F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby (Velký Gatsby)

  We had to read The Great Gatsby for a literary seminar but I had been planning to read it for some time before that. Unfortunately, I didn’t like the book very much.

The story is pretty simple. Nick moves into a house next to a huge mansion whose owner has bombastic parties all the time. He is not terribly well-off himself but has rich friends – Tom and Daisy. When he’s having a dinner with them he meets Jordan – a rich, young girl he likes – and also learns that Tom is cheating on Daisy. He later becomes friends with his neighbor Jay Gatsby and attends to his parties.

   Well, the story actually isn’t so simple so I will somehow shorten it. It is revealed that Jay knows Daisy and that he fell in love with her years before but couldn’t marry her because he was poor and she was damned rich. He actually became rich just to get on the same level as she is and they start having an affaire. Daisy than has a craziest idea – to invite Nick, Jordan and Jay to their house. The whole thing than gets crazier and crazier, half the characters die and it is really pretty fucked up.

   So what is it about? Yeah, well, mostly about money and what it can do to you and what it can’t do for you. Which, as a theme, got used up few centuries ago. It is of course partly psychological novel about relationships and love. The love story is quite strong and an important part of the book. It’s not the most important but it more or less drives the narrative. It partly feels as a detective story because  Nick keeps trying to find out what the hell is going on and ultimately is the only one who knows it.

   The greatest positive of this boos are its poetic description. They are great just as they are but combined with the theme of cold world of big money, they give the book a completely new dimension. I really like this part:

“We walked through a high hallway into a bright rosy-colored space, fragilely bound into the house by French windows at either end. The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea.

The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. I must have stood for a few moments listening to the whip and snap of the curtains and the groan of a picture on the wall. Then there was a boom as Tom Buchanan shut the rear windows and the caught wind died out about the room, and the curtains and the rugs and the two young women ballooned slowly to the floor.

The younger of the two was a stranger to me. She was extended full length at her end of the divan, completely motionless, and with her chin raised a little, as if she were balancing something on it which was quite likely to fall. If she saw me out of the corner of her eyes she gave no hint of it — indeed, I was almost surprised into murmuring an apology for having disturbed her by coming in.”

   Well, to sum it up, objectively, it is a good book. I just didn’t enjoy it very much, maybe I was reading it too much only on the story level and didn’t really bother thinking about it. But it is an important text, especially as one of these American-dream-breaking books. On the other hand, I could have had led a happy life even if I never read it.

Suzanne Collins: The Hunger Games Trilogy

   Again, I haven’t written anything in few MONTHS for which I deeply apologize. But having finished my thesis (again) I hope I may be able to write here little something now and then.

   OK, the big craze about The Hunger Games has been more or less over for some time so this review may be coming a little late but…better late than never, huh. I decided to write one review about all three books and say just what I think about them (many other review have described the story so look up one of those if you want).

The Hunger Games (Aréna smrti)

    I really liked the first book, it is no big literature but the story is well written, the characters are greatly described, it’s fun (mostly because Katniss is such a cynic) but what I believe is the most important thing about the book – it’s targeted on different readers than similar stories before. Yes, sure, it is YA literature and it has some Twilight-like features…so what. There have been books and films about utter evilness of reality shows and there have been distopias…and many of them are WAY better than The Hunger Games. But…15 year old kids will not read 1984 or The Brave New World and they will not watch Truman Show. And there are much better let’s-show-the-brutality-of-human-nature books too (again, how many teenagers would read Lord of the Flies). So that is where I see the real merit of this book.

   Another thing is Katniss herself. She isn’t the classic good heroine, she has (piles of) flaws and she’s not emotional (well, she is very emotional, just not in the classic way). I even liked the whole romantic plot because it was very different from what people are used to in romances. The feelings kind of creep on Katniss and when she realizes what is actually happening she…well, she keeps on denying them.

   And I also liked the symbolism of the book. It is not very subtle, especially concerning the flowers and birds. The symbolism of birds is actually mentioned in the story directly (mainly the mockingjay-revolution connection) but it works on other levels too (for example, Rue reminds Katniss of a little bird which brings in a sense of fragility). The flowers create connection between the main heroines (Katniss, Rue and Prim). And let’s not forget about president’s roses.

   I really think it is a worth-reading, enjoyable and pretty well-written book.

   And few words about the movie. I think it’s mostly awful. The first part is pretty good and I loved how they depicted District 12 and the Capitol’s fashion. There are some great bits like when Katniss gets stinged by those hornets but it was mostly boring and the scene in the cave…the unspeakable horror of it. The scene with burying Rue was also almost ridiculous, especially as Rue had very little space in the movie and it was pretty hard to understand what is the big deal. What in my opinion really killed the movie, was Katniss. Not the actress, she was absolutely fabulous, but the way it shows (or rather doesn’t show) her character. Katniss is funny, smart and ironic about so many things. Which got lost completely in the movie. Sure, it’s easy to write it in the book written in the first person and I don’t know how to put such a thing in a movie. But it’s not really my problem, when I want to make a book into a movie, I should see what’s actually important in the book and what is not.

