I know, I said Rabbit, Run was next...but I just had to get this one done. MIDDLEMARCH BY GEORGE ELLIOT

Ooh my god. This book took me almost exactly a year of on-again, off-again, self-inflicted reading to finish. Note to others: do not try to read Middlemarch while you are in the middle of a masters program. Quite honestly, I’m having a difficult time writing this review because I really don’t want to think about this book anymore…we’ll see how well I far I get…also, not so sure I’m going to greenlight this one.

Middlemarch is subtitled A Study of Provincial Life. Now doesn’t that just sound riveting? It is the story of the members of a fictional town in England called Middlemarch in the 1830s. This book has a massive list of characters and covers many, many, subjects, but they’re basically the ones you’d expect from a novel of the time—marriage, the state of women, class, farming, medical practices, inheritance, religious experiences, and political reform. I know, you’re chewing at the bit to read this book. The central characters in Middlemarch are Dorthea Brooke, an idealistic bu,t sometimes foolish, young woman and Doctor Lydgate, a doctor, obviously. For the most part I enjoyed Dorthea’s storyline but not so much Lydgate’s…so there goes half the book.

Readability: The writing is dense, and a bit preachy. There were some sections I would be completely enjoying and then the book would take a nasty turn into the ramblings of old grumpy medical men, or gossip about some character I couldn’t remember. Also, it’s waaaaay too long.

Enjoyability (is that a word?): I’ll say I enjoyed parts of this book. I wish I had my own personal editor who would take out all the unnecessary jaunts into subjects completely unrelated to the storyline. In some books this works, but in this one it was just boring.

Favorite quote(s):

"I would not creep along the coast but steer out in mid-sea, by guidance of the stars."

"But what we call our despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope."

“What loneliness is more lonely than distrust?”

“Will not a tiny speck very close to our vision blot out the glory of the world, and leave only a margin by which we see the blot?”

“If youth is the season of hope, it is often so only in the sense that our elders are hopeful about us.”

Favorite character: Dorthea, the main female protagonist. She makes many bad decisions and is stubborn, idealistic and dog

matic to a fault but her heart is in the right place. From a feminist perspective it bums me out a little bit that this independent woman ends up subordinate to two men and doesn’t end up following her passion

to be a great benefactor to society. Ooh well, the times, the times.

Least favorite character: Mr. Casaubon, Dorthea’s husband. Seriously, this man is horrible. He’s a jealous, suspicious intellectual who never really did anything with his life, and this makes him bitter, understandably so I suppose.

Social impact: A part of this novel that I wish I knew more about, being a political science major and all, were the aspects relating to the reform movement in England. The book takes place at a time when Parliament was in the process of being restructured in England. While I found some of this interesting, it was confusing because the author assumes you know exactly what happened in the movement and, not being an expert in 19^th century British politics, I don’t. It was also written by a woman—something not all that common at the time (thus the pen name).

Greatest impact: Sheer length.

Recommended for: People who want their reading stamina challenged by a novel. Anyone who enjoys 19^th century English romances, think Jane Austen but not as witty and longer. People interested in the English class system, position of women, social relations farming techniques and medical practices.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a book my mother has been telling me to read for at least a decade, and for some reason I never felt drawn to it... part of me was convinced it was going to turn out to be a terrible romance novel. Mom, you were right: I am so, so glad I read this book. The jacket of my copy says it is about "the ultimate inconsolability and incurability of the human soul," and that about sums it up. Read it!

Readability: Very readable. A little slow at times, and compared to some books not a lot HAPPENS, but the language is beautiful and the characters are engaging.

Enjoyability: I really enjoyed this book. Again, not a lot of action, but the intimate portraits painted of avariety of characters who are both very different and have fundamental similarities are just beautiful. This is a novel characteristic of the South, with lots of similarities to Faulkner or even Harper Lee, and the slower pace seems to fit the time and the sensibility of the story. It is enjoyable too because this book deals with issues of the human spirit: loneliness, connections between people, misunderstanding, and also more tangible struggles like alcoholism, poverty, suicide, and racism. McCullers could easily have approached any one of these with a heavy hand and a message or a point, but she paints the picture and then allows the reader to draw their own conclusion.

