The Susanne

This was my first Faulkner. I read it in pre­par­a­tion for a course in mod­ern­ism which I’m taking this autumn (I wanted to get a head start on the read­ing list as I’m taking five courses instead of the recom­men­ded three).

At first I really struggled to get into it. I didn’t find it very inter­est­ing after read­ing the back cover, saying it was the story of a woman’s death told by mem­bers of her family, and then all the chapters were pretty boring at first. None of the char­ac­ters seemed to have any­thing inter­est­ing to say. But then, some­thing changed. It might have been that I got to know the char­ac­ters a little better, it might be that their weird­ness became more evid­ent, but I star­ted loving it!

I spent a week on the first 50 pages and then about a day on the rest. I simply couldn’t put it down. I loved the fact that the char­ac­ters, Addie Bundren’s family, were if pos­sible even more weird than my own family. I loved that they were so honest about everything even when they hid things from each other: they may have hidden the facts of things but they always left their heart on their sleeve. I loved that they all thought ‘I’m the only one who really, truly loved her.’ I loved that every­one else had their own the­or­ies about the dif­fer­ent mem­bers of the Bundren family and that none was right. I loved it because it made it so clear that life is so ambigu­ous, truth is in the eye of the beholder, and that what others think never mat­ters until you let it.

Here’s a link to the book on amazon; I strongly recom­mend read­ing this. If you’ve a weird family or if you’ve the most normal family in the world, this will give you a new per­spect­ive on life. I promise!

I read this book in Sicily, on the beach and on the bus. It was a great com­pan­ion because it com­pletely cap­tured my atten­tion, leav­ing me almost obli­vi­ous to the annoy­ing voice of our Sicilian tour guide (on the 13 hour guided trip to Piazza Arm­er­ina and Agri­gento) as well as keep­ing me from work­ing myself into a fit over the crying babies and loud Trøndere at the beach.

As to the story, well, let’s just say I was mes­mer­ised. It’s one of those stor­ies where I get so caught up in the action and in the feel­ings of the char­ac­ters, I feel like they’re friends of mine and I feel a deep sense of loss when the story ends and so con­sequently my acquaint­ance with them.

Whilst I was thor­oughly sick and tired of Char­lotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (the char­ac­ter) about twenty pages into the story, I never tired of neither Gil­bert Markham nor Helen Graham/Huntingdon. I loved the por­trayal of Gil­bert as a silly, con­ceited, spoilt but essen­tially lovely and kind man, depic­ted (as modern read­ers know, but which was not known at the time of pub­lic­a­tion) by a woman. I loved Helen Graham’s piety, her folly, her sil­li­ness and her mar­tyr­dom (please allow me this little exag­ger­a­tion) and I did not for one moment resent her or feel annoy­ance at her like I did towards Jane Eyre.

Beau­ti­ful though grim story, def­in­itely worth a read, a tear and a laugh.

If you’re think­ing of buying it, here it is on amazon.

I would like to argue the case for what I believe to be the best, and only, read­ing order of the Chron­icles of Narnia. Oh, after I make a tiny men­tion of the supreme superi­or­ity of the excel­lent White Witch of 1988 over the rather sickly and weak one of 2005. Hon­estly, Tilda Swin­ton, you’ve noth­ing on Bar­bara Keller­man! Just look at her!

I was ter­ri­fied of her for years! I had one of those Stompa beds which are kind of bunk beds with only the top bunk, leav­ing room for a play area under­neath. And can you ima­gine my terror as I night after night feared fall­ing asleep because I knew the White Witch was hiding down there, just wait­ing for me to fall asleep so she could kill me! Oh the ter­rors of a young mind. Now I recently saw the 2005 film (against my own res­ol­u­tion never ever ever to see it for fear of ruin­ing the won­der­ful exper­i­ence that the BBC series was to me in my childhood…) and I must say, I didn’t find the witch scary at all. In the BBC series, the witch is the most mag­ni­fi­cent part of the whole thing. But in the film…well..she’s ter­rible. And not in the ‘terribly frightening’ sense of the word, but ter­rible in the ‘terribly disappointing’ sense. I could go on and on about the other things that dis­ap­poin­ted me in the film, but as I knew in advance what to expect and chose to see it anyway, I’m just going to leave it for now. I’ll just quielty mourn the loss that modern tech­no­logy is caus­ing our chil­dren to suffer in terms of ima­gin­at­ive view­ing. What’s fun about talk­ing anim­als that look like anim­als? What’s fun about com­puter graph­ics that look so real you don’t have to ima­gine it being real? I’m just saying..

