Cannonball Read 3 - Review #15 - The Group by Mary McCarthy

I'm fascinated with women's issues and social history, and especially the plight of the woman in less modern times, because the social constructs of the American woman's role is so complex. The Group is a novel that follows eight Vassar graduates from the class of 1933 and follows them through their lives in New York City from two weeks after their graduation to the funeral of one of their members many years later. The novel isn't in a typical narrative format, rather it kind of disjointedly focuses on each member, some more than others, and shows how they stay in each others lives or drift away over the years. Within the fictional narrative, we also get a really close-up look at the way women lived then, from sexual politics to marriage and their role in the working world. In some ways, their stories are timeless and resonate deeply with me as someone only two years out of college, stumbling around pretending I'm a grown-up when really I'm terrified and completely unsure of where my life is going. Some of these women put on brave faces, thinking they have it all figured out, and they get into marriages that destroy them, involve themselves in political movements they hardly understand, and struggle to maintain friendships with people they only think that they know all the way. It also explores the delicate dynamics of the friendship within a group of women, the power plays, the insecurities and the real warmth that all come into play in such a group. No matter how they change or where they go, in the end, they are always brought together because they are a part of The Group.

Cannonball Read 3 Review #14 - The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

Kazuo Ishiguro is a Japanese-English writer who is somehow able to completely capture the restrained, reserved English personality while writing complex and developed characters who go through trying ordeals. In Never Let Me Go, the novel was centered around three friends who love and hurt each other while on growing up and then on the verge of their deaths. He expresses their pain, confusion and passion while never being melodramatic or amateur. In The Remains of the Day, the narrator is a proper English butler who has worked most of his life in a great English house for Lord Darlington. Not only is Stevens a stiff-upper-lip Brit, but he is a butler who takes his job very seriously and dedicates his life to serving his master. So when I say that he is restrained, I mean he is really restrained. Yet his story, told in diary form, is so clear and thoughtful and coherent that you don't feel a disconnect. Just because he doesn't flail around or cry out about his feelings doesn't mean we don't feel his frustration at his weaknesses, befuddlement over the housekeeper's mood swings and sadness over the decline of his beloved Lord Darlington. In the present day, it is the 1950s and Stevens works for an American man who has bought the Darlington manor after the lord's death. Stevens sets off on a brief road trip to meet with Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper of the home, and during his trip he thinks back to the days working for Lord Darlington, the height of his career in the years leading up to the second World War. Through Stevens reflections, we explore the ideas of what it means to have dignity, the social constraints of English society, and the complicated relationships in his life, both personal and professional. Stevens is trained to always do the right thing, to be loyal and gentlemanly, and it is interesting to see how he struggles to do his best while others around him falter or try to pull him down. Ishiguro's language in the book, through Stevens narrative, is straightforward and sparse, fully illuminating his narrator as a character. I can't wait to see the film, as Stevens is played by Anthony Hopkins and Miss Kenton is played by Emma Thompson. You can't really get much better than that.

Cannonball Read 3 Review #13 - The Secret History by Donna Tartt

The Secret History is a unique novel, a sort of calm and detached telling of a group of strange college students to do evil things. The story is narrated by Richard, a transfer to the fictional Hampden College in Vermont. He itches to get away from his depressing town of Plano, California and get away from his cold parents, so he heads to Hampden, a small liberal arts college in a small Vermont town. He immediately notices a small, close-knit group of students who study Greek and the classics with a strange professor, Julian, who has no small amount of influence on his students. Richard manages to ingratiate himself to Julian and the others, and is allowed in the small, six-person program. He becomes a part of this eccentric group of students and is involved in the murder of their friend, Bunny, which I'm not spoiling, as he mentions it in the first page of the novel. The novel is split into two books, and we know going into it that the group murders Bunny, so the first half is the events that lead up to the murder, and the second half is what happens to the group in the aftermath of their crime.

The novel is an interesting one, as it is not in the form of a typical murder mystery. As I mentioned, we know up front that the group kills their friend Bunny, so the only suspense is wondering why it happens and what happens to everyone afterwards. Though it is never specifically stated, the novel takes place in the 1980s, but the students at the center of the novel have this strange, old-world vibe, and this cold, disaffected air so that the reader is never comfortable with them and never connects with their motivations. It's a picture of how cool and capable evil can be, how seductive and calculating. Only in the aftermath of this horrible act does the reader, and our narrator, really start to understand the scope of what happened and become horrified with how we were lead astray. It was an unexpected book, and I think Donna Tartt is a wonderfully capable storyteller. I'm excited to talk about it with my book club.