Best Reads of O-Nine and Reflections

The end of the year, and decade, is nigh and it is time for some navel gazing and reflection. I was going going to do a ‘best reads of the decade’ thing but I realised that would simply be impossible. Ten years is a long time, particularly for somebody who has transited from teenage years to a young adult (or ‘adult’). But it would have been interesting to watch the changes in my reading habits, if only I had kept a reading journal.

Compared to last year, I have read much more, more than double the amount. This is largely due to not focusing on research material and assigned literature. This is also the first year, in more than a decade, that I was not dictated what to read since I was no longer (sadly…) taking any English Lit. classes, both high school and university, so that was an unusual position.

I didn’t set out a number of books I wanted to finish this year because I don’t believe in that sort of thing. I’d rather savour books slowly and ponder rather than rushing through volumes. Being a rather slow reader comes into play here. I’d signed up for two reading challenges but I didn’t complete those either. I’ve decided readings challenges aren’t really for me but I do like the 1% of 1001 books challenge although I’m just working off the list rather than strategising and planning.

This year, I’ve read a wide variety of books, from classics to very hyped up crime thrillers (which is rare for me). I re-read several books, something that usually occurs once every four blue moons. I also read quite a bit of French existentialist novels and I’m making a conscious effort to read more Australian writers. I managed to get to the Melbourne Writer’s Festival for the very first time and even got the lovely M.J. Hyland to sign my book after making embarrassing random and inane comments to her, trying to think of something cool and witty to say.

Finally, I think I’m slightly Vampire-d and Austen-ed out.

Top Reads 2009 (no particular order)

1. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2. Breakfast at Tiffany’s & other short stories – Truman Capote
3. The Ghost Writer – John Harwood (re-read)
4. Lucky – Alice Sebold
5. Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
6. She Came to Stay – Simone de Beauvoir
7. The Outsider – Albert Camus (re-read)
8. The Plague – Albert Camus
9. In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
10. Persuasion – Jane Austen
11. A Streetcar Named Desire – Tennessee Williams
12. Disgrace – J. M. Coetzee
13. Carry Me Down – M.J. Hyland
14. The Millennium Trilogy – Stieg Larsson (yes, I know it’s three books)
15. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold (re-read)
16. The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
17. The Child’s Book of True Crime – Chloe Hooper
18. The Garden Party and Other Stories – Katherine Mansfield

I know – that’s a pretty long list, almost half the titles I read this year. But I did read some pretty good books.

Review: “A Child’s Book of True Crime” by Chloe Hooper

I wished I really were a little girl. Little children can transform themselves from magic birds into flying strongmen. At play, children wear intense expressions and make a range of hero noises … running with their arms stretched straight ahead, the children become the most powerful and beautiful – the most super – people in the universe. – p. 19

Kate Byrne is a 22-year-old primary school teacher living alone in a sleepy, quiet town of Endport in Tasmania, Australia. She is having an affair with the father of one of her brightest pupils and whose wife has recently released a novel based on an unsolved crime in Endport of a young adulteress – Murder at Black Swan Point. With an vivid, and unnerving overactive imagination, Kate retells the unsolved crime through the eyes of a community of local animals which is interwoven with her narrative.

“Wally,” said Terence breathlessly. “Whatever has happened?”

“Oh dear!” sobbed the usually gruff wombat. “Poor Ellie Siddell …”

Terence raised an eyebrow.

“Well,” Wally murmured, slightly shamefaced, “I guess you’ve heard about her torrid personal life?” – p. 10

Ellie Siddell was the young assistant and lover to the local vet, Graeme Harvey, until she was brutally murdered, having been repeatedly stabbed in the face and chest. The most obvious culprit of the crime was Margot Harvey, Graeme’s wife, but she was never seen again after that night. Her car was found parked at the Suicide Cliffs and, although her body was never found, it is assumed Margot was the murderer.

As Kate becomes more paranoid about her affair being discovered, she increasingly begins to draw parallels between her life with Ellie Siddell’s. Kate further discovers clues that her lover’s wife knows, with strange late night phone calls to her house, an eerie scratching on her classroom door ‘I know’ and with her brakes tampered with, Kate fears for her life.

