Dr. Zhivago, Pasternak

If there was a writing style I should like to emulate, it is Pasternak's. I don't know what it takes to be a writer like him - political strife, disillusion, poverty, sexual passion - but I admire his writing style exceedingly.

The intro by John Bayley of Oxford notes the unconventional form, and poetry, of Pasternak. The poetry refers to the material richness of the descriptions, the mesmerizing everyday details. "This is Pasternak's remarkable power of conveying the wonderful oddity of objects which is the life force of his poems..." The unconventional form is the somewhat chaotic rythmn of the novel, the fairy-tale abruptness with which events occur and people appear.

The lyricism of the prose, and the zeitgeist (the temporality but richness of life?) resonates with Michael Ondaatje's The Skin of a Lion.

When I read Lord of the Rings a week ago, I loved the epic form, the archaic turn of phrase, and how multiple characters and viewpoints are handled. It struck me how personal an epic can be - the greatest events are handled from the viewpoint of a bystander, recounted by someone, instead of being narrated directly. But sometimes Tolkien delved into the personal emotions of a hero, as well as of a more common (but nonetheless heroic) character.

All the same, in the grandeur of the world the narrative voice seems removed in an epic as such.

I read somewhere C. S. Lewis conceived of his stories in terms of plot, and the characters were mere pawns by means to achieve this end. I tend to generalize that to the fantasy genre in general. In a bildungsroman, however, I've often felt that the plot is only occasion for a character to breathe and have their being in; it's the character that matters.

I like the epic scale of Dr. Zhivago - it assumes "the dimensions of a national myth" , has that wonderful coincidential cast of characters- but it remains Zhivago's story.

---

As for Zhivago himself - have I ever met anyone like him? Intelligent, introspective, with a circle of friendly acquaintances despite his ineptitude for common life - he is idealistic and perhaps he is so absorbed in his ideals that he deteriorates. What makes him attractive to Lara, to Marina? What makes him love Lara with no wholehearted contrition, or dimunition of love for Tonia? Women are attracted to that introspective type - perhaps with a maternal desire for someone to care for, perhaps their unkemptness is coloured with romance.

And is sexual passion essential to intelligentsia?

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisnero

I found the novella in my mother's laundry room and fell to reading it, more shamelessly to fulfill my "read 52 books a year" quota than anything else. But I picked it up because I've heard the title long ago, and was intrigued.

It's a candid telling of childhood poverty, coming of age, tragic and comic characters, in the same era and social setting of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. (So much of it must resonate with my mom's childhood.) The chapters pages are brief as poems, each a tribute to a character or incident.

The author is of course hispanic, and falls into the category of "writing what we know." Will I, too, write what I know? Will my stories (which lately have been developing along the lines of character sketches, of tragic and the burden of parentage and immigraion) be a social product too?

Kilmeny of the Orchard, L. M. Montgomery

Upon re-reading (I love my LMM's so well, that most of her novels I have reread countless times) I find that Kilmeny is underrated. The characters are original: they vary from the LMM formula. Robert Williamson, the gossip of Lindsay, for example, is a man, a rare choice for Montgomery; and a defiance against stereotypes. His wife, on the contrary, holds her counsel. Thomas Gordon is reserved, stoic, but intellectual- he can be fired up by discussion. There's a very conventional but colourful flavour to teh way Eric's father talks. Eric is a good depiction of a charming young man. I know (or holds someone on a pedestal by fancy, esteems) people like that: genuine, truly charismatic.

The plot holds, and it's a story well-told.

Tales of Edgar Allan Poe

The flyleaf bookcover writes that Edgar Allan Poe is the father of short stories. The tales, though I have long known and thrilled to some of their very names - the Tell-Tale Heart, the Masque of the Red Death, the Cask of Amontillado - aren't as delightfully engaging as classics sometimes are. The turn of phrase sometimes chimes with my very soul in Dickens or Tolkien.

Poe's stories make me wonder if a short story isn't really an essay, illustrated with a fictional incident. There is a thesis on human psychology preambling every tale.

The prose - constant prose, verging towards stream of consciousness, little dialogue - gets very tedious at times.

I thought I would delight in a good volume of ghost stories, but I struggled to stay focused on them.

