Book Tamers| book reviews

Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando are the main characters of the filmed version of this book. With their images in mind it’s hard to imagine this story as a simple Southern one, a violent coming out of the routine, a piece of news from the “local dramas” column. This short story is as awkward and disquieting as all of Carson McCullers’ writings; she prefers the depressing certainty that all of the world is different, that deviation is the new normality and this is probably where the first signs of McCullers’ fame as strange came from. However, more important is the fact that, two decades before Capote’s In Cold Blood, although in a different manner, Reflections in a Golden Eye searches for a meaning in crime and refuses the absolute portraits of victim and murderer. All the characters are victims and at the same time someone’s murderer.

The book’s most visible quality is concision: in less than 200 pages there appear a few stories so desperate and characters so minutely described, that it seems hard for the author to solve them till the end of the book. And still she does it in a very simple manner, through an expected denouement.

Until the end, the story has the aspect of a tense observation: on the one side private Williams grows an obsession for Leonora, captain Weldon Penderton’s wife, watching her quietly until he is discovered; on the other side, the captain, his wife and major Morris Langdon form a confused amorous triangle, given the captain’s latent homosexuality and Leonora’s appetite for flirting. Also, captain Penderton himself is examining private Williams, whose primitive calmness irritates and attracts him.

Private Williams ”had the strange, meditative face of a primitive man from Gaugain’s paintings”, is written somewhere, and this is a detail strong enough to indicate that the private’s opacity and simplicity are worse than fury and violence.

In the same sad, contemplative way, without facilitating any moral conclusion, is Penderton also described:

”This quantity of medicine caused him a unique, voluptuous sensation; it was as if a big, black bird halted on his chest, looked at him with fierce, golden eyes and stealthily embraced him with its dark wings.” He is an ailing man, overwhelmed by his aunts’ excessive carefulness, haunted by childhood memories, untruthful to himself, uncertain of whether he loves his wife or her lover; a complex character, with his soul caught in the strings of abstinence and cowardice.

The Major’s wife, Alison, and her devoted servant, Anacleto, represent another point of interest: two awkward, marginal figures, with their own childish and touching rituals, and their discussions about the quality of dreams, music, beautiful clothing materials, peacocks, as if making fun od the others’ so-called social-life:

”And the dinner from the evening of that last concert! Amacleto stepped victoriously and proudly behind her in the hotel’s dinning room, dressed-up in his orange velvet sack coat. When his turn to order came, he lifted the menu in front of his face, and completely closed his eyes. To the surprise of the colored waiter, he ordered in French.”

Their project of escaping the military fort’s somber reality, out of their status as observers, fails. In a way, their ridiculous plans have more meaning than the events that surround the amorous triangle Leonora- Morris- Weldon, followed by private Williams as by a shadow. However, without an ending, their project remains an illusion. Actually, the only way to come out of a situation that has made them both anxious watchers and watched, is death. But the final scene, of a grotesque beauty, motionless and perfect, casts doubt upon this solution: it might be that death doesn’t solve anything.

Doubt, dilemma are not unusual effects for the world Carson McCullers writes about, even if the author has the precision of a scalpel when it comes to evaluating the humane aspect: what is certain cannot be reached, what causes one fear is the thing closest to one, what one wishes for goes further when one believes it is the closest. Simple? This is another way of asking the question:

”Do you mean that any achievement gained with the price of normality is wrong and should not be let to bring happiness? said Captain Penderton.”

Written by Mihaela

Ishiguro is one of the few writers I would recommend entirely. Because every time I read one of his books I was completely fascinated: from the plot, to the language, to his capacity to create a hallucinatory and bizarre world and to his charming and complex characters.

When We Were Orphans is a strong, magnificent novel, a novel which goes beyond its appearance as realistic in order to become a postmodernist jewel.

A combination between the suspense of a detective story and the sensitivity of a confession, the action swings between England (the image of the old centre of Imperial power) and Shanghai, where the West meets the East, the product of the Western hegemonic ambitions.

Christopher Banks, the main character and the narrator, grows up in Shanghai and comes back to England, after his parents mysteriously disappear. Tormented for the whole of his life by this mystery, he becomes a famous detective and decides to go back and find out what happened to his parents. Upon his arrival in Shanghai, the novel radically changes its shape and we are introduced in an unreal, Kafka-like world.

