Gustave Flaubert (author of Madame Bovary)

Since I am about to embark on a Madame Bovary read-along hosted by Nonsuch Book I decided to look briefly at the life of its author Gustave Flaubert. This is something I quite often do when reading classic novels as I find that having an understanding of the author's life and when they wrote it helps put the novel into context.

Flaubert was born in 1821 in France and began writing from a very early age. In 1840 he went to Paris to study Law but decided he didn't like it and dropped out. His first finished work was completed in 1842 and was a novella entitled November which was about a young boy and his relationship with a courtesan

He completed Madame Bovary in 1850 It took him 5 years to write. The government immediately tried to charge Flaubert and the publisher for immortality but was acquitted. Madame Bovary has stood out from among his works due to the realist and more truthful view of life which inspired future writers. The book is set at a time when there was a great rise of power among the bourgeois middle class which Flaubert detested. According to Wikipedia, the reader should therefore view the passages of the book where the country French customs are detailed as social criticism.

Flaubert never married instead seeking long-lasting friendship and travel companions. He certainty didn't have this attitude when it came to his sex life however and enjoyed both male and female prostitutes which he was very open about in some of his travel writings. These exploits resulted in him contracting syphilis in Beirut and for most of his life he suffered from various vernerial diseases. Nice. It's just as well he didn't marry really as a case of the clap does not make a good wedding gift.

Flaubert died in 1880 at the age of 58 from a cerebral haemorrhage.

Well it'll be interesting to read a book which has a style which inspired future writers such as Kafka but it seems that Flaubert could certainly give Madame Bovary a run for her money in the naughty behaviour category.

Posted by Jess

Nocturnes by Kazuo Ishiguro

Nocturnes: Five Stories of Music and Nightfall is a collection of short stories with music as a major theme running throughout. Each story features musicians who are unable to reach their full potential due to life’s niggling obstacles like looks, money or relationships and yet it is also music which sparks the friendships formed in each of the stories.

Each of the stories reads like a snapshot of a bigger picture and there is even a reoccurring character who appears in two of the stories. The other reoccurring themes within the stories are relationships at breaking point and the unease of fame.

The book therefore benefits from being read as you would a novel rather than dipping in and out as you might with traditional short stories. I did fill a little unfulfilled however and I would have liked to have seen a couple of the stories expanded a lot more. They were very well written in a similar dreamy style to Never Let Me Go but I'm not sure this style suited the short story format as much as the novel one.

Would I recommend this? Perhaps people who are more experienced with short stories would be able to comment on this one better but I preferred this authors novel.

Verdict 3/5

Posted by Jess

Asterix The Gaul

I don't often read graphic novels but the few I have read I have enjoyed. Some people do not consider graphic novels to be serious reading material and I can see their point but at the same time I think it is fun to read them from time to time and they sometimes have a surprising amount to offer.

The Asterix comic books are a good example of this. First published in France in 1959, there have been 34 books to date, the most recent written in 2009. There have also been 11 films (animated and otherwise) and several video games. There is even a theme park in Paris! Asterix books have sold 325 million copies worldwide.

In Asterix The Gaul we are introduced to Asterix; a hunter from Roman occupied Gaul (modern day France) The whole of Gaul is under Roman control with the exception of Asterix's small village. This is due to a magic potion brewed by the village druid (cheekily named, in a stroke of pure genius, 'Getafix') which gives the Gaul warriors superhuman strength for a limited time. Asterix has all sorts of adventures but spends most of his time beating the tar out of Roman soldiers after consuming the magic potion. This isn't to say the books are particularly violent and the fighting is always akin to the sort of Tom and Jerry 'saucepan in the face' slapstick children find hilarious. There is no blood and gore which is refreshing and certainly no cursing. All the characters in Asterix books carry swords but seem to prefer to use their fists (which is probably just as well!)

This isn't just a kids book. There is adult humour too, some of it tongue-in-cheek, sometimes satire, sometimes plays on words but always witty and good natured. A good example is the Roman centurion named 'Crismus Bonus'

All in all I found the book to be great good natured fun and I can easily see how the books could become collectable, they are very nicely put together and the illustrations are wonderful, clearly a lot of time and care went into drawing them. Although I'm no expert I have been confidently assured that the French to English translation is first class and very accurate.

Final verdict 4/5

Chris

Paper Americana (and a request for suggestions)

Some of you may have noticed that lately I have been mostly reading and reviewing classics(just looking at the sidebar under 'Jess is Reading' confirms this).

Well I have been concentrating on classics but more specifically American Classics. I'm not sure why but I have always been drawn to American Classic literature a lot more than English or French etc. I guess because it excites me, I relish the prospect of reading Steinbeck or Wharton far more than the prospect of reading Dickens or Bronte.