Middlemarch, George Eliot

I finished Middlemarch awhile ago. It affected me so much that I have not been able to accurately review it. I have thought about it much, and dreamed of discussing it with my mom. It is one of the most accurate and incredible portrayals of human life I have read; like many classics, I find it to be true.

to quote more of its genius:

Life would be no better than candle-light tinsel and daylight rubbish if our spirits were not touched by what has been, to issues of longing and constancy. 570

We must not inquire too curiously into motives. Miss brooke knows that they are apt to become feeble in the utteranace: the aroma is mixed with the grosser air. We must kept the germinating grain away from the light. 17

Dorothea, with all her eagerness to know the truths of life, retinaed very childlike ideas about marriage. She felt sure that she would have accepted... any of those great men whose odd habits it would have been glorious piety to endure; but an amiable baronet, who said "Exactly" to her remarks even when she expressed uncertainty - how could he affect her as a lover? -5

Since they could remember, there had been a mixture of criticism and awe in the attitude of Celia's mind towards her elder sister. The younger had always worn a yoke; but is there any yoked creature without its private opinions? 10

There are characters who are continually creating collisions and nodes for themselves in drams which nobody is prepared to act with them. Their susceptibilitis will clash against objcets that remain innocently quiet. 200

Scenes which make vital changes in our neighbour's lot are but the background of our own, yet, like a particular aspect of the fields and trees, they become associated for us with the epochs of our own history, and make a part of the unity which lies in the selection of our keenest consciousness. 342

our good depends on the quality and breath of our emotion; and toWill, a creature who cared little for what are caleld hte solid things of life and greatly for its subtler influences, to have within him such a feeling as he had towards Dorothea, was like the inheritance of a fortune. What others might have called the futility of his passion, made an additional delight for his imagination: he was concsious of a generous movement, and of verifying in his own experience that higher love-poetry which had charmed his fancy.

I like Mary best out of all the characters, for her imperfectness of character (upon meeting her, don't we know she is surly because of her plainness, but compensatingly endowed with a clever tongue and good humour?) in her fidelity are traces of my heart:

It has taken such deep root in me - my gratitude to him for always loving me best, and minding so much if I hurt myself, from the time when we were very little. I cannot imagine any new feeling coming to make that weaker. 550


If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us; for no age is so apt as youth to think its emotions ,partings and resolves are the last of their kind. Each crisis seems final, simply because it is new.

I could never relate truly to Dorothea's passion for Will, though, who seems lacklustre, mediocre, what our society calls a "loser" and theirs a "vagabond."

I like Mary's father Caleb, too, who is generously good, who manages to convince others of their folly in a simple, logical way. (re: Railroad fight scene.)

When a tender affection has been storing itself in us through many of our years, the idea that we could accept any exchange for it seems to be a cheapening of our lives. and we can set a watch over our affections and our constancy as we can over other treasures.

I find Lydgate and Rosamond's marriage very tragic and realistic. In the young and charismatic doctor Lydgate's sacrifice of anything, even manlly pride, and ambition, for domestic comfort, I understand how some men are unerringly tender towards their wives. The inevitable softening comes because it must.

His marraige would be a mere piece of bitter irony if they could not go on loving eachother. ... His wife had a hold on his heart, and it was his intense desire that the hold should remain strong. In marriage, the certainty, 'She will never love me much' is easier to bear than the fear, 'I shall love her no more.' Hence, after that outburst, his inward effort was entirely to excuse her, and to blame the hard cicumstances which were partly his fault. He tried that evening, by petting her, to heal the wound he had made in the morning, and it was not in Rosamond's nature to be repellent or sulky; indeed, she welcomed the signs that her husbnad loved her and was under control. But this was something quite distinct from loving him.

Rosamond's depiction is very accurate too - there are women like her, whose smallest words and expressions bring others to blame and make them yield to her. In a thought-out, but not malicious way.

It is a terrible moment in young lives when the closeness of love's bond has turned into this power of galling.

He had begun to have an alarmed foresight of her irevocable loss of love for him, nad he consquent drearines of their life. The ready fullness of his emotions made this dread alternate quickly with the first violent mvements of his anger.

His mariage... if it were not to be a yoked loneliness, must be a state of effort to go on loving without too much care about being loved...

The affair of Raggles' sinister information, which brings about the catastrophe of the novel is a little overblown and unrealistic. But its effects are accurately drawn enough.

Everybody liked better to conjecture how the thing was, than simply to know it, for conjecture soon became more confident than knwoledge, and had a more liberal allowance for the incompatible.

