Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea
by Jean Rhys
read: 2016
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #94, Guardian 1000 Novels

At one point in Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette Cosway and her husband have a conversation about how to him, living in the Caribbean feels like a dream, and to her, his tales of England sounds like a dream. That dream-like quality pervades the novel, from her oppressed childhood to his perceptions of island life, to her ultimate madness and imprisonment.

Mrs. Dalloway

Mrs. Dalloway
by Virginia Woolf
read: 2016
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

I'm not a huge fan of stream-of-consciousness novels, but Woolf's prose style reads much more clearly than those of certain works or James Joyce or William Faulkner. Clarissa Dalloway, Peter Walsh, and Rezia Smith, among others, reveal their regrets and laments through internal monologues. Of the other novels I've read, it probably evokes American Pastoral more than anything else. 

Wieland

Wieland: or, the Transformation, an American Tale
by Charles Brockden Brown
read: 2016
Guardian 1000 Novels

At one point I thought that this might turn into a really interesting bit of psychological horror, with narrator Clara turning out to be the perpetrator of the gruesome murders, but Brown's narration downplays the mystery and suspense elements to the story. It doesn't quite come together, but given that it was published in 1798 it's easy to imagine the impact it had on horror writers to come. The beats and pacing of the genre had not been established yet.

One element I liked was the epilogue. She concludes the main narration by suggesting that she would die shortly after penning her tale, but she lives and is able to find happiness long after the harrowing events of the story. That's a phenomenon that is understood in modern psychology - I was first introduced to it in Stumbling on Happiness - and Brown's intuitive understanding of the effect more than a century earlier stands out:

Such is man. Time will obliterate the deepest impressions. Grief the most vehement and hopeless, will gradually decay and wear itself out.

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner

The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
by James Hogg
read: 2016
Guardian 1000 Novels

The structure of this novel is odd. The titular "memoirs and confessions" is presented as a document within the story, published a third of the way through the novel. The preceding third has a somewhat comical air, mocking the stern religious scruples of Reverend Wringhim and his ward Robert. For the most part, that section contains the story of Robert's brother George, but when George is murdered the tone shifts abruptly and it becomes a horror story told from Robert's perspective. Like in The Turn of the Screw, Hogg never spells out the nature of the supernatural evil and leaves the reader to wonder whether Gil-Martin is real or a figment of Robert's imagination.

The Turn of the Screw

The Turn of the Screw
by Henry James
read: 2016
Guardian 1000 Novels

Man, the ending is so weird and abrupt, and left me with a lot of unanswered questions. Why does Miles die? Is Flora spared his fate because she leaves Bly? Does the governess fail Miles in some way? Why did Miss Grose not see Miss Jessel while the governess does? Are the children being possessed by the ghosts or just manipulated? What is the master's role in all of this? Why did Miss Jessel die? Was the governess' death, only alluded to in the frame story, also premature and unnatural? Why have the frame story at all?

Locke and Key

Locke & Key
by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez
read: 2016

It's been a while since I read a graphic novel, but a couple of my friends lent me this set with high recommendations. I don't generally think horror plays up well in the comics medium, and I can't say I was terrified by anything in Locke & Key, but the story was compelling. Like his father Stephen King, Hill spins tales of the supernatural that are grounded in relatable human struggles. One of my favorite parts involved Kinsey pulling fear and sadness out of her psyche through supernatural means. This has certain advantages as the family struggles to combat the evil forces haunting them, but it causes her to be cruel to her friends and love interests as she navigates high school. That sort of poignant twist makes Locke & Key stand out. There's a ton of clever plotting and backstory here, but the characters make those elements ultimately mean something.

Claudius the God

Claudius the God
by Robert Graves
read: 2016

Claudius the God continues the real-life Game-of-Thrones story of I, Claudius, but there's a bit of a tonal shift. Graves' Claudius shows a knack for leadership and public service, but he also plays the comic fool sometimes, especially oblivious to his wife Messalina's infidelities and manipulations. Claudius' relationship with Herod, a major element on the story, also has comic touches.