Growing up under the protection of colonial power’s enclave, Christopher is even more surprised by the kidnapping of his parents by the Chinese anarchical troops. But Ishiguro suggests that beyond the protagonist’s failure to find his parents there lies the West’s and Japan’s failure to conquer China.

The novel is structured around seven dated chapters. But this dates have no relevance to the story line, as they only represent the date when they were written, when the narrator remembered the events he writes about. And although Christopher assures the readers that he is an objective observer and that the data he presents belongs to a professional detective, most of the times he has to admit to the feelings’ influence and his incapacity of keeping distance from the events he narrates.

When We Were Orphans owes much of its charm to this continuous uncertainty and to the fact that Ishiguro denies the traditional chronology. The construction similar to a puzzle patched up with uncertain memories, gives the unmistakable color of the world created by Ishiguro.

Written by Ana-Maria

At first sight, The Devil’s Larder wasn’t appealing at all. And that is mainly because the presentation has nothing exciting on the surface (it has a rather tern cover). Jim Crace was an unknown name to me. And maybe it would have stayed that way if I hadn’t picked up The Devil’s Larder.
Crace’s book has 64 stories and reminds us of the “hidden goodies” of the human lusts, it says something about things that are maybe impossible to “digest”. And that is because characters in The Devil’s Larder have cravings that are hard to be satisfied, they become people submitted to instincts. And nothing is more exciting than a secret that has been discovered.
If at first sight Crace takes into the universe of larder full of food that can be explored and tried, later on I understood the author’s aim: food is left aside when human feelings and their interaction come up. Food is just an instrument that awakes the sense, temptations, guilt, disappointment, fear, etc. It is about those senses that most of us don’t feel when we eat.
Even though I’m not a fan of a soup made of an old leather purse, one can’t skip the intriguing food. It is actually the surprise, the uncertainty of what characters might eat that makes The Devil’s Larder a “delicious” book”!
Of course, it’s hard to explain what hides beneath the 130 pages of the book. But The Devil’s Larder gives me a strange feeling, a sweet guilt and pleasure and that is why I’d read it again. What did Crace gave me? Well, recipes that will tell me if I’m going to be a great cook, neighbour or wife. It gave me the taste of some sauces that can become and foods that stir imagination.
I can’t do anything else but to invite you all open this fantastic book and choose from its shelves a box, a can or food. I’m sure you will find something to your taste.

Written by Cristina

Life proves to have this quality of being forgotten and ignored. We take each day for granted, we think it’s ours no matter what, that it has no end and doesn’t ask for anything in return. We weave a cocoon around us that keeps us from the outside world and we “decorate” it with what we think makes it wealthy.
The personal comfort is our final goal, and egocentrism isolates us from what actually lives around us. We build defense walls in order to protect ourselves and we end up alone and cold behind them.

What do we actually do when we look death in the face? How do we defend ourselves then? Where do we hide? And how do we keep on living?

Richard Novak, a wealthy business man in Los Angeles, has to answer these questions, because he has a pain of unknown origin which makes him conscious about the idea that he can die anytime.

Richard is what we call a successful man: he earns money with a minimum effort, he lives a very organized and healthy life, he has a house on the Los Angeles hills, an expensive car, a housekeeper, a nutritionist and a personal trainer.

His visit to the ER changes radically his life and takes him to an adventure that is beyond any reason. Homes’ happenings, narrated in a constant and inflexion free voice, describes a supernatural Los Angeles, rotten and hilarious, with traditional typologies of characters.

Beside the rich, lonely man, Homes brings up the neurotic and frustrated wife, the modest cinema star, the philosophical immigrant, the famous writer and some other supporting characters on their way to success in this movie center.

The emptiness in Richard’s life reflects in that hole next to his house, the artificial silence that he’s fighting for, in his flavourless diet that he’s imposing on himself. But life asks for noise, for voices and flavours, and Richard is trying to gather around him people, attention and food.

Homes doesn’t point the finger at the flaws that deform the charming American high society’s face but keeps his distance and tells impartially all the eccentricities of the sick world Richard lives in. The reader has nothing to do but to observe, to analyze and to judge.

I have to say that I liked the cover of this book; I think it was carefully assembled, under the form of a map with lots of clues that guide you in reading the novel. The symbols on the cover are inspired and intriguing.

