Book Review: A PLACE OF GREATER SAFETY by Hilary Mantel

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"A mob has no soul, it has no conscience, just paws and claws and teeth... what does the crowd want? To roar."

People are uploading their Halloween reads and here I am thinking I have just lived through the scariest book experience yet... a bone-chilling account of The Terror of the French Revolution through the eyes of Danton, Robespierre, and Desmoulins, as well as their wives.

For there is nothing as frightening as idealism and "vertu" gone wrong in the face of mindless mob rule.

Mantel is a resurrectionist: with her pen, she summons these great men from the page, transforms ink into flesh and blood, and she makes 873 pages feel simultaneously like several lifetimes, yet not long enough.

"How are they to form a moral society when they have no experience of one?"
"The people were translated from heroes to scavengers, to savages, to cannibals."

The length of the novel was necessary, to drive in the point that the revolution did not happen overnight. It was a series of violent incidents fanned to flame by intellectuals who later lost control of a monster of their own making. It is a chilling warning as to the results of anarchy, when nothing is left sacred. Its readers shall have nightmares from the true-to-life descriptions of savage acts committed in the name of freedom, of the worst of human nature harnessed in the name of the people.

"What is the point of combating the tyrants of Europe if we behave like tyrants ourselves? What is the point of any of it?"

Perhaps the greatest warning here is the loss of institutions: when they crumble, so does civilization itself. Cousin against relative, childhood friend turned to foe, it became a mad free-for-all. And when the protection of civil rights are ground to dust, those who destroyed them are destroyed in turn.

"There is a point beyond which - convention and imagination dictate - we cannot go; perhaps it's here, when the carts decant on to the scaffold their freight, now living and breathing flesh, soon to be dead meat."

Perhaps scariest of all... is that this can happen anywhere. At any time.

"We are entering a time of terror."

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Book (and Film) Review: THE ENGLISH PATIENT by Michael Ondaatje

 

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"She entered the story knowing she would emerge from it feeling she had been immersed in the lives of others... her body full of sentences and moments, as if awakening from sleep with a heaviness caused by unremembered dreams."

MY REACTION TO THIS BOOK EXACTLY. This is poetic storytelling at the highest level, insert all the superlatives here. You MUST experience it for yourselves to learn how heartbreaking beauty can be.

I don't think I've ever been compelled to watch the movie IMMEDIATELY after finishing the book, in the same way I was seized with urgency by this masterpiece.

There are two pairs of lovers caught in two timelines, less than a decade apart, one at the start and the other pair finding each other at the end of World War II. It tells of quiet moments before and in between chaos, silent oases where people celebrate life and love however they can, with more information on WWII bombs and mines, and desert geography, than I've ever encountered before.

It is simultaneously an anti-war tract, a warning against excessive passion, a tribute to life-giving affection, but above all ONE MAGIC CARPET RIDE over the Saharan desert.

Both are absolutely beautiful. Deserving of all the awards. But be warned: both will break your heart.

It's been two days since I've finished it and I'm still torn up inside about it!! Perhaps I ought to stop listening to the breathtaking Gabriel Yared soundtrack, with its echoes of Bach, still remembering how sensual some of the scenes were and mulling over the impossibility of perfect love.

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Book Review: EARTHLY POWERS by Anthony Burgess

Earthly Powers by Anthony Burgess
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

"What you're trying to say about God it seems to me cannot be said ever ever, do you understand, about God... the human imagination is capable of a terrible amount of evil. God bless us, God save us from harm."

That quote sums up how I feel about this terrible book. Is it beautiful and brilliant? Undoubtedly so. But so was the former angel known as the Morning Star. I am a firm believer in the redemptive power of art and literature, and I was appalled at how this 600+ pager of a novel came to a close: such incredible promise, such explosive potential, and all for naught.

It is a very lengthy, very learned memoir that starts out with perhaps the most infamous sentence in English literature (too foul to be reproduced here), which should have warned me about its contents. It tells of a man who is asked to confirm a late pope's sanctity unto sainthood, who sifts through his memories of living through perhaps one of the most evil of centuries (the 20th), who sees and lives through much evil.

I do wonder what the author meant to accomplish by this fearsome work. This should come with a warning: "not for ye of little faith." It seems to be written by one who has a passionate love/hatred for the Catholic church, and for any form of organized religion. If there was such a genre as "fictional theology" or "theological fiction," then this book would exemplify it: most of the dialogue and conflicts revolve around matters of faith, as well as of gender and sex.

Some might define great literature in terms of technique, of the weight of ideas, the erudition of an author who can write with authority on all matters anthropological, musical, literary and linguistic. By that rubric, they would say this is a great novel.

But great literature should also ennoble, not enfeeble; encourage, not demoralize. And by that metric, this book gets a solitary star.

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Book Review: THE MASTER AND MARGARITA by Mikhail Bulgakov (translated by Hugh Aplin)

 

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

One-star to this very trippy book with a crazy narrative that didn't make sense, interweaving events in Stalin's Russia with the last hours of Jesus and Pontius Pilate, featuring You-Know-Who, his minions including naked witches and talking cats, and various unfortunate writers and literary men.

