1001 Books to Read Before You Die

The Grass is Singing – Dorothy Lessing

September 21, 2012October 10, 2012inspirationalreads2 Comments

Book #538

Reviewer: Kara

The Grass is Singing is Doris Lessing’s first novel, and it is fantastic. It chronicles one woman’s psychological disintegration in the context of poverty and white rule in 1940s and 1950s Southern Rhodesia. This woman is Mary, who grew up poor (hating her father, watching her mother suffer) and as a young adult has a good secretarial job, and a decent single life. Mary marries Dick Turner and becomes suffocated and depressed by her new life on a poverty-stricken farm with a man she doesn’t love. Over the years, both Mary and Dick weaken and become more and more frustrated and ill, leading up to the murder that frames the novel at its beginning and end. This heartbreaking story is embedded in a swirl of social, racial and gender tension and inequality. In 1950s Southern Rhodesia, white rule is in full force, and the pressure of fulfilling her gender role leads Mary into her miserable situation in the first place.

If you’re looking to read something light and fun, this isn’t it. But it will expand your literary horizons and open your eyes. The Grass is Singing is a compact and powerful story that makes clear how destructive racial and gender inequities without becoming a treatise and nothing more. Lessing demonstrates right from the start of her career her amazing talent for intense prose that is thought-provoking and cuts like a knife.

I was really impressed by the way Lessing weaves social criticism of race relations and social expectations (i.e. women marry and bear children) at the time into a deeply psychological narrative. Both Mary and Dick are sympathetic characters, and both are fraught with ugly flaws especially, but not only, when it comes to race relations. Both Mary and Dick completely fall apart over the course of the novel. Dick becomes nervous, frustrated and miserable, which doesn’t help his inability to complete anything he starts. Mary becomes a mere shell of herself – spending hours staring at the wall in a deep depression.

The Grass is Singing is a closely attuned depiction of the destructive power of socially-mandated hatred and expectations. My edition also included a supplement at the end with Doris Lessing’s Nobel Prize for Literature acceptance speech. It is fascinating! She discusses how in Africa people yearn for books and literature and education, even when they’re hungry and exhausted. She also talks about how these places are the future of literature – great writing comes from experiencing hardship and we in the western world have pretty easy lives.

Quote of the Week

September 19, 2012September 4, 2012Ms Oh WailyLeave a comment

“We are of opinion that instead of letting books grow moldy behind an iron grating, far from the vulgar gaze, it is better to let them wear out by being read.”
― Jules Verne, Journey to the Centre of the Earth

The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test – Tom Wolfe

September 17, 2012September 17, 2012Ms Oh Waily3 Comments

Book #397

Reviewer: t, of as long as i’m singing

I read it once before. By accident. On purpose. Who knows. But I know I read it, and that in part, is why I decided to review it. It was a thrill the first time, and – so far – even more enlightening the second. Even if my jaded and olden eyes, see it now (read: Grok it) in a wholly other light.

Lance has told me before that his sentences are more succinct than mine. And he’s right. Or is it “write?” My sentences tend to stroll very slowly over to where the period is, using as many commas, dashes and doo-hickeys as needed to get there. But Tom Wolfe baby, well he’s the mollyfocking (his word, not mine) king of the commas, the prince of the air, the earth, and the soul of commas. He makes me look like a rank focking amateur.

With this book, at any rate, he tumbles through thoughts and ideas, comma-ing his way along, never letting a period get in his way. Never letting anything like structure tell him how to play out “his movie.” In fact, here’s exactly how he describes a certain trip early on in the book:

“But then – soar. Perry Lane, Perry Lane.

Miles

Under all that good vegetation from Morris Orchids and having visions of

Faces

  so many faces rolling up behind the eyelids, faces he has never seen before, complete with spectral cheekbones, pregnant eyes, stringy wattles, and all of a sudden: Chief Broom.”

Trips.

Trips are what this book is all about. A certain author by the name of Ken Kesey, in fact (that cat who wrote “One Who Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” – oh yeah, THAT Chief Broom) and his jolly bunch of friends-addicts-devotees-leeches-whatever, who call themselves The Merry Pranksters – like saying it makes it so – adorn every page of this literary plague upon the good, simple, un-stoned, not-on-the-bus folk of the world, as they travel – well who knows/cares where – all over in their mind-crazed dolled-up bus of a bus.

It’s not a book for the faint-hearted. Nor the half-hearted. Nor the heartless, I suppose, but who cares about the heartless, as they are most decidedly NOT on the bus.

Wolfe, for his part, tries to write the book in the vernacular of The High. And I, for my part, almost began this review with “I’ve never taken acid before, but Tom Wolfe makes me feel as if I had.” But only because he did. And that’s why I love this read – even IF it didn’t make my personal top ten (dude, there can only be ten, alright?)

I read it once. And loved it. And then never laid eyes upon it again. That is until 1,001 Books allowed me to review it. A new copy was gonna cost me sixteen fat daddy ‘Merican dollars. Way too much for a book I read once, would read again, and then probably shelf forever. So from the library I stole it. Stupid Fockers at the Buffalo library, had three copies, and wouldn’t ya know, all of them were sitting all dusty-like at “central.” The one location no one without a gun goes to – so I had to request a transfer for a copy to one of the more docile, suburban, urbane – SAFE – locations. The transfer cost me a quarter. A quarter I haven’t paid yet. A quarter I never will.

