The Outsider - Albert Camus

"Meursault will not pretend. After the death of his mother, everyone
is shocked when he shows no sadness. And when he commits a random act of violence in Algiers, society is baffled. Why would this seemingly law-abiding bachelor do such a thing? And why does he show no remorse even when it could save his life? His refusal to satisfy the feelings of others only increases his guilt in the eyes of the law. Soon Meursault discovers that he is being tried not simply for his crime, but for his lack of emotion - a reaction that condemns him for being an outsider. For Meursault, this is an insult to his reason and a betrayal of his hopes; for Camus it encapsulates the absurdity of life."

I think the little book Gods must really be liking me recently. I have been reading amazingly profound book after book. 

This was another book that knocked me sideways (though, I must say, not to the same extent as say Giovanni's Room.) 

It was a very interesting read. The idea that someone is tried for not reacting in a conventional manner sits very close to home as someone who has Asperger's and thus doesn't react conventionally myself. However, I think that the people who argue that Meursault isn't a bad person, just someone unconventional, different, being unfairly persecuted by a out of date traditionalist society, must not have read the same book I did. Meursault is undoubtedly a bad person. Even if I do not feel nor express emotions the same way as "normal" people, it doesn't mean that sitting by while a pimp beats his girlfriend, a man abuses his dog, or killing a man in cold blood are acceptable things to do. 

I am unsure of what Camus was trying to express ideologically through this book. That all morality is just a social construct and thus false and meaningless? That people are more judged for being unconventional then they are for their actual crimes? The life in itself is inherently meaningless and thus your actions hold no meaning?

One of the main questions that was raised in the book was, what truly defines humanity or makes someone human? During Meursault's trial, he is constantly accused of not showing remorse and therefore as being cold and inhuman. He is most definitely human though, just detached. This raises the question of whether one should be expected to exhibit certain characteristics in certain situations to "keep their humanity". It also raises the question of whether much of our emotion is created by ourselves or the expectations of others to exhibit certain emotions in a given situation. The book is also an indictment on people's efforts to dictate other people's lives. We are constantly told what is right and as a means to justify our own sense of "what it means to be human." As someone who, on many occasions, has been accused of being cold, inhuman, even psychotic, merely for not displaying emotions in the expected way, this was a wonderful question to be mulled over. It also prompted me to be more honest myself. Why should I have to lie, as Meursault refuses to do, about what I do or do not feel.  

Camus's writing was also wonderful. Meursault lives very much "in" his body, he experiences the world through his senses rather than his emotions. This creates a brilliantly evocative, unique and absorbing tonal atmosphere. Camus's choice to have all the settings drenched in sun heightened the raw sensual savagery, of humanity being brutally illuminated. 

A thoroughly interesting book full of a complex and ambiguous philosophical messages, thoroughly open to interpretation and analysis. Age Rating 16+ Sex, murder, abuse, both domestic and animal. 

The House in Paris - Elizabeth Bowen

"When eleven-year-old Henrietta arrives at the Fishers’ well-
appointed house in Paris, she is prepared to spend her day between trains looked after by an old friend of her grandmother’s. Little does Henrietta know what fascinations the Fisher house itself contains–along with secrets that have the potential to topple a marriage and redeem the life of a peculiar young boy. By the time Henrietta leaves the house that evening, she is in possession of the kind of grave knowledge that is usually reserved only for adults."

I was unsure of what to expect with this book, as I picked it up merely because of an intriguing blurb and an aesthetically pleasing cover. What I found inside was a deeply unusual, constrained, tense yet stunningly beautiful work. This book haunts you. 

Some have said that the main characters, the 11 year old Henrietta and the 9 year Leopold, don't act like real children. I have to beg to differ. The rigid mistrust and hierarchy is very true to the experience of the inner lives of children. (Or at least to my experience of childhood.) Children don't fully understand that they are children, thus their emotions and inner lives are by no means neutered by that fact. 

The plot is relatively simple, a sad romantic entanglement between a group of friends. It's simplicity is what makes it brilliant, it allows Bowen the time and space to really explore the emotions, tensions and atmosphere of these characters. What most struck me was Bowen's writing style. Bowen’s sensibility is heightened to the pitch of a lonely woman in a big house who hears what sounds like an intruder downstairs in the middle of the night. Inanimate objects become animated and not only contribute to the tension of every passing moment but define it. The way light falls or dwindles becomes a coded text of prophecy. It took me a while to get into the rhythm of the book, at once feeling melodiously slow and tensely frenetic. Bowen's primary story-telling device is dialogue, dialogue filled with hidden meaning delivered in staccato. This tempo gets even more frenetic when Bowen writes in monologue, telling a person's thoughts. Bowen covers a range of themes in a relatively short book: the creation of identity, time, secrets and lies, sexuality and sensuality, the constraints of society, death, the relationship between mothers and their children.

The most fascinating character to me was definitely Madame Fisher, the controlling and menacing matriarch. Her ever-watching presence that consumes the house with a creeping ennui. 