I have some dear friends who count this among their favorites, and so I bought the cheapest edition I could find and read it in the name of friendship.

And honestly if I didn't regard these friendships highly I wouldn't have forced myself to finish my copy, hehe.

Intellectually, I understood the narrative. Even got most of the references (hurray for college and footnotes!). But for the life of me, I just don't get WHY it's considered one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.

I understood what the story is about. But it's a bad thing if a reader has to Google the ending just to make sure she understood it (I used the Internet to verify that, indeed, things did turn out the way I understood they did).

I'm now wondering if I would have fared better had I read a different English translation? Hmmm. To those who loved this book, I'd be really interested to find out what drew you to it!

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Book Review: CITY OF MIRACLES (The Divine Cities # 3) by Robert Jackson Bennett

 

City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"I will not let you forget who you are. I will be there to remind you... until you are you."

And thus ends one of the greatest trilogies I've ever had the privilege to read. CITY OF MIRACLES, like its predecessors, tells of humanity's attempts to recreate civilization with science and technology, after killing its miraculous gods a little under a hundred years ago.

But, as in the previous two books, it's VERY hard to kill what is divine.

What if there is a child of old gods, seeking out its siblings in order to devour them and take their powers for itself? There's nothing like SAVING THE WORLD levels in terms of stakes, and Book 3 gleefully brings together our favorite trio: the Viking-like Sigrud (who has the uncanny habit of surviving encounters with deities who want him dead), the politician-extraordinaire Shara (whose assassination at the beginning sparks all the events that follow), and female general-turned-politico Mulaghesh, whose definition of adulthood is EVERYTHING:

"My definition of an adult is someone who lives their life aware they are sharing the world with others... someone who knows the world was here before they showed up and that it'll be here well after they walk away from it. My definition of an adult, in other words, is someone who lives their life with a little f***ing perspective."

The last scene was an absolute masterpiece! T.T And THAT'S how you end a series, guys. I had Hans Zimmer's GLADIATOR soundtrack playing in my brain as I read the last couple of pages, and I think I wet the last page with my tears! Huhu.

You know it's a great ending when you're inspired to re-read Book 1. That's what the ending of Book 3 did for me.

Another hallmark of greatness: when there are references to tiny events in Book 1 that resurface in Book 3, seemingly unimportant but later revealed to be grace notes that show how much care and thought went into the plot.

Where do I sign up to be tattooed as a fan of RJB's?!!? This series is deserving of all the awards!

The strongest book, it must be said, was the first. The second was the weakest (gave it three stars). This third one was 4.5 for the most part but THAT ENDING is deserving of five stars, just for that poignant scene alone! Darn you RJB for breaking my heart and remaking it!!

What a journey. This series will live on in my heart for decades to come. A must-read!


View my review of Book 2 here

View my review of Book 1 here
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Book Review: CITY OF BLADES (The Divine Cities # 2) by Robert Jackson Bennett

 

City of Blades by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"I have trudged through fire and death to come and ask you this: Can we not be better? Can we not do better? Our ancestors were legends who remade the world. Are we willing to be so small-minded with our brief time upon these shores?"

My personal litmus test for five-star classics is: Am I going to re-read this? And while my answer for Book 1 (CITY OF STAIRS) of THE DIVINE CITIES trilogy was a resounding HELL YES, my answer for Book 2 is a whispered, pained no, hence the 3 star rating.

And it pains me, because the first 3/4 of the book was very good! You need to understand... I waited 10 long months after reading Book 1 for Book 2 to reach the shores of Manila. I pined and longed like a girl waiting for her sweetheart. And so when it arrived, I TORE into the package, bid adieu to reality and locked myself in my room to dive into a world I didn't want to leave.

I was delighted to find familiar characters in Book 2, still set in that world where gods once walked, but had supposedly been killed off in a cataclysmic event known as "The Blink" some 80 years in the past, and where men have made great strides in science and technology, when formerly deities were needed to wrought "miracles."

A female senior-citizen general who sacrificed one hand to save the world in Book 1 is now promoted to the lead role! I love General Mulaghesh: her grit, her passion, her vulnerability. The author (RJB) does characterization so skillfully, you'll never get confused even with large casts. You root for them so much, and their fates affect you so much, too!

I figured out the technique RJB employed in Book 1 that he used skillfully in this second book as well: it starts with a mystery.

In Book 2, a government spy goes missing after investigating a curious ore that may have links to the Divine. And a retired general is brought back into service, bound by honor and duty that I wish all soldiers had:

"A true soldier does not take. A soldier gives. Anything. Everything, if asked of us... a soldier strives not to take... so others might one day have something."

However, Book 2 merely approaches the near perfection of Book 1. The ending, especially, seemed rather rushed and not satisfying.

Still won't stop me from diving straight into Book 3 after work tomorrow, hehe.

"The world may not go on forever. But that does not mean we cannot try to make tomorrow better."


