The Secret Garden by F. H. Burnett

Summer is basically over, so I am going to name this my last summer novel. There were a bunch on the list that I never got around to, but fortunately I am still alive so I can read more and more!

The Secret Garden is an old friend of mine. I first read it when I was maybe 8 or 9. It is a kids' book but it was written in a beautiful plain style which I love. There are very few big words or complex sentences, but the ideas are still very skillfully and delicately explained. The parallel structure of the two main story lines (the growth of the garden and the development of character in Mary) are so neatly coupled as to be nearly allegorical.

I am not sure that the author would have said directly that gardens make people better people, although it seems like she is saying that at several points in the book. She certainly thought gardens were worthwhile. I think what she did mean by this story was that caring about other people makes people happier. Caring about other things is a step towards caring about other people. I think that the main theme in this book is overcoming selfishness through taking an interesting in things outside of oneself.

This book always makes me feel better about nature and things. It is a good one.

Secrets from the Vinyl Cafe by Stuart McLean

No, this wasn't technically on the list. But that's only because I didn't think to read it until I saw it sitting there on the shelf at the library, and their copy of "Walden" was out anyway.

I know I have mentioned to many of you before why I love short stories. It's kind of like having snacks when you're not hungry or watching 5 20-minute television shows when you don't have time for a movie. They don't take effort or fill you up full, short stories are just little diversions (unless you're John Steinbeck, in which case piss off, stop ruining my life).

Long live Stuart McLean! These little stories that I usually hear on the radio on Sunday afternoons are always just the right thing to make me laugh aloud on the train home at the end of a very mediocre day at work or the thing to make me tear up when I thought I was too grouchy to feel sympathetic to something.

Their main strength is that they are told in plain Canadian. It's not the same as plain English. Plain Canadian is a speech that assumes you know what the worst is. It assumes that you don't need to be told all the grisly bits, you can tell them from the look on the storyteller's face. That, and Stuart is the unparalleled MASTER of dramatic irony. I believe this appeals to our national sense of patriotism. We don't rally to calls about hope and freedom and whichever that amendment is that lets people carry guns. We tend more to just look over everyone's shoulder and say "Told you it wouldn't work".

I would say the most loveable thing about the Vinyl Cafe is that it makes me feel like I have a lot of good friends around when I'm reading it or listening on the radio. It's disheartening to be out of the hosue for 12 hours in a day and realize you haven't talked to a single person that you truly like. And then along comes Dave and Morley and everything is okay again.


Up next: The View from Castle Rock by Alice Munro

White Fang by Jack London

I read this one on the not-technically-a-recommendation of Tasha, who usually has a much different taste in books than I do. Fortunately, we both like crazy old Jack London.

White Fang is the story of a wolf-dog who is raised through the many different stages of human interaction. He is born in the wild, but before he is a year old his mother takes him to live in an Indian camp. When he has become a full-grown dog, he is sold to a man who owns a dog-fighting ring. After he is nearly killed in a fight, he is rescued by a man who takes him to live domestically in California. It's kind of an anti-call-of-the-wild thing.

What I enjoyed particularly in this book was that it was kind of an observed progression through the evolution of human society. Rising from the wild to the hunter to the semi-barbaric to the comfort of civilization, White Fang's observations of humanity at each stage throw light on old Jack's perception of how humans got from fighting wolves off their backs to having wolves beg for tidbits under the table. It is a story about a wolf, but is also a story about the domination of humans, and what that might mean to an outside observer.

It is not a long book, and it as lots of lovely bits about the North and the Wild (which are proper nouns to Jack). The style of the writing always generates the ominous feeling of the Wild being very near by. It is a happy but threatening thing, and it makes me all tingly. I imagine all those freeze-dried explorers felt the same before they got lost went crazy or became lunch or all three.

Here's a song that I imagine Jack would have liked. Now I have to go watch the 90's film version of White Fang, which I'm sure Jack would not have liked at all.

Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw

This little play took me all of ninety pages to read. It's only 94 pages long, including stage notes and that, so I must be losing my edge.

This play was adapted very slightly to create the screenplay for My Fair Lady, the film featuring the splendid Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn. It has given me endless joy over the years.

