David Copperfield ~ Charles Dickens

David Copperfield has been on my ‘must read list’ for longer than I can remember.  I don’t know what took me so long to pick it up, but I’m so pleased that I finally did as it was truly a very enjoyable read.

I was expecting a tale of destitution and cruelty with life only coming good towards the end.  But it was not like that at all.  It was a linear tale of David’s life, told in remembrance by David  himself, commencing from the date of his birth when his Aunt Betsy Trotwood appears out of the blue to meet the new baby girl only to disappear just as quickly upon being told ‘it’s a boy!’  Betsy later redeems herself by taking care of the orphaned David and paying for his schooling and articling him to a proctor.

David’s early life is happy enough until one day he is asked if he would like to go on a little holiday with his beloved nurse-maid Peggoty.  When he returns he finds that his widowed mother has  re-married, and life will never the same again. Mr Murdstone and his steely sister cast a gloom over the once happy home with physical and mental abuse, and David is sent away to a questionable school where he becomes friends with two boys who will play very different roles in his later life. 

There is plenty of drama and   tragedy and not all of it relates to David, but to some of the many people he comes to know from all walks and class of life – with the class divide being a major theme throughout.

This novel was Charles Dickens’ favourite, being semi-autobiographical, and it contains some very memorable characters such as Mr Wilkins Micawber and Uriah Heep, and I think it could well become my favourite too.

A Prayer for Owen Meany ~ John Irving

This has been my first John Irving novel and it has far surpassed my expectations.

It is a story that is narrated with much love for Owen Meany, but it is also bound in a scathing attack on US politics and the Vietnam War.

The narration follows two time lines, that of the narrator and his childhood friend Owen and that of the narrator's life after Owen's death.  The scenes from their childhood are wonderfully written, and very touching, with Irving capturing the essence of childhood perfectly.

Oskar Matzerath

Owen is an unusual character and was created in tribute to Gunter Grass' Oskar Matzerath (The Tin Drum) and although there are similarities, this story stands alone and I found that I enjoyed it much more than The Tin Drum.

Owen believes that he is the instrument of God and the last few chapters read like a book of 'revelations'; and the way the story all comes together in the end really has a touch of brilliance.

The characterisations are wonderful throughout (although the narrator is a trifle boring), and I found it a truly  enjoyable read to the end.  A must read, put it on your list now!

Disgrace ~ J M Coetzee

I only wish that this novel was longer than the 215 pages that it is.

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, it is a very human look at how quickly one can fall from grace and the effects of the anger that has continued from apartheid.

Lucy, the protagonists daughter who lives away from the city, understands the ways of the blacks and how it is she who must fit in with them, but even this does not spare her from the terrible assault on herself and her father David Lurie.  After David's resignation  from his University position (due to an indiscretion with a student) he stays with Lucy to escape the fall-out.  There he spends his time helping on her small farm and assisting in an animal clinic, but the vicious assault changes everything.

David does not understand his daughter's attitude towards what has happened to them, the local blacks and even herself, but he is from another generation.  However, towards the end of the novel he finds himself willing to try before he loses everything important in his life.

I think you would have had to experience life under apartheid and it's fallout to fully understand the range of emotions portrayed in his novel, but Coetzee writes it very simply and very well. I found it hard to put down.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle ~ Haruki Murakami

How do I begin to review a novel that is as bizarre as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle?  Whatever I say won’t really do it justice; it truly is a strange collection of stories in the form of a novel.

The premise itself is simple, Toru Okada’s cat has gone missing and then his wife Komiko leaves him under mysterious circumstances.  In the search for his cat he meets the weirdly wonderful fifteen year old May Kasahara and the psychic sisters Malta and Creta Kano.  In the search for his wife he meets the equally strange Nutmeg Akasaka and her mute son Cinnamon.  All but May are using pseudonyms.

