Genus
As Genus stands proudly as Book #100 of the 100 books in a year challenge, I am glad of it, and glad I was able to finish on a high note. Genus by Jonathan Trigell, the acclaimed writer of Boy A is a great book, so good that halfway through it I messaged my one of my best friends on Facebook to tell her to get it whilst it remains 99p for the Kindle on Amazon.
Genus takes as its concept, a dystopian future London. A scientist who renamed himself Prometheus has taken the concept of the designer baby to its zenith. "Improving" ones genetics, buying add-ons and building ones child from the ground up, but, this kind of technology comes at a price, and has created an alarming new social scale, the rich, are now also the most beautiful, the healthiest and the most talented, what is left is the "scum" the disabled, the defective, and the working poor, coralled into small areas of Britain, unprovided for.
The novel focuses on London's Kings Cross, now The Kross and a variety of characters from this underworld: Dwarf artist Holman, policeman Gunt, drug runner Valentine, blind war veteran Crick, gang member Quigley and assorted other people from the social bottom rung, and a select few from the top.
This novel was published at the end of July this year and would have been written and complete to go to press some months before that. Therefore Trigell himself must have been chilled to the bone when a section of the novel which now seems more like premonition than future prediction came true on the streets of London in August. In an eerie replica of the summer riots, shops are looted and buildings burned out, this isn't a vision of things to come, the future is now. I think it was this section of the novel which tipped it over into "something special" land for me, I mean it's so on the pulse it's living. In addition, the characters are likeable, particularly Gunt and Holman, so as to hold your attention upon the novel. I was already imagining the movie version with Peter Dinklage that would be brilliant.
The eradication of genetic defect seems like a marvellous thing the future could grant us, but Trigell truly succeeds in making clear the very dark end game involved in meddling with nature, belief in God or otherwise with a cracking warning shot from our own history at its close.
I am so glad that Genus was my final book of 2011 so I could end on a high. Read Genus Please. 10/10
Showing posts with label Brilliant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brilliant. Show all posts
Saturday, 31 December 2011
Monday, 25 April 2011
Book #26 - Lady Chatterley's Lover by DH Lawrence
Lady Chatterley's Lover
A book more infamous than it is famous 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' is one of those books that you feel 'you must get around to some day'. Published to great scandal in 1929 it remained banned in Britain for salacious content for 31 years and during that time became notorious though few had actually read it. Upon its release in 1960, people queued up at bookshops for it desperate to judge for themselves, it's publication became one of the first major literary events.
The book held a number of surprises for me, I expected to find that in the 82 year time lapse between the book being written and my reading it in the present day, what passed as 'racy' then, would be tame and timid now perhaps even cringeworthy and embarrassing. It is not so. The sex scenes in the book, and there are many are incredibly graphically written, not in a way that feels obscene, to me, anyway but in a way that feels right. They are frankly written, realistic and actually quite tasteful and romantic.
The phrase 'ahead of his time' is of course a cliche now, but it genuinely applies in this case, were this book written by a modern author in 2011 about a romance between an aristocratic lady and her gamekeeper in 1929, it would probably be equally admired as a modern classic but cause very little in the way of moral outrage now with the potential exception of the Daily Mail.
As a modern reader of literature I find that it has had a real impact on my opinion of society of that time, it was an era perhaps when out of politeness things were left unsaid but not necessarily undone, and that the women and men of the 1920's are not perhaps as different from us as we tend to believe. The free use of the more frowned upon swearwords and modern slang in the dialogue indicates this too; like the paragraph in which Mellors admires Connie's derriere and actually uses the word arse. Obviously there are better examples but I think I'll keep them out of the blog, but it's not really what you "expect" from the "classic writers"
To sum up the plot Connie marries a man who is crippled in the War, he can no longer have children, and he encourages her to have an affair in order to concieve which she then embarks on with the gamekeeper Mellors. (My own frustration with this was the inaccuracy that a paralysed man cannot have sex/children which of course they can, but I sort of have to let that quibble go as this was not widely understood in 1929, and also it's a plot device)
This is where you realise there is more to this story, a man has given his wife licence to have affair, as a means to an end, what does this say about him and about her....?
