In Which We Discuss Books I Read in my 27th Year, Week 24/52

I'm very late in writing this.  When I say 'late' I mean it's now Tuesday and I'm due to post the 25th week tomorrow.

I read five books between 20th - 26th January.  Three library books, an audio book and a Kindle book.

I'm not really any more impressed with the second Scott Pilgrim graphic novel.  I think Michael Cera's crappy acting and total lack of chemistry with Ramona's actor - as well as the lack of character development - has ruined it for me.

The Stone Angel was very enjoyable.  It's by a Canadian author - and the essay at the back points out how few of these we know of, apart from Margaret Atwood - and is something of a classic, I gather.  It's the life of Hagar, a Canadian woman born at the turn of the century.  It flips between her childhood and her time in her nineties, fighting over being asked to leave her own home and forced into a nursing home.

Big Brother is a book I read years ago.  I enjoy 90% of it, but the last 10% ruins it for me.

I had the same sort of issue with Woman's World.  Woman's World is told using cuttings from 60s women's magazines, like a ransom note.  It's a useful storytelling technique, considering the character.

What disappoints me about the ending is that the issues raised are not resolved.  They just...magically go away.  Which is a lot less interesting than actually dealing with it.

Unseemly Science is the second in the Fall of the Gas-Lit Empire series, focusing on Elizabeth Barnabas and her cross-dressing adventures as her imaginary brother, Edwin.  The Gas-Lit Empire has very Victorian values you see, and being a man can be incredibly useful.  I enjoyed it, enough to have pre-ordered the third book, which comes out on Thursday.

In Which We Discuss Lolita, Catch-22, Stephen King, and Lionel Shriver

The funny thing about reading classics is it's all been done before.  I finished Lolita a few days ago, and I was quite pleased to find out that Humbert Humbert was supposed to be creepy.  I was a bit worried that the whole thing was a defence of paedophilia, and it would turn out that the author thought H.H was totally normal.  Luckily, no.  Though I do wish they'd stop putting young girls in provocative poses on the covers, it's a total misrepresentation.  And creepy.  HH style creepy.  Like, "reader, she came on to me, look at how she's posing!".  To which I will recite Ellen Page's speeches from Hard Candy, you creep.

Ahem.

I started Catch-22 yesterday.  That book has been in my unread pile for almost a decade.  I was surprised to find that it's funny, really laugh-out-loud funny.  I knew I planned to read it someday (eventually), so I tried to avoid spoiling it for myself.  It's dark humour, but that's what my family goes in for.  My aunt had her leg amputated a few weeks ago, and we've already discussed getting her a parrot and an eyepatch for Christmas.  It's how we cope.

In other news, Stephen King did a recent ask-the-author session on Reddit.  There's a summary of the questions and answers here, and the entire thread is here.  It's finished now, but it's still an interesting read.  I'm very gratified to see how many other people loved Rose Madder.

Lionel Shriver did a similar session yesterday, on Goodreads.  She seemed to get bored halfway through, though.

In Which We Discuss Kevin (Again)

Last night, I finished re-reading Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin. I first read this back in 2008, and wrote a very short review of it here.

The rest of this post is going to assume that you've read the novel too, and will discuss major spoilers. If you haven't, then look away now. If you don't think you will ever read it, I'm going to quote a blurb after this so you can make up your mind properly. If you're still with us after that, don't cry about being spoiled, k?

Nature or Nurture: What makes a monster?

Kevin Khatchadourian killed seven of his fellow high-school students, a cafeteria worker and a teacher, shortly before his sixteenth birthday. He is visited in prison by his mother, Eva, who narrates in a series of letters to her estranged husband Franklin the story of Kevin's upbringing.

A successful career woman, Eva is reluctant to forgo her independence and the life she shares with Franklin to become a mother. Once Kevin is born she experiences extreme alienation and dislike of Kevin as he grows up to become a spiteful and cruel child. When Kevin commits his murderous act, Eva fears that her own shortcomings may have shaped what her son has become. But how much is she to blame?