Toru also becomes acquainted with an old soldier called Lieutenant Mamiya, who tells him war stories from World War II.  These stories are very disturbing, and one of his experiences inspires Toru to utilise a dry well in the garden of an abandoned house to search for Komiko in an alternative reality.

It is the individual stories that each character has to tell that are so amazing in this novel.  Lieutenant Mamiya’s description of watching a man being skinned alive would work well as a stand alone piece in any unsettling fiction anthology, it truly gave me goose bumps.  Nutmeg has war stories to tell too, based on her father’s own war experiences and they link back to Lieutenant Mamiya’s.  She tells two stories of a massacre at a zoo – one involving the animals, and the other involving a group of Chinese men dressed in baseball outfits.

There are several connecting themes throughout Toru’s reality, his alternate reality and the various ‘short’ stories, and they are the dry well, a baseball bat and a blue/black mark that Toru finds on his face after spending a night in the well.  Each story has a dreamlike quality to it, they are strange, some are rambling but ultimately they are hypnotic, taking you away so that you feel you are there. Some stories are told to Toru by a character, whilst others are in letter form.

There is a kind of linear sequence to meeting each character but May Kasahara features throughout the novel.  She will rank as one of my all time favourite literary characters.  I would love to know who Murakami based her on, because she just had me laughing out loud.  She’s so dark, obsessed with death and suicide, but at the same time she is outrageously funny.  I did this novel as an audio book, and I think the narrator captured her brilliantly.  She is such a contrast to the boring Toru and when we came to each one of May’s scenes, I’d turn up the volume and just revelled in her eccentricities! 

If you enjoy the author Franz Kafka, or appreciate the work of David Lynch then you would really enjoy this.  If you like your novels to make sense then forget it!  You have to completely suspend your disbelief and just immerse yourself in the bizarre break from a mundane life that Toru experiences.  I for one cannot wait to read more of this fabulous author’s work.

So, with all this said and done you’ll probably want to know did the cat come back?  Well…….. you’ll have to read it and find out J

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Labels: 1001, Modern Lit

Middlemarch ~ George Eliot

Cover Illustration shows the
birthplace of George Eliot

It’s rare to read a novel where the characters are so richly imagined, and the progression in their lives so well documented.  Even the minor characters are fully embodied.

Set during a period of three years and ending just prior to the first reform Bill in 1832 we meet and grow to love the inhabitants of Middlemarch.  From the well to do Brookes' and the manufacturing Vincy’s to the working class Garth's.

This provincial town isn’t without its gossip, scandals and dogmatic principals and moving forward with the times can be a little difficult as the new age Dr Lydegate finds out to his peril when he moves to Middlemarch in 1829 (the year the novel opens).

The story is told mainly through the lives of Dorothea Brookes and Tertius Lydegate, and they both have a common story in that both have marriages that do not fulfil the ideal and both want to do so much more than they are able to.

This novel is also a political statement of the times, and it would be recommended to research a little on the political environment leading up to the Reform Bill.  However, I found the biggest message in Middlemarch was how important it is for someone to have something to do and a goal to reach for especially when it relates to the betterment of people other than yourself; I don’t think that Eliot would have had much respect for the idle rich. 

Don’t pick up this book if you are after a light read, but if you enjoy immersing yourself into a novel and enjoy full characterisations that grow and develop as one does in real life then I can fully recommend Middlemarch.

The Third Policeman ~ Flann O'Brien

The TV series Lost sparked a new interest in this novel. It is a truly bizarre but very funny story, told by a murderer. who ends up in an alternate reality in Ireland where people can turn into bicycles and you can visit Eternity via a lift. You can also leave via the lift, but there is a catch—you must weigh the same when leaving as when you first arrived. Which upsets our narrator no end, because in Eternity he had been able to obtain some solid gold bars and thousands of pounds worth of jewels!


