C

The more I sit and think about this novel, the more I am fascinated by it - I think it might be brilliant.  This is not to say I enjoyed every aspect of my read, or that I understood why on earth Tom McCarthy took me to certain places until well after they were over.  But his dexterous weaving of complex themes is starting to make more and more sense as I reflect on them - or am I finding patterns and interpreting codes that don't exist?

The novel opens with the birth of a baby boy, Serge Carrefax, second child of an eclectic set of parents.  Serge's father runs a school for deaf children that emphasizes teaching them to speak and be understood - and he is fascinated with "modern" wireless communication technology.  Serge's mother is deaf (and a former student) who inherited a family silk factory - complete with insect-residents.  Serge's older sister Sophie is his greatest companion (and a compelling character) until her untimely death.  From these characters, three themes emerge - communication, insects, and death - and are repeated in countless ways time and again through Serge's action-filled life.

It is the continual re-appearance of these themes in Serge's life that ultimately makes this book a comprehensive unit.  Serge's adventures as a sick adolescent, WWI pilot, architecture student, drug addict, and Egyptian explorer often cause jarring juxtapositions in the story that took me some getting used to.  But I'm having so much fun reflecting back on what it all means, and trying to decode the appearance of insects, communications and death throughout the book, that I'm not sure it matters to me anymore.  And don't get me started on the book's title - there are so many instances of the letter C that I can't begin to decide the importance of them.  And what about Serge's lifelong problem conveying physical perspective (a problem indeed for a student of architecture)?  I would love to convene a discussion group just to pick apart this novel.

Although sometimes I felt lost in the middle, this read was worth it and has stayed with me for many days.

Parrot & Olivier in America

I'm not sure why I thought I would like this book more than I did.  I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the early 1800's Europe as a moment in history, but the look at America as a burgeoning democracy was enticing.  However, the stylized language, as accurate as it may have been, was wearisome and cumbersome.  It was longer than it needed to be.  Character revelations came too late - I already didn't care about them or their motives or histories.  Themes of incarceration, class in democracy, and the male friendship between the two title characters were not well developed.  I was just bored.

The book follows Olivier, the snobbish son of French nobles in post-Revolutionary France, and Parrot, his reluctant English servant, who was originally trained as an engraver.  Olivier is forced to escape to America to avoid a revival of the revolutionary feeling in Paris with Parrot, along with his French mistress and her elderly mother, under the guise of completing a book about the American prison system.  Blah blah blah he has several encounters in the new world, a brush with the law and a failed romance.  Parrot discovers a new life and artistic ability in America and is happy.  Olivier is not. 

Sure, there were some good moments - Peter Carey is clearly an expert even if I didn't care for this novel.  I loved the insect metaphors he peppered throughout: people resembling wasps, silkworms, crickets and butterflies.  I particularly liked his description of a French wine encountered in America:

I bemoaned the palates of the Philadelphians who had called his Medoc cold and sour.  Miraculously, it was free of sediment, and rushed into my glass at that perfect stage of life.  In a year it would be a dowager with a faded old corsage, but as it entered my mouth it was vigorous and manly, completely composed, its orchestra all present and correct.  Oh heavens, that such small things make a man so happy.

Although this glass of wine sounds excellent, the rest of the novel just wasn't for me.

Room

I know this review is coming quickly on the heels of my most recent review.  That's because I read this entire book in one day.  Cover to cover.  Couldn't put it down.  This book is nothing if not gripping, fascinating, and constantly keeping your wanting to read just a little bit more.

I can't tell you much about the plot of Room by Emma Donoghue, or I will ruin it for you, and you're going to read it, aren't you?  The blurb on the back should suffice: 

To five-year-old Jack, Room is the world.  It's where he was born, its where he and his Ma eat and sleep and play and learn.  At night, Ma shuts him safely in the wardrobe, where Jack is meant to be asleep when Old Nick visits. 

Room is home to Jack, but to Ma its the prison where she has been held for seven years.  Through her fierce love for her son, she has created a life for him in this eleven-by-eleven-foot space.  But Jack's curiosity is building alongside Ma's own desperation--and she knows that Room cannot contain either much longer.

There.  That doesn't give much away, but it sets the stage for me to comment on a few themes that really interested me as I was reading.  First, everyone mentions it, but that's because it is essential to what makes this such a compelling book:  Five-year-old Jack as the sole narrator is unique and wonderful.  She manges to persuasively bring me into the mind and thoughts of an (albeit precocious) child, and leaves enough clues for the mature reader to gain extraordinary depth from the happenings that Jack only sort of picks up on. 

Second, as told second hand through Jack, the relationship between Ma and Jack has to be constantly managed by Ma in the context of their confinement and total domination by Old Nick.  As Jack gets older, Ma struggles to ensure that Jack sees her as the dominant figure in his life, as the provider and caretaker when Old Nick is acknowledged as the "bringer" and can make Jack's world light up simply by leaving a candy treat.  I was so empathetic with her struggle here.

Finally, Jack's perception of the world through television, his inability to believe that the things he sees on TV exist, and his capitalization of the nouns for things in Room (because they are the only example of such an item he has ever seen) brought me back to my first year of college and the Platonic Forms. Donoghue's implication here is that Jack's experience in Room is similar to the Unenlightened Man Plato describes, who sees the pure Idea - and that any other experiences will be echoes and reflections of the pure Idea or true form.  As you can imagine, this has some heavy implications for Jack.

The Finkler Question

I started out last week expecting I wasn't going to love every book I read - well here we go.  The first several pages of The Finkler Question introduce us to a rather unsympathetic protagonist, who is so obsessed with Jewish culture that he thinks he might actually, secretly, be Jewish - despite a complete absence of evidence to suggest it. His obsession starts to border on, and then crosses the line into the realm of racism; specifically, anti-Semitism.  This is where I got uncomfortable and frustrated with the book.

Throughout the novel, we experience the inner thoughts of Julian Treslove, a womanizer and spinner of romantic-tragic fantasies usually involving the untimely death of women he loves - who he has also just met.  After a banal incident, Julian grows more and more obsessed with anything and everything Jewish.  Most of his inner thoughts take the form of backhanded compliments -they come from a place of exotifying and idealizing the Other.  He and the other characters we meet think almost always in terms of "us" and "them" - Jews and non-Jews.  It gets grating after a while.  Perhaps it made me uncomfortable because we all have similar conversations internally - thoughts that if we shared would be considered racist (or sexist, ageist, etc.), but we can't prevent our minds from drawing distinctions or repeating stereotypes, even if we can choose not to say them aloud. It made me uncomfortable to consider this for too long.  But I still  wanted to know why Julian was so obsessed with Jewish culture - was it his empty childhood?  His obsession with Tragedy?  I'm still not sure I know.

In the end, the broader subject matter (Israel and Palestine, hate crimes, memory and love) as well as the incredible depth each of the main characters possesses kept me reading.  Jacobson's precise character description, delivery of dialogue, and clever use of language certainly establish him as a great novelist.  But I still find myself wanting to read the other 2010 finalists to see if I would have chosen differently.  Perhaps that is a challenge for the future...