A story of passion and heartbreak, of sexual power and destruction - without ever being voyeuristic, it is deeply erotic. Leopold is the living personification of passion spent and lost, and his future, standing at the station in the end, is just as open as his mother's was before her path was chosen. This novel spins an intricate and horrifying atmosphere, that feels at once deeply peaceful and deeply unnerving. A book that is less enjoyed but felt. I would highly recommend.

Age Rating 16+ Adult themes and a unique writing style that might need a slightly higher comprehension to understand/appreciate. 

Rubyfruit Jungle - Rita Mae Brown

"Molly Bolt is a young lady with a big character. Beautiful, funny
and bright, Molly figures out at a young age that she will have to be tough to stay true to herself in 1950s America. In her dealings with boyfriends and girlfriends, in the rocky relationship with her mother and in her determination to pursue her career, she will fight for her right to happiness. Charming, proud and inspiring, Molly is the girl who refuses to be put in a box."

An objectively good book with some really, really questionable sections. 

A fun and interesting coming of age story with a spunky main character, Molly, who never accepts an answer or societal control, kicks against all her disadvantages and the bigotry facing her. It was genuinely funny too - the description of the children's nativity play in the local school is priceless. Overall I enjoyed reading this book, especially the childhood part. However there were some definite issues. 

First of all, everything is too contrived. Everyone Molly meets just happens to become gay. Things happen very easily for Molly, she is homeless in New York than the next day finds a cheap apartment? I mean I wasn't in New York in the 70s, I wasn't around at all in the 70's, but that seems a little unrealistic. 

I enjoyed the main character’s strength of self and unapologetic intention to live her life only for herself without a care for what the world thinks. However, there is unfortunately little nuance, little moments of understanding and in truth, little sense of a full character. Molly's a one-dimensional saviour, who has no negative characteristics accept for the fact that she seems to be a bit of a bitch. She never seemed to care about any of the women she slept with. Her definition for being a lesbian seemed to be that she enjoyed sex with women more than she did sex with men, which I mean...I guess that's one definition. She never seemed to fall in love or actually care about anyone.

Now, the parts I had some real issues with. The aggressive putting down of butch lesbians, basically amounting to butch women being just like men. Molly literally says, why would she wish to be with a butch women, if she wanted a men she would sleep with a man. So yeah.... Then goes on to characterise butch women as ugly, stupid and grotesque. There is also the putting down of older lesbians. They are characterised as predatory and deeply sad. I am of course not here to say that there are no predatory, stupid, ugly people within the community, obviously they are. But for that to be all that you show in a book? Molly is the only "good" queer. It actually feels really homophobic for a gay book. 

There is also a rape scene (with Molly being the attacker) or at least the consent lines where so blurred I really wasn't comfortable with it. And the final cherry on top, - the approval and almost slight endorsement of incest and the assertion that it's "anti-human" to not commit incest to some level. I mean...excuse me, what? I am unsure whether all of these views are the authors, but as the book is semi-autobiographical I am led to believe so. 

I enjoyed the humour, the quirky happenings, the side characters were vivid and writing wasn't bad. It was interesting to read a book so important within the lesbian historical canon. But as a book that has been called so "sex positive", and I am no prude, but I personally don't think rape, incest, infidelity, cheating and sex without any emotions if very healthy or sex positive. 

Age Rating 16+ Sex, homelessness, discrimination, abortion, childhood abuse, death. 

Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin

"In a 1950s Paris swarming with expatriates and characterized by
dangerous liaisons and hidden violence, an American finds himself unable to repress his impulses, despite his determination to live the conventional life he envisions for himself. After meeting and proposing to a young woman, he falls into a lengthy affair with an Italian bartender and is confounded and tortured by his sexual identity as he oscillates between the two."

I picked this book up on a whim at the library. I had no idea what it was about. I had never heard of it before, and I must be honest, I didn't put the name James Baldwin together with the Civil Rights Activist I was taught about in school. So, I had no idea I was about to read one of best book I have yet read. 

This book unravelled me completely. I felt like my whole body was strung out by the sheer, inexorable weight of this story. During reading, I often found myself having to close the book and just process. Giovanni's Room is one of the rawest, most wounding and open-chested portraits of what it is like to burn with the fires of self-loathing as a result of internalized hate, and to wrestle, every day, from the webbing of a shame that stains, indelibly, yourself and everything you love. 

There is viciousness, lust, loneliness, sensuality, deception, sorrow, tenderness, despair, and ultimately tragedy that makes this book easily one of the top 100 best books I’ve ever read. Every reader will find something of themselves in this book, maybe not the part of themselves that they want to hold up to the mirror, but certainly a fragment, disdainful in nature or worthy of pity, that can not be denied.

It is classified as a "gay book." I think that is a overly simplified grouping, it is a book about doomed love. I do not think that you have to be queer to enjoy or relate to this book. You must only have felt out of place, a stranger in a strange land, to have looked at yourself in the mirror and not liked what you saw. To have felt the deep well of loneliness and meaningless desperation that comes with living as a human. Baldwin explores and expresses the torments of humanity and love, through his achingly beautiful prose that often left me breathless. David is profoundly selfish, and evasive to the attention he receives. He paradoxically wants love but cannot bear the responsibilities that go with it. He is an unlikable man, yet you cannot help but emote with him. You cannot help but feel all of his pain and regret and loathing. 

