speaks to him, through signs, informing him that "those who have always won will win again" - this becomes his motto. Clara then begins to speak to Esteban through signs, although she keeps her promise and never actually speaks to him again. A few years later, Clara dies peacefully and Esteban is struck with grief.
Alba is a solitary child who enjoys playing make-believe in the basement of the house and painting the walls of her room. Blanca has become very poor since leaving Jean de Satigny's house, getting a small income out of selling pottery and giving pottery classes to mentally handicapped children, and is once again dating Pedro Tercero, now a revolutionary singer/songwriter. Alba and Pedro are fond of each other, but do not know they are father and daughter, although Pedro suspects this. Alba is also fond of her uncles. Nicolás is eventually kicked out by his father, moving, supposedly, to North America.
When she is older, Alba attends a local college where she meets Miguel, now a grown man, and becomes his lover. Miguel is a revolutionary, and out of love for him, Alba involves herself in student protests against the conservative government. After the victory of the People's Party (a socialist movement), Alba celebrates with Miguel.
Fearing a Communist dictatorship, Esteban Trueba and his fellow politicians plan a military coup of the socialist government. However, when the military coup is set into action, the military men relish their power and grow out of control. Esteban's gentle son Jaime is viciously and pointlessly killed by power-driven soldiers along with many others. The government goes from being very conservative (the side Esteban is on) to liberal (with the majority rule, popular support, democratic election) to a full military dictatorship. People are kidnapped during the night and torture becomes the weapon of choice. Esteban helps Blanca and Pedro Tercero, now being persecuted, to flee to Canada, where the couple finally finds their happiness.
The novel takes a gruesome turn and documents the violent atrocities that the wealthy try to ignore throughout the country. The military regime attempts to eliminate all traces of opposition and eventually comes for Alba. She is made the prisoner of Colonel Esteban García, Esteban Trueba's and Pancha García's illegitimate grandson. García got in to the military school with Trueba's help, although Trueba did not realize that García was his grandson, and thought he was just helping one of his hacienda's peasants. During his visits to the Trueba house, García molests Alba as a child and forces a kiss on her when she is older. He seems to enjoy Alba's discomfort/pain and in these ways expresses his hatred for her and the legitimate children and grandchildren of Trueba.
In pure hatred of her privileged life and eventual inheritance, García tortures Alba repeatedly. He rapes her, thus completing the cycle which Esteban Trueba put into motion when he raped Pancha García. Alba is also beaten and tortured for information on Miguel. When Alba loses her will to live, she is visited by Clara's spirit who tells her to not wish for death since it can easily come, but to wish to live since that would be a miracle.
Esteban Trueba manages to free Alba with the help of Miguel and Tránsito Soto, an old friend/prostitute from his days as a young man. After helping Alba write their memoir, Esteban Trueba dies in the arms of Alba, accompanied by Clara's spirit; he is smiling, having avoided Ferula's prophecy that he will die like a dog. Alba explains she will not seek vengeance on those who have injured her, suggesting a hope that one day the human cycle of hate and revenge can be broken. Alba writes the book to pass time while she waits for Miguel and advances in pregnancy.
Review: So many different story lines evolved, started, stopped. There was love, death, murder, kidnapping, mutilation, war, riots, revolt, marriage, a head in a box, a car crash, magic, green hair...there was so much. This family was an absolute train wreck. It should have been interesting in the "I can't look away car crash type of way". But it wasn't. Allende is the product of the political scene of S. America and this is what this novel is full of. Yes, it’s a family saga but throughout it’s a saga of politics. There’s love and revenge and wealth and poverty and all that good sagas are made of. Permeating all this though is politics.
Opening Line: “Barrabas came to us by sea,” the child Clara wrote in her delicate calligraphy.”
Closing Line: “It begins like this: Barrabas came to us by sea…”
Quotes: “…unfortunately she turned out to be an idealist, a family disease, one of those people cut out to get involved in problems and make those closets to her suffer; that she took it into her head to help fugitives get asylum in the foreign embassies, something she did without thinking, I’m sure, without realizing that the country is a war, whether war against international Communism or its own people it’s hard to tell, but war one way or the other, and these things are punishable by law, but Alba always has her head in the clouds and doesn’t realize she’s in danger, she doesn’t do it to be mean… “
Rating: Poor.
244. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
August 2009
History: First written in English and published in 1955 in Paris. The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject. After its publication, Nabokov's Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious young girl.