But Kate herself is an unusual character and an unreliable narrator. She is a teacher, an adult, but she is fascinated with the world of children and is almost a child herself. She asks her fourth-graders philosophical questions and it utterly rapt with their responses, particular her lover’s son’s replies. In some more slightly disturbing passages, she baby-talks to her lover.

Chloe Hooper’s debut novel is an amazing read. It reads like a hybrid of true crime fiction, a thriller, a children’s story and history. The plot is tightly written and consistently builds up the tension leaving you to constantly wonder how the story could possibly end? The downside to this is, of course, the ending might not reach people’s expectations. I thought it was slightly an anti-climatic ending and a little disappointed. However, this was a thrilling and extremely enjoyable read and I finished it in one sitting.

Reading on Mondays

This week’s RoM.

Finished:

• Les Enfants Terribles by Jean Cocteau. Fantastic and unique read but I suspect a lot of the beauty of the story was lost in translation.
• Amsterdam by Ian McEwan. Another great read and also the winner of the 1998 Booker Prize. The second McEwan I’ve read (the other being Atonement many years ago) and I’ve decided he has the most beautiful, quiet writing. It’s effective without being garish.
• The Child’s Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper. This is part of my attempt to read more Australian writing but this is also a book I’ve been meaning to read for some time. I was not disappointed. It’s a thrilling and, again, unique and different read. Not bad for a debut novel.

Reading:

• The Age of Reason by Jean-Paul Sartre. I’ve had this for a while but I’ve been waiting for a time where I’ll be able to get right into it. I was on an existentialist movement a few months ago and got a little burnt out. This is a fantastic and, surprisingly, accessible read. Another great existential novel.

Lined up:

Nothing definite but perhaps another classic. And I’ve got a few books waiting at the library about books which are my favourite type of non-fiction – books about books. I have finally tracked down Nicholas Basbane’s A Gentle Madness.

Final Delivery Before Christmas

Well, the shopping centres here have been opened for 36 hours since yesterday (23rd) morning and have closed today at 6pm. This is to accommodate those last minute gift buying frenzies. I went along to one of the shopping centres and it is startling how terrifying the Christmas rush crowds are! I managed to pick up some books even though the last thing I ever need is more books. Those poor trees.

I got:

• Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
• The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

The mail also started coming through too since there has been a postal strike on for the last several days. Two of the books from the lot I ordered from the Book Depository have come through today’s post before the holiday break.

• Poor Miss Finch by Wilkie Collins
• Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens

I am most excited about Our Mutual Friend. Book Depository has been speedy in their delivery but I’m always dismayed the books turn up a little battered. They’re not as bad as the ones that appeared from Borders though. I’m always meticulous when picking out new books and even the slightest dents and bends puts me off. I like to do the damage to the books myself, thank you very much.

All in all, a nice little Christmas gift to myself.

Merry Christmas everybody!

Review: “The Slap” by Christos Tsiolkas [2008]

At a suburban barbeque, where family and friends of Hector and Aisha have gathered, a misbehaving child is slapped by an unrelated man.

The boy’s face had gone dark with fury. He raised his foot and kicked wildly into Harry’s shin…he saw his cousin’s raised arm, it spliced the air, and then he saw the open palm descend and strike the boy. The slap seemed to echo. It cracked the twilight. – p. 40

And so begins the story. The novel is narrated through eight of the characters, of various ages, who were present at the barbeque. What transcends is an intricate detailing and commentary of modern suburban life. There is the idea of marriage and what it means: for the middle-aged couple, Hector and Aisha, whose marriage have become stalemate and both approaching their potential mid-life crisis; for Hector’s elderly father, a nice juxtaposition, once a hard done migrant from Greece who worked hard to raise a family who now ponders the meaning of life while watching the lives around him slowly dissipate.

There is also the questions of raising children, the idea of discipline and restraints and what it means to be a parent. There is Anouk, who is successful, well-paid scriptwriter for a trashy soap but desires nothing more than to be serious author but is afraid to make the jump. She finds herself pregnant to her actor boyfriend who is younger than her by twenty years. There is Rosie, the mother of the misbehaving child, Hugo, who cannot seem to accept her situation in life and refuses to see her reality. She refuses to accept her husband is an alcoholic and refuses to set boundaries for Hugo. The question of child-rearing in today’s society is questioned when the next generation do no understand that enough is enough, when too far is too far and that there is a line that cannot be crossed.

