Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.

Rebecca is a great example of a novel that's far, far better than it has any right to be. Reading a plot summary makes it sound like hundreds of other Gothic novels: a young girl marries a rich, older man and moves to his beautiful but unnerving estate. Once there, she comes into contact with various strange and mysterious characters and eventually uncovers a terrible secret, one that changes our perspective on everything that came before. Boilerplate, right?

But such a summary misses two vitally important elements that set Rebecca apart from other genre exercises: first, Mme. du Maurier's sparkling but never--or at least rarely--melodramatic prose. If you've read much in the Gothic genre, you know how rare that is; she knows how to underplay the watershed moments for dramatic effect, and when to ramp up her description of the mundane until it becomes almost unbearably tense.

Secondly, du Maurier is a master plotter. Chris mentioned this in his review, but Rebecca isn't a genre exercise built around a twist; rather, it's winding narrative that maintains, and maybe even increases, its power once you know exactly how everything plays out. If I were to add a third element, I'd say the characters are remarkably well-drawn, but to say much more on that, or any, point might be to spoil the novel for those of you who haven't read it.

Rebecca seems to me, in some ways, the perfect novel of its type: engrossing and easily readable without sacrificing depth or beauty. There's more here than a simple mystery or romance--Du Maurier's musings about time and loss--always organic to the narrative--are moving and powerful, but don't get in the way of the story. If you haven't, you should read Rebecca.

Also, the line quoted above: one of the greatest opening lines of all time, right?

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Pride and Prejudice is probably the best example I’ve ever seen of the necessity of reading a book before making a judgment on it. Previous to this year, I’d thought of Pride and Prejudice as literature lite, frothy Victorian romance for silly little girls and silly older women—Twilight for people who don’t like vampires, basically. In my defense, it’s easy to get that impression. Every crappy romance novel written in the last 20 years claims Austen as an inspiration, not to mention that Jane Austen herself has become a posthumous cottage industry. In your average bookstore, you’ll find significantly more books about Austen or inspired by her work—including some dreadfully explicit Darcy/Bennet erotica—than you will novels by the woman herself. So when Christopher told me that Pride and Prejudice was one of his favorite books, I was intrigued.

And so, how was it? Safe to say, it was nothing at all like I expected. In fact, after reading it, it’s hard for me to imagine how the Austen-worshippers have gotten from the book what they’ve gotten. To judge from Pride and Prejudice, Austen would have mocked the culture her work has spawned. Not to mention that, although it’s certainly romantic—but never treacly—at points, to me, it reads more like a comedy.

For those who don’t know, the plot is thus: The Bennets are a moderately wealthy family, made up of r. Bennet, their easy-going and uninvolved father, Mrs. Bennet, who is completely crazy, and five daughters, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty, and Lydia. Elizabeth’s story gets the most ink now, but in the novel, both Jane’s and Lydia’s get nearly as much space in the book itself. There’s a lot to the plot and a large cast of characters, but considering the volumes that have been written already, I think I’ll focus on a couple things that stood out to me and leave the in-depth summaries to Wikipedia.

First, Pride and Prejudice is funny. Austen has a dry sense of humor, maybe too dry for a lot of modern readers (especially the kids who read it in school), but it’s hard to see how anyone could be unamused at the perpetually useless Mr. Collins, who, lacking in social graces, thinks the appropriate response to Lydia running off to elope with a less than pristine officer is the encourage her parents to disown her and to congratulate himself on not getting involved with Elizabeth, or this exchange, to which every comedy in the last 20 years owe royalties:

“Then it is as I always hoped,” cried Jane; “they are married!”
Elizabeth read on: “I have seen them both. They are not married,”

Jane’s hopeless optimism, Mary’s overwrought moralizing, and even Austen’s slow-burning disdain toward Mr. Bennet, who starts off with the reader’s sympathies but is eventually revealed to be passively complicit in his daughters’ situations. That’s not even to mention Mr. Darcy who spends approximately 2/3rds of the book acting like a major jerk. He insults Elizabeth at their first meeting, but is drawn to her when she rejects him. For her part, her interest perks up about the time she sees his beautiful estate. It makes a good point, one that romantic fiction rarely addresses: that frequently, the deepest affection can start in the shallowest of waters.

Secondly, Austen’s treatment of Lydia is interesting. Lydia elopes with the promiscuous Mr. Wickham, and upon her return home to see her family, we—and certainly the readers in Austen’s time—expect to find her cowed and realizing the error of her ways. Instead, she’s gleeful as a nymph, flitting around boasting about the wonderful man she’s landed. After that, we might expect some comeuppance, but even this doesn’t quite happen. True, when we last see her, we are told that her passion has cooled and that Wickham’s cooled long ago, and she is has little money or communion with her family, but is this really the most terrible thing? There is no cosmic consequence for her actions; she simply reaps more or less what you’d expect.