Plot: Lolita is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar born in 1910 in Paris, who is obsessed with what he refers to as "nymphets". This obsession with young girls is suggested by Humbert himself to have been a result of his failure to consummate an affair with a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh, before her premature death from typhus. Shortly before the start of World War II, Humbert leaves Paris for New York when his first relationship with a grown woman turns sour. In 1947, he moves to Ramsdale, a small New England town, to write. When the first house he was promised burns down, he ends up at the door of Charlotte Haze, a widow, with something of a crush on Humbert, whom she sees as a European sophisticate. As the two tour the house, Humbert rehearses different ways of turning her offer down, but after being led out into the garden he notices Haze's 12-year-old daughter, Dolores (who is also variously referred to in the novel as Dolores, Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo, and L) in the garden. Humbert, perhaps seeing Annabel in her, is instantly smitten and eagerly agrees to rent the room afterwards.
When Lolita is sent to summer camp, Mrs. Haze gives Humbert an ultimatum by letter that he must marry her (for she has fallen in love with him) or move out. He is horrified at first, but sees living with Lolita as his stepdaughter as a way to make her part of his living fantasy and so agrees. Charlotte marries Humbert and appears oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her and his lust for Lolita until she reads his diary against his permission. Horrified and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee with her daughter, writing letters to Humbert, Lolita, and a reformatory boarding school for young ladies to which she apparently intends to send her daughter. Charlotte confronts Humbert when he returns home, ignoring his protests that the diary entries are just notes for a novel, and bolts from the house to post the letters. But upon crossing the street, she is struck and killed by a passing motorist. A child retrieves the letters and gives them to Humbert, who destroys them.
Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, telling her and the mistress of the camp that her mother is desperately ill in a hospital. He then takes her to The Enchanted Hunters, a nearby hotel, where he meets a strange man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert attempts to use sleeping pills on Lolita so that he may molest her without her knowledge, but they have little effect on her. Instead, she consciously seduces Humbert the next morning. At breakfast he discovers that he is not her first lover, as she has had a sexual affair with a boy at summer camp. After leaving the hotel, Humbert tells the "trouble-making" Lolita that her mother is dead. Alone and frightened, Lolita has no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms.
Driving Lolita around the country in Charlotte's car, moving from state to state and motel to motel, Humbert bribes the girl for sexual favors. He subsequently fosters a kind of love for her, but is conscious that she does not reciprocate this and shares none of his interests. Likewise, he is also unaware of her mentality as a human being. Eventually, after a year's tour of North America, the two settle down in another New England town, Beardsley, with Humbert posing as Lolita's father and Lolita enrolled in a private girls' school. The headmistress views Humbert's possessive supervision as that of a strict, old-world European parent as he continues to deny her the chance to learn acting.
Humbert nevertheless is persuaded to allow Lolita to take part in the school's theatrical club, although he extracts additional sexual favors from her in exchange for his permission; however, even this becomes increasingly more difficult. Ominously, the title of the play — The Hunted Enchanters — is an inversion of the name of the hotel where he had his first sexual encounter with her. Lolita is enthusiastic about the play and is said to have impressed the playwright, who attended a rehearsal. Just before opening night Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument, and Lolita bolts from the house on a bicycle. Found nearby by Humbert a few minutes later, Lolita declares that she wants to immediately leave town and resume their travels as they had used to. Humbert is delighted, but becomes increasingly guarded as they again drive westward, nagged by a feeling that they are being followed by a convertible, and that Lolita knows who the man is. He is right. Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's, the nephew of the local dentist in Ramsdale, and the author of the play being performed at Lolita's school, is himself a pedophile and amateur pornographer. He is tailing the couple in accordance with a secret plan of escape he has devised with Lolita. Lolita tries to escape from Humbert at more than one point on the trip, but always fails to elude Humbert.
While Humbert becomes increasingly paranoid, Lolita becomes severely ill and recuperates in a nearby hospital. Humbert is forced to cut short his vigil over Lolita by night because of the hospital's rigid operating hours. One night, she checks out with her "uncle", who has paid the hospital bill. Humbert, still clueless about the identity of Lolita's "abductor," makes farcical and frantic attempts to find them by inspecting various motel-register aliases, which have been laced by Quilty with insults and jokes flavored with literary allusions, some of them supplied by Lolita herself. Eventually, Humbert gives up his search for Lolita, a broken, dejected man.