As I said in my other post, in my first reading, I found the narration flowery. It threw me out of the story at first, and although it is semi-justified by the fact that Eva does write for a living, and is quite well-educated, I still found it quite jarring. I suppose it's also justified by Kevin's skill with words - his English teacher describes his writing as worthy of Swift, and comments on his vocabulary - since there are quite a few hints about just how much Kevin has inherited from Eva.

I also found the narrative to move irritatingly slowly. I wanted to find out what happened when he was (three days from) sixteen, not about before he was born, or what he was like as a baby or a toddler. But, when I did find out precisely what had happened when he was sixteen, I understood the point. I realised (especially after this second read-through) that I'd missed the whole story.

One major strength this novel has is in characterisation. The characters which are mainly dealt with are those of Kevin and Eva. In a book of almost four hundred pages, they are on every single one of them. They seem real, believable, solid. In contrast, more secondary characters like Franklin and Celia seem almost two dimensional and flat. But then, that's the point - the point of the novel is to understand Kevin and Eva as individuals, and as they relate to each other. As Eva herself acknowledges, this isn't something that can be easily explained - it's best understood by piling up all those little moments and anecdotes which seem flimsy by themselves, in order to build up a stronger understanding. This is what Shriver does, masterfully, over the course of those four hundred pages. Reading the novel a second time, knowing what was coming, I could take my time to fully absorb this.

The twist at the end of the novel changes ones viewpoint of Eva. She's not just an incidental character; she's important. She's the one member of Kevin's family whom he decided not to kill. Reading it over again, it becomes more apparent that Eva and Kevin were too alike. He didn't come from nowhere - his traits can be traced back, through his mother, and through other members of his family. It's this single combination that's deadly.

I also suspect that my own growth has changed my viewpoint. I've gone from nineteen to twenty-one between the times I read this book, and I've discovered the concept of Childfree. While I'm beginning to suspect that I'm merely childless, and not childfree - I'm a fence-sitter - I whole heartedly agree with the idea that no one should be expected to have children, just because they can and it's what their parents did.

Knowing about the childfree also makes it easier to understand the way that a mother can simply not like her own child. Again, as Eva comments in the novel, getting pregnant - or rather, trying to - is like leaving a door open. You never know which stranger is going to walk in.

A lot of people talk about loving their children no matter who they are, and what they're like. Can that really be called love, that undiscriminating, unspecific affection? If it makes no difference what they're like, then could you not love a wall just as easily? I suspect that's the difference Kevin noticed between his parents. His father loved him because he was his son. His mother disliked him because he was Kevin. And, in the end, he showed very clearly that he preferred his mother to his father.

I don't think the book has any huge point or moral. I just think it portrays a fascinating relationship, and I found that I could appreciate that much better the second time.

In Which We Discuss Kevin

...because We Need To Talk About Kevin.

I've recently read that book (by Lionel Shriver). About twenty pages in, one thing had already struck me.

See, the book's supposed to be about the mother of a mass murderer (the columbine kind) writing letters to her estranged husband about their son - basically, exploring how he came to turn out that way. The thing is, she doesn't write like most people. The language is too flowery. And since it's meant to be in first person, that takes away from some of the realism.

Still, it's a very interesting topic for a book. So far, though, I really prefer Jodi Picoult's Nineteen Minutes.

After the floweriness of the first couple of pages, the book does get better. Personally, I wanted to know more about what happened afterwards, than about his birth. Although his mother's feelings about how he came to be are relevant, they're just not what I wanted to hear about.

About halfway through, you get a sense of Eva (the mother) being biased, and unreliable, which was quite effective. Normally, even in first person, I tend to take characters at their word. I also liked the little twists which were hinted at, and then gradually revealed - but a lot of the time, I was waiting for the reveal, rather than enjoying the journey. So, an interesting book. Perhaps not one that I'll read again.