Book Review Monday
Well, it's Monday and I've got a few books I'd like to share with you. Two of them are graphic novels, but we won't hold that against them. All books I've finished this week, they're fresh in my mind and I hope I can do them justice. Bear with me.
The first book I want to get to is called The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger.
I was a bit wary of this book at first, thinking it would be a harlequin romance in a sci-fi skin, but after the first twenty or so pages I saw otherwise. This is not a romance; nor is it a sci-fi novel. It is one of those rare occurences that can't be classified into any genre; save "life fiction," and we wouldn't generally put books involving time travel there either.
Let's talk about story. Henry DeTamble is a man with a genetic disorder, one that throws him backward and forward in time, without any clothing. For a science fiction writer, this might be enough of a seed for a short story. It's a new way to look at time travel, an original idea that deserves a lot of credit for initiative. But Niffennegger doesn't stop there. Henry appears at the residence of Clare Abshire, in a meadow outside her house when she is six years old. She meets with him and he leaves, giving her a list of dates when he'll be back. As Clare grows up, Henry continues to visit her in the meadow, and she falls in love with him. Later, when Clare finds Henry in real time, he doesn't remember her and she's known him all his life. This is because all of the backwards traveling by Henry is done after he's found and falls in love with Clare.
The reality of this novel was startling; the characters I felt I had known for the longest time, each with heroic characteristics as well as not-so heroic characteristics. And yes, I think we'll agree that while the occurrences in the book are not quite possible (unless they really happened and Niffennegger is really Clare). Somehow this doesn't take away from any of the truth of the novel.
I'd like to note, for any time travel nut out there, that this book is not free of paradoxes. There are a lot of questionable events, which raise questions about how they happened. For example, an older Henry travels back in time to teach his younger self valuable skills for surviving as a a time traveler (like a time he returns to teach himself to pickpocket from strangers). There's a small problem with this logic, however. If he only ever had himself teach himself how to do things, how did he learn the skill in the first place (without the answer being "himself")? Issues like these can be overlooked when faced with the quality of the novel, and I think that in this case they should be.
Recommended. 5/5.
The second book I have for you is called City of Glass. Formerly a novel by Paul Auster, this is an adaptation into the graphic form by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. And it takes about an hour to read through.
We follow the story of writer Daniel Quinn, a mystery novelist who publishes books about his detective protagonist Max Work under the pseudonym of William Wilson. Confusing? Maybe. Anyway, Quinn's going through depression as he's unsure where his life is going, when he gets a phone call. Some man asking for Auster, Paul Auster. Quinn tells him he has the wrong number. A few nights later the man calls back. This time, Quinn pretends to be Auster. The man on the other line is Peter Stillman, a herky-jerky creepy weirdo guy who is how he is because he was locked in a room for nine years by his father.
Peter Stillman's father, a man convinced that if only the human being could be cleansed of all knowledge of speech by men, he could learn to the original language of God, was arrested and and yet paroled. It's Daniel's job to keep Peter Stillman Sr. away from Peter Stillman Jr. because it's said the old man sent a letter to the younger declaring that there would be a day of reckoning.
As Daniel Quinn becomes more and more involved with the case, we see the breakdown of his sanity as well as his detective work. Eventually I can't even tell what's going on anymore. The ending is vague, and I feel like there was an intended point to get from the book, but I think I missed it. It almost makes me want to read the original Auster novel, but since I know the plot I don't think I will. Oh well.
Good art, nice page design.
3.5/5
And finally, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.
I liked this book. It's not better than my other favorite graphic novel, also by Alan Moore, Watchmen, but it's still good.
Centering itself in a world where 1980's Britain has become a totalitarian fascist government, the book introduces us to V, a character in a Guy Fawkes mask who uses terrorist tactics to bring down the government.
Over the course of the book you learn his backstory, and it's quite intricate and fun. So I won't tell you.
Much of the book has to do with freeing the mind of a scared young woman, Evelyn Hammond. About to be raped and murdered in the beginning of the book, V shows up and dispatches the assailants and takes Evey to his lair, aptly named the Shadow Gallery. I had some issues with the portrayal of Evey as a stupid, naive girl, but accounting for the fact that this book was written twenty five years ago when that was about the only way anyone depicted women in comic books, it's not too bad.
I don't really want to say anything more about the plot, but I'd like to talk about the images used in the book. They're incredibly inked, utilizing a confidence of brush I've not seen, and David Lloyd uses an incredible array of watercolor to make the images come to life in a way you don't normally experience with a comic book. I'll admit that at first it was distracting, but after five or six pages I was hooked.