During this period, Humbert has a chaotic, two-year love-affair with an alcoholic named Rita who, at 30, is 10 years younger than he and a passable physical substitute for Lolita. By 1952, Humbert has settled down as a scholar at a small academic institute. One day, he receives a letter with no return address from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, heavily pregnant, and in desperate need of funds until her husband is able to start his job in Alaska. Armed with a loaded gun, Humbert discovers his young obsession's residence after asking for directions. After finding Lolita, Humbert gives her the money she needs as well as her rightful stake in her mother's estate. During their conversation, Lolita explains that her husband, a nearly-deaf and crippled war-veteran, was not her abductor, whereupon Humbert offers to give her all the money he has if she will reveal the man's identity. Lolita complies, saying that she had really loved Clare Quilty, but that he threw her out after she refused to perform in a pornographic film he was making. Humbert asks her to leave her husband and follow him, but she refuses, breaking Humbert's spirit.
Leaving Lolita forever, Humbert attempts to surprise and kill Quilty at his mansion in an act of revenge. Quilty is in a daze as Humbert's gun is pointed at him, and Humbert does not shoot immediately as he wants his victim to understand who Humbert is and why he is there, seeking to get Quilty to admit his part in the abduction of Lolita. Humbert appears to reject Lolita's earlier admission that she loved Quilty and her failure to say that she loved Humbert. After a long standoff and a subsequent struggle for Humbert's gun, Quilty, who is now mentally unsound, responds unusually as Humbert repeatedly shoots him while chasing him around his own house. He finally dies with a comical lack of interest, expressing his slight concern in an affected English accent. The eventual killing of Quilty fails to offer Humbert a sense of satisfaction and he ends up leaving Quilty's mansion for his final journey in Charlotte's old car. Seeking a sense of release from his present condition Humbert decides to drive on the wrong side of the road, a minor act of defiance following the murder he has committed, but one that offers him satisfaction. Arrested for murder, he writes a book he entitles Lolita or, The Confessions of a White Widowed Male, while awaiting trial. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well and states he hopes her child will be a boy. According to the novel's fictional "Foreword", Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis upon finishing his manuscript, which had been days before his trial was to begin. Lolita dies giving birth to a stillborn baby on Christmas Day, 1952.
Review: The novel's scandal-tinted history and its subject—the affair between a middle-aged sexual pervert and a twelve-year-old girl—inevitably conjure up expectations of pornography. But there is not a single obscene term in Lolita, and aficionados of erotica are likely to find it a dud. Lolita blazes, however, with a perversity of a most original kind. Nabokov's Lolita is not an endorsement of pedophilia, since it dramatizes the tragic consequences of Humbert's obsession with the young girl. Several times, Humbert begs the reader to understand that he is not proud of his union with Lolita, but is filled with remorse. At one point, he is listening to the sounds of children playing outdoors, and is stricken with guilt at the realization that he robbed Lolita of her childhood. Wild, fantastic, wonderfully imaginative, it is a style which parodies everything it touches. Lolita seems to me an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish materials. It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy.
Opening Line: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
Closing Line: “This is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”
Quotes: “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
“Solitude was corrupting me.”
“In fact, I would have the reader see 'nine' and 'fourteen' as the boundaries - the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks - of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast misty sea. Between those age limits, are all girl-children nymphets? Of course not. Otherwise, we who are in the know, we lone voyagers, we nympholets, would have long gone insane. “
Rating: Superb.
History: First written in English and published in 1955 in Paris. The book is internationally famous for its innovative style and infamous for its controversial subject. After its publication, Nabokov's Lolita attained a classic status, becoming one of the best-known and most controversial examples of 20th century literature. The name "Lolita" has entered pop culture to describe a sexually precocious young girl.
Plot: Lolita is narrated by Humbert Humbert, a literary scholar born in 1910 in Paris, who is obsessed with what he refers to as "nymphets". This obsession with young girls is suggested by Humbert himself to have been a result of his failure to consummate an affair with a childhood sweetheart, Annabel Leigh, before her premature death from typhus. Shortly before the start of World War II, Humbert leaves Paris for New York when his first relationship with a grown woman turns sour. In 1947, he moves to Ramsdale, a small New England town, to write. When the first house he was promised burns down, he ends up at the door of Charlotte Haze, a widow, with something of a crush on Humbert, whom she sees as a European sophisticate. As the two tour the house, Humbert rehearses different ways of turning her offer down, but after being led out into the garden he notices Haze's 12-year-old daughter, Dolores (who is also variously referred to in the novel as Dolores, Dolly, Lolita, Lola, Lo, and L) in the garden. Humbert, perhaps seeing Annabel in her, is instantly smitten and eagerly agrees to rent the room afterwards.