Although it has a self help title, This book will save your life will not change anything in your existence. It’s a shocking book; it won’t shake you and will not give any answers for a more fulfilling life. But it is a book that will make you think through and be grateful for the life you have.

Written by Ana-Maria

How a century begins

Apparently, the further we go from the 20th century, the more we are tempted to recreate the past into fiction, to imagine it or to go to already common and comfortable representations, that show us that then it was better, in other words, we tend to idealize it. E.L. Doctorow’s novel is dealing with the thought that then it was better, referring to America in the first two decades of the century, using little means and an honest and clear style.
From the point of view of the illusions, it wasn’t better then. The beginning of the 20th century in America, as in Doctorow’s novel, is nothing but racism, it means poverty and misery, it is inequity and discrimination. On the other hand, and maybe this is more important, the ragtime years are a mix of reality and fiction, a world where everything is possible, when one can hope, when one can honestly believe and live impulsively.

That is why considering the main three histories in Ragtime as symbols of an uncertain reality is not far from the truth, although Doctorow’s unsubtle fictionalization was blamed.
In New Rochelle, the family of Father, Mother, Mother’s Younger Brother and the Boy are forming a middle class family, having clear moral principles and progressive views, caught up to a point in habitudes and prejudices. On the other side, Mameh, Tateh and the Little Girl are, according to expectations, the classic immigrants, the victims or the winners of the American Dream. Finally, Sarah and Coalhouse Walker, whose drama is described over the novel’s second half, are characters ideally built in order to point out the situation of the black people at the beginning of the century. Actually, if it weren’t for the dry, ironic tone, Doctorow could be blamed for using cliché images in a demonstrative book.

Ragtime is not all about these three histories, which are however sufficiently extended and detailed, but also it deals with historic characters, like Jung and Freud, Houdini, as one of the most brilliant portraits in the novel, and also, it is about passionate murders, like that of Harry K. Thaw – the millionaire who killed Stanford White, his wife’s lover. One can’t ignore Emma Goldman’s portrait, an anarchist preacher, a wild and strange mix of independence, conformism and defiance.

The encounter between Henry Ford and the wealthiest man in America, J.P Morgan, is relevant for the alert atmosphere, of passing and of change of the decades: it is about the meeting of two very different personalities, and any understanding between them is out of the question, there are two business styles, a pragmatic and an aristocratic one, well, two different ways of seeing the world. This meeting is actually the miniature meeting between two worlds: the old one, sentimental, passionate, and hypocrite and the new one, brave, honest and insensitive.

The American novel

I think that any regular description of an American novel goes for Ragtime also. It is about that novel that is a little known by everybody, it is a novel that lives through some features, it is the novel that sells (thus, it is named commercial), it is the ambitious novel, that wants to swallow the whole world, that doesn’t content itself in dissecting only one aspect of reality, but wants and can do more (thus, it is called a mix without the sense of proportion). Even more interesting is the way of narrative organization: it’s a correct and honest one, it doesn’t shine but through irony, and that is why it is flattering for the characters and the events. Maybe it is the only way of comprising the great number of details and characters, to connect them in fiction logic.

One good example is rendered by Harry Houdini’s portrait, the Jew illusionist able to break through every captivity, to get out of a safe, of a milk can, prison cells, spectacular and restless at the same time. His wish of escape grows with the difficulty of his performances, and it is not slowed down neither by airplane flight, nor by stunning freedom rendered by air escapades. It’s like he can’t make the difference between real life and tricks. The same thing can be said about Mother’s need of escape from her passive role of a wife; about the Younger Brother who bonds with a new system, created ad-hoc by Coalhouse Walker; about the Father who goes with Peary’s expedition at the North Pole and comes back weary and captive. Each character is constrained by himself, by circumstances, by principles, and the greatest idea is that only death and freedom are equal; everything else is nothing but a surrogate.

I recommend Ragtime not just because it is a serious idea that gets behind the narration- thus it appears as threateningly compulsory, but because Doctorow is very generous towards the reader. Sketching portraits, possibilities, masking confessions, he gives the reader the occasion of imagining the text and beyond the text, to continue and to develop the story. I think Ragtime can be a catalyst for one’s own imagination.

Written by Mihaela

A really good fantasy novel needs three things:

1) A captivating story and characters with whom the reader can identify himself.
2) A complex magical/religious system that can affect the plot in many ways.
3) A narrative style that is easy to follow and readable.

