I'll begin this review by stating that after reading this book, I'm not sure I could handle the movie. The images in my head were enough - do I really need to see this truly terrifying and sad tale play out on the big screen? I may give it a go, but I'm scared to see it.
It was a really good book - but really sad. The story is simple, yet complex. A father (the man) and son (the boy) walk along an abandoned highway (the road) headed south to escape the cold. Oh, I should mention it takes place in post-apocalyptic America. There are no names for places and things anymore - just ash and death.
They encounter many disturbing things - things that showcase the darkest side of human nature. The side that allows for some moral flexibility when it comes to survival. Who are the good guys? Who are the bad? The man and the boy are the good guys, but the boy often questions this when they are forced to act selfishly in order to survive.
There are no chapters in this book - which reflects the story. A life with no order. No days of the week, no months, no years, no knowledge of seasons. Though it makes it hard for the reader to know where to stop, it allows for an interesting flow.
The story is about a father-son relationship in peril. The man, while trying to survive himself, is protecting his son, and wants to keep his innocence (several attempts are made to shield him from the horrors of this new world).
I can't really say much else without giving away the ending. But I will say this, The Road is both hopeful and hopeless. There are no laws in this world. Just ideas of good and bad, good and evil.
If anyone sees this film in October, let me know how it is. I need to know if I can stomach it or not.
My first two reviews were for books recently published - this one was published way before my time - 1965. This, among other reasons, might be why I must file this novel under: WTF?
The description on the back states this is a satire - okay, so maybe I don't fully understand the genre of satire, but I couldn't help but think "what exactly is this satirizing?"
The edition I read was a 152 page paperback and compared to my other readings this summer, this took me far too long to finish. I'll admit to reading other readers' reviews of this on Goodreads.com to see if I wasn't alone. It seems Pynchon is a writer that is either loved or hated.
i didn't hate this book, but I can't say that I loved, or even liked it - it was really nothing to me. The issue was that I couldn't properly invest in the characters because too much was happening and it didn't seem logically. Things that one might assume to be important turned out to be seemingly insignificant. And I'm all for books with open endings, but this brand of post-modernism isn't for me. The book starts to end with what you think will make it all make sense - it doesn't. You finish this book feeling used.
Why spend pages and pages describing the sexual encounters between the main character, Oedipa Mass, and the lawyer if it wasn't really going to be revisited again? It's the type of book where either everything is important or nothing is. I have no clue what's what.
I don't really feel like describing what this book is about because I don't really know - I do, but I don't. If you really care read the description on Amazon that reeled me in, but be warned, it isn't as clear as they make it seem. Maybe I'm just dumb, but this book was a bad choice for me, as I like to read late at night, right before bed, and I just couldn't focus on what was happening - it was all over the place.
I see that Pynchon has a new book out - I may skip it though. Even though he's one of those mysterious reclusive writers, I can't really see myself investing in his back-catalogue, let alone his new material.
I tried it, let's move on.
Next on my shelf: The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
This book was written for me. Generation A. Generation Allison? I think not, but it resonated with me like none of his other books have before.
For those of you who follow my principal blog, My Quarter-life Crisis, you'd know that I've been anticipating this novel all summer. I even made it a goal that I would complete the first four books in the Coupland canon of fiction before this came out on September 1. In fact, since the beginning of spring I've been reading a lot. I've immersed myself into literature this summer and I think Generation A has helped me realize why. I'll explain later.
This novel takes place in the near future and human carelessness and selfishness has wiped out the world's bee population. No bees equals widespread plant failure. The world has been reduced to synthetic replicas and hand-pollination. The story begins with five people from all over the world each being stung by lone bees.
Zack: A young corn farmer from Mahaska County, Iowa, who hates corn. He was left this farm after his father died of flesh eating disease. He was harvesting corn naked while driving a combine with satellite cameras filming him for a paying observer.
Samantha: A young trainer at a gym from Palmerston North, Wanganui, New Zealand was stung while making an Earth sandwich with a girl from Spain.
Julien: A Worlds of Warcraft addict from Paris, France. He had just been kicked out of a gaming centre and was sitting outdoors (not his usual style) when he was stung.
Diana: An ex-church lady with tourettes from North Bay, Ontario. She was stung when she was arguing with her crazy neighbour after she caught him abusing his dog. Her ex-lover (her pastor) and his wife arrived at the scene as well. They all witnessed the sting.