Catching Fire (Vražedná pomsta)

   I will not write a lot about this book. It was mostly boring, nothing really happened and the similar structure with the first book gave the book the last blow. I have to say I expected most of the plot-turns. There were some good bit, I liked the idea of the second arena and some of its traps (the screaming mockingjays being on of the most brutal thing in this overall brutal trilogy). But still, it was kind of a let down. Definitely the poorest book of the trilogy.

Mockingjay (Síla vzdoru)

   This one was much better than Catching Fire. The story and load of new characters (especially that terrible president of District 13) gave the story a new life. I also think that the author herself kind of literary matured and there were very poetic parts, sometimes it seemed there was intentional rhythm in the sentences (but it might have been just my imagination).  I appreciate that it didn’t end up as a total happy end…it actually didn’t end up as a happy end at all (by which I don’t want to say that all happy ending are automatically a bad thing…it just wouldn’t feel right in this case).

    There were also things I didn’t like, especially the battle in the Capitol was really weird. I think somewhere in the trilogy, Katniss says that the rebels didn’t get to the Capitol at all in the first rebellion. And now they just flew there…period. It was just weird.

  

To wrap it up, I’d like to say something about the Czech translation in Czech.

   V první řadě názvy knížek jsou vážně otřesné, ale překladatel s názvem většinou nic moc nenadělá, takže tohle je spíš výtka nakladateli. Asi se pokoušel o něco, co zaujme a přiměje to člověka koupit...ale názvy jako Aréna smrti a Vražedná pomsta většinu soudných lidí spíš odradí. Co se týče jmen, překladatel se snažil převádět nějaká „mluvící jména“ do češtiny, ale Cetkie místo Effie Trinket je ukázka toho, jak se to nemá dělat (respektive násilně a okatě). Proč se Gale jmenuje Hurikán jde naprosto mimo mě a nehodlám po tom ani dál pátrat. Ze začátku se mi moc nezdálo slovo splátci za tributes, tedy ti, co se mají utkat v aréně, ale nakonec je to celkem dobré řešení (vzhledem k tomu, že mají splácet jakýsi dluh za povstání). Z překladu jsem ale větší kus nečetl, takže kromě tohohle to nemůžu moc posoudit.

Iain Banks: The Bridge (Most)

I haven’t written a review for more than a month but I have read quite many books in that time. I decided not to write reviews on all of them because a) some of them were pretty boring (Little Women) and b) some of them have LOADS of reviews on the internet (Chronicles of a Death Foretold). Anyway, if you happen to be deeply interested in what I read, you can follow me on GoodReads.

It’s been few weeks since I’ve read this book so I’ll do my best to come up with something at least remotely intelligent. It is a story of John Orr who lives on the Bridge where he had been found in water with no ID or anything and with no memory of what had happened to him or who he is. He has sessions with a psychologist who is to help him to get his memory back but mostly wants John to tell him about his dreams. But John mostly dislikes his methods and sometimes often just makes up something to satisfy the doctor. What he really wants to find is one of libraries that seems to have disappeared. He also wonders what is beyond the Bridge because the only thing he knows about it is that there is the Kingdom on one side and the City on the other.

The narrative shifts to the Barbarian. He has nothing to do with the Bridge, just more or less wander around and kills things. One of his stories actually sounds like a D’n’D adventure but maybe it wasn’t the purpose. He is not extremely smart and rather brutal. And speaks in an awful Scottish accent. He also has a familiar (some kind of a bird) who is pretty much his opposite – small, weak but super-smart.

The last protagonist is Alex whose story takes place in our world and concerns his studies and later life but mostly his love to Andrea. They have kind of weird long-term relationship where he tolerates her lover in France. He is not much of a hero, really rather a boring, mediocre guy and his parts of the story are what people reproach to this book the most… and they’re right, his parts are the most boring. But the whole thing would make no sense without them. He also likes bridges. And feels bad because he left his working-class roots.

It probably comes as no surprise (and if you do not think you know how this sentence ends and you think you want to read this book, you should skip this paragraph right now because I am about to put here some spoilers) that Alex, John and the Barbarian (and Barbarian’s familiar) are one person. Alex gets drunk one evening and crashes his car while admiring…wait for it…a bridge. Anyway, the whole thing is not a huge mystery because the author spills the beans in the very beginning and if you don’t forget that there was the weird first chapter before John’s story starts, you will probably know what is going on in few pages.

I loved the book in the beginning that is mostly about John because its overall weirdness is really catchy. The book slows down later when it concentrates more on Alex but if you stay focused and look for connections between different parts of the book, you’ll find out many things that should reveal a lot about characters.