To be honest I thought the play would be more different from the film. The main difference is that in the film the main characters are reunited, and in the play their separation is final.

What is it about? It's about the chains that money and class wrap around us. It's about the dignity and feeling that carries a person through life with their chin up. It's about panache.

I am reminded of another play that is infused with a similarly witty eloquence. Cyrano de Bergerac, my all-time favourite romantic hero, could be considered an anti-Higgins - or rather Higgins is the anti-Cyrano. Cyrano is the great poet and lover, treating even a common flower-girl (who is disguised in his play as an orange-seller) as though she were a duchess. Higgins is condescending and rude almost without exception, and I laugh at his surprise when his desires are met with condescension and scorn.

To be honest, there is much more of Higgins' heart than of Cyrano's in me. It makes me unhappy in a way. Wouldn't we all love to say these magnificent lines in honesty:

I carry my adornments on my soul.
I do not dress up like a popinjay;
But inwardly, I keep my daintiness.
I do not bear with me, by any chance,
An insult not yet washed away – a conscience
Yellow with unpurged bile – an honor frayed
To rags, a set of scruples.
I go caparisoned in gems unseen,
Trailing white plumes of freedom, garlanded
With my good name – no figure of a man,
But a soul clothed in shining armor, hung
With deeds for decorations, twirling – thus –
A bristling wit, and swinging at my side
Courage, and on the stones of this old town
Making the sharp truth ring, like golden spurs!

 Rather I find myself acting out the dreary Henry Higgins charade:

If you can't stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life of the gutter. It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, don't you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what you can appreciate.

 Making someone writhe until they come around to do what you want them to has its own jolly merits, but I think on the whole I'd rather be Cyrano.

I'm sorry if that didn't really have much to do with the play. I love it dearly, and I grinned like a fool on the GO train while I read it. Higgins is a marvellous worm, really, and I am happy that Eliza storms off with her very own Christian de Neuvillette (a cute, empty-headed boytoy, just like in Cyrano).

Vengeance by George Jonas

Reading this book was partially necessary because Peter lent it to me, and partially because my dad is a nutso Zionist, and I disagree with him on that political stance.

If you haven't googled it already, this is a probably true story of an Israeli counter-terrorist agent who worked in Europe for several years during the 1970's. At the time, counter-terrorism was just becoming a recognized military discipline. The protagonist and his team are given a list of eleven men to kill. The targets were allegedly responsible for planning or carrying out the murder of Israeli athletes during the 1970 Olympics.

This book was compiled as a memoir of one of the agents and has been independently verified in several ways, although obviously not every detail is verifiable.

Since its publication in 1984, very little seems to have changed in the way the Arab-Israeli conflict is fought, and the public knows just as little (or wrongly thinks they know as much) as they did in the 70's.

What I thought was most engaging about this book was its very conversational and unembellished style. It was like someone telling me a story in a bar and it was a heck of a story. It was kind of a Bourne Trilogy thing, but with a protagonist who could have been named Steve Martin, he's so average.

So where does the Zionist thing come in? The author and the protagonist question at several points during the book whether counter-terrorism tactics employed then (and now) by the Israeli government are actually effective at stopping or even decreasing terror. They seem to doubt whether the method of sending a group of hitmen after the hitmen who are chasing hitmen is really anything but vengeance.

My dad seems to think that Israel is justified in doing whatever it takes to protect itself from the forces which would try to destroy it. This seems okay, but not ideal, in theory. Self-preservation is not the highest of moral standings we can take, but when it applies to an entire nation it is logical. The question then is where the line is drawn between self- preservation and continued provocation of a long-standing grudge. So maybe there is justice in hunting down a single human who coordinated and funded an attack killing a dozen civilians. Maybe there is justice in taking out someone whose functional political stance is to destroy Israel and all its inhabitants. The wall I seem to be running into with the modern issue comes down to this: if we're saying it's an eye for an eye, then why, in the most recent events, has the casualty count been Palestine: 213 and Israel: 1? You don't get to claim self-defense on odds like that. Yes, one side has made the first move, but I feel that the proportions of this conflict can not be reconciled with a claim of self-preservation. Every human death is a tragedy, and using civilians as retaliatory targets, whether in response to provocation or not, is neither politically nor morally acceptable.