They’re not my rules and they are not at all settled, but they are common sense. A writer can’t take them into account if he wants to obtain a certain effect, but there is a limit for fantasy novels.
Elantris is Brandon Sanderson’s first novel and a quite ambitious one. Actually, it is too ambitious in some parts and plans too poorly in others. But, if Sanderson’s next novels will be as good as the last pages in Elantris (and I’m sure they are), I can’t wait to read them.

But let us return to our subject. I said in the beginning that fantasy novels need a captivating story and catchy characters so that the reader can relate to them. I can say a lot about the story in Elantris, but it’s hard to say it’s not captivating.

There was a kind of gods in Arelon. They were called Elantrians and they lived in the city of Elantris. They did powerful magic and anyone could become one of them if taken by Shaod – the transformation. Shaod came at night and transformed a man, no matter his social condition, into an Elantrian. Then, that man went live on Elantris. It may sound utopian, but it is an interesting premise. Things happen and their magic is lost, and Elantrians transform into beggars that wander around their ruined city. But Shaod continues and the people he gets are now cursed, not blessed.

After the fall of Elantris, merchants in neighbour cities plot a revolution and they form a monarchy, where the richest of people declare themselves nobles and the others become servants. Ten years later, Prince Raoden is struck by Shaod and thrown in Elantris, as tradition says. Sarene, the fiancée he never knew, gets to the city a few days later, wishing to form an alliance between her country, Teoden and Arelon. This alliance would have fought against Fjorden, a theocratic empire that wants to conquer all unfaithful peoples. Things get more complicated when Hrathen, the great priest of Fjorden empire, arrives; his mission is to reclaim the kingdom of Arelon to the religion of Shu-Dereth.

From now on the story will follow the three heros. Prince Raoden tries to find out why Elantris has been destroyed, Sarene will struggle to save the arelonian monarchy, and Hrathen will spend his time plotting and doubting his own religion. The latter is by far the most interesting, although there is not so much empathy involved. The story is told in the third person, in cycles of three chapters- one for each character. This way, the reader knows more than each character and there is an emotional bond with every character. I have to add however that characters’ names (Raoden, Sarene Kiin, Iadon, Eondel, Saolin, Kaise, Svrakiss, Dilaf…) are impossible and they break all rules of phonetics.

The magic system is the foundation of the book and Sanderson takes good care in revealing it gradually. The rhythm of the revealing is not all perfect and the end is dangerously close to deus ex machina, but magic in Elantris is well planned and logically explained. The same thing happens with the religious part, represented by the war between the two great doctrines– Shu-Dereth and Shu-Korath. Although Hrathen will explain some of the foundations of his religion, the true differences will be seen in the short theological discussions between characters. As a whole, Sanderson’s interest for magic and his world’s religion is praiseworthy and it should be the same for every fantasy writer.

Once the magic and the story put aside, we get to the ugly part. I would like to observe that two points out of three is not bad at all. I would want to say the same thing about Sanderson’s prose, but I would.

In Elantris, prose is insipid, colourless and inodorous. Even worse, it is simplistic, very direct, non-esthetical, and even naïve and annoying. Sanderson has no interest for the art of writing. He’s no James Joyce, to conquer all narrative barriers, and he’s not Gene Wolfe, to turn words easily and to find new and dangerous uses for them. Sanderson is more interested by his story and the magic, so the prose suffers. The descriptions are very short or long and full of epithets. Two in three verbs are in the present participle form, characters’ thoughts are summarized in short sentences, and dialogues refer to platitudes or things that the characters already knew, but had to share them with us.

The good part is that, once you give up any expectancy for good literature, the story is captivating and you get to really like the characters. And the last part of the books is definitely written later than the others, for Sanderson’s writing leaps. Well, better late than never.

At the end, Elantris is a standard fantasy novel, with princes, princesses and warrior monks and draws attention to itself because of the magic, the religion and the social speech. It was hard to get over the writing part, but once I did, I discovered an interesting story with characters I really enjoyed.

Written by Cristi

Before anything, I have to confess I dislike popular books. I consider them, in a very discriminating manner, as commercial and I have no interest in reading them. The same thing happened with Memoirs of a Geisha. I mean, how important can be what an Occidental man has to say when he talks from the perspective of a Japanese woman?