I read Women In Love at university, and read it rather too quickly in order to have it read on time. I didn't particularly enjoy it or find it remarkable in any way. Last year I read Sons And Lovers which was a really bizarre experience because I really enjoyed the book, and I still think of it occasionally but I absolutely detested the main character and several of the supporting ones. Lady Chatterley's Lover was a different experience again and what I found myself thinking most was what a terrible shame it is that mere mention of the title is inextricably linked to the scandal surrounding it and the idea that it is smutty. There is so much more to Lady Chatterley than sex, although the sex IS well written.
During the course of the novel such diverse subjects are dealt with: the condition of Post World War I Britain, class struggle, class snobbery, intellectual snobbery, society, the roles of men and women, human nature, human frailty the emotional dynamics of a sexual relationship, love, marriage and the disintegration of those things and even existentialism.
I find it such a shame that if you say 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' to someone, perhaps as recommendation they will automatically assume because of its infamy that you like "dirty books" or something. It's the main association everyone has with it, that it was banned because it was dirty.
And it's not just that! It's so INTERESTING, engrossing, well written and thought provoking that all the sex is just an integral part of the story not the sum of its charms. This book is excellent. Read it. 10/10
A book more infamous than it is famous 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' is one of those books that you feel 'you must get around to some day'. Published to great scandal in 1929 it remained banned in Britain for salacious content for 31 years and during that time became notorious though few had actually read it. Upon its release in 1960, people queued up at bookshops for it desperate to judge for themselves, it's publication became one of the first major literary events.
The book held a number of surprises for me, I expected to find that in the 82 year time lapse between the book being written and my reading it in the present day, what passed as 'racy' then, would be tame and timid now perhaps even cringeworthy and embarrassing. It is not so. The sex scenes in the book, and there are many are incredibly graphically written, not in a way that feels obscene, to me, anyway but in a way that feels right. They are frankly written, realistic and actually quite tasteful and romantic.
The phrase 'ahead of his time' is of course a cliche now, but it genuinely applies in this case, were this book written by a modern author in 2011 about a romance between an aristocratic lady and her gamekeeper in 1929, it would probably be equally admired as a modern classic but cause very little in the way of moral outrage now with the potential exception of the Daily Mail.
As a modern reader of literature I find that it has had a real impact on my opinion of society of that time, it was an era perhaps when out of politeness things were left unsaid but not necessarily undone, and that the women and men of the 1920's are not perhaps as different from us as we tend to believe. The free use of the more frowned upon swearwords and modern slang in the dialogue indicates this too; like the paragraph in which Mellors admires Connie's derriere and actually uses the word arse. Obviously there are better examples but I think I'll keep them out of the blog, but it's not really what you "expect" from the "classic writers"
To sum up the plot Connie marries a man who is crippled in the War, he can no longer have children, and he encourages her to have an affair in order to concieve which she then embarks on with the gamekeeper Mellors. (My own frustration with this was the inaccuracy that a paralysed man cannot have sex/children which of course they can, but I sort of have to let that quibble go as this was not widely understood in 1929, and also it's a plot device)
This is where you realise there is more to this story, a man has given his wife licence to have affair, as a means to an end, what does this say about him and about her....?
I read Women In Love at university, and read it rather too quickly in order to have it read on time. I didn't particularly enjoy it or find it remarkable in any way. Last year I read Sons And Lovers which was a really bizarre experience because I really enjoyed the book, and I still think of it occasionally but I absolutely detested the main character and several of the supporting ones. Lady Chatterley's Lover was a different experience again and what I found myself thinking most was what a terrible shame it is that mere mention of the title is inextricably linked to the scandal surrounding it and the idea that it is smutty. There is so much more to Lady Chatterley than sex, although the sex IS well written.
During the course of the novel such diverse subjects are dealt with: the condition of Post World War I Britain, class struggle, class snobbery, intellectual snobbery, society, the roles of men and women, human nature, human frailty the emotional dynamics of a sexual relationship, love, marriage and the disintegration of those things and even existentialism.
I find it such a shame that if you say 'Lady Chatterley's Lover' to someone, perhaps as recommendation they will automatically assume because of its infamy that you like "dirty books" or something. It's the main association everyone has with it, that it was banned because it was dirty.