I read that it is an unconventional love story or just as general (or psychological) fiction but I decided to categorize it as Crime/Mystery because I think that is how it mostly reads (and there is no Psychological Fiction category on Eclectic Reader Challenge). But it is many things including horror, thriller, fantasy and parody.

Jeanette Winterson: The Passion (Vášeň)

   I don’t know why it is that one kind of dark can be so different from another. Real dark is thicker and quieter, it fills up the space between your jacket and your heart. It gets in your eyes.

   We read this book for our reading club where it did not meet with a huge success… but I think the book wasn’t entirely to blame. Anyway, I admit the book has some flaws.

   The story takes place during Napoleonic wars and has two main heroes. The first one is Henri, a young boy who has no experience with the world but gets into the army and becomes Napoleon’s personal cook. And he falls for Napoleon. Not in romantic way but he idolizes him and admires him. Henri thinks about his home village a lot, he is quite homesick and seems really taken aback by all that is happening around him. But in Napoleon he trusts and in everything he says so it keeps his world together. Main themes of his thought seem to be home, what it means for him and how his understanding of it changed dramatically (from “the boring place where I am going to spend the rest of my life” to “the dreamy place where nothing ever happens”) and the catastrophe of Napoleon’s attacking England which ended up in death of thousands of soldiers. He is very innocent and sentimental and rather feminine (which is the point of the book, anyway).

   The second hero is actually a heroine called Villanelle. She was born into a Venetian boatman family and her feet are webbed. Which is quite surprising because she is the first woman to have such feet. Which makes it quite difficult to overlook that Henri is rather a woman and Villanelle rather a man. Anyway, she works in a casino where she comes dressed as a boy. People fall in love with her, regardless if they are a man or a woman (women see her as a boy and men as…a very girlish boy). She is a redhead, she is beautiful, simply greater than life. Her (slightly overused) motto is “You play. You win. You play. You lose. You play.” And boy, she plays.

   Later, she falls in love with an elegant woman who comes into the casino and they spend some time together. The relationship somehow goes wrong, I can’t really remember how, but Villanelle leaves her lover. And she finds out she has lost her heart. Not in a symbolic way (well…depends on how you look at it) but she literally puts her hand on her chest and feels nothing.

   She then becomes a prostitute (unwillingly) and joins the French army on their way to conquer Russia. She meets Henri who found out that Napoleon may actually be kind of nuts and they decide to leave together and go back to Venice. I won’t go into more details but Henri falls for Villanelle, changing one unattainable idol for another (meh, chicks).

   I think the book has some very good ideas and is beautifully written. Winterson’s language is very poetic which can discourage some people from reading it. I don’t enjoy such book myself as I tend to lose attention and start thinking about something different and then I have to go back in the text and read it again. But I liked some parts of this book very much. What was really getting on my nerves were some sentences that the characters kept repeating. Not just the you-play line mentioned above, but also “I am telling you stories. Trust me.” Why, why did they have to say it like every ten pages? Interestingly, both characters used some of these lines, which kind of merged them together and made them almost one person (at least, it makes you consider position of the narrator).

   I think Winterson is an author worth trying. You may find out she’s not your taste but you can also fall for her forever. I wasn’t extremely amazed but I liked the book and I’d like to try another piece of her work (probably Oranges Are not the Only Fruit) but it will take some time before I get to it.

I didn’t know what hate felt like, not the hate that comes after love. It’s huge and desperate and it longs to be proved wrong. And every day it’s proved right it grows a little more monstrous. If the love was passion, the hate will be obsession. A need to see the once-loved weak and cowed and beneath pity. Disgust is close and dignity is far away. The hate is not only for the once-loved, it’s for yourself too; how could you ever have loved this?

Iain Banks: The Crow Road (Vraní ulice)

   I chose this book mostly because it usually ranks quite well (and for some time probably will) in lists of the best opening lines of novels. It’s quite easy to believe considering the first sentence is: It was the day my grandmother exploded. Also, Awaris seems to adore this author which is usually a good sign (if you want to read her review, I warn you it reveals more or less all major points of the story).

   The story begins with death (quite obviously) and death tends to stick on all protagonists for the whole book. Two main narrators are Prentice and his father Kenneth but there are more. There are also few bits of Prentice’s uncle Rory’s stories. It’s kind of a family chronicles of the McHoans, the Urvilles and the Watts. Relations between tha characters are quite complicated but on the other hand, I like making family trees when reading a book (I have a sheet with War and Peace characters somewhere…at least from the part I read. And of the Buendías family from One Hundred Years of Solitude. It was few years later I found out that you are actually supposed to confuse the characters…whatever).

