Review: Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

Ethan Frome was Edith Wharton’s 16th novel in thirteen years, and is one of the few that she based in down-at-heel a rural setting, rather than in urban high society – in which she herself participated.

It has been claimed that the novel is somewhat autobiographical; born in 1862 in to the Jones family (of keeping up with the Jones’ fame), Edith was married at 23 to an older man, who became an invalid after suffering a mental breakdown. Though they remained married for 28 years until his death, the marriage was not considered a happy one and Edith conducted at least one affair during this time. By mirroring some of her own circumstances – albeit with an eponymous male protagonist – the main characters – Ethan, his incapacitated wife Zeena and her cousin Mattie Silver – are particularly rounded and resonant.

The story is cleverly constructed, covering a span of many years in a relatively short book. The opening chapter sees a nameless narrator, newly lodged in the town of Starkfield, become acquainted with Ethan Frome and intrigued to understand how he came about his physical difficulties. The narrative, turning back some twenty or so years, sees a healthy Ethan holding a candle for Mattie Silver, who is to be turned out of the house in favour of another girl who is more capable of playing stand-in housewife for Zeena, desperately wondering whether his feelings are reciprocated. We slowly learn that Mattie does indeed return his hidden feelings and discover how they intend to deal with their predicament. The dénouement of this section is by no means unexpected, but is still shocking, although far less so than that which we get when the narrative returns to the present.

The setting for the novel is again something that Wharton experienced first-hand and her knowledge of and love for Massachusetts shines clearly throughout. The description of Ethan and Mattie’s journey to the train station through the snow is so evocative that you can almost taste the cold crispness of the day, and smell the pines – and this is not the only passage that allows the reader that luxury.

Despite its brevity, Ethan Frome is certainly another stunning success in storytelling from Edith Wharton.

Review: The Book of Dave by Will Self

I found The Book of Dave, Will Self’s 6th novel, a difficult read at times, and almost gave up (much to my disgust) a couple of chapters in, as I found the dialect-rich prose that parts of the novel are written in a struggle to follow. Ultimately though, I persevered, and once I had got to grips with ‘mockni’ (a language based on a combination of slang, text-speak and cockney), found a witty, scathing and an all too frighteningly possible vision of the future of humanity.

The eponymous Dave is a taxi driver, living in turn of the millennium London and battling his estranged wife for contact with his son. Dave is flawed - misogynistic, racist, homophobic – and obsessed with The Knowledge, viewing London as a series of runs and points, his cab being the only place he feels at ease. As he slips further in to depression, Dave begins writing the Book, a treatise on how relationships between men, women and children should be governed. He then buries the Book in the back garden of his wife’s new home for his son to find.

Interspersed with the ‘Dave’ chapters are those set at some indeterminate time in the future, after the UK has been submerged by water and exists as a series of islands. Dave’s Book has been found and developed in to a religion – Davinity – and this new code decrees that men and women live separately, with children spending part of the week with the women and then at ‘Changeover’ moving across to the homes of the men. Questioning the Book is punished through torture and exile. The lead character in these sections, Carl, is conscious of the iniquity of the Book’s teachings and begins a quest to discover what happened to his absent father, said to have discovered a second, more compassionate Book and tried to enlighten his compatriots as to its contents.

Whilst on the surface the characters in the novel appear to be disagreeable, there is actually deep emotional warmth to them and as a reader I found myself rooting for the anti heroes throughout. The complexity and cross-referring of the storylines is cleverly handled – at times you can see direct correlations between the events of ‘now’ and the future, at others the unveiling is a slow-burn process. If you’re a fan of Will Self and his erudite vocabulary then this is the book for you, but it is not, I suspect, the best introduction to his works.

Review: Atonement by Ian McEwan

What can I say about Atonement that hasn’t been said already! Ian McEwan is an author I already knew I enjoyed, but his other novels – although extraordinarily good when judged by most other authors’ standards – are left in the shade by this epic story.

Opening in the years before the Second World War, Atonement follows the lives of Briony Tallis, her older sister Cecilia and Cecilia’s contemporary, Robbie Turner, the son of their housekeeper. Shifting the narrative between characters and often telling the same story from different viewpoints allows McEwan to build a complex web of a story, fleshing out seemingly innocent actions and showing the reader how the disposition of the observer can dramatically alter their meaning and have lasting implications for those involved.

The understanding McEwan has of his main characters psyches is all encompassing, they are all individually fully realised and could almost walk off the pages as living beings. Briony, an emotionally immature teenager, given to introspection, who reads distorted meanings in to circumstances. Cecilia, a young adult – torn between rebelling against her upbringing and duty to her family – and coping with separation from her lover. Robbie, supported by his mother’s employer financially, but remaining steadfastly divided from them by rules of class, whose life is destroyed on one fateful evening. All are nuanced and – even given how utterly frustrating I found Briony’s attitudes in the first third of the book – sympathetic.

Equally, his adeptness at describing the settings for the action in the story enables the reader to completely immerse themselves into the period – whether it is the oppressive, hot summer of the opening chapters; the desperation of the Allies retreat through France to Dunkirk; or the horrors experienced by Briony training to be a nurse in one of the London hospitals that dealt with those same wounded soldiers.

It is hard to review Atonement without seeming to pour for a stream of praise for it, although, to my mind, none of the eulogising is unwarranted. This is simply one of the best books I’ve ever read.

1001 must read books

After seeing people adding the '1001' tag to books in their libraries on LibraryThing I finally decided to try and track down an online version of the original book, with the vain hope of having read a reasonable proportion (certainly of the more modern books) listed. Oh what a surprise I got!

This wonderful spreadsheet I found shows me that, based on the 2008 version I've read 53 books, plus an additional 10 from those taken out of the original 2006 version....... only another 20 or so to read every year before I pop my clogs then!

Still it has helped me populate my Amazon wishlist (circulated to lovely friends and family in advance of Christmas) in case anybody is ever stuck for a present. Only another 600 titles to browse to see if I like the look of them :0)