What does that have to do with the story itself? Nothing. It’s part of my movie, not Wolfe’s. But his short tale (if you consider 411 pages short) is all about “the movie.” His – Kesey’s – Yours – Mine – The Hell’s Angels – the Unitarians – Hell yeah, even the Prankster’s movie.

The Pranksters. The best part, man. Because you see Wolfe, well, he makes them sound somewhat/a whole hell of a lotta like cool – you know, like all druggie drag ragtime USA authors do… but then this cat shows you how they most-to-all slowly lose their minds as a result.

Because, you know, in the end, the party’s over, the never-ending string of commas have to end, and if, IF, all you’ve done is stoned, and groked, and sat on the bus, well then, all that mind-opening, mind-blowing vision – FOCKIN’ VISION – helped only you and your fellow travelers. Only you, and the other day-glo folk living on the bus. A bus that most of the rest of us spend just a few short years on, never return to again.

A cautionary tale. Definitely worth a read.

*Reviewer’s note: Much like Wolfe did, but not nearly as well, I attempted to write this review in the “vernacular of The High,” in order to provide you with a flavor as to how the book reads. Quite enjoyable at times, maddening at others.

Who’s a Tweetie Pie then?

September 15, 2012September 14, 2012Ms Oh WailyLeave a comment

Now joining our other social media outlets, we have signed up to tweet you, should you be a microblogger as well as a regular blogger and Facebook fan.

Our handle over at Twitter? Why @1001BooksBlog. What else could we be?

If you like to get your notifications in a short and sweet kind of way, each blog post here will show up there for your greatest convenience. Pithy it most certainly will be.
Tweet on book lovers.

Alias Grace – Margaret Atwood

September 14, 2012September 13, 2012Ms Oh WailyLeave a comment

Book #109

Reviewer: Beth, of Beth’s List Love (First published July 2012)

Recently I have read a string of books with protagonists who are murderers or at least thieves. In this book, the guilt or innocence of the protagonist is at least in doubt. While my last several protagonists were self-professed criminals, Grace Marks, of Alias Grace has been convicted of murder, but claims she cannot recall critical details of events surrounding the deaths for which she has been imprisoned. The novel is based on a real criminal case, and Atwood’s treatment of the topic is artistically masterful without giving up a bit of the suspense of a good murder mystery. My Goodreads review begins with an excerpt from early in the book, as Grace is getting to know the doctor who has traveled from Massachusetts to interview her.

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

And that is how we go on. He asks a question, and I say an answer, and he writes it down. In the courtroom, every word that came out of my mouth was as if burnt into the paper they were writing it on, and once I said a thing I knew I could never get the words back; only they were the wrong words, because whatever I said it would be twisted around, even if it was the plain truth in the first place. And it was the same thing with Dr. Bannerling at the Asylum. But now I feel as if everything I say is right. As long as I say something, anything at all, Dr. Jordan smiles and writes it down, and tells me I am doing well.
While he writes, I feel he is drawing me; or not drawing me, drawing on me–drawing on my skin–not with the pencil he is using, but with an old-fashioned goose pen, and not with the quill end, but with the feather end. As if hundreds of butterflies have settled all over my face, and are softly opening and closing their wings.

But underneath that is another feeling, a feeling of being wide-awake and watchful. It’s like being wakened suddenly in the middle of the night, by a hand over your face, and you sit up with your heart going fast, and no one is there. And underneath that is another feeling still, a feeling like being torn open; not like a body of flesh, it is not painful as such, but like a peach; and not even torn open, but too ripe and splitting open of its own accord.
And inside the peach there’s a stone.

In Alias Grace, which was shortlisted for the Orange Prize in 1997, Margaret Atwood tackles a historical mystery from a small town in Canada in the mid-19th Century. Did Grace Marks participate in the murder of her employer and his housekeeper/mistress or was she simply an innocent bystander taken hostage by the stable-hand who was convicted and hanged for the crime? The real Grace Marks was sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life in prison, and eventually Grace was released. Atwood approaches the events in the tale through the device of a young doctor, Simon Jordan, who comes to interview Grace in order to test methods of dealing with amnesia. The novel alternates between two points of view. Grace reflects on her current situation, as in the quote above, and also provides edited and unedited versions of the answers to questions Dr. Jordan asks her. The other perspective is the young doctor’s. He struggles with big and small decisions about his own personal life, while at the same time trying to discern the truth about the crime Grace is accused of committing. Through these two lenses, the novel explores class issues, sex roles, the nature of memory, and the 19th century spirtualism craze, among other themes. The characters are well and sympathetically drawn. Grace is a strong, perceptive and appealing heroine. Her life history has made her both wise and circumspect in her dealings with those around her. Dr. Jordan is younger and more naive, and serves as a fascinating counterpoint to Grace. Atwood begins each section of the novel with selections from literature and from contemporary documents about the historical murder case. The book gets under your skin, and is very hard to put down. In some ways it is the most straightforward and accessible of the Atwood novels I have read, but that doesn’t make it a simple book. It’s a suspenseful and fascinating read.