In this alternative reality people who ride their bicycles for too long can eventually turn into one. You can tell when this has happened to a person because they need to prop themselves up on counters, or lean against a wall. If they fall over they can’t get up again.

The story runs in a loop, and at the end you realise there is no end. It reminded me of the Alfred Noyes short story Midnight Express in that regard.

There were some rather unnecessary (long) footnotes throughout relating to a fictional character known as De Selby who appears in O’Brien’s other works and they did annoy me, but on the whole I could read this book again, it was brilliant.

Maxine

In a letter to William Saroyan, dated 14 February 1940, O'Nolan explained the strange plot of The Third Policeman:

“When you get to the end of this book you realise that my hero or main character (he's a heel and a killer) has been dead throughout the book and that all the queer ghastly things which have been happening to him are happening in a sort of hell which he earned for the killing ... It is made clear that this sort of thing goes on for ever ... When you are writing about the world of the dead – and the damned – where none of the rules and laws (not even the law of gravity) holds good, there is any amount of scope for back-chat and funny cracks.”

Source: Wikipedia

Note: Flann O’Brien was one of Brian O’Nolan’s pseudonym’s and although The Third Policeman was written between 1939 and 1940 it wasn’t published until 1967 (Sadly, O’Nolan died in 1966).

Naked Lunch - William S Burroughs

How this book is on the must read lists is a wonder to me; I have nothing nice to say about it.

Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

Not what I expected, set in the Belgian Congo it highlighted the atrocities being committed by ivory traders. A book I could read again.

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

I did enjoy this novel, but more so after reading the forward entitled The Custom House, which explains the inspiration behind the story, and was in itself fascinating. I appreciated all the more the thought that went into creating this love story set in Puritan New England.

After being publicly humiliated Hester Prynne is forced to wear a large red letter ‘A’ to punish her for her adultery. However, the townsfolk eventually do not see the letter because Hester is so admired for her skill in needlework and help within the community.

As time goes by Hester desires to secretly leave New England to start life anew with the tormented man that she loves, and their illegitimate daughter Pearl, but he is being pursued by her estranged husband…...

Slaughterhouse Five ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut witnessed the fire bombing of Dresden (by Allied Forces between 13 February and 15 February 1945), and was unable to understand or make sense of it. Eventually he tried to write about it in his novel Slaughterhouse Five or The Children’s Crusade.


The protagonist Billy Pilgrim is unstuck in time. He appears to be living simultaneous lives, as a youth in the war, a successful optometrist and family man after the war, and as an alien abductee being exhibited in a zoo on the planet Tralfamdour (along with the girl of his fantasies Montana Wildhack).

There are many novels written about the futility of war (Heller’s Catch 22 for example) but Slaughterhouse Five really brings across Billy’s bemusement at the situation he had no control over.

Bewildering, humorous and poignant, there are some wonderful characters, and Vonnegut cleverly utilises key moments in Billy’s life to accelerate his movements in time.

The scene where Dresden is bombed in reverse (which unfortunately was missing in the movie) will stay with me for some time

Ethan Frome ~ Edith Wharton

Ethan is a solitary man, a struggling farmer, and married to an older woman who has become a bitter hypochondriac. When his wife’s cousin comes to live and help at the house Ethan falls in love, but is unable to communicate his feelings.


Once Ethan’s wife discovers her husband’s true feelings she sends her cousin away. As Ethan drives her to the station they each make their feelings known and realize that they cannot live without each. The only way out that they can see is to kill themselves. This they attempt by way of an accident, but the outcome is tragic and not what was planned and they find themselves back at the farm house ultimately to be taken care of by Ethan’s wife.

This is a dark twisted love story, but it is well written. Wharton portrays a bleak winter landscape in Massachusetts, a cold grey farmhouse, and then contrasts this bleakness with symbolism such as a red pickle dish—a much valued item of Mrs Frome’s.

The ‘accident’ itself is based on a true event witnessed by Edith.

