I first read this novel many moons ago when I was about 18 years old. My eyes are so different now.
Many people know the basic story. It's a semi post-apocalyptic story where the civilization of Gilean has instituted martial law. Women have lost all rights. They can't have jobs, control money, or survive on their own. Not only that, they have been reduced to their reproductive potential. Wives are generally married to important men and barren, Martha's are women who are useful but can't reproduce and take care of homes, handmaids have viable ovaries and have sex with husbands trying to give barren wives children. Creeptastic. The women have little if any communication with one another, resentment is rampant, and everyone is afraid. It's only been four years - all of these women remember the time before.
Offred, the protagonist, is a handmaid in the home of a Commander (of what she does not know) who clearly remembers her life before. The story vacillates between her current day horror and the year or so leading up to marital law: the day her accounts were frozen, the day she lost her job, the day she and her husband tried to run with their daughter. As I sit typing this, reeling over "criminal miscarriage" legislation, it's creepier than ever.
This book does an amazing job of many things. One is, it demonstrates the loneliness of all the women, cut off from each other, reduced to function, in a way that is heart breaking. Imagine the relief in speaking in full sentences in your normal tone of voice. Can you even. Or imagine having, after four years, to make yourself think about spelling again. Atwood's portrayal of how basic skills are lost with disuse is mind boggling and probably true. Atwood's protagonist spends most of her time trying not to think, concentrating on the simplest things: a fingernail, a cloud. Without even thought to keep you company, the world is very lonely place, even in close quarters.
Offred eventually gets an opportunity to expand her life a little. The Commander involves her in life outside the house - either as an act of mercy or one of control, your reading may vary - and Offred begins to want again. To feel what it is to have power, no matter how limited. She takes risks, albeit calculated risks. Most importantly she starts to think again. Not just remember, but process, create in her mind, plan. I guess that's suppose to be the uplifting part.
There are a lot of moments in this book that suck the wind out of you and not all of them are what you'd expect. The sex act in this culture is it's own special kind of sickness must it's not the most sickening moment, at least not for this reader. There are many others, in the women who help to control other women, the betrayal among those who have no choice but to trust, etc etc. The most frightening moment for this reader though, comes in the middle of the narrative, Offred is remembering the early days when things began to change - she is bereft, afraid, already losing herself and in a moment of clarity that changes everything, she realizes her husband doesn't mind. What, if anything, can a subjected population do if even their allies are complacent?
CBR #9 - A Star Called Henry
Henry Smart has had a hell of a time. This is the first book in a trilogy (of which I read the third first) by Roddy Doyle. It follows the life of Henry Smart from his earliest years in Dublin during the Troubles to his retirement from the IRA. Henry is the first child to survive, in a family that would have been immense, born to impovershed parents in Dublin. His father is a bouncer at the local whore house and sometimes heavy man for the local gangster. His mother is aging five years for every one at home with the ghosts of her children who didn't survive.
Little Henry first hits the streets at age 3 and is already mean. He grows up on the streets, leaving home with his little brother in tow by the time he is 8. His Mother is incapable of caring for them and his father has run off, or died, either way it's two little boys on the streets. At first, being a middle class American born in the late twentieth century this seems hard to believe, but Doyle's writing is so convincing that even I can picture it painful as it is.
Henry eventually gets off the streets and into hiding as an early soldier in the IRA, he has what Cusack called "a certain moral flexibility" and it gains him position in the burgeoning army. Henry works hard, falls in love, commits murders, runs and runs and runs. All the while he maintains a sense of humor and loyalty to his cause. Until he can't anymore. And then he just absolutely cannot. The plot description doesn't do this book justice.
I don't know much about the troubles or the IRA honestly, although I'm enamored by it. This novel hints at the strategies of the IRA and how they were successful in ways that require that I do some research and see if they're true (I love that in a novel). Did the IRA really draw the English intentionally into peaceful neighborhoods and trick them into wreaking havoc, murdering citizens, in order that public opinion turn against them? Did the IRA knowingly sacrifice their own when it suited them, or defend their own for crimes equal to any British peeler?
Whether intentional or not, this novel manages to maintain the romance, on some level, of the Irish Independence movement; however, at the same time it is a gripping narrative about the use and abuse of those that served. Men like Henry with nothing to lose carry a revolution on their backs until slowly one by one they are betrayed, disillusioned, or killed. As Henry goes about his work, he slowly comes to realize that he is little more than a beast of burden for a movement whose intentions may have been true, but whose execution, in the end, is wanting.
