When I was a little less than half-way through Doctor Zhivago, I mentioned it casually to a thoughtful and well-read friend. “Ugh,” he said without hesitation and rolled his eyes. I was confused by this--I was enjoying it so far. Sure there were a million characters, each with multiple names, but the Internet helps with this a lot. And the author does a pretty good job of reminding you who’s who as you go along.
Granted, I expected to have trouble with this book. I have a pretty shaky grasp of Russian history. It wasn’t taught in my grade schools, and I didn’t pursue it in college. My 9th grade English teacher taught us Animal Farm as an Aesop’s-Fable-type story about the importance of knowing your place. I expected to get lost in some of the “who’s fighting who, when, and ostensibly why” details of this novel, which stretches from the early 1900s through World War II–a pretty active time in Russia. And I did. But I kept reading (rather, listening; I got it on CD for my commute). I read without an unusual amount of eye rolling until chapter 13, “Opposite the House of Sculptures.” And then it lost me; I turned. Glancing through other reviews on Goodreads, I’m not the only one who turned at this point. It’s a ginormous chapter in which two characters who are supposed to have the most pure, passionate love ever known to existence speak to each other in impersonal monologues, explaining their feelings and large sections of the plot that the reader has already witnessed. The chapter probably shouldn’t feel so ridiculously long and boring and forehead-slappingly unbelievable. The reader is supposed to understand the intense passion that these two feel for each other. The problem, obviously, is that we don’t. And this was the point in the book when I realized that there wasn’t going to be any further character development. The characters were fully formed, but they were wooden. The only other explanation for their reactions, emotions, and absences we’d get would be delivered in monologue--either by themselves or the narrator. I felt and understood this great and perfect love exactly once: [SPOILERS!] Yuri is headed home to confess his affair with Lara to his pregnant wife, Tonia. On the way, he convinces himself that he really didn’t end things right with Lara and should probably go back and talk to her again. (Eye rolling, because you want him to be better--this poet/philosopher/physician--but it’s realistic.) He’s so overjoyed at the prospect of seeing Lara again, even if it’s just to break up with her. But then, on the way, when the reader is anticipating a beautiful love scene, he gets kidnapped by partisans. And marches around the woods with them for about 2 years. And then, when he finally escapes, he goes to Lara’s house first so that they can give speeches at each other for hours. Ugh. [/SPOILERS!] After that turn in chapter 13, Doctor Zhivago wasn’t able to win me back. The coincidences get ludicrous. Reading this, you’d think there are only about four houses in Russia, because everyone keeps appearing at the same places. They walk straight across Siberia and end up at the same house. Really. (All of that said, Pasternak comes up with some of the more beautiful nature descriptions I’ve ever read. His scene descriptions are the strongest part of the novel. And the relationship between Lara and Komarovsky in part 1 is, oddly, the most believable and human relationship in the book.) Once I finished Doctor Zhivago, I read the Wikipedia page and a few other online resources. Maybe, I thought, I missed something. Maybe each of these characters is a metaphor for some aspect of Russian culture or history that is lost on me in my ignorance. Maybe that would explain the way they all interact with each other, fade and reappear, go to their fates. But no. At least, I didn’t find an interpretation that supported that theory. So, the question remains: Why is this Nobel-winning novel such a drag? Maybe it’s because it’s written in a style that modern (American) readers aren’t familiar enough with--like trying to watch Lawrence Olivier act and wondering how anyone could ever have tolerated him for a whole movie. It’s not very old (smuggled out of Russia and published in Italy in 1958), but it’s a bit old, and it’s Russian. Or maybe the reason for its popularity and critical success during the Soviet era had a lot more to do with what it said about the Soviets and less about its plot and characterization. Are the readers or the book to blame? I don’t have enough information to answer the question. But if you’re a student of Russian history, I encourage you to read Doctor Zhivago and tell me what you think. Let’s talk about it. Because it’s very possible I just missed something obvious, and you have something to teach me. While The Time Machine’s plot is pretty quick moving and interesting, and the world that Wells creates is intriguing, the book as a whole suffers from one of the same problems that I think most H.G. Wells novels suffer from. The characters are anonymous to the point of being uninteresting.
