Month: June 2016

The Non Fiction Challenge – Just Kids – Patti Smith

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2016 Nonfiction Challenge

Genre: Autobiography / Memoir

Narrative Style: First personUnknown

Rating: 4/5

Published: 2010

Format: Paperback

Reading Challenges: The Non Fiction Challenge

Synopsis: Patti tells of her relationship with the artist Robert Mapplethorpe and their time in New York in the late sixties and early seventies, just before both of them became famous. 

It is apt that I discovered Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe together and to me they have always come as a pair. In 1992, my then boyfriend bought a copy of Horses (On vinyl, of course. That’s the sort of students we were.) and we rushed home to listen to it. The music blew me away. I had never heard anything like it. But I was also really taken with the photo of Patti on the front (taken by Mapplethorpe) which seemed to encapsulate something of the music. Patti was all PattiSmithHorsesmasculine elegance, a look I was trying – with less success – to pull of myself. (This was a time when I thought I was Jim Morrison and wandered around in outsize men’s shirts and leather trousers.) I quickly discovered it was by Robert and was soon as fascinated by his photography as I was by Patti’s music.

I knew a little of their relationship already, having read a biography of Patti Smith some years ago but it was interesting to hear it from the horse’s mouth, as it were. It isn’t just the relationship between Patti and Robert that is so interesting but also her description of the times which saw them mixing with Warhol and the members of The Factory and staying at the Chelsea Hotel to name but two things.

Of course, the whole thing is tinged with sadness. At the end, Patti says that Robert asked her to write the story of them and it had taken her until then to be strong enough to do it. (He died in 1989 and this was published in 2010) Her longing for Robert to still be alive is in every word of this and it seems apparent that she misses him still. When I was approaching the end, I found myself preparing for the horror of his death. My relationship with his work has always been tinged with sadness as by the time I discovered him, he was already dead and I was sad to think there would never be any new work from this amazing artist. It was an emotional end and not at all easy to read. You get a real sense of how difficult it must have been for Patti to carry on afterwards.

 

Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016: The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern

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2016eclecticreader_bookdout

Genre: Paranormal Romance, Magic Realism

Narrative Style: Third person from a variety of view points. Non-chronological

Rating: 5/5

Published: 2011Unknown-1

Format: Kindle

Reading Challenges: Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016 – Genre paranormal romance

Synopsis: Celia is trained by her father to take part in a mysterious magical competition. She is bound by the scar on her finger. She has no idea what the rules are or who her opponent will be. Marco is rescued from an orphanage by a strange man who trains him in the art of magic. He too has a scar. 

The Cirque de Reves appears in towns with no warning. It is the most amazing thing that people have ever seen. They go back night after night as there is always more to explore. Then the circus disappears just as suddenly. Could this be the playing field for two extraordinary young illusionists?

I was dreading this genre, conjuring up as it did images of vampires and ridiculously twee films. I’m not really a romance fan and the addition of some supernatural creature didn’t make it any more appealing. When I started to read The Night Circus, I didn’t realise that it would fit but it soon became apparent that this was a romance.

From the start, there is a magical atmosphere. Celia’s father is an entertainer, a magician who has to make his illusions less good so that the public think it is not real. His training of Celia is ruthless. He is determined to win the game and Celia is his pawn. Marco is trained in a different way but his trainer – the mysterious man in grey – is equally determined. The stage is set straightaway for a magical battle.

Admittedly, the pace is slow but I liked that. There was so much illusion, so much beautiful description that it would have been a shame to miss out on it. The circus is almost like another character in the book as it quickly takes on a life of its own. We learn of the different personalities and are given hints of future events. The act of reading this book was not unlike a visit to the circus. You want to take it slow so you can take in every detail.

The romance is equally slow burning. It takes a while for Marco and Celia to realise they are adversaries and then when they do, they are frightened by the intensity of feeling when they are together. Finally, they discover that the only way to end the game is for one of them to die. They realise they have to find a way to escape.

I did find the changing chronological sections a little confusing. I spent a lot of time looking back at chapters to see when they were set. However, I think that it worked. The importance of the character of Bailey becomes apparent and I realised why Morgenstern had structured it the way she had.

This was one of those books that I didn’t want to finish. It was so beautiful, I felt really sad leaving it behind. Still, it is good to think of the circus carrying on, appearing suddenly to charm people before disappearing into mystery again.

Eclectic Reader Challenge 2016 – The Kraken Wakes – John Wyndham

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2016eclecticreader_bookdout

Genre: Dystopia, Disaster

Narrative Style: First person

Rating: 4/5Unknown

Published: 1953

Format: Paperback

Synopsis: The first sign that anything is amiss is when strange globes start to appear over the sea and then sink under the waves. Nobody thinks anything of it at first but then ships start to disappear and worse, islands start to be attacked. Mike Watson and his wife, Phyllis are caught in the reporting of the events as they quickly escalate. 

Unlike a lot of disaster style fiction, this novel takes you through events as they happen rather than what happens afterwards. At the beginning, Mike and Phyllis Watson are watching icebergs flow past them. Clearly something has gone very wrong. They decide that an account needs to be written of what has brought the world to this sorry state.

There are three separate stages to events. The first is the seemingly harmless phenomenon of strange red balls in the sky that seem to disappear under the waves. Next ships start to disappear and attempts at discovering what may be beneath the waves end with ships being destroyed along with strange creatures starting to invade islands and coasts. When people start to fight back and the creatures are curtailed then the icebergs start to mysteriously melt and the flood waters start to rise.

Mike and Phyllis are journalists and this is apparent in the report that Mike writes. There is a distance between them and events – with them often reporting back about events that they have not actually seen. Consequently the reader is a little distanced from it as well. There was little in the way of emotional response from Mike even when he describes having to get away from it all because he is stressed by events.

Wyndham allows Mike to comment on world affairs and reactions and this is much more successful. The comments about Russian and American reactions and about Government propaganda were apt and clever. The character of Bocker, who in the beginning prophesies doom, goes through many stages in the book – starting off being ostracised until finally he is the only one who has actually got anything right. This shows how the media works to create heroes and villains when it suits them.

I found the ending a bit disappointing. Perhaps because it seemed a bit too neat. It reminded me a little of my disappointment at the end of H G Wells The War of the Worlds. It was almost like a cheat. Or like Wyndham had got fed up with telling the story. Apart from that, this was a very enjoyable and very clever tale of disaster and the way that Governments respond to them.