Dorothea's impetuous generosity is made of this:
Some of her intensest experience in the last tow years had set her mind strongly in oppostition to any unfavourable constructions of others... she disliked this cautious weighing of consequences, instead of an ardent faith in justice and mercy, which would conquer by their emotional force.

more of Tertius (what a horrible name) and Rosamond:

"Even this trouble, like the rest, she seemed to regard as if it were hers alone. He was always to her a being aprt, doing what she objected to.... For he had almost learned the lesson that he must bend himself to her nature, and that because she came short in her sympathy, he must give the more."

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the greif of one who falls from that serene activity into absorbing soulwasting struggle with worldly annoyances.

When one is grateful for something too good for common thanks, writing is less unsatisfactory than speech - one does not at least hear how inadequate the words are."

I liked the ending about Mary and Fred's successes, each being attributed to the other.

There is really an odd reversal of foturnes in this story - Fred irresponsible, finally successful, Lydgate having always seen himself as sold out. I liked the portrait of how the Bulstrode dealt with their tragedy, too, but neither acknowledging the crime. That is how soem people work.

He burst out crying and they cried together... his confession was silent, and her promise of faithfulness was silent. Openminded as she was, she nevertheless shrank from the words which would have expressed their mutual consciousness as she would have shrunk from flakes of fire. She could not say, "how much is only slander and false suspicion?" and he did not say, "I am innocent.

I think it is one of my favourite books.

Vanity Fair, William Thackeray

I just finished "Thackeray's masterpiece." - and liked it. I tried to read it years ago and ran short of time. I don't think I would have liked it at seventeen... like Middlemarch, it is a "classic for adults."

I would have thought Becky evil incarnate years ago, perhaps. But I admire her Becky and almost wish for her success. We wish for Dobbin's success, too, we want a happy ending and are satisfied! Becky is not subdued but remains as intriguing as she ever was. Sometimes you are inclined to pity her for being an orphan. You wonder in what way of life can she otherwise find happiness. I find that in her I get a glimpse of people who are "too pretty and clever for their own good" - people who strive to please, and succeed.

quotes:
The best of women are hypocrites. We don't know how much they hide from us: how watchful they are when they seem most artless and confidentaial, how often those frank smiles, which they wear so easily, are traps to cajole or elude or disarm - I don't mean in your mere coquettes, but your domestic models ,and paragons of female virtue. Who has not seen a woman dhide the dulness of a stupid husband, or coax the fury of a savage one? We accept this amiable slavishness, and praise a woman for it: we call this pretty treachery truth. 137

By humbly and frankly acknowledging yourself to be in the wrong, there is no knowing, my son, what good you may do. I knew once a gentleman and very worthy practitioner in vanity fair, who used to do little wrongs to his heighbours on prupose, and in order ot apologise for them in an open and manly way afterwrads - and what ensued? My friend Crocky Doyle was like everywhere, andd eemed to be rather impetuous but the honestest fellow. 179

As his hero and heroine pass the matrimonial barrier, the novelist generally drops the curtain, as if the drama were over then: the doubts and struggles of life ended: as if, once landed in the marriage country, all were green and pleasant there: and wife and husbnad had nothing but to link each other's arms together, and wander gently downwards towards old age in happy and perfect frution. (But our little Amelia was just on the bank of her new country, and was already looking anxioulsy back towards the sad friendly figures waving farewell to her across the stream, from teh other distant shore. 216

I really like the picture (how sad, stirring, bitter) of Rawdon's departure to battle:

Faithful to his old plan of economy, the Captain dressed himself in his oldest and shabbiest of uniform and epaulets, leaving the newest behind his wife's 9or it might be his widow's) guardinaship. And this famous dandy of Windsor and hyped Park went off on his campaign with a kit as modest as that of a sergeant, and with something like a prayer on his lips for the woman he was leaving. He took her up from the ground, and held her in his arms for a minute, tight pressed aginast his strong-beating heart. his face was purple and his eyes dim, as he put her down and left her.


concerning Geroge's burial:
Which of us can tell how much vanity lurks in our warmest regard for others, and how selfish our love is?

I think the tale is a very clever one of reversals and opposites. Rebecca goes from poverty to wealth by din of her wits, Amelia from wealth to poverty for too gentle affection. Rebecca does not love her husband, who is devoted to her; Amelia adores her too much for her own good. Ditto for the sons. Amelia ruins her husband, but Becky makes hers' fortune.

