http://www.holkar.net/reading/index.html Book reviews and recommendations en-uk http://backend.userland.com/rss PHP/4.1.2 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=16 It was not the best book I have ever read, it was very boring throughout the start and middle but i could relate to him moving to a new place. i really loved the twist at the end! Tue, 20 May 2008 00:00:00 +0100 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=16 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=107 I am a big Diana Wynne Jones fan, but for some reason I hadn't caught up with this book until now. It's one of her 'a bit more grown-up' novels from the occasionally slightly dodgy mid-Nineties period... and it manifests that by experimenting considerably and interestingly in narrative form. There are two narrative strands to start with: a bureaucratic mess-up in an interplanetary autocracy, and a normal-seeming Earth girl observing strange goings-on at a nearby farm from her sickbed. Usually in this sort of narrative the reader has the pleasure of knowing more than the blundering characters in either strand do, and the satisfaction of seeing them join to complete each other. That doesn't quite work in this book, because Wyne Jones plays a number of clever tricks with time, awareness and consciousness, meaning that although the divided characters are puzzled and blundering as usual, they don't realize that they are: while the reader is in full awareness of his or her bafflement. You can think of it as a touch of the Philp K Dick's creeping in, if that helps! The story itself has Wynne Jones's usual main theme of young person learning to deal with the woes that fate has dumped upon them, but the way the book's written allows her to take several approaches to this 'dealing' -- which is rewarding. The wood of the title, which seems to rewrite reality in the same sort of way as Robert Holdstock's Mythago Wood, is deeply intriguing and it's a credit to the author's imagination that the underlying device of a rogue future-scenarioing machine doesn't let it down. The concluding scenes in the castle, when the main characters have more or less worked ou what's gong on but are forced to achieve their resolution aims within the devious construct-reality that the machine has been managing, are tremendously effective, and Wynne Jones cheeringly denies sentiment the chance to undercut this too severely. I suppose the verdict is that if you like Diana Wynne Jones, this book is an interesting side-path in her canon, which achieves some of the clevernesses that books like A Tale of Time City and The Crown of Dalemark hinted at. I have to say though that in places it feels a bit too clever, and the emotional power of her best work is slightly lacking. If you don't like Diana Wynne Jones, you're clearly either (a) mad or (b) you haven't read her yet, in which case get cracking! Sat, 12 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=107 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=105 Did you know that in the 1870s, the British built a 2000-mile spiky hedge across India, so they could charge different prices for salt on either side of it? Nor did I, and nor did Roy Moxham until he stumbled across a mention of it, was intrigued, and set off on the journey of investigation that makes up this book. It more or less alternates chapters on the history of the period, the background to the salt duty, and musings on the follies of empire, with the modern-day tale of his efforts to first find out about the hedge and then to find what remains of it on the ground in India. Although the historical stuff is interesting enough in its own right, Moxham's travels in contemporary India, interactions with bemused locals, and growing frustration as he desperately seeks the elusive hedge, bring the book to life -- these travel book elements work well to counterpoint the dry historical account. In Bengal, the British used the salt duty as a de facto poll tax, to the extent that an average worker effectively spent two months of the year working just to pay salt duty -- of course, it affected the poor proportionately much more than the rich, unlike a tax on say sugar -- and it was actually competitive to ship salt to India from England to undercut the duty. Moxham is very severe on the economic and political cruelties thus inflicted, and relates with glee that the hedge itself, the final stage of the customs barrier, was made obsolete within a few years of the tremendous effort of its completion. Tue, 15 Feb 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=105 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=104 This is the first novel I've read by this veteran author, winner of three Whitbread prizes. First thing to say -- he is a terrific stylist, with not a word wasted. The novel tells its story beautifully -- that of the daughter of a Protestant landowning family who gets accidentally left behnd when her parents leave Ireland in the 1920s. Lookng back at the plot, it all sounds highly implausible -- her parents travel in Europe for 16 or more years, without her, the servants they left behind at their Irish house, or their lawyer being able to contact them to tell them she is still alive. But at the time of reading it certainly kept me carried along. I was unable to resist reading Lucy's story as an allegory for the whole class of Protestant ascendancy, planted in Ireland centuries ago to keep the natives under control. Abandoned by the mother country England, not wanted by Ireland, they become increasingly stranga as time goes on (and produce writers like Iris Murdoch, Elizabeth Bowen and Trevor himself). The interesting character of Horahan, whose nationalist violence as a young man prompts the flight of the Gaults but who then descends into madness, is maybe saying somthing about the troubled history of the IRA. The Irish servants Henry and Bridget are the most likeable characters in the book, and their dialogue passages the most engaging. Anyway, you can easily get carried away with analysis: in the end it's an interesting story, a lovely work of prose, and a pleasant reading experience. Wed, 26 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=104 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=103 John Sladek, SF's arch-satirist, died a little while ago, leaving far too few books behind. This is one of the early ones, a short novel from 1968, but in it he had already found his unmistakable voice. The basic plot is a simple one -- self-reproducing machines get out of control and take over the world -- but Sladek does more than use that trope to take potshots at the military-industrial complex, the robotization of modern humanity, and the pigheadedness of authority figures everywhere, which a lesser satirist could have managed. He works in 18th-century-style debates about predestiation and God as the Author of all, genuine consideration about the design and operation of self-reproducing systems, copious references to bad 1950s sci-fi movies and spy thrillers, the folly of the opposition of science and the humanities, and a wonderful dreamlike sequence set in a degrading Las Vegas. The book is rather frantic and almost crammed too full of ideas, so it doesn't have the power of later works like Roderick and Tik-Tok. But still very much a must-read! Tue, 25 Jan 2005 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.holkar.net/reading/book.php?book_id=103