Book Review: The Time of the Hero

As I discussed in my earlier post on The Time of the Hero, I didn’t enjoy Vargas Llosa’s first book as much as some of his other novels when I read it for the first time. As I picked it up to read it for my class, though, I was determined to start fresh with the novel and give it a fair chance. After finishing the re-read, I was glad that the class forced me to return and reevaluate the novel; I enjoyed The Time of the Hero a lot more once I was prepared to consider its more crude elements from new perspectives (read my earlier post for more on this). I also simply found the novel more interesting and engrossing once I was able set aside my initial impressions of certain (sexual) scenes.

Beyond what I’ve already said on this subject, I started thinking about how a lot of the more seedy and sexual elements of the novel follow the conventions of literary Naturalism. Naturalism grew out of realism, which is essentially the attempt to portray reality more straightforwardly than Romantic or Surreal literature, but Naturalism purposefully contains more crude and sordid subject matter in its attempt to illustrate how social conditions and other elements of one’s environment, as well as heredity/genetics, are extremely important factors in the development and determination of a person’s character.

The Time of the Hero addresses this idea in very complex ways – the boys in the military academy come from very different socio-economic backgrounds and have very different family situations, yet all of them become corrupt and degenerate participants in the military academy culture once their freedoms are restricted and their dignity is constantly threatened. As suggested by the epilogue, once the boys emerge from the company of their fellow military academy cadets, they also seem much more capable of leading normal, less degenerate lifestyles. The implication is that something about the social environment at the military academy are what prompt these boys to act in more crude, violent and animalistic ways (a la Lord of the Flies) – which for some reason is shocking to the military leaders who run the academy.

Even after reading the novel twice, though, I am not convinced that The Time of the Hero expresses a completely unavoidable, deterministic relationship between social environment and the development of an individual’s character, though. Especially because the character Ricardo Arana never behaves in the same violent and crude ways as his fellow classmates, it seems as though Vargas Llosa may have been agreeing with the philosophies of the Naturalists on one level, while challenging an entirely deterministic philosophy/worldview on another level.

Once I begin to understand how certain sexual scenes (which I initially found to be quite distracting) contribute to the novel’s themes of corruption and degeneration, I was not only able to appreciate the relationship between Vargas Llosa’s writing and the European Naturalists, but other ways in which the author made use of genre and literary tradition in The Time of the Hero. Stylistically, Vargas Llosa makes it clear that he admires the Modernists, with his forays into stream-of-consciousness writing in certain passages and the unusual structure of the narrative. Clearly, he’s been reading his Europeans and his Modernists – Woolf, Joyce and Proust, and he’s paid particularly careful attention to his Faulkner.

But Vargas Llosa doesn’t only make use of the conventions of “high brow” literature – one thing that we touched on in class was that the novel actually plays into the Detective Novel/Crime Fiction genre in many ways. This was interesting for me to consider because while I love my Sherlock Holmes, my Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys novels, and have even enjoyed my share of Lord Peter Whimsey, I don’t consider myself a big fan of Detective Novels or well-versed in the Crime Fiction genre overall. I am a much bigger fan of adolescent fiction, so while the “who-done-it” suspense may have been what drew others into the second half of the novel, I was simply absorbed in the more general development of the characters by that time and was focused on comparing the boys in The Time of the Hero to Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye. I’m not sure if this is a particularly unusual way of reading this novel, but I think I try to understand most (if not all) teenage boys through the lens of Holden Caulfield. It was interesting to realize that Time of the Hero essentially puts the adolescent novel into dialog with certain conventions of Crime Fiction, while adding a certain Latin American flavor to the mix as well. In fact, I think that this is what made me enjoy the novel so much the second time – the combination of compelling (re: confused, confusing) adolescent characters and a vague was-it-really-murder? mystery.

In the end, I would encourage readers (again) to set aside any scruples that they might have regarding sexual content, and to appreciate the many excellent qualities of The Time of the Hero. This novel is both disconcerting and engrossing, and while it isn’t light reading to throw in your bag and take to the beach, it entertains even as it reveals the seedy underbelly of adolescence and the disturbing potential of society to reduce us all to primal creatures. It isn’t cheery, but it’s four stars…

This post participates in my Mario Vargas Llosa Reading Focus.

Book Review: Clockwork

Philip Pullman’s novella Clockwork, which won a Children’s Choice Award in 1999, is one of four fairytales in the collection Four Tales (for more information on this compilation, read my description here.) This particular story emphasizes in several different ways how situations in life often work together as intricately as the machinery within a time piece, with circumstances driving one another much like the cogs and wheels of a clock. The story is written in the deceptively simplistic language of a fairytale, but as the tale of the village storyteller Fritz, the ambition of the clockmaker’s apprentice Karl, and the kindness of the barmaid Gretl all become linked to the fate of the innocent Prince Florian, readers will come to appreciate the complexity and horror of Pullman’s narrative.