There's my little political rant. I'm not going to sit here and preach at you about a subject that I have no real-world experience of. I simply would like everyone to take note that this book, thrilling adventure though it is, has a very valid point to make about how terrorism is handled in the global political theatre.

Up next: Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. I'm really excited for this one, because I've never read Shaw before and he's a big deal, apparently.

The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis

You thought I'd forgotten this, didn't you?
Wrong! I was just working through a scholarly book that required some serious reflection and contemplation.

"The Allegory of Love" is a critical journey through the poetry of the Middle Ages, tracing a common theme of something called courtly love. This seems like a very dry thing for a summer reading list. I have deeply enjoyed this book, though, because it's by C. S. Lewis. There are a few of you who are about to say "You would have thought it was lame if the name on the cover was different". I contend that I would not have thought it was lame for the very simple reason that I would not have attempted it at all if the name on the cover was different.

Allow me to digress briefly into why C. S. Lewis is the best writer of all time (to me). He writes with a clear, candid style that has a natural rhythm and freshness which suits the novel and the scholarly treatise equally well. He has an ability to make a thought take solid form and once it is out in front of me on the page, I always wonder how I didn't think of it quite like that before. He also has an immense knowledge of this particular subject and just burbles out quotations from obscure sources (all properly cited, of course, and all is right in the world). And somehow he takes what would easily be a topic for a very dull upper-year literature course and makes it seem as important as a train schedule and as interesting as The Matrix was the first time you saw it.
The digression is complete.

Courtly love, that is, the idea that happiness is accessible through successful romantic attachment, came about quite unexpectedly in the early 11th century. To our generation, it seems to have been the topic of all really interesting written and musical art since time immemorial. Lewis traces the germination and evolution of this idea through the poets of the Middle Ages. He shows how the feudal relationship of master and peasant created a mould for romantic feelings to be shaped into a feudal servitude. He shows later how the art of allegory (using a literal story to tell an inner, imaginitive one) was used by poets who lacked the imaginative vocabulary to speak their hearts. Lewis writes, of these early sentimental writers

We are apt to take it for granted that a poet has at his command, besides the actual world and the world of his own religion, a third world of myth and fancy... Such were the three worlds which Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton were born to. London and Warwick, Heaven and Hell, Fairyland and Prospero's island. But the triple heritage is a late conquest. Go back to the beginnings of any literature and you will not find it.

 The poets, therefore, used the deities of a long-deceased culture to express their emotional experiences and fantasies, as Lewis writes

The old gods, when they ceased to be gods, might so easily have been suppressed as devils... only their allegorical use, prepared by slow developments within paganism itself, saved them, as in a temporary tomb, for the day when they could wake in the beauty of acknowledged myth and thus provide modern Europe with its third world of romantic imagining.

This new system of using allegories and references to the Greek and Roman pantheons allows the poets to explore and express this new sentiment, romantic love, outside the confines of the morality of their own religious beliefs. Even though these two concepts of love had been spawned and nurtured independently, the interaction and conflict between the courtly love and the divine love continue to colour many great literary works throughout the era. As poets build off the works of others, the form for expressing the inner world changes and allegories become obsolete, but not before giving us the great works of Chaucer and Mallory, and much later the allegorical method was changed into the practice of symbolism (they are definitely different things). And just like that, the modern human has the words and means of expressing their inner life every bit as clearly as they express their literal, physical one.

It is silly of me to try and give you a short-form of this book, which is already itself a condensation of the largest literary experiment ever undertaken. What I will say is that Lewis works indefatigably to give due credit to the poets who had "the power which welds raw masses of experience into a whole", although they may have been overlooked by modern readers. His respect for the poet as a species is infectious, and catches me up in an inherited awe for the skills of those artists. His respect is not given undeservedly, though, as is evident from his discussion on the poet Alanus ab Insulis, who had a style Lewis disliked

Those who have read [the poem] to the end - a small company - and those only, can understand how speedily amused contempt turns into contempt without amusement, and how even contempt at last settles into something not far removed from a rankling personal hatred of the author.

