I Capture the Castle

Sometimes I pick a book to write about for the sheer pleasure of reliving the fun I had reading it - this is one of those! This means that those of you who enjoy positive reviews because of the warm and fuzzy feeling generated by someone saying nice things about a book you like will enjoy it, while those of you who prefer the bitchy thrill of a mean review a) should be ashamed of yourself and b) might want to stop reading now.

Before I start the review proper, I should apologise for the recent sporadic service - various circumstances have left me with rather less free time than I had formerly, so I will now be updating this twice a week, not the three times you will all have come to expect and, I tell myself, eagerly anticipate.

Now, on to the novel! Clearly, I am a fan. Partly, I just like Dodie Smith. I like the way she writes, and really enjoyed all other novels of hers I have read (which, for those of you who haven't heard of her, include 'A Hundred and One Dalmatians'. Which is brilliant). Partly, I think it is a lovely novel.

The characters are well-drawn and very real, though Rose does annoy me a bit. Cassandra, however, is the kind of girl one could easily be friends with and Topaz, while nuts, is warm and loving. The plot is nothing out of the ordinary - the magic for me is all in the writing and characterisation.

The only point of disagreement I have ever come across is about the ending. I happen to love the bittersweet nature of it - it's true to life without being "gritty realism" (in other words unpleasant and depressing work that people only read so they can say they've read it). However, if you're absolutely committed to a definite conclusion, I can see that this wouldn't appeal to you.

'I Capture the Castle' has the other bonus that it is one of very few novels whose film adaptation I truly enjoyed. Anyone who knows me will have heard me complain ad nauseam about the terribleness of various movie adaptations, so you will appreciate how rare this is - if you haven't seen it, I can heartily recommend it. But read the book first.

The Chocolate War

I read this one some time ago, so you'll have to forgive me if I'm a little hazy on the details... What I do remember quite clearly is the emotional reaction I had to it, which is the reason I picked it. At first blush, 'The Chocolate War' seems like it's going to be a nice, standard triumph-against-adversity type of story. After all, anything with the word "chocolate" in the title has to be nice, right?

You can see where this is going, can't you? Yup, you guessed it! 'The Chocolate War' is actually a nice, standard tri- no, I'm kidding, it's horrible. I'm not going to reveal the ending to you, but it is depressing. At least I thought so. I'll accept that I may be more easily depressed than most people, but not until you've read the novel and can honestly say you didn't find it depressing.

In it, we follow the path of one student as he attempts to stand up to the secret society that effectively governs his school. We then watch as they express their disapproval in varied ways - some fairly standard school-bully-material, others less so.

The story is powerful and well-written, with pretty clear motivation for all of the characters. That is not my problem with it. My problem with this novel is twofold. Firstly, it leads you to believe that it will be a completely different kind of novel, making the shock that much worse when it reaches you.

My second problem is entirely personal, and is the same as the problem I had with 'Lord of the Flies' - I happen to find children acting in this brutal fashion incredibly disturbing. If they were adults, it wouldn't disturb me half as much. I'm sure it's unrealistic of me, but if there are schoolboys like Archie Costello or Emile Janza out there, I don't want to know about it.

Helen

This is my first post-degree summer, so I've been looking for new and different authors who I think might interest me. In this spirit, I picked a Maria Edgeworth (well, partly that and partly because it was on one of those Waterstone's stands...), thinking to myself "If Jane Austen liked it, it can't be bad".

And it isn't. Or at least, not really. It's well-written and reasonably compelling, leaving me with a strong desire to keep reading every time I put it down. I'm just not sure that that's enough. I found that Edgeworth's strong influence on Austen's writing style was evident, making the experience of reading the novel slightly eerie.

Essentially, my problem with 'Helen' was that it had all of the outdated attitudes and excessive morality of Austen's novels, but none of the humour. Helen herself is just a bit wet - she actually reminded me very strongly of Fanny from 'Mansfield Park' - and not particularly interesting.

Cecilia is a prize (excuse the language) bitch. She willingly betrays her best friend to save herself and doesn't think twice about it until it affects her directly. Lady Davenport, the only truly interesting woman in the novel (Miss Clarendon is offensively rude) proves to be rather pathetic, spoiling the end of the novel for me.

The moral of the story seemed to be "Don't lie, it's bad", which I felt could easily have been expressed in a paragraph, and, to be honest, I'm not sure there was anything else going on. Interesting reading certainly, but it did leave me feeling that Austen's taste didn't match her abilities.

Lolita

So, after spending all of my review of 'Daddy-Long-Legs' bitching about people calling it paedophilic completely incorrectly, I thought I should probably review a genuinely paedophilic novel, to prove my point (I know, this should have been the post after DDL, but I only just thought about it, so tough luck. Try re-reading the DDL post before you read the rest of this, see if it helps!).

I have to say, I think 'Lolita' is an extremely clever novel. He absolutely gets into Humbert Humbert's head - to the extent that one is left wondering exactly how Nabokov himself felt about young girls... Though I choose to think that he just had a fabulous imagination! Lolita is exactly right - just experienced enough that we can believe she would so the things she does, yet maintaining the innocence necessary for a girl of her age to be remotely convincing as a character.

Humbert Humbert is eerily likeable, which is what gives the novel its true creepiness (as far as I am concerned, anyway). A simple story about a man who falls in love/lust with a thirteen-year-old girl, then gets his comeuppance (I'm simplifying slightly...) might be interesting, but wouldn't leave you with the strong sense of unease engendered by 'Lolita'.

