I didn't really read much in March and April, and much of what I did read, proved to be less than noteworthy. Never mind, having started something (monthly book posts) I'll stick with the program and subject you to the boring details. I wasn't really looking for deep reading, my mental processes already being taxed with a few outside projects as well as the rigors of packing and sorting-while-packing. This could have been part of the problem, I am drawn to things that make me reflect, and am often disappointed by shallow gloss. And yet life is full of surprises, and sometimes you never know where you'll find some detail you weren't even aware you were looking for.
Actually, it wasn't all bad. There were a couple of books I just loved, and a couple of more that I struggled with, but which won me over and proved to be silent friends, the kind that sometimes catch you by surprise when you aren't looking. I loved George RR Martin's Game of Thrones and found it to be the perfect distraction and escape, but not without thoughtful passages that also fed my own need for rumination and reflection. It had been on my list for a long time, but never read, and I impulsively started it one night when I really wanted to disappear into that kind of numbing mindlessness that television can bring. I believe that the time reading the book was well spent and although I actually spent longer with it than I would have with the first season, the book was quite enjoyable and thought provoking as well. Alas it was a long time before another book so captured my imagination and there were evenings that I did indeed fall asleep into a video-induced semi-coma.
Shortly before reading the Martin, I picked up Adam Johnson's The Orphan Master's Son, which was also excellent, and one of my favorite novels from these two months, but it was not as good of a stress reliever or escape as the former novel. In fact, it was difficult to get started with this novel, but it did win me over in the end. It is not a novel for someone who just wants to get lost in an epic tale that carries you away, and it can be difficult with its layers of meaning, truth, fable, surrealism and poignant portrayals of hope and despair and the way they shape and corrupt. But despite this, despite the pain in this novel, there is also incredible beauty and hope and I highly recommend it, just not necessarily as bedtime reading.
If these two novels were my favorites, and they were, with their somewhat overlapping themes but very different approaches, what was the sleeper, the book that won me over? Actually there were two novels, but they are linked. Both novels are by Rachel Cusk, Transit and Outline. I also have to admit that, as much as I might have loved the first two novels discussed above more while I was reading them, it is these latter two that are going to haunt my thoughts longer.
First of all, I have to admit that I had read a couple of Rachel Cusk's earlier novels, and although they were well written, they just were not quite my cup of tea. In fact I probably would not have sought out anything else by Cusk except that I happened to read something about her newest novel, Transit, that captured my attention. After placing myself on the wait-list at my local library, I decided to read the previous novel, Outline.
Outline is a slow, engaging novel that doesn't follow a typical novel form. In fact it is much like an outline where the narrator and protagonist is passive, slowly revealed through her interactions with others, with the ways others respond to her presence. Although it seems a little odd, quite a bit is actually revealed, both about the characters with whom our narrator interacts, but also about our narrator herself, and the period of transition she is going through after a divorce, simply through the situations and revelations others make in her presence and her reaction (or lack of reaction). I wish I had my notes with me from when I read the book, as there were passages I copied out and commented upon, but alas they are packed Still, despite not having a clear story-line, the story grew, and the outline of our protagonist's character grew, as if she was slowly be revealed not only to us, but to herself, through the process.
Transit is the second novel in what is meant to be a trilogy. Here, the author is still listening to others, but she is also more present in the story and in her life. She has moved to London, purchased a house in desperate need of renovation, and has taken on that project, and this has sparked something in herself, as if the physical renovation of the house is symbolic of the emotional renovation she must undergo to become more fully herself in her new life. In fact she refers to her passivity in the previous novel:
For a long time, I said, I believed that it was only through absolute passivity that you could learn to see what was really there. But my decision to create a disturbance by renovating my house had awoken a different reality, as though I had disturbed a beast sleeping in its lair. I had started to become, in effect, angry.
Our protagonist has moved from numbness, to anger, two steps in her transformative process. And the process here is told with great gentleness and subtlety. These are books that stole into my heart when I wasn't expecting it, and they will stay with me a long time. I look forward to whatever will be revealed in the next chapter, and I appreciate the slow evolution, and anticipation, as the novel itself, or series of novels takes shape, from outline, through evolution, to some future state, not yet quite known.
In conclusion, following is my actual list, in order read, perhaps an occasional comment, but for the most part not.
Elizabeth Kostova — The Swan Thieves. I actually enjoyed this a great deal, beautiful writing about art, slightly less successful as a novel.
Rachel Cusk — Outline.
Nujeen Mustafa — Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey…..
Clare-Louise Bennett — Pond.
Adam Johnson — The Orphan Master's Son
George R.R. Martin — Game of Thrones
Stephen King — Mr. Mercedes
Jimin Han — A Small Revolution
Rachel Cusk — Transit