Favorite character: Most intriguing to me is Mr. Singer, the deaf-mute who works as an engraver in a silver shop, who cares passionately about his dear friend Antonapoulos and somewhat paradoxically becomes the confidant for many of the other characters. His anonymity and inability to react results in other characters projecting their thoughts, cares, and worries onto him, and he becomes a sort of vessel for holding these. I won't ruin everything and give the ending away, but let's just say it is shocking and unexpected. Intrigued? You should be.

Honorable mention for favorite character goes to Mick, the young girl who wants nothing more than to make music.

Most un-favorite character: I was not a big fan of Jake Blount, the hard-drinking wanderer. Not a lot of redeeming qualities, as far as I'm concerned.

Best Quotes:

"Maybe when people longed for a thing that bad the longing made them trust in anything that might give it to them."

"How can the dead be truly dead when they still live in the souls of those who are left behind?"

"the way i need you is a loneliness i cannot bear."

"Then suddenly he felt a quickening in him. His heart turned and he leaned his back against the counter for support. For in a swift radiance of illumination he saw a glimpse of human struggle and of valor. Of the endless fluid passage of humanity through endless time. And of those who labor and of those who—one word—love. His soul expanded. But for a moment only. For in him he felt a warning, a shaft of terror... he was suspended between radiance and darkness. Between bitter irony and faith."

Recommended for: Fans of Southern literature, people drawn to the struggles of humanity (I know that sounds broad and metaphysical, but really), people who are okay with a book where nothing blows up.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers

Look at this picture. Seriously. This sad looking lady is Carson McCullers, the author of The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.


This is a novel about the socially maladjusted. People who feel strongly but have difficulty connecting.

It is one of those books that I had picked up for years at bookstores, read the blurb on the back, and decided it wasn’t for me. I mean, much as I love southern novels, the sentence, “The Heart is a Lonely Hunter tells an unforgettable tale of moral isolation in a small southern mill town in the 1930s,” just doesn’t do it. Also, why does the cover have a not-so-great picture of a sad looking woman on it? What I’m rambling towards, is I think this book has been poorly marketed. In reality, it’s a heartbreaking story of loneliness, longing, and our inability to connect to each other despite wanting more than anything to do so.

Enjoyability: In some ways this book was a rough read for me. I recognized painful aspects of myself in some of the characters. I had flashbacks to my own teen years when reading about Mick, the teen girl in the story. But this is part of what makes the book so good. We all have times of loneliness and so can identify with the characters even though they lead very different lives.

Readability: An easy read. The prose is smooth and, while not much happens, I found myself anticipating what would happen to the characters

Favorite Quotes: "But say a man does know. He sees the world as it is and he looks back thousands of years to see how it all come about. He watches the slow agglutination of capital and power and he sees its pinnacle today. He sees America as a crazy house... He sees a whole damn army of unemployed and billions of dollars and thousands of miles of land wasted... He sees how when people suffer just so much they get mean and ugly and something dies in them. But the main thing he sees is that the whole system of the world is built on a lie. And although it's as plain as the shining sun—the don't-knows have lived with that lie so long they just can't see it."

“This was her, Mick Kelly, walking in the daytime and by herself at night. In the hot sun and in the dark with all the plans and feelings. This music was her—the real plain her...This music did not take a long time or a short time. It did not have anything to do with time going by at all. She sat with her arms around her legs, biting her salty knee very hard. The whole world was this symphony, and there was not enough of her to listen... Now that it was over there was only her heart beating like a rabbit and this terrible hurt.”

“And as there was no way to disprove these rumors they grew marvelous and very real. Each man described the mute as he wished him to be."

Favorite Character: Mick. She is an angry, lonely, disconnected and awkward but she loves music more than anything, even though she has no real access to instruments or radio, and through this love for music we get to see another side of her.