The ideas of friendship and family plays a significant role. There is the question of where loyalties should lie. This is particularly emphasised as Hector’s family are Greek, where family is everything, while Aisha believes her loyalties should lie with her friends.

There are so many other interesting issues weaved throughout the novel: the idea of status, of private schooling, domestic abuse, sexuality, love, dreams, sex, drugs, race and ethnicity. Above all, the idea of what is means to be a grown up, an adult.

The novel is an interesting exploration of what it means to live in our society today and Christos Tsiolkas is a fantastic writer. While the idea of eight different narratives put me off at first, it is ultimately a smooth and seamless flow throughout the novel. I did not get attached to any of the characters because none of them were particularly likeable but it was precisely that quality that I liked the novel – the deeply flawed characters. And I’ve got to say, it was particularly fun to read about my city in a novel.

Review: “The Almost Moon” by Alice Sebold [2007]

* Minor spoilers.

Alice Sebold certainly has a knack for writing arresting and captivating first sentences:

When all is said and done, killing my mother came easily.

The novel opens with Helen Knightly finally breaking down under the stress of looking after her invalid and elderly mother and suffocates her. The murder is an uncomfortable hybrid of a mercy killing of a diseased riddled body and also out of spite against a cold and loveless mother. After the murder, Helen is filled with guilt and remorse but also relief. As Helen tries to comprehend what she has done and its consequences, she also revisits her childhood having grown up in a rather dysfunctional household.

As an only child born to a mature couple, Helen’s presence is more of an interruption than a welcomed addition to the lovers. As the reminiscences progresses, we find the fraught position Helen is in. Her mother, a severe agoraphobic for almost all of Helen’s life and who lived her life completely housebound, could not leave her house to even save a dying boy in her front yard or to protect her only child from an angry mob of men from assault. Her father, with the veneer of a loving and stable father and husband slowly crumbles from the weight of depression which tragically ends when he shoots himself in the head and Helen is forced to clean up his blood at her mother’s insistence.

The novel is ultimately not about the murder but a study of the complex relationship between parent and child, mother and daughter. Helen herself have two daughters and must now face up that her action has changed all their lives. It is also about mental illness and the way it has been, how it is, misunderstood or incomprehensible.

Some reviews of this book has been less than complimentary. As a stand-alone novel, I liked it but when it is compared with Sebold’s earlier two novels, while The Almost Moon does not measure up it is still a remarkable read.

The Modern Library – 100 Best Novels

Random House recently compiled a list of the 100 best novels. There were two lists – one from the publisher and another compiled by ‘readers’. I’m not quite sure how they come up with the list.

Here it is.

Those in bold are ones I have read.

