Gets a (firm) fourth star from me only due to the subject matter and persistence of the author. Residing in the culture via marriage, de Bellaigue is Gets a (firm) fourth star from me only due to the subject matter and persistence of the author. Residing in the culture via marriage, de Bellaigue is observant and immersed, but somehow still manages to be a bit haphazard and disorganized in his pursuits. Resulting in a book of many questions, some detail but not enough, and a reluctance to reach many conclusions.
Still worth it, though. Iran needs to be an open book in our era, not an orientalist's mystery-box. ...more
Poignant, at times heart-rending. A novella's sensibility within a novel's scope, Ishiguro's first published book is a small gem, a beautiful set of mPoignant, at times heart-rending. A novella's sensibility within a novel's scope, Ishiguro's first published book is a small gem, a beautiful set of moments.
Really just a conglomeration of impression and memory, the narrative in A Pale View Of Hills slips inobtrusively between Japan in the aftermath of nuclear war, and placid, green postwar England. But gently, and without capital-D Drama.
Ishiguro had made it the business of his telling to obscure or imply major narrative developments, and keep the consciousness of the reader on the momentary or fleeting impressions, surfaces, and small talk. So that the significance of the bigger things is felt, not said or told. In spite of its mostly Japanese fundamentals, it is really a very English manner of conveying the emotional undertow in the lives of the characters.
Can't really go too much in depth without reducing what is a very substantial work-- the manner of the telling here does a pas de deux with the arc of the story, and it is well worth being in the audience as the lights go down and the curtain-- quietly, almost unnoticeably-- rises. Five stars....more
The post shows up four or five times a day, envelopes served on platters by noiseless houseboys. Grand motorcars glide along quiet streets. Just roundThe post shows up four or five times a day, envelopes served on platters by noiseless houseboys. Grand motorcars glide along quiet streets. Just round the corner from the Forbidden City, the noise and dust settles, and it's rubbers of bridge in the British Legation, clinking cocktail shakers and roundabout references to the murderous t'ai-pings just outside the city gates.
Ms Bridge gives us the full Empire On Parade, complete with a jolly little outing that will take our ensemble cast up-country for what's called a picnic. In the event it involves hampers of appetizers and liquor, carried on ahead by mules, with camp-beds and linens, whilst the main party struggles forward riding in estate cars and aboard ferries. It's the familiar gathering of military and embassy, love-crossed youth and wiser elders, the odd American authoress and Cambridge don, you know the drill. Their destination is the rambling and otherworldly Chinese Temple city situated against rolling Asian hills. Where half the way into a pretty standard, cocktail-drenched weekend of dalliances and sunset strolls, the t'ai pings attack.
If this begins to sound a little familiar, it certainly is. Basically we have A Passage To India in 3os China, which merges and morphs with bits of Wings Of The Dove and Up At The Villa, depending on where you look in. But it doesn't feel formula or boilerplate; there is a certain leeway in using the colonial setting, in that the British Empire covered the whole known world at certain points, and every kind of narrative can be stitched into the scenery.
Bridge creates a fascinating heroine here in her older-woman head of household Laura Leroy, who centers the story and gently draws out the other characters as she goes. (Oh and by the way, it's about 37 years that gets you the 'older woman' niche in this 3os drama.) Self-disparaging but nervy and empowering, as the only Chinese-speaker and quickest on-the-draw, Laura is the spine of the novel, and suffers no fucking around once the going gets dodgy.
Nothing is too surprising if you've been on this sort of picnic before, but Bridge has done a nice little bait-and-switch. By giving us a novel of character dressed in period-travel clothing, an insightful outing where a lesser author would have gone strictly for the t'ai-ping-at-the-gate theatrics... we're in Forster or Maugham territory, which is intricate and nuanced. ...more
May be a five-star, as it was a very early modern take on the Great Game topic, and actually set up some of the rules for the genre. (Haven't read in May be a five-star, as it was a very early modern take on the Great Game topic, and actually set up some of the rules for the genre. (Haven't read in too long a time, though; deserves another look.) ...more
Here in Part II we're carried along with the journey begun and paused at the edges of the Danube in Fermor's A Time Of Gifts. There are most of the asHere in Part II we're carried along with the journey begun and paused at the edges of the Danube in Fermor's A Time Of Gifts. There are most of the aspects of that volume here, too, and with a far more exotic landscape, that of Hungary, Rumania and Bulgaria rather than the preceding western and central Europe.
Make no mistake, though, any of this completely willful and enigmatic journey is a fascinating story, taking place as it does in the pivotal era that was 1934 and freely, unconcernedly being the early impressions of a very young man just seeing the world. What a world it was, and Fermor valiantly tries to bring it back alive.
What isn't immediately apparent here is how the distancing (lists, explanations, updates and overall a lot of what couldn't have been known by the young author) effects arise, and for that we are glad to have the introduction by veteran travel writer Jan Morris. Whereas A Time Of Gifts relies on journals and ready, firsthand memories, this volume wasn't published till the eighties, and is cobbled together from fragmented or secondary sources. So inescapably we have the informed, worldly reflections of the elder author in his seventies re-assembling this account, and while the fact-checkers may be much happier here for that reason, the voice, and the stay-up-all-night-in-the-magic-spell-of-europa spirit ... is nearly gone.
We have here a strange brew of the young man's pathways and adventure, as filtered through the older man's better knowledge and reflection. Even still, occasionally the sheer outrageous scale of the endeavor will break through, as when, coming down out of the wolf-ridden Carpathians, we encounter the 'Baths Of Hercules', a posh spa hideaway in the mountains where formal wear for dinner and waltzes on the terrace are the norm. Or as Fermor is getting thru yet another later-life listing of what he might have seen, the present of the narrative crashes through and a Perseid meteor shower rains down above the high Balkans. Immediately, the old-man author has shut up and we gaze enraptured with the young man's eyes again.
In his defense, Fermor makes oblique apologies that note lost journals and notebooks, and we do seem to have more wine and women in this act of the play, too. I'm giving this four stars even though it doesn't deserve it, as much to say that Time Of Gifts... or the grand, fearless, reckless nerve of the whole project... deserved much more. And as with that first volume, sometimes the planets just align for Fermor, and we are carried right along :
It was getting late. The sun left the minaret, and then the new moon, a little less wraith-like than the night before, appeared on cue in a turquoise sky with a star next to it, that might have been pinned there by an Ottoman herald. With equal promptitude, the hodja's [muezzin's] torso emerged on the balcony under the cone of the minaret. Craning into the dusk, he lifted his hands, and the high and long-drawn-out summons of the izan floated across the air, each clause wavering and spreading like the rings of sound from pebbles dropped at intervals into a pool of air. I found myself still listening and holding my breath when the message had ended and the hodja must have been half-way down his dark spiral ...
Let's not forget that the object of this long walk across Europe in 1934 is the former Byzantine capital, Constantinople, the gate to the mysteries of The Orient. Here by the end of book two of three, we've only gotten near the goal, and we leave off there, with Book Three still not published here in May of 2013. Fermor has passed away, and there are all kinds of rumors about whether he ever finished Book Three. But there are also some indications that something will be published by Fall 2013. It has a name, The Broken Road, and it has, needless to say, interested readers ...
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