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flyingfox02's reviews
260 reviews
The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
3.0
Short and sweet story reminiscent of a Black Mirror episode. I like how plot twists are revealed without fanfare.
Solaris by Stanisław Lem
2.0
Um.. is nobody going to talk about the blatant racism in this book? I went on the other book review app to see if anyone clocked it and the top reviews don't even mention it! I don't know if it's the fault of the translators or the author (both surely?), but it nearly gave me whiplash.
Have to say I'm disappointed with this one because it's considered a classic sci-fi, yet there's barely any science.. It has a brilliant premise and Solaris is such an intriguing world, yet it's let down by dry lacklustre writing. We get to know this planet by way of 'literature review', where our narrator Kelvin reads a bunch of books about Solaris and regurgitates theories by fictional scientists without explaining the science behind them. The neutrino theory and experiments that the characters ran also weren't explained. I want my worldbuilding well done, please.
I did like the psychological kind-of-thrillery aspect. And the study of grief and desire that the Phi-creatures instigated. (I may have related to Kelvin a teeny bit.) But even that was left forgotten in the last stretch of the book.
Have to say I'm disappointed with this one because it's considered a classic sci-fi, yet there's barely any science.. It has a brilliant premise and Solaris is such an intriguing world, yet it's let down by dry lacklustre writing. We get to know this planet by way of 'literature review', where our narrator Kelvin reads a bunch of books about Solaris and regurgitates theories by fictional scientists without explaining the science behind them. The neutrino theory and experiments that the characters ran also weren't explained. I want my worldbuilding well done, please.
I did like the psychological kind-of-thrillery aspect. And the study of grief and desire that the Phi-creatures instigated. (I may have related to Kelvin a teeny bit.) But even that was left forgotten in the last stretch of the book.
Solenoid by Mircea Cărtărescu
challenging
dark
reflective
2.5
Solenoid is a book saturated with ideas, from the extremely large to the incredibly small, from the astronomical and grandiose to the infinitesimal and invisible. The meaning of life, the purpose of living, death, dreams, bodily fluids, organs, insects, dust, mites. All have a place within the pages of this tome.
It’s written in the form of diary entries and opens with our navel-gazing narrator plucking bits of twine out of his belly-button. This was a big fat sign saying “This book is achingly self-indulgent, proceed with patience”. The writing style I would also describe as hypnotic and feverish. The narrator experiences strings of unsettling memories, terrorising dreams, and phantasmagoric visions. A house with endless rooms, a school with ever-changing hallways, enlarged microscopic creatures, murderous giant statues.
Gentle reader, I was not patient. Those hallucinatory and surrealist aspects are the subject of praise from critics and casual readers alike. But they irritated me. To others, these ramblings might be inspiring and truly thought-provoking. To me they were nonsensical. The plotlessness didn’t help. My mind couldn’t stop wandering and wondering how these fantastical ideas would converge and what the point of it all is.
Pages upon pages upon pages were spent on his dream journals. I’m so sorry bro but no one cares if sometimes your head falls off your neck in the middle of the night. Take these parts out and the book would not be the lesser for it.
I also have a bone to pick with the way women are written. The number of times they’re described as voluptuous and voluptuously showing their voluptuousness and the “flowery” “nautilus” “between their elephantine legs”… Fella I know we’re horny but pack it in I beg you.
The first half of the book was almost a chore to read. But I thought if I could finish One Hundred Years of Solitude, I could finish any book. So I persevered.
My review has been very negative so far, but this novel had its moments, especially after around the halfway mark. My favourite parts are the ones more grounded in reality. His time at Voila, his first marriage, having a daughter with Irina. These were the most tender and touching moments. I also liked the exposition on higher-dimensions (no one’s surprised there) and how it relates to the prison story and Ispas’ disappearance. I liked the rumination about dreams (not the dream journals). I liked the part with the mites world, it was gnarly and disgusting and thoroughly fascinating.
Mircea Cǎrtǎrescu is a fantastic writer. The way he weaves sentences together and pull metaphors out of thin air is exemplary. Sean Cotter also deserves massive credit for his translation. The narration flowed beautifully and no word felt out of place. I’ll have a hard time choosing which highlighted bits to add here.
