books 2009 -- #33 - 37

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First of all, I'd like to give this book 4.5 stars. (Why is it so hard to be confined by the one-star increments?) It is a great book, I just can't give it my very highest rating. I wonder if it is suffering somewhat in comparison to The Count of Monte Cristo, which I read right before A Tale of Two Cities, and I loved that one SO much.

In any case, I'm just thrilled that I finally read this book! I have been suffering for some time now as the result of not having read it. I have felt like a pseudo-reader because I didn't like Dickens, couldn't get through him. I tried to read A Tale of Two Cities in 2002 when we were living in Paris, because it just seemed appropriate. I couldn't get into it, and gave up not far into it.

Recently I decided I had to give it another shot. There has to be a good reason it's such a classic, right? Right. This time, I had no trouble at all getting sucked right into the story. I have no idea what my problem was before. It turns out, I like Dickens, and I'm thrilled about it.

I really found it interesting the way Dickens portrayed the French Revolution. He went back and forth between condemning the revolutionaries for their violent, bloodthirsty acts, and showing the despicable actions and excess of the aristocracy. He makes his readers confront their feelings and prejudices and question their own actions, hypothetical or real.

If I have any complaint at all about A Tale of Two Cities, it's that many of the characters seem a bit one-dimensional. So many of them are completely evil or completely good. That's what makes Carton such an interesting character. He is complex, he is at times detestable, and at others compelling, sympathetic, or even admirable.

I loved Lucie as well. Yes, she seems perhaps unbelievably good. But she is so admirable, she makes me want to be a better person.

This is a book with the best first and last lines ever, and a very satisfying ending. Highly recommended.


The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was so excited to read this, and I guess I had too many expectations, because it really fell flat for me. It read like slapstick. I've always enjoyed Oscar Wilde's quotes -- the only lines I really liked from The Importance of Being Earnest were ones I already knew.




The Zookeeper's Wife: A War Story by Diane Ackerman

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, I guess you can teach an old dog new tricks, because I'm starting to think maybe I like nonfiction after all! Maybe not all nonfiction. But I did really enjoy The Zookeeper's Wife.

It is the story of a husband and wife zookeeping team in Warsaw -- before, during, and after WWII. This is exposing my ignorance, but I really didn't know much of anything about what it was like in Warsaw during the war and the German occupation. Horrible, as you can imagine. I didn't even know that the term "ghetto" comes from the Ghetto that was built to contain the city's Jews (in wretched living conditions, of course).

Jan and Antonina hid over 300 Jews at the zoo and worked with the resistance, both to help Jews to escape and to sabotage the German soldiers. I keep thinking that I'm done reading about WWII. It's too painful. But then I read a book like this that makes me really think. Maybe there's no such thing as too many...

What makes some people in a war situation risk everything to help those in need, while others just hunker down and try to be invisible? It's fascinating to me. I really hope I would be one that would try to help, but I wonder.



Sacred Hearts: A Novel by Sarah Dunant

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sacred Hearts is set in 1570 in a Benedictine convent in Ferrara, Italy. While some of the nuns entered the convent by choice, many of them are incarcerated by force -- married to the church by their families because they were not marriageable for one reason or another -- or simply because they had nowhere else to go.

Santa Caterina is a convent that allows these noblewomen many freedoms not allowed to them elsewhere, and opportunities to pursue knowledge and interests. Suora Zuana is the dispensary mistress, using knowledge passed down from her father about herbs and healing.

The nuns hear rumblings from other convents about a Counter-Reformation movement which will impose ever tightening restrictions on the nunneries, and one spirited, rebellious new novice, Serafina, threatens to bring unwanted attention to Santa Caterina -- and to upset the delicate balance of politics and order within.

The book jacket says that, "Sacred Hearts is a rich, engrossing, multifaceted love story, encompassing the passions of the flesh, the exultation of the spirit, and the deep, enduring power of friendship." It is all that and more, and I found it highly interesting.



Out Stealing Horses: A Novel by Per Petterson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is translated from Norwegian, which I never would have known had I not read the "translated by" note on the cover. The last thing you want is to read something that is obviously a translation.

I found the language to be almost lulling in nature. Trond is an older man, living alone, reflecting on his father, an old childhood friend, and one summer from his adolescence in particular. The characters are interesting and the tone seems spot on to me.

Some favorite quotes:

"Time is important to me now, I tell myself. Not that it should pass quickly or slowly, but be only time, be something I live inside and fill with physical things and activities that I can divide it up by, so that it grows distinct to me and does not vanish when I am not looking."

"That kind of coincidence seems far-fetched in fiction, in modern novels anyway, and I find it hard to accept. It may be all very well in Dickens, but when you read Dickens you're reading a long ballad from a vanished world, where everything has to come together in the end like an equation, where the balance of what was once disturbed must be restored so that the gods can smile again."

"What I do, which I have never let anyone know, is I close my eyes every time I have to do something practical apart from the daily chores everyone has and then I picture how my father would have done it or how he actually did do it while I was watching him, and then I copy that until I fall into the proper rhythm, and the task reveals itself and grows visible..."

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