Tag Archives: fiction

Amerika and The Miner

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Franz KafkaGiven the sort of novels I generally go for, it will probably come as a bit of a surprise that this is the first Kafka novel I have ever finished. And given that I’ve never read Kafka before, my statement just now was based completely on the plot plot (i.e. plotting the shape of plots on a graph) of Kafka’s novels by Kurt Vonnegut (as seen in A Man Without a Country). To save you the work of tracking a copy down (though we do have it!), here’s how he described Kafka’s Metamorphosis:

A young man is rather unattractive and not very personable. He has disagreeable relatives and has had a lot of jobs with no chance of promotion. He doesn’t get paid enough to take his girl dancing or to go to the beer hall to have a beer with a friend. One morning he wakes up, it’s time to go to work again, and he has turned into a cockroach... It’s a pessimistic story.

Who wouldn’t want to read that?*

 

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Reservoir 13 (by Jon McGregor)

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Reservoir 13Reservoir 13 is the latest mystery novel by the British author Jon McGregor. As a Guardian Notable Book of 2017, Reservoir 13 tells the story of many lives haunted by one family’s loss. Praised by many, unfortunately I didn’t enjoy it as much as I hoped to. It is a story narrated from a third person perspective, which is very interesting and I have never read anything like this before. However, I did not connect with many of the characters and did not develop with them. Every time a character’s name is mentioned, I need a second to think “who is this again”. The story line is also a bit dry and slow for me. This novel promises to blend the grace of beautiful nature surroundings with human lives and the aftershock of the tragedy. However, I find myself skipping some of the nature descriptions from time to times just so I can keep up with the story and the characters.

This is a unique book. It is worth reading if you would like to try something different. It’s not for everyone but you might just enjoy it 🙂

Pinocchio Post-Pinocchio

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Scott William CarterFairytales generally end the same way: happily ever after. But I’ve never been able to help but feel that it’s a bit of a stretch to ask me to actually believe that they do just sort of float through life happily ever after, so I love seeing follow-ups to, and riffs off of, some of the more popular traditional fairytales!

In Wooden Bones, Scott William Carter explores concerns I’d say were noticeably absent in the original Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi – why being a real boy is necessarily better than being a wooden puppet, for example*, or developing a concept of identity that is not dependent upon being a boy of flesh and bone – while still adhering more or less to the fairytale structure. Pino, the boy formerly known as Pinocchio (because Pinocchio is too long and cumbersome for everyday use, according to Gepetto), discovers that apart from just being a magical boy, in the sense that he became a real boy only with the aid of magic, he truly is a magical boy, in that unlike regular real boys, he has magical powers.

Of course, these magical powers only bring him trouble (as well as helping him get out of trouble by digging himself a bigger hole), but the trouble is what prompts him to come to the realization that it doesn’t matter whether he’s a real boy or a wooden puppet boy: he’s Pinocchio, and perhaps more importantly, Gepetto won’t love him any less for being one or the other. Continue reading →