Ian McEwan; Enduring Love

How far can we believe those we love when what they are telling us seems so very improbable? When the version of the world they portray contains sexually obsessive monsters. Where God represents all that is evil. Where your life is controlled by the actions of strangers.

Enduring Love is concerned with the life of Joe Rose, a member of the affluent middle classes. His life is changed forever when alongside a set of strangers he attempts to moor a hot air balloon which has torn free of its moorings. The men all grab the balloon but upon realising they may die if the balloon goes to high they let go, bar John Logan who falls to his death. From here on in a member of the group, Jed Perry, becomes sexually obsessed with Joe and believes he is the only means in which he can find God. Jed's obsession is born out of de Crembault's syndrome which is an illness that rationalising dangerous sexual obsession. This obsession quickly begins to threaten Joe's life and family; soon enough Joe is driven near to murdering Jed.

The book explores the tension between chance events such as the hot air balloon accident and those who bring stability to our lives such as Joe's family. Jed can be seen to embody this instability. He is a man of God which suggests the unpredictable nature of forces we cannot see or control play a huge role in our lives. He is also suffering from an illness which makes him hugely irrational and dangerous further indicating his representation of instability. On the other side of the coin we have the stability of Joe's previous life, he is middle class, he is happily married, and he has a good job. The introduction of this instability in Jed threatens to unravel Joe's once perfect life.

The book itself is exceptional well written. We are all aware that McEwan is unable to write a poorly crafted sentence. Time and time again the biggest frustration that can be found with his work is that it is so uncomfortably middle class. His protagonist is a struggling journalist with a wife who is a university lecturer. Everything about Joe is middle class, unfortunately this means that when he encounters a character such as Jed who is clearly unwell we find it hard to empathise with his constant complaints of a man he is often cruel to.

Make no mistake this is an excellent book. An accurate commentary on the real workings of people's lives and relationships? It certainly is not.

Milan Kundera; The Unbearable Lightness of Being

The desperate wife, the attractive mistress, the bad guys and the good guys, love and loss, faith and suspicion. Fear not humble readers this is no typical love story, or other than at a superficial level a love story at all. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1929 Kundera leads us through his world and gives us an insight into the regime which would not only ban his books but force him to live in exile.

The book primarily follows Tomas and Tereza, two lovers who have encountered one another purely by chance. It is hard to say where this book begins, physically as with all books it begins at page one but the narrative of Tomas and Tereza does not begin till chapter three. Right from the beginning Kundera lets us know that this is as much a book on philosophy as it is a story of love, already by the time Tomas is introduced we have peered into the world's of; Nietzche, Paramedies, Aristotle and even Jesus Christ himself.

From the start it becomes apparent that Tomas and Tereza are never going to have a conventional relationship. Prior to his meeting with Tereza Tomas was a notorious womanizer, and even after meeting Tereza he continues in this vain, much to her annoyance. Here in lies the dichotomy of the novel, Tomas seeks the weightiness, the "unbearable," of being in a relationship with Tereza, whilst also aiming to achieve the "lightness," of his various affairs. Clearly these two world's cannot exist alongside one another and herein lies the crisis of the novel, Tomas begins to act in a more obscure and unpredictable way in order to fulfil these needs. Outside of his relationship with Tereza, Tomas, functions as Kundera's voice in the novel, he is used to explore the dangers of the communist regime and the oppressive way in which it acted toward intellectuals. With such complexity in his life contrasted against the way in which the regime wish to opress him, Tomas' tale could never be a straight forward one...

The narrative is simply brilliant, all the way through Kundera's voice is never lost. Just as the story begins to progress Kundera intervenes and shows us another side to the story or introduces some obscure philosophical concept that can be related to the story. He does this without ever making the story feel stale, he creates an atmosphere that is so intimate we don't mind being removed from the narrative for a while as it ensures Tomas and Tereza cannot be harmed, for the time being.

The characters themselves are varied and interesting. Tomas manages to cheat on his wife numerous times whilst still being likeable, and even attracts sympathy when his life begins to go downhill. Perhaps the greatest criticism that can be levelled against this book is that Tereza is somewhat dull, for all she is presented as being the victim of the novel her refusal to leave Tomas yet constantly verging on suicide is somewhat tiresome.

Kundera has achieved something truly magnificent. There are few novels that are as effectively comedic and tragic. Truly, truly, truly, an amazing novel.

Ian McEwan; Saturday

Hello once again, recently my updates have been sparse and I am sure my five followers are bereft at this fact. Do not fear, my exams are over and I will be able to regularly blog once again, whether you choose to read it or not I leave to your own fine judgement. Anyway, on with the book!

To begin, we all know that Ian McEwan is incapable of writing a bad sentence. Saturday is no exception, throughout his use of prose is brilliant, at times bordering on being melodic. However, for all his writing may be wonderful at times this affects the progress of the story. I genuinely can't see how nearly fifteen pages describing a game of squash could be fundamental to story progression. More so, his protagonist’s obsession with his father in law wastes valuable narrative space, at the climax of the story the father in law bizarrely becomes the centre of attention rather than the men robbing his house.

It is truly a shame that McEwan's obvious talent is wasted in this novel. Perhaps worst of all is the odious family he presents us with. The surgeon father, the poet daughter and rock star son could not be more stereotypically middleclass. All in all this book is well written, but at times frightfully dull, long winded and ultimately disappointing that McEwan believes the middle-class are truly like this.
Sorry for such a short post, but now I am back in to doing it they will improve. Cheers for reading.

Modernism. A Brief Overview.