Ok. Over to the books! Count­less dis­cus­sions exist on this sub­ject and I’m dying to voice my opin­ion. Work­ing in the lib­rary I noticed that the edi­tions of The Chron­icles of Narnia on the shelves there were all numbered, and invari­ably The Magician’s Nephew was numbered as the first book. Now, I hon­estly don’t see how anyone can believe that this would make a nat­ural read­ing order! The Lion, The Witch and the Ward­robe is clearly the first book: it intro­duces the land of Narnia to the reader in a way which The Magician’s Nephew simply can’t.

The children’s exper­i­ences in Narnia in The Lion, The Witch and The Ward­robe takes the reader on a jour­ney to a — both to the reader and the chil­dren of the story — unima­gined land which they find at the back of an old ward­robe. The Magician’s Nephew is a ret­ro­spect­ive story, the story of how it all began; and it is para­mount to the full and proper exper­i­ence of that book that the reader already be famil­iar with the land of Narnia. As to the view that as The Magician’s Nephew comes first chro­no­lo­gic­ally, I simply don’t see how that can be con­sidered a valid argu­ment by anyone. Firstly, it was pub­lished much later, second to last in fact, and secondly it hardly offers a sat­is­fact­ory intro­duc­tion to the magical uni­verse which the Chron­icles depict. Being much more abstract, and much less like a fairytale, it hasn’t that won­der­ful qual­ity which The Lion, the Witch and the Ward­robe has, and which has dazzled gen­er­a­tions of chil­dren and made them fall in love with the Chron­icles. All love begins with an ini­tial attrac­tion, and The Chron­icles of Narnia being children’s stor­ies, The Magician’s Nephew simply does not have ‘it’.

When C. S. Lewis replied to a little boy’s letter saying he agreed with him about the read­ing order of the Chron­icles (the silly little boy thought The Magician’s Nephew should come first as the story is chro­no­lo­gic­ally before the rest of the books), it is my belief that he was humour­ing a little child and not at all intend­ing to set the cannon for the read­ing of his mas­ter­piece in years to come.

Enough people have debated over this sub­ject that I feel no need to go into the boring facts and det­at­ils; I’ll just leave it at this: When I, together with Lucy Peven­sie, first found my way through that ward­robe it was the begin­ning of my rela­tion­ship with Narnia. And I am a firm believer in that being the only real way to get there.

Howards End by E. M. For­ster is an abso­lutely enchant­ing read. I’m only about halfway through at the moment but I’m head over heels in love with the story, the char­ac­ters, the lan­guage, the author.

A very typ­ical Mod­ern­ist novel, and pub­lished in 1910, it fore­shad­ows right from the begin­ning the tur­bu­lent cen­tury which lies ahead of it. I’m not going to reveal too much about the plot, but seroi­usly, you must exper­i­ence this won­der­ful book!

This is the only Sher­lock Holmes story I have read. I read a Donald Duck ver­sion of the story once when I was little and liked it very much — read­ing the ori­ginal story at 21 I loved it. It is only in later years that I have redis­covered my taste for mys­ter­ies; I used to love Jane Austen and con­tem­por­ary Amer­ican and Irish authors and didn’t even con­sider all the great mys­tery lit­er­at­ure out there.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had to bring Sher­lock Holmes back to life for The Hound of the Bask­ervilles, having appar­ently killed him off earlier when he tired of him. I can under­stand why he killed him: he was being con­stantly mis­taken for his char­ac­ter by the hoards of ador­ing fans, and I sup­pose he missed having his own iden­tity. In this story, Watson is given a chance to try his invest­ig­at­ive skills. Com­mend­able, yes, but then Sher­lock didn’t really let go, did he, hiding out in a cave and keep­ing a watch­ful eye on his ‘trusted’ assistant.

The story is known to all I sup­pose, and if it isn’t known to you I strongly advise you to read this book. It’s so good.