Reviewer Barrie Trinkle writes that Pullman’s “story begins, as all good fairytales do, with someone whose human weakness sets events inescapably in motion,” and the author emphasizes inevitable forward march of both time and tale while also drawing attention to the complexity of the multiple players in his story through the description of the town clock:

The great clock of Glockenheim was the most amazing piece of machinery in the whole of Germany. If you wanted to see all the figures you would have to watch it for a whole year, because the mechanism was so complex that it took twelve months to complete its movement. There were all the Saints, each coming out on their own day; there was Death, with his scythe and hourglass; there were over a hundred figures altogether.

From amongst the many players in the story, there are two morally weak characters who seem to set events in motion – the clockmaker’s apprentice Karl and the two storyteller Fritz, both of whom have failed at their task to produce some form of entertainment for the townspeople. All clockmaker’s apprentices are expected to produce a new figure for the great clock of Glockenheim, and the much- admired storyteller Fritz is expected to produce many more a rousing, chilling ghost tale to satisfy the townspeople’s need for thrills on a cold winter’s night; neither of the young men have managed to create a satisfying product. But although Pullman begins his tale by describing these two, as events unfold, it becomes clear that someone else has set this set of great and complex gears in motion.

While reading his incomplete story to a captivated audience at the White Horse Tavern, Fritz is interrupted by the very villain within his own tale – a horrifying tale of the Prince Otto, who has had his heart cut out and replaced by a piece of clockwork that forced his arm to continue to drive the horses and cart all the way back home to his palace, even though he was dead. After finishing Clockwork, a story with several creepy elements, my husband and I agreed that this was the most horrifying aspect of the whole tale: a dead man who continues to run by clockwork. Thus, there are several interlocking stories within the novel – the gruesome mystery of Prince Otto’s death and the fate of his son Prince Florian; the tale of the powerful storyteller Fritz, who it seems might be able to conjure up characters from his pages and into real life; and that of the clockmaker’s failed and desperate apprentice Karl, whom Fritz’s villain arrives in the flesh to tempt with a devilish offer.

It is Gretl, though, who ties all the elements of these stories together and brings about the end of the tale – she is the heroine of the piece. I am falling in love with Pullman’s consistent choice to portray young girls as a strong and important force against greedy, corrupt men. Pullman’s His Dark Materials focuses on the brazen Lyra, and while Gretl is quite mild and gentle compared to the heroine of that trilogy, she is still central to the happy ending of the tale Clockwork. Though her actions may seem simple, they involve a great deal of bravery – in the end, it is she who climbs the great clock tower and explores the creepy machinations of the Glockenheim clock (at night, no less) in order to save the Prince Florian. While all the men in this story give in to their fear, Gretl boldly does what must be done in order to set things right.

Overall, Clockwork is told with both the familiar tone of fairytale narratives and many new twists and elements that are both truly haunting and gruesome; my husband and I both found this interesting blend of the familiar, the unexpected and the horrifying to be very engrossing and we read this novella together in one sitting. While it wasn’t quite life-changing, I found this story to be not only entertaining, but very thought-provoking. I have a sense, as well, that I have not quite even picked up on the many layers and themes that resonate through this story; as I stated earlier, the language in Clockwork can have the effect of making the tale seem deceptively simple. Underneath the “once upon a time” prose, however, is an intricate set of parts that all work together to propel the reader forward through a sometimes-grisly tale that eventually reveals how Prince Otto ended up with a piece of clockwork sewn into his chest – but still leaves you guessing how the characters from Fritz’s tale might have had the power to come to life in the first place. I’m willing to bet that Pullman’s ability to balance the story on the edge of a knife while juggling these mysterious elements will keep readers engrossed through all 80 pages.

Book Review: Redwall

In early February 2011, seventy-one-year-old Children’s Fantasy author Brian Jacques passed away. His obituary in the New York Times started out with the following description:

“He was a longshoreman and a long-haul trucker; a merchant mariner and a railway fireman; a boxer, a bus driver and a British bobby. But it wasn’t until he became a milkman that Brian Jacques found his métier. Nearing midlife, Mr. Jacques (pronounced “Jakes”) took a job driving a milk truck in Liverpool, where he was born and lived to the end of his life. On his route was the Royal School for the Blind. Invited in for a nice cup of tea one day, he volunteered to read to the students. Over time, he grew dissatisfied with the books available — too much adolescent angst, he later said — and vowed to write his own. He wrote what he called “a proper story,” brimming with battle and gallantry. Titled Redwall and published in 1986, it became the first installment in what is now a best-selling 21-volume children’s fantasy series.”

Although the covers of Jacques’ Redwall series had not seemed enticing to me as a young reader, I now found myself curious to read the stories invented by such an experienced jack-of-all-trades. A trucker/milkman/firefighter turned successful author? This didn’t fit my preconceived notion of a trucker or a milkman at all – and so this I had to see for myself.

