Tom Jones; Henry Fielding

Comedy

It's been a while since my last post! Not because this book took me that long (though not far off), but because course reading has been taking its toll!

Anyway, on with the review.

Henry Fielding's Tom Jones is an incredibly well known novel, and Fielding a novelist whose comic novel, one of the earliest on the list (published in 1749), is something that takes a good deal of time to wrestle with.

It is difficult to categorise this novel simply as being a comedy, because in its 346,747 words, Fielding fits a hell of a lot in; romance, family drama, social commentary... There was a great deal to contend with in this book, but although a long, long, novel, it wasn't unmanageable. Interestingly, for a book published over 260 years ago, Tom Jones gets away with being relatively readable.

The most interesting relationship that Fielding tackles in the novel, I think, is that of Jones and his half-brother Blifil, whose high-birth and standing cause him to become a less than attractive character. The religious figure, the aptly-named Thwackum, comes to represent the hypocrisy of the Church, an institution that seeks, within the novel, to control and condition through fear and pain.

Being an eighteenth century novel, it is perhaps unsurprising how much of the novel is concerned with religion and the crown. It seems that a great many of the 'good' characters of the novel, who end up 'happily ever after', eventually, are loyalist and Anglican, whereas the 'bad' are Jacobites and Anti-Hanoverians.

Tom Jones is by no means for the faint of heart. It is an intensely wordy book, and very long indeed. It is, however, a very rewarding novel to finish, and although the comedy is often that of a 'I can see why that would be funny' kind, there are moments which are truly laughable.

The next book on the list is Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry.

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.

Tender is the Night; F. Scott Fitzgerald

Love

F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night explores the lives and relationships of its three main characters; Rosemary, Dick and Nicole. It is less a love-triangle than a web of romance - Rosemary is shown to 'love' both Dick and Nicole, a married couple. Dick adores them both, too; Rosemary is a breath of fresh air, but he and Nicole have a long and complicated history, explored in the second part of the novel. 

First published in Scribner's Magazine between January and April of 1934, this was Fitzgerald's final completed novel. The title "Tender is the Night" comes from John Keats' Ode to a Nightingale. There are actually two versions of the novel, the first of which is written using flashbacks, and the second - the one I read - is organised chronologically. The novel certainly has some autobiographical elements - Fitzgerald's wife, Zelda, was schizophrenic just as Nicole is in Tender is the Night. 

The wealthy couple form a sort of pedestal to which Rosemary, the actress, looks up. Dick and Nicole are fascinating to all, and are seemingly faultless in their appearences. It is Rosemary who notes that "when people have so much for outsiders didn't it indicate a lack of inner intensity?" and there proves to be nothing more true. Fitzgerald gives a tongue-in-cheek account of the role of women - Rosemary, who has been brought up by her mother, is bred to work as an actress, not to be married off to a rich man; and Dick points out that "economically you're a boy, not a girl". 

There is a depth of struggle throughout the book - Rosemary struggles and succeeds in gaining the attention of Dick, Nicole struggles with her own schizophrenia, an illness that originates, it is indicated, from her incestuous relations with her father in early age. The greatest struggle is Dick's, though, between Rosemary and Nicole - he adores them almost equally, and it is this that seems to kill him inside - in witnessing Rosemary's sadness, "he wanted to gather her up in his arms, as he so often had Nicole, and cherish even her mistakes, so deeply were they part of her". 

Lastly, it's worth having a look at Dick's amusing derision at other countries, and other countries' people. To him, "England was like a rich man after a disastrous orgy who makes up to the household by chatting with them individually, when it is obvious to them that he is only trying to get back his self-respect in order to usurp his former power". In Italy, he announces: "I like France, where everybody thinks he's Napoleon - down here everybody thinks he's Christ". 

Tender is the Night is rightfully a famous novel - it is a fascinating portrayal of love and foreigness, and a great demonstration of how a writer can create a character that you disagree with at every turn and yet are still in awe of. 

Next I'll be reading Tom Jones by Henry Fielding - good luck!

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.

Martin Eden; Jack London

Family and Self

Jack London's Martin Eden is concerned with the rise to fame of a working class seaman who becomes an intellectual and a writer and eventually, having become what he had craved in the first half of the book, falls into a depression from which he does not escape until the final page of the novel. 

The novel was originally published in serials in the Pacific Monthly magazine between the Septembers of 1908-09, before being published as a book in 1909. It is interesting that the book should have been read by so many in a magazine, and it makes a lot of sense. Martin Eden is concerned with the failures of magazine editors, and so its format as a magazine serial clearly forms an important part of its appeal, and its later publication into book-form offers a nice parallel to the life of Martin Eden in the book.

There are some major themes beyond simply the following of the development of Eden as an intellectual and a writer, as a Kunstlerroman. There is a major attack upon socialism and the individual within the book, the former in direct contrast to the beliefs of the book's writer, Jack London. In fact, it is clear that London pits socialism and individualism against one another, a fight out of which it could be argued that socialism wins, and individualism, in which the sympathies of the lead character, Eden, lie, fails miserably. Martin Eden defends a stalwart self-improvement in which he cares not for the failures of his class, but only for the failures of himself. As he rises intellectually above the Morse family, he becomes lost as he has nowhere left to look up to. His eventual suicide could quite easily be put down to his failure to follow socialism, and his reliance upon his own Self. 

