Book Tamers| book reviews

The Magic Toyshop is a descriptive novel rather than a dynamic one. So descriptive that I could say the minute descriptions spread on about half of it. The effect is a positive one though, and I would go even further, believing that it is the one expected by the author, but I will talk about this later.

Melanie’s life, the main character, seems taken from the Before and After column of a women’s magazine. Except that instead of the make-up session or the facial lifting there is her parents’ death. Before is a luxurious life, with daily bathing in hot water, perfumes, dresses and a beautiful house; an elegant mother, a little eccentric father, but reckless enough not to save any money for their children. A happy, careless life, which ends just about when Melanie was beginning to discover herself, at the age of 15. After is a life in a gruesome house, miserable, with a rusty boiler which is an adventure to turn on, with a little piece of home-made soap and fuggy air.

Things wouldn’t be so terrible, if the inhabitants didn’t make up a ”nuthouse”. The house belongs to her uncle, the owner of the toyshop, which he manufactures together with his apprentice. However, he is a terrifying presence, a violent and masterly man of whom everybody in the house is afraid and who has decided to erase from Melanie and her brother and little sister any resemblance to their father, whom he couldn’t stand. Aunt Maggie, who became mute her wedding day, and her brothers, Francie and Finn are the uncle’s puppets. They always obey him and are as odd as the rest of the house.

What becomes clear is that the three have a secret. As time goes by, the reader learns about them through Melanie’s eyes, who observes every detail, while they become close to her, Finn more than the other two. All these details make up an oppressive, overwhelming atmosphere, above which there stands the presence of the uncle, and as the pages become less, one can tell that the disaster is near. This is the effect I was talking about in the beginning. Looking from this perspective, all those descriptions are not as boring as one would expect.

The disaster occurs, the secret is revealed, but the ending is disarming. It is mute to the same extent to which the characters’ souls are explored. It is obvious that the only magic the toyshop ever made is forcing Melanie to become mature, but could this maturity already had turn into indifference?

Seeing Melanie’s terrified face expression, which pictures the apogee of the book, the moment when she plays Leda in her uncle’s sketch, I realize I have finally found a cover connected to the book. However, I cannot catch a glimpse of the resigned girl in the end. If only there had been another page…

Written by Raluca

Khaled Hosseini’s novel, recently adapted into a film of the same name, has all the ingredients of a bestseller: friendship, betrayal, salvation, exoticism, happy ending. They are all decently mingled with one another; however, there is nothing spectacular, on one hand, and on the other, there are also no illegible clichés.

Strictly referring to what it is told and not how it is told, The Kite Runner is a captivating novel: it takes you in the Afghanistan of the ’70s, calm, monumental, in the America of the immigrants, back into the new Afghanistan taken over by the Taliban, in an incredible rhythm, which sometimes seems to be out of the author’s control. It is an amazing story which leaves out its author, which is autogoverning, which, as in fairytales, is beyond credibility.

Amir, the insecure and coward hero of his own story, has the tone of the one that wants to make up for his mistakes: the fact that he betrayed Hassan, his childhood friend, is a burden that he carries with him all his life, until he finds a way to make it up for it. Also, he strongly wishes that his dad would be pleased with him, both during childhood and after they exile themselves to America. This is the world that Amir gets to know and it doesn’t matter that it is about the Kabul of his childhood, the Afghan community in America or the ruins of the city that he sees years after. Thus, even though the social-political context is mentioned, only history at a smaller scale is emphasized. The manner in which the characters are integrated in history has - nevertheless - a certain searched exotism, defending the occidental reader from too much horror and serving images that he’s already used to by the media.

Up to the end, the cliché can’t be avoided: the cliché is a concentrated form of truth, a sort of an instrument. However, it has to be noticed that the story has enough content to be self told: the character’s reflections and those of the author through the character can’t but disadvantage it.

Up till now, it is clear that the recipe for The Kite Runner is working between some limits: what is most important is the story- this is the most important principle. But for me and my personal way of evaluating a book, educated in the European kind of way, the story can’t be told just like that. If there was some subtlety, Khaled Hosseini would have extended the metaphor of the kites up to the one that could say that Afghanistan is controlled by some other states’ strings. With the help of this subtlety, he would have restrained Amir’s intellectualizations, so unreal in its dullness, too flashy if considering the bad times that he experiences.

