Sunday, October 12, 2008
Definitely not Enid Blyton
Recently I've seriously considered dropping this blog because, as you may have noticed, I find it difficult to post in a timely fashion! Occasionally it's a lack of anything to say that's Blyton-related, or even book-related, but mainly it's because of time constraints. Still, here we are, and this time I thought I'd mention a few books I've read lately — vaguely on topic, perhaps?
I've read a number of books recently, some of them actually written for adults! I read Cormac McCarthy's The Road, not even realizing until I was partway through that it's about to hit the movie theaters. The story is about a father (played by Viggo Mortensen in the movie) traveling north with his son in a post-apocalyptic U.S. wasteland. A very dark book, and we never even learn the main character's name because, frankly, it's just not important. The story is simply about a desperate father and his son getting from A to B, and it's definitely NOT for kids as some scenes are brutal. What's really horrible is that you know this is how low humans could stoop.
The author uses an interesting writing style. There's not a great deal of dialogue, and what little there is comes across in a simple narrative form that uses no quote marks. The dialogue is just thrown in as if the author is saying, "look, this is what they said, the punctuation isn't important." In fact, punctuation in general is sparse. This kind of writing would normally be laughed at, but here it is, a Pulitzer Prize winner. Just goes to show that you can get away with anything when you have a riveting plot... although, as I said above, there isn't much of a plot either! So what makes this book so darn good? I don't know, but it is. I have high hopes for the movie.
I read Laura Whitcomb's A Certain Slant of Light, about a 130-year-old ghost named Helen, who remembers nothing of her previous life on Earth and spends her time haunting her current human host, a school teacher. Actually "haunting" is too strong a word, for the teacher doesn't even know she's present. She has a very subtle influence on him as he goes about his life, but in a way he can't quite fathom. Helen spends her "life" looking over the teacher's shoulder, reading his books and getting annoyed when he turns the page too fast, and helping him to write his own book by "whispering words in his ear"... and looking the other way when the teacher is in the bathroom!
Then along comes a schoolboy who can actually see Helen! This boy had, a week or so earlier, overdosed on drugs, and now his spirit has left. The empty body was just begging to be taken over by a disembodied ghost, and this ghost happened to be James, an intelligent man who, now in control of a new young body, can touch and feel for the first time in years! And he can see other ghosts. It's only a matter of time before James and Helen fall in love... but how can such a relationship last when only one of them is in a physical body? So the quest begins for Helen to find an empty body for herself...
The book is supposedly for young adults, but it's pretty mature stuff! I would definitely recommend it as an intriguing ghost-romance type. Oddly, the idea of a ghost like Helen is not scary or even creepy in the slightest; what's scary and creepy is the idea of a family being so over-the-top religious that they stifle their daughter to the point that her spirit simply "leaves," thus leaving another empty body walking about. This is the body that Helen moves into, so she can be with her fellow body-snatching ghost. Is this stealing? Maybe... but the alternative is a dark, sinister presence taking up residence instead of a nice, caring ghost like Helen.
The title comes from one of Emily Dickinson's poems, who would have been relatively new on the scene back in Helen's time on Earth. I hate to admit that this is a romance novel, but it kind of is. But it's supernatural enough to class it as a ghost book rather than a romance! Which reminds me that one of my all-time favorites is another romance with fantasy elements...
From James and Helen to Henry and Clare, another perfect couple overcoming the odds, Audrey Niffenegger's The Time Traveler's Wife is also a romance novel — but the poor guy's genetic disorder (named by a doctor as "Chrono Displacement") allows me to say it's a book about time travel rather than a romance. How does a man and woman cope when the poor guy inadvertently "leaps" back in time without warning? His life is backward compared to his wife's; she meets him when she's a young girl and he's a middle-aged man jumping back in time, and as the story progresses and she gets older, she learns that she's going to marry this man. Then, in her present, she meets him — and he doesn't know her. Yet.
I read this one a year or so ago, and it's fantastic. The plot sounds confusing, and at first you think you're never going to keep up with the backwards/forwards timelines. But somehow it all becomes very clear, and the ending is — well, I'd better not spoil it. This book is due out as a movie around Christmas this year, with Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams. Can't wait for that one!
Somewhat lighter in tone, but still fairly dark (no pun intended) is The City of Ember by Jeanne Duprau — which, again, I'm reading in advance of the movie. This one hit the screens last Friday. It's for young adults, but it's a page-turner for old adults like me too. I went ahead and bought the hardback version, and, having enjoyed it immensely, have ordered the next three books in the series.
This reminds me a little of This Time of Darkness by H. M. Hoover, or perhaps The Giver by Lois Lowry. All three are about post-apocalyptic worlds (although exactly what kind we're never told). All three involve a "community" of people who have never seen the world we know, but have grown up in an artificial and pretty dismal existence created by scientists who knew disaster was approaching all those hundreds of years before and took steps to prevent the extinction of the human race. These are stories of human survival — people packed into safe havens just before the bombs landed, and left to fend for themselves. Like This Time of Darkness, The City of Ember is about finding a way out of these worsening conditions.
Oddly enough, my own novel, Island of Fog (still in progress but very nearly finished now) deals with a similar theme! Coincidence?
As for the movie version of The City of Ember, I'm not sure I like the idea of Bill Murray playing the part of the Mayor; I like Bill Murray but he tends to send things up a little. I don't picture the Mayor like him at all. I think I picture the Mayor more like Richard Griffiths, who played Uncle Vernon in the Harry Potter movies. But I think the young actors playing the main characters, Lina and Doon, look the part. Looking forward to seeing it soon!
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Tom B -- I've not posted your note just yet, but will later! Please email me privately and I'll explain why. :-)
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