I think Dobbin's move at the end was very wise. Even though I am a patron of fidelity and tragic love, I wanted Amelia to be happy, I wanted Dobbin (who is endeared to me by his awkwardness) to finally gain his long endeavoured prize.

And how like Rebecca to be involved in the blackest, most intriguing scandal! She triumphs to the end.

It's a jolly comedy.

My Name is Anne, she said, Anne Frank by Jacqueline van Maarsen

The memoir lay on a display table at Waterstones and I don't know I picked it up merely because it was simple to read. No - although it was a short book that I knew I would champion in the course of a few stolen evening's peaking - it was the fly-leaf synopsis describing Jacqueline van Maarsen's survival because her french mother managed to unlist her from being a jew, that intrigued me.

I have never read Anne Frank's diary, though I have read fragments. Jacqueline's memoirs were fascinating. I liked from the beginning the descriptions of Jacqueline's mother Eline and her triumphs in the fashion industry. I liked the explanations given for everything, like Eline's decision to pursue fashion in defiance of her unfaithful father, or her desire to have children to console her parents for a lost grandchild.

I liked Jacqueline because she was artistic, and often her descriptions diverted to descriptions of art nouveau art and architecture. I liked that they lived on a street of flourishing new young families, involved in art and music.

When Anne entered the scene, her friendship immediately reminded me of my friends CE's. How friendships where the best friends are utter opposites have always bewildered me! Jacqueline writes: " We were complete opposites, but we were kindred souls." Jacqueline admired Anne for being bubbly, spirited, extraverted and full of zest for life. On the contrary, I sympathized and felt for Jacqueline who suffered under Anne's tyrrany. Anne was jealous of Jacque's other friends, writing slanderingly of them in her diary. Anne seemed very possessive and "full of herself" to me. Just the other day, though, my roommate mentioned how she liked a certain bold coworker of hers "because I'm not like that." And Jacque suffered from loneliness at her new school, withdrawn because after her intimacy with Anne other friendships were hard to come by.

I even mourned for her how she would never have suffered if her mother had had her unlisted as a jew from the beginning of the war. I mourned the secret correspondence Anne proposed, that was never realized.

It surprised me how short the period of their friendship was - only a year in their 12th or 13th spring. And yet its poignancy endured for a lifetime, Jacque is an old woman now. I wonder who she finally married. I liked that the theme of the book was really her parents marriage, the mariage of the french lady and her dutch jewish husband, and that the memoir primarily pays tribute to Jacque's family. Her sister, I suppose, is mentioned only in passing for privacy reasons.

The book affected me, and I already like Anne's friend better than Anne herself.

The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood

I hadn't known that Margaret Atwood had a "new" book.

So I walked to the next nearest library (it was signed out at the nearest) to fetch it. The cover illustrations by nina chakrabarti really half enticed me to hold a copy of the novel.

It was an enjoyable read. Typical Margaret Atwood witticism and subversive feminine perspective of a male world. Penelope was a believable character whose logic and "unprettiness" I could relate to. But she was a bit of a wimp... you wonder if the maids' farcical version didn't have some truth in it. After all, Penelope does claim to be a liar.

The mock anthropology at the end (also very typical Margaret Atwood) made me laugh.

The real problem with the novel is that it doesn't have "enough meat". We fly through years of Penelope's life and nothing remarkable happens... but more importantly, we learn nothing more of her. She is an unchanging creature. At thirty-five is she less impressionable, less weepy, more guile-ful as she was at fifteen? I wish we saw more of her personal growth, palace strife in the intervening twenty years. Her conversations with her maids and the blarney of her suitors, and the slander of the minstrels. I read the book in two hours: it felt rushed, Margaret Atwood could have elaborated.

Not that I'm not glad to have another book done and listed on the record!

Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar

Of late I have loved, loved Marguerite Yourcenar's Memoirs of Hadrian. I love writing translated from french - it resonates with my own "writing style." It is so easy to read. I love the complexity and grace of her writing. I finished it right away because it was so hard to put down. Even without a word of dialogue the memoirs read.... never fail to hold my interest for a moment, never lack for fascinating detail which I wish I knew more about. If I could write a book like that....

the most secret aspirations of a young man impatient of the present, uncertain as to the future, and thereby open to the gods. 56

The condition of women is fixed by strange customs: the yare at one and the same time subjected and protected, weak and powerful, too much despised and too much respected. In this chaos of contradictory usage, the practices of osciety are superimposed upon the facts of nature, but it is not easy to distinguish betwen the two. THis confused state of things is in every respect more stable than might appear: on the whole, women want to be just as they are; they resist change, or they utilize it for their one nad only aim. The freedom of the women of today, which is greater, or at least more visible, than that of earlier times is but an aspect of the easier life of a prosperous period; the principles and even prejudices of the old laws have not been seriously disturbed.... The weakenss of women, like that of slaves, lies in their legal status; thye take their revenge by their strength in little things, where the power which they wield is almost unlimited. I have rarely seen a household where women do not rule; ... In financial matters they remain legally subject to some form of guardianship, but in practice it is otherwise. In each small shop of hte Suburra it is ordinarily the .. wife who sits firmly ensconced in command of hte counter. 105

His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass)

Despite having heard about it for all of my childhood, I only recently read this novel, and I believe it's one of my favourite fantasies thus far. I'm currenlty reading the last book of the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass.

I love the premise of Pullman's fictional universe - namely that growing up, is about gaining consciousness. I admire how he explains this (and many other philosophical matters) in such a simple and appealing way to children by creating a world where each child has a daemon, that is a symbolic animal. It's extremely well written, complex, and controversial - rebelling against ideas of the church, family, dealing with mental illness etc. VERY interesting material, especially for "just a children's book."

finally finished it some weeks ago... i drew it out, reluctant for the story to end, knowing it wouldn't end happily.... which at the same time makes me think of anne shirley's dictum "only a genius should try to write an unhappy ending." beautiful... and torturous! when will and lyra are so perfect for each other. i am haunted by the story.

i read lyra's oxford immediately after to squelch my cravings... and i don't know if i am happy with the lyra in it. has she lost her spunk?

speaking of which, what on earth is a pine marten? i very well expected pan to become a wildcat.

and while pullman wrote "more lyra"... what about more will? i can't help thinking will will have a much harder time adjusting to his world than lyra. a much harder time "creating more dust." lyra is naturally friendly and it's no surprise that she will make friends at st. sophia's, patiently and cheerfully... but will isn't really a people person. he is earnest, honest, but oh god... the burden on him is SO much harder.

i can't say i'm too happy with the ending. what temptation did mary malone offer... and wasn't it both will and lyra's choice, not just lyra's? WHAT is this means of travelling between worlds without windows, and who is the friend who knows it? serafina? mary? what does it mean, that lyra's oxford and will's oxford will one day overlap but never touch?

arghhhh... i'm so unsated.

Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Marcia Marquez

There are several quotations in Love in the Time of Cholera that I love so far.

"in the solitude of his soul"
"Little by little he idealized her, endowing her with improbable virtues and imaginary sentiments, and after two weeks he thought of nothing else but her."
"a vocation for complicity"
"... after having renounced not onlly their family name but their own identity in exchange for a security that was no more than another of a bride's many illusions. They alone knew how tiresome was the man they loved to distraction, who perhaps loved them but whom they had to continue nurturing until his last breath as if he were a child, suckling himm, changing his soiled diapers, distracting him with a mother's tricks to ease his terror at going out each morning to face reality. And nevertheless, when they watched him leave the house, this man they themselves had urged to conquer the world, then they were the ones left with the terror that he would never return.
"to cry with her in rage at the loss of paradise"

I just finished Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. So well written - original in thought, in conclusion, convincing in description and metaphor. I love the writing style; I love it a lot. Stunning, joyous ending.

It is really a "life story."

Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden

In the relative quiet of morning - or what mellowed into the quiet of morning, I huddled in bed to finish memoirs of a geisha. It's a convincingly written story, rather true to an oriental sensibility. Hatsumomo and Sayuri's rivalry, and the subtle brutality women, especially lesser women, display towards one another is an ancient theme since the dawn of civilization. It recalls "Wan jue gak gak" and the like.

And so, I imagined criticizing the novel with my parents. I know they would find the Chairman's magnamity unrealistic, and so do I - mainly because he remains a dream figure whom we do not know or understand as well as Sayuri, Mameha or even Nobu in his arrogance. We only see the Chariman through her eyes, and his hidden passion for her is hard to believe. I don't know if it is forgiveable. So the ending fails to reconcile my anxiety for Sayuri's fate.

