Possession

Possession
by A.S. Byatt
read: 2015
Time 100 Novels, Guardian 1000 Novels, Man Booker Prize

Possession is full of layers of metafiction. The text is mostly present-day narrative, but also contains letters, diary entries, and poems. For the most part, we are confined to what the characters in present uncover when investigating the mysteries of the past, but there are a handful of occasions where Byatt introduces a narrative account of the past that cannot be known to the present-day characters.

Roland and many of the other characters are literary scholars and are conscious of how the elements in their lives mirror literary themes. "He was in a Romance, a vulgar and a high Romance simultaneously; a Romance was one of the systems that controlled him," Roland realizes.

The novel is deep enough to invite literary scrutiny, but at the same time it is a comment on the limitations of such scrutiny. Roland thinks he understands Ash, but when he finds Ash's love letters to Christabel he realizes he was missed an aspect of his personality. Similarly, the thrust of the scholarship around Christabel's work assumes lesbian themes, and when it's discovered she had an affair with Ash it changes the interpretations of her work. We are also limited to what is preserved for posterity, as items are never recorded or destroyed. The novel begins with Roland discovering a letter that was never sent, and ends with all the characters opening a letter that was never read.

I feel compelled to mention the final scene. It was uplifting that Ash knew of his child and kept a lock of her hair forever, but that meant that Christabel needlessly carried the guilt of not telling Ash for the rest of her life. The situation was bound to be hopeful in some measure and tragic in some measure, and it is little surprise that the woman suffers more.

The Secret Adversary

The Secret Adversary
by Agatha Christie
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

While The Mysterious Affair at Styles is a prototypical mystery novel, The Secret Adversary is really a spy story, with Bond-esque stakes involved. If amateur adventurers Tommy and Tuppence can't find a girl and a document, all of Western Civilization could collapse.

I suspected Julius early on because he used some British slang - "flat," "lift," etc. Is that how Americans talked in that time period, or was Christie taking some liberties?

MaddAddam

MaddAddam
by Margaret Atwood
read: 2014
MaddAddam Series, Book Three

There's a metatextual element to MaddAddam, where the story itself is being written as a conscious part of the story. Toby journals her experiences, even though it's unclear whether in the post-apocalyptic world of the novel that there's even going to be a notion of written history. And after teaching Blackbeard to write, she is unsure whether she should have just let writing and history disappear rather than preserving it.

In The Year of the Flood we learn Toby's backstory and that she's never really found love or happiness. MaddAddam is really Zeb's tale, and we learn that he too has experienced loneliness and heartbreak. In a world that's destroyed, and where the human species is practically on the verge of extinction, it's touching that they find happiness together.

The Mysterious Affair at Styles

The Mysterious Affair at Styles
by Agatha Christie
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

The Mysterious Affair at Styles was Agatha Christie's first novel, but I was surprised to see how much of the mystery novel template was already fully-formed. The structure - red herrings, twists, a genius investigator who keeps everyone in the dark until the eleventh hour - is pretty similar to mystery TV shows of today.

The Year of the Flood

The Year of the Flood
by Margaret Atwood
read: 2014
MaddAddam Series, Book Two

I enjoyed The Year of the Flood less than the other Atwood books I've read. I'm having a hard time understanding whether Atwood (or her narrative voice) is poking fun at the Gardeners or exalting their style of life. Probably her real stance (and the rational one) is somewhere in the middle, or both. Toby and Ren both claim to have doubts about Adam One's teachings, but they find strength and solace in them in times of need.

Random note: Ren's chapters are in first person while Toby's are in third person. I don't have a theory about why that is.

Olive Kitteridge

Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
read: 2014
Pulitzer Prize

I'd say Olive Kitteridge is most similar to Winesburg, Ohio, of the books I've read. Both are collections of short stories that have some common settings and characters; in the case of Kitteridge, the titular Olive is at least mentioned in every tale. Both capture the zeitgeist of a small town, though Kitteridge is set in coastal Maine rather than Anderson's Midwest. Both also deal with the tragedies and triumphs of normal life rather than earth-shaking events on a global scale.

I wasn't crazy about Winesburg, finding it repetitive, cliched, sentimental, and overly morose. Kitteridge has some of the same flaws, particularly how depressing many of the stories are, but Strout's just such a good writer and hits on unspoken truths of human existence:

You couldn't make yourself stop feeling a certain way, no matter what the other person did. You had to just wait. Eventually the feeling went away because others came along. Or sometimes it didn't go away but got squeezed into something tiny, and hung like a piece of tinsel in the back of your mind.

Kitteridge is dripping with these kinds of poetic observations of modern tragedy. Offsetting the heartbreak is Olive, whose blunt matter-of-factness often serves a humorous counterpoint to the weighty themes.

The Shining

The Shining
by Stephen King
read: 2014
Guardian 1000 Novels

This is only the second Stephen King novel I've read (after It), and something that struck me about both books is how he uses contrast. Describing horror, fear, depravity, and evil is obviously integral to the horror novel, but King spends just as much time showing goodness, bravery, altruism, and generosity. The touching relationship between Danny and his father Jack makes Jack's corruption, possession, and destruction all the more tragic. Dick's bravery in risking his life to save Danny, and the willingness to help of the various people he encounters, makes the story inspiring. The novel is called The Shining, and the shining itself is almost the hero of the story, set in opposition to the evil force of the hotel itself.