Tuesday Book Review

This is a new feature on my site. Mayhap of the Gothic Bookshop will review books each Tuesday.

I have been trying to think of a couple of good books to recommend and it is much harder than I would have thought. It depends so much on the person who is looking for the book and what frame of mind they are in.

This would be much simpler if we were meeting face to face and I could get a feel for your preferences and mood. For ages, I walked right by Ian McEwan's book Atonement without so much as a spark of interest. In fact, all the hoopla probably made me more wary than I normally would have been. The flyleaf on the book tends to put one off. I looked it over and thought, “Wow, pretty depressing.”. The thought that a book might be “depressing” usually puts me off for a bit. It is a bit like that visit to the gynocologist that we put off. This isn't the best comparison, but hopefully you get my drift.

Luckily, I came down with pneumonia and my coworkers brought over Atonement to ease my boredom. I thought it was pretty brilliant, actually. Like most good books, it didn't wrap it all up and present it with a bow.The characters were plucky and interesting. Brave with plenty of stiff upper lip. I loved that because I was born without a stiff upper lip, but I have always wanted one. I especially enjoyed the restraint in the writing. It had intent. Perfect? Almost, and darn good read.

One of the more interesting books I've read lately is The Last Samurai, by Helen DeWitt. To start, I'd like to confess that I'm not sure I caught all of it. There is a lot of scholarly stuff in there. I grew very attached to the young brilliant boy. Also, I suppose I should watch Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. I haven't seen the movie but I hear its good and this book seems to emphasize it quite a lot. Sort of worship it really. Anyway, when I knew where I was narratively speaking , I couldn't put it down. The real force in the book is the strange and lovely relationship between the son and his mother. I found myself flipping to the About the Author and trying to fit the author into the book and vice versa. I don't always do this with books, but I found myself almost fretting over it in this case. I haven't decided what that means yet. Maybe nothing, but I wondered if Helen DeWitt weren't somewhere in London huddled in a cold room watching Seven Samurai for the 10,000^th time. It is a decent length so you can live with the characters for a while and I like that.

A book I read ages ago that I reluctantly recommend is The Furies, by Janet Hobhouse. I say reluctantly because I think this is not a book for everyone. It is intense to the point of being almost unbearable. Ms. Hobhouse was dying when she was writing the book, so that experience becomes a shadowy character in itself. The book is supposed to be fiction, but it clearly is not. The writing surpasses almost anything I've ever read. This book was almost like going through something. Like getting thrown around on the Whip at the fair and when you get off your legs are loopy. This book is like that. The heart of the novel to me is about death, but that certainly isn't all of it. There is a stunning portrait of a mother -daughter relationship that dominates the book.

This book isn't for everyone. I found I couldn't recommend it to my coworkers. I just didn't think it would suit any of them. To some this book might come across as self indulgent, but if you stay with it, you realize that it is more soul baring. After reading this book, it occurred to me that I wasn't the only person with some enormous hidden warts and scars. If they are come by honestly, surely they deserve a peek at the daylight as our life is ending? I wonder if I could be as brave as this author. To me that is her real achievement.

So, go grab these at your nearest bookshop. Try to buy books at independent bookstores. I work in one and times are tough. I don't mind Barnes and Noble, et al, but they shouldn't be the only game in town. You may not think it is important to have more than one superbookmart, but you will when they deny that your favorite book exists, or that there is no such thing as an Hawaiian dictionary. They aren't stupid people, just geared for the masses. As evidenced by book sales, book people are not the masses.