I’m just going to come right out and say it: Shirley Jackson knows how to tell a story. Though she may be best known for her work in the psychologicalI’m just going to come right out and say it: Shirley Jackson knows how to tell a story. Though she may be best known for her work in the psychological suspense genre, I’m pretty convinced she was not limited by this label, nor would she have been by any other, and this work would most likely fall into the “other” category. But there’s no reason to take my word for it; even Oliver (view spoiler)[
(hide spoiler)] found himself drawn to her work, enthralled by her words, and taken in by her characters to such an extent that his appetite for Jackson’s novel was all-consuming. He practically devoured the story in one sitting!
It took me a bit more than a single sitting, but whatever remains of this story Oliver left for me I nonetheless enjoyed. We Have Always Lived in the Castle is Jackson’s final novel, and somewhat melds ideas and themes prevalent in “The Lottery” and in The Haunting of Hill House. The first-person narrator is an 18 year-old infant, a childish adult not unlike the kids from Dogtooth with their alarming degree of worldlessness, and through the course of the narrative, we (the reader) find ourselves being duped several times over as our impressions of the characters are formed and reformed, morphing as quickly and as seemingly effortlessly as a T-1000. Are the villagers as chillingly terrible as Mary Katherine Blackwood would have us believe, and as we are confident she herself believes? Is there perhaps something more deviant and sinister to the Mary Katherine whose older sister playfully admonishes as “Silly Merricat”? Or—and more likely—does the novel rather take place in a gray area of suspicion and questionable motives, screwing around with our sense of moral placement?
If I could rate with half-stars, I’d probably have given this a 3½. While the writing itself is top notch, the story ends kind of anticlimactically, and while the plot is well paced, one could often tell where it was going before it got there. Still, these are minor quibbles. A good Shirley Jackson book is a great book in general, as it turns out....more
Does anything sound like less of a good time than listening to some crotchety old man wax nostalgic for his younger days, humoring him (in a patroniziDoes anything sound like less of a good time than listening to some crotchety old man wax nostalgic for his younger days, humoring him (in a patronizing way, of course) while he complains that times have changed? Very little pleases this person; he’s finicky, he’s bad-tempered, and his attitude toward his fellow man is depressingly sour. At first glance, Ebenezer Le Page might resemble this curmudgeonly type, and admittedly he is a curmudgeon on many levels, but there just happens to be something about him that sets him apart from the typical irascibility of his curmudgeonly brethren, a “something” that inevitably makes getting to know him an investment worth undertaking.
Ebenezer, not surprisingly, is a constant in an area of the world that has seen rapid technological advances since World War II, before which it remained relatively protected from external influences. Naturally, Ebenezer covets the insularity his homeland enjoyed before the war, having been raised in this environment and having forged close ties with his surroundings, particularly to his home which has been in the possession of his family for generations. Ebenezer views these changes as a sort of “end” to Guernsey life as he has always known it, and unwittingly becomes a human parallel to its terminative quality when he finds himself inching imminently closer to his own mortality with no one left to extend his legacy, or at least no one he deems “Guernsey” enough. He thus spends a large chunk of his remaining days deciding to whom he should bequeath his property while simultaneously composing a memoir of his life, a memoir that becomes The Book of Ebenezer Le Page.
This is one of the easiest five-star ratings I’ve ever applied to a book. It is a fictional memoir whose narrator has completely and totally endeared me to him. He writes with an almost Proustian capacity for observing human relationships, and his accounts of friendship—specifically with Jim, but also with Raymond and later with Neville (who, to him, represents the antithesis of the new generation of Guernsey)—are beautiful in their depictions. At the end of his life, Ebenezer is able to reflect honestly on the choices he has made, without judgment, and from a vantage point of understanding better the circumstances around which those choices were made. His words and actions are comical, yet poignant, and his fictional legacy will be—for me—largely unforgettable.
Speaking of crotchety curmudgeons, this book was a gift from one of my favorite Goodreaders. Thank you, David!...more
Compared to the stories told in this book, and the stories that surely countless others could tell of their own obsessionAs it turns out, I’m a fraud.
Compared to the stories told in this book, and the stories that surely countless others could tell of their own obsessions with the printed work, I’m like the guy in the back of a Star Wars convention who says, “Oh, I’ve seen Return of the Jedi once or twice, I think!” Because the fact is, you people are out of my league.
And that just might be the difference between liking this book—appreciating it for its humorous accounts of bibliomania and its interesting history of book collecting—and loving it on a level that only someone who personally identifies with the neurotic episodes contained therein can love it.
Objectively, there is plenty to find fascinating about A Gentle Madness, not the least of which is that it offers the healthy perspective of correlating batshit-crazy book collecting with the preservation of historical records. Without these nutsos doing their thing, it is not unreasonable to believe that many aspects of history might have otherwise been lost to the ages. Book collecting is important! At the same time, a majority of these book collectors are people with whom I cannot readily identify. For example, there is an account of an older woman who collected children’s books...thousands of them. Her interests leaned toward the rare, but truthfully she would have accepted anything into her collection that showed signs of being handled by actual, real-life children. You’d think her motivations were rooted in a love for children themselves, or at least in a desire to recapture her own childhood by allowing herself to be absorbed by these books. But nope! Her desire was simply to collect. She wanted no snotty brats touching her books, and she certainly had no interest in actually reading them. The reason I can’t relate to these experiences is that I feel as though I am the exact opposite. I love reading. I will read (practically) anything somebody gives me, or anything that catches my eye. But once I’m done with it, the book itself is fair game. In fact, I would rather give a book away for someone else to enjoy than keep it for myself. I understand this concept is foreign to most Goodreaders who proudly display photos of their bookshelves, or their “book porn” (which—seriously—is a practice that needs to STOP; unless the books are specifically pornographic in nature, they are not book porn), but that is how I differ from most of you psychos.