“My bed turned into an archaeological site, where, in the impossible shape of a crushed being, lay the yellow and porous bones of a lost animal.”
“My meagre memory, rent and consumed by misfortune’s flames.”
“Literature is a machine for producing first beatitude, then disappointment. After you’ve read tens of thousands of books, you can’t help but ask yourself: while I was doing that, where did my life go?”
“They often wrote too affectedly and poorly, but they knew how to capture, like a flame rising from the wet wood, the grand light of dreams.”
“I’ve asked myself many times what belief without doubt could be, the faith that could move mountains, the one that knows that all is possible. What it’s like to pray for something and have the complete assurance your prayer will be accepted.”
“While the new Irina takes flight, proficient even from the first beats of her wings, I will remain beside the empty shell of the old Irina, as moving as a mutilated statue, until, inevitably, the wind scatters her being.”
Solenoid is a book I willingly admit is not for me. Maybe when I’m older I can come back to these pages and see the follies of my youth. When the right amount of little grey cells get into my noggin I might finally understand.
Oh but who am I kidding, I can't go through that all over again.
Oh but who am I kidding, I can't go through that all over again.
A Little Trickerie by Rosanna Pike
2.0
Quite disappointed with everything about this book. At first I was hooked by the unique voice of the protagonist. It was somewhat endearing in its naivety. But then it made me uncomfortable, 2-4 years later on in the story (30% into the book), because she's supposed to have grown up, but the voice stayed childlike. With the things that were happening, I still thought of her as a child, so it was a bit unpleasant to read.
The plot beats are incredibly predictable but also somehow outlandish, given it's set in the Tudor period. There's an element of found family but character dynamics developed too quickly and conflicts resolved too easily for my taste. The "little trickerie" went on for way too long, I know it's the book title, but it was just getting tedious. Also they're a bunch of idiots, why the heck would you do that.
Sorry for being a grouch.
The plot beats are incredibly predictable but also somehow outlandish, given it's set in the Tudor period. There's an element of found family but character dynamics developed too quickly and conflicts resolved too easily for my taste. The "little trickerie" went on for way too long, I know it's the book title, but it was just getting tedious. Also they're a bunch of idiots, why the heck would you do that.
Sorry for being a grouch.
Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
This was my first time reading a play since English class at school and literary analysis was never my forte anyway, so even if I could follow the story perfectly fine, a lot of themes probably flew over my head. I could only pick out the superficial ones, like mathematics and sex. (A joke to be made there har har).
I thought it would be a good palate cleanser, because I needed a break from the brick that's my current read. A Tintin comic would've been a better choice!
I thought it would be a good palate cleanser, because I needed a break from the brick that's my current read. A Tintin comic would've been a better choice!
The Warden by Anthony Trollope
funny
4.0
What the Czar is in Russia, or the mob in America, that the Jupiter is in England.
Mr. Harding, our warden, has been accused of misappropriating funds from the church where he is employed. John Bold alleges that the warden’s salary of £800/year is excessive and most of the money should in fact be given to the 12 bedesmen under the warden’s care, in accordance to the will of the church’s long-dead landowner. The newspaper Jupiter becomes aware of the situation and launches an attack against the warden. The bedesmen (except one) sign a petition to be granted the money they’re entitled to. The archdeacon Dr. Grantly — who is also the warden’s son-in-law — urges him to stand his ground and fight back. He has done nothing wrong. The warden isn’t so sure, though. What if they’re right?
This is a story about money, morals, and cancel culture. If it sounds a bit boring, and well.. institutional, I don’t disagree. It’s set at a slow pace and clearly Trollope wasn’t in a hurry to get to the end of the story, or the sentence for that matter. However, the strengths of this book lie in its character exploration.
No one is truly a villain in this novel. John Bold, new to town, is trying to do right by the old bedesmen. But, he is in love with the warden’s daughter, Eleanor. This creates an interesting conflict between them, which culminates in a cracking exchange that’s worthy of any soap-drama.
The indomitable Dr. Grantly is furious at the accusations thrown at his church. He employs the nation’s best lawyers to prove that the warden’s salary is legitimate. However, he is fighting on two fronts: one for the public image of the church, another for the warden whose resolve seems to be crumbling.