Truly a haunting read, one that will stay with you long after you have finished it. My review cannot do it justice, I merely urge you to read it. 

Age Rating 16+. An insinuations of rape, murder, execution and prostitution but nothing overt. 

Chronicles of a Liquid Society - Umberto Eco

"Umberto Eco was an international cultural superstar. In this, his
last collection, the celebrated essayist and novelist observes the changing world around him with irrepressible curiosity and profound wisdom. He sees with fresh eyes the upheaval in ideological values, the crises in politics, and the unbridled individualism that have become the backdrop of our lives—a “liquid” society in which it’s not easy to find a polestar, though stars and starlets abound."

I must be honest as we go into this review that this is the first piece of work I have read by Umberto Eco, and probably it wasn't the best starting point. I was somewhat disappointed to discover that this is not a book of essays, as I expected, but a collection of Eco's newspaper column articles. The nature of the original media dictates the format of most entries: incredibly short (500 - 1500 words each), the use of 'newspaper language', and written in response to a certain event (many of which felt either dated or way too regional)… So overall it reads a bit bitty, piecemeal, and lacklustre. 

Due to the short word count Eco is allotted for each subject he is never fully able to delve into the question or topic but rather skims, thus it doesn't feel like a fulfilling range of work or a complete understanding of his views. Plus, they are totally outdated. It’s a posthumous collection, so I can understand that. Yet he is referencing events that I have no recollection of, often happening while I was in Primary School. Or he is speaking about social trends that have either become common knowledge or haven't happened at all. 

Eco's intelligence and education shine in his more academic pieces, his more "modern" criticism often sound like the moaning of your grandfather that tells you you spend too much time on your phone and that childhoods where better in his day. I’m not really interested in reading about your hatred of the Internet when you’re ranting about Windows Vista.

I would like to quickly draw your attention to the cover of the book, which I thought was so clever. I loved the use of the shot of piled up newspapers, that not only references the topical/ non - fiction nature of the collection, but also visually references water or ice flows. I thought it was neat. 

Overall an entertaining read but by no means an invaluable education. I would either suggest another piece of Eco's work that is less obviously outdated, or, if you want to read about current social affairs, read something more current. Age Rating 15+. 

Glimpses of the Moon - Edith Wharton

"Set in the 1920s, Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic
misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas. The other part of the plan states that if either one of them meets someone who can advance them socially, they're free to dissolve the marriage. How their plan unfolds is a comedy of errors that will charm all fans of Wharton's work."

Well, Wharton's brilliance is at it again. 

I have heard this story described as a love story, and while an accurate description, I would suggest that it is a touch misleading and strips the story of the many many layers that it possesses. Both as a character study, and as a study of society at a very specific time in history. 

Glimpses of the Moon is a intricate character study of two, actually quite unlikable main characters. Susy is vapid, self absorbed, mercenary and grasping. Nick has a superiority complex though the roof, condescending and hypocritical. Both are prone to feeling that the world owes them something, refuse to work honestly, and look at their wealthy friends with such distain it amounts to loathing while still happily taking their money and aspiring to their lifestyle. These are not nice people. Yet Wharton is able to write them in such a way that you find yourself genuinely feeling for them, despite being aware of how flawed they are.

You become genuinely invested in these characters and you are able, strangely, to relate to them. You feel for Nick when he becomes aware, and then embarrassed, by his inability to financially look after his new wife and how this deeply impacts this view of himself. You see him becoming aware of just how low he has slipped morally, and how he wants to try for something better. You see him grapple with his feelings about Susy. He loves her and in loving her, he wants to be a better person and have a higher standard of moral integrity. Yet as his morals change, he becomes more and more disillusioned with her morally grey mercenary ways. By loving her, he falls out of love with her. 

You feel for Susy who just wants to be financially secure and have pretty things. Is that really such a crime to want, especially as a women with little to no financial mobility by herself, who's only route to power was through matrimony? Could you really hate her for "managing" when what else was really open to her? Did she deserve to be so looked down on by Nick who, up until their marriage, had been "managing" himself in exactly the same way. 

There where moments when I wanted to just slap both these characters and tell them to just god damn communicate better. But, I think that was the whole point. They had to discover what was important to them separately. I loved the ending. It was utterly endearing; so beautifully and painfully hopeful. The realisation literally amounting to money can't buy happiness. Fulfilment doesn't come from material gain but from emotional investment. This was a slightly amusing take, however, coming from a writer whose family supposedly inspired the saying "keeping up with the Jones'" as they where so exceptionally wealthy everyone had to fight to keep pace with them.  

I am also honour bound to discuss Wharton's writing. She just blows me away. Her descriptions of Susy and Nick's acquaintance are brilliant. I was especially struck with her characterisation of Streffy. Wharton's insights into the human psyche and the foibles of society are stunningly handled and nuanced. Everyone is multi faceted and achingly human. I truly cannot recommend enough, though I must warn you it is an emotionally taxing book and deserves a slow and thoughtful perusal. 

Age Rating 15+. Nothing untoward, though the writing style might be a little tough for a younger audience.