Benediction, Kent Haruf

Benediction is perfect. It is life, humanity, and lives and people and huge sorrows. I can't articulate how much I feel and love novels which aren't fast paced and don't really have a beginning, middle and end, and don't end. The book leaves, but the world it has let you into keeps going and is still there in some other place.

It is set in a small town in Colorado. Holt is surrounded by plains and the story reflects this, it is open and isolated simultaneously. Haruf's prose is pared down, long sentences but simple, with feeling and a particular sense of place even in the way he writes and the people he speaks for.

The core story is that of Dad Lewis and his family. Dad is dying, his wife and daughter are caring for him. There is a son who they don't hear from anymore. A girl just moved into the house next door to live with her grandmother as her mother has died and there are the Johnson women, a mother and daughter, and the story of the preacher and his family.

 

Benediction is a book you read and then think, yes that is how it seems to be, but overwhelmingly, it will be ok, and there will be something or someone, and maybe it is all just healing. You just can't convey some things in a sentence. But Benediction shows, for me, exactly what novels are for.

Thank you very much Picador for the proof.

Brighton Rock, Graham Greene

I'm not sure about this one, it is enjoyable, but not hugely. I think in part because none of the characters are particularly likeable, they aren't as straight forward as that. Greene seems to be moralising and testing opinions of different characters, you aren't supposed to like any of them, and they evolve and change throughout.

This from the back cover:
'Pinkie, a boy gangster in the pre-war Brighton underworld, is a catholic dedicated to evil and damnation. In a dark setting of double-crossing and razor slashes, his ambitions and hatreds are horribly fulfilled... until Ida determines to convict him of murder. But Pinkie, on the run from her pursuing fury, becomes even more dangerous...'

The above description gives a very glamorised version. The story is linear, and not as straightforward as you expect.  It continually leaves things behind and moves on. I like that nothing is explained fully, but it gives the novel a not-quite tied down feel. This, coupled with the characters and Greene's questioning of morality, contributed to my not engaging fully I think. 

I started it because I was going to Brighton for the weekend, it has a brilliant sense of place. The town is vivid, even as the characters are somewhat murky, the feel of the place and the sea-side-ness of it is conveyed.

Unusually I'm not sure what I'll read next (finished Brighton Rock in my lunch break today). My bookmark is currently in Benediction by Kent Haruf, but I'm not quite convinced it suits my mood.

Pygmalion, Bernard Shaw

I didn't realise until a couple of pages in that this is the play that 'My Fair Lady' is based on. It is pretty much the same as the film, except for a rather long afterword. This isn't too tedious though, Shaw uses it to explain why he didn't match up Eliza and Higgins. Higgins doesn't see Eliza as his equal and so can't give her what she wants; 'his relation to her is too godlike to be agreeable'. I get the impression Shaw would have been a really interesting person to have a conversation with.

Pygmalion is a very funny play, but I never really appreciated before how moral the story is. Classes and superficiality, men and women and how people are treated. Shaw lulls you in with a funny, slightly silly play and asks you lots of questions whilst showing you the answers. Its a lovely read, and worth taking the time over as its a different experience reading it over a few days than watching it in a couple of hours. 

I have just started Brighton Rock by Graham Greene (mostly because im going to Brighton at the weekend..)