The narrative voice is so strong and so compelling that the story comes across much more intensely and ferociously than this review would suggest. It has moments of bone crushing sadness and pure elation. Henry is a brute, but you love him, as you're suppose to, even when you know he is wrong.
Little Henry first hits the streets at age 3 and is already mean. He grows up on the streets, leaving home with his little brother in tow by the time he is 8. His Mother is incapable of caring for them and his father has run off, or died, either way it's two little boys on the streets. At first, being a middle class American born in the late twentieth century this seems hard to believe, but Doyle's writing is so convincing that even I can picture it painful as it is.
Henry eventually gets off the streets and into hiding as an early soldier in the IRA, he has what Cusack called "a certain moral flexibility" and it gains him position in the burgeoning army. Henry works hard, falls in love, commits murders, runs and runs and runs. All the while he maintains a sense of humor and loyalty to his cause. Until he can't anymore. And then he just absolutely cannot. The plot description doesn't do this book justice.
I don't know much about the troubles or the IRA honestly, although I'm enamored by it. This novel hints at the strategies of the IRA and how they were successful in ways that require that I do some research and see if they're true (I love that in a novel). Did the IRA really draw the English intentionally into peaceful neighborhoods and trick them into wreaking havoc, murdering citizens, in order that public opinion turn against them? Did the IRA knowingly sacrifice their own when it suited them, or defend their own for crimes equal to any British peeler?
Whether intentional or not, this novel manages to maintain the romance, on some level, of the Irish Independence movement; however, at the same time it is a gripping narrative about the use and abuse of those that served. Men like Henry with nothing to lose carry a revolution on their backs until slowly one by one they are betrayed, disillusioned, or killed. As Henry goes about his work, he slowly comes to realize that he is little more than a beast of burden for a movement whose intentions may have been true, but whose execution, in the end, is wanting.
The narrative voice is so strong and so compelling that the story comes across much more intensely and ferociously than this review would suggest. It has moments of bone crushing sadness and pure elation. Henry is a brute, but you love him, as you're suppose to, even when you know he is wrong.
Jack CBR-III #8 Sufficient Grace
Apparently I can't count and I'm too lazy to go redo it. So, here we are at number 8.
Sufficient Grace by Darnell Arnoult. Apparently, although I was choking to death on Faulkner by the time I got out of grad school, I can't get away from Southern novels. Well, Southernish. This novel takes place between two neighboring towns and tells the stories of two families, one black, one white, brought together by the protagonist's slow decent into schizophrenia. There's no spoiler involved to tell you that one day Gracie wakes up, prepares her house, cuts up her credit cards, gets in the car and drives away from home, thirty year marriage, and grown daughter. She is found sleeping on the grave of Arty, dead husband of Mattie, and son of Ma Toot, in a town just across the state line. The two black women take her home and care for her. The rest of the story unfolds as the supporting characters each deal with Gracie's (who goes by Rachel at Ma Toot's house) madness and the effect it has on their lives.
There were two things that really struck me about this book. First, Gracie/Rachel's decent into madness is described in terms of the voices she hears and sometimes the specifically odd things they tell her. That, in and of itself, not so striking. But, the novel is peopled with other people who listen to voices of their own, and yet clearly aren't crazy. The juxtaposing of crazy voice versus the little messages we all hear from day to day is at times riveting. It made reading about this type of illness as accessible in a lot of ways.
The second thing is the richness of the characters and their individual development. Ed, Gracie's husband, who she leaves without ever looking back, undergoes two significant and completely believable transformations. Not only that, all the while, he struggles to do what he can to relate to his wife, support her, and find a way to bridge the disassociation between them. Ed and Ma Toots are two most developed characters in the novel and both their stories are compelling, but it's the humanity and level of detail given to even the tertiary characters that makes this novel so compelling. The aching, beautiful secretary, who has always wanted Ed's attention, in only a few pages comes alive and is more more interesting and sympathetic than the stereotype you might expect (and get) elsewhere. Ginger, Gracie's daughter, is equal parts irritating and relatable. Her fear of what family crazy means and the impact it will have on her specifically is sometimes moving, her impatience with her "crazy" mother in the closing chapters brings some good, believable comic relief.
Another interesting thing is the way the book explores how these people respond when new roads are opened up before them. Ed and Gracie have been married 30 years. It seems like all the decisions about their life have been made until she leaves and then Ed gets to make new ones. Mattie is grieving for her husband and has decided to make it a full-time endeavor until the presence of Gracie (and others) make her rethink the paths that may be available to her. Each character comes to know something new about themselves, something brimming with potential Some of the stories tie up a little more neatly necessary, but even still you can believe it might, could happen that way, if you listen really hard to the little voice inside.
