This is a wrap up video for some of the books I read in August, September and October. I’m not including any Shakespeare plays or any non-fictional books about Shakespeare because we read Romeo and Juliet, Richard III and Antony and Cleopatra together in September and I talked about them in dedicated videos already. I also talked about My Shakespeare by Greg Doran and 1599 by James Shapiro with all the non-fictional books about Shakespeare I read in the last two years in a separate video. What I have today is a list of novels.
Klara and the Sun
Klara and the Sun is a 2021 novel by Kazuo Ishiguro, about Klara an artificial friend and what happens when she is chosen in the store and is taken home to a human family to be the companion of a teenage girl Josie. I have mixed feelings about this story.
Klara has a lovely personality. She’s curious about people and the world, always watching and trying to understand; she’s loyal to Josie and the family, goes on dangerous adventures and even sacrifices herself to save Josie.
We see the world from Klara’s point of view and because Klara is an AF, she sees things and processes what she sees differently. Some of the things I can understand with a small shift of gear, some things are just plain confusing. One of these confusing things from the beginning to the end is this Cootings Machine. What are they? Leave me a comment if you know. Is this some kind of machine that does road work? What does it represent? Another thing that’s very confusing is that she keeps describing a scene or a room or a person’s face for example in tiers of boxes. What is she on about?
There are a lot of symbols that I don’t understand either. For example, what does the Sun represent? Klara and AFs are solar powered so sunlight has a significance for them. When Josie is sick and dying, Klara pleads to the Sun to give Josie strength and make her well. Which from an AF’s point of view makes sense. But the Sun DOES miraculously make Josie well one day. It doesn’t make sense in a sci-fi novel. It becomes like a fantasy or, more like a fable: Klara goes on a quest with the help of a kind knight. When she gets in the presence of the supreme power, she pleads for her cause in a scene of ceremony and ritual that involves pledges and sacrifices. When she goes home, her plea is granted.
So mixed feelings aside, this is a pretty typical Ishiguro novel, the discussion of what makes a human human, what makes a relationship meaningful is a common theme with Never Let Me Go, the vagueness and confusion created by the first person perspective has a ring to The Remains of the Day, the mythical fable quality is very much like The Buried Giant. I didn’t enjoy it as much overall. If you want to read Kazuo Ishiguro, I recommend Never Let Me Go or The Remains of the Day.
The Daughter of Time
I read The Daughter of Time in September because it’s all about Richard III and we read Shakespeare’s Richard III as part of the Shaketember event. It’s a unique book that talks about the non-fictional, historical figure of King Richard III through the medium of a fictional work, a detective novel published in 1951 written by Josephine Tey.
The protagonist, Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant was feeling very bored while confined to bed in hospital with a broken leg. A friend suggested he should amuse himself by researching a historical mystery and brought him some pictures of historical characters, knowing his interest in human faces and his ability to read a person’s character from their appearance. A portrait of King Richard III caught his attention. He couldn’t reconcile the face to the infamous reputation. King Richard looked like a gentle, kind and wise man. Was he really a murderer?
The rest of the book is Grant’s investigation into Richard’s life and the case of the Princes in the Tower. With the help of a young American researcher working in the British Museum, Grant spent weeks examining historical documents and came to the convincing conclusion that what we now know and believe about Richard III is a lie and a piece of Tudor propaganda.
What I’m most impressed with about this book is the fact that the protagonist was physically stranded in a hospital bed for the whole duration of the novel and all the investigation happens either in his head or in the conversation between himself and the researcher and various doctors and nurses, which sounds like a terrible set up for a novel, imagine watching a film where the characters stay in a small room for the whole duration. But amazingly, the story is very witty and funny, the facts and arguments are not dry or boring at all.
Station Eleven
I had a vague and vaguely wrong idea about Station Eleven before I started. It was great that I did because it meant I had no expectations and the actual story was a wonderful surprise. I thought it was a Sci-fi where a travelling theatre company takes Shakespeare plays to settlements in space after a plague destroys human civilisation on Earth. It’s not too wrong if you take out the Sci-fi and the space bit. It’s also not just about the travelling company playing Shakespeare – they do orchestra music too and the story follows five characters, only one of them is from the travelling troupe.
Those are all trivial details about the novel and I’m making it sound very dull. I don’t want to tell you who these people are and what the story is about so that you can have a reading experience like mine, no preconceptions, no expectations. But also Station Eleven doesn’t need me to sell it. It’s already very popular and I’m just one more admirer of Emily St John Mandel’s imagination and writing style.
