April and Frank Wheeler are an average American couple. They are living the ‘American Dream’, with a suburban house, two children, Frank in a solid, dependable and untaxing job, and April keeping house and looking after the kids. The neighbourhood is an average suburban neighbourhood where everyone is polite and no-one breaks rank from the unspoken behavioural norms.

But April and Frank are dissatisfied, and the reason, as far as I could tell, was they had both been living a lie from the day they had met. What struck me about the story was how Yates managed to paint such a clear and realistic picture of two people who were so completely artificial and caught up in the game they were playing that it was a wonder they hadn’t crumbled sooner.

This is a story of arguments, hatred, disappointment and entrapment – both of the characters suffered these things and blamed the other. What I found interesting were the contrasts. Mr and Mrs Givings were at one end of the artificiality scale. Mrs Givings would never admit to being dissatisfied, would never want anything else, and was so deliriously happy and positive all the time (between gossiping and judging others) that it was impossible to know who she actually was. On the other end of the scale was their son, John Givings who was the only person in the entire book who was ‘genuine’, saying it how he saw it and recognising other people’s unhappiness stripped bare. However John was confined to a mental asylum. I couldn’t help but think that of all of the characters in the book, he was the one least deserving of that – but then again, he didn’t fit in to the fiction that everyone else lived by.

In the middle were Frank and April, and the tension that came from their feeling of disempowerment and entrapment was to spell their downfall. This is an incredibly tragic story, and the author has succeeded in making you feel the venom of the arguments, making you feel the blame and hopelessness of both, and putting you in a position where you can’t side with one or the other – they are simply both to blame.

Rating: 8/10
ISBN: 0099518627
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 24 October 2009
Pages: 352

La Symphonie Pastorale was written in 1919. The copy that I own also contained a second story, Isabelle which complemented the original story perfectly. Both were suffused with longing, loss and tragic disappointment but both were beautifully written (and translated) despite the darkness of their themes.

The title story is about a pastor who, upon attending the bedside of a dying woman, discovers her blind daughter – illiterate, unsocialised and terrified cowering nearby. He brings the girl home, to the resentment of his wife, and proceeds to care for her, educate her and bring her up surrounded by his cocoon of moral teachings and beliefs. Gertrude, despite her blindness, learns to ’see’ through his teaching and particularly through her introduction to music. Time passes, the pastor’s wife grows ever more angry, and slowly but surely, the feelings of the pastor shift from their paternal beginnings.

The tragedy occurs when Gertrude is finally given back her sight through an operation and discovers that the world isn’t as beautiful as she had imagined, and also discovers the feelings of the pastor towards her (unreciprocated) and the loss of the man she had loved – Jacques, the pastor’s son, who had been sent away by his father so he didn’t have to share Gertrude’s affection. Whether romantic affectation or not, there was really no other ending to this story than the one posited – the girl commits suicide, leaving everyone lost, broken and irrepairably betrayed.

Isabelle, written some years before La Symphonie Pastorale also tells the story of longing and disappointment when that longing is finally fulfilled. In this story, the protagonist falls in love with a picture of an absent daughter in a house in which he is staying. His longing for her grows and grows until he finally meets her, and realises that she is human, imperfect and less than the ideal he had built of her. In some ways I found this story even more tragic than the first – not because of the loss felt by the young man but because the object of his affection was never ever going to live up to his ideal. In such a situation, there is only ever going to be unhappiness.

Both stories exquisitely examined human emotion and the dire trouble humans find themselves in when the emotions of two people are not parallel. All of Gide’s characters were in this uncomfortable place – whether it was the pastor’s love, Jacques longing or the pastor’s wife’s sense of rejection. The author paints a cruel world where each person is separate from all others, and no matter how hard they wish or try, they cannot form a connection. And the fault for this is not with the other person – it is with their own emotions, selfishness and desires. 

Rating: 8/10
Publisher: Penguin Books
Year: 1963
Date Finished:  March 2009
Pages: 170

The funeral business in Hollywood was cut throat in the early 1950s. Bigger, better, more glamorous – for a funeral home to really reach the pinnacle, it had to try and compete with Whispering Glades, which was truly the biggest, best and most glamorous funeral home in the whole of Hollywood.

