A letter to William Makepeace Thackeray:

Dear Sir,

I just finished what is considered your masterpiece, Vanity Fair, and I have a few comments. First: it’s a great story. Really. I enjoyed your portrayal of Becky Sharp (though perhaps I wasn’t supposed to like her?); she was a very intriguing character throughout most of the book. I loved Major Dobbin, but then who wouldn’t love his devotion to Amelia. And I even liked Amelia, though there were times when she came off as a sniveling and annoying wimp. I enjoyed the statire on high society and those who aim for it. there were even parts that made me laugh out loud.

However, there was just too much of it. I know, it’s a product of the times you wrote in: the book was serialized in the papers, you were a contemporary of Dickens. Whatever. There is still way too much book here. Especially for the story. But then, I do have to admit, I feel the same way about many of your contemporary authors. Many of them, like Dickens, have great stories to tell that get bogged down in the sheer amount of words they take to tell them. And, sir, you fall vicitm to that flaw. Perhaps it was because there was a significant lack of decent editors around to tell you that if you tighten your story, it will have greater impact in the end. I skipped whole chapters whithout ever losing the main gist of the story.

Oh, one other thing: you really needed to work on the ending more. Yay for Dobbin and Amelia. But to just drop Becky like that? She deserved something grander, something more, well, scandalous to end the book. To just have her fade is really quite pathetic. But then, maybe that was your point.

Sincerely,
Melissa

The cover of this book by Suzanne Wolfe has this quote: “An imaginative vision akin to that of Dante.” The person who said that must have a very low opinion of Dante. Because the imaginative vision of this book was nonexistent. It’s about art renovation and a woman healing from her horrible past, both of which could have been interesting in the right hands. In this book, they both were terrible cliches. I never cared that the main character was raped, or had a miscarriage or even finds healing in the arms of her Italian lover. The art restoration was slightly better, but so infrequent that by the end I couldn’t care less that they discovered not a lost masterpiece but a new work of art by an obscure woman painter. Whoopee.

Thankfully it was short, or I’d really be grumpy about the time spent. (Then again, I might have bailed before the end….)

I loved this movie. We watched it a while back with our girls, and just enjoyed it thoroughly. It’s a great story about a girl wanting her grandfather’s love, and how she comes to earn that love and how he comes to realize her worth. And she learns to be a Maori chief and ride a whale (the girls liked that part). See it.

As a result, I was really excited to read the book by Witi Ihimaera. And, on it’s own terms, it’s a good book. I enjoyed learning the Maori legends, I enjoyed the language of the book. But, I had a few quibbles. The book’s point of view is from the girl’s — Kahu in the book, Paikea in the movie — uncle, which didn’t sit well with me. Especially if it’s a story about a girl who can talk to whales. The girl is age 2 through 8 in the book, too, and comes across as more of a mythic character, rather than a pro-active one. I think the point of the book was to focus on the Maori creation legend and to give the book a mythic quality. And I think Ihimaera succeeded at that.

But I think that by refocusing the story to the girl’s point of view, making her older, and making her more proactive rather than reactive the movie told a better story. It’s not often that I think a movie is better than the book, but in this case, it is. One last quibble, though this is with the library: they had this book in the juvenile fiction (ages 8-12) section. It’s not a juvenile fiction book. Not because of content or themes, but because of presentation. I’m not sure my almost 9-year-old would enjoy this very much.

All that said, I still think I’d like to give Ihimaera another try.

After reading Julie’s review of Loitering With Intent, I was really quite intrigued to read a Muriel Sparks book. Unfortunately, being in a small town, the library didn’t have Loitering, so I was on my own to choose which one of the three books the library did have would be a good read. I did reasonably well. Aiding and Abetting didn’t quite live up to the book jacket description; I didn’t find it either “hilarious” or a “witty jab at the upper class”. It was an intriguing, though slightly werid, story though. It’s based on the case of Earl Lucan from 1974. I guess he murdered his children’s nanny, hoping to get his wife, and then has been in hiding for 30 years. Okay. Sparks took off on that and went into motives and means of support for his exile. But there were a couple of odd sub-plots that just didn’t quite fit. What on earth did the story of the stigmata fraud/psychiatrist have to do with anything? Or the whole sub story of Lucan’s old friend and the daugher of another friend going after Lucan to hunt him down? Didn’t get it. In short, I finished the book, but I don’t think I enjoyed it. Next time, I’ll just stick to the book recommended.

Last of the backlog. I promise.

Watch with me: and Six other stories of the yet-remembered Ptolemy Proudfoot and his wife, Miss Minnie, nee Quinch, Wendell Berry
Berry is usually known for his essays on agriculture, environment and society (Sex, Economy, Freedom and Community is an excellent book, for example). But, he also writes fiction. This is a fun little book about community and marriage. I know I’ve read The Memory of Old Jack, too, but I don’t remember much about that one.

The Count of Monte Christo, Alexander Dumas
Adventure! Romance! Revenge! It’s Huge! Heard the movie sucked, though.

The Bean Trees, Barbara Kingsolver
She’s a good writer, and this was an interesting story.

The Lonesome Gods, Louis L’Amour
I was going to put this on my “all time favorites” list until the last few chapters. I was really enjoying the story about a boy’s growing up, learning, and dealing with hatred and revenge (and rising above it). That is, until the book dissolved into a bloody hunt and shootout where all the “bad guys” die. It would have been better had it not become so violent. (My father-in-law took issue with my objections, commenting, “How on earth could it have ended any other way?!”)

A Sudden, Fearful Death, Anne Perry
A good, well-told mystery set in the 1800s

The Princess, Lori Wick
I’d never read something so obviously “Christian fiction”. It was interesting. A romance – an arranged marriage and the couple working to learn to love each other – in which everyone in the book is either
praying, talking about praying for people, reading scriptures or going to church. In the end, though, the book’s just okay.

For lack of a better title…

The House on Mango Street, Sandra Cisneros
An interesting little book. I liked it, though I probably didn’t understand it like the author probably meant it to be understood.

Swift as Desire, Laura Esquivel
An attempt to read Latino fiction… it was pretty good. A bit much sex for my taste, but I think in the end the story won me over.

The Chosen and The Promise, Chaim Potok
I liked both books, though I liked The Chosen better. An interesting look at Hasidic Judaism and its relationship to other Jewish factions and the rest of the world. The Asher Lev books are also excellent books by Potok. I have also read The Books of Lights, In the Beginning, Davida’s Harp and I am the Clay, but not for a very long time. So I don’t remember what I thought of them.

Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, Amy Tan
I generally like Amy Tan, but her books are just different versions of the same story. It gets old after a while. Joy Luck Club is a good movie, though.

The Hundred Secret Senses, Amy Tan
My favorite Amy Tan book, mostly because it’s not about a Chinese-American daughter coming to terms with her Chinese immigrant mother. It’s a decent story of reconciliation, with a bit of ghost story thrown in.