“The time traveler” himself doesn’t even get a name, let alone much of a backstory. The narrator of the frame story refers to other characters as “Mr. ____” or “the editor” and provides no other personality traits. There’s a mysterious character who appears the night that the time traveler returns and tells his tale, but it’s never revealed who he is or why he’s important. This is an attribute of a lot of science fiction, especially written in this era. But I find it very difficult to understand a character’s motivations when the author provides no information about how they have come to the world--what they’ve seen before and how they might interpret the situations before them. The author develops a robust environment, but crucial details of it get lost when the reader can’t understand the main character’s train of thought. Also, and again like Wells’s other works I’ve read, the characters have an intolerably English-white-male-centric view of the world. From the little I know about Wells as a person, I understand that he was quite progressive for his time. But his nameless, featureless characters who travel to exotic and fantastic worlds with entirely different species and culture can only interpret things from the most basic, stereotypical, privileged viewpoint imaginable. All that said, The Time Machine contains some really interesting ideas. Even if the time traveler’s motivations aren’t always decipherable, his actions are entertaining, his descriptions are vivid, and his fear feels real. The reader is drawn into the mystery of the futuristic world he encounters and saddened to realize the horrible truth behind it. But for my taste, unique concepts and plotlines aren’t enough to sustain a novel. As far as I can remember, this was my first time reading The Phantom Tollbooth. Throughout every page, I thought it would be more enjoyable if I were reading it out loud to a child. I don’t have kids, and this didn’t provide any nostalgic thrill, so I undoubtedly didn’t like it as much as many other people do.
The story doesn’t make a ton of sense--there are big gaps in the plot that are largely ignored. The wordplay was more cute than clever, mostly puns. Again, kids would like this, but it falls pretty flat to an adult. There are a lot of characters who run quickly in and out of the story without having much effect. The characters generally only have one personality trait or aspect each, and even those are not consistent. The moral(s) are generally positive, although there are also a ton of them, and they are not regularly applied by the characters. It’s not like Milo began to appreciate learning and used that to save the princesses, for example. Overall, The Phantom Tollbooth is a collection of cute ideas that would likely appeal to children, especially if it’s being read to them in small segments. But without the nostalgia kick, it doesn’t hold appeal for adults.
Despite an intriguing concept and an interesting final quarter, The Island of Dr. Moreau fails to really engage the reader. The first three quarters of the book are filled with rambling info-dumps, detailed plot lines, and character introductions that aren’t really necessary to the story. The narrator, Prendick, spends a long time building up to the reveal of what’s happening on the island. If he were dropping clues and piecing together the puzzle himself, the reader would be right there along with him. But instead, he simply narrates odd things that happen around him without seeming to be able to come to any conclusions. It’s up to Dr. Moreau himself to explain everything in a lengthy monologue, and only after Prendick has seen it first-hand.
Even listening to this monologue, Prendick asks the wrong questions. He seems to be so caught up in the impropriety of the island that he can’t bring himself to think deeper about any of it. Moreau makes a point of saying that he doesn’t use any humans in his experiments, but how is that possible? How do you combine a bat and a dog and come up with something that walks on two legs and can speak English? And if the Hyena-Swine is a cross between those two animals, then what, exactly, are the Leopard-Man and Ape-Man created from? Since Prendick never asks about it or suspects Moreau was lying, it seems like a rather large plot hole. The world view that underlies Prendick’s narration hurts the book as well. He clearly has an ideal of a white, heterosexual, educated Englishman as the pinnacle of civilized life. There are many subtle examples of this bias throughout the narrative, but the most egregious (to me) was his comment that the female Beast Folk seemed to be more aware of their grotesqueness and to feel shame about it, dressing themselves up more with pretty fabrics. Retch. If you can make it through the problems in the first three quarters of the book, though, you’ll be rewarded with the ending. After a pretty dramatic action scene (relatively), the tenor of the island changes. Prendick’s priggishness, snobbery, and self-righteousness finally start to affect his safety, and he’s forced to either change his behavior or face a dangerous, lonely life. He mostly chooses the latter. These final 4 months on the island are skimmed over for the most part, but it is only then that Prendick actually begins to change a bit. The most introspective Prendick ever gets is when he returns to England and finds himself utterly traumatized by the events of the island. After being so caught up in propriety and civilized behavior for so long, Prendick finds he can’t quite blend back into society. Maybe Wells chose Prendick as his narrator specifically to show how ridiculous his attitude is and how ill-equipped it leaves him to deal with anything more difficult than a London train delay. If so, I think this would have come through more clearly if the story were told in third-person rather than Prendick’s rather shallow first-person narration. But the fact that the unnamed narrator of The War of the Worlds had some of these same hang-ups gives me pause. At any rate, it makes both narrators difficult to sympathize with.