When Lolita is sent to summer camp, Mrs. Haze gives Humbert an ultimatum by letter that he must marry her (for she has fallen in love with him) or move out. He is horrified at first, but sees living with Lolita as his stepdaughter as a way to make her part of his living fantasy and so agrees. Charlotte marries Humbert and appears oblivious to Humbert's distaste for her and his lust for Lolita until she reads his diary against his permission. Horrified and humiliated, Charlotte decides to flee with her daughter, writing letters to Humbert, Lolita, and a reformatory boarding school for young ladies to which she apparently intends to send her daughter. Charlotte confronts Humbert when he returns home, ignoring his protests that the diary entries are just notes for a novel, and bolts from the house to post the letters. But upon crossing the street, she is struck and killed by a passing motorist. A child retrieves the letters and gives them to Humbert, who destroys them.
Humbert picks Lolita up from camp, telling her and the mistress of the camp that her mother is desperately ill in a hospital. He then takes her to The Enchanted Hunters, a nearby hotel, where he meets a strange man (later revealed to be Clare Quilty), who seems to know who he is. Humbert attempts to use sleeping pills on Lolita so that he may molest her without her knowledge, but they have little effect on her. Instead, she consciously seduces Humbert the next morning. At breakfast he discovers that he is not her first lover, as she has had a sexual affair with a boy at summer camp. After leaving the hotel, Humbert tells the "trouble-making" Lolita that her mother is dead. Alone and frightened, Lolita has no choice but to accept her stepfather into her life on his terms.
Driving Lolita around the country in Charlotte's car, moving from state to state and motel to motel, Humbert bribes the girl for sexual favors. He subsequently fosters a kind of love for her, but is conscious that she does not reciprocate this and shares none of his interests. Likewise, he is also unaware of her mentality as a human being. Eventually, after a year's tour of North America, the two settle down in another New England town, Beardsley, with Humbert posing as Lolita's father and Lolita enrolled in a private girls' school. The headmistress views Humbert's possessive supervision as that of a strict, old-world European parent as he continues to deny her the chance to learn acting.
Humbert nevertheless is persuaded to allow Lolita to take part in the school's theatrical club, although he extracts additional sexual favors from her in exchange for his permission; however, even this becomes increasingly more difficult. Ominously, the title of the play — The Hunted Enchanters — is an inversion of the name of the hotel where he had his first sexual encounter with her. Lolita is enthusiastic about the play and is said to have impressed the playwright, who attended a rehearsal. Just before opening night Lolita and Humbert have a ferocious argument, and Lolita bolts from the house on a bicycle. Found nearby by Humbert a few minutes later, Lolita declares that she wants to immediately leave town and resume their travels as they had used to. Humbert is delighted, but becomes increasingly guarded as they again drive westward, nagged by a feeling that they are being followed by a convertible, and that Lolita knows who the man is. He is right. Clare Quilty, an acquaintance of Charlotte's, the nephew of the local dentist in Ramsdale, and the author of the play being performed at Lolita's school, is himself a pedophile and amateur pornographer. He is tailing the couple in accordance with a secret plan of escape he has devised with Lolita. Lolita tries to escape from Humbert at more than one point on the trip, but always fails to elude Humbert.
While Humbert becomes increasingly paranoid, Lolita becomes severely ill and recuperates in a nearby hospital. Humbert is forced to cut short his vigil over Lolita by night because of the hospital's rigid operating hours. One night, she checks out with her "uncle", who has paid the hospital bill. Humbert, still clueless about the identity of Lolita's "abductor," makes farcical and frantic attempts to find them by inspecting various motel-register aliases, which have been laced by Quilty with insults and jokes flavored with literary allusions, some of them supplied by Lolita herself. Eventually, Humbert gives up his search for Lolita, a broken, dejected man.
During this period, Humbert has a chaotic, two-year love-affair with an alcoholic named Rita who, at 30, is 10 years younger than he and a passable physical substitute for Lolita. By 1952, Humbert has settled down as a scholar at a small academic institute. One day, he receives a letter with no return address from Lolita, now 17, who tells him that she is married, heavily pregnant, and in desperate need of funds until her husband is able to start his job in Alaska. Armed with a loaded gun, Humbert discovers his young obsession's residence after asking for directions. After finding Lolita, Humbert gives her the money she needs as well as her rightful stake in her mother's estate. During their conversation, Lolita explains that her husband, a nearly-deaf and crippled war-veteran, was not her abductor, whereupon Humbert offers to give her all the money he has if she will reveal the man's identity. Lolita complies, saying that she had really loved Clare Quilty, but that he threw her out after she refused to perform in a pornographic film he was making. Humbert asks her to leave her husband and follow him, but she refuses, breaking Humbert's spirit.
