arukiyomi

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 5 stars

“Back in early 1995, I was walking up a path in the Himalayan foothills with an Indian friend. I mentioned that I’d recently read Christopher Hibbert’s fantastic book The Great Mutiny: India 1857 and asked him what his perspective on the Indian Mutiny was. “Oh,” he replied coolly, “You mean the First War of Independence.” I’ve never forgotten that lesson in historical perspective. Farrell gives us another lesson with this remarkable novel.

Farrell’s written a great book here. It deals with the human condition so very well against a startlingly vivid backdrop through a medium of wit, irony and deep insight. It seems a very worthy winner of the Booker. I enjoyed it immensely and found it a much more satisfying read than The Singapore Grip.

It’s the characterisation that makes Siege an improvement on Grip, principal among the nameless Collector who oversees a residency under siege. He is rendered exceedingly well as a man whose religion of rational culturalism is, as we know from our perspective, doomed. Farrell tells the story with pathos, wit and with some wonderfully ironic passages scattered with healthy doses of cynicism.

To illustrate this, take The Collector’s pride and joy: his hoard of cultural artifacts brought over at great expense from Europe in the hopes that some of their beauty will rub off on the natives and thus raise them from their morass. In desperation however, The Collector ends up ordering them to be used either as shot for the cannon or to shore up the earthen ramparts. In other words, he uses his art to either kill the natives or to hide behind. Fantastic imagery.

There are some great passages about religious and scientific discussions of the day which, as they would have done in reality, polarise the community under siege. Towards the end, the two doctors end up at loggerheads over how to treat cholera and throughout the Padre demonstrates the inanities of religion in various forms. Hardly anything isn’t dealt with: religion, sexuality, culture, science, civilisation, relationships… Farrell weaves them all in seamlessly. I’m very glad I read it.”

arukiyomi wrote this review Monday, April 12, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

1 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 2 stars

“This is a rare book in that inside the front cover, the publisher has included some comments from reviews of the book. What makes them unique as far as I can tell is that this book has negative reviews. There are reviews telling us not to bother reading it, that it’s distasteful and not worth our efforts. I can only think that by mixing these in with those eulogising it, the publisher is attempting some form of reverse pyschology. Anyway, I was halfway through it before I realised, but even by that point, I understood the reason for the mixed reviews.

This is the story of a person who has created their own world within a world created for them by their father. It’s a claustrophobic novel told in the first person deep down in the thoughts of Frank, an obsessive who has punctuated his life with superstitious ritual. These rituals involve the death of large numbers of animal and insect life, often in gruesome ways. I can’t imagine any vegetarians liking this one.

Quite why Frank feels this is all necessary is never explained. It just is. Frank’s got a brother, Eric who is quite patently insane and has been shipped away somewhere. He escapes from this somewhere near the start of the novel and gradually gets closer to home as the novel progresses. The climax, when it comes, is a bit strange. In fact, the whole thing’s a bit strange.

Banks has included a twist at the end which isn’t too hard to anticipate and having delivered this, the novel limps to a brief and altogether premature end. Anyone frustrated by Banks’ decision not to explore the issues in a more humane way should read a novel which I will hide because knowing it would give away the twist. If you want to see the novel I’d recommed click show
: Middlesex.

I didn’t think it was terrifically well-written. If you’re a fan of McEwan, you’d feel at home with the style. And it probes people’s psyche like McEwan does too. But I wasn’t overly keen on my first Iain Banks. Maybe I’ll like The Crow Road better.”

arukiyomi wrote this review Saturday, April 10, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

0 of 1 members found this review helpful.

• Rated 1 stars

“The 1001 Books list has totally changed the way I read novels. It's given me access to writers that have deeply influenced the way I see the world and has given me memories of characters and storylines that have been incredibly powerful. And then it's introduced me to Elizabeth Gaskell and the trivial withering rubbish of Cranford.

This is a book about absolutely nothing. I recently thoughtNorthanger Abbey lacked any substance. How very wrong I was. Cranford redefines pointlessness. I waited in vain for one significant thing to happen throughout the entire book and, when it finally did, the novel ended. It was an audio book and, for a minute, I thought my mp3 player had had a fit and I'd lost some files. But no, that was it.

My mother in law asked me why it was so bad. To help her understand I asked her to imagine following a contemporary blog of some young 20-something whose life is filled with triviality, all of which she details every day. You meet her shallow friends with bland personalities, hear her discuss with avid attention for pages and pages things that shouldn't justify a blink of attention. That's Cranford, the petty ramblings of a young woman with nothing better to do. Even Wikipedia can't come up with much on this one.

I'm glad the reading's over with... now I'll just sit back and wait for the Gaskell-ites to comment and try to sell this one to me. Just go ahead and try, I dare you ;-)”

arukiyomi wrote this review Friday, April 2, 2010. ( reply | permalink )

• Rated 4 stars

“I knew nothing about the Biafran conflict in the late 1960s. I know considerably more now. Yellow Sun is an eye-opener. Very movingly written and yet never far away from the resolute humour that characterises many of the novel’s cast.

The book begins in Ugwu’s village. He goes to work for a university professor and by entering the world of the literati teaches himself to read and write and to think about the world beyond the village. Various other characters enter the orbit of the professor’s family and then the war breaks out and everything changes forever.

Adichie writes very well and you’re never tempted to flick ahead a few pages to see if she picks up the pace. It’s not fast-paced though, don’t get me wrong. It’s measured and thoughtful. She has spent time crafting sentences in what is not a short novel. The whole is thus lent a grace which belies its subject matter which is, at times, quite brutal and graphic.

The strength of the novel lies in its characterisation. The actors are strong and the writing changes just ever so slightly with the focus on each one. From Ugwu’s viewpoint, the professor is always Master or Master Odenigbo at best, but from his peers, he is just Odenigbo. I liked the fact that she still managed to retain subtlety like this in a novel whose subject matter is anything but.

The story is told from the Biafran side and it is a side of suffering and sorrow. I learned more than I’d ever known before and was grateful for it. I hope to pass it on to a friend whose working in Nigeria now. I wonder what kind of reception it gets there?”

arukiyomi wrote this review Sunday, March 28, 2010. ( reply | permalink )