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eadaoinlynch's reviews
225 reviews
The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
4.0
I liked the way Pynchon makes fun of attempts to impose order on chaos, especially through language. But I'm going to have to let this book sink in a little further in my mind until I can fully comprehend it! At times - like most postmodern books, I think - I find myself engrossed, and at others, plain bored. I'm not sure the juxtaposition of satire (poking fun at randomness, and a human will to organise it) and science (the penultimate expression of order) works to its fullest potential. But like I said, I'll have to let it sink for a bit before I can back up my arguments properly.
Mother America by Nuala Ní Chonchúir
5.0
On June 7th, Nuala Ní Chonchúir is launching her fourth short story collection, Mother America, in the Winding Stair Bookshop in Dublin. As I am lucky enough to be interning with Vanessa O’Loughlin of writing.ie, I got a copy of Mother America in the post last week. Since then, I’ve been avidly reading all 19 stories — which jump between historical fiction and contemporary realism with ease — and had a very informative interview with the lovely Nuala herself, which I will be posting in full once I proof it. (The feature interview on writing.ie is available here.)
The first story in the collection, ‘Peach’, was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize and won the Jane Geske Award, and rightly so. The precision of detail in this story is wonderful. Ní Chonchúir has a penchant for description, and her opening lines are always perfect introductions to the story itself: “There was a pregnant woman getting drunk in the back lounge; I could see her through the hatch, from where I sat at the bar.” The narrator, Dominic, soon becomes involved with the frail woman, Maud, whom the reader learns has recently had a miscarriage. What astounded me about this story was the way in which the descriptions of the characters’ actions and surroundings so precisely outlined their own personalities:
"At Maud’s front door a smoke-coloured cat with white feet brushed around my legs and pushed its torso into my shins. I half-kicked it away, being careful not to hurt it.
‘Your cat?’ I asked, while Maud unlocked the door.
‘No, that’s Chicago; he belongs to the neighbour.’ She shook her foot at him. ‘Psst, Chicago, psst. Get lost.’ Chicago ran through Maud’s legs into the hall; he looked up at us.
[...]
There was a Kahlo-bright oilcloth on her table: it was yellow with cerise hibiscus flowers. An orchid, propped in a milk bottle, spilled orange dust from its stamen onto the tablecloth; the orchid seemed to spray its hot smell into the room. A birdcage on a stand was parked in one corner. I looked in at a budgie; he was a startling, fake-looking blue.
[...]
Maud’s house had a stillness that I found almost unbearable, a sense of time being immoveable; I needed noise."
The themes of loneliness and consolation reemerge in many of the stories in the collection, none more so than “When the Hearse Goes By”, a powerful examination of grief and succour. Another male narrator, Fergus, goes to Paris after the funeral of his brother, and meets his sister-in-law, Ivy, “a stumpy woman with a man’s haircut.” The two attempt to downplay the loss of their mutual friend, but inevitably find it’s the only thing that can connect them. At a restaurant in the eighth arrondissement, Fergus says, “You miss him, I suppose.” “Like air,” Ivy answered. The two discuss the odd dreams they have had recently — Fergus dreaming about insects and waking up to a loud chorus of birds, Ivy dreaming that her husband is still sitting in the chair in their bedroom. The conclusion of their relationship is both understandable and shocking, and all the while I couldn’t help but feel that the ominous end was hinted at from the beginning: “it was safely in the past that Ivy most wanted to be.”
Complex familial relations are a regular concern in Mother America and in the final story, “Queen of Tattoo”, a mother, Lydia, is confronted by her son, Clyde, who does not realise that raping another woman in the town is any cause for concern. After spending time in jail for his crime, he returns to Cherry Street to ask his mother to tattoo him in order to hide from any jailmates who might be looking for him.
" ‘Clyde’, she says, ‘the first thing we need to give you is a heart.’ "
She tattoos a heart on his chest with two daggers in it, then a wolf on his back, then serpents from his wrists to his armpits. Clyde complains that she’s hurting him, that he never meant that girl Rosary any harm, that they have an understanding. He produces a bundle of letters signed ‘Rosarie’ that profess her undying love for him, but,
"Lydia knows the child’s way Clyde uses language; she recognises the particular slant of his vowels, the back and forth mess of all his words. She also knows how Rosary spells her name."