Leaving Lolita forever, Humbert attempts to surprise and kill Quilty at his mansion in an act of revenge. Quilty is in a daze as Humbert's gun is pointed at him, and Humbert does not shoot immediately as he wants his victim to understand who Humbert is and why he is there, seeking to get Quilty to admit his part in the abduction of Lolita. Humbert appears to reject Lolita's earlier admission that she loved Quilty and her failure to say that she loved Humbert. After a long standoff and a subsequent struggle for Humbert's gun, Quilty, who is now mentally unsound, responds unusually as Humbert repeatedly shoots him while chasing him around his own house. He finally dies with a comical lack of interest, expressing his slight concern in an affected English accent. The eventual killing of Quilty fails to offer Humbert a sense of satisfaction and he ends up leaving Quilty's mansion for his final journey in Charlotte's old car. Seeking a sense of release from his present condition Humbert decides to drive on the wrong side of the road, a minor act of defiance following the murder he has committed, but one that offers him satisfaction. Arrested for murder, he writes a book he entitles Lolita or, The Confessions of a White Widowed Male, while awaiting trial. The narrative closes with Humbert's final words to Lolita in which he wishes her well and states he hopes her child will be a boy. According to the novel's fictional "Foreword", Humbert dies of coronary thrombosis upon finishing his manuscript, which had been days before his trial was to begin. Lolita dies giving birth to a stillborn baby on Christmas Day, 1952.
Review: The novel's scandal-tinted history and its subject—the affair between a middle-aged sexual pervert and a twelve-year-old girl—inevitably conjure up expectations of pornography. But there is not a single obscene term in Lolita, and aficionados of erotica are likely to find it a dud. Lolita blazes, however, with a perversity of a most original kind. Nabokov's Lolita is not an endorsement of pedophilia, since it dramatizes the tragic consequences of Humbert's obsession with the young girl. Several times, Humbert begs the reader to understand that he is not proud of his union with Lolita, but is filled with remorse. At one point, he is listening to the sounds of children playing outdoors, and is stricken with guilt at the realization that he robbed Lolita of her childhood. Wild, fantastic, wonderfully imaginative, it is a style which parodies everything it touches. Lolita seems to me an assertion of the power of the comic spirit to wrest delight and truth from the most outlandish materials. It is one of the funniest serious novels I have ever read; and the vision of its abominable hero, who never deludes or excuses himself, brings into grotesque relief the cant, the vulgarity, and the hypocritical conventions that pervade the human comedy.
Opening Line: “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins.”
Closing Line: “This is the only immortality you and I may share, my Lolita.”
Quotes: “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
“Solitude was corrupting me.”
“In fact, I would have the reader see 'nine' and 'fourteen' as the boundaries - the mirrory beaches and rosy rocks - of an enchanted island haunted by those nymphets of mine and surrounded by a vast misty sea. Between those age limits, are all girl-children nymphets? Of course not. Otherwise, we who are in the know, we lone voyagers, we nympholets, would have long gone insane. “
Rating: Superb.
243. Timbuktu – Paul Auster
August 2009
History: This book, or novella, was published in 1999. The title of the book comes from the concept of the afterlife as proposed by Christmas, a self-titled poet, who believed it was a beautiful place called Timbuktu. A major running theme in the book is Mr Bones' worry that dogs will not go to Timbuktu, and he won't see Willy again after death.
The novella also draws on themes of existentialism, finding purpose in one's life, and a meditation on late 20th century America.
Plot: This is the story of Mr. Bones, a smart, sensitive dog who tries to survive on his own after homeless Willy Christman, the man he had been with since he was a pup, dies of illness and despair. Bones knows that if he doesn't find a new caring master within a short amount of time he will most definitely not survive. Dogcatchers, constables, the hyprocitic humane societies, some cruel humans, and Chinese restaurant owners are just examples of the dangers that a lone dog has to face in a big city like Baltimore. After several initially promising episodes with strangers and an exhausting journey that takes him into Northern Virginia Bones eventually finds a family that is good to him. But they go on vacation, leaving him at a kennel, and he becomes sick. So sick, that he escapes, and heads onto the highway, with the desire of being with Willy again.
