3 posts tagged “book club”
Water for Elephants is not a book that would have recommended itself to me by it's premise - young man suffers a tragic loss and joins the circus - but the depiction of life in the circus behind the scenes made it an enjoyable read.
I loved the animals. I liked the details and stories about the circus workers and their life behind the scenes of the show - many of them based on true stories the author had come across in her research. I liked the Prohibition era setting. And I loved how behind the scenes, the circus was not really romantic or magical - although there are bits of that - but actually rather dirty, creepy, and sinister.
There were a few things I did not like. The story got off to a slow start but I found the very last pages satisfying. The plot was predictable but saved by the colorful details of life in the circus. I found switching back and forth between past and present distracted from the story, but I did like the writer's treatment of the very senior Jacob in the nursing home: although locked away in a sterile nursing home, a little old man who can barely walk with a big, colorful, dramatic story. Jacob was a good character, but many of the key characters were types such as August and Uncle Al and Marlena. The writer touches upon how memory can be slippery but ultimately does nothing with it. There was more to play with in terms of being trapped on the train, trapped in the circus, trapped in the nursing home, and not having anything outside of those worlds except for a great deal of fear and the likelihood of loneliness, starvation, death. The romance was not very interesting, just expected, and I was much more interested in the hierarchy within the circus, the social groups and their interactions, and the way the circus dealt with the citizens of the small towns they entertained or at times offended. Despite the flaws, there was enough still in there for a satisfying read.
First finished book of the year. Next up: Winter's Tale by Mark Helprin.
The beginning of the book especially is written in a rather pulpy, overblown style that was rather off-putting, too full of machismo, but eventually the tone settles down a bit and the stories themselves are interesting.
Gann was around before La Guardia and describes it is a little grass field. He and his co-pilot fly over the jungles of Latin America in a cloud-filled sky and then realize they're approaching a mountain range and the chart doesn't accurately list the mountain elevations or even how far it is from one lonely landing field to the next. And Gann is among the first to start making long ocean flights for cargo trips during WWII and eventually commercial passenger flights overseas. He describes the danger of ice and their inexperience with flying through cloudy weather and storms. He describes engine failures in air, mechanical glitches, pilot errors. And at the heart of those early flights, when they were learning so much about flying, is luck. Bad luck. Good luck. The sane thing to do is to focus on the good luck.
Gann knew a lot of unlucky pilots, most of whom were smart, accomplished pilots. He mentions them throughout the book. A brief sentence or two about how one pilot was in a plane that inexplicably dove straight down in clear weather, a bad landing, or flew into a mountain. Very brief descriptions. Of course, they wouldn't really know the cause since there aren't any witnesses. While reading I would think, those were commercial passenger flights.... Best not to dwell on that.
Somewhat foolishly, I read the bulk of the book before I boarded my plane to Cancun. D found out about the book before my trip. She advised me to stop reading and leave the book at home because it would be bad luck or at least keep me in fine-tuned hysteria throughout the flight. I was 80 pages from the end, so of course, I went against her advice and brought it. And what happened?
That's a separate entry.
For all the unlucky pilots that Gann knew, I found the book oddly reassuring - even if there's a lot going in the cockpit that I will never know about. We've come a long way since Gann's time, which were pretty much the pioneering days of long-range flying. He focuses on luck as what kept him alive, and he had a lot of luck, but he became a good pilot through experience, and I figure pilots today have benefited from the hard-earned knowledge of their predecessors.
Of course, I hope all the pilots for my and my family's flights are lucky pilots.
Our first selection, chosen by yours truly, was My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk. The first chapter opens with the account of a murder victim whose broken body lies at the bottom of the well, and he is rather angry and vengeful but he has no idea who killed him or why. A promising first chapter.
The story is set in Ottoman Turkey in the late 1500s, when Turkish illustrators were beginning to encounter Western art, particularly the Renaissance art styles of Italy although the characters refer to the art as "Frankish." Ottoman painting focused on trying to present the world from how God sees from above while the Frankish art focused on presenting everything as closely as possible to how an eye would see it and from how man sees the world at street level. Even the idea of having an individual style as an artist is anathema to the Ottoman illustrators. The very literal and radical differences in art and perspective leads to a crises among the illustrators as they try to learn and master the new style. Art is how they experience the world and the new style they try to master conflicts with their own traditions and world view, their own experience of the world.
Of our little group, I was the one who liked it most. I was a little curtly informed that I was too generous to the book when I commented that I would rate it three stars out of five stars, but I think this was a difficult book to write. The book tackles sophisticated themes, attempts to lay out a different culture and artistic approach, and contains some beautiful, polished writing, including a few lovely parables. Although I saw flaws, I have mixed feelings about the book: it is a thoughtful novel, a cut above the ordinary, but the end although poignant was unsatisfying.
There are wonderful chapters. I loved the chapter where Enishte confronts one of his artists, I loved the horse contest, I loved the coin chapter and the red chapter, and I liked Enishte, Shekure, and Esther, but the end left me unsatisfied. One problem was the characterization of the master illustrators, who are very difficult to distinguish from one another until the very end, when we finally learn about these artists as individuals. There is also constant, deliberate repetition, which in some instances was beautiful but became wearing. I thought the end was poignant as it related to the art but I was less satisfied with how the story wrapped up the fate of some of the characters. Anyway, although the others were very down on the book, it was a good book discussion.