I ordered a copy of Redwall, the original book of the series, and although I thought it would probably sit on my desk for a while before I got around to reading it, I found that I was drawn to read it right away once I saw the image on the cover – an adorable little mouse clad in a green monk’s robe, fiercely wielding a sword and shield. The juxtaposition of cute and aggressive was so unexpected (and a little bit comical) that I immediately wanted to know more about the story. I was convinced simply by the picture that the mouse was sure to perform some mighty deeds.

And that is what I found in the pages of this novel – characters that exemplified the same strangely heartwarming juxtaposition as is featured on the cover. Matthias the mouse and a host of others were described as adorable woodland creatures, but displayed both a traditional sense of honor and an unrelenting ferocity in defending their home against the pack of invading rats.

At first, as Cluny the Scourge and his rat army laid siege to Redwall Abbey, this seemed a bit ho-hum to me. There were the cute little mice, with their young and slightly awkward hero who must inevitably step up to the plate and become a Great Warrior Mouse. There was the stereotypically greedy, evil warlord who was determined to conquer the peaceable residents of the Abbey and take all the plunder for himself. There was a young female mouse who would obviously be paired with the Warrior, once he stepped into his role and achieved victory over the warlord Cluny. It all seemed a little too straightforward to me – in the beginning of the novel.

But as is required for most great stories, Jacques was simply taking a bit of time to set up a more complex storyline. As the New York Times stated in Jacques’ obituary, the Redwall novels contain “quests and riddles; cunning treachery and chivalric derring-do,” which is a pattern that is skillfully established in the very first novel. The initial siege and battle are the catalysts that send Matthias the mouse on a quest to find Martin the Warrior’s famed sword, which he believes will assure the mice’s victory over the invading rats. The sword has changed hands several times, though, and so Matthias must travel to dangerous places and befriend several groups of natural enemies before he can even locate the whereabouts of the sword, let alone regain possession of the symbolically precious weapon.

Although I still feel like the characterization of many of the animals was a little too stereotypical (a subject which I fully intend on discussing further in subsequent posts), the riddles and adventures in Redwall were more than enough to draw me into the novel. I was on the edge of my seat as Cluny tried plot after plot to gain access to the well-defended Abbey, and despite the reliance on character stereotypes, I honestly even cried when one of the characters died near the end of the book. (I asked my husband if I should feel strange that I had cried while reading a book about mice and badgers and ferrets, and he just smiled at me – that indulgent smile that tells me that he loves me, despite the fact that I’m a little odd.)

Ultimately, this novel is both adorable and engrossing because of its riddles, quests, and fairly complex (for a Children’s novel) plot. I would say that Redwall falls somewhere in between C.S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia and Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials in terms of reading level and content/complexity. I’m not convinced that the themes of Redwall are as well thought-out or developed as in either Lewis or Pullman’s work, all which delves into spiritual themes; Jacques remains firmly in the territory of more simplistic platitudes, extolling peace and only advocating violence when necessary to defend your way of life. These sentiments seem pretty run of the mill when compared to Pullman’s particularly controversial themes. But while I may not have found Redwall to be quite intellectually challenging or life-changing, I could even imagine that for a young(ish) child, Jacques’ novels could have quite a significant influence on their interests and literary tastes. And who can resist the moments when the mice cleverly outwit Cluny the Scourge, achieving victory after surprising victory?

All in all, I really enjoyed reading Redwall and am quite excited to continue on with the series… I’ve already ordered the next three novels!

Book Review: Anna and the French Kiss

This review could alternatively be titled “And Now for Something Completely Different…”

I took a little break from all the Fantasy Literature to indulge in a different kind of pleasure – contemporary romantic Teen Lit, what I like to consider the movie theater candy of my reading diet. Honestly, I don’t read this type of thing very often, but Khy from Frenetic Reader is always mentioning how incredibly much she loves Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins, so finally my curiosity got the better of me (despite the novel’s tweeny-bopper name and cover). I picked up a copy from the library and indulged, feeling just as guilty as if I was raiding the shelves of a bakery when I am supposed to be on a diet.

What I found was every bit as tasty as an éclair or a macaroon, although I’m still not convinced we could call this type of novel a “gourmet” treat. (I am, if you will recall, I recovering literary snob. I would like to think that I prefer Nobel Prize winning literature about depressing subjects and third world countries.) Anna and the French Kiss is a "pitch-perfect romantic comedy," to steal a phrase from Linna over at 21 Pages – I really can’t find fault with it, despite the battle between the obvious guilty pleasure that I experienced while reading and my overwhelming literary snobbery. I agree with Linna, who further writes in her review of Anna that, “This is the kind of story that’s just incredibly fun to read – entertaining characters, humorous situations, quirky dialogue, and the type of setting that makes you want to hop on a plane as soon as possible because it’s described so enticingly.” That is the perfect word for this RomCom: fun.