Dennis Barlow is an English rogue, trapped in the artificiality of expatriate Hollywood where he must keep up appearances for both the British and the Americans or risk being ejected from the country. When his friend and script writer, Sir Francis, commits suicide after being pushed aside at the studio he had spent most of his life writing for, Dennis commits a crime so heinous that the ex-pat community can barely believe it. He takes a job in the Happy Havens Pet Funeral Home.

Through the arrangements for Sir Francis’ funeral, Dennis meets the ethereal Aimee Thanatogenos – a beauty consultant for the dead. Aimee is working for the famous Mr Joyboy – an embalmer who everyone looks up to and everyone adores. Thus begins a rather gruesome love triangle between Dennis and Aimee and Aimee and Mr Joyboy which ends in bizarre, almost surreal tragedy.

This is a scathing satire, highlighting the cultural clash between the British and the Americans as well as the eccentricities shown by people with money. It is grotesque and tasteless but written with such wit and humour, that you have to keep turning the page. It was clear that Waugh was not a lover of the culture within which he had to survive when he wrote this (he was in Southern California), so he chose to write a cutting comedy exposing the ridiculousness of Hollywood and the affectations which characterise it.

He created a cast of characters, all of whom were stupid and quite repulsive, but none of whom you could actually hate. All of the characters were painted perfectly for the satirical tone of the novel. It was a ridiculous world, peopled by even more ridiculous characters.

It is the first Evelyn Waugh novel I have read and I could see the author’s mastery (and bitterness) within this novella. As one of his lesser known works, it is still fantastic. If you have stopped at Brideshead Revisited it is worth having another try.

Rating: 7/10
Publisher: Penguin
Year: 1948
Date Finished: 8 January 2009
Pages: 127

Hands up all those people who didn’t study Heart of Darkness at school? Not many of you? OK, those of you who did, hands up those who can’t remember much about it. I know my hand is up, which is why I went back to read it again after I finished Blood River by Tim Butcher a few weeks back. The edition I read was also one which contained the short story Youth as well as an introduction by Tim Butcher himself.

The story is grim, as the title suggests. The plot is relatively simple. Staged as a story within a story, Marlow (the narrator) tells his listeners about a time in his life when he took a job in what was then Belgian controlled Congo. Although the country and the river name is never mentioned directly, it is quite clear that Marlow arrives in an alien, jungle covered country, where whites cling tenuously to their control through violence and repression. Marlow’s task is to take a rusty steamer up the Congo River to rescue a mysterious man named Kurtz. Kurtz becomes the character which dominates this book, even though he is actually only in the story for a matter of pages. However, Kurtz embodies the most powerful messages.

The story explores the contrast between darkness and light, and it has a heavy atmosphere of unhappiness and oppression throughout. Kurtz’s presence forces the readers and characters to question where civilization ends and where depravity begins, or if indeed there is any difference. Judging by the behaviour of the colonials, one would think that they were one and the same thing when looking at it with 21st century eyes. I got the sense that Marlow felt that way too.

The portrayal of women in the story was of its time – their role was either ornamental or one-dimensionally emotional, without the brains or understanding of what amounted to male business. And yet the male business of domination, colonialism and plundering resulted in death and an almost absurd striving for power and money which, when looked at rationally, was completely pointless. Of course, reading this after being so moved by Tim Butcher’s realistic account of Belgian colonialism and the reprecussions which are still echoing through the region today, I was bound to approach the book with cynicism.

Like many ‘classics’, the prose can be dense at times and the message can be hidden beneath words and sentences. However, this density was evocative of the jungle, and so perhaps quite appropriate.

It was pleasant reading Youth after finishing the main novella. It is a story with similarities but exploring very different themes – themes of age and idealism, adventure and misfortune. It was a far easier read, and provided a nice antidote to the oppression of the previous story.

It’s short enough to read again, but with several other excellent accounts of the state of the Congo around, I would recommend reading in context with some of these other sources.

Rating: 6/10
ISBN: 0099511541
Publisher: Vintage Classics
Year: 2007
Date Finished: 4 November 2008
Pages: 176

Victorian humour? Is it possible? I certainly wasn’t expecting it, but Jerome K. Jerome proved in Three Men in a Boat that it was indeed possible. Despite my normal aversion to ‘funny books’ (in particular modern funny books) there were moments I actually laughed out loud whilst reading this book. It was ‘Murphy’s Law’ in prose, with delightful observations on the world which haven’t lost their relevance despite more than a century passing since the book was first published.

