Tag Archives: 20th Century

Game of Thrones by George RR Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1)

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Synopsis:
Political powers battle for control of the Iron Throne, while to the north supernatural powers threaten, and in the south a dispossessed royal begins to raise an army.

Review:
I wanted to reread Game of Thrones before the HBO series launches in April, and decided I’d give the audiobook a try. I am so glad I did. The narrator, Roy Dotrice, not only has a magnificent voice but sets all of the characters apart from each other. He’s just amazing.

As for the story, well, it’s just as captivating as I remember, perhaps even more so because I know where Martin plans to take the characters (at least as far as book 4 of the planned 7-part series). I definitely got a lot more out of it because I knew to pay attention to seemingly minor figures like the Hound and Renly Baratheon.

And because I wasn’t caught up in the “what happens next” suspense, I could really enjoy the big set pieces, like the Hand’s tourney and the battles seen through Tyrion’s and Catelyn’s eyes.

I am so excited for the HBO series. Have you seen the 10-minute extended look?

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

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Synopsis:
The lives of a prior, an earl, a master builder, two vengeful orphans, a “witch,” and the bastard son of a jongleur intertwine during the building of a cathedral.

Review:
I had several people recommend The Pillars of the Earth to me, and since I’m loving my Kindle I thought I’d see if I liked reading a long book on it. (I did.)

The story is sweeping but the character journeys make it intimate. It really was an engrossing read. However, I grew a little weary of how wicked the bad guys were, and some of the scenes grew repetitive. I thought he did a good job depicting Prior Philip, a believably flawed man striving for goodness in a fallen world.

Foxybaby and The Sugar Mother by Elizabeth Jolley

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With reading time at a premium due to an active 3-year-old and a high needs 4-month-old, I’m not able to dive into all the worthy books that are sent my way for review. So this will be a bit out of form for the Superfast Reader, more of an endorsement than a review, since I was only able to give these books a perusal instead of a read. But they are absolutely worth recommending, for their literary merit and sheer originality.

Foxybaby follows a writer with punk rock sensibilities through her residency at a weight loss camp for adults. The tone is blackly comic, but with a beating heart of real passion and humanity. For as grotesque as some of Jolley’s characters are, she never condescends to them. I was reminded so much of Jane Campion’s movie Sweetie–and that’s a high compliment.

The Sugar Mother is about a middle aged academic who falls in love with a much-younger woman, and then wants her to be a surrogate for him and his wife. I was less taken with this one, finding the scenario a bit distasteful, but the writing was psychologically astute and enjoyable as hell.

Jenny by Sigrid Undset

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Synopsis:
A young Norwegian woman pursues her painting in Rome, but when she gets swept up in a romance with a fellow countryman she finds her dreams derailed and her life shattered.

Review:
Jenny is a realist novel from the Pulitzer Prize winning author of the Kristin Lavransdatter trilogy, one of my all-time favorite reads. It’s a somber story that reminded me of Theodore Dreiser and EM Forster, delving into the psychology of Jenny, an artist in her late 20s living a bohemian life and not sure why she’s not dreaming of settling down. When she meets Helge Gram, another Norwegian prowling Rome, she allows herself to be captured against her better judgment, and what follows is an exploration of a woman caught between expectation and longing.

I found Jenny to be startlingly fresh. Jenny and her roommate Cesca could have been me and my friends back when I was young and single, even though they were subject to more social constrictions than we were. Further proof that Undset is one of the 20th century’s greatest authors.

The Warrior’s Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold

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Synopsis:
After flunking the physical portion of his battle school exams, Miles Vorkosigan heads off looking for glory and winds up the admiral of a fleet of mercenaries, making it look like he’s about to declare war on the emperor.

Review:
I am a huge fan of Lois McMaster Bujold’s fantasy, and many people have recommended the Vorkosigan saga to me. I figured I’d start with The Warrior’s Apprentice, since it’s the one that started it all, if not first chronologically.

Space opera is pretty low on my list of preferred genres, and I was worried that The Warrior’s Apprentice would contain too much nerdy humor. While the book wasn’t free from some pretty cringe-worthy moments, the fast-paced story and enjoyable characters more than made up for it. I liked that Bujold wasn’t afraid to take Miles to some dark places–despite the overabundance of such annoying wrylys as “blandly” and “sardonically.” Her writing has been so strong in the other books I’ve read that I was surprised to find such a dependence on adverbs here.

I also appreciated that she didn’t give us a straight coming of age story; rather, she got Miles out of school pretty quickly and then shoved him into a very complex real life situation. The plotting was super inventive.

I’m glad I know what Miles is all about, but I’m not going to keep going in the series. I just don’t really have the taste for space opera.

The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

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Synopsis:
Upper East Side bond trader mows down Bronx “honor student” and New York City freaks out.

