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jennygaitskell's reviews
120 reviews
Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch
3.0
After an encounter with a tiger, young Jaffy finds himself working for an animal trader. He leaves Late Victorian London on a whaling boat, headed for the Pacific and a hunt for a rumoured dragon on behalf of his master. The high seas adventure is told by an older and wiser Jaffy.
Every scene in this book is vividly described, so that I shared excitement, delight, seasickness and horror. Long, lyrical passages explore the relationship between place and Jaffy's emotions.
Jaffy is obedient, unambitious, considered to have a way with animals. Though the settings are technicoloured, characters are less filled in - until their ultimate test. For much of the book the narrative tension derives from Jaffy's competition with his friend Tim, which didn't keep me turning pages. I kept going, if slowly, and despite the depictions of whaling, to find the stakes soar in the final third.
Some of the images from this book are staying with me. Unfortunately they're those of human cruelty and suffering.
Every scene in this book is vividly described, so that I shared excitement, delight, seasickness and horror. Long, lyrical passages explore the relationship between place and Jaffy's emotions.
Jaffy is obedient, unambitious, considered to have a way with animals. Though the settings are technicoloured, characters are less filled in - until their ultimate test. For much of the book the narrative tension derives from Jaffy's competition with his friend Tim, which didn't keep me turning pages. I kept going, if slowly, and despite the depictions of whaling, to find the stakes soar in the final third.
Some of the images from this book are staying with me. Unfortunately they're those of human cruelty and suffering.
Ham on Rye by Charles Bukowski
5.0
This novel documents in first person Henry Chinaski's formative experiences in 1920s-1940s Los Angeles. It reads as a series of true moments lived and observed and re-imagined. The writing is honest and direct to the point of brutality.
Reading it, I was inside Chinaski's head, fascinated, often appalled, but unable to look away.
Reading it, I was inside Chinaski's head, fascinated, often appalled, but unable to look away.
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
5.0
This rule-breaking novel played wonderful tricks on me. It teased me as a reader, pricking holes in every expectation, including those it'd encouraged.
You're two second person heroes, who fall in love with the beginning of a novel and are desperate to find the end. The hunt leads you to meet eccentric characters, who each give you another novel they believe to be the one you want. You read a series of contrasting and intriguing, but false, starts. Never fear, just as you're really getting frustrated, you'll start finding clues to the absurd history behind them all and may even guess the climax (perhaps not the final kicker).
This is a book for the brain, rather than the heart, but a work of such mastery that I often found my mouth hanging open (even in public). One for my inspiration shelf.
You're two second person heroes, who fall in love with the beginning of a novel and are desperate to find the end. The hunt leads you to meet eccentric characters, who each give you another novel they believe to be the one you want. You read a series of contrasting and intriguing, but false, starts. Never fear, just as you're really getting frustrated, you'll start finding clues to the absurd history behind them all and may even guess the climax (perhaps not the final kicker).
This is a book for the brain, rather than the heart, but a work of such mastery that I often found my mouth hanging open (even in public). One for my inspiration shelf.
Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward
5.0
This is the powerful story of a turning point for three generations of a Mississippi family. It takes place over a few days from a birthday to a haunting, in events driven by long ago and recent tragedy.
Thirteen year old JoJo wants to be a good man, his drug-addled mother Leonie wants the comfort of her lover, and the long dead boy Richie just wants to go home. Each tells the story, of heartbreaking modern realities and old-times mysticism, of humanity and prejudice and man-made horrors. It shows truths that are hard to look at.
Every scene, every sentence in this book is essential, drawing you deeper into the family and its past; many lines are exquisite. You can see what's coming but can't turn away.
I was deeply impressed and moved, and will add this book to my inspiration shelf.
Thirteen year old JoJo wants to be a good man, his drug-addled mother Leonie wants the comfort of her lover, and the long dead boy Richie just wants to go home. Each tells the story, of heartbreaking modern realities and old-times mysticism, of humanity and prejudice and man-made horrors. It shows truths that are hard to look at.
Every scene, every sentence in this book is essential, drawing you deeper into the family and its past; many lines are exquisite. You can see what's coming but can't turn away.
I was deeply impressed and moved, and will add this book to my inspiration shelf.
