The Graveyard Book - Neil Gaiman

The Graveyard Book was my final read of 2008 because I had seen so many great reviews, and wanted to end the year on a high note. I was not disappointed. However, due to the fact that I'm very behind in all my reviews and that there have been so many great reviews of this book already, I'll keep this short.

When we meet Nobody Owens, he is a baby, and his parents have just been murdered by a mysterious assailant. The boy wanders from the scene, and into a graveyard, where he is adopted by the dead who are buried there, and another who is not dead, yet not among the living. Over the following pages, we watch Nobody, or Bod for short, grow into a young man, with no fear of the dead and full of curiosity about the living.

I didn't love The Graveyard Book. Well, not right away. I wasn't sure about it at all at first, and I can't put my finger on the moment that I fell for it. And boy did I fall. The word that springs to mind whenever I think about the Graveyard Book now is "gentle". There is an absolute gentleness about this book, despite its rather gruesome opening chapter. There was so much that reminded me of The Jungle Book, the inspiration behind this story, of a young boy's innocence, and of his friends' and family's attempts to shelter him from the unknown and fearsome world outside. I really grew to care about Bod and his journey, I wanted him to find the truth that he needed, but to be safe. He became family and I wanted to protect him.

This is at its heart, a ghost story. But one not about a ghost. Bod is a living, breathing human, and above all, this story is about him. It is about the wonders of childhood, and the loss of it. It is about the excitement and fear of the journey. I have some strong memories of childhood, but there is also a great deal that I have lost, events and moments that I cannot get back, and sometimes that leaves me with a terrible sadness. The transient nature of our lives. I wish that perhaps I had written more as a child. But many of my abiding memories come from the stories that I read, or were read to me. The Graveyard Book could have been such a story, and I wonder how much I would have loved it as a child. As an adult, I shall continue to appreciate it for another example of Neil Gaiman's beautiful writing. And perhaps more wistfully, I shall lose myself in more memories of the past.

Other blog reviews:
Stainless Steel Droppings
The Written World
Stuff as Dreams are Made On
Things Mean a Lot
Rhinoa's Ramblings
Books & Other Thoughts
Melody's Reading Corner
You Can Never Have Too Many Books
Bold.Blue.Adventure
The Hidden Side of a Leaf
Valentina's Room

The Bloody Chamber - Angela Carter

Read for: Short story challenge

Whether or not Angela Carter’s stories are indeed retellings/reworkings of fairy tales or fresh stories containing familiar elements of fairy tales seems to be a point of some conjecture amongst literary circles. Whatever you decide them to be, these interpretations vary a great deal in tone and length, with the title story being half the length of the entire book. Carter’s work is notably sexual and subversive in nature, with dramatic and gothic overtones that permeate every facet of her storytelling. Though more adult in tone, and certainly not suitable for younger readers, Carter’s work should not be dismissed as mere erotic fairy tales. There is so much more to these stories, emotionally and culturally. The descriptions alone are sumptuous and palpable.

The Bloody Chamber is based on the tale of Bluebeard. A teenage girl marries an older, wealthy French Marquis and is whisked away to live in his castle. When he is called away, he leaves the keys to the castle with his young wife, with strict instructions not to unlock one particular door. But the young woman cannot resist taking a look, only to discover the true extent of her husbands sadistic and perverse nature. Typical of Carter, this tale is more sexual in nature, revolving around the sadistic Marquis, and his infatuation with his previous wives. Shocking and gruesome, yet one of the most powerful stories in this collection.

A beautiful tale of love and loss, The Courtship of Mr Lyon is a relatively familar adaptation of the story of Beauty and the Beast. After his car breaks down, Beauty's penniless father is given aid by a stranger who becomes angry when he steals a perfect white rose for his daughter. He is allowed to leave with the rose but ordered to send Beauty for dinner. The stranger, revealed as a leonine beast falls in love with her and allows her to leave but when she does not return he begins to succumb to heartbreak and only Beauty's love can save his life and humanity.

The Tiger's Bride also contains elemens of Beauty and the Beast, but with a very different ending, a reversal of any I have read or seen in the past. This is not Disney!

Puss-in-Boots is an elaborate and garish tale of a cat named Figaro who lives a life of freedom and debaunchery with his young human companion. But when the young man falls in love, it is left to Figaro to factor their union and extricate the girl from her unhappy marriage. Gloriously over the top, this story had me smiling.