Review:
Oh, how I love Bonfire of the Vanities! I have read it several times, most memorably rereading it in the first month after I moved to New York City, way back in 1995. I don’t know that I could ever tire of reading it, because I’m always astonished by how deep Wolfe takes you into every single little nuance of the story. And it’s funny how the small details are what always stick with me most: brown lipstick, packing peanuts, Bruckner Boulevard, the little tap and the boy goes down.

This time around I enjoyed, might I say heartily so, the audiobook version. And what struck me this time is how often Wolfe turns his characters into tour guides, in order to show off how much he knows about abso-freaking-everything. Sherman has inner monologues about the greatness of Wall Street. Killian tells Sherman all about how the courts work. Abe Weiss explains Bronx politics to Larry Kramer. The narrator explains women’s fashion. I could go on but then I’d just be rewriting the book for you. And it’s all so fascinating, even the stuff that is outdated.

The narrator of the audiobook, Joe Barrett, is quite possibly the greatest actor of all time, giving voice to scores of characters and making them all original and distinct. And he does a better job with Maria Ruskin than Melanie Griffith in the atrocious movie version.

I have read everything Tom Wolfe has ever written and nothing can ever compare to this book, which is one of my all-time favorites. I can’t wait to read it again!

The Secret History by Donna Tartt

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Synopsis:
A group of misfit classics students at a small Northeastern college take things too far.

Review:
Love The Secret History! Have read it at least 3 maybe 4 times since it came out back when I was in college. And that’s all I have to say because I finished it at 11pm and had my 2nd baby at 3:20am and I’m a bit too tired to blog :)

Wolf’s Brother by Megan Lindholm

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Synopsis:
As a group of reindeer herdspeople approach their summer grounds, simmering tensions and unspoken accusations bubble up with murderous results.

Review:
Wolf’s Brother is the completion of the story begun in The Reindeer People, and I was more than satisfied with the resolution.

While the book’s setting recalls Clan of the Cave Bear, the story itself focuses around what could be considered a murder mystery, and the genre-blending is what really kept me turning pages. Megan Lindholm brings the action to a thrilling climax that might be a bit too jam-packed, but I was invested in the journey of the characters so it worked for me.

I really hope that these two books come back in print. They deserve a wider audience.

The Reindeer People by Megan Lindholm

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Synopsis:
An outcast healer and her shaman-bewitched son become caught up in the politics and intrigue among a group of reindeer herdsman.

Review:
The Reindeer People is only the first part of the story, and ends on a most incomplete note, so I’m glad that I’ve got Wolf’s Brother on hand to start immediately. I really hate that publishers do this–I’d much rather read one long book than wait for a second installment.

This is one of Megan Lindholm/Robin Hobb’s earliest works, and in it you can see the seeds of the greater writer she will become. The prose is confident and assured, and her characters satisfyingly flawed. While the book got off to a slow start, I was glad I stuck with it.

The world here is ancient, though not quite primitive. The characters have intellect if not sophistication, and the aforementioned politics and intrigue are complex, from a psychological perspective. Tillu is not Lindholm’s greatest heroine, but I’m warming up to her.

The Son Avenger by Sigrid Undset (The Master of Hestviken)

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Synopsis:
With Olav Audunsson facing the end of his lonely days, his children Eirik and Cecilia find themselves trapped in the repercussions of Olav’s as-yet unconfessed sins.

Review:
There was so much I loved in The Son Avenger, particularly Cecilia’s journey of wife- and motherhood with Eirik’s less-than-reputable childhood friend Jorund. She really came alive as a different kind of woman than the others I’ve seen in Undset’s work, with a rigidity that blossomed into self-awareness and even a kind of independence. She’s mirrored nicely with Eldred, the woman Eirik falls in love with later in the book, and together they show that the feudal system and all its concomitant restrictions on people were not enough to break at least two women.

Undset was writing in the 1920s, and I find her approaches to class and sex to be refreshingly ahead of her time. It would probably be stretching things to call her a feminist, but there is an egalitarian quality to her character depictions that questions the power dynamic between the genders in a way that feels radical for both her time and the time she’s writing about. But because she’s deeply Christian, she isn’t going to let go of the notion of necessary submission as a vitally important character quality. In many ways, her characters live out St. Pauls’s teaching that in relation to God, we are all feminine.

Turning to the men, I was less excited by how Undset completed the journeys of Olav and Eirik. I really feel like Olav got let off the hook for his crimes, but that could be my 21st century desire for openness and transparency, since Olav does, in a sense, lose everything. Grown Eirik didn’t resemble boy Eirik enough for me to be swept away in the continuity of his story, and the ambiguous ending that Undset creates for him doesn’t help matters.

I’m so glad I made my way through this series, though it will never eclipse my beloved Kristin Lavransdatter.