The Magnificent Ambersons
1918
The Magnificent Ambersons will take through a nostalgic journey to Midwestern America in the later part of the 19th century. Written with certainty and fluidity, it recreates an epoch vividly, almost making you wish you were part of it, strolling along with them, with their false sense of glory but without the sunshade. If the story, centred on the social changes a family must confront in a growing town, is small and seems, at first, uninteresting, Tarkington’s astute style of storytelling will make you care effortlessly. It’s a book that is enjoyable to read, clever, honest and often illuminating.
As you close the last page, you leave the early 20th century with a feeling of not having read enough (for it is a small read), of wanting to know more, all the while knowing that some things are best left unsaid. You’re free to let your imagination wander now, and, surprisingly, you do. While you weren’t watching, you let yourself get attached to the seemingly distant and arrogant characters and you honestly wish them the best.
The only flaw in The Magnificent Ambersons, however, is a significant one: if never hurtful or unkind, Tarkington’s whole attitude towards Blacks still makes it very difficult for a 21st-century reader to fully go past it. Of course, he probably didn’t mean for a black person to read it but the fact is we do, and for a book on society’s changes it is ironic that its author wasn’t able to envision such change in his readership. While providing some social and linguistic credibility to the story, his terminology (‘darkie’) and characterization of black characters (or lack thereof) lack the decency and effort he put in his white characters. In a book that otherwise excels as a comedy of manners and characters, Blacks are one-dimensional: either proud, lively or slavish, they seem cheerful all the time, so busy they are with humour, women, food and gin. As impersonal and unfeeling images stuck in time, they don’t seem to take part in the industrial world changes going around them, but remain immutable, a ready-made repertoire providing a good-natured background against which other characters move as they please.
That’s a real shame for this holds back your feelings uncomfortably, keeps you on ‘liking’ terms with the book when you could have loved it.
Tags: rapid growth and industrialization, sympathetic comedy of manners, late 19th century-early 20th century, centred on one family in one town with several dramas, the idea of getting your comeuppance really explored here, money vs. land, doing. vs.being, when George confuses filial overprotectiveness with filial ‘overpossessiveness’,
social changes in the busy US, courtship dance, yes, no, ye…maybe, but…no, well…,
lack of proper characterization of black characters, town and characters across the years, the know-it-all young white man or when George teaches us all what it is to 'be', still shaping America
Herman MelvilleMoby Dick
1851
This is a gigantic book, made for the self-aware reader. You've got to bear with so many pages of "explanatorythingsexplained" but they are worth it! The message (or should I say, messages...) is so basic, yet so deep; the characters are alarmingly touching; some moments are laugh-out-loud funny...Basically, Moby Dick gets you to the core and whether you love it or hate it, it cannot leave you indifferent. And all that, ladies and gentlemen, from a big white whale! A beautiful story on the rise and fall of greatness, which lives up to its subject. Personally, one of my favourites!
Tags: biblical allegories, the power and limits of mankind, racial prejudice, homosocial (and not just) relations, the "what-the-hell-are-we-doing-here?" question, fate, the know-it-all young white man, ship & sea, animaux, ...
Lynn Flewelling
Nightrunner (The Nightrunner Series):
Les Maîtres de l'Ombre I. (Luck in the Shadows)
Les Traqueurs de la Nuit II. (Stalking Darkness)
La Lune des Traîtres III. (Traitor's Moon)
Le Retour des Ombres IV. (Shadows Return)
1996/1997/1999/2008
Une petite perle de fantasy moderne, de celles qui peuvent passer inaperçues si elles ne contiennent pas moult combats épiques ou un système de magie inventif. Rien de tel dans Nightrunner. Mais! Des personnages bien développés, en 3D, et si crédibles qu'on les ressent presque allant et venant dans la pièce; des aventures déroulées une à une comme sur un plateau de jeu dans un scénario de maître, mesuré et pourtant tissé avec expertise, de sorte qu'il vous tient en haleine du début à la fin, le tout dans une écriture simple et efficace où transparaît une ambiance intimiste et captivante. On y croit de plus en plus au fil des pages, on s'habitue à l'atmosphère de fantasy médiévale/"17ème siècle" comme si l'on se retrouvait dans un terrain tout-à-fait naturel, et pourtant surprenant. On s'y attache. On devient fan. Et ici et là surgissent des instants de profondeurs qui complètent les bouquins sans voler la vedette à l'intrigue d'aventures qu'ils se sont fixés de raconter. Une "petite" série sans aucun doute, mais grâce à cette portée modeste pour objectif, elle devient une œuvre complète qui murît de page en page. Rien ne manque dans ces bouquins car s'il n'y a pas de trop, il y a plus qu'assez. Nightrunner donne envie de lire toujours un peu plus loin.
P.S. Ooh, et les urghazi!
Tags: relations homosociales (et plus), travestisme, gender & feminism, héros malmenés, magic, socio-political structure, spies, game & adventure, guerres here and there, mythopoeia, "échanges" interaciaux
Elizabeth Gaskell
North and South
1855
A tremendous masterpiece in its scope, a shock-book that could see the issues of its time_ and ours_ before they were acknowledged; that could find a strong interest in people that were rarely talked about; that wasn’t afraid of telling us about the rights and wrongs of our most beloved movements.
North and South follows the route from a dualistic conception of life to the apogee of this meeting between dualisms: two people, two ways of life...and their alternatives. This is not a book with one ready-made solution; there is no ideal, there are only truths under that one honest desire to understand the other. North and South teaches you how to learn how to love.
The writing is superb, as if complex thoughts and situations were flowing from the author’s vision to her hand without effort, as if she was merely revealing a situation that was really there, lifting in a few fluid sentences the curtain of your own mind and that of your neighbour.
This is the poetry of the mind that thinks hard and is never afraid of going too far.
Tags: historical relevance, industrial revolutions, capitalism & industrialisation, unions & syndicats, social observation, class confrontation, socio-political structure & agenda, famille & land, feminism, faith vs. religion, ladies & gents' courtship dance, 19th-century society, roman de mœurs, close quarters, religious doubts and questions
Northanger Abbey
1818
Well-written, sophisticate, are all novels of Jane Austen. But Northanger was one of my favourites because it never failed to surprise me. The book is small and feels at time rushed, at times slow, as if it had been written quickly, but planned carefully. Gradually, Northanger goes beyond its focus on melodramatic Gothic fiction and keenly observes the fictious in the real, the falsity of its heroine's social net. As Catherine goes from fiction to fictious, the reader is caught into the ferventness of the intrigue, not knowing what it actually is until late in the book, but reading ardently_ like Catherine devours her Mystery of Udolpho. Nothing in particular happens, as, Austen points out, nothing does in social life. Yet in that nothing, everything is: the envy, the pursuits, the love, the lies, the little somethings and the big nothings that make up Austen's enclosed, almost stuffy, scene.
Tags: ladies & gents' courtship dance, close quarters, gothic interest, 19th-century society, roman de mœurs, gender relations, famille & land
