For Whom The Bell Tolls, Ernest Hemingway

I have mixed feelings about Hemingway. The Old Man and the Sea is one of my favourite stories, but generally I think I have difficulty with what I've heard of his personality, and in general his attitude to women in life and print.

For Whom the Bell Tolls is a great war novel. We follow Robert Jordan, who is an American volunteer fighting against the fascists in the Spanish Civil War. He is sent to blow up a bridge, and for this reason is attached temporarily to a group of guerrilla fighters behind enemy lines. They are a motley crew of mostly men and two women. The younger woman is a love interest for our hero and is sickeningly and unbelievably sweet, pliable and naive. The relationship, and in particular its intensity, is vital to the plot, and there is something in Maria being so young and naive which is symbolic or says something about the situation. Nevertheless I found her difficult, some parts of her history vs. present hard to believe and generally wanted her to get a grip. The other female character, Pilar has a touch of caricature, but so do many of the other members of the guerrilla group. Apart from numerous references to how ugly she is, she is well and sympathetically drawn.  

The novel feels genuine and somewhat realistic, not overly idealised or cynical. It looks at the individual, human experience of war and is thoroughly engaging. It focuses on individual experiences, lives and deaths rather than on battles or even concerns with ideology. We can feel the characters' fear and both a hope and hopelessness, a kind of resignation. When compared to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia there is no contest, For Whom.. is the better book by miles. 

My copy was given to me for my birthday by friends and it is a gorgeous gift edition, photographed here without its dust jacket it is a lovely embossed hardback with gold edging and an oak leaf pattern inside. 

Bad Feminist, Roxane Gay

I took a while to start reading this, I think because the word 'essays' put me off a bit. That was completely my loss, Gay's writing is funny, intelligent, passionate and compelling. The essays are completely accessible and cover popular culture, race, sexual assault, politics and personal experience. Her personality shines through the work and she feels familiar by the end. It is a privilege to read something so personal and political and galvanizing. 

Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

This is a great dystopian novel, as you would expect from its reputation. It is an idea which I think will always be current, the idea that people are becoming lazier and less interested in reading, critical thinking and 'intellectual' pursuits. It is not a dystopia that comes from the top down, rather it is the government who exploit a 'weakness' in the population. 

I like the way Bradbury writes, it is to the point and the narrative is concise. I did have a problem with the women in the novel though. There is a 17 year old girl who is the catalyst for the 'awakening' of our main character. She is a trope, bright, engaging 'pleasing' in every way to the hero and makes him feel special whilst making him think, she's a bit like a puppy, waiting for him as he goes to and from work and softening his heart. The other women (it is even worse that one of them is his wife) are held in complete contempt by our hero. They are symptoms of the system, in that they fall for all the new, vapid entertainment and have no free thought. The men are all complicit or in control or activists. The women have no agency and the reader is asked to hate them for it. In reality they are victims of a system which, if all the other roles in the novel are to be believed, was built and is maintained by men.  

Love in the time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

I am not sure what I was expecting from this book, but it wasn't what I got. I found it completely distasteful and claustrophobic at times. I am sure the claustrophobia was intentional, and came from the skill of the author in describing the oppressive atmosphere of the city where the characters live as well as the social and personal binds they create or find themselves in. 

In terms of the distaste, I am not sure how we are supposed to view Florentino Ariza. I imagine there are two parallel readings, one where he is an admirable, poetic and heroic figure, and my reading, which was that he is completely insufferable, self delusional and vampiric, feeding off the idea of an idea of a woman his whole life. Having said that I was charmed by the ending of the novel and fully appreciate what García Márquez says about different forms of love and relationships. 

Some of the themes are similar to The Return of the Native; someone falls in love with the idea of a person and the disconnect between idea and reality has a ripple effect. He also talks about marriage and what makes a good one, the role of women and loss of self-hood in marriage, which for the time must have been perceptive. And then there are both long term and short lived affairs, and the idea of loving and being with multiple people at once. There is a particularly disgusting and predatory relationship between the old Florentino Ariza and a teenager, which I think is there to show disillusionment and degradation of old age, but which is awful and marring.

The whole novel is written in such a way that it all, except the first and last chapters, feels like background information, the author seems to be skimming over events whilst giving us details, everything seems to be taking place in fast forward somehow and I am not sure exactly where that feeling comes from. I found it engaging, but could completely understand someone who stopped reading part-way through.

Postcard Stories, Jan Carson

This is a gorgeous collection of very short stories, first written on postcards and sent to Carson's friends. The stories are vignettes, observations and ideas, most both everyday and profound. They are completely delightful. 

It is from fab independent publisher's The Emma Press who publish beautiful, original stories and poetry pamphlets, well worth looking up. 

Education, Tara Westover

This is a difficult read in places. Westover talks about her upbringing in a survivalist, mormon family, headed by her father. She and her siblings were brought up off grid in rural USA. The father has a complete and shocking disregard for the safety of his children, putting them in harm's way as a matter of course. That's to say nothing of his religious and conspiracy theories. Westover conveys the fact that she did not see anything wrong with how she was brought up at the time - it was normal for her - but she felt scared when her father asked her to do clearly dangerous tasks. Her brother was also very abusive, and it was this that made her leave for good. 

It is amazing that she managed to leave the family and receive an education. It is also eye opening in that there must be so many children who are experiencing the same thing. Children who are unregistered and cut off completely from society. 

A Spool of Blue Thread, Anne Tyler

This is my first Anne Tyler novel and I can't account for why. It's a family drama which follows three generations of the Whitshank family, revolving around the large house they live in. It is a very american novel, the family have a really strong sense of identity which is based on only one generation, nothing is known of the generations before, and there is a pervading sense of the american dream, failed or otherwise. 

Tyler slowly and carefully reveals each member of the family, at first through other's eyes and finally through their own words or at least their own story. There is something uncannily skillful in the way she can fully draw a family and describe all the underlying frustrations, resentments, longings and sadnesses without it feeling forced or overly dramatic. The nuance of their relationships are laid out for us, and explanations are quietly revealed.