Greatest Impact: I just noticed that this book is on Oprah’s book club. Eew. That aside, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter was written by a 23 year old white woman, in the south, in the 1940s AND deals sensitively with poverty, racism, discrimination, socialism etc. etc—all topics that were pretty controversial at the time. Pretty neat, and gutsy.

Recommended For: People who like southern novels (you know—racial tensions, hot nights, dusty streets, poverty, injustice, violence—all that) but told from a slightly different perspective. Only the lonely (Dum dum dum, dummy doo wah).

The Yacoubian Building

Readability:
I feel it necessary to make a distinction here. This is not a book that is hard to read - the language is straight forward, the story easy to follow, etc. But note that it took me two months to finish this book, because I just had a hard time making myself sit down and read it. While vaguely interesting, I didn't feel any sense of connection to the characters or to what they go through. So while I didn't find it hard to read, I did find it hard to make myself read it.

Enjoyability:
I am so disappointed not to like this book. I was excited about it - a book from a non-Western writer that the back cover claims is about "flawed and fragile humanity," particularly about Egyptian society and the juxtaposition between the current era and the values and traditions of the past. Sounds promising, right? Unfortunately... how do I say this nicely? I hated it. The story moved around too much, the characters were flawed to the point of not being relatable or even likable, although sensitive topics like homosexuality and women's rights were covered in what might seem to some a "progressive way," I felt like they were included for the sake of including them and the bias and values of Al Aswany himself were what really showed through. There are places where a character or story line becomes engaging for a time, but as a whole I found this book frustrating and disappointing.

Favorite character: Probably Busayna, just because I felt sorry for her. She is a young girl who ends up doing some fairly un-savory things out of financial obligation for her family, and she struck me as one of the strongest characters. The frustrating of her story is that she ultimately marries someone who does not seem fit for her with only a brief explanation of how or why this would happen, and the ending is rushed - what about all the trauma she went through? And then she fell in love and everything was hunky dory? I don't think so. It didn't feel credible, and I wish we would have seen more emotional depth from her.

Most un-favorite character: Sooo many to choose from. Practically all the characters besides Busayna are just jerks in one way or another, taking advantage of each other or being corrupt or what have you. I may have to pick Hatim Rasheed, who is a wealthy newspaper man who is an extremely unhappy person, largely because he is gay and lives in a society that does not accept that and largely views him as morally reprehensible. What I couldn't stand about him is how he treats this guy that he supposedly loves, and is just horrible to - manipulative, coercive, etc. I can almost never condone violence, but this is a case when I'm tempted to say he got what he deserved.

Best Quotes:
Whatever.

Recommended for:
People who want to learn about modern Egyptian society, people who like to read about scandal but don't mind unsatisfying endings, people who can read a whole book even when they don't care about any of the characters.

Want a better version of this style of novel, with focus on multiple story lines and culture? See Bright Shiny Morning by James Frey, or Home Town by Tracy Kidder for a non-fiction version. Both of them are excellent.

The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany

This is going to have to be a bit of a different review, not only because I no longer have access to the book (I know, I could check it out from the library...but that takes work) but also because it isn't going to make the cut, GASP!

We originally put this novel on the list because we were looking to add a bit of, shall we say, diversity to the list. Like the halls of congress, the western literary world is littered with old dead white guys with the occasional woman/minority thrown in. This book is apparently the highest selling book in the Arab speaking world, but I suppose we should not have confused popularity for quality. That's not to say it's a bad book, just not good enough to make the list.

The Yacoubian Building is the story of the residents of the Yacoubian Building, a real-life building in downtown Cairo. It jumps around between the lives of those who live in shacks on the roof of the building and those who live in the run down opulence below them. Almost exactly like the book cover above, whoa.

Readability: Easily read. My only issue was keeping track of names (probably due to my unfortunate ignorance of Arabic names) and difficulty with transitions between story lines.

Enjoyability: I never really got into it. I just kept reading it to, well, finish it, and then pawned it off on a friend as soon as possible (and I have a book collecting addiction, to a serious degree).