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
5.0
'The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.'
This astonishing speculative novel begins, 'It was a pleasure to burn.' Montag is a pillar of his community, a fireman who sets fires to burn books. He's ashamed of his secret doubts, which grow with his wife's fake happiness, distrust of his colleagues, and the firemen's license. Guided by new friends, he takes action.
The mindless, sensation-addicted future is for me the book's most powerful feature. Written in the 40s, it's prescience added to my unease. I found this scene particularly uncomfortable: household after household stands, summoned by their full-wall three-wall TV screens to rise, look outside.
Montag himself is a hero without a goal, hard to love until the very end, but I shared his paranoid uncertainty, his bursts of fury.
The mood is bleak, the language often brutal, with wild staccato passages reminding me of beat poetry, hard bop jazz. In contrast, the theme is beautiful - reading as the means to question before finding one's own understanding, to absorb and ultimately embody. Fahrenheit 451 will certainly stay with me.
This astonishing speculative novel begins, 'It was a pleasure to burn.' Montag is a pillar of his community, a fireman who sets fires to burn books. He's ashamed of his secret doubts, which grow with his wife's fake happiness, distrust of his colleagues, and the firemen's license. Guided by new friends, he takes action.
The mindless, sensation-addicted future is for me the book's most powerful feature. Written in the 40s, it's prescience added to my unease. I found this scene particularly uncomfortable: household after household stands, summoned by their full-wall three-wall TV screens to rise, look outside.
Montag himself is a hero without a goal, hard to love until the very end, but I shared his paranoid uncertainty, his bursts of fury.
The mood is bleak, the language often brutal, with wild staccato passages reminding me of beat poetry, hard bop jazz. In contrast, the theme is beautiful - reading as the means to question before finding one's own understanding, to absorb and ultimately embody. Fahrenheit 451 will certainly stay with me.
The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
4.0
'It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York.'
Esther's cool, wry voice tells us how it was with stylish precision right from the famous first line. This is a novel about depression, and wanting to die - about being stuck inside your bell jar, separate and suffocating. Originally published under a pen name, it's based on Plath's own experiences, and is also about men squishing women, and women squishing women, down to the expected size.
The writing is direct, poised, impeccable, clever. Edith shows little love or pity for anyone, including herself. I think that's why, despite it's cold brilliance, I couldn't love this masterpiece.
Esther's cool, wry voice tells us how it was with stylish precision right from the famous first line. This is a novel about depression, and wanting to die - about being stuck inside your bell jar, separate and suffocating. Originally published under a pen name, it's based on Plath's own experiences, and is also about men squishing women, and women squishing women, down to the expected size.
The writing is direct, poised, impeccable, clever. Edith shows little love or pity for anyone, including herself. I think that's why, despite it's cold brilliance, I couldn't love this masterpiece.
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
5.0
'All this happened, more or less.'
This book deserves more stars, all the stars. I feel wiser, that I've the chance to be better, for having read it. It tells the story of a horror, the bombing of Dresden in 1945, with profound humanity, with humour and pathos.
To paraphrase Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim, our ostensible hero, is everybody and nobody, with a twist. But he's an acknowledged device, to enable the author to tell a story he needs to, but has been failing to for a decade.
The structure and storytelling are compelling, circling towards the horror, using authorial interruptions, alien abduction and non-linear time, coincidence, to brilliant effect. The writing is honest, direct. I loved the use of repetition, reminding me of who the real hero was, and what he needed me to hear.
'Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.'
This book deserves more stars, all the stars. I feel wiser, that I've the chance to be better, for having read it. It tells the story of a horror, the bombing of Dresden in 1945, with profound humanity, with humour and pathos.
To paraphrase Vonnegut, Billy Pilgrim, our ostensible hero, is everybody and nobody, with a twist. But he's an acknowledged device, to enable the author to tell a story he needs to, but has been failing to for a decade.
The structure and storytelling are compelling, circling towards the horror, using authorial interruptions, alien abduction and non-linear time, coincidence, to brilliant effect. The writing is honest, direct. I loved the use of repetition, reminding me of who the real hero was, and what he needed me to hear.
'Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt.'