Sufficient Grace by Darnell Arnoult. Apparently, although I was choking to death on Faulkner by the time I got out of grad school, I can't get away from Southern novels. Well, Southernish. This novel takes place between two neighboring towns and tells the stories of two families, one black, one white, brought together by the protagonist's slow decent into schizophrenia. There's no spoiler involved to tell you that one day Gracie wakes up, prepares her house, cuts up her credit cards, gets in the car and drives away from home, thirty year marriage, and grown daughter. She is found sleeping on the grave of Arty, dead husband of Mattie, and son of Ma Toot, in a town just across the state line. The two black women take her home and care for her. The rest of the story unfolds as the supporting characters each deal with Gracie's (who goes by Rachel at Ma Toot's house) madness and the effect it has on their lives.
There were two things that really struck me about this book. First, Gracie/Rachel's decent into madness is described in terms of the voices she hears and sometimes the specifically odd things they tell her. That, in and of itself, not so striking. But, the novel is peopled with other people who listen to voices of their own, and yet clearly aren't crazy. The juxtaposing of crazy voice versus the little messages we all hear from day to day is at times riveting. It made reading about this type of illness as accessible in a lot of ways.
The second thing is the richness of the characters and their individual development. Ed, Gracie's husband, who she leaves without ever looking back, undergoes two significant and completely believable transformations. Not only that, all the while, he struggles to do what he can to relate to his wife, support her, and find a way to bridge the disassociation between them. Ed and Ma Toots are two most developed characters in the novel and both their stories are compelling, but it's the humanity and level of detail given to even the tertiary characters that makes this novel so compelling. The aching, beautiful secretary, who has always wanted Ed's attention, in only a few pages comes alive and is more more interesting and sympathetic than the stereotype you might expect (and get) elsewhere. Ginger, Gracie's daughter, is equal parts irritating and relatable. Her fear of what family crazy means and the impact it will have on her specifically is sometimes moving, her impatience with her "crazy" mother in the closing chapters brings some good, believable comic relief.
Another interesting thing is the way the book explores how these people respond when new roads are opened up before them. Ed and Gracie have been married 30 years. It seems like all the decisions about their life have been made until she leaves and then Ed gets to make new ones. Mattie is grieving for her husband and has decided to make it a full-time endeavor until the presence of Gracie (and others) make her rethink the paths that may be available to her. Each character comes to know something new about themselves, something brimming with potential Some of the stories tie up a little more neatly necessary, but even still you can believe it might, could happen that way, if you listen really hard to the little voice inside.
CBR-III #5 Faithful Place - Tana French
This is the third of Tana French's novels that I have read and I have enjoyed them all. This last installment is similar in some ways to the first two, but it takes the feel of the other two and moves in a new direction.
Faithful Place, unlike the first two novels, is less focused on the solving of a crime and more focused on the place where it happened and the people it happened too. Frank Mackey is a detective from Faithful Place, who left twenty two years ago and never looked back, of course, until now. The single sibling of four with whom he still speaks calls him in for an emergency: a suitcase has turned up in an abandoned house at it looks to be his high school sweet heart's case. The one who left him (and apparently the case) behind the night they were suppose to run away. Frank rushes to drop of his nine year old daughter back off with his ex-wife and heads directly for Faithful Place. We learn a lot in those opening pages.
The mystery of who killed Rosie Daly unravels slowly. And maybe it's a result of having read her other two novels so recently, I knew who did it relatively early. The beauty is it just didn't matter. French does such an amazing job with a slew of damaged, frightened, bitter, scared characters, most of whom are still on Faithful Place to this day, that the mystery takes second place behind the unraveling of all these characters. French treats them all with such honestly that even the most beastly among them is compelling and on some level understandable - not sympathetic - but understandable.
I have few quibbles with this novel, most probably aren't worth mentioning. There is however a revelation that seems a little too easy and the happily ever after potential unrealistic (especially given the rest of the novel), but it's a smaller side plot and not the main story. As heartbreaking and some of the other side plots end, they are true to what you'd expect from the people involved even though you hate that you even expected it, and I love an author who can pull that off without disappointing.
French's novel has a lot to do with family and loyalty, and the pain that comes with both. And yet it demonstrates beautifully why even when given an escape people continue to come back for more.
