I've just read/skimmed Border Crossing by Pat Barker. This is the wonderful serendipity of having remaindered and withdrawn books around .. at some point, I find myself surprised by joy or wonder. I couldn't really recommend this novel because reading it isn't really a good time. It's about a very dark subject, and the very fact that the protoganist is getting divorced while the action of the novel takes place is no coincidence: he's struggling with everything including loneliness and disappointment. His wife moves her furniture out and now his voice is in an empty room.
But I think this book is sublime. It's beautifully written, and is the reflection, I feel, of a novelist who is deeply thoughtful and deeply curious about the essential nature of things and how that is reflected in how we live now. Love her. Simply love her. (Pat Barker is, of course, the author of the Regeneration trilogy and I highly, highly recommend Regeneration.)
I'm still reading around in Tomalin's Pepys, and I haven't made any progress on Steve Jobs and I know I won't today ..
A week or two ago I began reading True Grit by Charles Portis. I think this is a wonderful novel. I think Portis is a masterful realistic novelist, on the basis of the few pages I've read. More so than almost all of the writers I've read in the past two years, he convincing paints a portrait of a real person in the first few pages.
What's real about her? She interrupts herself in the middle of telling her tragic, life-changing story to digress and tell the story of an acquaintance that includes a brief summary of his life story and her thoughts about his interesting name. I would never interrupt a story about my father to tell any other story -- but she would. That feels real to me.
However, as much as I admire Portis' skill as a novelist, I'm almost certain that I will never care enough about this novel to finish it before it has to go back to the library. Why? I don't know .. perhaps if I didn't have to take it back to the library I would eventually finish it.
I am, of course, beginning the Big Short which I enjoy so much, I think, because Lewis' own personality comes through the pages and I find it entertaining and, because, for some reason this is the kind of book I like now.
But I think this book is sublime. It's beautifully written, and is the reflection, I feel, of a novelist who is deeply thoughtful and deeply curious about the essential nature of things and how that is reflected in how we live now. Love her. Simply love her. (Pat Barker is, of course, the author of the Regeneration trilogy and I highly, highly recommend Regeneration.)
I'm still reading around in Tomalin's Pepys, and I haven't made any progress on Steve Jobs and I know I won't today ..
A week or two ago I began reading True Grit by Charles Portis. I think this is a wonderful novel. I think Portis is a masterful realistic novelist, on the basis of the few pages I've read. More so than almost all of the writers I've read in the past two years, he convincing paints a portrait of a real person in the first few pages.
What's real about her? She interrupts herself in the middle of telling her tragic, life-changing story to digress and tell the story of an acquaintance that includes a brief summary of his life story and her thoughts about his interesting name. I would never interrupt a story about my father to tell any other story -- but she would. That feels real to me.
However, as much as I admire Portis' skill as a novelist, I'm almost certain that I will never care enough about this novel to finish it before it has to go back to the library. Why? I don't know .. perhaps if I didn't have to take it back to the library I would eventually finish it.
I am, of course, beginning the Big Short which I enjoy so much, I think, because Lewis' own personality comes through the pages and I find it entertaining and, because, for some reason this is the kind of book I like now.
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