View my review for Book 1
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Book Review: ISTANBUL: MEMORIES AND THE CITY by Orhan Pamuk

Istanbul: Memories and the City by Orhan Pamuk
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

"For anything we say about the city's essence says more about our own lives and our own states of mind. The city has no center other than ourselves."

I think this memoir would be best appreciated by either a passionate lover of either Istanbul or Pamuk. As this is my first by the author, I don't qualify, hehe.

The pictures are gorgeous, there's no doubt. And Pamuk did write in the intro that he meant it to be picked up and read in snippets, with a tenuous narrative thread that can read forwards or backwards. Part history, part travel guide, mostly a memoir of an author's unhappy childhood in a rich family, Pamuk drew comparisons to his own family's dwindling fortune with the melancholy "hüzün" pervading Istanbul's people, who "simply carry on with their lives amid the ruins" of a once-powerful city made powerless by its defeats by the West.

Taken as a literary whole, I found the book too long-winded, repetitive at times, and it was difficult to sympathize with the first-world problems of a man in a poor country, who felt himself better than everyone around him, who admitted that he could afford to be kept by his parents in comfort even if he didn't seek a profession of his own.

I suppose I went into this with too high expectations, and left rather disappointed. I hope his other works don't! After all, one doesn't win a Nobel for nothing!!

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Book Review: TEHANU (Earthsea Cycle # 4) by Ursula K. Le Guin

Tehanu by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Despair speaks evenly, in a quiet voice."

My God. This book ought to come with a trigger warning! IT IS ABSOLUTELY NOT FOR CHILDREN. I can't emphasize this enough. And even for adults, one shouldn't expect this to be anything at all like the previous three books in the series.

TEHANU is a raw wound, beautiful but deadly. The emotional scarring starts at the beginning: a child is found, burnt, with the unthinkable done to her, by her own family. This is the story of her hard-won salvation.

If Book 3 was tropey, Book 4 is its polar opposite. There is almost nothing in it to recommend its being fantasy (except for a dragon appearance at the very end). For we find our hero and heroine from the previous trilogy, grown to middle age, but left without any magic.

"He thought he had learned pain, but he would learn it again and again, all his life, and forget none of it."

How does one fight home invaders and evil child abusers without spells? How does someone from the pinnacle of power learn to live as the humblest of mortals?

I think this book will resonate with older readers, especially teachers and parents. At its core is the fundamental question: how does one bring up a child? Especially after so much trauma?

I think I have never hated any character in my life with the same righteous passion I felt in this book. But Ursula Le Guin preaches the false joy of anger: "Leave them to their hatreds, put them behind her, forget."

I cannot forget this book. I will never stop recommending it, but also, I do not foresee a time that I shall reread it because it broke my heart too much this first time.

To be fair, there is a lot of beauty in it, too. There is the rediscovery of first love in middle age, of the reminder that women's domestic lives are every bit as heroic as daring quests. There is the joy and peace of embracing one's duty: "I know all that all I understand about living is having your work to do and being able to do it. That's the pleasure and the glory, and all."

Not for kids. But perhaps the best EARTHSEA book of them all. On to Book 5!

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Book Review: THE FARTHEST SHORE (Earthsea Cycle # 3) by Ursula K. Le Guin

The Farthest Shore by Ursula K. Le Guin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

"What is evil?"
"A web we men weave."

For the past three days, I've been reading myself to sleep with an installment from the Earthsea Cycle (#perksofbuyingcompilations).

"Just a few pages" becomes chapters and before I know it, it's waaaaay past my bedtime and I've finished the whole thing!

Such is the quality of these books. However, compared to Books 1 and 2, I have to say that Book 3 seemed the most... tropey. It's a familiar story: there is a great evil abroad, and our hero from Books 1 and 2 (Sparrowhawk is fast becoming a real person to me!!), now the archmage of Earthsea, must leave his ivory tower and do battle with only an innocent teenaged prince, Arren, as his companion.

That being said, Le Guin's prose elevates it to another plane. Just look at this gem of a paragraph:

"Arren saw the dragons soaring and circling on the morning wind, and his heart leapt up with them with a joy, a joy of fulfillment, that was like pain. All the glory of mortality was in that flight. Their beauty was made up of terrible strength, utter wildness, and the grace of reason. For these were thinking creatures, with speech and ancient wisdom: in the patterns of their flight there was a fierce, willed concord."

ALL THE GLORY OF THAT WRITING. Reading it, one feels... ennobled!

Was quite shocked to read about slavery and drug use in its pages, keeping in mind that Le Guin wrote this for young adults in 1972. In the afterword, she says that she did this deliberately bcause she saw evil "as an insidious and ever-present enemy in my own daily life in my own country: the ruinous irresponsibility of greed."

But it is never all doom and gloom with Le Guin, which is why we love her.

Her heroes are pushed to the very brink of death, and sometimes past, but they persist. "Though you choose despair, remember we have not yet done so."

Hurray for the weekend... which means... guilt-free reading time! Onwards to Book 4!

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