   In the beginning of the story, Prentice and Kenneth don’t speak to each other after having argued about religion – Kenneth being a devout atheist and Prentice having some feelings that this whole world is kind of unjust and that there must be some hidden logic in it, something bigger that knows things are just as they should be and that all of this happens for a good reason. Considering Prentice’s uncle Rory has been missing for some ten years by that time and one of his best friends has just died in a pretty awful accident, it is quite understandable. As you might have guessed, one of the points of the book is that Prentice and his father are basically the same (stubborn assholes…at least sometimes).

   Another plot line is Prentice’s research on what happened to his missing uncle Rory who left one day and no one has ever seen him again. Rory was a traveller, he wrote some books about his travels to India and other parts of the world but always felt as a failure. Even more when Kenneth published book of stories he used to tell to his children and kids from the neighbourhood. This book affected Prentice too because he feels that his father’s stories were a private thing and that he spoiled it somehow. Which only shows that Prentice is in awkward teenage self-centred phase (On the other hand, I get him. My father once wrote in an article that my sister and me are crazy about Pokémons and we speak about nothing else and play with the cards all the time. Which a) was not true, we watched it sometimes but weren’t crazy about it and b) we were actually forbidden to collect the damn cards. Anyway…how dared he?).

    Prentice is pretty cool character, really cynical and funny, but sometimes rather full of himself and sometimes plainly obnoxious. Well, that’s how people are, I guess. Structure of the book is quite complicated as the narration shifts not only between the two major characters but also jumps into different moments in past. Quite often different parts of the story are somehow connected, for example the character thinks about some old story or mentions some fact and the following part comes back to it and gives some more insight. There is almost unsupportable number of characters and it takes time to remember who is who. The book is also full of suspension, sometimes it takes rather long before you are really sure who is the narrator in the moment or when the event being that is being described took place; sometimes you get some information but must wait pages and pages before it gets properly explained. You should be also prepared for a huge load of sarcasm, cynicism and black humour.

   If there is something I kind of didn’t like, it was the beginning and the ending. Or at least that the book starts with a funeral and ends with some weird kind of atheist baptism. Was that really necessary? Well…it probably was considering the constant presence of death, what better ending could there be? But still, it’s the kind of symbolism I could live without.

    In all other (numerous) aspects, I think it is an amazing book. It’s funny and dark in the same time, the storytelling is amazing and it makes you…yes, I going to say that…it makes you think.

   Oh, and the name of the book is from the Scottish saying to be away the crow road which means to die. And there is also a street called the Crow Road in the book.

Jacques Tournier: La Maison déserte

   I chose this book absolutely randomly in the municipal library, just because I wanted to read something in French and this wasn’t too long. The problem with most of the French books in that library is that they are from Gallimard and they don’t  bother with any description of books they publish or information on the author. Besides, the library obviously doesn’t bother with getting many new books in foreign languages and if you want a foreign book in other language than English, the offer is nothing much. Now, that I have expressed my discomfort with the municipal library, let’s get back to the book.

    Although Tournier has several books published, this one probably isn’t the best he has ever written. At least I guess so, as Wikipedia doesn’t even mention this book in his entry (and it is the right Jacques Tournier). For those interested, he also wrote a biography of Carson McCullers, translated Tender is the Night or The Great Gatsby into French and wrote some novels like Des Persiennes vert perroquet (I can’t help it but that’s a cool name), A l’intérieur du chien or Zelda (which is about Zelda Fitzgerald and, unfortunately, no Fairy Fountain nor princesses in distress are involved).

   Well, the story. The main character is a woman...and I can’t remember her name. It’s written in the third person and I’d have to look it up. Anyway, she moves from France to the Netherlands where she rents a little house. She lives there with almost no furniture, she doesn’t use the upstairs at all and she is totally depressed all the time. Little by little, we learn that she lost her husband, than fell in love with another man and he died too. Now, she is trying to keep hold on her dead lover and more or less pretends he’s still alive. The book treats the way she comes to terms with her lover’s death and carries on her life.

    It’s not a particularly enjoyable book. I’d say it’s mostly boring. And very...very over-exaggerated. For example, there is a part when the heroine takes a walk to a lighthouse. The weather gets really bad and there is a strong wind and heavy rain but she sits by the lighthouse and watches the storm. Seriously? Storm, lighthouse, dead lover, raging waters? All at once? No, I don’t think so. And there are other, less extreme but still weird scenes.

   I don’t want to say it’s not a good book. Maybe someone with a similar experience would say that’s exactly what he or she felt (although I doubt many people write and actually send letters to their dead lovers...or pretend having dinner with them). But I really didn’t enjoy the book very much and I dare doubt many other people would. 

Kit Whitfield: Bareback

   I came across this book some time ago while browsing on some blogs about literature. It caught my eye (obviously) but I completely forgot about it. And than, I was going through some cheap books in those wooden boxes in front of Palác Luxor and I found myself keeping this book in my hands. As this book is quite well known and (more importantly) well received in the GB and the US, the fact that it cost half money than Eat, Pray, Love is really sad.