The novel tells the story of little Chiyo, the youngest daughter of a poor fishermen family, who was sold as a slave. Her beauty helps her in the famous Gion of the thirties and she will be bought by an okiya, a geisha house. Here, against all odds, she is educated to become a geisha. To the individual vision of Gion, we also have the bigger picture, involving Japan before and after the second World.

The positive aspects of the novel remain in the geisha descriptions. The most fascinating pages are those who speak about the transformation procedures, when a simple woman becomes a geisha; also, the education the apprentices received and the rules in their strict life. A special place is taken by geisha’s clothes and Golden is very persistent about it. The detailed description of those many accessories geishas wear and the complex ritual of dressing, together with the full description of kimonos help visualizing the fascinating oriental culture.

The negative aspects are more varied.

First of all, the characters seem to be forgotten by the pen which seems more interested in revealing the details of a kimono. Even the hero of this novel, Sayuri (her name as a geisha) lacks in depth and she is widowed of important character traits. She seems as an oriental Cinderella- the most beautiful, the best and the kindest. Childhood and teenage miseries don’t seem to influence or to model her character.

Then, even though the novel is famous for describing geisha life, it actually leaves a great question mark about these women’s real life. Although the author apparently has done massive research (see attention for dressing and make-up), he doesn’t seem to have truly break into the geishas’ mysteries. The novel seems more of an answer to occidental fantasies about geishas.

More than that, Arthur Golden was sued by famous geisha Mineko Iwasaki, the model for the novel. It seems that Arthur Golden didn’t keep to the information she provided during interviews, nor did he protect her privacy. Mineko Awasaki published herself a novel (Geisha, A Life), in order to reveal in a more authentic manner her experience as a geisha.

However, Memoirs of a Geisha is an interesting novel, even though it is easy and superficial. It is a good reading, but don’t expect too much from it.

Written by Ama

How about if we all have our own attic where we keep letters, diaries or some other memories from our childhood? Or from our teenage years or from our youth?

Of course, for me this is not possible, because of my age and the timing. But for the main character in The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley, Leo Colston, the past becomes present simply by discovering a diary from 1900.

In a very Proustesque kind of way, in a single afternoon, the old Leonard Colston meets young Leo, passionate about the signs of the zodiac and magic. Thus, the reason for introspection becomes remembering the lost time, in that summer of 1900 when he was a child of 12 and was invited by his classmate Marcus Maudsley to Brandham Hall, the summer residence of Marcus’ parents. Everything seems absolutely natural considering the children’s age, and they pass their time playing, walking or drinking tea.

The motley people that go through Brandham Hall is vividly described by the little magician. I have one tiny observation to make: the adults seem to be part of an amorphous mass, preoccupied only by teas and tennis and endless discussions that are pointless to Leo.

In the middle of these people, Leo feels for the first tie the class difference, and the suit he will receive from Miriam, Marcus’s sister, will be seen as a seal that the 12 year old will wear with a lot of pride; this will be the difference between Leo from home and Leo from Brandham Hall.

The old Leonard recognizes his feelings as a young man and the little “betrayals” next to his mother, forgetting to write or not recognizing anymore what he knew before his arrival to Brandham Hall.
Marcus will get down with measles and this will be the unhappy event that will make the boys grow apart. Thus, Leo will find himself alone between people who don’t care about him and who joke on his behalf. But through all of this, he grows fonder and fonder with Miriam, and he will become her postman, delivering love letters for her and Ted Burgess, an farmer from the neighbourhood.

Once Leo discovers the letters’ content, all passion and the secret games will melt. This is because he feels for the first time the buds of love for a girl who showed him interest and kindness. Thanks to this feeling, Leo continues to deliver the letters, even though he faces tough consciousness problems and even if he doesn’t know whether to be friends or reject Ted Burgess.

While the plot is pretty simple, Hartley made it through writing a special novel by concentrating in such a young person all the feelings he’s going through. It is quite interesting seeing Leo’s transformation, and the twisted feelings he’s experimenting.

More than that, The Go-Between manages to reunite a typical British middle-class life from the beginning of the 20th century, and the critical eye is a 12 year old boy from a different class.
What happens next? Will the two lovers be discovered or will Leo betray them? Well, that’s what you’re gonna find out reading The Go-between by L. P. Hartley.

Written by Cristina

A collector’s edition, recommended by Kotler.