This book's worth a read, if only just to have read it.
4/5.
The first book I want to get to is called The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffennegger.
I was a bit wary of this book at first, thinking it would be a harlequin romance in a sci-fi skin, but after the first twenty or so pages I saw otherwise. This is not a romance; nor is it a sci-fi novel. It is one of those rare occurences that can't be classified into any genre; save "life fiction," and we wouldn't generally put books involving time travel there either.
Let's talk about story. Henry DeTamble is a man with a genetic disorder, one that throws him backward and forward in time, without any clothing. For a science fiction writer, this might be enough of a seed for a short story. It's a new way to look at time travel, an original idea that deserves a lot of credit for initiative. But Niffennegger doesn't stop there. Henry appears at the residence of Clare Abshire, in a meadow outside her house when she is six years old. She meets with him and he leaves, giving her a list of dates when he'll be back. As Clare grows up, Henry continues to visit her in the meadow, and she falls in love with him. Later, when Clare finds Henry in real time, he doesn't remember her and she's known him all his life. This is because all of the backwards traveling by Henry is done after he's found and falls in love with Clare.
The reality of this novel was startling; the characters I felt I had known for the longest time, each with heroic characteristics as well as not-so heroic characteristics. And yes, I think we'll agree that while the occurrences in the book are not quite possible (unless they really happened and Niffennegger is really Clare). Somehow this doesn't take away from any of the truth of the novel.
I'd like to note, for any time travel nut out there, that this book is not free of paradoxes. There are a lot of questionable events, which raise questions about how they happened. For example, an older Henry travels back in time to teach his younger self valuable skills for surviving as a a time traveler (like a time he returns to teach himself to pickpocket from strangers). There's a small problem with this logic, however. If he only ever had himself teach himself how to do things, how did he learn the skill in the first place (without the answer being "himself")? Issues like these can be overlooked when faced with the quality of the novel, and I think that in this case they should be.
Recommended. 5/5.
The second book I have for you is called City of Glass. Formerly a novel by Paul Auster, this is an adaptation into the graphic form by Paul Karasik and David Mazzucchelli. And it takes about an hour to read through.
We follow the story of writer Daniel Quinn, a mystery novelist who publishes books about his detective protagonist Max Work under the pseudonym of William Wilson. Confusing? Maybe. Anyway, Quinn's going through depression as he's unsure where his life is going, when he gets a phone call. Some man asking for Auster, Paul Auster. Quinn tells him he has the wrong number. A few nights later the man calls back. This time, Quinn pretends to be Auster. The man on the other line is Peter Stillman, a herky-jerky creepy weirdo guy who is how he is because he was locked in a room for nine years by his father.
Peter Stillman's father, a man convinced that if only the human being could be cleansed of all knowledge of speech by men, he could learn to the original language of God, was arrested and and yet paroled. It's Daniel's job to keep Peter Stillman Sr. away from Peter Stillman Jr. because it's said the old man sent a letter to the younger declaring that there would be a day of reckoning.
As Daniel Quinn becomes more and more involved with the case, we see the breakdown of his sanity as well as his detective work. Eventually I can't even tell what's going on anymore. The ending is vague, and I feel like there was an intended point to get from the book, but I think I missed it. It almost makes me want to read the original Auster novel, but since I know the plot I don't think I will. Oh well.
Good art, nice page design.
3.5/5
And finally, V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd.
I liked this book. It's not better than my other favorite graphic novel, also by Alan Moore, Watchmen, but it's still good.
Centering itself in a world where 1980's Britain has become a totalitarian fascist government, the book introduces us to V, a character in a Guy Fawkes mask who uses terrorist tactics to bring down the government.
Over the course of the book you learn his backstory, and it's quite intricate and fun. So I won't tell you.
Much of the book has to do with freeing the mind of a scared young woman, Evelyn Hammond. About to be raped and murdered in the beginning of the book, V shows up and dispatches the assailants and takes Evey to his lair, aptly named the Shadow Gallery. I had some issues with the portrayal of Evey as a stupid, naive girl, but accounting for the fact that this book was written twenty five years ago when that was about the only way anyone depicted women in comic books, it's not too bad.
I don't really want to say anything more about the plot, but I'd like to talk about the images used in the book. They're incredibly inked, utilizing a confidence of brush I've not seen, and David Lloyd uses an incredible array of watercolor to make the images come to life in a way you don't normally experience with a comic book. I'll admit that at first it was distracting, but after five or six pages I was hooked.
This book's worth a read, if only just to have read it.
4/5.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home