And it's not just that! It's so INTERESTING, engrossing, well written and thought provoking that all the sex is just an integral part of the story not the sum of its charms. This book is excellent. Read it. 10/10
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
Book #1 - Monsters Of Men by Patrick Ness
Monsters Of Men
Monsters Of Men in the final book in the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness. It's virtually impossible to write about Monsters Of Men on its own without spoiling the entire trilogy for those who haven't read it, so instead I'm going to write about the trilogy as a whole. The first book, The Knife Of Never Letting Go was read by a friend of mine who came by it through work and enthused about how great it was, I eventually got round to reading it late last year as part of my holiday reading. The Chaos Walking Trilogy to my understanding, is marketed at teenage boys in the Young Adult section of libraries and book shops. I'm a 29 year old woman with an English degree specialising in the Classics, and I thought this trilogy was utterly fabulous to a degree that I have a writers jealousy at not having written it myself. In the first book 'The Knife Of Never Letting Go' we are introduced to Todd, the last boy left in his town, Prentisstown, all the other boys having past the age of 13, the age at which a boy becomes a man in his community, and finally his birthday is approaching.
Through the writing we learn that Todd and his community are settlers from our own planet earth, who have come to a new planet and colonised it. We learn that when they arrived, three things happened:
a) Some kind of virus wiped out the female population leaving only the men left alive
b) The effect of the virus on the men and the animals meant that all their thoughts could be heard, the sound of all their thoughts creates The Noise, a permanent collective buzz in their community.This affords no man privacy or secrets. Comically, The Sheep, mostly say 'Sheeep' and Todd's dog Manchee doesn't say much more than 'Todd' and 'I need a poo' but you understand the oppressive nature of having no private thought for all concerned.
c) Following their arrival the humans had a war with the indigenous population The Spackle which they successfully won.
And then, just as he approaches manhood, Todd comes across a surprise in the marshes...it's a girl...a human girl.
And so, the trilogy begins. Although I can't say much about this book, Monsters Of Men, what I can say about the overall trilogy is that its fantastic and compelling, making you desperate to read the next book once you've read the first, an example of how dystopian fiction can be done for young people, I've never read anything like it in that age group. I found Monsters Of Men slightly disappointing for certain reasons and so can only give that book 7/10 but the entire trilogy is a 10/10 MUST READ.
If you have teenage children, get it for them and sneakily steal it, and if you don't just get it anyway!!!
Monsters Of Men in the final book in the Chaos Walking Trilogy by Patrick Ness. It's virtually impossible to write about Monsters Of Men on its own without spoiling the entire trilogy for those who haven't read it, so instead I'm going to write about the trilogy as a whole. The first book, The Knife Of Never Letting Go was read by a friend of mine who came by it through work and enthused about how great it was, I eventually got round to reading it late last year as part of my holiday reading. The Chaos Walking Trilogy to my understanding, is marketed at teenage boys in the Young Adult section of libraries and book shops. I'm a 29 year old woman with an English degree specialising in the Classics, and I thought this trilogy was utterly fabulous to a degree that I have a writers jealousy at not having written it myself. In the first book 'The Knife Of Never Letting Go' we are introduced to Todd, the last boy left in his town, Prentisstown, all the other boys having past the age of 13, the age at which a boy becomes a man in his community, and finally his birthday is approaching.
Through the writing we learn that Todd and his community are settlers from our own planet earth, who have come to a new planet and colonised it. We learn that when they arrived, three things happened:
a) Some kind of virus wiped out the female population leaving only the men left alive
b) The effect of the virus on the men and the animals meant that all their thoughts could be heard, the sound of all their thoughts creates The Noise, a permanent collective buzz in their community.This affords no man privacy or secrets. Comically, The Sheep, mostly say 'Sheeep' and Todd's dog Manchee doesn't say much more than 'Todd' and 'I need a poo' but you understand the oppressive nature of having no private thought for all concerned.
c) Following their arrival the humans had a war with the indigenous population The Spackle which they successfully won.
And then, just as he approaches manhood, Todd comes across a surprise in the marshes...it's a girl...a human girl.
And so, the trilogy begins. Although I can't say much about this book, Monsters Of Men, what I can say about the overall trilogy is that its fantastic and compelling, making you desperate to read the next book once you've read the first, an example of how dystopian fiction can be done for young people, I've never read anything like it in that age group. I found Monsters Of Men slightly disappointing for certain reasons and so can only give that book 7/10 but the entire trilogy is a 10/10 MUST READ.
If you have teenage children, get it for them and sneakily steal it, and if you don't just get it anyway!!!
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