   Well, why did it catch my eye? It’s called Bareback (Benighted in the US version). For those unfamiliar with this word…look it up on Urban Dictionary. And the second reason - it’s about werewolves. (Un)fortunately, it’s not about werewolves barebacking each other…although I might enjoy reading something like that too. (My BF was like What the f******ck are you reading???).

   Anyway, it has nothing to do with anything naughty. The story takes place in an alternative world where almost everyone is werewolf (but the word is not used in the book, which is actually quite logical). When I say almost, I mean more than 99 % of population. The rest are called nons or, in slang, barebacks (oooooh). The main heroin Lola works in DORLA (Department of Ongoing Lycanthropic Activity) – as every other non has to. At the beginning, one of her colleagues and friends gets his hand bit of by a lyco and than he gets shot in head. She is to investigate the case, which leads her to many, many, many and (yeah, I am about to repeat it once more) many discoveries she would prefer not to have done.

   So we have a detective story. But the book was also compared with 1984, which is quite a good comparison. The whole point of the story is a classic anti-utopia. But Whitfield is also great in describing psychology of Lola. Barebacks are a very small minority, which has a huge impact on them. They also feel they are crippled or that they have some kind of defect – and in the world they live in, they actually do have a defect. But the main aim of DORLA is to keep guard during full moon nights. For centuries, there has been a law that when people “fur up” on the full moon night, they have to be locked up indoors. Of course, there are accidents, people don’t get into shelters, they get out of their houses and so on. And then, there are prowlers – those who break the curfew intentionally. DORLA agents have to catch these lunes (metamorphosed lycos) and get them into shelters. So there is a paradox – people (often) hate nons but they also need them. Mainstream society can’t actually afford not to have DORLA. Imagine that once a month, everyone would get crazy, run through city, fought with each other and destroyed everything that gets into his or her way. That would hardly work.

   Nons have to start working for DORLA when they are 18 and they leave at the age of 60 (or…something like that). The only problem is a quarter of them are heavily injured or dead by that time. On the other hand, DORLA is not a bunch of nice, smiley guys either. They tend to arrest people and not give them any human rights (like lawyer or a phone call). And than they beat them. Brutally. Which is OK because only heavy wounds don’t heal when they fur up.

   Lola has to deal with much. She doesn’t speak to her mother at all and her relationship with her sister isn’t the best one either (but it gets much better during the book). She is under pressure of everyday life in society which hates her, her friend is dead, her sister is obviously worried that her coming baby might be a bareback and DORLA is more understaffed than ever so she has loads of work.

   But she copes. She has a whole system to protect herself. She wears gloves (palms of non are much softer compared to lycos). She fills her life with work so she doesn’t have to think about other things. And she is very perceptive when speaking to someone. She listens to little words people use and immediately deducts things others would easily overlook. She controls herself and her emotions extremely well but as she is confronted with some tough situations, she sometimes loses it.

   Oh, and there is a new word into “weird vocabulary”. Loten. It’s supposed to be “moonlight so bright you can see in it” in Old English. Unfortunately, Google doesn’t know this word so either Whitfield made the word up or Google is a really bad source for Old English vocabulary. In this case, I guess it’s the former.

  Anyway, the title doesn’t sound like it, but this is actually a good book. Sure, it’s mostly the story but not just that – Whitfield has a nice English and some of her descriptions and similes were absolutely amazing (like when Lola describes her feelings after beating a man as if her bones were cold and empty…I think it’s a rather impressive image). And obviously, there are piles of stuff about xenophobia, hatred between classes, manipulation of society, etc. Read it…but it’s still a good idea to cover the book (the looks guys in public transport were giving me…).

   And there will be a movie under the title Benighted. 

Émile Zola: Thérèse Raquin (Tereza Raquinová)

   After quite a long time, I came back to the good old classic literature – when people got sued for what they wrote and when writing about sexual intercourse was really something different (where’s the fun today when no one minds a woman on a stage yelling I LOVE MY CUNT). Yeah, those were different times…when Zola was the most read French author, Baudelaire was more that “the only French poet I have ever heard of”, Madame Bovary was an upsetting novel and Maldoror walked the streets of Paris and forced dogs to molest little girls.

   The story has four main characters – Thérèse, Camille, Madam Raquin and Laurent. Thérèse grows up with her aunt Madame Raquin and her cousin Camille. Camille is a sickly, feeble boy and Thérèse spends quite a lot of time with him indoors, taking care of him. In reality, she has temperament and she would love to be running in the woods and enjoy nature. But little by little, she falls under influence of her cousin and Madame Raquin and submits.