In fact, the reason why I can’t really find a whole lot wrong with the novel is because that’s its purpose and it more than fulfills its purpose. There may be a number of cliché elements – the popular mean girl, the guy who spreads a rumor that our heroine has slept with him, the jerk who distracts the heroine from her perfect romantic partner, and of course the happy ending when the girl and the boy end up together – but those are excusable precisely because Anna is a RomCom. If it didn’t speak the right language, readers would be off looking for something that matched more of their expectations. I doubt that anyone is coming to this book expecting to find the next Crime and Punishment; we’ve all signed up for some cotton candy reading here.

Yet, as I said, the novel is more like an éclair than cotton candy – it’s not sugary fluff. Oh sure, there are moments of dialog, banter and flirting that aren’t likely to appear in the next Nobel Prize-winning novel that I pick up. But these are the kinds of conversations that I remember were so thrilling to my teenage self – and would still be thrilling if I wasn’t a happily married old fogey. (In fact, why do you think I’m reading this novel? Because I still love the thrill of young and/or new romance. There’s just something so delicious about the excitement that you feel when you’re getting to know a person that seems to jibe with you perfectly…)

But the characters themselves have some real meat to them. (We’re getting away from the éclair metaphor, I know. Maybe I ought to be comparing this novel to a pasty instead…) St. Clair doesn’t know how to deal with his mother’s cancer, Rashmi has lost her best friend and doesn’t know how to begin confiding in someone else, and Anna herself – our hesitant, germophobic cinephile of a heroine – is truly intelligent. She’s a regular teenager, obsessed with boys and the acceptance of her peers, but she’s also a conscientious student and aspiring film critic. Perkins has done her homework, throwing in the word auteur (an influential director/filmmaker who exercises an usual amount of creative control over his or her movies, despite the ways that producers and others in the film industry typically overshadow the production of a film). Anna works hard at developing her film reviews and publishing them in her own blog, knowing that it will take a lot of hard work and dedication to become as well-known a female film critic such as Pauline Kael (another mention that wins Perkins points in my opinion). There are also several discussions from Anna’s English class about global literature in translation – kudos to Perkins again, for working in several mentions of novelists like Banana Yoshimoto and disparaging drippy novelists like Nicholas Sparks. All these things, from information about how radiation will effect St. Clair’s mother to discussions of Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert, all of these details mean that this RomCom isn’t simply filled with drivel.

For those of you who aren’t looking for a lesson in cinematography and film criticism, however, there are some delicious scenes – including the cat-fight between Anna and the popular mean girl. Essentially, the novel maintains a great balance between its entertaining and intelligent elements.

What emerges is a story that isn’t just about Anna finding the perfect guy, but about how she explores who she has been/is and decides the kind of person that she would like to be. Because she is shipped off to boarding school in Paris, Anna gains the kind of independence that most teenagers don’t fully experience until they go off to college, which forces her out of her comfort zone and into the territory of both self-exploration and self-examination. In many ways, Anna must become an adult as she learns to navigate the international waters without the guidance of her parents or the familiar comfort of any years-long friendships. She realizes some not-so-pleasant things about the ways that she handles relationships, but also discovers the kind of intelligence, determination, supportive love and loyal friendship of which she is truly capable. So while we can all cheer that Anna gets the boy in the end, there are so many other reasons to enjoy this novel and even respect the journey that Anna undertakes.

For teenage and adult readers alike, Anna and the French Kiss will be both a pleasurable and intelligent experience that may even help some people think about their own friendships and priorities, while ultimately still fulfilling our typical RomCom fantasies. For most, it won’t be a life-changing novel, but pick this one up on a gray afternoon and you won’t put it down all evening.

Book Review: A Wizard of Earthsea

Although I have strong feelings on the subject of judging each work of art based on their own merits and avoiding comparisons as much as possible, I’m afraid I’m going to make myself into something of a hypocrite with this particular book review, since my obvious and unavoidable frame of reference for Ursula Le Guin’s A Wizard of Earthsea is J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Please try to forgive me for making frequent comparisons between the two, which is unfair to Le Guin for several reasons – first and foremost because she published A Wizard of Earthsea in 1968, a good thirty years before the appearance of Rowling’s boy wizard. In fact, some fans of Le Guin were not pleased when Rowling was hailed as being original and creative, given that Le Guin’s novel similarly tells the tale of a powerful young wizard who attends a school of magic and must face off with a terrible nemesis before becoming one of the most powerful wizards in his world.