The tensions built up in this story between love and delusion made me wish it was a novel, and not a short story, just so I could keep reading. On a less selfish note, the skill with which Ní Chonchúir writes attests to her proficiency as a storyteller and her talent as a poet.
I have been trying to focus on a less fanatical point of critique for Mother America, but everything that I could find to criticise is merely my own subjective pet peeves, which are neither constructive or important. This has led me to question if I would rate this book as highly as classics such as Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss and Other Stories or Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories, and I have to admit, I would. This collection is a neat and rigorous examination of character, and while it may not be as overwhelmingly groundbreaking as Mansfield or O’Connor, the detail and skill evident in each story merits as much acclaim.
The first story in the collection, ‘Peach’, was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize and won the Jane Geske Award, and rightly so. The precision of detail in this story is wonderful. Ní Chonchúir has a penchant for description, and her opening lines are always perfect introductions to the story itself: “There was a pregnant woman getting drunk in the back lounge; I could see her through the hatch, from where I sat at the bar.” The narrator, Dominic, soon becomes involved with the frail woman, Maud, whom the reader learns has recently had a miscarriage. What astounded me about this story was the way in which the descriptions of the characters’ actions and surroundings so precisely outlined their own personalities:
"At Maud’s front door a smoke-coloured cat with white feet brushed around my legs and pushed its torso into my shins. I half-kicked it away, being careful not to hurt it.
‘Your cat?’ I asked, while Maud unlocked the door.
‘No, that’s Chicago; he belongs to the neighbour.’ She shook her foot at him. ‘Psst, Chicago, psst. Get lost.’ Chicago ran through Maud’s legs into the hall; he looked up at us.
[...]
There was a Kahlo-bright oilcloth on her table: it was yellow with cerise hibiscus flowers. An orchid, propped in a milk bottle, spilled orange dust from its stamen onto the tablecloth; the orchid seemed to spray its hot smell into the room. A birdcage on a stand was parked in one corner. I looked in at a budgie; he was a startling, fake-looking blue.
[...]
Maud’s house had a stillness that I found almost unbearable, a sense of time being immoveable; I needed noise."
The themes of loneliness and consolation reemerge in many of the stories in the collection, none more so than “When the Hearse Goes By”, a powerful examination of grief and succour. Another male narrator, Fergus, goes to Paris after the funeral of his brother, and meets his sister-in-law, Ivy, “a stumpy woman with a man’s haircut.” The two attempt to downplay the loss of their mutual friend, but inevitably find it’s the only thing that can connect them. At a restaurant in the eighth arrondissement, Fergus says, “You miss him, I suppose.” “Like air,” Ivy answered. The two discuss the odd dreams they have had recently — Fergus dreaming about insects and waking up to a loud chorus of birds, Ivy dreaming that her husband is still sitting in the chair in their bedroom. The conclusion of their relationship is both understandable and shocking, and all the while I couldn’t help but feel that the ominous end was hinted at from the beginning: “it was safely in the past that Ivy most wanted to be.”
Complex familial relations are a regular concern in Mother America and in the final story, “Queen of Tattoo”, a mother, Lydia, is confronted by her son, Clyde, who does not realise that raping another woman in the town is any cause for concern. After spending time in jail for his crime, he returns to Cherry Street to ask his mother to tattoo him in order to hide from any jailmates who might be looking for him.
" ‘Clyde’, she says, ‘the first thing we need to give you is a heart.’ "
She tattoos a heart on his chest with two daggers in it, then a wolf on his back, then serpents from his wrists to his armpits. Clyde complains that she’s hurting him, that he never meant that girl Rosary any harm, that they have an understanding. He produces a bundle of letters signed ‘Rosarie’ that profess her undying love for him, but,
"Lydia knows the child’s way Clyde uses language; she recognises the particular slant of his vowels, the back and forth mess of all his words. She also knows how Rosary spells her name."
The tensions built up in this story between love and delusion made me wish it was a novel, and not a short story, just so I could keep reading. On a less selfish note, the skill with which Ní Chonchúir writes attests to her proficiency as a storyteller and her talent as a poet.
I have been trying to focus on a less fanatical point of critique for Mother America, but everything that I could find to criticise is merely my own subjective pet peeves, which are neither constructive or important. This has led me to question if I would rate this book as highly as classics such as Katherine Mansfield’s Bliss and Other Stories or Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard To Find and Other Stories, and I have to admit, I would. This collection is a neat and rigorous examination of character, and while it may not be as overwhelmingly groundbreaking as Mansfield or O’Connor, the detail and skill evident in each story merits as much acclaim.