Jerome set out to write a river guide which soon turned into a charming story about the boating antics of the working and lower middle classes in London. The three men are himself and two of his friends as well as a fox terrier, Montmorency, to whom Jerome gives a wry humour and a personality which perfectly suits the group. After spending an evening contemplating their respective illnesses (none of which they had of course), the three friends decided to take two weeks in a boat along the Thames, with idyllic ideas of pleasure, freedom and nature. Thus decided, the journey begins…

This book isn’t fantastic because of its plot – in fact the plot is thin at the best of times. It is fantastic because of the observations made by J and his friends whilst they travel. Whether it was the fun of the three trying (and failing) to open a tin of pineapple chunks, or the observations that because Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn courted in several places, it must have been intenseley frustrating for everyone at the time because every single place they went they would have run into the two wayward lovers, or the delicious description of how they loved to hold up the steam launches by pretending they couldn’t hear them, until they were being towed by a steam launch and then they felt justified in cursing all of the selfish boaters who held up the steam launches by pretending they couldn’t bhear them, this book was constant amusement. Of course, the trip wasn’t as idyllic as they wanted, but that never seemed to dampen the spirits of the main characters. In that respect, they were truly delightful.

Three Men in a Boat paints a lovely picture of the way leisure time was spent during the 1880s. Despite the fact that leisure time was earnt through long hours and hard work, it was used as a way to transcend class and, just for a few short hours, pretend that they were men of leisure with all the time on their hands and the beauty and history of the river in their grasp. In contrast to classics such as Dickens, which paint a miserable picture of the poorer classes of London, Jerome chooses to show them up as happy, carefree and full of humour. It was a lovely contrast.

Rating: 8/10
ISBN: 978-0-14-144121-4
Publisher: Penguin (Classics)
Year: 1889
Date Finished: 16 April 2008
Pages: 178

A Farewell to Arms is an unusual book. The storyline is simple enough, but the style of writing took some time getting used to. This is the first Hemingway novel I had ever read so I wasn’t prepared for it, but after reading the introduction in the edition which I own, the word ‘detachment’ stood out to me. The story began and I felt like I was outside looking in. Despite being written in the first person, you never feel like you have got into the mind of the protagonist. There is a wall there between his feelings and you as a reader which never really comes down even as the story turns into tragedy.

Because of this, I found it one of the strangest love stories I had ever read. The love between Frederic Henry and Catherine Barkley plays out in an almost childlike way. This impression was heightened by the continual repetition in the dialogue, or the descent of the dialogue into a long rambling paragraph of ‘he said’, ‘I said’ not unlike a child’s journal. It was when I switched from seeing the book as a detached narrative and began seeing it as a story from the heart of a child, that it really began to move me.

Despite their trials, the relationship between Catherine and Frederic is steeped with innocence. The war goes on, but neither character is ever truly a part of it. What they are part of is a strange world filled with the mystery of an overwhelming love for one another, and the war does little more than get in the way of that. Despite danger and risk, both characters continue to talk about the ‘fine time’ they are having or the ‘grand adventure’ that it all is. Nothing sullied can touch them – neither cruelty, injustice, war or death. Because of this, Hemingway’s conclusion is all the more tragic because

[The world] kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry

I enjoyed viewing World War I from a different angle again – this time the battle in Italy against the Austrians which tends not to be the focus of most WWI novels. Henry’s experience during the retreat is poignant – you so want him to escape and return to Catherine. But Hemingway’s intention is not to build anticipation or fear that he won’t. This part of the story simply serves to place a surmountable barrier in the way of Catherine’s and Frederic’s love which makes their reunion all the more wonderful.

There was little true character development of any but the main characters, and even those two were not developed deeply. I get the sense though that characterisation was not his priority. Because this story is semi autobiographical, I get the sense that Hemingway simply needed to ‘get it out’ and in doing so, contemplate his experience, his loss and mortality. In such an exercise, the characters were incidental.

Rating: 8/10
ISSN: 1753-3120
Publisher: Vintage (promotional copy from Paperview UK Ltd)
Year: 2005
Date Finished: 20 March 2008
Pages: 252
Challenges: 4 of category 7: Books with World War I as the theme for the 888 Challenge