Favorite quote(s):,Favorite character:, Least favorite character: Yep, don't have the book anymore...

Social impact: As I said earlier, this is the top-selling novel in the Arab world and it does deal with many an important, and controversial, issue-homosexuality, terrorism, women's roles/sexuality, poverty etc. but it deals with them in a way that, no offense intended, feels very stale, old-fashioned and sometimes insulting. I know, I should step back and view this from the position of someone in the Arab world where ideas like those explored in this book probably are fairly revolutionary but, from by white-person-privileged-American perspective it just doesn't work. It's sometimes like reading an 'enlightened' Victorian talk about 'women's problems.'

Greatest impact: I found the transition of one of the characters from a bright boy living in poverty to member of a terrorist cell fascinating.


Recommended for: People interested in learning more about Egyptians and Egyptian society, from a fairly mediocre book.

Overall: Eh.

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles

Readability:

Through the first 7/8 of the book, an easy read. Prose is spare and not overly complicated, although it must be said that most of what happens is internal to the characters and some might say that not a lot happens. So that's the first 7/8. Then all of a sudden the last bit shifts and really feels more like a dream than anything else, or what it feels like to be inside a nervous breakdown. Actually a lot of stuff happens during this last section, but it is pervaded by the feeling of detachment or dissociation (or is that just the way the desert feels?).

Enjoyability:

I really really liked this book. I love the way Bowles describes the landscape, the desert: "By the road sometimes were high clumps of dead thistle plants, coated with white dust, and from the plants the locusts called, a high, unceasing scream like the sound of heat itself." I like the way you can FEEL the dichotomy of being a traveler, simultaneously attracted and repelled by the strangeness and otherness of this foreign place. There's this wonderful scene when Kit is homesick for Europe and pulls out all these extravagant silk dresses and then just curls up in them on her bed. There are these moments of striking beauty and then moments where all they can focus on is the flies or the heat or the food. Plus I liked that I didn't really know what was going to happen - there were several moments along the way when I just thought 'What?!'
Definitely a book and a writer I will come back to.

Favorite character: Probably Turner, just because he's such a cheerful and genuinely good-hearted fellow. Of course he does sleep with his best friend's wife, but he means well (is that any excuse?). I liked Kit in a lot of parts too, but get frustrated because she is has such a tendency to be dependent on others. I had high hopes for her during Port's illness when she stepped up and got them away from the Typhoid epidemic in S'ba, and then was taking care of him, but the ending makes me feel like maybe that was only possible because she was about to have a nervous breakdown.

Most un-favorite character: Mrs. Lyle. It's very hard to be sympathetic to someone who is a wealthy writer/photographer who spends all her time gallivanting around Africa, and yet is utterly bitter, critical, and ungrateful. Here's what Port has to say about her: "Her life had been devoid of personal contacts, and she needed them. Thus she manufactured them as best she could; each fight was an abortive attempt at establishing some kind of human relationship. Even with Eric [her son], she had come to accept the dispute as the natural mode of talking. He decided that she was the loneliest woman he had ever seen, but he could not care very much." I can only care enough to hate her a little.

Best Quotes:

"But not here in this sad colonial room where each invocation of Europe was merely one more squalid touch, one more visible proof of isolation; the mother country seemed farthest in such a room."

"As she stared she found herself wondering why it was that a diseased face, which basically means nothing, should be so much more horrible to look at than a face whose tissues are healthy but whose expression reveals an interior corruption."

"... it occurred to him that a walk through the countryside was a sort of epitome of the passage through life itself. One never took the time to savor the details; one said: another day, but always with the hidden knowledge that each day was unique and final, that there never would be a return, another time."

" 'Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus. It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth--' She hesitated.

Port laughed abruptly. 'And now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end. And that's when you're conscious of the bitter taste.' "

"At least you would learn not to be afraid of God. You would see that even when God is most terrible, he is never cruel, the way men are."

"What delight, not to be responsible - not to have to decide anything of what was to happen! To know, even if there was no hope, that no action one might take or fail to take could change the outcome in the slightest degree - that it was impossible to be at fault in any way, and thus impossible to feel regret, or, above all, guilt. She realized the absurdity of still hoping to attain such a state permanently, but the hope would not leave her."

