Review: Perdido Street Station, China Mieville

I've been feeling weary of genre fiction lately. I used to be a huge sci-fi and fantasy buff, but the past few years I've been more in the mood for something more literary and... cerebral? I guess I just prefer nice writing over heroes and rocket ships. But, if you look hard enough, turns out I don't have to pick one over the other.

Perdido Street Station is, in a nutshell, about an overweight scientist in a fantastic city. But it's a thousand times more than that.

It has a million different plots and subplots, some of which get unsatisfactorily dropped partway through, some which disappear and then resurface long after you've forgotten about them. But it is the world and the characters that really shine in this work.

I'm inclined to describe it as fantasy, or urban fantasy at first, because it has magic and fantastic creatures, but it has shades of steampunk and science fiction as well. The universe of New Crobuzon is as vivid, expansive, and colorful as anything by Tolkien or C. S. Lewis, but even more interesting because technology mixes with magic and half a dozen alien races mingle together within one extraordinary city.

Most of the main characters aren't particularly likeable; they're all flawed in some ways and it adds an interesting dynamic to the story. Even though there are more 'alien' (in the book they're referred to as 'xenian' and it's not clear whether they're extraterrestrial or native) characters than human, they're all written with lifelike qualities and it's not until Mieville mentions wings or antennae that you remember the person speaking is not actually a 'person' after all.

I got out of Perdido Street Station exactly what I wanted from it - an enjoyable read, the way I used to enjoy science fiction and fantasy when I was younger. My tastes may have evolved from Orson Scott Card to Margaret Atwood, but I can still enjoy a good story with magic and monsters and fantastic elements. I'm relieved!

"I am compelled to worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the conjunction of two rivers. It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding. Fat chimneys retch dirt to the sky even now in the deep night. It is not the current which pulls us, but the city itself, its weight sucks us in. Faint shouts, here and there the calls of beasts, the obscene clash and pounding from the factories as huge machines rut. Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins. Red brick and dark walls, squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes in the old town, culs-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchures, a new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten volumes, old hospitals, towerblocks, ships and metal claws that lift cargos from the water."

Length: 7/10 It's quite a thick volume, but it doesn't drag at all once you get into it. You just keep wanting more.
Grade: 95. Perdido Street Station is a gripping read, a beautiful world, and best of all just downright fun to read.

~Joy

The Book Group

This isn't a book review, but I think this post might be relevant to readers of this blog. I recently discovered a television series called The Book Group. It's a British series starring Anne Dudek, an actress whom you might not know but would certainly recognize - she has had a number of supporting roles on popular shows such as House, Desperate Housewives, Bones, Psych, Big Love and Mad Men. It was very satisfying to see her in a starring role, because I think she really is a great actress. Surprisingly, this show is actually an older one which was shot before many of her roles on American television.

The program is only available on DVD in the UK, in the Region 2 format. However, both seasons (or series as they're called across the pond) are currently available for viewing on Hulu if you live in the US.

Between the two seasons there's a total of 11 half-hour episodes, which makes for quick viewing if you get into the show, and then leaves you wanting more. For each of the two seasons, I ended up watching the majority in a single sitting - each half hour was like a potato chip, and I kept telling myself "Just one more before bed." The series is interesting, compelling, sometimes funny and sometimes gripping. The characters are anything but flat, and it's really just a fun show to watch.

Each episode is focused around a meeting of the very eclectic eponymous Book Group - As you would expect, the characters meet up to discuss a book. But the series explores the many facets of the characters' lives, which more often than not relate to the book they are currently reading or discussing. Titles include Don Quixote, The Alchemist, and even The Little Engine That Could.

I hesitate to call the series a comedy, because while parts are humorous, there are a lot of serious issues also explored. The Book Group tackles such issues as drug abuse, being in the closet, and infidelity - and also contains a refreshing portrayal of disability, with one of the group members, Kenny, using a wheelchair. Kenny is no mere 'token', but rather he displays the issues of disability and ability that he faces from day to day.