The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson
5.0
Hunter S. Thompson was never a writer to whom I’d properly given my time. Having watched Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas I presumed I’d gotten a well-rounded insight into his subject and style, but then I read The Rum Diary and soon began stomping around the house in fits of gusto and self-chastisement.
The novel opens with a quotation from Dark Eileen O’Connell,
"My rider of the bright eyes,
What happened you yesterday?
I thought you in my heart,
When I bought you your fine clothes,
A man the world could not slay",
that does set you up for the undertones of the novel. The preface — outlining how the infamous Al’s Backyard came to be — ends with Paul Kemp, the main character, acknowledging that,
"I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making progress [...] At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles — a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other — that kept me going."
This book trumped a lot of opinions I had about first person narrative, mainly the idea of explicit intent — ‘Show don’t tell’. Thompson uses it in such a way that it’s reflective, not slipshod or overbearing, and fits into Kemp’s characterisation. He often tells you something while showing it, and somehow it’s never unnecessary. There is a great deal of craft in Thompson’s writing, and the concise balance between characterisation and narrative is what propelled me through the novel.
Now that I’ve gushed about technical prowess, let’s have a look at the story itself.
Paul Kemp is a reporter from New York who moves to Puerto Rico to start working for the San Juan Daily News. On the plane over he makes a fool of himself trying to get the attention of a pretty blonde lady, whom we later learn is called Chenault.
The editor of the San Juan Daily News, Ed Lotterman, an ex-communist, is a nervous breakdown waiting to happen. Kemp soon becomes friends with the paper’s professional photographer, Bob Sala, who shows him to Al’s Backyard, and complains endlessly about every aspect of his life. Yeamon, another American working for the News, is a volatile character, going steady with Chenault, and often abusing her. Throughout Kemp’s stay in San Juan, he becomes more and more aware of the tensions in the News’ office and the instability of both its employees and editor. He witnesses numerous unsettling events in Puerto Rico — the St. Thomas carnival (in which Chenault is abducted), riots outside the News’ offices, police brutality and apathy — and all the while I had to admit that Kemp is right when he saw himself “blown and buffeted in the rotten winds of life”.
The novel’s title rightly suggests that it’s written as a retrospective account, but it still retains a sense of immediacy when the plot moves fast. I was surprised to find out that The Rum Diary was Thompson’s second novel — it shows a remarkable vision from a budding writer. Kemp is a reporter who fears he’s gone over the hill, and halfway through the novel when he begins investing in a car and an apartment and openly acknowledges that he wants to settle down, it’s clear he’s not the wild young free radical he thinks he is. It’s conveyed so convincingly, so effortlessly, that it really did shock me when I discovered that Thompson was only twenty-two when he wrote it.
More than the characterisation, and plot, and subject, which are all skillfully done, the descriptions of Puerto Rico in 1960 are beautiful. In Chapter Twelve, Kemp visits a remote beach in Puerto Rico that ‘The General’ Zimberger wants to turn into a resort:
"The minute I saw it I felt that here was the place I’d been looking for. We drove across another cane field and then through a grove of palms. [...] My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. The beach was white as salt, and cut off from the world by a ring of steep hills that faced the sea. We were on the edge of a large bay and the water was that clear, turquoise color that you get with a white sand bottom. I had never seen such a place. I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again."
Thompson also describes the hot pressure of a crowded street in St. Thomas with equal artistry:
"The sound was incredible; people were singing and stomping and screaming. Here and there I saw tourists trying to get out of it, but most of them were carried along in the mob. The bands moved off together, heading down the main street. Behind them the crowd linked arms, thirty abreast, blocking the street and both sidewalks — chanting the music as they jerked and staggered along."
The final words of the story expose Thompson’s attention to detail, and the immediacy of the descriptions:
"Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night."
Hard as I’ve tried, I simply can’t find anything to criticise in this novel — not that it’s ‘perfect’, that’s a silly notion, but rather that its merits far outweigh any minor critique that I have.
Read it. And then watch the film. But preferably read it.
The novel opens with a quotation from Dark Eileen O’Connell,
"My rider of the bright eyes,
What happened you yesterday?
