2024

Books & reviews

• Pride & Prejudice: Reread, for the first time since my early teens. I appreciate it a lot more now than I did then; the criticism of the class system, the sense of humor, the realistic depiction of different personalities, and how much was communicated via strongly characterized dialogue was all excellent. I enjoyed it, and will revisit some other Austen works later this year.
• Dark Places: The second Gillian Flynn novel I've read. Good, but not great. She has a talent for absolutely gruesome descriptions, a few of the scenes made their mark on my mind very strongly. I had to put the book down at one in particular, it made me slightly queasy. Like Gone Girl, Dark Places had a tendency to drag a little. But it was ultimately an effective thriller with a unique atmosphere and interesting characters.
• I Know What I Saw: Not intellectually rigiorous or convincing in the slightest, but entertaining enough (especially the first 100 or so pages). "I want to believe": the book.
• (in progress) The Good Apprentice: Death - real and ego, grief, guilt, spirituality, religion, magic, magic, magic. Though the same-ness of the Jungian archetypes is a weak aspect in her work, I enjoy Murdoch's writing best when her stories take on the feel of a fairy tale or myth. "The Unicorn" was satured with that atmosphere, but it also occurs in "The Bell" and "The Sea, The Sea". After about a hundred pages, "The Good Apprenctice" gains that atmosphere more strongly than any other work besides "The Unicorn". It's delightful. Anyway, there's the usual middle class Brits acting as mouthpieces for philosophical debates during dinner parties, in bed after sex, at the shop, on the street, each character representing some philosophy or question or tension that is explored at length in their internal monologue and exterior dialogue. I'm highlighting quite a lot; she's one of those authors that makes you deeply aware of how superior her intelligence is to your own. However, she is a philosopher first and an artist second. Her strength as an author isn't her prose; it's good, sometimes great, but never masterful. Much of the writing is just driving the characters forward to the point where the ideas they represent are put into conflict with one another. That is where her genius lies. Delightful, obtuse religious & philosophical romps through ridiculous middle class British characters and relationships self-consciously modelled on mythic stories. I'm still working on it, but I'm getting big Arthurian Fisher King vibes...