   Later, she marries Camille but she is never really happy. Camille meets his old friend Laurent and introduces him to his family. Thérèse falls for him immediately and it doesn’t take long before they start a sexual relationship. Thérèse changes completely and the nice, calm girl turns into a crazy, passionate lover.

   Gradually, their relationship becomes obsession and they decide they want to be together. Obviously, there is a problem – Camille. Which may possibly turn out not to be such a problem. You just have to take him for a ride in a boat. And than throw him into the water. And than jump in and pretend you were saving his dear wife when the boat turned about.

   So far, the plan goes great. No one suspects them and they pretend not to care about each other. They even play Madame Raquin and her friends to propose the idea of their marriage.

   On their wedding night, they find out that this might not have been the best idea ever. They can’t sleep, they can’t sleep with each other, they actually can’t be in the same room. Such a situation is unbearable and drives both main protagonists into utter madness.

   This is the third book by Zola I have read so far and I liked it the best. I can’t really remember Nana, I read it a little bit too fast, and Germinal was good but a little slow. This one is short and something keeps happening all the time. Not that I would mind lack of story in books but in case of naturalism, you really need some that will catch you. It’s one of Zola’s early work, I believe it’s his first published novel, and he already uses his aesthetics of analysis and scientific approach to literature. But I guess we all know that.

   What seemed really interesting to me was that Zola was the first to realize (according to our literature professor) that human emotions are physical. There is of course insight into Thérèse, Laurent and Madame Raquin (interestingly, there is almost none into Camille…he is probably just too dull so even Zola didn’t care what he was thinking) but when they feel something, they feel it through their bodies. He goes in his analytic approach so far that his characters are based on four major temperament types. At least wiki says that Thérèse is choleric, Laurent sanguine and Camille phlegmatic; I dare say that Madame Raquin is melancholic.

   I think there is a lot to like about this book. Sure, there are those yucky parts some people could mind (like the description of Camille’s putrefying body) but you can’t read Zola without them… So if you get over them (or you skip them or you weirdly enjoy them) you get to his description of life in its brutality and savageness. Those people are hideous but they also can’t help themselves, it’s in their nature.

   The only thing I really disliked was the fact that Thérèse’s mother was from Africa. Given the philosophy of predeternism Zola uses in his work, her mother’s origin is a direct reason of her temperament and her savage and in a way primitive nature. Sure, using Africa as a symbol of barbarism and primeval instincts in humans wasn’t weird or offensive in that time (and few…many…decades later) but still…it feels weird nowadays.

Douglas Adams: Holistická detektivní kancelář Dirka Gentlyho (Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency)

   I bought this book like zillion years ago to my Mum for her birthday or Christmas or whatever. She was reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and she loved it so I thought Dirk Gently would be a great gift. Unfortunately, she over-adamsed herself and she never touched this book. I thought that at least I should read it so it wouldn’t be a complete waist of money.

   I will be quite brief on this book, especially as I didn’t like it very much. The story begins with a weird, alien, mechanical monk who somehow gets on the Earth. He has no idea where he is and gets completely confused.

   The main hero, Richard, works as programmer and he comes to Cambridge to join a dinner with his old professors and to meet one of them and have a drink. After few hours, he realizes he was supposed to bring his girlfriend with him. While he is drinking with the old professor, a horse appears in the professor’s bathroom.

   Richard’s boss Gordon is murdered in his car. He leaves a message on his secretary’s answering machine. Later, he becomes a ghost.

   Susan is Richard’s girlfriend and Gordon’s secretary. They both piss her off. She has a dinner with Michael.

   Michael leads a little literary and art magazine. The magazine is not very good and his mother – the actual owner of the magazine – gives the job to someone else. Michael doesn’t like it. He is also an alien.

   Dirk sees someone climbing a building and getting into someone else’s flat. Later, he finds out that it was Richard and that the flat belongs to his girlfriend.

   Everyone thinks Richard murdered Gordon.

   There are more aliens involved in the story.

   There are also many quotation of Kubla Khan. Considering the end of the book, the poem is probably really vital for the story.

   I actually forgot the ending of the story. But I can remember I didn’t understand it. Someone wants to do something and someone else wants to stop him and travels in time and Coleridge is involved. Ehm. Maybe the problem is not in the book.

   Anyway, it was quite fun but it wasn’t anything special. I probably expected too much after the Hitchhiker. I don’t know what the problem is. I didn’t like the characters very much – Richard is boring and Dirk is an ass. The story didn’t catch me either. I really didn’t care who and why killed Gordon. It’s probably because it is not very good as a detective story (but it was probably never meant to be an actual detective story) – you don’t know anything about the victim and his surroundings so you can’t try to find the murderer on your own.

  It has good and funny parts but I never actually laughed loudly. And that’s what I expected from this book. Next time, I’ll take something by Pratchett, next time.

