I don't intend to write a review of Kate Grenville's well known and much praised follow up to 'Lillian Story', but as one of my resolutions, now I'm not working full-time, is to get a little more 'literary' and scribble down a few thoughts about the books I read, I want to put to something on the page.
I had to keep reminding myself that this book was written by a woman. Albion Gidley Singer is so repulsive, so odious in his pompousness - his hatred towards women and their bodies is truly grotesque – yet the book, that is, the voice of AGS is so compelling. I don't often equate literary fiction with 'page turning' as an attribute (For example, I got off to a flying start with Debra Falconer's 'In the Service of Clouds', but ended up putting it down a third of the way through and haven't found the compulsion to pick it up since. When it gets a bit hard yakka and you stop caring what's going to happen, well, why bother? And don't even get me started on 'A.B. Byatt's 'Possession'. ) So anyway, it surprised me that I devoured 'Dark Places' in much the same way as I would a Marian Keyes. That's not to say I didn't savour Grenville's way with a sentence or her brilliant, concise descriptions of people, places and events. I most certainly did, but I was also in hurry to get to the climax. How could a reading experience be any more perfect? I suppose I was drawn to the conclusion already knowing the 'taboo' that the book has staked its reputation on, but I didn't realise that the whole story – Albion's childhood, marriage and family life – led to this one final, despicable act. Perhaps I was expecting a story that dipped in and out of ritual sexual abuse and incest from the get-go, but no, I should have expected more of Grenville as an author. She is truly a master at what she does and she refuses to deal in clichés, too.
It's reading a book like 'Dark Places' that really brings home to me the power of fiction and its ability to illuminate lives, past and present, that non-fiction or bare historical facts cannot hope to plummet the depth of. 'Love in the time of Cholera' resonated with me in the same way. The only similarity between the two is that they expose and reflect on male arrogance in the face of rampant (apparently) female desire around the turn of the last century, but it's probably more to do the with brutal honesty of the central character, the attention to detail and the authenticity of characters and setting that support the narrative that brings me to compare the two books in the first place. But that is what brilliant authors do and I don't believe 'literary fiction' should be lauded in the way it is if it fails to meet these simple criteria. I didn't intend to get all soap boxy about it, but some 'literary' novels are a god damn borefest and somehow, if you can't through them, you end up berating yourself for not being 'literary' enough, or even, possibly stupid for 'not getting it'. When Grenville writes, when Gabriel Garcia Marquez writes (even in translation), hell, when Tolstoy writes, 'I get it' – so I don't think I'm a literary slouch – and I therefore fail to see why we can't hold other 'brilliant' writers to the same kind of accountability. That is, do I want to read the next page or has your ponderous, laborious, adjective stew sent me into a coma?
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Shit Blakkat. Of the authors you mentioned, I've read only Tolstoy, and he is immensely "readable". I find Dickens and Fitzgerald the same but know people who find them impenetrable. It's an interesting literary question you pose.
I've tried about four times to read Ulysses and hardly got past the first few pages. Then I tried to read Anthony Burgess' "How To Read James Joyce" and couldn't get through that either!
In films, I had to do a fair bit of reading up on 2001 before I felt like I got it.
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