In the end, I recommend this novel to those that want to be drawn into a tensioned and touching story, in a world that they got to know watching news on TV or movies. Amateurs that would wish to be thrilled could be dissapointed.

Written by Mihaela

In Atonement, Ian McEwan presents one of the most interesting love scenes I have read lately. His most recent novel evolves around the presentation of the first night in the life of a newly weds, in a conservative social context.

Although it is not a real novel, On Chesil Beach resembles a classic drama in five acts.
The story takes place in 1962, a period that is precursory to sexual revolution (a motive that will be very discussed along the book). Edward and Florence are two young people who get married and spend their first night together in a hotel in Dorset, somewhere on the English Channel.

They’re both virgins and they live the thrill of their first night in different ways: Edward’s shyness mingles with anticipation, whilst Florence lives a true inner drama, between happiness and disgust, being actually terrified with the little she knew about sex.
During this tensioned scene between the two, the reader gets acquainted with their past- their families, personalities, their plans and future hopes, their sensitivity, the lack of experience and ease, all these in a time when discussions about sexuality or sexual problems were practically impossible.

McEwan recreates the sexual tension perfectly, blending both past and present problems of the two: Edward’s anxiety of waiting and Florence’s fright concerning sexual intimacy. These unsaid problems will lead to an event that will change their relationship for good.

The geography of the Chesil Beach is characterized by a 25 kilometer land that time and sea have shaped in a certain way. Little rocks are polished and placed in an increasing way, depending on their size, along the 25 kilometer land, so that the beach is like a map of time. The local fishermen pride themselves with the capacity of identifying their exact location by looking only at the size and the form of the stones.

McEwan’s story sets the words as stones on a beach of time. The way the author makes the tension evolve is incredible, even when the whole drama is nothing more than a drama of unsaid words and fear of failure. The social context that influences the two characters’ life decisions is also described carefully and it is actually a good reason to read the book. On another hand, the purity and the exaggerated naivety of the characters, the microscopic structure of the story, and the light analysis of their personalities are not enough to create, in my opinion, a real novel.

As in Atonement, McEwan’s style is subtle, gently graded, with no peak of tension, and which in the end leaves a striking dramatic conclusion: the way a life can change is by doing nothing at all.

Written by: Alin

When people around you hear you’re reading a horror novel and that actually you’re captivated by the whole bunch of pages, they immediately request full actual data, the author, the title, they express their fright when it comes to the number of pages, but due to a shiny cover, a perfect drawing, a clever foreword, they easily get curious and they all have the same desire: to read it. Well, according to Michel Faber, they partially become reading vodsels.

But what are vodsels? I will not reveal the subject of the book more than the fourth cover does…and I actually don’t know what’s stopping me. A very young and well-adjusted woman picks up every day one hitchhiker so that the people in her underground world to process him as our meat factories do and to serve him as file to the rich subterranean people. These creatures have a different morphology than ours, they walk on four legs, but they have a fox mouth, long ears, tail and they have discovered a way of transforming one of them, named Isserley, in a vodsel female, that is a hot sexy biped.

The novel includes in its narrative space both places where Isserley looks for her victims, that is Highway 9, and the farm where the latter are fattened and carved. As a matter of fact, I thought that every scary novel should have a dark spot, with barbaric, rude and butcher-like creatures.

The perspective of the book is given from the point of view of the bait woman, of this being who has to pretend she is fragile, breathing sexuality, but who actually can barely wait for the moment when she pushes a button that will paralyze the victim. Isserley is the flower of the underworld, morphologically modified in order to have the vodsels’ appearance, but bearing the nostalgia of the lost organs. Nonetheless, her sexual attractiveness is given by her breasts and her hair, the woman is actually scaring some of the hitchhikers, she has a skin full of scars, and her unearthly eyes are masked with the help of some glasses with very thick lenses. She has a strange appearance, a rare understanding capacity; something weird comes out of her. Most of the hitchhikers think it is sexual desire, but the finest psychologists would have a lot of questions to ask this woman driver.