All told, I'd say this is far and away the best literary criticism I've ever read, and is a far sight better than a few of the novels I have already attempted this summer. I'll leave you with one final quote from the book, because it is so quotable. This is in reference to Geoffry Chaucer's great love poem, "Trolius"

The end of Trolius is the great example in our literature of pathos pure and unrelieved. All is to be endured and nothing is to be done. The species of suffering is one familiar to us all, as the sufferings of Lear and Oedipus are not. All men have waited with ever-decreasing hope, day after day, for someone or something that does not come, and would willingly forget the experience... We turn, for relief, to the titanic passions and heroic deaths of tragedy, because they are sublime and remote, and hence endurable...

Up next: Vengeance by George Jonas

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol

I expected this to be a gloomy book. I took one look at that title and I thought "This will be all Russian morality and crime and punishment. Perfect."

Turns out that Nikolai Gogol is Russia's Douglas Adams. We're talking like ridiculously silly comments here. I tried to find some examples on Wikiquote, having returned the book to the library. Just funny little asides about this character or that one looking like a goat's momma or something like that. It was wonderful.

The story itself, though, was some good hearty moral stuff, which I always appreciate. The basic premise was something like "There's no point in me (the author) making up some perfect hero who is brave and kind and wonderful in every way. We are all sick to death of that. Instead I will draw the hero that I know, that I have met a thousand times in a hundred different cities. You will know him too, because he is so like your neighbour or your cousin or even yourself".  So the hero is this fellow of questionable moral fiber, who acts exactly like every intelligent, popular person in Russia would have hoped to be acting at that time. And the hero's sins catch up with him, but it's difficult to condemn him, even though you may not like him, because makes exactly the decision each of us readers would have in any situation. I think Gogol is poking fun at the intensely moralistic society which he was surrounded by (for examples of moralist Russian writing, read Fyodor Dostoyevsky). He was trying to get everyone to look their inner devils in the eye, and laugh at them a bit so they would seem so awful. He seriously felt the squalidness of his homeland, and the meanness that people visited on each other, and tried to polish it up with a couple jokes so that people would actually look at these things for what they were.

Anyway, I liked the thing a lot. Elegant and witty and lightly informative.

Up next: The Allegory of Love by C. S. Lewis. It's an academic work on the sudden appearance of a new formula in medieval literature: "happiness grounded on successful romantic love - which still supplies the motive of our popular fiction". I am looking forward to this immensely.


To close, I give you a little quote from Gogol: "As it is so strangely ordained in this world, what is amusing will turn into being gloomy, if you stand too long before it, and then God knows what ideas may not stray into the mind... Why is it that even in moments of unthinking, careless gaiety a different and strange mood comes upon one?"

They Fight Like Soldiers They Die Like Children by Roméo Dallaire

I had been wanting to read this book ever since I attended Dallaire's presentation on the issue of child soldiers at the University of Waterloo three years ago.

This is not a work of fiction, so I do not have the same criteria for evaluating it as I have for the other books I have read.

This book is an intensely research exploration of the causes and effects of using children as weapons of war. Dallaire covers social, political, and economic pitfalls, both local and widespread, which contribute to the ongoing use of children in armed conflict. He then examines the shortcomings of current efforts to prevent and cease this practice, and provides an academic basis for ongoing development of programs at all levels.

One thing I found especially surprising was the impact that fighting against children has had on the author directly. Allow me to trouble you with an excerpt:

Do such circumstances [ie: kill or be killed] eliminate or at least reduce soldiers' sense of humanity in order that they can employ destructive force? In the heat of the moment, cna they still hear the orders, can they still understand the rules of engagement, can they objectively process ethical, moral, and legal dilemmas? Is there still a track in their brains that permits some overriding constraints or limitations to what a human can do in combat? Can they still see the enemy as human or has the enemy become a target made of metal, wood, fabric, and flesh, all of equal value and posing an equal threat? Is the enemy still human and are you still human too?

These questions arise from combat between equals. Here's another. Can you kill a child if that child is dressed and armed as a warrior? If so, how many times can you do that deliberately before revulsion and disgust and self-doubt fry your brain?