The Book Group is great fun: sometimes heart-wrenching, sometimes knee-slapping, sometimes thought-provoking. It's short and sweet, which may leave you wanting more, but I found it pretty satisfying. I can't recommend it enough, especially when US viewers currently have the opportunity to watch it free of charge.

~Joy

Review: The Rainbow, D. H. Lawrence (Librivox)

I always have a book I'm reading, and I always have a book I'm listening to as well. Librivox is a fantastic resource for public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers. I'm a knitter, and I like to listen to a book while I knit. Recently I finished listening to The Rainbow by D. H. Lawrence.

I had already read the fantastic Women in Love for a history class before reading The Rainbow. Lawrence's Women in Love details the most recent generation of the Brangwen family, sisters Ursula and Gudrun. The Rainbow is the story of three generations of Brangwens, from the Brangwen sisters' grandparents to the sisters themselves.

In a nutshell, The Rainbow is about a family's lives and loves. The book has a very grand scale because of the amount of time it encompasses, and the number of different people experiencing love and desire in similar and different ways.

Because the book spans three generations, one must be careful to keep the characters distinct. I found it a little difficult, especially with the first generation of Brangwens and the second. When you categorize characters into wide boxes such as 'the husband' and 'the wife', since most books only have one of each of those characters, it's easy to get them mixed up when a book has several of each!

I found Lawrence's writing style generally pleasant, though sometimes getting a bit too philosophical for me. In Women in Love, every conversation the sisters or their men had was a Very Deep One indeed, and there isn't as much of that in this one, but plenty of introspective internal dialogue. Reading either book will certainly get you thinking.

I might never have read this book if I hadn't found it as a free audibook on Librivox. I like to unwind by knitting and watching TV or listening to something, so I enjoy audiobooks very much. The quality of Librivox audibooks can vary, even from chapter to chapter with a single book. This recording was all done by a single reader, which was nice. The quality is generally good, though some people might find the reader's voice a bit grating. There were a few mispronunciations I found occasionally distracting, but for the most part the reading is fluent and easy to understand.

"Indeed, it was true as they said, that a man wasn't born before he was married. What a change indeed! [...] When he was a child, he had thought a woman was a woman merely by virtue of her skirts and petticoats. And now, lo, the whole world could be
divested of its garment, the garment could lie there shed away intact, and one could stand in a new world, a new earth, naked in a new, naked universe. It was too astounding and miraculous."
Length: 5/10 (1 is the Cliffs Notes, 10 is Shakespeare's entire oeuvre) The book is hefty enough, but it feels like it goes quickly because it's like three stories in one book.
Grade: 90%. The Rainbow is a wonderful, enjoyable, rewarding read.
~Joy

Book Review Blog Carnival at INFtDIRaB

Over at I'll Never Forget the Day I Read a Book! (what a great title!), the 21st Book Review Blog Carnival has been posted.

There's a huge variety of a ton of book reviews for you to go over and read, so check it out! If you have a book blog, you can also submit your reviews for the next edition or apply to host the carnival. The Book Review Blog Carnival is bi-weekly.

~Joy

Review: The Lovely Bones, Alice Sebold

Here's one of those books that I've always meant to read, but didn't get around to it until now. I'd seen the bright blue cover all over bookstores, with the enigmatic charm bracelet and clean text. Mysterious. And very, very popular. There is a sticker on my hardback copy: "Read this! Good Morning America." It's been a huge bestseller, gotten critical acclaim, there's a movie in the works to be released next year. So what's all this fuss about? What is The Lovely Bones anyway?

The Lovely Bones, is, in a nutshell, about a murdered girl. But it's also about so much more than that.

Fourteen-year-old Susie Salmon, our narrator, is murdered at the beginning of the story. An older neighbor lures her to his backyard, into a fort he dug in the ground, rapes her and kills her.

But this isn't a murder mystery, and it isn't a horror. It isn't a religious book, or anything like that. After describing the events surrounding her death, Susie spends the majority of the book sitting up in her heaven, watching her family and friends deal with life after loss.