1. ULYSSES by James Joyce
2. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
3. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
4. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
5. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
6. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
7. CATCH-22
8. DARKNESS AT NOON by Arthur Koestler
9. SONS AND LOVERS by D.H. Lawrence
10. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
11. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
12. THE WAY OF ALL FLESH by Samuel Butler
13. 1984 by George Orwell
14. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
15. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
16. AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY by Theodore Dreiser
17. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
18. SLAUGHTERHOUSE-FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
19. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
20. NATIVE SON by Richard Wright
21. HENDERSON THE RAIN KING by Saul Bellow
22. APPOINTMENT IN SAMARRA by John O’Hara
23. U.S.A. (trilogy) by John Dos Passos
24. WINESBURG, OHIO by Sherwood Anderson
25. A PASSAGE TO INDIA by E.M. Forster
26. THE WINGS OF THE DOVE by Henry James
27. THE AMBASSADORS by Henry James
28. TENDER IS THE NIGHT by F. Scott Fitzgerald
29. THE STUDS LONIGAN TRILOGY by James T. Farrell
30. THE GOOD SOLDIER by Ford Madox Ford
31. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
32. THE GOLDEN BOWL by Henry James
33. SISTER CARRIE by Theodore Dreiser
34. A HANDFUL OF DUST by Evelyn Waugh
35. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
36. ALL THE KING’S MEN by Robert Penn Warren
37. THE BRIDGE OF SAN LUIS REY by Thornton Wilder
38. HOWARDS END by E.M. Forster
39. GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN by James Baldwin
40. THE HEART OF THE MATTER by Graham Greene
41. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
42. DELIVERANCE by James Dickey
43. A DANCE TO THE MUSIC OF TIME (series) by Anthony Powell
44. POINT COUNTER POINT by Aldous Huxley
45. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
46. THE SECRET AGENT by Joseph Conrad
47. NOSTROMO by Joseph Conrad
48. THE RAINBOW by D.H. Lawrence
49. WOMEN IN LOVE by D.H. Lawrence
50. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
51. THE NAKED AND THE DEAD by Norman Mailer
52. PORTNOY’S COMPLAINT by Philip Roth
53. PALE FIRE by Vladimir Nabokov
54. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
55. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
56. THE MALTESE FALCON by Dashiell Hammett
57. PARADE’S END by Ford Madox Ford
58. THE AGE OF INNOCENCE by Edith Wharton
59. ZULEIKA DOBSON by Max Beerbohm
60. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
61. DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP by Willa Cather
62. FROM HERE TO ETERNITY by James Jones
63. THE WAPSHOT CHRONICLES by John Cheever
64. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
65. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
66. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
67. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
68. MAIN STREET by Sinclair Lewis
69. THE HOUSE OF MIRTH by Edith Wharton
70. THE ALEXANDRIA QUARTET by Lawrence Durell
71. A HIGH WIND IN JAMAICA by Richard Hughes
72. A HOUSE FOR MR BISWAS by V.S. Naipaul
73. THE DAY OF THE LOCUST by Nathanael West
74. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
75. SCOOP by Evelyn Waugh
76. THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE by Muriel Spark
77. FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce
78. KIM by Rudyard Kipling
79. A ROOM WITH A VIEW by E.M. Forster
80. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
81. THE ADVENTURES OF AUGIE MARCH by Saul Bellow
82. ANGLE OF REPOSE by Wallace Stegner
83. A BEND IN THE RIVER by V.S. Naipaul
84. THE DEATH OF THE HEART by Elizabeth Bowen
85. LORD JIM by Joseph Conrad
86. RAGTIME by E.L. Doctorow
87. THE OLD WIVES’ TALE by Arnold Bennett
88. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
89. LOVING by Henry Green
90. MIDNIGHT’S CHILDREN by Salman Rushdie
91. TOBACCO ROAD by Erskine Caldwell
92. IRONWEED by William Kennedy
93. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
94. WIDE SARGASSO SEA by Jean Rhys
95. UNDER THE NET by Iris Murdoch
96. SOPHIE’S CHOICE by William Styron
97. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
98. THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE by James M. Cain
99. THE GINGER MAN by J.P. Donleavy
100. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS by Booth Tarkington

Result: a disappointing 10/100.

Here is the reader’s list:

1. ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand
2. THE FOUNTAINHEAD by Ayn Rand
3. BATTLEFIELD EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
4. THE LORD OF THE RINGS by J.R.R. Tolkien
5. TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
6. 1984 by George Orwell
7. ANTHEM by Ayn Rand
8. WE THE LIVING by Ayn Rand
9. MISSION EARTH by L. Ron Hubbard
10. FEAR by L. Ron Hubbard
11. ULYSSES by James Joyce
12. CATCH-22 by Joseph Heller
13. THE GREAT GATSBY by F. Scott Fitzgerald
14. DUNE by Frank Herbert
15. THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS by Robert Heinlein
16. STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert Heinlein
17. A TOWN LIKE ALICE by Nevil Shute
18. BRAVE NEW WORLD by Aldous Huxley
19. THE CATCHER IN THE RYE by J.D. Salinger
20. ANIMAL FARM by George Orwell
21. GRAVITY’S RAINBOW by Thomas Pynchon
22. THE GRAPES OF WRATH by John Steinbeck
23. SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE by Kurt Vonnegut
24. GONE WITH THE WIND by Margaret Mitchell
25. LORD OF THE FLIES by William Golding
26. SHANE by Jack Schaefer
27. TRUSTEE FROM THE TOOLROOM by Nevil Shute
28. A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY by John Irving
29. THE STAND by Stephen King
30. THE FRENCH LIEUTENANT’S WOMAN by John Fowles
31. BELOVED by Toni Morrison
32. THE WORM OUROBOROS by E.R. Eddison
33. THE SOUND AND THE FURY by William Faulkner
34. LOLITA by Vladimir Nabokov
35. MOONHEART by Charles de Lint
36. ABSALOM, ABSALOM! by William Faulkner
37. OF HUMAN BONDAGE by W. Somerset Maugham
38. WISE BLOOD by Flannery O’Connor
39. UNDER THE VOLCANO by Malcolm Lowry
40. FIFTH BUSINESS by Robertson Davies
41. SOMEPLACE TO BE FLYING by Charles de Lint
42. ON THE ROAD by Jack Kerouac
43. HEART OF DARKNESS by Joseph Conrad
44. YARROW by Charles de Lint
45. AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft
46. ONE LONELY NIGHT by Mickey Spillane
47. MEMORY AND DREAM by Charles de Lint
48. TO THE LIGHTHOUSE by Virginia Woolf
49. THE MOVIEGOER by Walker Percy
50. TRADER by Charles de Lint
51. THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY by Douglas Adams
52. THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER by Carson McCullers
53. THE HANDMAID’S TALE by Margaret Atwood
54. BLOOD MERIDIAN by Cormac McCarthy
55. A CLOCKWORK ORANGE by Anthony Burgess
56. ON THE BEACH by Nevil Shute
57. A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN by James Joyce
58. GREENMANTLE by Charles de Lint
59. ENDER’S GAME by Orson Scott Card
60. THE LITTLE COUNTRY by Charles de Lint
61. THE RECOGNITIONS by William Gaddis
62. STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert Heinlein
63. THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway
64. THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP by John Irving
65. SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES by Ray Bradbury
66. THE HAUNTING OF HILL HOUSE by Shirley Jackson
67. AS I LAY DYING by William Faulkner
68. TROPIC OF CANCER by Henry Miller
69. INVISIBLE MAN by Ralph Ellison
70. THE WOOD WIFE by Terri Windling
71. THE MAGUS by John Fowles
72. THE DOOR INTO SUMMER by Robert Heinlein
73. ZEN AND THE ART OF MOTORCYCLE MAINTENANCE by Robert Pirsig
74. I, CLAUDIUS by Robert Graves
75. THE CALL OF THE WILD by Jack London
76. AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS by Flann O’Brien
77. FARENHEIT 451 by Ray Bradbury
78. ARROWSMITH by Sinclair Lewis
79. WATERSHIP DOWN by Richard Adams
80. NAKED LUNCH by William S. Burroughs
81. THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER by Tom Clancy
82. GUILTY PLEASURES by Laurell K. Hamilton
83. THE PUPPET MASTERS by Robert Heinlein
84. IT by Stephen King
85. V. by Thomas Pynchon
86. DOUBLE STAR by Robert Heinlein
87. CITIZEN OF THE GALAXY by Robert Heinlein
88. BRIDESHEAD REVISITED by Evelyn Waugh
89. LIGHT IN AUGUST by William Faulkner
90. ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST by Ken Kesey
91. A FAREWELL TO ARMS by Ernest Hemingway
92. THE SHELTERING SKY by Paul Bowles
93. SOMETIMES A GREAT NOTION by Ken Kesey
94. MY ANTONIA by Willa Cather
95. MULENGRO by Charles de Lint
96. SUTTREE by Cormac McCarthy
97. MYTHAGO WOOD by Robert Holdstock
98. ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach
99. THE CUNNING MAN by Robertson Davies
100. THE SATANIC VERSES by Salman Rushdie

Result: another 10/100!!

What do you think of the lists? Do you agree? I think it’s strange that To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf is more prominent than Mrs Dalloway and John Fowle’s The Magus is more prominent than The Collector.

An Honest Scrap Meme

Eyglo (from the blog, IDeary) has kindly awarded me with an award/meme that sounds like fun. So here goes:

Rules. (In my opinion, rules are made to be slightly stretched or broken :p) :

a. ‘The Honest Scrap Blogger Award’ must be shared.

b. The recipient has to tell 10 (true) things about themselves that no one else knows

c. The recipient has to pass on the award to 10 more bloggers.

d. Those 10 bloggers should link back to the blog that awarded them

As this is largely a book blog, I’ll stick to the theme. And these are hardly secrets. I hold much deeper and darker secrets than these.