I truly mean it when I say that I liked the book very much even before I started reading it. It has an interesting appearance, starting with the elegant hard cover and continuing with the shape, different from the usual rectangular one. I start reading these books hoping I will like them and that I will not be forced to use them as mere decorations in my bookshelf.

Marketing Genius confirms. Is indeed collector’s edition also from the content point of view. The author, Peter Fisk, is a marketing consultant who has worked with companies like Microsoft, Philips, Coca-Cola, Vodafone and, until now, the only consultant who is not specialised in online marketing and dares to begin his book with an analysis of Google. Fisk also talks about Amazon, Apple and other companies with roots in IT and Online about which most of the marketers do not dare to talk about or they do but express oppinions anything but pertinent.

Remember Sun Tzu?

No, not the military strategist but the book, Sun Tzu- Marketing Strategies, written by the Michaelson brothers. Marketing Genius is as marketed but much more consistent and, as a digression, this is how one sees how good is a marketer. It is true that he must know how to sell his own products (I am sure that Sun Tzu- Marketing Strategies was also sold) but marketing doesn’t stop here. You don’t pay someone to buy a product and then you claim you are doing marketing. Next time not only will that someone not buy the product, but will also tell all his friends about the farce.

Two things I didn’t like

First of all, I was a little disturbed by the translation. Keeping in mind that it addresses marketers used to so many English words, I think a few forced translation were really unuseful. For example, “lovemark” should have been kept in English.

The second problem I had were the “applications” between chapters. They are a few diagrams with questions which, I understand, are meant to help the reader solve or at least identify a few real problems that his company has. It didn’t work for me and the questions, although pertinent, were not useful. I liked more the specific examples of problems that big companies have encountered and the intelligent, or genius, like the author says, sollutions they found.

And, speaking of geniuses, Peter Fisk doesn’t contradict himself and talks a lot about the 10 characteristics of the genius and the way they are applied in marketing, all done with examples, analysis, and often going profoundly into what marketing really means, above the notions superficially discussed and overknown, like brand, awareness or target.

I am not interested in marketing. Why should I read it?

Did you know that the famous Coca-Cola produces over 400 different drinks? That 1/3 of Warren Buffet’s fortune is in Coca-Cola stocks? Or that Eddison had over 1093 licences, more than anyone until now, fileing for one every 10 days?

Now you know because I told you. But do you really think that I would be able to systematize all the information that can be read in the book?

Written by Andrei

Max Frisch’s novel didn’t seem to me as written in a cold, impecable, exact manner. Just like the protagonist, Walter Faber, is the victim of his own confidence in reason and science, the author is caught in his own style. His shortcomings- a possible identification with the character, a verse in the narration, a highly improbable painting- mean more, I believe, than what is rigurously and clearly written.

“I am an engineer and I have taught myself to see things the way they are” is Walter Faber’s own description. After a plain crash, an incredible encounter with his bets friend’s brother, a few weeks in Mexico and a late falling in love, Faber realizes that things the way they are do not exist. The repugnant German from the plane is his friend Joachim’s brother; Hanna, his highschool sweetheart, has married Joachim; his minutely planned trip changes its course from day to day; the girl he falls in love with is his daughter, about whom he doesn’t know anything. Connected to the latter there is a relevant fragment which puts homo technicus, Walter Faber, in another light:
“Sabeth once again on the dam, this time standing, and she is singing, our dead daughter, with her hands still in her pockets, she thinks she is alone and she is singing, but she doesn’t hear herself.- The spool is gone.”

The events mentioned above, which seem like taken from an adventure book, show the way Walter Faber is trying to live differently, how his life becomes free of logic, while the sequence of incredible goings-on leave the impression of “it was meant to be”. Complying his character to a strong criticism of reason and writing against the god of technology Max Frisch might fall to the extreme of over-demonstration.

What saves the novel from being a thesis is exactly the imperfection: although Frisch’s character is meant to be a rational cinic who becomes a person with weaknesses, a victim, his cinism is not authentic from the beginning, just like the events he goes through don’t change him radically. Moreover, about a sensitive issue like the incest, the author doesn’t write explicitly or moralising, his tendency is towards criticism of society rather than of the individual and to demonstrate how little does homo faber control the world and himself.

In this context, the creative man is nothing more than a moved irony. Creator of circumstances, of objects more or less useful, creator of context or of worlds, man fails to control all these, is what Max Frisch’s novel demonstrates. The inevitable question is why would man want to be in control.

Written by Mihaela