Frankenstein ~ Mary Shelley

Mary Shelley has conjured up a tortured soul in this classic horror story. The horror does not lie in the monster himself, but in how he became a monster. He did not ask to be given life, but when came into being, he was abandoned by his creator. He tries to learn the ways of man but is met with abhorrence at his appearance and violence. Violence begets violence and the monster seeks his vengeance on the man who had made him this ‘miserable wretch’.


Hollywood totally destroyed the true meaning behind this novel. It needn’t be described as a horror story at all but more of a lesson in humanity and the knowledge even back then that we are the product of our upbringing. The guidance and protection from our parents are a vital part of childhood, without them who knows what we could become?

Dracula - Bram Stoker

Dracula is a genuinely creepy telling of the Vampire legend. The story is actually told by various journals and letters from various characters.


Jonathan Harker is the first to encounter Dracula in his native homeland, and has to draw on all his reserves to face him once again when he is discovered in England.

With the assistance of the legendary Dr Van Helsing Jonathan and his friends follow Dracula’s deadly trail and endeavour to free his tortured soul, and at the same time save Jonathon’s beloved wife who has fallen under the vampire's spell.

There are some genuinely spine-tingling moments in the narration, especially the ship’s log describing Dracula’s passage to England and why a crewman is found dead and tied to the ship’s wheel ~ a real goose bump moment.

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

The subtitle to Moby Dick is ‘The Whale’, which is a more apt title as it reads like an encyclopedia on whales, rather than a high seas adventure novel with a mad Captain Ahab (which was what I was expecting).


Melville subjects you to chapters on the phrenology of a whale, his biology, a whole essay on why man is afraid of something that is pure white, along with discussions on Jonah, sea monsters from Greek and Roman mythology and even St George and the Dragon—(though I must admit I quite liked that idea).

The book is filled with shipping and whaling lore, extracts from prose and poetry relating to the whale and whaling ships, and with this in mind it is most certainly a masterpiece considering when it was written. However, as we know so much more these days, it is evident that much of the scientific conjecture is wrong,

The actual whaling sequences are upsetting, though remembering this was a legitimate trade in the 1800’s, they are described with some degree of sympathy by the author.

Overall it could have done with being 400 pages shorter.

Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

Rebecca is as much a story about the house Manderley as it is about the brooding Max De Winter and his young bride. A whirlwind romance and hurried wedding brings our young narrator (who is never named) to the West Country of England as Mistress of Manderley. But her marriage has no chance of happiness until the secret behind the first Mrs De Winter’s mysterious death is resolved.


This was excellent, a must read.

Glimpses of the Moon - Edith Wharton

Apparently now out of print, I got this as an audio book from the library.


This is a story of Susy, who is penniless, but has been taken care of by wealthy friends since the death of her parents. She marries Nick, who is also penniless, but is an aspiring writer who moves within the same circle of friends. Their marriage is an experiment. They will live off their friends for as long as they can using the cheques received as wedding gifts and take up the offer of places to stay for their long honeymoon. Susy works out that they can manage for a year, and if they sell Susy’s pearls, then possibly for a bit longer.

As part of the experiment, it is agreed that if the other finds a better opportunity then they will split.

Two months later, due to a disagreement, Nick leaves. During their time apart and their attempts at starting their respective lives again, they come to the realization that although they married for an experiment, they were meant to be together and are very much in love.

The characterisations were very good. I liked Susy very much, and her friend Strefford who wants to marry her after Nick leaves. The characterizations of Susy’s wealthy idle friends would probably be based on those Edith Wharton knew. They are completely shallow and selfish.

Nick is a little misguided and reminded me of Angle Claire from Tess of the D’Urbevilles due to his stubborn high mindedness. Thankfully this tale has a happy ending.

This is my second Edith Warton novel, and I’ve enjoyed both very much.

Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

May you not rest, as long as I am living. You said I killed you – haunt me, then’.