Although there is no shortage of books that describe the personal and familial turmoil that results from civil war, Eleni has to be among the most devAlthough there is no shortage of books that describe the personal and familial turmoil that results from civil war, Eleni has to be among the most devastating accounts ever written. Civil war is the nastiest kind of war, a war in which one’s own brethren becomes his enemies. The disjointed sense of loyalty associated with these internal struggles only fuels the chaos. Without that feeling of national unity that would otherwise pervade a conflict against a foreign entity, civil war becomes nothing more than a vehicle for senseless killing. In other words, civil war sucks, and we’ve seen it suck in just about every corner of the globe. It sucked in Iran, it sucked in Afghanistan, it sucked big time in Sierra Leone, and in this book we learn just how much it sucked in Greece.
Eleni Gatzoyiannis was a Greek mother of five who lived in an obscure mountain village near the Albanian border. After the Germans who occupied Greece got their asses kicked in 1945, the country found itself entirely surrounded by the newly formed Soviet bloc to its north. Stalin’s influence heavily penetrated this part of Greece and empowered the country’s Communist Party to form its own military wing, the inaptly named Democratic Army of Greece. Essentially a band of thugs, these communist guerrillas terrorized the northern mountain regions in which Eleni’s village was nestled. With aspirations to take over Greece and create a classless Marxist society for which their Russian heroes would be proud, these guerrillas were ultimately responsible for the actions that gave rise to the Greek Civil War (1946–1949).
This book follows the story of Eleni as she struggles to maintain a false sense of camaraderie with the guerrillas who have infiltrated her village while at the same time trying to protect her children from conscription, abduction, or worse. This is not an easy balance for Eleni or for anyone else in her situation, for to be caught trying to protect others from the guerrillas is to be yourself exposed as a traitor to the cause. It is disheartening, also, to discover how many times Eleni misses an opportunity to escape her predicament. Although some of the doors of opportunity close by no fault of her own, others remain open and are simply ignored by Eleni due to a fear of social repercussions. Greek village life in the 1940s adheres to a strict moral code that prevents Eleni from making decisions that could have possibly averted her fate.
In some ways, the most frightening aspect of this book is the transformation of the village itself during the guerrillas’ occupation, especially once the secret police are unleashed. Before the war, the banality of life is broken occasionally by the innocuous practice of neighborhood gossip. But as pressure is mounted by the guerrillas to weed out any “traitors” in the village, this gossip takes on a much more sinister and menacing role. A meddling busybody who is once thought harmless by her neighbors now wields the power to end one’s freedom, or worse, one’s life! The guerrillas, of course, take advantage of the villagers’ proclivity to turn on each other in the name of self-preservation, and that Eleni suffers this additional burden of suspicion and gross mistrust of those around her makes her situation all the more grievous.
Eventually, Eleni is indeed executed by the same communist guerrillas to whom she has pledged her loyalty, but not before ensuring the liberation of her family. Please do not scold me, for this is not a spoiler—Eleni’s death and the escape of her children form the premise of this book as discussed in its introduction. The book is really about her plight, not her demise. Also, what’s fascinating about this particular biography is that it is written by her son who just happens to live two towns away from me. He was a writer for the New York Times who left the paper in 1980 and traveled back to Greece to unravel the story of his mother, the woman who secured his freedom. In this book, he documents Eleni’s life and the events leading to her death so that the memory of her sacrifice and the knowledge of what happened to her and other villagers like her will live on....more
I’m not sure how to feel about Under the Dome. In one sense, the concept of an entire town being suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world and thI’m not sure how to feel about Under the Dome. In one sense, the concept of an entire town being suddenly sealed off from the rest of the world and the social, political, and even meteorological struggles that ensue is highly fascinating. But at the same time, King has really let me down with this cast of dull, one-dimensional, and highly stereotypical characters. It seems in this novel you are either a hateful, fear-mongering, murderous megalomaniac or you are a gentle, respectful, selfless individual with a limitless background of useful talents. There is little in between. In one case, a character is a blatant clone of the Trash Can Man from The Stand, complete with being the cause of a widespread disaster. Not very original. The interactions of these characters often seems forced and unnatural, and the dialogue, at times, horrendous. But still, the premise of the novel kept me going and the idea that one can be so completely isolated from functional society and the disasters which could result from this isolation became a truly terrifying prospect, especially as the story progressed.
In the end, I would have to say that what I like about this novel outweighs the negative, especially with some touching scenes at the novel’s conclusion where it becomes crushingly apparent how different a situation could be from one location to another, even if those locations are just inches apart....more
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