In a large way, Martin Eden mirrors the personality and life of Jack London himself. Both became disillusioned with their literary fame and took off on voyages around the Pacific, and the character of Ruth could be said to reflect the real figure of Mabel Applegarth, London's first love. 

Martin Eden is a fascinating novel, and a very real portrayal of an artist's life and the failures of fame and fortune when they are eventually reached. Reading it now, it often seems very cliched - largely, I think, because of its similarity to so many Hollywood films produced at the moment, which follow the idea of a 'falling out of love', as a result of the lover's failure to appreciate the love had in the first place. 

I'll be reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender is the Night next, so get reading.

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.

Novel on Yellow Paper; Stevie Smith

State of the Nation

So. Stevie Smith's Novel on Yellow Paper is the first of many, many, books that I will be reading and reviewing. A bit of background is necessary, I think. The original had a sort of subtitle, or alternative title - "Work it out for yourself", which is charming, don't you think? The sentence appears on the first page of the novel:

"Beginning this book (not as they say 'book' in our trade - they mean magazine), beginning this book, I should like if I may, I should like, if I may (that is the way Sir Phoebus writes), I should like then to say: Good-bye to all my friends, my beautiful and lovely friends.
And for why?
Read on, Reader, read on and work it out for yourself."

What was that? It sounds like a pretty weird book? You've got a point there.
Novel on Yellow Paper was first published in 1936, after Smith attempted to get her poetry published, at which time she was "told by a publisher to go away and write a novel". And so voilà - here it is. It rocketed Smith to celebrity, and she wrote two more novels afterwards. Well done Stevie Smith, well played. Clearly, as a novel set and written in pre-war Europe, there is great concern with Nazism, Judaism and all things war. But this novel really is a truly unique way of looking at an old and well-visited subject. 

So back to that weirdness. This is not your ordinary 'beginning-middle-end' plot novel. Not by a long shot. At its simplest, Novel on Yellow Paper seems to be the ramblings of an extraordinarily over-qualified receptionist who writes down her philosophical thoughts throughout the book. She talks about Euripides, sex education, Nazism and the Catholic Church, to name but a few of the topics that she explores and tears apart. There is perhaps a sense that Smith herself can be found in the narrator, Pompey, in the parallels in their writing for a magazine magnate. There are parallels, too, between Stevie Smith's writing style and Virginia Woolf's, in its rambling, roving conscious style. Pompey borders upon anti-Semitism, until her visit to Germany shows her the utter madness of such universal hatred.

There's something to be said for a book that so perfectly captures the pre-World War Two mindset. It gives us some insight into the uncertain world of Europe at this time - a world where the soon-to-be Allied countries looked with trepidation at the workings of Hitler's Nazi Germany, rising from the ashes of their hyperinflation struck economy. There's certainly a fear behind the narrator's voice that comes through her bravado - the back-story of her mother and her 'Lion' of an aunt really highlight these insecurities where you'd otherwise perhaps ignore them.

It was a strange one to start with, though, that's for sure. 

Novel on Yellow Paper acts as a fascinating insight into novel writing during the period - and although it won't be for everyone, it's definitely worth a read.

Next up is Jack London's Martin Eden, so by all means start reading. I'm sure you'll be faster than me.

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.

What is The Grand Book Review?

This Blog is a book review. "How very original," I hear you think (loudly). I know. Well, this idea originates from me feeling drastically overwhelmed by the lack of books that I have read, when I compare myself to the many other voracious book-consumers that study English alongside me. It seems mad that I should be studying a degree so immersed in literature when, really, I have read very few books. And so, with a bit of searching, I came across the Guardian's '1000 Books Everyone Must Read' (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/23/bestbooks-fiction), and realised that I had read 22 of them. That's little over 2% of what are considered essential books. So I chucked the books into a randomiser (in particular, http://www.random.org/), and have decided to review them, as I read them, one by one. This will be slow - and I mean slow - because I'm doing this alongside my course reading, and so the reviews will appear rather infrequently.

At the top of each review, I will put in bold which of the categories the novel has been deemed to be a part of, according to the Guardian, so you can decide whether or not you'd like to read the book based on that. Just a warning, though; the category really is a very rough guide, and the novels often stray into a number of other categories.

The categories are, incidentally, Comedy, Crime, Family and Self, Love, Science Fiction and Fantasy, State of the Nation and War and Travel.

So that's all there is to it, really, and now I'm just writing because I like the sound of my own keyboard.

The next book I'll be reading will be Novel on Yellow Paper by Stevie Smith, so if, Heaven forbid, you should wish to accompany me, go ahead.

Please, if you have any comments on my reviews, I welcome them. Consider this a book group, rather than a book review - debate, discuss and shout me down, by all means. Thanks for reading.