I love the story, I love how the author tells the story. It follows five characters in different timelines and manages to be not confusing at all. I love her imagination of large-scale world-building but also small details on everyday practical things to create this tangible almost too realistic plague-ridden world. It was so engaging I couldn’t put the book down but it was also so frightening I kept wanting to throw it in the bin. I was REALLY glad I didn’t read it during Covid and I was REALLY grateful that as horrible as it was, Covid was not like what happened in the novel. But at the same time, the plague and the collapse are devastating but the story is surprisingly hopeful. It brought tears to my eyes, sometimes because it’s so sad, sometimes because it’s so beautiful. And a lot of the time it’s both.
Rivers of London 4: Broken Homes
I’m terrible at finishing book series, I loved Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, but I can’t muster up the courage to tackle The Mirror and the Light. I’m one book into Scythe, a fantasy series for young adults, which I really enjoyed but it’s been years and I haven’t moved on to the second. I’m also two books into the Broken Earth trilogy. All this is to say how excellent Rivers of London series is. I read number 2 in May, number 3 in July, I just finished number 4 and will read number 5 next month. It’s a big series with 23 titles by 2023, including novels, novellas and graphic novels. But the feeling is ‘I’m so glad there are many more to come’, rather than ‘oh gosh when will this end’.
Rivers of London is about police constable wizard apprentice Peter Grant, from a department of the London Metropolitan Police that deals with unusual and supernatural crimes. Apart from Peter, we are by now familiar with Peter’s governor, Thomas Nightingale, a gentleman in the traditional sense and one of the last wizards in London. Lesley, who was a fellow PC with Peter before she became a fellow apprentice of Nightingale and joined the Folly, their headquarters and home, with Molly the maid in an Edwardian servant outfit and no one knows for sure what kind of creature she is, and Toby the dog who is used by Peter as a magic detector and thermometer.
Each story is set in a specific area in London. Broken Homes is the fourth in the series and it’s set in Southwark, an area that’s south of the river Thames with a history that goes back a long time. It’s where Shakespeare and Globe settled in 1599. More specifically, the actions take place in Elephant and Castle and even more specifically, the Heygate Estate, a large housing estate in Southwark with a Brutalist architecture style. It’s super interesting that the novel was published in 2013 and some of the story is around the preservation and the demolition of the estate. When I checked the building’s Wikipedia page, I discovered that the estate was demolished between 2011 and 2014, which would have been exactly when Ben Aaronovitch wrote the story. I don’t know how Heygate Estate was demolished, but I bet it was not as spectacular as that in the novel.
The storyline, to put it as boring and generic as possible, is about solving mysteries and catching baddies. The characters are superb. I really got to know them and love them – I think that’s why the ending of Broken Homes is so shocking.
One thing has been consistent across all four books I’ve read so far – I feel the author’s love for people, a generous affection towards everything alive and human. I can feel it through his characters, how they understand and respond to circumstances. The author shows the beautiful as well as the ugly side of the world, but even when it’s ugly, the eyes that look at it and the pens that tell the story are not indifferent and cold.
Little Women
I read Little Women when I was a child and the version I read was not only abridged, but also translated. So I was two times removed from the original Louisa May Alcott, plus it was such a long time ago I might as well say I’ve never read Little Women at all. BUT the end of the book triggered such a strong emotional reaction, that I actually do remember it. I don’t remember anything else except I was livid about Amy marrying Laurie. I remember I hated Amy because I loved Jo. I remember I was really annoyed by the realisation that things often don’t go as we wish them to, and this was probably the first novel that gave me a hint of the real world.
That impression stayed with me can you believe it all the way until I watched Greta Gerwig’s film adaptation in 2019. I absolutely loved the film, especially the cast. Jo is still the star and the hero, but I can understand and accept Amy, she is pretty heroic too. The film made some subtle changes to Jo, Amy and Laurie’s relationship development. It’s absolutely beautiful.
So for those who haven’t read or watched it, Little Women is a coming-of-age novel published in 1860s. The story follows the lives of the four March sisters, Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, and of course Laurie, the boy from the neighbouring house.
My only complaint about the novel is the way various moral lessons are told within the story. Even though I agree with the principles, some of them sound a bit preachy. But when the author forgets about telling people to behave and be good, and loses herself in the telling of their daily lives and interactions, it’s such a wholesome and comforting story. I think the film adaptation got the balance just right.
A Day of Small Things 