Despite the similarities and the obvious basis for comparison, though, there are some key differences between the work of Le Guin and Rowling that make A Wizard of Earthsea a very different reading experience from Harry Potter. First of all, there is the nature of the prose itself – Le Guin’s phrasing is much more somber and lyrical than Rowling’s witty, even sometimes comical style. Whereas Rowling’s serious tale of good versus evil is often includes sketches about students’ antics (namely Fred and George Weasley) that will bring a smile to your face or even cause you to laugh out loud, the first of Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle sounds much like the ancient ballads often mentioned throughout her tale. A Wizard of Earthsea is the origin story of Ged, a very powerful wizard with lowly origins and a dark indiscretion in his past. He ultimately becomes Archmange (head wizard) over all of Earthsea, though – sometime after the conclusion of this novel. Referencing these later events a few times at the beginning and end of the tale, the A Wizard of Earthsea reads very much as though a narrator were relating this story of Ged’s early adventures to the reader before a campfire. The cadences of Le Guin’s language are both ancient and universal, so that we feel almost as though we are listening to Homer’s The Odyssey or some other classical myth. The only thing that disrupted the rhythm of the prose for me was the names of Earthsea’s cities and inhabitants, which often felt disingenuous to me. It often bothers me, though, when authors slap together consonants and syllables that are extremely difficult to pronounce, thinking that this indicates that they come from a wholly different world. If that kind of thing doesn’t bother you, though, you’re sure to enjoy the prose of the novel without fear of disruption.

A second point of comparison between Le Guin and Rowling’s novels is the comparison of their main characters – Harry and Ged himself. While Harry is the classic do-gooder who will not bend his principles for any reason, Ged is much more prideful and especially early on, is bent on acquiring power and showing up his schoolboy rival. This difference, in and of itself, doesn’t necessarily make Ged less sympathetic then Harry, although it is often more difficult for a reader to identify with a protagonist whose main characteristics are negative. I personally think that characters driven by petty jealousy, greed and even hate can be extremely interesting and even sympathetic – if their emotions are explained to the reader in enough detail. But because Le Guin’s tale is written much like a ballad, the reader isn’t given long passages of insight into Ged’s state of mind. We are told that he is jealous, and then the story keeps moving. For me, this made it more difficult to identify closely with Ged, who simply came off as being power-hungry and ill-mannered at times. I wanted to like him – and I certainly did not want to see him bested by his rival, but when the “good” guy is less likeable and his rival is only somewhat snotty (certainly not as odious as Draco Malfoy), it is hard to be wholly invested in the conflict between them.

Despite the fact that I didn’t find Ged very sympathetic, the tale itself is fairly absorbing and I found myself lulled into different passages of the lyrical story. Ged’s own pride leads him to make several bad choices early in his career as a wizard, and then he must attempt to put right the shadowy evil that he has introduced into the world. This quest leads him on a long and dangerous journey through many different lands; his encounters and adventures are all well-imagined and interesting.

I not only enjoyed the novel for its own sake, but it also made me want J.K. Rowling to get back on the horse and write a couple of novels that detail Dumbledore’s adventures prior to becoming such a well-respected Headmaster at Hogwarts. In Deathly Hallows, Harry ends up digging through a lot of different stories and rumors about Dumbledore’s early days as a wizard, and those mysterious circumstances and famous battles could be a lot more interesting if presented as Le Guin has presented Ged’s early days – as a prideful, vulnerable young man instead of the great wizard that he one day becomes.

Another thing that I really enjoyed about A Wizard of Earthsea was the way that the novel discussed the use of magic and rules governing the supernatural. Le Guin relates a lot of information about the interconnectedness of the earth and all its inhabitants; the balance or “equilibrium” of the world; the power of knowing the true name of a man, a beast or an element; the difference between an act of magic that creates a harmless illusion and an act of magic that alters the fabric of the world, even in a small way. I found these passages to be particularly absorbing.

I have to say, though, that at no point did I find A Wizard of Earthsea quite as engrossing or riveting as Harry Potter. I’m fairly certain it’s because I just didn’t identify with Ged the way that I do with Harry and his friends, who are all unpopular misfits at school. Harry, Ron and Hermione may be the clichés of Children’s/YA Literature – the smart, nice outcasts that remind you of your own awkward adolescence – but there’s a reason that type of protagonist sells so well. If the author develops them with skill, then we identify with their teenage angst. Ged, being a quiet and driven character in a lyrical ballad-type novel, just didn’t project enough emotion for my taste, I guess. That isn’t to say that I didn’t like him or root for him, or that I didn’t enjoy the novel – just that I didn’t enjoy it as much as I could have. It’s still an excellent read which I highly recommend, and I can imagine that it would be great to read out loud to kids as well as being a novel that you can curl up with yourself.

This post participates in my Focus on Fantasy Reading Challenge. To learn more about the challenge or to participate, check out my original post about Focus on Fantasy.