William Trevor: Děti z Dynmouthu (The Children of Dynmouth)

   Well, after a few weeks with no review, I am back. I read this book quite a long time ago so I can’t remember it very well. But I will do my best. We chose this book for our reading club, I had had no idea what it was about, who was the author…I really didn’t know what to expect. But the book surprised me – it is really good.

   It takes place in Dynmouth – an imaginary little town on English coast (in the exact place where Francis Drake destroyed the Spanish Armada…it’s probably somehow meaningful for the book, I just didn’t find out how exactly). The main character is a young guy called Timothy who spends most of his time on his own, watching telly. His mother and sister have to work and even when they are at home, they don’t pay him much attention. As expected, Timothy seeks attention elsewhere.

   As he has very little to do, Timothy browses the town and watches people. Unfortunately, he watches them more or less all the time (except for the time he watches TV) and with no regard to their privacy.

   There is an annual festival where people have different performances and they can win some totally worthy prizes (something like British Hillbillies Got Talent). Well, Timothy thinks he can participate. Not only participate, he can win. He makes up a funny scene about a serial killer and his three victims (young brides) who he drowned in bathtub. Obviously, no one thinks it would be even remotely funny but Timothy is resolved to get all the props he needs (a bride’s dress, a bathtub and a curtain).

   He may be a complete weirdo and the most antisocial guy in the town, but it doesn’t mean he’s stupid. He starts blackmailing his neighbours in order to get all those things and when they don’t agree to give what he wants…well, that’s when the real fun starts. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really matter if people obey him or not, he tells their secrets to everyone anyway.

   There is no point in describing the whole of the plot so I will proceed right to the core of the matter. Timothy is an ass (obviously) but he is a) still more honest than most of the town and b) unlike the others, he sees the life of the town as it is. On the other hand, he might see through people’s masks but when it comes to his own life and the way he lives it, he is just as delusional as everyone else. Another point of the book is that people never really change. Timothy forces some of the inhabitants into really tough psychological struggle, they get through it and than…they carry on as they always have. An lastly, Trevor shows not only particular stories but he also presents the town as a unit. There is an old crazy religious lady, a divorced couple, an unfaithful husband with a young mistress, an old couple, a spinster who has spent all her life waiting for her beloved man to leave his wife, etc. Not only you can find almost same pattern in basically every town and village, people themselves repeat it – the children in the story begin their way to become some of these people themselves.

   It’s not a very nice book. I really hated Timothy. I wanted the little sod to die (I somehow expected that someone will lose their nerves and do him in). People in the city are all weak and when he threatens them, they run or they just let him hurt them. But…that’s probably how it is.

China Miéville: Un Lun Dun (Un Lun Dun)

    I was in the Municipal Library with Awaris once and I found one of Miéville’s books. I told her it looked quite interesting and she replied that she has already read most of his work. Well, I don’t understand when she found the time for it but OK (it’s obvious she has a time machine and is too mean to share her secret with humanity). I really wanted to read some of his books and I finally had time for it and I loved it.

   It’s kind of Alice in Wonderland but modern and in urban settings. Two girls – Deeba and Zanna – accidentally enter UnLondon – a weird version of London where all things that become moil (mildly obsolete in London) or broken come and continue their lives. Unfortunately, UnLondon is threatened by the Smog – a cloud of effluvia (effluvia…that’s a cool word) which gradually gained consciousness. Zanna finds out that she’s the Schwazzy which is English transcription of choisi – chosen one (I will overcome my urge to correct everyone and do as if I have overlooked the fact that it should be choisie). The two girls are told to go to the Propheseers who should tell them what to do and help the Schwazzy to beat the Smog. When they arrive to the Propheseers’ bridge (after a trip in a flying bus and jumping across 2 metre high roofs) they meet the Book (basically, a big talking volume with inclination to deep depressions) and Brokkenbroll – the master of broken umbrellas. He and Benjamin Unstible – a Propheseers who everyone thought was dead – change old broken umbreallas into unbrellas – weapons against the Smog. But it doesn’t take long before things go very differently from what the prophecies say and it slowly turns out that unLondon might be rather in need of an unchosen one rather than the chosen (who will also need help – the too much talkative book, a half-ghost and a cuddly milk box).

   One thing I liked about this book is Miéville’s language. He is probably one of a few authors whose description didn’t bore me to death (it is quite difficult to be boring when you create a world where houses are built from old writing machines…but anyway). He uses a little difficult or less known words (not sure why, maybe it’s like Lemony Snicket who always puts in a definition of the word…Miéville is just for a little older readers…it’s a YA book). And he makes up his own words. Like binjas. I liked binjas. They are bins but also ninjas. Binjas kick ass. Language and language games are one of things which makes is so much like Alice in Wonderland. For example, the heroes enter the land of Mr Speaker who is the only one allowed to speak in Talklands. And every word he pronounces takes on physical existence (and crawls out of his mouth…yuk). He is complete control over them until…well, until Deeba says this:

“Well,” said Deeba, “don’t think word do what anyone tells them all the time.”