Like Moby Dick, The Old Man and The Sea clearly isn’t for everyone. But I loved it. You don’t pick this one up for the plot, you pick it up for what it says about the human condition. About each one of us, more so the older we get. Life is a struggle. Sometimes we get lucky and something amazing happens. But even then, does it really matter? We can feel proud and we can feel shame, we can face the world as an impoverished Cuban fisherman or as the great Joe DiMaggio, we can feel energy or exhaustion, and we can put up brilliant and incredible fights… but in the end, does it matter? We all die. We all struggle and die and then are eaten.
That sounds horribly depressing, I realize, but it’s not! Truly! How freeing to know that no matter what you count as your personal successes and failures in life, we all end up the same way. The trick is just to keep fighting. Just keep striving for better, for stronger, for longer. Be content with what you have and what you’ve achieved, yes, and allow others their own choices, but strive, always strive. Santiago is like some kind of Zen master, never begrudging the other fishermen for their success, still loving the boy even though he has had to join a more successful boat, and deeply respecting the marlin who struggles so epically and forms such a worthy adversary. The sharks finally snap the calm, peaceful thread through this story, the sharks that defeat the old man. There will always be sharks. There will be 85-day stretches without a fish. There will be giant marlins who fight for 3 days. There will be times you have to eat dolphin without lime or salt. The nobility of these struggles comes not from the struggle themselves, but out of how we react to them. Each of us has a choice at every moment to get angry, bitter, and frightened. Or, we can choose to recognize the ultimate meaninglessness of these tiny battles and accept life for what it is. This story could very well be the defining one of Santiago’s life. But who will know about it outside his village? How much will he even tell the boy? This is just one small story in the course of one small life, the kind of thing that gets quickly forgotten by everyone else. But what is a life but a series of small stories–accomplishments mixed with failures? And what can a story from another small life contribute to mine? Odd Men Out includes a little bit of everything effectively blended together, resulting in an action-packed story of a diverse team of do-gooders and baddies. There are a lot of characters and a lot of action to get though--not to mention a lot of world-building--but it all clips by at a quick pace, and never does that info-dump thing that so much science fiction falls back on.
The story takes place in an alternative history version of the U.S. in which the Civil War has ended only because the South and North have joined together to fight a zombie outbreak. When the book opens, the zombie outbreak is pretty well contained, although still ongoing, and the country is adapting to a new normal. What caused the outbreak? No one knows, but neither does anyone know exactly what mad scientist Dr. Pooley was working on before his death… This truce of convenience doesn’t sit well with everyone, including Tom Preston, leader of a group of Northern loyalist terrorists who destroy infrastructure, engage in espionage, and generally lie, steal, and kill their way into possession of a small arsenal, including one mythically powerful (but untested) weapon. The only people in a position to stop Tom from leveling Atlanta are a rag-tag team of former soldiers, circus performers, pacifists, and others, all with their own secrets. Also thrown into the mix is a circus baron stubbornly intent on bringing some questionable giant lizards into his show. Although I found myself wanting to explore some of the characters a little more, the author gives you everything you need to know to understand their actions and motivations. In a plot this complex, there’s not really time for much more. But I never felt lost or confused keeping up with everything, which says something to the author’s skill at understanding exactly what the reader will need. And with this many characters to choose from, pretty much any reader will find at least one to closely identify with. I’d recommend this book to a wide range of people, but it would make an especially good gift for the people in your life who think books are boring. Odd Men Out just might change their minds. |
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