Harj: A call-centre employee from Tricomalee, Sri Lanka. He was being interviewed by the New York Times regarding his website where he sells celebrity room tones when he was strung.
The five are each isolated in clean, empty rooms - save for a bed and a few minor Ikea furnishings. They spend weeks there answering questions and submitting to blood tests. They are each released back into the worlds from whence they came and are left to deal with their new found fame.
Before they could get accustomed to their new lives they are scooped up by the same people who tested them before and sent to a remote island north of British Columbia, Canada - the site of the last known bee hive.
What are they asked to do here? Tell stories. Yep, each member of the B5 (the name they are given in the media) is asked to tell several made-up stories to the others. Serge, the scientist in charge, sits and keenly observes.
Without giving away the ending I'll address the part that made me realize why I bury myself in an endless stream of books. The topic of reading comes up a lot in this novel. Particularly the feeling one gets when one reads: peaceful solitude. It's just you and the world that exists inside those pages. There is no future, no past, just you and the book, the words. One is okay with loneliness when one is reading a book. Books are an individual experience - one of the few left in this modern world.
Technology has turned us into a tribe - we have X number of Facebook friends, X number of MSN contacts. We live in a world where we share our experiences so openly. Reading is the last refuge away from the tribe - away from the hive. In one of the B5 member's stories (I can't remember whose) the main character is left behind after the rapture because he refused to accept text-message speak as a form of language. He was isolated from the herd.
I recently watched Douglas Coupland's documentary, Souvenirs of Canada. In the film they show him putting together an art exhibit about things he finds distinctly Canadian. Towards the end of the film he says he did it because he's nostalgic for something that isn't even gone yet; pre-nostalgia.
That is how I feel about language and reading. I feel like I'm so primitive - like us book readers will soon be extinct. I like my alone time with my books. I think I would have been the sixth person stung. If you want to know why, read the book.
I'll be honest, I've never formally reviewed anything. Even when I worked at a magazine I only wrote short, promo-like blurbs about products and stores and people - but I didn't actually review them - not really.
I'll start off by saying this review is going to be quite bias because for those of you who know me well know that I credit Dave Eggers as the author who inspired me to go into writing. I've forever been fascinated with life writing - and A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius turned me on to a style of writing I'd never read before. I could go on and on, but this isn't a review of that book.
Zeitoun reflects a new phase in Eggers' career - telling the stories of those who have suffered great losses and great injustices. His previous book, What is the What, tells the story of a man who lived in Southern Sudan during the civil war and was a Lost Boy brought to America. Zeitoun is the story of a family before, during and after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Sounds like thousands of stories, right? Wrong. The Zeitouns are a Muslim family. Abdulrahman Zeitoun, an American citizen but native of Syria, his American wife Kathy, a Muslim covert before she met her husband, and their four children endured more than just the storm.
The story begins like so many I've read about Katrina. Those who fled and those who didn't both suffered in different ways. In this book, Kathy and the children fled for what they thought would only be four days - staying in a crowded house in Baton Rouge. Abdulrahman (known just as Zeitoun by most) stayed to watch the house, and monitor his rental properties (he owned his own painting and contracting business, and owned several rental properties in the city). The initial storm was not as bad as predicted, but the levees breached and the city was all but drowned.
Zeitoun, with a used canoe, began surveying the neighbourhood for damage. He helped rescue several people, and even fed some local dogs who's owners had fled and left them locked inside. Seems like a feel-good story right?
The story takes an unexpectedly sad turn when Zeitoun, his tenant Todd, an acquaintance Nasser (also of Muslim faith), and a virtual stranger who happened upon them, Ronnie, were all arrested without cause in one of Zeitoun's rental properties - a house with a working phone.
I'll stop here, so not to spoil the story. The story of Zeitoun shows both sides of human nature: the selflessness of those who stayed and helped, and the selfishness that those who stayed and stole.
With no proper legal system in place during such a disaster police officers and National Guards were making snap judgments. There seemed to be no protocol during Katrina - no sense of order.
Zeitoun tells the story of one man's struggle, while also telling an entire city's. It's an individual story about a family - about a man. A story that goes beyond the storm, but would not have happened without the storm. Zeitoun is about an unimaginable aftermath. An aftermath that begs the question, 'What is the world coming to?'