That's all she can do, for the most part. It may be a comfort to some people to think that the dead miss us as much as we miss them. Susie longs to talk to her family, to help them fill in the hole she left, to live her life that had so much potential until it was cut short. But Susie does not dwell upon this, and overall I would not say it is a sad book - though there are certainly many sad parts.

But mainly the story is about learning to move on. The family are crippled by grief at first, and Susie watches as they come to terms and go on with their lives, some more slowly than others. Their desire for healing, for justice, and for happiness are explored.

Susie is in heaven - not the Heaven, but her heaven. It's a heaven tailor-made for her, with all the things she likes. Those that share these desires, share bits of her heaven with her. It's not a Judeo-Christian Heaven and there is no mention of Hell, or any gods or angels or any of that. Susie resides in her own heaven, full of simple childish pleasures until she, too, can learn to move on, and let go of her obsession with her life as her family lets go of their obsession with her death.

"Our heaven had an ice cream shop where, when you asked for peppermint stick ice cream, no one ever said 'It's seasonal'; it had a newspaper where our pictures appeared a lot and made us look important... I could not have what I wanted most: Mr. Harvey dead and me living. Heaven wasn't perfect. But I came to believe that if I watched closely, and desired, I might change the lives of those I loved on Earth."
Length: 4/10 (1 is Dick and Jane, 10 is War and Peace) You can breeze through this pretty quickly. There aren't many sections that I would say 'drag on'. It's substantial but quick to read.
Grade: 85% A worthwhile read, to be sure. Full of a wide range of emotions - sadness, grief, yearning, but also love, suspense, and sweetness - but never sappy. The writing is smooth and pleasant, and in places quite beautiful.

~Joy

Review: Chocolat, Joanne Harris

Chocolat is one of the rare cases where I watched the movie before getting a chance to read the book. Normally I prefer to read a novel prior to watching the film adaptation, because the book, 9 times out of 10, contains more detail and if just better overall. I watched the film Chocolat before I even knew there was a novel it was based on.

Chocolat is, in a nutshell, about a clever, emancipated, and somewhat magical chocolatier.

Vianne Rocher (sometimes Jeanne, sometimes Anne, sometimes Sylviane) travels across the world with her daughter, Anouk, in the tradition set by her mother. The mother and daughter settle in the quiet town of Lansquenet (for how long, she does not know), opening a chocolate shop and ruffling more than a few feathers. Vianne does not attend church. She asks too many questions. She opens her shop on the first day of Lent, and does not close on Sundays.

The basic plotline has been done before; it's nothing special. The new girl in town shakes up the stuffy townspeople, changing their outlook and breaking through their prejudices! But the relationships in Chocolat are what really shine - and I'm not merely speaking about romantic ones. In fact, the romance which is so prominent on the film's poster - and, consequentially, the cover of my movie edition of the book - barely takes up a chapter in the novel. Instead, the personal platonic relationships between Vianne and the townspeople of Lansquenet make up the majority of the text and are very rewarding. Vianne is clever and calm, always seeming to know the correct path in everyone's life but her own.

The book is set in France, but not to worry - it includes no more than a few words of Kindergarten French (Do you understand the title? Chocolat? You'll do fine.) The only significant piece of French in the book is the following bit of song:

V'là l'bon vent, v'là l'joli vent,
V'là l'bon vent, ma mie m'appelle
V'là l'bon vent, v'là l'joli vent,
V'là l'bon vent, ma mie m'attend.

Which is a Quebecois folk song that translates to:
Here's the good wind, here's the pretty wind,
Here's the good wind, my friend calls me.
Here's the good wind, here's the pretty wind,
Here's the good wind, my friend awaits me.
And here's how it sounds.


Vianne is something of a witch - not in a powerful, magic wands, Harry Potter sort of way, more that she possesses a whole slew of superstitions inherited from her mother. She takes her tarot cards, healing herbs, and magical gestures and puts her own spin on them - such as scrying in melted chocolate. The "magic" in Chocolat is firmly on the sidelines - It's like magical realism, or a fairy tale where a tiny bit of magic exists: wishing on stars, or dreams brought to life, or friendly helping spirits. No one event in the book can be firmly attributed to the supernatural - maybe it's real, maybe not. But if not, how could...?