Possibly my favourite story due to my love of folklore and nature, The Erl-King is based on many a folk tale of the man of the woods. A young woman is lured to the mysterious Erl-Kings's home deep in the woods, where she discovers his true plan for her and is forced to escape by any means. Dark and sinister, Carter's writing practically had me drooling.

An interesting spin on the tale of Snow White, The Snow Child especially intrigued me as I have recently read Neil Gaiman's adaptation. In this story however, it is the Count who wishs for a young girl as white as snow, quickly becoming obsessed with his creation, much to the dismay of his wife. This story is short and brutal and left me feeling quite cold. No pun intended.

A fabulously morose tale, The Lady of the House of Love concerns a young soldier who stumbles across a vampire living in her mansion. The pure and innocent young man has a curious effect on the campire who is not content to simply feed on him. Another masterful example of Angela Carter's beautiful prose.

The Werewolf is a slightly twisted tale of a girl (Red Riding Hood) who visits her grandmother, only to make a horrifying discovery. But what the girl does was most suprising to me!

The Company of Wolves is a slightly closer adaptation of the Red Riding Hood fable, with the girl meeting a young man in the woods on route to her grandmother's cabin, only to discover that he has beaten her to it and is not what he seems. With words straight from the fairy tale itself, this story put a big grin on my face. Delightful.

The third wolf story in this collection, Wolf-Alice creeped me out. Perhaps because Carter's descriptions of a feral little girl were so realistic, I could almost imagine this child ripping apart chunks of flesh with her teeth!

Carter’s use of language is sophisticated and intoxicating, I found myself in utter awe of her powerfully descriptive writing through which she has masterfully twisted these predominantly patriarchal stories into tales of feminine power, liberation and sexuality. These stories are not for the faint-hearted though; they are dark, cruel and often violent. Carter once described herself as drawn to “Gothic tales, cruel tales, tales of wonder, tales of terror, fabulous narratives that deal directly with the imagery of the unconscious”. But perhaps most of all, the stories in The Bloody Chamber are about desire, both feminine and masculine and altogether inescapable. I cannot express how much I admire what Angela Carter has achieved and created here, I will certainly be reading more. Highly recommended.

Other blog reviews:
A Striped Armchair
Stainless Steel Droppings
Tripping Towards Lucidity
The Written Word

(let me know if I've missed yours!)

Guardian review (certainly worth a read)

I'm Tink Approved!

The charming LadyTink has sprinkled a little fairy dust my way and granted me her Tink Approved award. Many many thanks! For anyone who doesn't read her blogs, check them out for some wonderful book and film reviews!

Speaking of films, I just finished watching Deep Impact again, after many many years, and managed to find myself blubbing at exactly the same spot that moved me to tears the first time I watched it. (I won't spoil it for anyone, but suffice to say it involves sacrifice and saving the ones you love). Curious...apparently though I may have aged (and one hopes, matured) over the years, the same things have an emotional impact on me! And I don't usually get that teary at films, so that's saying something.

I also watched Inkheart with Rhinoa last week. I really enjoyed it, though it differed from the book a fair bit. Brendan Fraser is always fun on camera and Paul Bettany was quite frankly hot!

2009 YA Challenge

Yeah I know...I said I wasn't going to join any more challenges but seeing as I'm a huge YA fiction reader, this one is just so perfect for me. So...see J.Kaye's Book Blog to sign up and here are the rules.

1. Anyone can join. You don't need a blog to participate.
2. Read 12 Young Adult novels. No need to list your books in advance. You may select books as you go. Even if you list them now, you can change the list if needed.
3. Challenge begins January thru December, 2009.
4. You can join anytime between now and December 31, 2009.

I've chosen a list already, because I want to read these books this year anyway, but this list will grow/change throughout the year!!

1. Ghost Hunter - Michelle Paver
2. The Black Tattoo - Sam Enthoven
3. The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing - M.T. Anderson
4. Paper Towns - John Green
5. An Abundance of Katherines - John Green
6. Graceling - Kristin Cashore
7. Checkmate - Malorie Blackman
8. The Once and Future King - T.H. White
9. How I Live Now- Meg Rosoff
10. Nation - Terry Pratchett
11. The Underneath - Kathi Appelt
12. The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks - E. Lockhart

Enjoy!

Winter blues...

I'm rather behind in my reviews. I was hoping to catch up over the weekend but I'm finding it hard to concentrate on one thing for more than a few minutes. It has taken me over a week to write my Watchmen review...which ended up being a rambling mess anyway! I'm ill again...well technically I never actually got over my winter flu, so now have inflammed lungs which makes breathing really fun (and sleeping almost impossible). So I've been off work for a few days, had a very uneventful weekend and am facing the prospect of going to work in 12 hours still feeling rubbish. Nice. Plus the Japanese classes I signed up to take have been cancelled because there aren't enough people in the class, which means I'll have to start learning the language solo. Oh woe is me...etc etc.