Book Review: The Princess Bride

Having long been a fan of the classic movie The Princess Bride, I was eager to begin my increased “Focus on Fantasy” with the novel version, S. Morganstern’s The Princess Bride by William Goldman. The film is the comical yet romantic tale of Westley, who must rescue reclaim his beloved Princess Buttercup from the evil Prince Humperdink. There is also a secondary plot line about the character Inigo Montoya revenging his father’s death with the aid of his loyal friend Fezzik the giant. The film is distinguished from other adventure-romance-fantasies by its comic elements; the dialog is hilarious and memorable, delivered with aplomb by Cary Elwes, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn (Rex the Dinosaur from Toy Story), Chris Sarandon and the rest of the cast. It is parody at its finest, and yet audiences cannot help but take seriously the romance between Elwes and the beautiful Robin Wright (Jenny from Forest Gump). I swoon every time.

But for those of you who are not familiar with either the novel or the film, let me explain that the double authorship suggested by the title (S. Morganstern, William Goldman) is part of the metafictional parody that Goldman employs throughout the novel. Metafiction is a literary device in which a story calls attention to the fact that it is, in fact, a story. This distinguishes it from most other fiction, which attempts to disguise itself as truth or to at least distract the reader from the fact that they are reading a story and pull its audience deep into the tale. In S. Morganstern’s The Princess Bride, the real author William Goldman has written a story about himself rediscovering as an adult The Princess Bride by S. Morganstern, a novel that he loved very much as a child and that he in fact swears is the reason that he became an avid reader and eventually a novelist. This a frame story; Goldman tells the tale of how his father first read The Princess Bride to him when he was a little boy, and how Goldman gave his own son a copy of this same novel when the boy turned ten. Are you with me so far?

Both the novel and the movie versions contain a frame story that draws attention to the fact that the story about Westley and Buttercup is a parody of a fantasy story, but I must admit that I prefer the frame story in the movie to the more complicated version in the novel. The story about how Goldman’s father shares the beloved novel with his son, then Goldman himself shares The Princess Bride with his son and grandson, could have been fairly heartwarming and entertaining – but Goldman (the character) comes off as a rather dislikable guy in many ways. His strained relationship with his wife and son, his rude comments about his son’s obesity, his strange almost-flirtation with a young bikini-clad actress at a hotel in California all, quite frankly, turned me off. If I were to re-read this novel any time soon – or read it to my kids – I would skip the several introductions that have to do with Goldman and simply begin on page 30 with the tale of Buttercup and her handsome Farm Boy Westley.

I think, though, that by the time Goldman wrote the screenplay for The Princess Bride and was eventually able to have it filmed (over a decade after the novel was published), he had figured out the right frame story. The pared-down tale in the film about a grandfather reading the story to his grandson is cute and conveys much the same sentiments as the story about Goldman’s father reading it to him as a boy, without taking away from the stories about Westley and Buttercup, Inigo and Fezzik.

The main story of the novel, the fantasy narrative, is just as comical as the film version – perhaps even more so. All the most-quoted phrases from the film are present in the original text (“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father – prepare to die!”) and there are even more excellent lines of dialog that were likely excluded from the film simply for the sake of keeping the movie to a reasonable length.

Even so, there are subtle differences between the stories of Westley and Buttercup that are related in the film and the novel which made the fantasy tale likewise less enjoyable for me than the film version. For example: Buttercup’s characterization as a beautiful, devoted but extremely unintelligent young woman ultimately irritated me, even though it was a fairly humorous element of parody for Goldman to include. If I was able to read The Princess Bride simply as parody without connecting it to the film, with its sweeping romance between Elwes-as-Westley and Wright-as-Buttercup, then I would probably find Goldman’s dim-witted and gullible version of Buttercup quite a clever commentary on fairytale princesses. But the truth of the matter is that despite my own opinion that audiences should try to separate the book and film versions of story, appreciating each as a separate entity, I still cannot let go of the more noble and intelligent image of Buttercup that I have in my head thanks to Robin Wright. So, while the parody in the novel is quite entertaining, I ultimately prefer the slightly-toned-down version (and be reassured, the change is quite slight) of parody in the film.

But in fairness to the novel, I want to stress that this is still a really enjoyable, funny book to read. In retrospect, I think it’s kind of an odd way to start off my “Focus on Fantasy,” since it can be difficult to fully appreciate the parody of the genre without being completely aware of the genre’s elements. But that’s the nice thing about The Princess Bride – you can enjoy both the book and the film whether or not you understand the parody because underneath, you still have a good old-fashioned fantasy-romance with a lot of swaggering, swashbuckling pirates and villains crossing swords, all for the life and love of a beautiful princess.

This post participates in my Focus on Fantasy Reading Challenge. To learn more about the challenge or participate in the contest, visit the original Fantasy challenge post.