Chocolat is like a fairy tale in more ways than one - the story is quite timeless. While the film is quite clearly set in the late 1950s or early 1960s, the novel makes precious few references to the period in which it is set. With the exception of a passing mention here or there, of television, or automobiles, it could have been set as easily in the 1800s as the '80s. This is in line with the theme of the Old Ways throughout the book - Vianne coming into town and shaking up the Old Way of Life, Vianne struggling herself to break out of her mother's identity, the Old pagan beliefs against the Church... Vianne's beliefs are both old and new, predating Christianity and being revived in a town that has forgotten any other way of life than their current one. Anouk is the only child in school who does not attend church, asking dangerous questions of the priest who comes in to explain the story of Easter to them.

The tale is not told merely from Vianne's eyes - the chapters are split 50/50, or maybe 66/33, between Vianne and the Curé Reynaud. Interestingly, it is implied that Reynaud's chapters are actually overheard by Vianne, through her chocolate-scrying. The difference in writing is not the only thing differentiating the two speakers: Their chapters are set in two different fonts. Reynaud's text is narrow and bold, with heading in thick script. Vianne's is elegant, thin, and flowery. It is an interesting design choice that helps further separate the voices of the two narrators.

I have enjoyed Chocolat, both the book and the movie. Would my opinion of the film have changed if I had read the book before seeing it? Perhaps. I am going to have to give the film a second viewing now that I've read the book. Currently, I enjoyed both and would recommend either one. Johnny Depp as an Irish Gypsy? Yes please. Even if in the novel Roux is a redhead from Marseille...

"Before Christ - before Adonis was born in Bethlehem or Osiris sacrificed at Easter - the cocoa bean was revered. Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible."

Length: 4/10 It's a slim book, and can be read through in less than a week. My copy is 306 pages, but it felt shorter than that.
Grade: 76% Intriguing, with wonderful characters, if a mite too short. The plot is a bit stale and it's nothing truly exceptional, but still very enjoyable.
~Joy

Review: A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby

I love Nick Hornby. I read High Fidelity and About a Boy, and saw the films for each (starring John Cusack and Hugh Grant, respectively), and loved them both. A Long Way Down is one of Hornby's more recent novels, released in 2005.

A Long Way Down is, in a nutshell, about suicide. Or a lack thereof. The story is told from the points of view of four different characters, each of whom seeks to end their life at the beginning of the book. Of course, they don't, or else it would be a rather short book indeed.

The book is long on Hornby's characteristic sharp wit and English phraseology. He tells the events from each character's eyes distinctively, from the demure, homely churchgoing Maureen to the American guitarist-cum-pizzaboy JJ. Not only do the voices of the characters show through in their respective chapters, but subtle changes in the writing itself show how each of the characters acts: for instance, troubled teen Jess never cared to learn how quotations marks are used, so she doesn't use them.

Each character has their own voice that rings true. You could almost believe that Hornby really was an 18-year-old-girl, or a scandalous TV talk show host like Martin Sharp (whose name draws many puns in tabloid headlines). The characters are multidimensional and interesting, and it's intriguing to read on as more and more secrets are revealed about their lives and their pasts.

Unfortunately, the best part of the book is the first scene. The characters meet, a friendship is formed, and then... and then what? The book is divided into three parts, and each part is weaker than the preceding one. And in the end, well, perhaps it is symbolic of life in general, but there is no real satisfactory conclusion to the book. It ends, and perhaps the characters are a little better off than they started, but nothing is really solved. They just live to fight another day.

"Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned, found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning that life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short."

Length: 3/10 (1 is Goodnight Moon, 10 is The Lord of the Rings) This took me 4 or 5 days to read through, pulling me in with the rapt attention that Hornby's novels always provoke in me. It's not a very thick book, and you can get through it pretty quickly.
Grade: 84% A Long Way Down starts out fabulous with a great concept and living, breathing characters, but starts losing steam as the story progresses without a satisfying conclusion.

~Joy