This short passage communicates something I think has had a profound effect on Dallaire since he was involved in the UN peace-keeping force in Rwanda (where all armed groups had combatants under 14 years of age). I have read extensively on child soldiers and was not particularly shocked (but I was greatly saddened) by much of the information. One issue that is not often dealt with by charities and governments who rehabilitate these children is the issue of meeting force with force - when the aggressors may be as young as 6 years old. As instability and conflict spread across many nations, more and more trained peacekeepers will find kids with machine guns when they look through their scopes. How does an individual soldier deal with that situation and how can we prepare soldiers to make decisions that minimize the continued abuse and exploitation of these children?

There are a lot of questions that Dallaire asks in this book, but I think the final one in the quote above (how many times...) he has had to answer for himself. What a wretched answer to possess.

In the discussion that Dallaire presents of ongoing efforts to eradicate child soldiers, I noted his repeated insistence that better control of light automatic weapons and their associated ammo could be a huge help to keeping children out of direct confrontations (although they would likely still be vulnerable to exploitation as spies, carriers, or sexual slaves). This is, I think, the meeting point between the grand design and the ordinary people. This is how we hobbits can defeat Mordor. We can encourage our government to prioritize a decrease in small automatic weapons from both Canadian and international sources.

I won't say that you should all read this book, but I will say I found it encouraging and inspiring for a book that draws material from the most extreme examples of human brutality. Dallaire makes a convincing (and exhaustively researched) case for righting the wrongs, no matter how inconvenient it may be for us personally.

Up next: Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol (which should be more cheerful than this last one, oddly).

The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

I didn't expect to not be able to finish this book. I feel as though I've let you down, ducks, but I just can't do it. I know I'm putting it off because I've been re-watching Sherlock instead of reading this.

I'll see if I can outline why I can't finish it:
- None of the characters or their relationships to each other was ever described. As a result, I don't know who anyone is or how they relate to each other. Quentin seems to be both male and female, and T.P. keeps jumping from one location to another in the most incomprehensible way.
- The narration is taken up by a new character every chapter. It takes me 7-8 pages each chapter to sort out who is speaking and their relationship to the other characters, so I have no idea what's going on.
- The narration is a stream-of-consciousness type of thing. It is really well executed in the sense that people really do think in the manner the book narrates. The downside to this is that there is no expository interludes and it's hard to nail down a spatial or chronological or relational understanding of anything.

Basically, I need a Coles notes on this book, which I find too dismally embarrassing to acquire. If any of you lovelies has read this book and would like to tutor me on it, I'd be very much interested. For now, I'm going to set it aside.

Next up: They Fight Like Soldiers They Die Like Children by Roméo Dallaire (thanks for lending it to me, Peter!)

Raising Steam by Terry Pratchett

I know that I said I was reading "The Sound and the Fury", but the library emailed me and said that this was in for me, so I read it over the weekend.

A lot of people don't like Terry Pratchett. I can't understand how someone can not like 350 pages of silliness and puns and obscure references to historical events and figures

The silliness brings me much joy. I could say more, but this laptop is too hot and I am melting to death.

Up next: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

When a book makes the Wikipedia list of "100 Best Books of All Time", you have certain expectations.

I'm not saying that it was a bad book. It wasn't bad. I just didn't get a lot out of it.

"Things Fall Apart" is set in the period of early colonization of Nigera by the British Empire. It introduces a main character who is, in his youth, successful at all aspects of his tribal life. As he ages, he is plagued more and more by shortcomings in his character which decrease his standing with his tribe.

Basically, it's a tragedy: the descent of a honest, valiant hero into selfishness, depravity, and depression. It's also a pretty honest representation of early missionary methods in Africa and gives us a clue to why they were not really successful.

Ok, so maybe I got a lot out of it. The tragedy of heroism lost on the personal scale was paired with the tragedy of heroism lost on the clan scale (villagers refusing to fight against white people because of the repercussions). There's also an shift in the rationalization process of the main character between the outset and the outcome which I think is a notable feature of the writer's understanding of the transition between tribalism and colonialism in his home country.

Style, my ducks. Can't do much without it. The structure of the writing was a hybrid of "The Catcher in the Rye" and a fantasy story where the writer gets carried away making up words. I realize that all the unknown words were actually a language that is spoken in Nigeria, but often they were not explained at all. There was a bloody glossary at the end, just like there was in the fairy story I wrote in eighth grade. As to "The Catcher in the Rye", many of you have undoubtedly heard me harping on about how I dislike it. It lacked any drops of humour, wit, or fancy that could have enlivened the mood or tone. The metaphors, although accurate and not clichéd, were in most instances unmemorable. At least in Hemingway there was a reference to cojones or someones momma every few pages to keep everyone interested.