Faithful Place, unlike the first two novels, is less focused on the solving of a crime and more focused on the place where it happened and the people it happened too. Frank Mackey is a detective from Faithful Place, who left twenty two years ago and never looked back, of course, until now. The single sibling of four with whom he still speaks calls him in for an emergency: a suitcase has turned up in an abandoned house at it looks to be his high school sweet heart's case. The one who left him (and apparently the case) behind the night they were suppose to run away. Frank rushes to drop of his nine year old daughter back off with his ex-wife and heads directly for Faithful Place. We learn a lot in those opening pages.
The mystery of who killed Rosie Daly unravels slowly. And maybe it's a result of having read her other two novels so recently, I knew who did it relatively early. The beauty is it just didn't matter. French does such an amazing job with a slew of damaged, frightened, bitter, scared characters, most of whom are still on Faithful Place to this day, that the mystery takes second place behind the unraveling of all these characters. French treats them all with such honestly that even the most beastly among them is compelling and on some level understandable - not sympathetic - but understandable.
I have few quibbles with this novel, most probably aren't worth mentioning. There is however a revelation that seems a little too easy and the happily ever after potential unrealistic (especially given the rest of the novel), but it's a smaller side plot and not the main story. As heartbreaking and some of the other side plots end, they are true to what you'd expect from the people involved even though you hate that you even expected it, and I love an author who can pull that off without disappointing.
French's novel has a lot to do with family and loyalty, and the pain that comes with both. And yet it demonstrates beautifully why even when given an escape people continue to come back for more.
Unbroken - Laura Hillenbrand
What a way to ring in the new year. So I was completely out of things to read, and owe the library enough in fees that they've temporarily suspended my borrowing privileges. So, my husband's Mom sends him Unbroken for Christmas and with nothing else to read I pick it up. Don't get me wrong, I loved Seabiscuit but I tend to avoid anything war related; however, my husband convinced me it was a book about an escape during the war, not a real war story. Boy was he wrong.
It is testament to Hillenbrand's writing that I finished the book. The first 75 pages, before you get anywhere near the war, are so compelling and the characters so masterfully brought to life that there is no way you can stop reading this book until you come to the end. You have to know what happens to Louie and the rest of the group no matter how painful, and it is very, very painful.
The story follows Louie Zamperini, delinquent turned Olympic hopeful in the opening pages of the novel. He is staggering in his success and has all the makings of a star. However, Pearl Harbor happens and the Olympics are put on hold and Louie is put in plane.
To tell the order of events for the rest of the novel would serve more as spoiler than anything else. I will warn (spoiler coming) that Louie spends no fewer than 200 pages of this book in POW camps and worse. Hillenbrand describes the events in those places with such detail that I cried through huge sections of the book and several times had to abandon it for an hour or two. She follows a pattern where just after describing the most mind numbing, painful experiences she follows with equally detailed stories of how the men maintained moral, where they found hope, how they kept breathing. For this reader it wasn't enough, but I would guess for many it will be.
This book is definitely testament to the power of the human spirit. The things those POWs overcame, the very fact that they came home and led "normal" lives after the war is nothing short of awe inspiring. When I started reading this book, I thought everyone should read this. It brings to light so many things that so many of us don't dare to think about, but having finished it I don't know if I would read it again.
It is testament to Hillenbrand's writing that I finished the book. The first 75 pages, before you get anywhere near the war, are so compelling and the characters so masterfully brought to life that there is no way you can stop reading this book until you come to the end. You have to know what happens to Louie and the rest of the group no matter how painful, and it is very, very painful.
The story follows Louie Zamperini, delinquent turned Olympic hopeful in the opening pages of the novel. He is staggering in his success and has all the makings of a star. However, Pearl Harbor happens and the Olympics are put on hold and Louie is put in plane.
To tell the order of events for the rest of the novel would serve more as spoiler than anything else. I will warn (spoiler coming) that Louie spends no fewer than 200 pages of this book in POW camps and worse. Hillenbrand describes the events in those places with such detail that I cried through huge sections of the book and several times had to abandon it for an hour or two. She follows a pattern where just after describing the most mind numbing, painful experiences she follows with equally detailed stories of how the men maintained moral, where they found hope, how they kept breathing. For this reader it wasn't enough, but I would guess for many it will be.
This book is definitely testament to the power of the human spirit. The things those POWs overcame, the very fact that they came home and led "normal" lives after the war is nothing short of awe inspiring. When I started reading this book, I thought everyone should read this. It brings to light so many things that so many of us don't dare to think about, but having finished it I don't know if I would read it again.
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