THE IMPOSSIBLE ALWAYS TAKES A LITTLE LONGER This is a very tough book to review, but a magical one to experience. so old-fashioned in design that it looked like something else, perhaps a sexual appliance of unpopular function."!. her pause disinfecting the word, making it sound distant and theoretical." * "The night's clouds oozed drizzle onto the car." * "The presence of this forceful girl rendering him almost translucent." * "The hurricane, excreting the black smoke of its own obituary." * "Market towns - the sort of places with a bus garage but no cathedral." * "What puzzled her was how closely you could live beside someone without any sense of intimacy." * "Phrases dropped from the page and stuck like burrs to her winceyette nightdress." * "The word 'prostitute' sidled into her mind like a vamp through a door." Related to that, there's a fair amount of running away, both literal and metaphorical.ĭespite my criticisms, there are flashes of the wordsmith to come: The recurring themes are fear and bravery: fear of flying, death, sex (McEwan), state snooping, and God, but they are light in the first part and overindulged in the final section. It's cleverly prescient, though not totally accurate, which exacerbates the contrast between the this section and the more realistic earlier sections. The final section was written almost before the internet, but spends a lot of time describing a cross between Wikipedia and Google, and people's relationship with it ("Sessions might turn you from a serious enquirer into a mere gape-mouthed browser."). they wanted certainty they wanted definite rules. Groups of men got together because they feared complications. As for male camaraderie, there often seemed something false about it. Sex didn't make him feel lonely but it didn't. The descriptions of loneliness are well-done, too: "He had girlfriends, but he found, when he was with them, that he never felt quite what he was expected to feel: the inaccessibility of group pleasure, he discovered, could even extend to gatherings of two.
STARING AT THE SUN MANUAL
)) and comical - especially the excerpts of a coy sex manual and appointments with a family planning doctor who merely baffles Jean.
The coverage of sex is both poignant (reminiscent of McEwan's On Chesil Beach (review here. Somehow, by the middle section, she is taking expensive long-haul holidays on her own - and with her teenage son's blessing. Jean is naive and not especially intelligent or well-educated, and as the story is told from her point of view, the first section in particular is told in a rather abrupt and simple style that I didn't find very enticing. The points of debate echo issues in earlier sections, but it just doesn't work as a coherent narrative and the character development didn't ring true. The first two are conventional enough, but the third is too concerned with theology (15 different arguments for and against the existence of God/gods), radical feminism, euthanasia and elderly care, philosophy, "big brother" and futurology. It is the story of Jean, told in three parts: as a late teen on the cusp of marriage at the end of WW2, in middle age, and then approaching her 100th birthday in 2020. There is a promising novel struggling to reveal itself here, but this isn't it. Both books document a long life, but the style is very different. ), and for my second Barnes, turned to this, one of his earliest, from 1986. I recently read his wonderful latest book, The Sense of an Ending (review here. It is the story of Jean, told in three parts: as a late teen on the cusp of marriage at the e Julian Barnes has certainly improved a bit in the last 25 years. Julian Barnes has certainly improved a bit in the last 25 years.
0 kommentar(er)