Recommended for:

People who liked The Quiet American or are fond of Hemingway, travelers and expatriates, and people who don't mind books where (according to Bowles) "all the action takes place inside people's heads."

The Sheltering Sky by Paul Bowles: Our foray into Africa continues, and gets really strange.

Over a month has passed since our last post. All things considered it was a very strange month, so I suppose this is an appropriate book to jump back in with.

The Sheltering Sky begins as a kind of travelogue surrounding a married couple, Port and Kit, and their friend Turner's travels through post-war Northern Africa. Port and Kit have taken this trip as a last-ditch attempt at trying to save their failing marriage, and Turner is along for the ride for his own questionable purposes. They wander through Northern Africa engaging in various morally questionable actions and encountering a variety of characters, including the ever-present obnoxious Americans, until a series of events leads the book into some seriously existential and disturbing territory. (read it and you'll see what I mean)

Readability: This novel is very readable. The writing is sharp and the plot not only pulls you along with wondering what will happen next, but also with wondering what is going on in the character's heads.

Enjoyability: I'll admit, this book took me a bit to get into. At first I just kept thinking--ooh great, another book about Europeans traveling through Africa and spending a lot of time not enjoying themselves. Seriously people, why go to Africa if all you can do is complain about how 'uncivilized' it is? Somehow, though, it got under my skin. It certainly is a book I can keep thinking about and its dreamlike quality, combined with its non judgemental attitude, makes me keep questioning why the characters acted the way they did. A warning--the last 50 pages are a shocker.
Favorite quote(s):
"Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don't know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It's that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don't know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that's so deeply a part of your being that you can't even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless."
"Humanity?" Cried Port. "What's that? Who is humanity? I'll tell you. Humanity is everyone but ones self. So of what interest can it possibly be to anybody?"
"In this way he missed the night's grand finale: the shifting colors that played on the sky from behind the earth before the rising of the sun."

"Its strange," he said with a deprecatory smile, "how, ever since I discovered that my passport was gone, I've felt only half alive. But it's a very depressing thing in a place like this to have no proof of who you are."

"Before I was twenty, I mean, I used to think that life was a thing that kept gaining impetus It would get richer and deeper each year. You kept learning more, getting wiser, having more insight, going further into the truth'-she hesitated.Port laughed abruptly. 'and now you know it's not like that. Right? It's more like smoking a cigarette. The first few puffs it tastes wonderful, and you don't even think of its ever being used up. Then you begin taking it for granted. Suddenly you realize it's nearly burned down to the end ant that's when you're conscious of the bitter taste."

"The new moon had slipped behind the earth's sharp edge"

Favorite character: Kit...I think. I had conflicting feelings about most of the characters in this book. They make poor decisions, complain, treat each other poorly but with all of this they feel real. What happens to Kit at the end of the novel is unsettling but could I say I wouldn't do the same? Probably not. Somehow, this end feels appropriate despite its distressing nature. In the end it's all about the desert anyway so, maybe that's my favorite character.

Least favorite character: The creeptastic caravan owners who 'help' Kit towards the end of the novel.

Social impact: Paul Bowles spent much of his life as a ex-pat in Northern Africa and clearly questions of identity for expats, as well as their detrimental affects on local culture, were an important theme for him and likely brought attention to the phenomenon. I couldn't help thinking though...man, I wish one of these novels was written by an African for a change...

Greatest impact: Identity and mortality are main themes of The Sheltering Sky and this novel does a great job examining these ideas. It also accurately portrays the feeling you get when you're in a strange country and the relationship of people who were once close but don't know how to get back to what they once had. What really got me ultimately was the desert itself and its power to change people.

Recommended for: People who enjoy novels about expats. If you like the work W. Somerset Maugham. If you like books that question the nature of identity/mortality. OR simply if it's a long, cold winter and you just need a book to make you feel warm again.

Overall:

"It was the end of the line"