Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The novel was subtitled "a novel without a hero", and I think therein lies the masterpiece. All of the characters are selfish in some ways, generous in other ways. It seems as though kind Amelia and selfless Dobbin win in the end, but it is really the scheming Becky Sharp that is the most interesting. And although Becky is often manipulating, she is also always cheerful. Life is a game, and whether she is losing or winning she is always delighted by it. Amelia loves deeply and often sacrifices her happiness for others but is often miserable and in many ways ends up in the same situations as Becky. Whether Amelia truly "wins" in the end is up to the reader. I loved Thackeray's narrator, often breaking the fourth wall to comment to the reader, moralizing when it suits him, and giving the whole novel a playful tone with witty asides, apt names, and ridiculous situations. It's main flaw is that it was a serial novel and just like tv shows with too many episodes, there are whole chapters that seem like complete fluff that seem to be filler and then suddenly the plot thickens again. Impossible to edit a book when you publish it while you write, and it shows here.

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All the world used her ill, said this your misanthropist, and we may be pretty certain that persons whom all the world treats ill, deserve entirely the treatment they get.  The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the election of his own face.

and certainly (for novelists have the privilege of knowing everything) he thought a great deal about the girl upstairs.

Are not there little chapters in everybody's life, that seem to be nothing, and yet affect all the rest of the history?

And in determining to make everybody else happy, she found herself so

the remembrance of it haunted him afterwards like a crime

so to be, and be thought, a respectable woman was Becky's aim in life

Think, what right you have to be scornful, whose virtue is a deficiency of temptation, whose success may be a chance, whose rank may be an ancestor's accident, whose prosperity is very likely a satire. 

The Hollow of Fear

 

The Hollow of Fear by Sherry Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I definitely should have read this closer to the last book in this series, since its plot draws heavily on what has preceded it. Thomas does a good job of backtracking enough so that the reader isn't lost, it's just I felt like things would have slid into place easier, and with more "of course!" with more memories of what came before. There are a lot of moving pieces (and costumes) in this one, and even (finally) a little romance for Charlotte. When everything is revealed at the end, and all the strings come together, I admired Thomas for keeping the reveal a surprise yet all the moving pieces in plain sight.

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Harmless Like You

 

Harmless Like You by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

There are a lot of things I liked about this novel. I loved the epigraphs before the chapters about Yuki--little facts about a shade of color that show up again in the chapter. At first, I found the poetic style of the Yuki chapters to be almost distractingly metaphorical, but soon grew to appreciate the precise way each metaphor allowed the reader to see things the way Yuki saw them. The chapters from Jay's point of view were much less poetic; told in the first person it truly felt like there were two narrators, which I appreciated (I hate when different perspectives are told in the same voice). However, although there was some growth with Jay, it's hard to say what role Yuki played in it. Yuki's character seemed almost pathologically inclined to pick out the most self-punishing choices, and it was hard to see why. Jay was pretty despicable as well for most of the book. Very well written, but the story it told fell flat for me.

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Ketchup marks looked less like stains and more like kisses. 

4321

4321 by Paul Auster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This book is so many things. It is 4 alternate histories of the same character. Which I always love--what events are life altering? In this case, the answer seems to lie in decisions his father makes--at least this it seems the stories truly diverge, which is interesting to think about--how much of our life is determined by things put into motion before we are even born? It is also a treatise on writing--what you should read and experience, how to discipline yourself, how to edit, even different ways of getting published. It's also the story of the United States in the from the late 50's to the early 70's--political, international, local NY, and literary and film happenings--as well as some perspectives from Paris. It's a lot to cover and it certainly takes a hunk of trees to do it--and personally I think seasoned authors don't get edited as much as they should. There were definitely some tangents that I thought went on a little long. Also, while sex is certainly part of coming of age, I felt like it's blunt, almost pornographic, handling in some instances, made an otherwise brilliant book banal.

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tormented by the curse of ambition.  By contrast, his father and Uncle Don were consumed by their ambitions, which paradoxically made their worlds smaller and less comfortable than those who weren't afflicted by the curse, for ambition meant never being satisfied, to be always hungering for something more, constantly pushing forward because no success could ever be beg enough to quell the need for new and even bigger successes.

The word psyche means two things in Greek, his aunt said.  Two very different but interesting things.  Butterfly and soul.  But when you stop and think about it carefully, butterfly and soul aren't so different, after all, are they?  A butterfly starts out as a caterpillar, an ugly sort of earthbound, wormy nothing, and then one day the caterpillar builds a cocoon, and after a certain amount of time the cocoon opens and out comes the butterfly, the most beautiful creature in the world.  That's what happens to souls as well, Archie.  They struggle in the depths of darkness and ignorance, they suffer through trials and misfortunes, and bit by bit they become purified by those sufferings, strengthened by the hard things that happen to them, and one day, if the soul in question is a worthy soul, it will break out of its cocoon and soar through he air like a magnificent butterfly.

curious interregnum, meaning a time that stood between two other times, a time of no time when all the rules about how you were supposed to live had been thrown out the window

there seemed to be several of him, that he wasn't just one person, but a collection of contradictory selves, and each time he was with a different person, he himself was different as well.

paying attention, Ferguson discovered, was the first step in learning how to be alive.

She had lost her daughters love because she had loved her unwisely.

what did it mean to be himself anyway, he wondered, he had several selves inside him, even many selves, a strong self and a weak self, a thoughtful self and an impulsive self, a generous self and a selfish self, so many selves that in the end he was as large as everyone or as small as no one.

now he was doing things he never would have done in the past, behaving as if he were no longer himself.

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley

The Twelve Lives of Samuel Hawley by Hannah Tinti
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Tinti has a gift for story-telling. Especially in all the ways I love. Taking discrete tales and then tying them into a whole. Using symbolic motifs. Creating tension then cutting it with levity. Taking a tale as far as you think it should go, and then going in that much further. The only thing I didn't particularly like is a personal aversion to the trope of sympathetic gun-slinger who raises a daughter to think guns are the answer, and the symbol of strength, protection, and independence.

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On Jupiter, Loo would weigh 283.6 pounds, while on Pluto she would weigh only 8....Changing where you were could change how much you mattered.

She leaned back.  She closed her eyes.  It could have been a minute.  It could have been an hour.

Their hearts were all cycling through the same madness--the discovery, the bliss, the loss, the despair--like planets taking turns in orbit around the sun.  Each containing their own unique gravity.  Their own force of attraction.  Drawing near and holding fast to whatever entered their own atmosphere. 

The Island

 

The Island by Victoria Hislop
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A fine drama against the backdrop of Spinalonga, the island where lepers were sequestered from the rest of Greece. Besides giving the history of the colony there, the narrative focuses on the fates of the daughters of one of the inhabitants of Spinalonga. There is love and jealousy and quiet affairs and treachery. Especially compared to Mokola'i, which is also about a leper colony during the same period, it was compelling to note the differences and similarities between the two cultures.

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