BOOK REPORT: The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Title:                               The Graveyard Book

Author:                            Neil Gaiman

Original Copyright Date:          2008

My Rating:               4.5 out of 5 stars  ( loved it)


Back-cover Description
It takes a graveyard to raise a child. Nobody Owens , known as Bod, is a normal boy. He would be completely normal if he didn't live in a graveyard, being raised by ghosts, with a guardian who belongs to neitherthe world of the living or the dead. There are adventures in the graveyard for a boy -- an ancient Indigo Man, a gateway to the abandoned city of ghouls, the strange and terrible Sleer. But if Bod leaves the graveyard, he will be in danger from the man Jack-- who has already killed Bod's family.

My Thoughts
The Graveyard Book is a fabulously entertaining, not-so-standard coming-of-age story about a boy (standard) being raised in an old, no longer used, graveyard by the ghosts buried there (not-standard).  This story is listed as "Young Adult" or "Children's" but I don't think Neil designed it that way, he just set out to write a great story that just happened to be accessible to most age groups.  

Most of Neil's writing have a dark edge to it, and The Graveyard Book is no different; it is set in a graveyard and death is a not-so-subtle theme throughout, starting off with the murder of Bod's family and continuing with the community of souls who help raise him.  However, the myriad souls which adopt Bod, who range from a roman statesman, a few aristocrats, some well respected craftsmen and  teachers, and others give Bod a diverse and somewhat normal upbringing.  

We've learned from Harry Potter and other young adult stories, death doesn't need to be omitted from young adult books if addressed properly,by not dancing around it and allowing the characters to deal with it. and Neil definitely balances this topic expertly.  The Graveyard Book is an expertly written, clever, and fun story that no one should miss.

BOOK REPORT: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

Title:                                           Lolita

Author:                                       Vladimir Nabokov

Original Copyright Date:          1955

My Rating:            4 out of 5 stars  ( well done )


Back-cover Description
Awe and exhilaration-- along with heartbreak and mordant wit-- abound in Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's most famous and controversial novel, which tells the story of the aging Humbert Humbert's obsessive, devouring, and doomed passion for the nymphet Dolores Haze. Most of all, it is a meditation on love -- love as outrage and hallucination, madness and transformation

My Thoughts
When Lolita opens up, it immediately sets this story as a memoir-confession of a dying man in a prison or mental institution.  The main character, and narrator, Mr Humbert Humbert starts off as a child of 13 falling in love one summer with a girl (also 13).  She dies of Typhus suddenly.  

We then jump ahead to his adult years where he is a writer and academic in psychology and literature and he still has a fascination with pubescent girls between the ages of 10 and 14. He admits that he is the creepy man in the park that goes there only to ogle the girls, or nymphets, as he calls them. He admits he's had several trips to mental institutions and that he often spends the evening with young looking prostitutes. 

How does one say that they liked a book where the main storyline revolves around such a off-putting pedophile?   This is where Nabokov shines and my experience as a literary critic falters.  I just don't have a way to articulate *how* Nabokov keeps you engaged in such an off-putting story. But he does. I can really only give you my thoughts as I read it.   

Lolita is divided into two parts. In the first part of the novel, you are in the head of a mad-man crazed by pure, unadulterated (pun-intended??) love and devotion to his Lolita.  It seemed to me, in the first chapters describing their relationship, that Humbert is a full on schizophrenic where he became that 13 year old boy again.  His adoration of Lolita, his nervousness in anticipation of simply being in the same room as her;  the luck of a glancing touch seemed just like a 13 year old would behave around his first crush.  Nabokov balances this out with a narrator that interrupts himself to correct himself, or to say that he doesn't quite remember this detail or that. It pulled me out of his head, enough to keep me separated.  

