Literary Crushes: In which I discover a preference for English gentlemen

Following from a stray thought in a previous post, the fictional characters that could turn me into a fangirl, in no particular order:

(Add on: I just realised that most of these characters have been brought to life of celluloid. Could a literary crush have been formed because of the readily visualised screen version, rather than an impression formed from the pages of a book? I think my list is entirely based on literary characterisation, but my enjoyment of these characters might no doubt be enhanced by a well-acted, in-character performance. Comments on the screen realisations - and the actors - have been added)

1) Lord Peter Whimsey (Dorothy L Sayers)

Dorothy L Sayers was said to have indulged in a bit of Mary-Sueism when she wrote the Harriet Vane character, a mystery author that Lord Peter later marries. Sayers was accused of falling in love with her own character and writing herself into the books as a romantic interest. If so, who can really blame her? Lord Peter is delightful; a decidedly English nobleman with a clever mind and a graceful way with words.

(There is a mini-series on the Lord Whimsey mysteries, but I have not seen any of it.)

2) Mr Darcy (Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice)

P&P is my favourite novel because it is light, sparkling, hilarious and deeply satirical. Mr Darcy stands out because he seems different from the tone of the book. He is quiet, aristocratic (but not snobbish), inclined to be judgemental (but redeemably so), generous and given to noble Grand Gestures, carried out earnestly and with a seeming lack of irony. He is almost, but not quite the ideal romantic hero (that would be Persuasion's Wentworth) but his imperfections make him all the more interesting. Even without Colin Firth's wet shirt sequence, Mr Darcy would be a fictional heart-throb.

(Since I mentioned Colin Firth, it goes without saying I have seen the BBC P&P. It is one of my favourite mini-series/movies and I own it on VCD. It seems almost cliched to say it now, but Colin Firth is really the perfect Mr Darcy. He has the voice down pat; there is an aristocratic dismissiveness in many of his early scenes that is exactly how I imagine book!Darcy to be. What I like best about Firth's performance is his expressiveness when he isn't saying anything. In the book, Darcy is hardly voluble but you learn something about him nevertheless, because of Austen's masterful writing. Colin Firth ably substitutes.

I realise there is a new movie version of P&P out now, but Keira Knightley as Lizzie just seems so incongruous to me that it might take a while to convince myself to watch this. I don't think Firth's definitive Darcy would be bettered, even if it might be equalled.)

3) Atticus Finch (Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird)

Not an Englishman, for a change. He is almost English, though, in the quietness of his bearing, his non-demonstrative affection for his children and his impeccable good manners. Although TKaM revolves around Scout and Jem, Atticus is the heart of the book for me. He is a man who does the right thing despite knowing it to be a lost cause. He does it because to do otherwise would be be like killing a mockingbird.

(Gregory Peck won a Best Actor Oscar for playing Atticus Finch in the screen adaptation of Mockingbird. I enjoy most old movies and would watch this whenever it pops up on TV, but it does not quite have the same magic as the book. Peck was a very fine Atticus, bringing the right sense of nobility and an air of weary detachedness. To me, he was too good looking for the role, even with the hair-cut and the glasses. Not quite the Atticus of my imagination, but good enough.)

4) Lord Percy Blakeney (Baroness Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel)

I might actually prefer the stylish fop Lord Blakeney to the action-hero Pimpernel ! He is witty, genuinely funny, unfailingly good-natured and always fabulously turned-out. Of course, the SP himself has more than a few virtues, chief amongst them being a charmingly adoloscent enjoyment of a good prank.

(There have been more than one screen adaptation of the Pimpernel tales. The only one I remember had Anthony Andrews as Blakeney and Jane Seymour as Marguerite. Anothony Andrews was perfectly adequate in the role and I did enjoy the twinkling-eyed fun he brought to the Pimpernel's proceedings. It has been years since I saw this mini-series (TV movie?) but I remember thinking Andrews was not quite foppish enough when he was playing Blakeney.)