Book Review: Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret

It may or may not be surprising to find out that I didn’t grow up reading Judy Blume’s novels – I went to a private Christian school from 4th until 12th grade, and so the librarians weren’t exactly pushing fiction from the banned books list. I’m fairly certain, in fact, that my school librarians were the kind of people who contributed to the lists of books to be kept from innocent children – hoping in vain that they could keep our vulnerable minds from learning about subjects such as menstruation, sex and religious freedom.

But this is exactly why everybody loves Judy Blume’s novels so much – she actually writes about the subjects that most parents and librarians consider inappropriate, yet are the most significant subjects that preoccupy and shape young adults. I’ve heard that many adults who grew up reading Blume’s novels in the 1970s and 80s now swear that the author saved their lives because she was the only adult that was honest with them. Honesty – a policy preached but not practiced by the majority of conservative adult society.

I decided that it was finally time that I learned more about Judy Blume, starting with the novel that I had heard the most about – Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. And oh, would this book have infuriated my Christian school librarians! To talk frankly about menstruation would have been unseemly, to entertain the idea of religious freedom for an audience of elementary schoolers would have been irresponsible and inappropriate – but to combine the topics? I believe that might actually fit under their definition of blasphemy.

As I read the novel and thought about all of this, I grew more and more frustrated with adults – parents, grandparents, teachers and librarians, who all have forgotten what it feels like to be a kid and be left in the dark, especially about something so important. Margaret is old enough to understand that religion and the development of her body are both extremely critical elements to the person that she is and will become. She may even understand that better than the adults in her life, who don’t want her to think about these things in a critical, rational manner, but would rather simply dictate to her the kind of person that she ought to be.

But what we’ve really got in Are You There God? is a case of the blind leading the blind, with quite selfish intentions. Margaret’s Grandma Sylvia is insistent that Margaret is a Jewish girl, while her maternal grandparents are adamant that because Margaret’s mother was raised a Christian, Margaret is a Christian too. Even her own parents, who are certainly more open-minded because they have been able to sustain an inter-faith marriage, aren’t so open-minded as they seem – they would prefer that Margaret remain undecided in terms of her own religion, presumably in order to justify their own choice to reject both Judaism and Christianity. I was not feeling too sympathetic toward any of the parental figures in this novel, none of whom actually took the time to explain the significance of religion or the purposes of any religious practices to poor Margaret.

Instead, I really felt sorry for Margaret, who had to struggle through her religious crisis all on her own, while also dealing with puberty. These two crises are intertwined in Margaret’s experience – she is desperate to get her period and behave in socially acceptable ways with boys so that she can fit in with her friends and peers. Likewise, a major reason that she wants to make a decision at this point about her religion is so that she can understand where she fits in socially – she wants to know whether she should join the local YMCA or the Jewish Community Center. A lot of Margaret’s self-concept is built on how well she can assimilate into the social landscape. This isn’t exactly healthy, but it is realistic – most young adults would rather die than stand out from their peers. It’s too bad, then, that some readers focus on Margaret’s anxieties regarding her period and her relationships with boys, while loosing sight of how her religious crisis is so closely-related to her sexual anxieties. In other words, her emotional, spiritual intellectual and physical development are all tied together – which is the case for most adolescents.

All in all, I doubt that I’m saying very much about Judy Blume’s novel that hasn’t been said before – but if nothing else, I want to communicate that I think it’s important for everyone to read this classic for themselves. It’s entertaining (who can’t help but laugh at the chant “We must, we must, we must increase our bust?”) but it’s also an important reminder that children are capable of thinking critically and therefore need answers. Most of the time, an adult’s attempt at shielding a young adult simply stunts their growth – instead of trying to protect teenagers, we should be attempting to guide them and support them. I couldn’t help but think of how much easier Margaret’s struggle would have been if someone had set her down and said, “Listen, here is why Jewish people do this and this, and here is why Christians do that and that. This is the way that they think and believe, this is what is important to them. Now you have to decide whether or not those things are important to you, too.” Margaret still would have had a lot to sort through on her own, but she wouldn’t have felt quite so confused and alone.

And so one of the things we can take away from this novel is that honest communication between children and adults will build trust and foster critical thinking, not contaminate the young adults in question. Kids and teenagers need information just as much as adults – they need to understand what’s going on around them and what is happening to their own bodies. This novel is great because of its brutal honesty about all kinds of adolescent anxieties – and I think all adults stand to learn a lot from Judy Blume.

[Disclaimer: My parents, despite being the ones who placed me in private school, did not attempt to restrict my reading materials in any way – so this review/commentary is not meant as a criticism of them at all. They let me check out anything I wanted from the library, and only once did they even bat an eye – when I came home with a stack of Anne Rice novels at the age of twelve. But despite being disconcerted, they let me carry on – and it did me no harm. So, a big thank you to my parents.]

