Unravelling in Raveloe

A year ago, Catie suggested we join a book group. That sounded a bit drastic - I might have to actually read a book right through - not just start one, read it for a short while, and then abandon it. There was always something a lot easier, about seeing a film, or seeing a television story - version of a book or such like, or just doing something else. Being in a book group, would also mean I would be obliged to finish the book to a deadline - the next book group meeting, so when would I fit it in? But the book group idea did sound a good one, so I agreed ... and it's turned out really well.

At this point, I must mention that I might talk about book plots and features, so if you don't want to know - LOOK AWAY! We started off with 'The Time Traveler's Wife' by Audrey Niffenegger. Although a 500 page book, this was great fun - more a romance over time, than a science fiction tale, I would say, and a page-turner - although not all the group thought it was great literature.

12th April 2009

Now I'm jumping to right now, to the book we're reading this month, and then I'll get back to some of the books we've read inbetween. Our book group is very democratic - we suggest books for the following month, and vote on them! Despite my efforts to get the group to read a Carl Hiaasen book, I haven't managed it, and I think those books will remain a personal pleasure - so that's really OK! Carl is from Florida in the USA, and writes satirical detective stories that take place in Florida, with ecological matters carefully thrown in! I came to know of him through the music artist, Warren Zevon, when they collaborated on a song called 'Basket Case', and Carl's written a novel of the same name.

Anyway, the current book was my choice. It's 'Silas Marner' or rather 'Silas Marner: The Weaver of Raveloe' by George Eliot. The reason I suggested this book, was that I had read it as a child and really liked it. Or so I thought! That is: I knew that I liked it, but had I actually read it? It's strange what elements you remember. I thought I had read it at secondary school, but when I started reading it now, the language (which is very beautifully and elaborately written) would have been rather beyond me then, and although I had about two main features in mind - such as his cataleptic fit, and the love and care for the little boy - his enduring 'treasure', I didn't remember much else. In fact, of those two 'facts' Catie (who is ahead of me now) has said it wasn't a boy, but a girl! I certainly didn't know anything about the brothers, or that there was such great humour in it. So, I'm about half way through, and I'll let you know what other aspects I find out, as I do my unravelling in Raveloe.

13th April 2009

Well, I finished the book last night. It didn't take an age, as it wasn't long, and it was interesting. As far as reading it decades ago, as I said, I enjoyed it then but I must have read or listened to some very Condensed Classics version or something - the condensing leaving most of it out, or I've just forgotten.

Anyway, now I feel I can look around the story as well - at what was going on back then - George Eliot was the pen-name for Mary Anne Evans (1819 -1880). In this story, there are strong themes of love, social justice, rural life, poverty and drug addiction, the class system, amongst others. This was set in her time, although it moves through the period as Silas moves to Raveloe, and lives his life there, and then returns to a very changed - now industrialised - original home town. The book was first published in 1861, in Victorian times, after the Tolpuddle Martyrs of 1834 and the Enclosures of land that preceded it. Two of Mary's contemporaries, who wrote often along similar lines, were Charles Dickens (1812 - 1870) and Thomas Hardy (1840 - 1928) although Hardy, who was only 21 when Mary's book was published, would have been influenced by her writing rather than - at that time - the other way round.

'Silas Marner' is a good read - a fairy story really, with a backdrop of social and political upheavals.

Now back to some ot the other books we've read in the book group. There was 'The Catcher in the Rye' by J.D. Salinger. A short book but with plenty of impact, about a 16 year old New Yorker boy, going through changes with plenty on his mind ... and he tells you about it. There are some things he repeats a lot, such as people being 'phony', things 'killing him', and things 'depressing' him ... and this is where the book group comes into its own - when we meet we have plenty to agree on, plenty to disagree on, and particularly where we hear a different point of view of what we have just read, and it can be a fresh eye-opener of a view. With 'Catcher' I didn't think the boy, Holden, was depressed despite his frequent use of the word. More, it was just an expression - here a youthful expression of a teenager. But in the end he gets sick, and presumably in a mental hospital, before he resumes his studies. So, maybe I concede that he meant 'depressed' in its straight way, but maybe I don't completely as I see the book and what he says in a very jaunty, upbeat way! And ... 'killing him' just meant that he found things a laugh - things creased him up ... I'm confident of that interpretation!

'The Bell' by Iris Murdoch was excellent. There was a wonderful bit on a train down from London, travelling towards the community where she was going to stay, and the dramas going on down at that community.

Then there was 'A Tale of Two Cities' by Charles Dickens, a novel where the action takes place in and between London and Paris - in Paris, where the Revolution is taking place and the characters are sucked into the turmoils of that.

There were books I didn't read, or started to and then stopped. One of these was 'A Thousand Splendid Suns' by Khaled Hosseini (who wrote 'The Kite Runner'). I read the first, very small chapter, and couldn't get into it. Catie encouraged me to read more, and I read a couple more of his small chapters, but it was hopeless - I couldn't get involved. Wilkie Collin's 'The Woman in White', which many believe to be a masterpiece, I just didn't have the energy for, at the time.

Our son, Joe, recommended 'The War of Don Emmanuel's Nether Parts' by Louis de Bernieres. He's the author of 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin'. With a title like 'The War of ...' I didn't know what to expect! - but I found this story totally absorbing. Laughed a lot at first, and then found that for a whole chapter I had no reason to laugh, and I was well into the 'realism' of the 'magic realism' genre, that I had stumbled upon. There were only four of us, that day, at the book club meeting, and we were split right down the middle in our opinion of the book. I though it was great.

So, I've done my unravelling down in Raveloe ... and London and Paris, New York, Florida, South America and so on, and maybe fairly soon we'll be down in Dorset with our local boy, Thomas Hardy, but the nearest I've ever got to that so far, is seeing the films of 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles' and 'Far from the Madding Crowd' and reading the fictional names of the places round here, that appeared in his books. Dorchester became 'Casterbridge', and I live in 'Shottesford Forum', rather than Blandford Forum, according to Thomas Hardy's novels.

Thanks to Kevin - not from our book group, but from way back - for recommending I read 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' by Tom Wolfe. I really enjoyed reading that at the time, and I hope a better film is made of it than the one out there, or maybe it would be more sensible just to read it again!