Hello again everyone, sorry for the lack of posts but with exams I simply have not had the time. As I have became a bit more accustomed to this blogging business I have started to realise my blog has began to become more of a literary rambling than a strict book reviewing forum. Maybe that isn't necessarily a bad thing, in today's blog I am going to try to offer a brief overview of Modernism. Hopefully to all of you who are undertaking English qualification or to those of you who are interested in viewing literature in a new light this will be of some interest. Be warned, there is far more to Modernism than I could ever possibly hope to write in a single blog post.

American writer Harold Rosenberg was described Modernism as "the tradition of the new." If we take this as a starting point we then have to consider in terms of literature what is meant by new? The "Twilight," series is new but other than being perhaps the biggest affront to modern literature, is certainly not modernist. Therefore if Modernism does not refer to new as in an event in a chronological time frame, then "new," can be considered to be a break from the old.

The old, in terms of Modernism is Realism, a way of writing that recounts events in a believable and accurate fashion, a form of prose that holds a mirror up to our own lives. Arguably realist texts in their broadest sense form the bulk of novels in circulation; it is not hard to find examples of texts that reflect real life. Some examples include; Don Quixote by Cervantes, Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy and in more recent times books such as Saturday by Ian McEwan. Therefore what Modernism does through writing in a way that is different from Realism is writes in a way that does not hold a mirror up to our lives. Works that find their base in metaphor and complex allusions. Modernism is more like a projector, it takes the real world and beams it back to us in a way which we can relate to but don't immediately recognise.

T.S Eliot's The Waste Land is seen as the avante garde Modernist text. Set around the centre of London we are provided with a series of complex metaphors that are purposefully obtuse. Lines such as "This music crept by me upon the waters And along the Strand, up Queen Victoria Street," illustrate how on the one hand we are presented with the familiarity of the streets of London but at the same time offered a complex metaphor in "music crept by me upon the waters," in my opinion showing how Eliot believed the war had attributed sinister faculties to sweet things such as music.

Modernism is complex, it is obtuse but it is certainly interesting. I hope my extremely brief overview has been of some use and of some interest. I can't recommend enough going out and reading some modernists texts for yourself.

Please comment to let me know what you thought, I am a bit short on reading material at the moment so any suggestions would also be hugely appreciated :)

Barbara Clough. My own poem, because we all have to try.

Barbara Clough
Loyal wife, out of the spotlight.
Pleased to be housemaid?
The old fashioned type
The angry, the jealous, the stay at home, wife!
Well, to say I was just his wife would be the understatement of the season.

I was more than that, I was his sweeper.
His Target man and his strike partner.
His playmaker.
His main man.
He was great at home.
But then he started playing away.
He said I had too much width,
That I could not handle the pressure.
Well, he was crap in the box
Fucking useless.

Total football? Total bollocks.

“I wouldn’t say I was the best manager in the business. But I was in the top one.”
Typical pig headed Cloughie.
His mates, Jesus Christ, they were just as bad.
Johnny Walker, Jack Daniels, William Grant, his loyalist allies.

My number one.
His number nine.
Straight home after the match
Brian wasn’t the only disciplinarian in the Clough household.
Then his liver went, he thought I would care.
Jack Daniels had bit him right in the backside

Good, I hoped it would bloody kill him

He had it replaced, but I would have the last laugh.
Finally relief at last
“I’m not the best in the business but I am in the top one,
then the stomach cancer came, Brian was dead, finished, gone.




Let me know what you think guys, any suggestions for improvement or any comments at all would be greatly appreciated!

One Red Paperclip

Again, just a short one
Right, I know this is not specifically to do with literature but I thought that this merited a special mention. For all four of you who follow my blog at this present time I promise I will return to literature as soon as possible.

Anyway, I was talking to a friend of mine who mentioned that a gentleman in America had traded a house for a single red paper clip. Obviously confused by the disparity in monetary value I had to investigate further. After a quick search in Google I came across his blog wherein through a series of trade this man had in fact acquired a house from one red paper clip. To all of those who read this you must have a look at his blog, it is worth it for a laugh if nothing else. In a time where money is scarce it is reassuring a home can be acquired from one red paper clip.

What do we think? Could an experiment like this work in the UK? I have a feeling that had he done it over here at best he may have ended up with one red paper clip.

Anyway, here's the link to this blog.

http://oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com/2005/09/one-red-generator.html

Percy Shelley; The Revolt of Islam.

Hello all just a quick one today! After recently purchasing the Penguin anthology of Shelley poems there are two lines from The Revolt of Islam, which in light of current events seemed to be particularly poignant.

"The calm: for sudden, the firm earth was shaken,
As if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken."

Undoubtedly these are two beautiful lines of poetry but are so obviously significant on more than a superficial level. Transposed to today the "for sudden, the firm earth was shaken," can be viewed as a reflection on how our world is constantly changing beyond our control in unexpected ways. The use of "shaken," coupled with the purveyance of the feeling of the unexpected makes it almost too crude a comparison with the recent earthquake in Japan.

Perhaps even more interestingly the line "as if by the last wreck its frame were overtaken," in a modern context could be seen as a scathing remark on how the impact of humans is lurching the Earth from one destructive wreck to another. The use of "frame," is very much implicit that we are confined to live within our means and that the exploitation of natural resources could have disastrous consequences.

Shelley was by no means a prophet and his poem is in fact about his disillusionment with the ideas of rebellion following the dissolution of the French Revolution. In any case it is interesting that although his poem was written two hundred years ago we can still find parallels in our world today.