Sayuri's story and enduring faith in the Captain does not convince me that hope will bring true love into fruition. All along I had a stake in Sayuri's enterprise, for winning the affections of her Chairman - how could I but relate to her romance, and wonder if this was the stuff true love is made of? All that she had done in her life was fueled by her dream-life of romance with the Chairman. He permeated her every thought. When she had sex, she wondered what it should be like with him.

And what filled my nightly dreams, or as I sat reading with my skirt inadvertently hiked up under the blankets?

What is truly admirable is Golden's thoroughness in creating Sayuri's character. The novel is by no means flawless; as convincing as Sayuri's voice sounds, the writing style and tone flow but in an amateur way. The "nature similes", in speech and thought, seemed overdone in western writing yet I know how common that sort of thing is in Oriental speech. But very rarely does a male writer portray the female psyche realistically, and Golden's heroine is thoroughly female in her conniving cleverness, studied winsome charm (a reminder of how women inviegle their way into cracks and spaces in civilized society, and what intelligence it requires to achieve what one wants indirectly and with subtle arts!), memory for minute detail and impassioned longing. I'm not sure about the malice and kindness. But never once did Sayuri seem to be painted sentimentally, to beggar pity, to speak without confidence of her past. Retrospective reflection, analyzing situations and uttering proverbs of psychology - eg. "I don't think any of us can speak frankly about pain until we are no longer enduring it." - probably passe since the day of Dickens, adds to the authenticity of Sayuri's voice even when I do not believe in her convictions.

In all I loved the novel even despite, or perhaps for its flaws. And finishing it leaves me with a sort of heaviness, of the same weight Sayuri describes her sorrows and desolate plight. A mingling of no choice, and that this is fortunate. Peppered with questions of choice and fate. It's easy to read and easy to comprehend, and causes a comfortable amount of self-reflection. The proof of a good, successful novel. And Golden's success is inspiring because you can see the flaws indicative of how it might be achieved, the details that create realism and the unrealistic fictions readers are hoodwinked by.

Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino

"They say that this has not just begun to happen: actualy, it was the dead who built the upper Eusapia, in the image of their city. They say that in the twin cities there is no longer any way of knowing who is alive and who is dead" (110, Calvino - Invisible Cities)

"The world is covered by a sole Trude which does not begin and does not end. Only the name of the airport changes." (128)

"I think you recognize cities better on the atlas than when you visit them in person."

The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot

There is Eliot's The Mill of the Floss which I am reading too. Characterization is the key word - there is wonderful characterization in that too, such that we understand why Tom is confident, always right, why imaginative Maggie is ever questioning herself and magnifying her tragedies. I'm not very good at characterization and these two books offer a great study.

I just finished The Mill on the Floss - couldn't put it down after I had begun, although the ending disappoints me. The entire book is full of Victorian melodrama which I revel in, but if I were inclined to cry over novels, I would cry over Maggie Tulliver's death. She seems real to me - the ever wronged, tragic, fallen clever woman. Couldn't Eliot have allotted a better fate for her after all? Jane Eyre got her Rochester and Catherine and Heathcliffe's love are requited in their children, but Maggie Tulliver's - only relief - is in death.

New to Eliot I loved her writing and her art of evoking sympathy - truly of describing human psychology. Is that what a novel is - character studies, and wisdom imparted as to a mode of life? Achieved through conflict of course, internal and external. Lessons in human nature. I will give you a sample of some of Eliot's words which strike me:

Of those two young hearts Tom's suffered the most unmixed pain, for Maggie, with all her keen susceptibility, yet felt as if the sorrow made larger room for her love to flow in, and gave breathing space to her passionate nature.

This is the path we all like when we set out on our abandonment of egoism - the path of martyrdom and endurance, where the palm-branches grow, rather than the steep highway of tolerance, just allowance, and self-blame, where there are no leafy homours to be gathered and worn.

Perhaps the emphasis of his admiration did not fall precisely on this rarest quality in her -perhaps he approved his own choice of her chiefly because she did not strike him as a remarkable rarity.

The middle-aged ,who have lived through their strongest emotions, but are yet in the time when memory is still half-passionate and not merely contmeplative, should surely be a sort of natural priesthood, whom life has disciplined and consecrated to be the refuge and rescue of early stumblers and victims of self-despair.

