Sunday, January 30, 2011

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #2 - Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov

I've said it before, but Lolita is one of my all-time favorite novels. I've heard people say that it's the kind of book English majors love, which, you've got me. I like it because Nabokov can really, REALLY write, and he also makes a disgusting pedophile and sociopath into a sad, almost sympathetic character. That is some skill. So I decided to try another of his novels, and I picked up Pale Fire. The premise interested me. It starts off with a 999 poem in four cantos by the fictional poet John Shade, shortly after his death. Then the rest of the book is a commentary written by his friend and neighbor, Dr. Charles Kinbote. I mean, you can't say the idea isn't original. Nabokov wrote a 999-line autobiographical poem of a fictional man, and then wrote another 230 pages or so of commentary from the perspective of a truly weird and creepy admirer. However, Kinbote, the man writing about the poem, is a weird duck. He spends most of the time commenting not on John Shade's poem about his life, but on three things: the story of the exiled King of Zembla, (the King of where? Exactly.), the story of the King's hired assassin, and then Kinbote's own perspective on his friendship with the poet John Shade. It's disjointed and weird, and although the book only clocks in at 301 pages, it took me a damn long time to get through. From the light research I did on its critical reception, I have gathered that it was met with mixed reviews. I certainly applaud Nabokov's creativity and effort, however it's a very strange and sometimes frustrating read. But the narrator is, in my opinion, most likely a lunatic, so perhaps that was Nabokov's plan after all. I'm going to read Nabokov's novel Ada at some point, so hopefully that will be more on the side of Lolita than Pale Fire.

Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Cannonball Read 3 - Review #1 - The Time of the Hero by Mario Vargas Llosa

Yikes, my first CBR review ever! Forgive me. I had to read this book for my January book club meeting. It was suggested by our newest member, who is a college history professor, so even though it wasn't a book I would have ever picked up myself, I'm glad I got the chance to read it. The subject matter is all quite foreign to me, which is always a fun challenge, but it made getting into the novel a slower process. It is a novel that takes place at the real Leoncio Prado Military Academy in Peru, and it centers around a group of teenaged boys who are all in the same section and year at the school. And it's a terrifying world to observe. I'd say the book is half Lord of the Flies and half my worst nightmare. Although they live in a military academy, their behavior is largely unchecked, and there is hazing, boozing, and bestiality galore.

There are the two moral centers of the novel, Ricardo "The Slave" Arana, and Alberto "The Poet" Fernandez. The Slave is meek, bullied mercilessly by everyone at the academy. He is eventually befriended by The Poet, who uses his wit to stand up to bullies and gains their favor by writing erotic stories for them. It's a bleak life in the academy. Then there is The Circle, a group of four boys, led by "The Jaguar," an angry, revenge-obsessed young man who runs things and leads the others using fear. The plot is kicked off with The Circle stealing a Chemistry exam, and then it ripples into something that affects our main characters in huge ways. The book flips back and forth from the plot in the present day academy to the backstories of three of the main characters' paths to the school.

Ultimately, the book deals with truth vs. perception, the true nature of a person, and how in our imperfect world, justice doesn't always come to pass. Vargas Llosa's writing style in the novel flips around from standard prose and dialogue to confusing, claustrophobic, formless pieces of speech and thought, putting the reader in the middle of a complex and chaotic world of angry teenaged boys. It was a fascinating look into very foreign subject matter to this particular obedient English major.