Book Review: I Am the Messenger

After reading quite a bit of historical fiction as of late, my interest in Fantasy Literature is resurfacing, and so I began reading The Fantastic by Tzvetan Todorov a few nights ago. I did not think that Todorov’s book would particularly connect to Markus Zusak’s novel I Am the Messenger until I came across the following definitions of “Fantastic” Literature:

Castex, in Le Conte Fantastique en France, writes: “The fantastic… is characterized… by a brutal intrusion of mysery into the context of real life.” Louis Vax, in L’Art et la Litterature Fantastiques: “The fantastic narrative generally describes men like ourselves, inhabiting a real world, suddenly confronted by the inexplicable.” Roger Caillois, in Au Coeur du Fantastique: “The fantastic is always a break in the acknowledged order, an interruption of the inadmissible within the changeless everyday legality” (The Fantastic: A Structuralist Approach to a Literary Genre, Todorov 26).

And then there’s Todorov’s definition of the Fantastic: Fantastic literature is literature in which “the ambiguity is sustained to the very end of the adventure: reality or dream? truth or illusion?… In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils, sylphides, or vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar world. The person who experiences the event must opt for one of two possible solutions: either he is the victim of an illusion of the senses, of a product of the imagination – and the laws of the world then remain what they are; or else the event has indeed taken place, it is an integral part of reality – but then this reality is controlled by laws unknown to us… The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event” (The Fantastic, Todorov 25).

I love this language, which sets Todorov’s definition apart from the others: the Fantastic is that hesitation experienced before the character and/or the readers really know what’s going on. In other words, we have not yet been able to discern what kind of a world we really live in. We thought we knew – but now we’ve been confronted with something that makes us question everything that we thought we understood.

This is the kind of hesitation I experienced as I read Zusak’s I Am the Messenger. As the main character Ed begins to receive playing cards through the mail, inscribed with addresses and cryptic instructions that lead him to people in need of his help, I started to feel a lot like I was back in the world of Franz Kafka’s The Trial. A seemingly ordinary man is suddenly thrown into a bizarre puzzle that turns his world into a confusing labyrinth resembling a video game more than real life. The main character becomes a lab rat, a hamster on a wheel, running for someone else’s pleasure. The question is – who? Who is it running the experiment, sending poor, lonely Ed Kennedy these cards with instructions? How are they able to keep track of his every move? And is it really a benevolent person who wants to send Ed on missions of mercy? The missions on which Ed is sent seem to be motivated by kindness and compassion: keep this lonely old woman company, help this priest revitalize his congregation, stop that drunk from traumatizing his wife and daughter. But if this mysterious person is really so kind and benevolent, why does he send two thugs to Ed’s house to beat him up? I felt a little bit lost throughout the novel as to what was really going on.

The strange thing about Ed (and the rest of the characters in this novel as well) is that while they think this situation is a bit odd, they ultimately just shrug their shoulders and accept the bizarre situation. Ed doesn’t spend too much time wondering about who is sending him these playing cards – and even less time actually trying to find out. He just gets on with the business of following the instructions on the cards, “delivering messages” to the lost and lonely people around town who need a little prodding to find their way through difficult life situations. It’s not that I don’t admire Ed’s willingness to minister to the needs of these people, and the concept certainly makes for a good novel in the end – but all the plot points line up a little bit too neatly without a satisfying explanation. It’s as though Ed takes a look at the playing cards and suddenly understands what the author wants him to understand, the purpose that the author has devised for these playing card messages. That leaves a big plot hole, to be honest… how does Ed see a list of addresses and jump to the conclusion that he is meant to help the people who live at these locations? Where does he get this explanation?

If we set aside these questions and the plot holes that they create, though, this is actually a great novel. It’s not quite as life-changing as Zusak’s Printz Award-winning The Book Thief, and certainly not as polished, but entertaining and moving nonetheless. It’s interesting to see the way that Zusak is starting to play with language and metaphors in this novel, which precedes the incomparably-crafted The Book Thief – if you take a look at the language and structure of both novels, you can observe his development as a writer. Between the two, he jumps from a few off-beat descriptions and metaphors that make I Am the Messenger an interesting text to the beautiful metaphors and lyrical language in The Book Thief. But I Am the Messenger is by no means so far behind the other that it cannot be enjoyed. I still ended up engrossed in the story, once I decided to set aside my own questions about the questionably-benevolent person sending Ed those playing cards and just get on with the business of the story. I think most readers will really enjoy this novel – and if you haven’t yet read The Book Thief, then I suggest that you read this novel first. I Am the Messenger will doubtless seem of an even higher quality if you can’t compare it to Zusak’s finest work.

This post participates in my YA Aussie Novels Reading Challenge. If you're interested, check out my other reviews of Australian Young Adult novels, and come back to catch more reviews by authors Melina Marchetta, Markus Zusak and Sonya Hartnett that I have planned for the upcoming weeks.