A classic novel that has definitely stood the test of time. Wuthering Heights deals with obsessive love and the ultimate revenge that has far reaching effects.

The story centres on the Linton’s, the Earnshaw’s and Heathcliffe, a foundling brought into the Earnshaw family and raised as a sibling to Catherine and her brother Hindley. Catherine and Heathcliffe are like two peas in a pod, and spend every waking moment together playing wildly out on the Yorkshire moors. However, an accident one day brings Catherine into the fold of the Linton’s who bring out her more feminine side and for a while subdue her wild ways.

When Catherine eventually marries Edgar Linton, Heathcliffe cannot bear the rejection although at first Catherine seems unaware of the anguish she has caused. When he finally confronts her she is distraught and through her desperate efforts to appear the victim she becomes ill eventually dying in childbirth, although the daughter Cathy survives.

Heathcliffe then contrives to wreak his retribution on the Linton’s for taking Catherine, and on the Earnshaws because of his dislike of Hindley, by ensuring he becomes owner and beneficiary of all properties and wills with a view to impoverishing and enslaving their descendants. He almost succeeds.

Published in 1847 under the name of Ellis Bell, the language is dated, and at times annoying. The man servant Joseph’s dialogue is written totally in the Yorkshire accent and is very difficult to read, it would have been better to have just had a few thee’s and thou’s thrown in to normal English to get the idea!

The character names such as Catherine and Cathy, Linton as a surname and then as the forename of Heathcliffe’s natural son, plus other names such as Hindley and Hareton cause some confusion within this intricate web of relationships and a storyline that flips from past to present and back. In addition we are exposed to three forms of narration. The narrator is Lockwood the new tenant of one of Heathcliffe’s properties, but the housekeeper Mrs Dean becomes the main narrator for most of the story within Lockwood’s narration, and mini narrations are introduced within Mrs Dean’s from other minor characters.

However, with this aside the opening chapter where Lockwood is forced to spend the night at Wuthering Heights due to sudden inclement weather and experiences the ghostly return of Catherine is very creepy and quite horrific when you consider when it was written. Spine chilling and haunting.

Tragically Emily Jane Bronte died 19 December 1848 aged 30 from consumption, just one year after Wuthering Heights was published.

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

Originally to be titled Trimalchio, Gold-Hatted Gatsby and even Under the Red White and Blue, the Great Gatsby is ranked second in the Modern Library’s list of the 100 Best Novels of the 20th Century.


Set during the Jazz Age, and centering on the new monied mysterious Jay Gatsby, his temporary neighbour (and our narrator Nick Carraway) and the old monied Daisy and Tom Buchanan, we are given an insight into the lives and loves of the idle frivolous rich.

Gatsby’s mansion is always full of visitors and guests, he holds the most elaborate parties but for the most part seems very unsure of himself and when he is murdered no-one but Nick, Gatsby’s elderly father, and one unknown party guest attend his funeral.

Gatsby has lived his life with the aim of rekindling his unlikely relationship with Daisy, which ended when he was sent to war. Daisy’s husband Tom is having an affair with the wife of a local garage owner, and has had many obvious affairs in the past. This relationship web becomes destructive and when it all falls apart and results in three deaths, Daisy and Tom retreat “back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…..”

The sad morale to this story is that money can’t buy you happiness. For all his wealth and generosity, barely anyone who attended Gatsby’s parties had ever met him or knew who he was. For those that did know him, he was made up of rumour, gossip and innuendo. Gatsby hid his low class upbringing from Daisy as he was ashamed, and denied who he really was to the point of changing his name (from James ‘Jimmy’ Gatz). Yet at the end of the day the family he denied (his father), and his new friend Nick were the only ones who really cared and attended his funeral.

Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

A slapstick comedy about bumbling commanding officers, Yossarian’s desire to live and Milo’s attempts to profit from the war via M&M Enterprises.