Mr. Harding never used to worry about where his money came from. He looks after his men well and gives them allowance out of his own pocket. But his conscience is pricked when John Bold raises the issue. He couldn’t bear that he “should be accused by others, and not acquitted by himself.”
He grapples with this dilemma throughout the novel, which frustrates Dr. Grantly who feels that the warden “is convinced of his own honesty, and yet would yield to them (the accusers) through cowardice.” Dr. Grantly promptly rebukes the warden in a speech that “silenced him, stupefied him, annihilated him” …and me, gentle reader.
That’s not how the story ends, but I can’t say more than that, it’s better to read it yourself and see the warden’s inner turmoil.
I had this preconception that Victorian authors are rigid and vapid, and they write as an excuse to grumble about their dull, drab, and dreary Victorian lives. Charles Dickens has proved to be the opposite; his novels take his characters, and you, on a ride through the peaks and troughs of human emotions. Is he an exception though? I wasn’t sure, until Anthony Trollope came in and dashed those faulty assumptions away.
I didn’t see Trollope’s apparently well-known humour come through until a few chapters in. It’s different to Dickens’ humour, which will induce you to hearty giggles at a caricature description or silly dramatic speeches. In contrast, Trollope’s comedy comes across in a sardonic way. He makes allusions to prominent figures at the time, as well as historical ones, and characters from Greek mythology. (Dickens himself is depicted as Mr. Popular Sentiment.) I had the footnotes to thank because I wouldn’t have understood half those references otherwise.
There are many scenes in the book that tickled me, including one towards the end involving Mr. Harding and his tiny violin. That bit ran like a movie in my head, it was so funny and modern.
It took me 3 weeks to read the entire thing (plus 2 more to write a proper review), which is longer than I like to spend on a 300-page novel. But I shall look back on my reading experience with fondness and amusement!
—
P.S. I picked up The Warden because I want to go through the Barsetshire Chronicles before starting Framley Parsonage, which I own a copy of. I think I’ll read one from the series every year, which means there’s a Dickens and Trollope to read for at least the next 3 years. Fingers crossed I make it through.
P.P.S. Actually, should I keep assuming the worst of Victorian authors? That way I can be impressed every time I read a new one. (Collins, Eliot, Gaskell be ready.)
P.P.P.S. I realise I never mentioned the Bröntes who are, shockingly, also Victorian but Jane Eyre was an absolute banger.
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
3.0
Primo Levi was an Italian-Jewish chemist and Holocaust survivor. This collection of essays is a look into various episodes of his life: the Jewish community he grew up in in Piedmont Italy, his teenhood in the time when Fascism was growing and creeping closer to home, briefly his spell at Auschwitz, and his career afterwards and living as a survivor. These are interspersed with tales recounted by people he met in his life (as he admitted, he was someone that people liked to speak to) and a couple of fictions that he wrote himself. Each essay is titled after an element from the Periodic Table and touches upon that element in one way or another, even if only for a paragraph.
The tales are almost fantastical in tone and have an otherworldly feel to them. The autobiographical chapters are, on the other hand, sober and to some extent impassive. But when he talks about chemistry and doing chemistry, it’s with purpose and a calm passion. I’m not much of a chemist (I took classes for my first two terms at uni and barely passed) and many things flew over my head, but reading those parts felt like I was watching someone who knew what he was doing, a man who knows his craft intimately.
This is a passage from my favourite chapter, “Vanadium”, where he reveals his correspondence with Dr. Müller, a former SA member who worked at the concentration camp where he was taken.
The Müller character was entpuppt, he had come out of his chrysalis, he was sharply defined, in perfect focus. Neither infamous nor a hero: after filtering off the rhetoric and the lies in good or bad faith there remained a typically gray human specimen, one of the not so few one-eyed men in the kingdom of the blind. He did me an undeserved honor in attributing to me the virtue of loving my enemies: no, despite the distant privileges he had reserved for me, and although he had not been an enemy in the strict sense of the word, I did not feel like loving him. I did not love him, and I didn’t want to see him, and yet I felt a certain measure of respect for him: it is not easy to be one-eyed. He was not cowardly, or deaf, or a cynic, he had not conformed, he was trying to settle his accounts with the past and they didn’t tally.