I have decided to embrace this and I enrolled on a American Literature course (its not a qualification but purely for fun). The first session was last week and featured The Scarlet Letter and the course ends in March with Faulkner. For this course I'll be reading around 15 American Novels which includes authors such as Hemingway, Updike and Plath but I also want to add my own reading list to run along side this until March(ish).

I have come up with a rough list of additional American novels which I will read and includes authors such as Melville, Twain and Crane but its also a list which contains more modern writers such as Toni Morrison and McCarthy. I don't want to get bogged down with endless classics so I have also added some quite recent books such as The Hours and Olive Kitteridge which were Pulitzer prize winners.

There is now an additional page on the blog titled 'The American Project' which I haven't finished yet but will eventually contain all the books I will read during this time in the date order that they were published. This isn't a 'challenge' and as such I do not have a deadline or a set number of books I have to read, I'll keep going with it until I get bored really.

So that's my reading plan for the next few months and I wanted to ask if anyone had any suggestions for me? The suggested books can be either old or more recent but must come under what you would consider either an American Classic or be what you would consider to be a great American Author. Please don't assume I am knowledgeable in this area, I had no idea who Richard Wright was until I read Black Boy and I didn't know what a 'beat' writer was until I recently read On the Road. So any suggestions (even if you think its an obvious one) are most welcome.

Posted by Jess

Forbidden Planet

One of my favourite science fiction films is 'Forbidden Planet' made in 1956 starring Walter Pidgeon, Anne Francis and a young Leslie Nielsen. Of course the special effects were naff and the acting a little cheesy but I remember seeing it as a child and being both thrilled and terrified by the inspired 'Monster from the Id'

Imagine my excitement when I discovered there was a book written in 1956 to be released in conjunction with the film and that there are still copies around today!

Forbidden Planet is set in the future on the distant planet of Altair IV; a desert world many light years from Earth. 20 Years previously an expedition was sent to Altair IV from Earth but was never heard from again. At the beginning of the film the space cruiser C57D arrives on Altair IV where the crew find Dr. Morbius, the sole survivor of the original expedition, who has discovered the technological remains of an ancient alien race which lived on Altair IV thousands of years earlier. All is not well on Altair IV as Morbius warns the crew to leave the planet at once before a deadly planetary force, which was responsible for killing the members of the previous expedition, returns to kill them.

To begin with the book is very dated however, unlike the film, it hasn't aged well. The book is poorly written and disjointed, a different character from the story narrates each chapter which means the book doesn't read smoothly and the reader has to re-adjust to the different character's individual style and viewpoints which can be confusing.

The content of the book is inherently sexist; when the sex starved crew of C57D discover Morbius has a young daughter the highly trained and disciplined spacemen, who are supposed to be the best of the best, turn into dribbling lecherous perverts attempting to seduce the hapless girl at every turn (which even borders on creepy since she is described as 'like a child' due to her naivety)

Sadly the wonderful spirit of science fiction adventure captured in the original film is not present in this book at all which was a terrible disappointment to me, especially as copies are rare and I had to go through some expense to get my hands on a copy.

One reason this book will stick in my mind is that it is the only book I have ever read where swear words are stared out! It happens more than once! Bizarre

Final verdict 2/5

Chris

In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami

What a roller-coaster this book was.

Kenji is a taxi driver/tour guide for the sex district in Tokyo. If your visiting the city and you want someone to show you the best sex clubs/prostitutes etc. with a translator then Kenji is your man. When an overweight American called Frank hires Kenji for three nights over new years eve, it soon becomes obvious that Frank has murderous desires on his mind. What follows is a descent into evil and murder.

The picture of Tokyo that the author paints is a vivid one and he uses the guide Kenji to great effect as he also 'guides' the reader around the sex district and how large parts of it operate. The conversations between Kenji and Frank are quite compelling and its interesting to see sometimes how Frank knows more about Japanese culture than Kenji and Kenji knows more about some aspects of American culture. There is a lot of commentary on modern travel and life and Kenji muses on the loneliness among the American business travellers he guides (although it has to be said that the kind of Americans Kenji comes into contact with are going to be lonely to a certain extent.)

There is some quite shocking violence in the book but sometimes I found the violence a little too over the top to have realistic impact. The majority of the book follows Kenji as he become more suspicious of Frank who is an unnerving character. Unfortunately the book loses a little momentum during the second part but at only 180 pages it manages to fit a lot in there.

Would I recommend this? If your up for the violence and you want to try this particular Japanese writer then its be a good place to start.

Verdict 3/5

Posted by Jess