Dec

1

Another Doorstop Down

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A big fat book can be a wonderful thing, whether in spite of its length or because of it.  I spent a couple weeks getting through The Children’s Book by A. S. Byatt.  At another time in my life I probably could have done it in a few days if I had nothing else to do, but it is hefty and not a one-sitting kind of thing.  The only other book of Byatt’s I read is Possession, and that was a long time ago, though I remember liking it.

TCB has a lot of things that I normally don’t like.  It’s historical (not a dealbreaker, but not necessarily a big plus), it’s full of long tangents getting into the happenings of the day, and it features cameos from famous figures of the time.  I understand that Oscar Wilde and Rupert Brooke feature into the social circles of the book, but I also can’t help feeling like an author has misappropriated them for their own purposes without their consent.  I was willing to forgive all these flaws because I got very quickly caught up in Byatt’s story.  I’ve read a lot of books set in turn-of-the-century Britain lately, and I’ve read a lot of authors from that time period, so that helped.  I was aware of the resurgence in children’s fiction (J. M. Barrie and the like) but hadn’t ever realized how broad it was, so that was also nice.

Byatt does what I like best in an author: she presents a story with several characters, where each are allowed their own point of view.  Because of the large number of characters in TCB, some do get shortchanged.  But those you get to know best do develop a strong inner life and get to interact with all sorts of other characters.

Unfortunately, as the book went on it became clear that Byatt was less concerned with the individual stories of her characters and more concerned with placing them into a larger historical context.  (Thus the repeated appearances of Brooke.)  The more the world started to invade their lives, the less interesting the book became.  It wasn’t at all surprising that it all came to a head at World War I, if anything it became so obvious that this would happen about halfway through the book that it was rather anticlimactic.  I still don’t quite know what to think about the ending.  It is all so quick and dirty.  And I can’t quite figure out how it fits into what Byatt is trying to say.  Did the War force the generation of children to grow up?  Or does it mean that they’d doomed their own children to become adults far too quickly?  And while an awful lot of characters died in those last few pages, many were ones we didn’t know well and the cumulative effect of all those deaths actually made it less affecting.

Still, for about half the book, I fervently adored it and if it all could have stayed like that I think it would become a new favorite.  I don’t know that I will read it again, but I do feel comfortable recommending it, especially to people who like historical novels.

I feel like all my reading got put on hold while I spent weeks trying to finish TCB.  I am still in the middle of Rabbit, Redux.  I have started The Lost City of Z, and should probably get back to it since I’m sure I can’t renew it.  I have just dived into This Is Where I Leave You by Jonathan Tropper, and expect to be finished soon.  TIWILY is good.  It reminds me of The Corrections, except it’s funny and wry and raunchy and doesn’t take itself so seriously.  (These are all compliments.)  I am listening to Brave New World on audio, I realized it had been at least a decade since I’d read it and I could hardly remember anything about it, I think it is one of those books you need a decent memory of since it’s in a host of cultural references.  I also wanted to make sure that I like 1984 better.  You always have to pick one.  Thus far, my mind has not changed.  It is good, it is sometimes horrifyingly prescient.  But I think the use of the “savages” could have been a bit better.  Still, I think Huxley pulls you in pretty well, which is a big deal in this kind of fiction.

I am reaching the end of the year, which means I’ll have to put some thought into my best list.  I have a few specific ideas for my favorites, but I won’t be able to make the kind of extensive list I made last year.  It hasn’t been so bad, the highs have been quite high, but I have suffered through a few more books than I should have.  I need to learn to get out sooner.

As you’d expect for the parent of an infant, I am sadly behind on movies.  I would love to go see Fantastic Mr. Fox and Up in the Air and Precious and Nine (yes, please, Nine!) and Invictus and A Serious Man and Broken Embraces but most of these probably won’t come to pass since I have a baby who must be entertained and a husband who’s not particularly interested in any of these movies.  So it’s back to the DVD queue for me.  I have had When Father Was Away on Business and Farewell, My Concubine sitting at my house for at least two weeks so I haven’t been particularly good on that front either.

I did watch almost all of the 7Up films recently, though.  (35Up is not available on Netflix Watch Instantly, but all the others are.)  I found it very interesting, especially since your expectations were often totally overthrown from one film to the next.  I didn’t mind so much that it was an intrusion into the lives of its subjects (as today’s reality tv often is) because they were allowed to comment on whether the films were effective and what they thought themselves.  It’s unclear whether there will be a film to follow 49Up, and there certainly has been a lot less change from film to film recently.  But I think they should keep going, if only to keep viewers from assuming that life is boring after 50.


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