His condemnation of Nazism was timid and evasive, but he had not sought justifications. He sought a colloquy: he had a conscience, and he struggled to soothe it.
I admitted that we are not all born heroes, and that a world in which everyone would be like him, that is, honest and unarmed, would be tolerable, but this is an unreal world. In the real world the armed exist, they build Auschwitz, and the honest and unarmed clear the road for them; therefore every German must answer for Auschwitz, indeed every man, and after Auschwitz it is no longer permissible to be unarmed.
Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin by Sue Prideaux
4.0
This book starts off with death: "In 1903, Paul Gauguin died in Atuona on the tiny island of Hiva Oa in French Polynesia. He had lived his last three years there in a hut constructed mostly of bamboo canes and pandanus leaves."
It was at that moment I paused. This sounds familiar.. could it be..? Yes it is! The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. S. Maugham inspired by Paul Gauguin's life and I read it in 2023! I love when I find unexpected connections in books. I was excited to delve into this one to see if I'd find other correlations between the fiction and real life. But I didn't, because I have the memory of a stick. (Maugham was mentioned here visiting Gauguin's home in Polynesia though.)
Biographies aren't usually my thing (this might be my first one ever, not counting Wikipedia articles), neither is art. I like admiring it but don't know much about it. With this comprehensive account of Gauguin's life, I had fun learning of the events that led up to his paintings and the artists he influenced or was inspired by. The author also explains the symbolisms that can be found in his art, like why is that dog there, why is the picture composed like this, why use such colours, etc. Gauguin had strong anti-colonial beliefs and was the first Western artist to depict non-White people in his paintings, which were produced when he lived in Polynesia. In his last years he advocated for the rights of the native people, and was beloved by them. I liked these chapters the best, along with the two chapters featuring the Van Gogh brothers, which were most affecting.
Reading about an artist's life turned out to be quite fun, and Sue Prideaux has written a book on Edvard Munch so I might check that out too.
It was at that moment I paused. This sounds familiar.. could it be..? Yes it is! The Moon and Sixpence is a novel by W. S. Maugham inspired by Paul Gauguin's life and I read it in 2023! I love when I find unexpected connections in books. I was excited to delve into this one to see if I'd find other correlations between the fiction and real life. But I didn't, because I have the memory of a stick. (Maugham was mentioned here visiting Gauguin's home in Polynesia though.)
Biographies aren't usually my thing (this might be my first one ever, not counting Wikipedia articles), neither is art. I like admiring it but don't know much about it. With this comprehensive account of Gauguin's life, I had fun learning of the events that led up to his paintings and the artists he influenced or was inspired by. The author also explains the symbolisms that can be found in his art, like why is that dog there, why is the picture composed like this, why use such colours, etc. Gauguin had strong anti-colonial beliefs and was the first Western artist to depict non-White people in his paintings, which were produced when he lived in Polynesia. In his last years he advocated for the rights of the native people, and was beloved by them. I liked these chapters the best, along with the two chapters featuring the Van Gogh brothers, which were most affecting.
Reading about an artist's life turned out to be quite fun, and Sue Prideaux has written a book on Edvard Munch so I might check that out too.
The Book of Disappearance by Ibtisam Azem
3.0
A short, thought-provoking story with a brilliant ending.
The premise is this: What if Palestinians in Palestine '48, Gaza and the West Bank all suddenly disappeared?
Much of the novel explores Israelis' reactions to this mysterious disappearance. Some are elated ("We don't have to deal with the Palestine problem anymore!"), some feel betrayed.. betrayed! ("How could the Arabs do this to us when we have only trusted them?") Most are rightly confused. "Where have they gone and most importantly, what do we do?"
However, I think the strongest theme that runs throughout the book is longing. Longing for a place, a community. Memories of a place, and one's complicated relationship and history with it. These ideas are examined through the diary entries of Alaa, a Palestinian born and brought up in Palestine '48 ("Israel"), in which he addresses his deceased grandmother. He reflects on her past, her experience of the Nakba and how she's had to come to terms with strangers occupying her home (and her house) while her family left the country.