I guess what I’m saying is, read Pride and Prejudice. I’m glad I did.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.

This was an excellent book that came highly recommended from a number of people. A couple of people described it as the best story they had read in a while. I am inclined to agree with them. Not only does Zafón tell a great story, but he does so with excellent writing.

The Shadow of the Wind is a book about a book. The main character is a boy named Daniel, whose father runs a used book store in mid-20th-century Barcelona. Daniel comes across a book called The Shadow of the Wind by Julian Carax, which he falls in love with. But as he tries to find more books by the author, Daniel discovers that Carax is shrouded in mystery. What starts off as simply an interest in finding more works by Carax turns dangerous as Daniel uncovers a mystery decades old.

This is a slow-burn mystery. By that I mean that while there is a strong undercurrent of mystery, the other elements of the story are strong enough, that at times they become the driving force of the story. Zafón deftly weaves the history of Barcelona with an intriguing story of mystery and romance. The end product in an ode to storytelling. A love letter to reading.

The Girl in a Swing by Richard Adams

Watership Down is one of my all-time favorite novels. So I was excited to read something else by Richard Adams. I can't remember why I chose this book or why I decided to order it from ABEbooks.com, but I did not really see the cover or anything until I had already paid for the book. You can't see from the picture, but on the front cover right above the title is this phrase from the New York Times Book Review, "Beautiful haunting erotic love and an absolutely terrifying ghost story." I turned the book over and on the back, "Stunning. . . a novel of love and beauty, mystery and horror." Right above that blurb from Vogue, the main female character is described as "a seductress of erotic mystery and exquisite sexual genius." I remember thinking, Geez, what have I gotten myself into?

As it turns out, almost none of what is written all over the cover of this book is true. The book occasionally deals with sex, there is some mystery surround the female lead Kathe, and there is technically a ghost. However, the ghost plays such a small role in the story that I would never refer to this as a ghost story, definitely not haunting. There were a few parts that were a little spooky, but not "terrifying," "chilling," or "terrible" as the hyperbolic cover suggests. However, this is not to say that the book was bad. It was a good, slow-moving story of a man who falls in love with a woman he knows little about. I wonder if I would have enjoyed the book better had the cover not set me completely on the wrong path. I know that I would have enjoyed the ending much more than I did.

So, I didn't really like The Girl in A Swing, but it was not so bad that I won't give Adams another shot.

**Update: I gave Adams another shot.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Vengeance is mine; I will repay - Romans 12:19

And so begins Anna Karenina, common nominee for best novel ever written and second of Tolstoy's two major works. I read War and peace last year, and, compared to its 1400 pages, Anna Karenina seemed like a relatively small undertaking. However, it turns out that Anna's relative lack of bulk is deceiving. I found it slightly more difficult to read than War and Peace, although, surprisingly, there were a lot of common themes.

The basic plot of Anna Karenina sounds more like an episode of The Young and the Restless than the plot of one of the greatest novels ever written. Anna Karenina, the titular character, has an affair with Vronsky, a dashing, young, womanizing soldier, and the book explores her narrative alongside that of Levin, a wealthy young man searching for God. Alongside these two plots develop dozens of side characters, families, and friends. There's also a fairly involved political subplot expressing Tolstoy's derision toward many of the attitudes of the day.

Of course, in a book with this scope, any attempt to summarize the plot is going to be underwhelming. The most interesting parts of the book are those that aren't written in stone. Tolstoy steadfastly resists speechifying about the morality of his characters, choosing instead to intimately detail their thoughts so that we, the readers, can see how their reactions come about and draw our own conclusions of their morality. Even the ominous epigram (Romans 12:19) that begins the book is open to interpretation in light of the book's development. The novel itself can be read as a political treatise, a satire, a love story, a romantic tragedy, historical fiction, a mystical/religious novel, or all of the above.

Tolstoy writes the best character interactions I've read anywhere. When his characters speak, whether it's Levin and Stepan discussing politics and religion, or Vronksy and Anna having an arguement, every word and action rings exactly true. The scenes of Anna and her husband trying to function normally after her infidelity is revealed were among the most wrenching passages I've read in any book. Also worth noting is an early use of the modernist technique of stream-of-conciousness during Anna's breakdown in the penultimate section of the book.