I thought you in my heart,
When I bought you your fine clothes,
A man the world could not slay",
that does set you up for the undertones of the novel. The preface — outlining how the infamous Al’s Backyard came to be — ends with Paul Kemp, the main character, acknowledging that,
"I shared a vagrant optimism that some of us were making progress [...] At the same time, I shared a dark suspicion that the life we were leading was a lost cause, that we were all actors, kidding ourselves along on a senseless odyssey. It was the tension between these two poles — a restless idealism on one hand and a sense of impending doom on the other — that kept me going."
This book trumped a lot of opinions I had about first person narrative, mainly the idea of explicit intent — ‘Show don’t tell’. Thompson uses it in such a way that it’s reflective, not slipshod or overbearing, and fits into Kemp’s characterisation. He often tells you something while showing it, and somehow it’s never unnecessary. There is a great deal of craft in Thompson’s writing, and the concise balance between characterisation and narrative is what propelled me through the novel.
Now that I’ve gushed about technical prowess, let’s have a look at the story itself.
Paul Kemp is a reporter from New York who moves to Puerto Rico to start working for the San Juan Daily News. On the plane over he makes a fool of himself trying to get the attention of a pretty blonde lady, whom we later learn is called Chenault.
The editor of the San Juan Daily News, Ed Lotterman, an ex-communist, is a nervous breakdown waiting to happen. Kemp soon becomes friends with the paper’s professional photographer, Bob Sala, who shows him to Al’s Backyard, and complains endlessly about every aspect of his life. Yeamon, another American working for the News, is a volatile character, going steady with Chenault, and often abusing her. Throughout Kemp’s stay in San Juan, he becomes more and more aware of the tensions in the News’ office and the instability of both its employees and editor. He witnesses numerous unsettling events in Puerto Rico — the St. Thomas carnival (in which Chenault is abducted), riots outside the News’ offices, police brutality and apathy — and all the while I had to admit that Kemp is right when he saw himself “blown and buffeted in the rotten winds of life”.
The novel’s title rightly suggests that it’s written as a retrospective account, but it still retains a sense of immediacy when the plot moves fast. I was surprised to find out that The Rum Diary was Thompson’s second novel — it shows a remarkable vision from a budding writer. Kemp is a reporter who fears he’s gone over the hill, and halfway through the novel when he begins investing in a car and an apartment and openly acknowledges that he wants to settle down, it’s clear he’s not the wild young free radical he thinks he is. It’s conveyed so convincingly, so effortlessly, that it really did shock me when I discovered that Thompson was only twenty-two when he wrote it.
More than the characterisation, and plot, and subject, which are all skillfully done, the descriptions of Puerto Rico in 1960 are beautiful. In Chapter Twelve, Kemp visits a remote beach in Puerto Rico that ‘The General’ Zimberger wants to turn into a resort:
"The minute I saw it I felt that here was the place I’d been looking for. We drove across another cane field and then through a grove of palms. [...] My first feeling was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself. The beach was white as salt, and cut off from the world by a ring of steep hills that faced the sea. We were on the edge of a large bay and the water was that clear, turquoise color that you get with a white sand bottom. I had never seen such a place. I wanted to take off all my clothes and never wear them again."
Thompson also describes the hot pressure of a crowded street in St. Thomas with equal artistry:
"The sound was incredible; people were singing and stomping and screaming. Here and there I saw tourists trying to get out of it, but most of them were carried along in the mob. The bands moved off together, heading down the main street. Behind them the crowd linked arms, thirty abreast, blocking the street and both sidewalks — chanting the music as they jerked and staggered along."
The final words of the story expose Thompson’s attention to detail, and the immediacy of the descriptions:
"Voices rose and fell in the house next door and the raucous sound of a jukebox came from a bar down the street. Sounds of a San Juan night, drifting across the city through layers of humid air; sounds of life and movement, people getting ready and people giving up, the sound of hope and the sound of hanging on, and behind them all, the quiet, deadly ticking of a thousand hungry clocks, the lonely sound of time passing in the long Caribbean night."
Hard as I’ve tried, I simply can’t find anything to criticise in this novel — not that it’s ‘perfect’, that’s a silly notion, but rather that its merits far outweigh any minor critique that I have.
Read it. And then watch the film. But preferably read it.
1Q84 #1-2 by Haruki Murakami
2.0
Not worth it! Murakami seems to have bypassed any structural edits in 1Q84. I got 140 pages in but couldn't get interested. It's really disappointing -- I loved his other work so much.