Alaa as a young man struggled to understand his grandmother's attachment to her hometown. "Your Jaffa and my Jaffa are not the same." Growing up in '48, he was accustomed to seeing the Israeli way of things. But as he grew older, he understood her more. For example, he writes in the diary that he once crossed out street names in Hebrew with their original Arabic names.
We get to read these entries because Ariel, Alaa's closest friend, found them when he was trying to find out what happened to Alaa after the mass disappearance. Ariel is a "liberal" Israeli Zionist, and it is through him that we meet other Israelis and see their reaction to the emptiness and silence left by the Palestinians.
What I really like about this book is how believable it is. Obviously there's an element of magical realism what with the disappearance, but I am referring to the Israeli characters' dehumanising rhetorics about Palestinians. It's both amusing and enraging. Amusing because we have literally seen the same kind of remarks being spewed out by Zionists time after time, especially after 7 Oct. The whole time I was thinking, yes they would say that! Not a word is exaggerated. And the victim complex these people have, my God.
I also love how this book ends. I thought it was perfect. Subtle and executed very well.We don't get answers about the disappearance but we do see the Israelis becoming more comfortable with the situation. Praying at the vacated houses, celebrating in the streets. Ariel's mother looking at houses. Ariel himself "temporarily" moving in Alaa's place, using his things, falling asleep while thinking about changing the locks. That was chilling.
But it was not all smooth sailing. I really struggled to connect with the writing at the beginning, especially during Alaa's parts. I found it repetitive and meandering, which doesn't mean it's bad (it is a diary after all), I just didn't enjoy it. It was only like the final third of the book that I got into the flow of it, which is a shame!
The translator Sinan Antoon writes a powerful afterword, which made me retrospectively appreciate what the author was doing with the story. Without that ending and afterword, I'd have closed the book feeling disappointed.
The premise is this: What if Palestinians in Palestine '48, Gaza and the West Bank all suddenly disappeared?
Much of the novel explores Israelis' reactions to this mysterious disappearance. Some are elated ("We don't have to deal with the Palestine problem anymore!"), some feel betrayed.. betrayed! ("How could the Arabs do this to us when we have only trusted them?") Most are rightly confused. "Where have they gone and most importantly, what do we do?"
However, I think the strongest theme that runs throughout the book is longing. Longing for a place, a community. Memories of a place, and one's complicated relationship and history with it. These ideas are examined through the diary entries of Alaa, a Palestinian born and brought up in Palestine '48 ("Israel"), in which he addresses his deceased grandmother. He reflects on her past, her experience of the Nakba and how she's had to come to terms with strangers occupying her home (and her house) while her family left the country.
Alaa as a young man struggled to understand his grandmother's attachment to her hometown. "Your Jaffa and my Jaffa are not the same." Growing up in '48, he was accustomed to seeing the Israeli way of things. But as he grew older, he understood her more. For example, he writes in the diary that he once crossed out street names in Hebrew with their original Arabic names.
We get to read these entries because Ariel, Alaa's closest friend, found them when he was trying to find out what happened to Alaa after the mass disappearance. Ariel is a "liberal" Israeli Zionist, and it is through him that we meet other Israelis and see their reaction to the emptiness and silence left by the Palestinians.
What I really like about this book is how believable it is. Obviously there's an element of magical realism what with the disappearance, but I am referring to the Israeli characters' dehumanising rhetorics about Palestinians. It's both amusing and enraging. Amusing because we have literally seen the same kind of remarks being spewed out by Zionists time after time, especially after 7 Oct. The whole time I was thinking, yes they would say that! Not a word is exaggerated. And the victim complex these people have, my God.
I also love how this book ends. I thought it was perfect. Subtle and executed very well.
But it was not all smooth sailing. I really struggled to connect with the writing at the beginning, especially during Alaa's parts. I found it repetitive and meandering, which doesn't mean it's bad (it is a diary after all), I just didn't enjoy it. It was only like the final third of the book that I got into the flow of it, which is a shame!
The translator Sinan Antoon writes a powerful afterword, which made me retrospectively appreciate what the author was doing with the story. Without that ending and afterword, I'd have closed the book feeling disappointed.