But...I am still on a high after seeing Twilight for the third time (eek!) and pondering which film to see this week: Defiance, Australia, Slumdog Millionaire or Seven Pounds. Too many films and too little time! Any recommendations?

Watchmen - Alan Moore

"Who watches the watchmen?" - Juvenal, Satires, VI, 347

I am not usually a reader of graphic novels, but have been experimenting with this medium over the past year, with some excellent reads including Persepolis and Maus. My reading of Watchmen was prompted by the forthcoming release of the film this summer and although excited about the film, I really wasn't sure how much I would enjoy the graphic novel. Watchmen is a 12-issue comic book series written in the 1980s and since published as a collection. The series has since received critical acclaim and has a core cult fan base that has endured over the years.

Watchmen is set in an alternate history where the cold war is pushing the United States towards a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union. The titular Watchmen are not in fact superheros, but are masked adventurers, costumed heros with no special powers per se, but merely a desire to dress up and fight crime. The only character who possesses superpowers is Dr Manhatten, a scientist transformed by a laboratory accident into an almost omnipotent being. These vigilantes have been outlawed, many keeping their true identities secret. The story begins with the murder of Edward Blake, a man with a mysterious past who turns out to be much more. His murder is investigated by Rorschach, the only vigilante still at large, who believes that the killer may be targeting costumed heroes. But with many of the other heroes retired, Rorschach is fighting against the odds to catch the killer, as the political climate worsens and the impending nuclear war draws closer.

I thoroughly enjoyed this graphic novel, despite it not being at all what I expected. In fact, I couldn't tell you what I expected. Watchmen is about so much more than superheros. Throughout the series, the back-stories of each character are slowly revealed and we begin to understand more about their decisions to become masked crimefighters. The story is about power, the search for it, and the misuse of it. It is also about the nature of morality, the reasoning behind these vigilantes' activities and the desire for power. The atmosphere is tense, and the situation rapidly descends into violence. A lot of violence. This graphic novel is very dark and it took me a while to get used to the level of violence. The characters themselves are quite hard to like, yet this didn't reduce my enjoyment of the story.

Although graphic novels are not my favourite medium of storytelling, Watchmen really opened my eyes to the kind of stories that can be told in this format. I highly recommend Watchmen to fans of graphic novels and those new to them. I am even more excited about the upcoming film now, though I am a little concerned that it will not possibly be able to delve into the Watchmen world into quite as much depth as in the graphic novel. There is a lot more I could say about Watchmen, but I am sure other reviews are far more eloquent than mine!

The book is also peppered with some great quotes from Alan Moore himself and eminent philosophers. I leave you with a couple of examples...

"It is the oldest ironies that are still the most satisfying: man, when preparing for bloody war, will orate loudly and most eloquently in the name of peace. This dichotomy is not an invention of the twentieth century, yet it is this century that the most striking examples of the phenomena have appeared. Never before has man pursued global harmony more vocally while amassing stockpiles of weapons so devastating in their effect. The second world war - we were told - was The War To End Wars. The development of the atomic bomb is the Weapon to End Wars.
And yet the wars continue."

"Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich W. Nietzsche

Other blog reviews:
Books & other thoughts
Bold.Blue.Aventure
Stainless Steel Droppings
Things mean a lot

Great expectations....

I have a problem. A real problem. Though it is, in truth, made easier by that fact that many of you share my same problem. I love buying books. Even when I have dozens (nay hundreds?) of books at home to read, I still can't seem to help myself. So after this last book buying binge (see above!), I have decided to try and reduce my book buying over the next 6 months. The aim indeed is to buy no books at all, and to resort to the library and borrowing from friends, but I am a realist, so I'm taking it a month at a time...along with no clothes or jewellery buying. Hopefully my wallet will reap the benefits of this frugality, and I shall be left to enjoy the tomes I already possess...

I have all these plans for the coming year (not least because I have a certain traditional landmark birthday approaching)...all of which require those all important pennies. I'm planning a trip to Japan, hopefully in Spring 2010, for which I will most definitely need to save, and also learn to get by in the language (I'm very allergic to fish which makes communication important in some countries!), and I am still clutching to my dreams of buying that elusive cottage in the country.

Anyone else got any great expectations for the coming months?