Throughout the two Claudius novels, the protagonist (and narrator) comes across as sympathetic, while the women of the tale - Messalina, Aggripina, and Lydia, especially - take the blame for many of the evil done in men's names. Graves' work is apparently based on historical information, but I wonder how many of those historical takes are based on outdated notions of a woman's proper place. The idea that Claudius ultimately becomes a tyrant to unselfishly hasten the fall of the empire and the rise of a republican form of government is a bridge too far, for me at least.

Revolutionary Road

Revolutionary Road
by Richard Yates
read: 2016
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

Revolutionary Road is full of uncomfortable truths for suburbanites like me. Protagonists Frank and April Wheeler aren't living the glamorous life they planned when they first got together, but they have a fine existence by most standards: a nice house in the suburbs, two children, a white collar job for him. They make a decision to become expatriates and live the life of their youthful dreams abroad, only to find life getting in the way of their plans.

Most novels would have a clear moral: either reinforcing the idea that people must follow their dreams, or reinforcing the idea that you should accept the good in the life you already have. Either is a valid life lesson. Yates chooses a third path, however, exposing every path, and for that matter, everyone and everything as irredeemably full of crap. Moving to Europe won't fix the Wheelers' problems, but sticking around won't, either. Nor does it seem that they can find solace in each other - it's not even clear that they like each other. Revolutionary Road is as bleak a portrait of modern life as I can imagine.

Most distressing is the way that many of Frank Wheeler's character flaws resonated with me. There have been times I've found myself telling long, winding stories and realized partway through that I'd already told them and they aren't that clever and everyone in the room knows it. There are real differences between me and Frank, but too many similarities for me to be comfortable with.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch
by Philip K. Dick
read: 2016

Like most of Dick's writings, The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch is a mental labyrinth, leaving the reader (and some of the characters) questioning who or what Eldritch really is and what he wants. Characters take hallucinogenic drugs and periodically plunge into realms where the lines between fantasy and reality blur. This is all par for the course with Dick, but Palmer Eldritch also possesses a beating heart under the mental gymnastics: protagonist Barney Mayerson is caught in a spiritual malaise and must find a reason to keep living in a universe where Earth and the other human outposts are largely uninhabitable. Mayerson must not only not preserve humanity, but determine that it is even worth saving.

Tobacco Road

Tobacco Road
by Erskine Caldwell
read: 2016
Modern Library #91, Guardian 1000 Novels

Erskine Caldwell's Tobacco Road has perhaps the most visceral descriptions of poverty I have ever read. The characters wear tattered clothing, live in dilapidated houses on infertile land, and battle the constant threat of starvation. They have no concept of money and little regard for human life, as evidenced by Dude's casual attitude towards committing two vehicular homicides. They are in part victims of the economic conditions of the times, but Caldwell's portrayal doesn't absolve them of their sins, either: theft, laziness, ignorance, and apathy.

Murder On the Links

Murder On the Links
by Agatha Christie
read: 2016

The multiple twists in Murder On the Links got gratuitous - it no longer felt like an earned surprise but instead just Christie trying to fool the reader. The romance was a bit silly, too - particularly Hastings' willingness to physical restrain Poirot so Cinderella could escape.

Dog Soldiers

Dog Soldiers
by Robert Stone
read: 2016
Time 100 Novels

Dog Soldiers is set in the Vietnam War, and like modern war novels Gravity's Rainbow, Catch-22, and Slaughterhouse Five, it has a wicked sense of dark humor. However, despite the title and temporal setting, Dog Soldiers isn't a war novel. There are no battle scenes, but the world of the novel and the actions of the characters are affected by the war. The characters do a lot, but they seem to be almost sleepwalking through their actions, going through the motions in a world where war has devalued human life.

The Croning

The Croning
by Laird Barron
read: 2016

In some ways, The Croning is a love story (albeit a twisted, horrific one), but I don't think Barron quite stuck the landing. He establishes a strong sexual connection between Don and Michelle, but I don't see a lot of depth beyond that. Plus, she's been lying to him and manipulating him for decades - that he would consider the moral sacrifice he's confronted with late in the novel didn't ring true to me.