Although the literary construction of this novel is crystalline, the style is textbook - dry in its correctness.

Up next: The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. I am craving something quotable.

Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams

I guess this is a bit of cheating since it's not "literature" as such. I picked this book up partially because I had ben intending to read it and partially because I needed something more light-hearted after the previous two books.

Douglas Adams is a British science fiction writer, best known for his series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". "Last Chance to See" is a work of non-fiction, documenting his travels around the globe to view an assortment of the rarest and most vulnerable species left on the planet. It was published in 1990 and contributed greatly to conservation efforts for these animals.

Since there aren't what I'd call "themes" in this book, I've selected an excerpt. While travelling to the island of Komodo in Indonesia to view the infamous Komodo dragon, Mr. Adams writes this;

One of the more disturbing aspects of travel in remote areas is the neccessity of taking your food with you in non-perishable form. For Westerners who are used to getting their chickens wrapped in polythene from the supermarket it is an uncomfortable experience to share a long ride on a small boat with four live chickens who are eyeing you with a deep and dreadful suspicion which you are in no position to allay.

Despite the fact that an Indonesian island chicken has probably had a much more natural and pleasant life than one raised on a battery farm in England, people who wouldn't think twice about buying something oven-readybecome much more upset about a chicken that they've been on a boat with, so there is probably buried in the Western psyche a deep taboo about eating anything you've been introduced to socially.

This frivolity of mood is contrasted by the dire circumstances many of the animals Mr. Adams saw (or didn't see, sometimes).

I really enjoyed this book for it's value to the conservation of these species and because it was like traveling to the most remote parts of the world with a sassy British sci-fi writer (I imagine this is all I've ever wanted out of life anyway).

Up next: I'm hoping to find the book "Things Fall Apart" by Chinua Achebe today. Wish me luck!

For Whom The Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

I had a very different idea of what Ernest Hemingway was before I read this. The only previous work of his that I read was "The Old Man and the Sea". From that novella and from my knowledge of his lifestyle I had concluded he wrote adventure stories. I interpreted him as a sort of Farley Mowat from the early 20th century. That was wrong of me.

This book has the potential to become a favourite of mine after I read it a few more times (and I know I will). Hemingway's style, unique to himself in his time, has been mimicked by many who came after. His words and sentences are simple and clear, but have a poetic turn of description which softens the edges of what would otherwise be a harsh, unsympathyzing tone. Some writers who have attempted to follow in his stylistic footsteps have gotten carried away with the "poetic" thing and sacrificed clarity in their meanings (Margaret Atwood, I'm looking at you). I realize this requires some explanation. In poetry or poetic prose, the author will often leave certain things unsaid, or say them indirectly to create certain moods or tones or ideas. This is all very well. There is a limit though to how many gaps you can leave in your meaning before a reader will be discouraged from ferreting it out. In "The English Patient", I have to admit I don't know what happens in the end due to this very problem. Perhaps the problem is with me, or it is with the writing. Nevertheless, it detracts from my overall enjoyment of the book.

Hemingway dodges this bullet well. His descriptions, although poetic, are candid and insightful. A specific scene comes to mind - a character tells of the revolutionary take over in a small Spanish town. The fascists were hunted down and executed by their neighbours. I won't say that I felt I was there with them. It was more that I felt I knew and understood each of the dying men and also the executioners. This is a marvellous achievement in communication.

I haven't even said yet what the book is about. Usually when someone asks what a book is about I get so carried away talking about the themes and the style that I forget the plot. It takes place in the heat of the Spanish Civil War in 1937. A mostly fascist faction had seized power from the elected republican government, so the republicans, communists, and other libertarian groups had joined against the fascists to reinstate the republic. The main character, Robert Jordan, is sent behind enemy lines to dynamite a bridge so that a critical attack can advance. He is aided by a group of geurilla republicans who have been hidden in the mountains for many months. I'm not going to ruin the ending for you beyond the fact that the title is an excerpt from John Donne - "And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee".