Now, why have I read this novel? Well, first of all because of a statement on the fourth cover that says it could be considered a new „1984”, respectively the description of a phase our society goes through or will go through. We could thus understand that there is or it is about to exist an underground world that appreciates from a culinary point of view the human meat and that there are evidently drivers that seek for lone hitchhikers in order to transform them in soup and steak.

As for the narrative accomplishments of the book, one can see that the action is represented by a monotonous series of murders on the same recipe, that the human society remains indifferent facing the number of the victims that is increasing considering that Isserley takes care of that every single day. I also take notice of the fact that beyond action, it is about the description of some people, who not being able to predict their future death, tell her about their daily routines, their indecision, misunderstandings, the way society treats them. Isserley waits from each and single hitchhiker the confession that no one will ever be interested in them and once she hears that, she pushes the paralyzing button. Some manage to get away, the popular ones, those who are loved or the physically weak. This diabolic machine is a kind of a psychiatric office where the patients, under the aphrodisiac effect of the enormous breasts of the driver, easily confess, they don’t get she’s pushy, that their ego is spoiled so that they could reveal themselves better.

I should also remind the persuasive techniques– Isserley follows some compulsory stages: finding the passenger’s destination, if he is in a hurry or not to reach a certain destination, if he’s expected by someone, and then she offers her breasts in many provocative positions, to stir the clients and to make them think about their own sexual relationships, the way they get along with their women, and she finds out many of them are divorced, they live alone, they’re misunderstood. Isserley becomes a confessor like the hookers who patiently listen all kinds of melodramatic stories from the men who seek to motivate and eventually to justify themselves that they are in their company. The one that got divorced are stung, the travelers as well, and so does the unemployed, the loners and the isolated. As Isserley says to herself, she has the impression society itself sends her the right victims, the hitchhikers are socially conflicted, inconstant and abusive … Isserley gets the impression she resembles a lion that takes care of the human herd purifying it by exterminating the undesired elements, pushed to the edges of society. It is here an allegory of euthanasia or in another plan a parable of the law of the jungle.

What this novel lacks is ideas, a certain consistency. This kind of things can show up only after the reader’s analysis, which is actually let to see what he wants and in the end he is totally lost because of the ambiguous ending. What is to be a hitchhiker, why some people hang around highways, why are they some kind of fishermen of what the street has to offer, how people who pick up hitchhikers think and why they do it, the relationship between driving and loneliness, these are the real questions here.

Plato and his two worlds can’t be forgotten especially when it comes about novels that suppose the presence of us and them, and beings in Isserley’s world look like those in the allegorical cave of the Greek philosopher. Moreover, I thought that Isserley, even though she has the chance of rejoicing the beauties of this world, which are unbelievable for those of her kind, still hangs on to the same initial habits and misunderstandings. She is from this point of view, a psychically inferior being, only the first in the series of butchers in the vodsels’ world. The one that makes the discrepancy between the two worlds, their fundamental differences and the pettiness of his kind is Amlis Vess, a visitor from the underground Dark Worlds, a very rich being who does not have to carry on the dirty chores of his poor fellow creatures. He admires the beauties of the Upper World, he thinks the sky is amazing, the sea is large, the leaves- a phenomenon that makes him think for hours, and sheep are mistaken for clever creatures. Isserley admires the Lower World, and this motivates her to kill, she is nostalgic about her genetically non-modified body, she likes vodsel meat and she often sees in the people down the road just some delicious hunks, but she also presents the image of the underground world and the superior capacity that her fellow creatures would rejoice.

Unfortunately, Michel Faber doesn’t explain the things that truly define an underground creature and the words he invented are actually barbaric and don’t cover any actual reality.
I found here the same trick as in the SF novels. When they should explain what is warp speed or what are the beauties of the underworld in the future, on Planet XP 223, then there is no magical explanation and the bridge to the psychological part is made. Maybe this is why SF novels or their fantastical tricks were successful only after the emphasis moved from action to psychology and from motivation to introspection.

In the end- I am a little bit confused. Did I like the novel or not? It is a new 1984! I think the verdict on the cover can’t be justified, Michel Faber’s writing is dated, and it belongs to those books that once read they just go away with no regrets. I should however praise the storytelling technique of this British author and especially his capacity of joggling multiple meanings, to maintain the story on the distinct and thin line between sexuality, meanness and knowledge.