For my money, the reason this novel is so effective is the way in which we, the readers, identify with Humbert Humbert (a side note: the best name in fiction? Definitely up there!). I don't know about you, but I could almost feel the attraction he felt towards his "nymphets" - and I'm neither attracted to girls nor children! I found myself rooting for him towards the end of the novel, which was deeply disturbing...

However, it is pretty clear by the end of the novel that, not only is he not a danger to children, but he has been completely destroyed by his relationship with Lolita, while she has emerged relatively unscathed, which fate reassured me somewhat - I wasn't identifying with a truly evil person, but a man who had been extremely foolish and was paying for it.

If you can handle the concepts behind the novel, I would recommend this - the style is perfect, the subject matter intriguing and the experience brilliant.

Persuasion

Ok, so those of you who know me will know I'm something of a Jane Austen fan. For those you who don't: I'm something of a Jane Austen fan. Well, that's that cleared up - review over, right? No? Oh, alright then... I picked 'Persuasion' because it's proabably my favourite Jane Austen novel - well that or 'Emma'. Or 'Pride and Prejudice'. So, I picked 'Persuasion' because it's one of my three favourite Jane Austen novels...

I like an awful lot about 'Persuasion', though oddly the heroine isn't particularly one of them. I mean, she's ok, but she's just a little bit wet - though not quite as wet as "Mansfield Park"'s Fanny. By contrast, the hero may well be my absolute favourite Austen hero. He's just that little bit more human than Darcy, making him more attractive as a person. I've always felt that Darcy, for all his merits, couldn't have much of a sense of humour, but Captain Wentworth clearly has a strong sense of the absurd.

I enjoyed the way 'Persuasion' was written, as I felt it was slightly more mature than her other novels, probably due (at least in part) to the greater age of her heroine. This, by the way, is a growing attraction for me, as I have a sneaking suspicion that Ann Elliott is the last of Austen's heroines still to be older than me. Which is terrifying.

Well, what else can I tell you? The writing is witty as always, Ann is very sweet (if a little excessively so at times), Frederick is dashing and terribly exciting and the villains are exactly as villainous as they should be! If you like Austen, you'll like it. If you don't like Austen - well, there must be something wrong with you. I'm sorry, but you had to know sometime...

Lord of the Flies

OK, for those of you who have mentioned this blog's slight positive bias, this should restore the average (and then some!). Now, I should probably tell you that I first read this book when I was eight, which may have coloured my opinion of it somewhat, but I hated it. I did try it again later, in the pursuit of fairness - I still hated it.

I know this is not the conventional opinion and I'm sure people will take me aside and explain to me exactly why it is that I "haven't understood the novel". Those people needn't bother. I get it, I really do. I understand that it's an allegory and a commentary on human nature; that doesn't mean I have to like it.

Let me explain why. Firstly, it's just morbid. Human nature may well work like that, it is certainly possible and people do commit atrocities all the time, but that doesn't mean I want to spend hours of my life dwelling on it. I know the message is far more effective if he uses children, but it also makes the whole thing extremely disturbing.

Secondly, I actually disagree with the point of the novel. I don't think that people will revert to their animal natures if left alone. Why should they? You see a similar attitude to the world if you look at Blake or Rousseau (although they obviously hit the opposite end of the spectrum and believe we would all be angels). Why is it that all of these people seem to forget that we are left alone?

After all, the rules constraining us didn't just appear! Humans have been around for about half a million years - organised society has only been around for about 5000 years. People didn't just wander around randomly killing each other, we wouldn't have survived until now if they had!

Ok, rant over. There you have it though, in a nutshell - I think it's unrealistic and needlessly morbid. Well-written, yes, absolutely. If you don't mind the former two, give it a shot. But it's not for me.

Cause Celeb

Well, here we are - another Friday, another blog! (I realise that I could have written that sentence on any given Monday or Wednesday as well, but today happens to be Friday. So there). So, 'Cause Celeb' - for those of you who don't know, this is Helen Fielding's first novel and is really rather good! I'm often wary of the first novels written by authors I admire, as they're so often disappointing, but this one lived up to my opinion of her.

Admittedly, it didn't quite reach the heights of 'Bridget Jones', but that's a little like complaining that 'Emma' isn't as good as 'Pride and Prejudice' - it may be true, but both are so good, it's hardly relevant. 'Cause Celeb' is the story of Rosie Richardson, who heads off to be an aid worker in Africa, primarily to escape a broken heart.

While she is there, crisis hits and she has to re-involve herself in her old life to save the day! That sounds awful, but I promise it's not. Fielding is very amusing and as observant as usual, pinpointing the common motives behind 'altruism' slightly uncannily (don't believe me? What was the last altruistic thing you did? Why did you do it? Honestly? See?), without necessarily condemning the good resulting from such actions.

Rosie is charming and rings very true - she's the kind of girl you'd like to have a coffee with. She's fun, intelligent and interesting, but not so perfect as to be intimidating. Oliver, the breaker of Rosie's heart, is very well drawn - attractive enough for us to understand why Rosie dates him, but horrible enough to be convincingly destructive (emotionally speaking).

I really enjoyed reading this and it cemented my opinion of Helen Fielding as one of the best comedy writers of our time (if not one the best writers of our time). Absolutely worth a read.