Now for some themes! The primary one that I extracted is presented early in the book when the main character says "It was much better to be gay and it was a sign of something too. It was like having immortality while you were still alive". (Gay meaning happy here, obviously. Stay with me). In the few days we are with this character, he experiences the most happiness that Hemingway believes can be had when he falls in love with a girl and she loves him back. He says of this love that "There will always be people who say it does not exist because they cannot have it. But I tell you it is true and that you have it and that you are lucky even if you die tomorrow". Robert Jordan knows that they might only have hours to live. In that time he experiences all of friendship and love and happiness that he is able to. He thinks "There is only now, and if now is only two days, then two days is your life and everything in it will be in proportion. This is how you live a life in two days. And if you stop complaining and asking for what you never will get, you will have a good life. A good life is not measured by any biblical span". This is a version of that old philosophy that those who die young have eternal youth. Also I wonder if Robert Jordan would still have thought that about love after five years of marriage, but the book doesn't say.

There are other themes, but none arrested me so strongly as that first one. Themes like fearing death, or cowardice, or the evils of war, and there are several political points buried in there which I will need to dig up sometime. This book is supremely quotable too, which always makes me happy. I love being able to quote things at people because it is like having a good citation in a report. The difference is that it's hard to find peer-reviewed articles on the value of love and the emotional experiences of a truly brave person, so we cite those writers with great minds and hearts. The serious problem with this method is that I am willing to believe anything that is said with enough conviction and style, although it may be meritless.

Overall, I'd tell anyone to read this book. It's helpful to know some Spanish, but I guess "cojones" is a common enough term that most people will get the jokes. Lots of "yo momma" jokes too, which brightened my day considerably. There are some parts where the pacing drags because the main character gets all wrapped up in political introspection, but most of those bits can be easily skipped over (maybe that's why I didn't catch on to the political themes).

I would love to tell you what book I'm reading next, but I haven't gone to the library yet and it's always a crap-shoot to know what they will have available.

The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

This book first came to my attention when it was adapted into a film in 1996. I never saw the film, but I recall the critical fanfare which surrounded it. I later encountered fans of the book, who were always quick to point out all the awards it had won for being amazing and for being Canadian all at the same time.

I didn't really choose to read this book first this summer. I went to the nearest branch of the Toronto Public Library and filled out the necessary paperwork for a library card with dizzying anticipation. The Rexdale Branch Library is a dismal place: one floor with sparse shelving and fluorescent lights. Most of the space is taken up by the children's literature section and a few computers. I looked (with slightly diminished excitement) for anything that was on my reading list, and along came Ondaatje. They had several of his books there, and none of the others', so I took his home.

The first impression that I had upon finishing the book was that the experience of reading it had been much more memorable than the content itself. I have, after some thought, attributed this to the writing style.

Although there are several central characters who take turns as the narrator, the voice and tone stays consistent throughout. This voice and tone has a poetic, observational quality that creates a type of emotional distance between the reader and the narrator. I believe this was done on purpose by the author, who wished to demonstrate the characters' experiences of each other. Each pair of central characters seems to share a remarkable intimacy, which is revealed by the stories and experiences they tell to each other. This intimacy is always oppressed by a reserve. Although they share extensively about who they have been and what they have done, there is rarely any expression of their inner motives, desires, or reactions to their experiences. The tone of the narration coupled with the detailed exploration of their lives gives me a strong feeling of intimacy lost or missed - like friends who have grown apart or words that were not spoken.

The matter of the book was, I suppose, along this same vein. I think it means to say that in times of great hurt, we reach out for supports. Sometimes we fabricate supports for ourselves out of people, and make them into things that never really existed. Hana believes her English patient is a warrior saint, a man of mystery and power and goodness. In reality he was a spy, a cuckold, and on the wrong side of the war. Her belief was good, although factually baseless, because it helped her recover some sanity and purpose after months of helping soldiers die comfortably.

To be honest, I don't know if I "got" this one. The writing was stylistically beautiful, and as I had said, the experience of reading it was delightful. I can try to assemble themes and meanings for it, but it seems contrived. I sum up my impression thus: He told her everything except for 'why'.