Written by: Gabriel

Umberto Eco is the author’s whose novels have always fascinated me ever since I encountered him for the first time in Foucault’s Pendulum. I didn’t manage to read it then and the same happened later with other three novels. But I felt that there was something there, something that I will understand after sometime, when I will have gathered the necessary life experience. He is an extremely complex author who crowds the description with multiple cultural, religious, historical and technical references and I have the impression that each one is put there with a specific purpose.

What I have read, understood and liked a lot are his articles, which appeared in semiotic magazines and a few collections. How to Travel with a Salmon is itself a collection of articles written between 1959 and 1961 in an Italian magazine. Under the shape of editorials, Eco manages to give his own definition of irony.

The title of the book is given by the last article, an atypical one, in which the author foreshadows something of the world of How to Travel with a Salmon, the novel which appeared 40 years later. St Baudolino is a protector of Alessanjdria, the province where the writer was born, a symbol of the place he talks about so dearly.

All of the other articles are “How to” guides: how to play an Indian in an American movie, how to organize a public library, to spend intelligent holydays, follow instructions, buy gadgets. Two pages each about a particular subject which reveals much of the human nature.

Consequently, if we want to play an Indian we are given adivece to: ”leave obvious signs of your passing-by: horse footprints, put out campfires, feathers and amulets which make the identification of the tribe easier.” or ”never use all of your men in an ambush, replace them as they are being hit.” Adapted, these could be trademarks of any American movie where the Right and Wrong are absolute and therefore absurd.

The same in the case of the public library which is usually very hostile concerning the personnel and the structure; or the holidays for which the press recommends books that are actually compulsory; or the instructions which are very elaborate and hard to understand or the gadgets which become more useless everyday. Eco manages to see a detail which many miss and he analyzes it with impeccable logic and irresistible humor.

Some say that irony is an insult said with a smile upon the face, others that it is the expression of a contradictory truth told in a funny way. Eco manages to meet both points of view, wrapping them up with a charm that would make the articles pleasant even to the one who is being hint at. Paying attention to the details of the society in which he lives, extremely present and adapted to his time, he observes the imperfections and the decays around him, making meaningful fun of them.

Being a collection of articles, How to Travel with a Salmon is a book to take along on a trip and be read in the car, in a waiting room or any other public place, that is if you don’t feel embarrassed to be seen laughing all by yourself, without apparent reason. One doesn’t need much time, as one or two articles at a time are enough. Each of them fills the reader with meanings and makes one wonder. At least that is what happened to me.

Written by Gia

Peter Beagle is commonly associated by Fantasy literature readers with the novel The Last Unicorn- considered to be one of the ten best Fantasy novels ever written. I haven’t read that one though, this being my first encounter with the author, so you will have to take their word for it.

A Fine and Private Place is his first novel and the fact that it rapidly became a classic of the genre is indeed to be appreciated, as Peter Beagle was only nineteen when he wrote the book.

The story begins with an evil-toadied raven which brings food to Mr. Rebeck, a chemist who has been living in a cemetery for twenty years. The reason for which he is there is his fear of the living people. His company is only represented (besides the talkative raven) by the spirits of the dead, before they vanish forever, once having forgotten how it felt to be alive. Two of them are the ghosts of Laura and Michael who meet in Mr. Rebeck’s cemetery in order to do something they couldn’t do during their lifetime.

Then there is also Ms Klapper, the widow who runs into Mr. Rebeck on her way to her former husband’s grave. Her apparition will turn Mr. Rebeck’s calm and hidden world upside-down.

The two pairs are seen in an antithetic manner: Mr. Rebeck hides away from life while Ms Klapper is afraid of dying. Michael and Laura, although they both shared a tragic end, look upon afterlife in different ways: Michael desperately tries not to forget the past, while Laura wants to leave the cemetery as soon as possible. However, their conversations about life, the exterior world and about love will reveal to them that their past, hopes and ambitions make them quite similar.