Barron is a master of conveying that something incredibly creepy is going on on the outskirts of our world, and I was intrigued and weirded-out through the novel. The tie-in with the classic fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin is a nice touch.

The Iliad

The Iliad
by Homer
read: 2016

Man, the ancient Greeks were not squeamish about violence.

Achilles is not a sympathetic character - he spends the first two-thirds of the Iliad nursing a grudge in a fit of pride, and the last portion on a wrathful rampage. Even the gods are jerks - there really aren't any models for good behavior here.

Dubliners

Dubliners
by James Joyce
read: 2016

I read "The Dead" probably about 10 years ago, and re-reading it now I found I remembered the absolutely brutal, cutting last few pages, but I had forgotten most of what came before. Joyce yanks out the rug from under Gabriel, as all of his concerns, desires, and thoughts are rendered foolish by the revelations of the last few pages. Gabriel is a newer, educated Irishman, pulled towards the idea that England and continental Europe are more serious and urbane than his native land, but this attitude is exploded by the events of the story. This kind of political undercurrent runs through Dubliners, particularly in stories like "After the Race" and "Ivy Day in the Committee Room." The class struggles that exist in contemporary British stories are present here, but the stories also struggle with the idea that Irish culture is often perceived as somehow lesser than many of the other nations of Western Europe.

Kindred

Kindred
by Octavia Butler
read: 2016
Guardian 1000 Novels

Everyone knows slavery is bad, but I have the luxury of feeling it's mostly bad in an abstract sense. The conceit of Kindred - modern African-American protagonist Dana travels back in time to a Maryland plantation where she interacts with ancestors, both black and white - makes the trials and tribulations of the slave's plight more immediate. Dana has modern education and sensibility, but it helps her only a little against the weight of society's oppression. Just as jarring is the effect on her white husband, Franklin, when he accompanies her on one of the trips. Despite his more privileged status as a white man, he is just as powerless to change or improve things for the slaves. It is easy for them to fall into the routine of the pre-Civil War southern society. Octavia Butler doesn't turn a blind eye to the individual acts of cruelty and torture that slaveowners inflected on the slaves, but what she paints as the most troubling feature is just how easy it is for everyone to accept.

The Martian

The Martian
by Andy Weir
read: 2016

The Martian has a terrific premise - an astronaut thought dead is abandoned on Mars, but he unexpectedly survives, finding himself alone and needing to survive for months if not years before rescue comes. He has limited food, no way to communicate with Earth, and no one is scheduled to return to the red planet for another four years. The gripping novel delivers on its promise, with Weir throwing different obstacles and challenges at Mark Watney in his quest to survive long enough to return home.

I don't think I've read anything that captures the process of problem solving as well. Watney often tries things that don't work, there are complications he can't foresee, and he often has to adjust on the fly. Some readers might consider those kind of minute descriptions of process mundane, but I thought it refreshingly realistic.

The Song of the Lark

The Song of the Lark
by Willa Cather
read: 2016

The Song of the Lark isn't a perfect book - Cather herself found flaws with it - but I think the story of Thea Kronberg will stick with me a while. In part, that's because I still have a lot of questions: why does Dr. Archie serve as a framing character, the lens through which we see Thea at the beginning of the story and in the final section? Does Thea ultimately choose to compromise her career (unlikely) to marry Fred Ottenberg, or does Fred compromise his desire to have a family (more probable)? Does Fred divorce his wife or does she die? What happens to Wunsch, and why don't we get an epilogue of his story as we do for the other father figures in Thea's life? Why bring Spanish Johnny back at the end, and what does Thea failing to notice him mean?

I've written about Cather's empathetic, all-seeing eye before, and that is present in this story. Thea's journey to becoming an accomplished artist leaves little room for the people around her. Her single-mindedness is both her best quality and her worst. This quality attracts others to her, but also forces her to keep them at arms' length. Her passion for her music cannot be contained; either she pursues it absolutely, or she cannot reach her aims. Cather does not praise this decision, or condemn it; she knows - and Thea knows, too - that there are benefits and drawbacks to whichever path the heroine pursues.