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3.02 AVERAGE
3.02 AVERAGE
A little slower moving than I expected I wasn't sure I would enjoy this. Turned out to be sleeper.
The visionaries of our time, Apple and Microsoft, have opened up our world, and our lives are now given over to internet screens. I am grateful for the timing that has allowed me to be part of this world festival of fact and fiction.
Yes, I am happy to read newspapers online, to listen to music via a screen, to search for information at the click of a button, to communicate, to check the time or the weather, to read and write in virtual print, to store my life in the cloud.
We live in the brightness of screens; when they sleep, we too shut down.
It was ironic then that my timing was so off yesterday and I was very far from my screen when a major event of our times happened, an event which was communicated to the world, not by text message, email or phone call but by a smoke signal from the chimney of the Sistine chapel.
But I too was in a chapel of sorts when the white smoke curled into the Roman clouds. I was in a temple dedicated to the god of ink print, Times New Roman herself, still worshipped daily in our humble bookstore. I was gathered with a group of the faithful to listen to the words of [a:Anne Korkeakivi|4025952|Anne Korkeakivi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1435912536p2/4025952.jpg] who was visiting our temple to speak of her recent book, a book where the universal sits beside the personal, where major events in world politics vie with shopping for dinner. A book where Time and timing are everything.
Present time and past time waltz with each other continually throughout [b:An Unexpected Guest: A Novel|17225331|An Unexpected Guest A Novel|Anne Korkeakivi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1357704893s/17225331.jpg|17997680]. The main character, Claire Moorhouse is a modern day Clarissa Dalloway, setting out in the morning to buy the flowers she will need for her dinner party that same evening. She lives on rue de Varenne, a street in Paris containing buildings which date back to the late sixteen hundreds some of which were destroyed in the mid-nineteenth century when the visionaries of the day opened up the city and sliced through rue de Varenne in the name of progress. It was while walking down this very street in 2006 that the author first got the idea for this novel, inspired by the tension she felt in Paris at that time, the problems thrown up on those historic pavements by twentieth first century wars and the threat of bombs which slice through urban centres in the name of patriotism.
And so present time and past time compete for our attention right through the narrative. Present time is measured out, not by church bells as in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, but on the screen of a mobile phone. Past time defeats any measuring, it is present only in wisps and fragments, retrieved haphazardly from the depths of memory. Present time is ordered by means of lists and facts accessed on computer screens while the facts of the past were noted and stored only in memory. The crucial ‘timing’ in the narrative revolves around this duality.
The final irony of yesterday for me was that even though I have many tools and devices available to me to record my thoughts, it was in the solitude of my mind, in the darkness of the night, that this review took shape.
Yes, I am happy to know that I don’t shut down completely when away from my screens. And yes, I am happy that facts can be stored perfectly in my memory, safe until they can be recorded in the light of day.
Yes, I am happy to read newspapers online, to listen to music via a screen, to search for information at the click of a button, to communicate, to check the time or the weather, to read and write in virtual print, to store my life in the cloud.
We live in the brightness of screens; when they sleep, we too shut down.
It was ironic then that my timing was so off yesterday and I was very far from my screen when a major event of our times happened, an event which was communicated to the world, not by text message, email or phone call but by a smoke signal from the chimney of the Sistine chapel.
But I too was in a chapel of sorts when the white smoke curled into the Roman clouds. I was in a temple dedicated to the god of ink print, Times New Roman herself, still worshipped daily in our humble bookstore. I was gathered with a group of the faithful to listen to the words of [a:Anne Korkeakivi|4025952|Anne Korkeakivi|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1435912536p2/4025952.jpg] who was visiting our temple to speak of her recent book, a book where the universal sits beside the personal, where major events in world politics vie with shopping for dinner. A book where Time and timing are everything.
Present time and past time waltz with each other continually throughout [b:An Unexpected Guest: A Novel|17225331|An Unexpected Guest A Novel|Anne Korkeakivi|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1357704893s/17225331.jpg|17997680]. The main character, Claire Moorhouse is a modern day Clarissa Dalloway, setting out in the morning to buy the flowers she will need for her dinner party that same evening. She lives on rue de Varenne, a street in Paris containing buildings which date back to the late sixteen hundreds some of which were destroyed in the mid-nineteenth century when the visionaries of the day opened up the city and sliced through rue de Varenne in the name of progress. It was while walking down this very street in 2006 that the author first got the idea for this novel, inspired by the tension she felt in Paris at that time, the problems thrown up on those historic pavements by twentieth first century wars and the threat of bombs which slice through urban centres in the name of patriotism.
And so present time and past time compete for our attention right through the narrative. Present time is measured out, not by church bells as in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, but on the screen of a mobile phone. Past time defeats any measuring, it is present only in wisps and fragments, retrieved haphazardly from the depths of memory. Present time is ordered by means of lists and facts accessed on computer screens while the facts of the past were noted and stored only in memory. The crucial ‘timing’ in the narrative revolves around this duality.
The final irony of yesterday for me was that even though I have many tools and devices available to me to record my thoughts, it was in the solitude of my mind, in the darkness of the night, that this review took shape.
Yes, I am happy to know that I don’t shut down completely when away from my screens. And yes, I am happy that facts can be stored perfectly in my memory, safe until they can be recorded in the light of day.
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
mysterious
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Anne Korkeakivi's debut novel is based on Mrs. Dalloway, with a well-to-do woman (here the wife of a British diplomat) planning an important dinner party while her life is upended. Clare has spent the past twenty years perfecting her job as a diplomat's wife, furthering his career by being discrete, decorative and an excellent guest and hostess. Their time in Paris is drawing to a close and he is angling to be next sent to Dublin instead of somewhere less comfortable and more obscure. A last minute request to host a dinner party could make or break his chances. Clare has never wanted to return to Ireland, after her one disastrous visit when she was twenty, but she's determined to support her husband; it's what she's always done. But the chance of an Irish posting is bringing forth memories, both pleasant and bitter. Her teenage son reappears that morning, unwilling to talk about some nebulous, but serious trouble he has gotten into at his boarding school back in England. The book follows Clare through her day, shopping for flowers and cheese, getting her hair done, delivering a translation she's finished, placating the cook and chatting with the guests.
An Unexpected Guest is a quiet novel; the turmoil is mostly internal, but that doesn't make it uneventful or boring. Korkeakivi writes confidently, and with an assurance not often found in a first novel. It's a pleasure to find a quiet book that isn't trite or whimsical. I'm eager to read whatever she next writes.
An Unexpected Guest is a quiet novel; the turmoil is mostly internal, but that doesn't make it uneventful or boring. Korkeakivi writes confidently, and with an assurance not often found in a first novel. It's a pleasure to find a quiet book that isn't trite or whimsical. I'm eager to read whatever she next writes.
So-so. I found Clare to be unsympathetic. All the drama was of her own creation. The secret that she had was hardly worth keeping all that time. I felt a little bit like Mathilde, the cook--exasperated and more than a little annoyed.
The writing is really good and eloquent, which I feel fits the life of a diplomat. However, it kinda felt like I was reading an ongoing panic attack for like 200 pages and then when the climax (I guess happened), the resolution kind of fell off for me. I was kind of just like “okay” at the end.
This book "happens" in the life of a woman in one day in Paris. There are recollections to earlier times, but the book is meant to be one day. I was surprised to find how much I enjoyed this book.
I truly enjoyed this book. It took me awhile to read, as I was in the middle of a few other books when I began it, but it was well-written and worth the time.
i actually started this with low expectations, but it was actually so good. gorgeous poetic writing and actually pretty engaging. probably not a reread tbh but it was very good.