1. I grew up in a bookless home as nobody else in my family were/are big readers. I was a huge exception.
2. When I was young, around 6 years old, we lived around the corner from the library. I would spend all day at the library or go there after school and it became an impromptu childcare centre. Of course, it helped that the librarians loved me and let me help them.
3. Picture books never held much appeal for me. Even when I was young.
4. I grew up on a steady diet of Sweet Valleys, Goosebumps, Fear Street, Babysitter’s Club, Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl.
5. Jane Eyre is my most favourite book. It was the first classic I read and it opened my eyes to gender equality and feminism.
6. English is not my first language. Regular readers may notice some strange grammar or expressions.
7. I find many literary magazines far too pompous. I’m hoping to start one up myself with a prerequisite that it won’t be pompous.
8. I would do my English major and honours year at uni all over again. I loved it that much.
9. I have a short attention span and I can rarely sit with a book for more than 2 hours – unless it’s extremely good then I can stay up the whole night. I am also a slow reader.
10. I am fascinated with what other people read and their bookshelves. I always find myself watching people on transport and zooming to shelves when I enter other people’s homes. I loved staring at and examining the shelves of lecturers whenever I went into their offices.

I’m tagging (highly optional, of course) these other great blogs:

• A Guy’s Moleskin Notebook
• Another Cookie Crumbles
• Biblioaddict
• Farm Lane Books
• Novel Insight
• Start Narrative Here
• With Extra Pulp

And of course anybody else who may be interested. I’m looking forward to reading your answers.

Reading on Mondays

This week’s RoM:

Finished:

I had a really good reading week – probably since I’m lazing around at home and job hunting.

• The Seance by John Harwood.
• Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffennegger. It was … interesting.
• The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold. This was a re-read and it was amazing.
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This was such a cute little book and I can see its longevity appeal.

Reading:

• The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus. I’m still dipping in and out of this. I have more time now (a curse and a blessing) that I can concentrate more on it.
• The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold. Why not complete the entire Sebold reading list? She’s one of my favourite writers and many have said this did not live up to her standards. I’ll have to read and see.

Lined up:

Nothing! I have a huge pile of library books as well as the recent buys. I think I’ll just close my eyes and pick one.

Review: “The Lovely Bones” by Alice Sebold

My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973.

With such an arresting opening sentence like this, how could one resist this story? The Lovely Bones tells the story of the young girl, on the cusp of puberty, who is violently murdered and disposed of. Susie tells us her story from the Inbetween, a place between Heaven and Earth. The Inbetween is Susie’s own particular heaven that she periodically shares with others. It is from her heaven that Susie, unable to let go of her life on earth, watches over her family and the impact of her death playing out.

As Susie watches her family come to terms with her death in their own way, she is also watching her murderer. Despite its premises, it isn’t a typical crime fiction or thriller that Sebold writes but one about life and what it means to be human. The Salmon family was a close knit, average suburban family with loving parents, three kids and a dog. It is through Susie’s narrative that we find out more about her through her family.

The narrative is amazing. It manages to weave in the past, current and future seamlessly. Susie’s narrative is also remarkable in that she begins her story in a somewhat childish voice but as the novel progresses, her narration becomes much more mature, insightful and understanding. It is as if Susie has aged in heaven while forever remaining a fourteen year old girl trapped in pre-pubescent body. Without spite but with some sadness, Susie watches her younger siblings grow up and her younger sister do the things she would never be able to do – fall in love, go to high school, shave her legs , chase the dog or hug her father.

One of the most moving passages in book is when the faithful family dog, Holiday, finally passes on and arrives in Susie’s heaven:

I waited for him to sniff me out, anxious to know if here, on the other side, I would still be the little girl he had slept beside. I did not have wait long: he was so happy to see me, he knocked me down.

The movement of time is seamless and the death of the long serving family dog is a nice little token. Towards the end of the book, Susie realises that her family is finally ready to slowly move on after almost a decade of unanswered answers. And Susie is too and is thankful for the love of her family, that she was beloved. The lovely bones, aside from alluding to her body, also refers to the bones of a beloved family; the strong bones that a family shares.

On a personal note, I first read this when it first came out in 2002 and this is the only re-read I’ve done of it since. I remember being sad but not wholly affected with the book. With more life experience and insight under my belt, the book is remarkably more profound. I am not a soppy reader but I found myself tearing throughout the book.

Alice Sebold is the most wonderful and fluid writer. Reading her work is effortless and her writing remains in your head after you have closed the book.