The Tin Drum by Günter Grass
4.0
'Or you can start by declaring that novels can no longer be written, and then, behind your own back as it were, produce a mighty blockbuster that establishes you as the last of the great novelists.'
This is a difficult, beautiful and disgusting, altogether remarkable novel.
Oskar recounts his life story from the moment of birth in pre-war Germany to the moment of writing. He's a perverse, murderous and paranoid egocentric with a Messiah complex. As we might expect, he's also an unreliable narrator, a teller of tall tales. He gives himself supernatural powers and uncanny experiences.
As Oskar tells his stories he's also telling Danzig's, Poland and Germany's. I'm sure I didn't see all of the symbolism, grasped a fraction of the references.
The structure is quite unlike anything else I've read, wandering between periods and locations, foretelling and flashbacks and flashbacks of flashbacks, but I was never once lost. There are long sections of exposition, in particular street directions and history, the purpose of which I missed entirely. There are descriptive phrases of jaw-dropping brilliance, astonishing sentences that break all the rules. There are dark jokes set up hundreds of pages before the punchline.
Though the novel has moments of playfulness, and occasionally touched me, Oskar and his Tin Drum most often sickened me. More than once I considered putting them aside - but made a conscious decision to respect the genius in the writing, and learn what Grass would do. The four stars mean my utter respect, but I could not love this book.
This is a difficult, beautiful and disgusting, altogether remarkable novel.
Oskar recounts his life story from the moment of birth in pre-war Germany to the moment of writing. He's a perverse, murderous and paranoid egocentric with a Messiah complex. As we might expect, he's also an unreliable narrator, a teller of tall tales. He gives himself supernatural powers and uncanny experiences.
As Oskar tells his stories he's also telling Danzig's, Poland and Germany's. I'm sure I didn't see all of the symbolism, grasped a fraction of the references.
The structure is quite unlike anything else I've read, wandering between periods and locations, foretelling and flashbacks and flashbacks of flashbacks, but I was never once lost. There are long sections of exposition, in particular street directions and history, the purpose of which I missed entirely. There are descriptive phrases of jaw-dropping brilliance, astonishing sentences that break all the rules. There are dark jokes set up hundreds of pages before the punchline.
Though the novel has moments of playfulness, and occasionally touched me, Oskar and his Tin Drum most often sickened me. More than once I considered putting them aside - but made a conscious decision to respect the genius in the writing, and learn what Grass would do. The four stars mean my utter respect, but I could not love this book.
A Thousand Paper Birds by Tor Udall
3.0
'Sometimes I realise that forever is now
You, beside me, unblinking.
And what I learn is this:
Hope is a rhythm.'
Audrey and Jonah, Chloe, Harry and Milly, each want something or someone they can't have, need something or someone they don't want to. They struggle to understand love and life and death, finding moments of beauty in Kew Gardens.
I enjoyed their multiple points of view, their interwoven stories, and their telling through a mix of scenes, flashbacks, notebook entries, songs and poems and paper birds. Kew Gardens is vividly described through the seasons, an inspiration for the characters which becomes magical. The novel is kind to human frailty, the tone warm. There is much to admire in this book.
You, beside me, unblinking.
And what I learn is this:
Hope is a rhythm.'
Audrey and Jonah, Chloe, Harry and Milly, each want something or someone they can't have, need something or someone they don't want to. They struggle to understand love and life and death, finding moments of beauty in Kew Gardens.
I enjoyed their multiple points of view, their interwoven stories, and their telling through a mix of scenes, flashbacks, notebook entries, songs and poems and paper birds. Kew Gardens is vividly described through the seasons, an inspiration for the characters which becomes magical. The novel is kind to human frailty, the tone warm. There is much to admire in this book.
The Secret Lives of Colour by Kassia St. Clair
5.0
'The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour most.' John Ruskin
This history of colour is a delight to read and also visually gorgeous. Kassia St Clair explores colour's chemistry and cultural entanglements with assurance and humour through a rainbow of weird facts.
Recommended reading for pure and thoughtful minds.
This history of colour is a delight to read and also visually gorgeous. Kassia St Clair explores colour's chemistry and cultural entanglements with assurance and humour through a rainbow of weird facts.
Recommended reading for pure and thoughtful minds.