Where, then would be all the memories of early striving, all the deep pity for another's pain, which had been nurtured in her through years of affection and hardship, all the divine presentiment of something higher than mere personal enjoyment which had made the sacredness of life?

If the past is not to bind us, where can duty lie? We should have no law but the inclination of the moment.

Then there is Philip's letter with echoes of Jingle in Pat. Are there truly those who love so, who love devotedly and gladly and unrequitedly, finding that such love sustains them? Is there really anyone like Tom - so unimaginative and quick to judge, so decisive in his sense of righteousness? Was Maggie's bravado in the final rescue enough to convince Tom to give her merit? There is something so vaguely dissatisfying about the ending.

But we know there are women like Maggie - we female readers know that we are ones ourselves. Do writers write anything except for the like-minded? We are clever and forever slighted - we are impulsive, self-doubting, imaginative to the disregard of consequences and self-sacrirficial. We strive to do right and find that it doesn't pay. We are hurt when we hurt others.

And there are of course many like dear Lucy, like Maggie's simple mother - who thwart the circumstances against themselves in benevolence and guilelessness. We laugh at them, we clever women, we find that our souls are fashioned of different stuff than theirs are - but we flock to their comfort all the same in our hours of need.

How different from Atwood where she gives the dullest Roz and simpering Charis credit. For perhaps even dull women have backstories and uncanny powers. They have strived too, to carve themselves a niche in this world of women-who-oppress-women.

Robber Bride, Margaret Atwood

I have been reading Atwood's Robber Bride. It is delightful to feel pleasure once more in reading - to cherish every written word as inspiration. Atwood's novel is inspirational - it is, first, a series of real, exaggerated, character sketches - each of the three very different women in their appearance, tastes and perception of the world. There is less dialogue than I would have thought would've flown in a novel, but the stream-of-consciousness keeps interest. The characters are accurate - Boyce the artistic, sensitive gay - or meaningful - the giggling twins, harsh Augusta. I love how one incident leads to each woman's backstory - a book of the lives of women, told through stories. The plot itself is gripping - we want to know what happens to Zenia, what happened with Zenia, who she is. Then there is the characteristic word-play, zenophobia and backwards words, the cool ending tying things into the larger scheme of history, the story told through Tony the historian's eyes. All the stuff about women's psyches and their longing for drama and murder and viciousness, which Zenia embodies. What a theme to center around! It's a very cool piece of work, and I admire - want to analyze - feel alive, in brain and soul, hungrily reading such manna.

Booklist 2007

Robber Bride, Magaret Atwood
The Mill on the Floss, George Eliot
Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
The Wreckage, Michael Crummy
The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodr Dostoevsky
The Hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes
The Need for Roots, Simone Weil
The Golden Compass / "Northern Lights", Philip Pullman
Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden
The Old Curiousity Shop, Charles Dickens
The Subtle Knife, Philip Pullman
London - A Short History, A. Wilson
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman
Lyra's Oxford, Philip Pullman
The Interpretation of Dreams, Sigmund Freud
Paradise Lost, John Milton
Memoirs of Hadrian, Marguerite Yourcenar
The Skin of a Lion, Michael Ondaajte
If on a Winter's Night a Traveller, Italo Calvino
Middlemarch, George Eliot
The Penelopiad, Margaret Atwood
My Name is Anne, she said, Anne Frank, Jacqueline van Maarsen
Vanity Fair, William Thackeray
Man and his Symbols, Carl Jung
Ireland, Frank Delaney
Mrs. Dalloway, Virginia Woolf
HP & the Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling
HP & the Chamber of Secrets, "
HP & the Deathly Hallows,
Hp & the Prisoner of Azkaban,
The Death of the Maiden (play), Ariel ___
Tennyson - Selected Poems (Penguin Edition),
Elizabeth Regina, Alison Plowden
Manual of Painting and Calligraphy: A Novel, Jose Saramago
Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens
The Broken Bridge, Philip Pullman
The Castle of Crossed Destinies, Italo Calvino
Under the Jaguar Sun, Italo Calvino
The City of the Sun, Thomas Campanella
Manifeste du Tiers Paysage, G. Clemente
Italian Journey, Goethe
The Book of the Courtier, Castiglione
Heroides, Ovid
The Return of the King, Tolkien
The Golden Road, L. M. Montgomery
Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Edgar Allan Poe
The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisnero
Dr. Zhivago, Boris Paternak