Hemi was looking at her with at least as much bewilderment on his face as Mr Speaker had.

“What are you on about?” Hemi said.

“YES, WHAT ARE YOU ON ABOUT?”

Deeba paused to admire about, an utterling like a living spiderweb.

“Words don’t always mean what we want them to,” she said. “None of us Not even you.” The room was quiet. Al the people and things in it were listening.

“Like…if someone shouts, “Hey, you!” at someone in the street, but someone else turns around. The words misbehaved. They didn’t call the person they were meant to. Or if you see someone at a party and they’re wearing something mad, and you say, “That’s some outfit!” and they think you’re being rude, u you meant it really.”

“Or…like if someone says something’s bad and people think they mean bad bad and they mean good bad. Or…” Deeba giggled, remembering one of the Blyton books her mother gave had given her, saying she had enjoyed it when she was Deeba’s age. “Or like that old book wit a girl’s name that just sounds rude now.”

The utterlings were twitching and staring at her. Mr Speaker was flinching. He looked sick.

(Unfortunately, Enid Blyton wrote like zillion books, so I didn’t find out which one Deeba speaks about).

   Another great thing about this books how imaginative it is. Mr Speaker is an example of it but there are piles and piles of great ideas (yeah, just like in Carroll). Well, long story short, it is a very good book if you’re looking for something funny and witty and you are in no mood for discovering the dark corners of human soul. I rest my case, just read it.

   Oh…one more thing. If you meet a giraffe…in night…and there are no bars between you and it…just run.

Paul Murray: Skippy Dies

   I have no idea how I cam across this book, I guess I must have read about it somewhere on the Internet. Than I asked my Dad to get it for me for Xmas and it was only now that I finally got to read it.

   There is not much of a story, at least there is no clear story line to follow (although the book has 660 pages). It’s more of a mixture of characters who are trying to somehow lead a worthy life (in which most of them…if not all of them…fail) or at least survive (in which some of them fail too). The story takes place in Seabrook – a prestigious Catholic boarding school in Dublin (it actually doesn’t exist but it is based on a school the author attended). The book presents us with POVs of several characters – mainly Skippy, Ruprecht, Carl and Howard. There are some other minor narrators, like Greg, the headmaster and evil incarnated; Father Green (aka Père Vert), a French teacher who hates French people and language, he hates teaching and most of all...he hates teaching French; and Lori, Skippy’s and Carl’s dream girl.

   Skippy is a student at the school, he’s 14 year old and for some unknown reason (later it is known, of course) he is so depressed he has to swallow handfuls of pills. He gradually falls deeper and deeper into depression until one day, he sees Lori and helplessly falls in love. Ruprecht is his friend and room-mate, a overweighed genius whose best entertainment is to sit in basement, trying to contact other intelligent species in Space. He tries to prove the string theory but after Skippy dies, he kind of loses it and tries make a contact with the beyond. Carl is same old as Skippy and Ruprecht but he’s a big, strong guy, a bully and a drug dealer and drug addict in one person. And Howard is their History teacher with a girlfriend whom he no longer loves who falls in love with a super-hot bitchy substitute teacher Miss McIntyre.

   The over-all feeling you’ll get from this book is a super-deep depression because this world is just fucked up beyond repair. All the characters try to deal somehow with this fact…mostly by getting high or drunk…or, in Ruprecht’s case, by eating piles of doughnuts. Sometimes, they get almost philosophical and reflect about life and world and Universe and Love and stuff and there are some really interesting ideas. The book mixes all kinds of moods – it’s funny, tragic, cynical and in a way brutal and disgusting in the same time. Sometimes it might be a little bit too much (one of Lori’s chapters will change your attitude to oral sex forever).

   But besides great characters and ideas, there is Murray’s excellent style. If you happen to teach about direct, indirect and all-those-between-direct-and-indirect speeches in English, use this book as your source text. On the other hand, it sometimes get a little confusing (especially Carl’s chapters lack quotations marks and sometimes they lack diacritics completely). He uses unbelievably wide range of similes – from biblical visions (used in really funny way – like when he describes Ruprecht putting his robot on floor as Moses’ mother letting her baby float in basket) to contemporary movies and computer games. He also has wonderfully imaginative, almost poetic language – mostly in the part when people are affected by drugs (I doubt there is any other book in which someone would describe eyes of someone on drugs in so many different ways).

   I really loved this book and if it weren’t so long, I would be sure to read it again sometime later. Hard to say if I’ll ever make myself re-read the whole novel but it is worth it. It was longlisted for Booker Prize 2010 so I really wonder what the awarded book is like because it should be frelling awesome if it beat Skippy… Anyway, there will be a movie next year so there should be a trailer soon.