Review: Auster has always written about sharp reversals of fortune, and the subject of this novel - a mongrel dog named Mr Bones, whose master is nearing death - offers wonderful scope to explore the theme. Auster's triumph is that we never doubt for a moment that the dog can reason like an intelligent child and understand human speech. This broadly comic tale offers glimpses of a profound and humane wisdom glinting beneath its assured surface. This is a story cleverly told to humans from the point of view of someone that knows “what” is happening among all those things that surround him but that he doesn’t know “why”.
Opening Line: “Mr. Bones knew that Willy wasn’t long for this world.”
Closing Line: “With any luck, he would be with Willy before the day was out.”
Quotes: “So, while the dog part of him waited on the corner, the fly rose into the air and flew into the air and flew down the block,, chasing ater the ambulance as swiftly as his wings could carry him.”
Rating: Okay.
History: This book, or novella, was published in 1999. The title of the book comes from the concept of the afterlife as proposed by Christmas, a self-titled poet, who believed it was a beautiful place called Timbuktu. A major running theme in the book is Mr Bones' worry that dogs will not go to Timbuktu, and he won't see Willy again after death.
The novella also draws on themes of existentialism, finding purpose in one's life, and a meditation on late 20th century America.
Plot: This is the story of Mr. Bones, a smart, sensitive dog who tries to survive on his own after homeless Willy Christman, the man he had been with since he was a pup, dies of illness and despair. Bones knows that if he doesn't find a new caring master within a short amount of time he will most definitely not survive. Dogcatchers, constables, the hyprocitic humane societies, some cruel humans, and Chinese restaurant owners are just examples of the dangers that a lone dog has to face in a big city like Baltimore. After several initially promising episodes with strangers and an exhausting journey that takes him into Northern Virginia Bones eventually finds a family that is good to him. But they go on vacation, leaving him at a kennel, and he becomes sick. So sick, that he escapes, and heads onto the highway, with the desire of being with Willy again.
Review: Auster has always written about sharp reversals of fortune, and the subject of this novel - a mongrel dog named Mr Bones, whose master is nearing death - offers wonderful scope to explore the theme. Auster's triumph is that we never doubt for a moment that the dog can reason like an intelligent child and understand human speech. This broadly comic tale offers glimpses of a profound and humane wisdom glinting beneath its assured surface. This is a story cleverly told to humans from the point of view of someone that knows “what” is happening among all those things that surround him but that he doesn’t know “why”.
Opening Line: “Mr. Bones knew that Willy wasn’t long for this world.”
Closing Line: “With any luck, he would be with Willy before the day was out.”
Quotes: “So, while the dog part of him waited on the corner, the fly rose into the air and flew into the air and flew down the block,, chasing ater the ambulance as swiftly as his wings could carry him.”
Rating: Okay.
242. Memento Mori – Muriel Spark
August 2009
History: This book was published in 1959.
Plot: The title translates to "Remember you must die" and is the message delivered by a series of insidious phone-calls made to the elderly Dame Lettie Colston and her acquaintances. The recipients reflect on their past lives whilst trying to identify the culprit. Many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed...
Review: Death is calling. An interesting approach on how several old people deal with their impending death. Brilliant, if sad.
Opening Line: “Dame Lettie Coston refilled her fountain pen and continued her letter.”
Closing Line: “Jean Taylor lingered for a time, employing her pain to magnify the Lord, and meditating sometimes confiding upon death, the first of the four last things to be ever remembered.”
Quotes: “Remember you must die.”
Rating: Good, but depressing.
History: This book was published in 1959.
Plot: The title translates to "Remember you must die" and is the message delivered by a series of insidious phone-calls made to the elderly Dame Lettie Colston and her acquaintances. The recipients reflect on their past lives whilst trying to identify the culprit. Many old secrets are dusted off. Beneath the once decorous surface of their lives, unsavories like blackmail and adultery are now to be glimpsed...
Review: Death is calling. An interesting approach on how several old people deal with their impending death. Brilliant, if sad.
Opening Line: “Dame Lettie Coston refilled her fountain pen and continued her letter.”
Closing Line: “Jean Taylor lingered for a time, employing her pain to magnify the Lord, and meditating sometimes confiding upon death, the first of the four last things to be ever remembered.”
Quotes: “Remember you must die.”
Rating: Good, but depressing.
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