Peter Beagle does a great job in shaping his characters. The narrative begins slowly, with news about the exterior world brought by the raven and continues with its influences on Mr. Rebeck’s life. Even though at times sad, the story leads to a happy ending for both of the worlds. The love story is very original, taking in consideration other existing ones. The dialogues, although sometimes slightly artificial, sustain some interesting ideas about symbols connected to life and inter-human relationships. And the raven (whose black humor reminds me of Neil Gaiman’s style) is more than a bridge between the world represented by the cemetery and the one outside it. It is a bridge between the world of the living and the one of the dead, between the story and the reader, as the whole action seems to be seen through its dark eyes.

Written by Alin

Alabama Song is not Zelda Fitzgerald’s biography, as we are being cautioned in the beginning of the novel. Actually it would be pretty hard to take it for a biography due to the chaotic structure and the madness of the narrator, a madness that infiltrates every word and phrase up to the point when truth, fiction, time and history itself mingle in a stunning amalgam, at times hard to follow, but so fascinating to read.

The novel begins from the very cover, where lies the sepia portrait of the most talked about couple of the ‘20s, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. The portrait is fascinating because of the bizarre attraction between the two and especially because of the look in Zelda’s eyes, who seems to be contemplating a riotously interior world rather than paying attention to the camera. I came back to the cover several times while reading the novel and her look had new meanings every time.

The novel is narrated by Zelda and is written in the form of a diary, but there appear some time discrepancies. Half of a chapter takes place during the First World War and in the other half we meet a nostalgic Zelda (and a little crazy) talking 20 years later. The events are not inserted in their natural temporal order, but are moved back and forth in the structure of the novel in order to create a spider web out of the confused memories of an old and schizophrenic Zelda. I guess that Gilles Leroy chose this kind of a structure to show that one’s life cannot be totally described, not even autobiographically.

But, as I said before, Alabama Song is a novel, not a biography. Zelda will leave the conservatory south of the interwar New York and she will get to France and then Spain, where “The Lost Generation” lives in a self-imposed artistic exile. Her relationship with Scott is of course the central point of the novel, and its description puts the American writer in a very bad light, as he steals her novels and puts her away in psychiatric hospitals. This torrid relationship will eventually destroy both of them, and the great couple’s decline is almost hypnotic to follow. We see again how society finds pleasure in creating idols only to destroy them and watch them fall apart.

I think the great merit of the author lies not in the late defense of Zelda Fitzgerald, but in the way he became one with the character and wrote in her voice. Every sentence is a bizarre mix of venom, nostalgia, hate and love, and Zelda’s madness floats through the letters in rising quantities until it distorts the whole novel. The only disadvantage is that the events are sometimes hard to follow and connect, being pulled out of their natural course.

Alabama Song is a whirlpool which absorbs both Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald and the reader, a whirlpool like the one of the ‘20s which absorbed a whole generation of American writers but at the same time produced masterpieces of great value. Everything stops leaving behind a crazy and tired Zelda, upon whom the reader can draw personal conclusions. My conclusion only regards the novel, and it is a positive one, as it was pleasant to read Alabama Song and discover such a fictionalized version of Zelda Fitzgerald.

Written by Cristi

„There are eight million ways to die, and among them there are a lot that are appropriate for those who want to do it on their own. No matter how bad subways look, they do their job when one jumps before them. And the city has plenty of terraces and windows on the upper floors, and the shops are open twenty four hours per day and they sell razor blades and ropes and sleeping pills.”

Welcome to Matt Scudder’s world, a private detective. The hero in Eight million ways to die written by Lawrence Block is a „veteran” of the streets. One can say he has experienced everything. As a retired police officer, authorization-free private detective, AA member, Scudder accepts to help a prostitute get out of the system. What he doesn’t know is that in 48 hours, Kim will be found dead in a hotel.

From this moment on, Matt Scudder feels guilty for the prostitute’s fate and will do his best to find the killer. What really drives him is the fact that he becomes the client of the former pimp, Chance, who wants the exact same thing. Scudder lives in the city where there is nothing else but death and ignorance. But that will not stop him from finding the killer.

I don’t like going in too much in the plot of Eight million ways to die and that is mainly because a detective novel can’t be narrated. But I can congratulate the publishing house for their thriller& mystery collection which gave me the opportunity of getting to know one of Lawrence Block’s characters. But what has to be said is the feeling I had when reading Block: do you remember those movies in the 50’s or 60’s where private detectives solve every possible case? At first, this was the impression Eight million ways to die gave me. But soon, coming back to present day has made me come to life and recognize the style that is so captivating.

