"The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald

I had to re-read this book. It's on numerous best-ever lists, lauded in academia, among the favourites of a few friends, and all literate men seem to have a hard-on for femme fatale Daisy Buchanan. I have a dim memory of reading it when I was pretending to be a precocious early teen, but could not recall much more than a vague notion of rich socialites. 

The story of narrator Nick Carraway who happens to move right next door to wealthy and popular Jay Gatsby. Gatsby is a tremendously wealthy young man who has a gigantic house and throws lavish parties. Nobody is quite sure where Gatsby got all his money and rumours abound as to his past. Carraway and Gatsby become fast friends. 

Carraway's cousin, Daisy, and husband Tom Buchanan also live by. Daisy and Tom's marriage is coming apart as Tom has a mistress and does nothing to conceal it. (sort of spoiler alert) Unknown to Daisy, her first love, Gatsby, lives just across the water and the story brings them together and apart in an ultimately tragic ending.

The writing is tremendous; Fitzgerald has a way of putting words together that makes you stop, re-read, and really consider the phrase. However, other than that, I wasn't too blown away. The character of Gatsby is as confounding and attractive to the reader as he is to the narrator, but the rest are somewhat flat. 

A quick read, I'm glad I can now speak authoritatively when I say "what's the big deal?".  

 

"The Withdrawal Method" - Pasha Malla

Go here.

"In Transit" - Mavis Gallant

There's something very appealing about the foreigner abroad. It makes me think the characters in "Lost in Translation", vulnerable and lonely in a strange world. Like that film, this collection of stories is more about the characters themselves than how they experience their environment.

The 19 stories in this collection all deal with protagonists who are away from home. Apart from their own culture and language, not quite living in the real world, these people are perpetually in transit.

Gallant's prose is simple and elegant and peppered with startling and astute observations.

"'Digby is slightly restless, and marriage would settle him,' said Mrs Glover, pitying Digby, who now joined the company of men whose fate had been settled by a pair of women over empty cups." (from "A Question of Disposal")

"Every day had to be filled as never at home. A gap of two hours in a strange town, in transit, was like being shut up in a stalled lift with nothing to read." (from "In Transit")

"He had the soul of a carpet." (from "Good Deed")

Gallant is one of Canada's most treasured writers, but people would be hard pressed to recall her work. Her short stories are highly anthologized and she's often read in the course of English-Canadian literature studies and then forgotten. Gallant deserves much more. 

"Birds of America" - Loorie Moore

I think short story collections are underrated. These books sit on library shelves, passed over time and again for a novel, but the narrative snobbery is unfounded.

Or maybe not. Some of the stories in this collection by Lorrie Moore I loved and can't wait to read again. Some of these stories I was continually flipping through to see how many pages were left. However, when Lorrie Moore is on, she is so on. She is able to portray seemingly ordinary people with such wonderful attention to detail that they practically leap off the page. The word play is tremendous and witty and humorous, though sometimes gets a little out of hand and gives off a "look at me, I'm so clever" vibe.

While I appreciate the melancholy of every day life and not necessarily happily ever after endings, by the end of this collection, I was ready for something more upbeat. The second last story, "People Like That Are the Only People Here: Canonical Babbling in Peed Onk" (makes sense after you've read it, sort of) follows the parents of a baby who has cancer. I mean, come on. A baby with cancer. It's hard to read and hard to put down, a combination that yields unsettling results. However, the emotion in it is so real that the story itself practically aches.

I think Moore is at her best when portraying the modern romance as seen in stories such as "Willing", "Community Life", and "Terrific Mother". The dysfunctional couple archetype is blown  apart and treated with an empathy rarely found.

These stories are beautiful, sad and funny at the same time. Moore goes on my list of authors to keep an eye out for.

"The Accidental" by Ali Smith

Ali Smith's writing is fun, whimsical, intelligent and breaks all sorts of rules. The trivialities of day-to-day existence are blown apart and rendered fascinating in this curious novel.  

The Smart family has left London to spend the summer in the countryside. Eve, the mother, writes her tremendously popular historical fiction in the shed. Michael, the step-dad, thinks of his liaisons with many, many, students. Magnus, the depressed teenager, mopes and has a sexual awakening. Astrid, the precocious daughter, videotapes the world around her and ponders the mysteries of life. All the narratives are mysteriously interrupted by the presence of Amber, a stranger who appears at their house and ends up staying there. 

The structure of this book is part of its appeal. Three large sections titled, "beginning", "middle", and "end", each containing a chapter for one of the characters. All the characters observe the world uniquely - the step-father's "middle" part is a sonnet sequence and the teenager often thinks in math equations. 

Adventurous, inventive and most of all, fun. Thumbs up. I'll read more of Ms. Smith in the future.

"Hunger" by Knut Hamsun

If I had read this book without any context, I would have assumed it was a modernist work highly influenced by Kafka. It's hard to believe that it was originally published in 1890.

The narrative is a first-person account by an unnamed Norwegian writer. He wanders the streets of Christiana (current day Oslo), starving and trying to sell his work to the local newspaper. As he becomes more and more hungry, he loses his grasp on reality and is driven to do some perplexing and awful things. He is a masochist, playing survival as if it's a game of him versus the world.

For those who like linearity, this book should be discounted. The narrator and story move in circles until the very end. This can be frustrating, but there is something mesmerizing about the character that keeps you reading. 

A quote on the front deems the book, "one of the most disturbing novels in existence". You've been warned.

"Zofloya; or, The Moor: A Romance of the Fifteenth Century" - by Charlotte Dacre

"there is certainly a pleasure...in the infliction of prologned torment"

This novel is quite shocking. Even more so when you consider it was written in 1806. Use to the Jane Austenish Romantic novels of sensibility, whereby much is made over refusing to dance with someone, the heroine protagonist of "Zofloya" tortures, imprisons, murders and makes a deal with Satan. 

Poor Victoria. As a girl, her mother run off with a lover, leaving Victoria to shoulder her family's shame. Growing up she is improperly educated and neglected and becomes evil. She eventually marries, but then falls for her husband's brother, Henriquez. She poisons her husband and emprisons Henriquez' lover in a cave in the mountains. Henriquez refuses Victoria's love and eventually kills himself. Victoria, enraged, stabs Henriquez' lover multiple times before pushing her off a cliff.

Dacre is a little wordy and has a loose sense of grammar, but the incredibly depraved and malicious characters are compelling. A fascinating glimpse into another side of Romanticism.