Death of the Heart

Death of the Heart
by Elizabeth Bowen
read: 2021
Time 100 Novels, Modern Library #84, Guardian 1000 Novels

This one had a lot of British class stuff that I probably didn't pick up on fully. It was hard to sympathize with Portia's affection for Eddie, when he was so obviously a snake the whole time.

The Sportswriter

The Sportswriter
by Richard Ford
read: 2021
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

Ford sets The Sportswriter after a lot of the most critical events in the life of titular protagonist / narrator Frank Bascombe. Frank has gone from promising young writer to abandoning his fiction, from family man, to grieving father of a son struck down by untimely illness, to divorcée. The novel begins after all those events, with a protagonist who largely has come to terms with his tragedies and failures, and settled in comfortably to a life as a sportswriter in a New Jersey suburb.

Frank's maturity from life experience brings perspective as he navigates the events of the novel, as does the grounded reality of being a sportswriter. Late in the book, he sums things up with the observation "The only truth that can never be a lie, let me tell you, is life itself—the thing that happens."

The Forever War

 

  
The Forever War
by Joe Haldeman
read: 2021
Guardian 1000 Novels, Hugo Award, Nebula Award

According to the Theory of Relativity, time moves differently for bodies traveling at different speeds. The difference is miniscule for bodies moving at planet-bound scales, but at faster-than-light speeds, this time dilation has a dramatic effect. That's the case for protagonist William Mandella, who returns centuries later to a very different earth after military tours of duty at far-flung planets. Sometimes the differences are good, usually they are bad, but always they are foreign and leave him feeling like a fish out of water.

This feeling pushes Mandella (and girlfriend Marygay) to re-enlist in the military, though he harbors no illusions about the morality of the army itself or the conflict he is embroiled in. Perhaps this is the only constant in Forever War: death is big business, and those who stand to profit off the war business have little consideration for the lives risked by those forced to wage those wars.

The Sot-Weed Factor

The Sot-Weed Factor
by John Barth
read: 2021
Time 100 Novels

This was a long, weird one. It was an entertaining read, and amusing at times with the distortions of historical events (like the "John Smith journals"). Some of the weird sex stuff, I dunno, I coulda done without.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

  
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
by Philip K. Dick
read: circa 2000
Guardian 1000 Novels

I read this back in college, but I had occasion to re-watch the movie adaptation (Blade Runner) again recently, as well as the belated sequel Blade Runner 2049. The latter movie got into the Dick-esque reality-bending mind-screwiness more than the former. 

Herzog

 

Herzog
by Saul Bellow
read: 2021
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

I got a sinking feeling about 2/3 of the way through that this was going to wind up being really dark. Instead it was sort of like The Corrections - more about a gradual realization than a big dramatic event. Would it have had deeper meaning for me if I had enough of a background in philosophy to appreciate a lot of the references that the titular Moses Herzog, an academic, makes? Maybe.

Rabbit, Run

  

Rabbit, Run
by John Updike
read: 2020
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels

The canon of English-language literature is heavy on white dudes, and Rabbit, Run is one of the more white-dude-ier. Protagonist Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom is married, with a good job, a son, and a baby on the way, but he's not happy, or something, so he just up and leaves. Is that compelling? Or is Rabbit just kind of an ass?