The action is told by the character/ narrator Matt Scudder, who apparently appears in many other novels. The reader finds out even Scudder’s thoughts between dialogues, and this brings more authenticity. Practically, the reader steps in the crowded city and follows the leads together with Matt Scudder.

Another thing that I liked was this incongruity with the ideal image of the hero-private detective. Lawrence Block’s Scudder is a former police officer, now an alcoholic who not only fights shady characters on the street, and faces crime, but he also has to face his urge to drink. The description of the character’s state of mind while drinking a glass of alcohol at the AA meetings is actually what makes him so real.

Characters in Eight million ways to die are common people and that is because they are built just as they would appear before our eyes. I just want to add that I am not a fan of detective mysteries, I haven’t tasted this kind of literature too much. But this novel made up my mind: Lawrence Block deserves all the prizes he received for his literary activity.

I could tell you more about the plot or about Matt Scudder but I would hate making you miss the pleasure of discovering this detective, his angst, Chance, the pimp with the dead employees and the rest of the characters that run their existence in Eight million ways to die.

Enjoy!

Written by Cristina

Some teenage friends saw me reading this particular book and they smiled at me with that ironic sprinkle in their eyes. „We have read that when we were young. Why wasting time on this”?  How could I explain them that a beautiful book never wastes one’s time. Or that this reader quality takes you out of the body’s traps and the flat reality dimension.
These friends have become grown-ups mentally. They have reached a point where they valued things on their price and dimension. Grown-ups love other type of books, the wrestling-type: The big Prince, Gorgon-eyed. The Oil Prince, the Wall Street King, the lord of the dance.

But there are things outside size. There is a place that allows our existence, the others’ existence, without self-proclaimed earthly kingdoms, without pride in the battle flag. A place where we can place Socrates, the philosopher who never wrote a book back in the Antiquity, and also Saint-Exupery. It’s not the size, but the nature of things that seem to have a real price. Why are they like that and what do they mean? That’s what Socrates searched for in the Athens’ agora many centuries ago. That’s what Saint Exupery is looking for in this parable of the little prince. The sound of things. The melody of beings. Their mystery. The beauty.

Socrates went to a merchant without caring if he was the greatest. For he was not a merchant or he rarely was one, he understood the one in front of him as a bearer of the merchant idea. But don’t we buy and sell all our lives? Don’t we try to embellish, sometimes artificially, our own things? Isn’t there any competition? Isn’t the merchant the one that can give us an image of the way these kind of relationships work in their natural habitat- the economical one- for us to understand their intrusion in our soul? And especially, asked Socrates, what is to be a merchant, king of Wall Street? How does it compete with life’s most important things, like the good, the beauty, the truth?
Facing cynical answers like the one that a merchant is beyond morality, he would shrug his shoulders and keep looking for somebody else to talk to. He was looking for that particular merchant who understood that talking about the nature of things is not a simple babbling, but a way of exploring one’s deepest abyss. It was a way of knowing oneself.

Thus, in the middle of the XX-th century, Saint-Exupery, the aviator, presents the Little Prince as a Socratic parable. He has the same curiosity when he looks for significations and symbols both in humans and in things. He tells us that each human being has a planet of his own, and that this planet embellishes or it is disfigured by the person’s behavior and nature. He also tells us that we live in a major illusion that makes us incredibly static. One imagines he’s a king but he has no servants. Another one is ready to lethally bite any other living being. One thinks that the meaning of people on Earth is to admire him. Some are slaves - like the Little Prince - of a beauty’s vanities.

That’s why sometimes, a journey is important for shaking the shackles’ rustiness from the realistic monotony of a “grown-up”. That’s why the two characters, the aviator and the Little Prince, are in their own way travelers that fell together in the same desert for a few days. The aviator is terrified by the perspective of his imminent death, his plane crashed in an isolated place, and the Little Prince is sad because his planet is full of baobabs and tyrannized by flowers. The things on his planet are not in the right order, and that’s why he visits other planets - to see something different, maybe something better.

