The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

"I go to the cinema," said Kay; ... "Sometimes I go in half-way through, and watch the second half first. I almost prefer them that way -- people's pasts, you know, being so much more interesting than their futures. Or perhaps that's just me..."

This book is set in WWII-era London: that's one point in its favour. It's written by an author who has been glowingly recommended to me: point two.

Nothing interesting happens in the first 100 pages (see? I was generous and gave it double the usual time to prove itself to me): minus one point. The characters are dull: minus two points.

Oops, this book is a zero.

Seriously, though... I expected a lot more from a writer who has had glowing critical praise and commercial success. I didn't expect a book that was, frankly... just plain uninteresting.

These people, Kay, Viv, Duncan and Helen, all seem to lead very dull lives in post-war London. There are occasional hints that they had more interesting pasts, but for the most part they do boring things (described in far too much meticulous detail), and they have boring, stilted conversations; neither seems to do much of anything to move the story forward. They have boring love affairs that are full of petty jealousy and boring friendships that are full of insecurity.

It looks like if I'd stuck with this book for another 60 pages, the book would have taken me back to 1944 and perhaps given me a little more interesting information about these dull people's mysterious pasts. I wonder what it would have been like if I'd taken Kay's advice and started the story halfway through; but then, what if I found out that their pasts were just as boring as their future seems to be?

Well, perhaps that's just me.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

This is the story of Stevens, a butler who served the Lord of a grand English house during the fading days of the British empire. In the 1950s Stevens remains at the house, but everything else has changed. Lord Darlington has died, the final years of his life marred by scandal and disappointment. The house has been purchased by an American businessman, most of its rooms are closed down, and the former staff of dozens of servants has been reduced to a skeleton crew of four. Stevens finds himself alone and friendless, as he has lost touch with the servants whose companionship and conversation helped him to define himself.

Mr Farraday, Stevens's new employer, invites his butler to take his car and go off for a week during Farraday's absence. Stevens is able to take his first holiday ever, which gives him time to look back on his life's work. The novel begins as Stevens is about to set out on this trip. The powerful first-person voice of this novel asserts itself from the first pages, and we get a glimpse into the mind of a man who has dedicated his entire self to the goal of being a perfect butler. As the story unfolds, we begin to see in Stevens the hollow shell of a man who, never having allowed himself to feel anything, having spent his entire life becoming the embodiment of "dignity", is trying to come to terms with his past. The result is a magnificent, deftly told tale. Though much is told through the memories and narrative of Mr Stevens, the real story reveals itself through subtext and implication. Many questions are suggested: Where does the work of a servant end and his own life begin? How can a person whose life revolves around being anonymous and unassuming express his own feelings and beliefs? What happens when he doesn't acknowledge those emotions? Does a servant have the responsibility to evaluate and develop opinions on his employer's behaviour and political activities? Yet Ishiguro does not provide answers to the questions, so I think I'll be pondering the implications of this novel long after having closed the book.

Regeneration by Pat Barker

This was a powerful novel, a moving and thoughtful glimpse into the lives of British soldiers' experiences during World War I. The prose is so smoothly written that you can dip into it and be completely absorbed - even submerged - in it. I'm sitting here holding the book in my hand, looking at the cover, re-reading the blurb on the back, because I am not quite ready to let go of a story that such had a profound emotional impact on me.

(And imagine! This book was assigned for my English course. At least there was *one* book in this mostly disappointing reading list that I can confidently say represents fiction at its best.)

Regeneration is a war story, a statement about the cost of war. It is an examination of the attitudes of soldiers, women, and men who weren't fighting on the front. It explores the psychological reality of "shell-shock" and the state of the psychiatric profession during the early 20th century.

The book focuses on the poet Siegfried Sassoon, who is sent to a psychiatric hospital in Scotland after publishing an anti-war declaration in 1917. In the hospital, he is put under the care of Dr. Rivers, and meets another young poet, Wilfred Owen, as well as other patients who are suffering from a variety of psychological problems after their experiences in the trenches. The story is mostly told through the eyes of Dr. Rivers, who struggles to maintain a belief in the necessity of the war while every day working with those who have been most traumatically affected by it.

Barker treats the war experiences of her characters frankly and doesn't pull any punches. The horrific memories of the men in the hospital are hard to forget, and yet they aren't sensationalized in any way. I know that in reading this book I'm getting a tiny glimpse of the death and suffering that were part of life in the trenches. What being a soldier or officer in World War I was truly like - and whether it really needed to be that bad - is something that Barker has sensibly left it to her readers to ponder after they turn the last page of this remarkable novel.

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

This book reads like the confused ramblings of an eloquent madman.

I'm not opposed to great writing, no, not at all. I hope that if you've read this blog for a while, you would know that about me. What I object to is great writing used in a way that obfuscates the story. And that, dear readers, is what I found in this book. Michael Ondaatje hasn't won literary prizes for nothing; he knows how to orchestrate the language of his books in a truly masterful way. His descriptions are beautiful and expressive. He can conjure up a vivid scene in my mind in just a few short sentences.

But really, and I know I've said this before -- great writing is not enough on its own. You need to create characters that are real and that your readers will care about. You need to tell a good story. Frankly, at no point during my reading of In the Skin of a Lion was I able to figure out who the main characters really are and what exactly the plot of this book is. The book is a series of disjointed, beautifully written passages that jump from one character or situation to another with no explanation or attempt to link the narrative so that it flowed smoothly. So, not surprisingly, I felt no emotion for the characters, and didn't know what this book was really about. I just don't have any patience for what amounts to 256 pages of literary wanking.

Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You by Alice Munro

Thanks to an English course I'm taking, I was forced to read this book, though I've been putting it off. This weekend I realized that I would have to pick it up, given that I need to write a paper on it that's due on Monday. Astute readers of this blog will have noticed that it's been on my shelf for quite some time now. (They will also have noticed that I have been struggling with a Michael Ondaatje book for weeks; it's not surprising that was another book I was assigned for the course. I very much hope to finish that one soon...)

Though the English course instructors seem to have an uncanny ability to choose fiction that I find uninteresting or downright awful, I'm happy to say that this was the first book that I actually liked from the assigned reading list. Though I prefer novels to stories, this book was a nice change of pace. Munro's stories are vivid and don't tend to be morbidly depressing, which is a tendency that has often annoyed me about short stories. This book is a series of bright vignettes, each one quite distinctive, and mainly told in the first person by women of a variety of ages. There's a nice balance of coming-of-age stories and stories about elderly women looking back on their lives. There's one story, "Walking on Water," that has a male protagonist, and I think it's the one I enjoyed the most. Mr. Lougheed, an elderly man struggling to understand modern young people whose behaviour and values are so different from those of his own youth, turns to a neighbor, Eugene, for insight. Eugene is a man in his twenties who has read a few too many philosophy and occult books, and seems to spend most of his time meditating, but he makes time to talk with Mr. Lougheed and help him see things from another point of view.

I don't feel motivated to say much more about this book; I spent all day plowing through it, and really wanted to watch TV instead. Guess what I'm going to do after I publish this post?