There were also very obvious omissions to his story which kept me at a safe distance.  Everything he recollects is his side only; he doesn't project emotion for other characters, he only provides insight into the scenes which actively or directly concerned him. The other characters dialog is only there to either frame his thoughts or move the story along, but only as much as needed.  For example, Lolita's mother, Charlotte, dies after being hit by a car whilst in a panic having discovered Mr. Humbert's feeling towards her daughter.  Lolita was away at camp at the time and gets picked up by Mr. Humbert who told everyone (including Lo) that she was merely in a bad accident and in a hospital that was no where near where they lived.  In the telling of this scene, the narrator never tells of Lolita's concern or anxiety over her mother's condition.  It's as if she is just there for the ride; happily content on being his seductress.   When she finally says that she wants to go see her mother, he says, "She's Dead" and that's the end of the chapter.  That's all that is mentioned of it. No, "She cried for days, or She shed a single tear and glanced off into the distance"... Nothing.  They just keep driving around the country. I think this is what the literary critics call an unreliable narrator. 

Part two of the novel deals with the unraveling of his "peaceful life" with his beloved Lolita. Cracks appear in the lustful walls around the story through which you start to see glimpses of how Lolita actually viewed the situation.  She wasn't the willing partner he made her out to be.  After Lolita "betrays" him and escapes, the walls crumble all together.  Again, this reinforces the unreliable narrator construct.

At this point, Nabokov transforms the story with a seemingly theater of the absurd quality where actual emotion on the part of anyone is scarce.  His loss makes him numb, and that numbness seems to be projected onto other characters.  Mr. Humbert's desire to kill the man who took the object of all his love and devotion away is presented in a simply stoic and matter of fact way; the way a farmer might say he had to kill a wolf who got into his hen house...  Except, in this story, the man on the other side of the gun is also just as unemotional about his predicament.

All in all, it was a very good book, Literature in every sense of the word.  If you can get past the base pedophelia, then it is a good read.

BOOK REPORT: Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

Title:                           Picture of Dorian Gray

Author:                       Oscar Wilde

Original Copyright Date:          1891

My Rating:          4 out of 5 stars  ( well done )

Back-cover Description
Oscar Wilde brings his enormous gifts for astute social observation and sparkling prose to The Picture of Dorian Gray, his dreamlike story of a young man who sells his soul for eternal youth and beauty. This dandy, who remains forever unchanged—petulant, hedonistic, vain, and amoral—while a painting of him ages and grows increasingly hideous with the years, has been horrifying, enchanting, obsessing, even corrupting readers for more than a hundred years.

Taking the reader in and out of London drawing rooms, to the heights of aestheticism, and to the depths of decadence, The Picture of Dorian Gray is not only a melodrama about moral corruption. Laced with bon mots and vivid depictions of upper-class refinement, it is also a fascinating look at the milieu of Wilde’s fin-de-siècle world and a manifesto of the creed “Art for Art’s Sake.”

My Thoughts

Wilde's Picture of Dorian Gray is a gothic horror story which boils the entirety of the aesthetic movement, of which he was a proponent, into a nice and neat two-hundred pages.  

"It is silly of you , for there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about."

This was an enjoyable read;  Wilde's poignant witticisms and  social critique made me laugh out loud and thankful that I don't live during a time where I could possibly be on the wrong side of his pen.  

While the aesthetic movement rhetoric was, pun intended, shallow, it seemed a proper fit for those who, as Wilde states, practice the fine and noble aristocratic art of doing absolutely nothing.  

As a quick aside, I'm thinking of going back to school to get my Masters in Aristocratic Arts... Advanced Matchbook Arrangement looks intriguing, but I don't have the prerequisites yet ( Muted Gossip, and Theories of Understated Social Disapproval)

"But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face. The moment on sits down to think, one becomes all nose , or all forehead, or something horrid" 

 It was very interesting to me to see how the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde theme of the duality of man was presented by Wilde.  In Robert Louis Stevenson's famous work, the duality was brought out by a drug,  and his "alter-ego" was responsible for all of the evil doings.  Dr. Jekyll had a sense of plausible deniability in his actions as he was physically transformed by the drug; Mr Hyde was a different persona.  Dorian's duality is more subtle; it arises out of the sole desire to stay beautiful.  Dorian has no Mr. Hyde, no alter-ego. The painting becomes Dorian's "Tell Tale Heart"; however, because he can keep it in the attic, as his little secret, watching the painting show his every evil while he stays the same beautiful Dorian becomes a thrill in itself.   In both stories, the main characters start to lose control over the evil outlet and their actions become more horrific and lead to a self-destructive and tragic end. 

I really liked this book and would recommend it for anyone wanting a short dark tale that is extremely well written.