Before I go any further, I should explain my own reaction. I could have joined my friends in irony if I had seen the book in somebody else’s hands. The beginning of the book gave me the impression of a fairytale in which a man in need creates himself an illusion to help him survive in the desert. But fiction will acquire during the deployment of the plot many other sentimental colors than an adult couldn’t possibly see, and the disappearance or the death of the Little Prince has a tragic, apotheosis tone. However, he didn’t even exist. But still, he exists beyond reality, there, on his planet and somewhere on everybody’s planet. It’s an intensity moment from childhood. From our eternal childhood.
What is childhood anyway? We ask this as Socrates does a child. No, not the greatest child, the king child. No. Just a regular kid. And we may receive the answer that in childhood we must remember about dreams and games. But does what we imagined start to make room into reality? And what are games but a repeated try to solve society’s puzzles?
That’s childhood in the Little Prince. He plays with curiosity and learns something from every encounter. It is everything he can take back to his planet, it’s everything that the aviator gets from him. Mirrors of the human abyss.

Here’s what a fox teaches him: that people need rituals and that they appreciate realities that can be tamed, like being cared for, raised and helped by the people around him. A snake shows him that among people one can feel alone, and a geographer reveals to him that beautiful things needn’t be on a map for they are ephemeral.

Why were those young people sarcastic with me? How many topics, similar to this story, could they have discussed? I feel for the first time the need to go back to this book and read it again because I was so touched by the little prince’s disappearance. But this time, in French, where I will definitely find delicacies that can’t be translate.

I would like to add something about Saint Exupery’s technique. It is close to Jacques Prevert’s simple attitude, it has a clear modern manner, it uses cinematographic procedures like moving away and foreground, it has no real background but who cares, really? I can’t really wait for the aviator’ engine to break down again. The Little Prince will show up asking for a sheep to be drawn and will drift away all my anxieties with his starry smile.

Written by Gabriel

So Many Ways to Begin is first and foremost a novel about a simple story, about a life like any other, but through the charm and attention of Jon McGregor it becomes a life of historic importance.

A dense novel, minutely built up, So Many Ways to Begin makes use of many starting points, stories that resemble threads which interweave to create the complex story of a simple man, David Carter.

The interesting construction technique

If one can’t find out the reason for the way the novel begins, one’s reading can be hardened and transformed into a tiring and discouraging one by the abundance of short chapters without apparent connection. But as the story develops, three main ideas stand out: David’s marriage to Eleanor, Eleanor’s childhood and David’s wish to shed light upon his past.

McGregor’s narrator is omniscient, although the narrative sometimes bounces between first and third person. However, the humanization of the narrator is achieved through the empathy and heart warmth showed towards the characters.

This aspect is also sustained by the new manner of involving dialogue in the text, by which McGregror manages to sweep away the barrier between words and feelings.

Life built up out of details

…hand-written letters, a cigarette-holder, a child’s gloves, a napkin, a salary note or a “metal, rusty biscuit-box, used as a piggy bank or to keep souvenirs” are the small things which we often miss, ignore and easily push away.

It is these little things that David has an interest in, these “meaningless things” help him discover the pleasure of life and through them he tries to bring out the past which keeps him prisoner. With the help of David we understand why nothing is meaningless, how every thing keeps memories and the force of the past which it represents, how life doesn’t need to be grandiose in order to be beautiful.

The mother as the eternal disappointment

McGregor’s novel abounds in mothers: young, old, with one child, more or none, loving, distant or violent. But none of them manages to have a healthy relationship with her child, to show or to prove her love; they all end up pushed away from the child’s life. From the exhausted and violent mother to the loving but incapable of understanding, to the one who would give her child anything but cannot give him birth or to the absent mother, without substance, maternity remains a failure in McGregor’s eyes.

The curse of the blood

David is the adult who finds out that his whole life has been built upon a false foundation. The truth propels him in a never-ending search and investigation of the past, but leaves him with the disillusion of having only what he has built up in the present, with the past being impenetrable.

So Many Ways to Begin has a devastating force, achieved through the simplicity and clarity of the style. The characters are molded attentively and with patience, the feelings are real and the implications have echo in the soul of every reader.

Written by Ama