The slaptstick is broken up by the recurring memory of the death of Snowden. All Yossarian can do to help him is say ‘There There” as the morphine has been taken by M&M Enterprises and all he is left with is Aspirin.

Mission limits are constantly being raised, morale is low as when they are close to going home the missions are raised again.

Yossarian relies on a fake pain in his liver to go to hospital and hopefully be sent home. “There was a much lower death rate inside the hospital than outside the hospital and a much healthier death rate”.

The language works today, not outmoded. It was reviewed as being shouted on to the page and being repetitive but I see this as adding to the slaptstick. It’s wacky but dark.

I wonder what real life experiences influenced this book? There were some good characterizations of bad management/command.

Highlights were: The forms letters – sent out complete, not edited to suit!

Inflation devices in the Mae Wests gone as they were used in Milo’s mess hall for soda streams!

Nately’s whore is reminiscent of the Pink Panther’s Cato.

There are Catch 22’s or paradoxes throughout the whole novel. The story told from various view points ie The injury to Major De Coverley’s eye, is later told by the old man in the brothel who had thrown the rose which injured the Colonel’s eye.

It is very clever. I loved it, it will be in my top 10 favourites.

Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

Initially I was bored by the opening 100 pages, not understanding the reason for the in depth ‘love story’. But, you need this as a backfrop to show how the war changed Stephen Wraysford from a sensual man to someone hard and vacant. I would however liked to have read this in exposition, though with chapters set in the 1970’s this could possibly have led to confusion going forwards and backwards in tme.


I have been to Normandy and the beaches, and also visited a graveyard in Rouen when I was 15 as part of my history studies. I was not old enough to appreciated I was I was experiencing. There were still tanks half buried near Pegasus Bridge, we found nails stamped with ‘Bremen’ on the beaches, and areas were still cordoned off for fear of land mines. Reading this novel brought it all back.

The character of Elizabeth who I did not want to read about at first did actually make the story more interesting. The reference to the german belt buckle falling out from of the pile of papers she had got from the attic and then to follow the story through to how it found it’s way to Stephens possessions was very good.

Elizabeth packing up the cake and whisky for Brennan in the home – akin to packing up a food parcel for a man at the front.

The conditions the men at the front had to endure was horrendous. These are men who are fighting for England but have hardly any nourishing food, tea is carried in petrol cans and they are covered in lice. Just appalling.

The chapter where they had to go over the top was very hard to read. The knowledge that the men were basically waiting for the hour of their death, shaking hands and clapping shoulders, basically to say goodbye. These were men who just had regular jobsin the uk, what a way to end your life….. to have to go over knowingly facing gun fire. Those that did get through only find that the wire had not been cut even though they had been told that it would be.

Some observations for discussion:

Jack Firebrace probably a good characterisatin of the average soldier, although older than many. Wife and child at home, son gets sick but he’s not allowed to go on leave to see him.

Weir – when he goes back on leave to see his parents, there’s no real joy that he has come home. It’s like life goes on and nothing has changed. He wants to talk about the horrors of war but his parents aren’t interested. How can you really understand if you have not seen it first hand? You would not have any comprehension.

When Stephen Wraysford goes back and goes to the tailor’s to buy some shirts, the tailor is uncomfortable that he’s in there. Who is he fighting the war for?

Ellis studied the effects of shell blast in training but what he had not seen though was the explosive effect on soft tissue.

Given a brief glimpse of the German viewpoint towards the end. They are just sons and brothers too. Would they have let Stephen go even if the war had not ended?

But, what happened to Stuart who proposed to Elizabeth? What was the point of that character?


They have seen human beings do things you never would have thought a human being could do and more.

There were some great lines:
German uniform (Feldgrau): colour of his darkest dreams
Dead body: green butter (of his skin) – yuk

I wasn't too keen on the ending, but it was a nice touch with the name.   Stephen it seems is ultimately destroyed by love and the war.