5) Benedict (Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing)

Ah, a woman-hater who speaks in Shakespearean verse! What is there not to like? Before he is converted to the cause of love, Benedict is particularly wonderful: caustic, wry and for all that, jolly good company and a genuinely loyal friend. He sounds exactly like the type of guy that you want to hang out with over a jug of beer and you could listen to him being sarcastic for hours.

(The version I have seen is Kenneth Branagh's movie adaptation, with the director playing Benedict alongside then-wife Emma Thomson's Beatrice. I adore Branagh as a Shakespearean actor; his voice fits the poetry of Shakespeare so beautifully and his line readings demonstrate true comfort with Shakespeare's language. Physically, Branagh is not anything like the Benedict that I read off the page, but I can forgive him that when he does such justice to the spoken words.)

6) Remus Lupin (JK Rowling's Harry Potter series)

This is ground that I have covered before. Lupin does not get a lot of page-time in the series although he is prominent in a couple of chapters in PoA. Yet he is one of the most popular supporting characters to emerge from the HP books. He is a good teacher and a good man who lives a difficult life with seemingly good cheer. But what I like best about him is something he shares with Percy Blakeney: an enjoyment of mischief. And I find it particularly appealing that this prankster is not boisterous or attention-seeking, but is rather portrayed as being quietly pleasant and unflappable.

(In the movie version of HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban, David Thewliss is a very tall, swing-music-loving Remus Lupin. He is a fine actor and brings off the character very well indeed, especially considering the butcher-job that was the screenplay. He is too tall and physically too imposing to be the Lupin that I visualise from the books, but that is hardly Thewliss's fault.)

7) Kester Woodseaves (Mary Webb's Precious Bane)

I just love this book. It is so lyrical and atmospheric, I can see myself in the Shropshire countryside, working alongside the Sarns and watching the dragon-flies with Prue Sarn and Kester Woodseaves. Although we meet Kester Woodseaves earlier in the book, it is in this scene that we fall in love with him. Before, we have learnt that he is brave, generous of heart and kind; here, we see his humour and intelligence. The cut and thrust of his gentle teasing is amusing, but never cruel to Prue. He knows that she feels something for him and befriends her with charming directness. When he leaves, he subtly hints that her feelings might be one day requieted. It is wonderfully done.

(There is a long lost BBC mini-series adaptation of Precious Bane, which, sob, I have not ever seen. I wish I could hunt down a copy, or that the BBC would release it from its back archives, if it still exists. Better still, could someone not film a new version? The book practically screams adaption, with its evocative visuals, strong characters and absorbing plot.)

8) Psmith (PG Wodehouse's Psmith series)

An eccentric Englishman with good taste and who plays cricket! You have to love him. Psmith is so marvelously quirky, self-assured and utterly comfortable in his own unique skin. His sense of humour is delicious and amongst Wodehousian heroes, he is the hunk du jour.

(I am not aware if there is a screen adaptation of the Psmith stories - and if no, why not?)

9) Lord Goring (Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband)

Well-dressed by all accounts, a bit of dandy, a philosopher and possessed of a wonderfully wry and irreverent sense of humour. If he is supposed to be a thinly disguised alter-ego for Wilde himself, we could do a lot worse. He makes some of the most marvelously subversive observations and seems to have no regard whatsoever for the conventions of society beyond the importance of a well-chosen buttonhole. This is the man who says, "The only possible society is oneself" and "To love onself is the beginning of a life-long romance". Simply superb and oh, so fanciable.

(Ahh, Rupert Everett playing Lord Goring in Oliver Parker's movie adaptation of An Ideal Husband. Everett being openly homosexual, the entire enterprise has an almost self-referential cleverness. But sexuality has nothing to do with why Everett's Lord Goring is one of my favourites in any adaptation of a literary classic. He pulls off the dry, cutting witticisms with nochalance and grace. When he duels verbally with Mrs Cheverley and Mabel Chiltern, he is completely amoral in two completely different ways. When I read An Ideal Husband, I imagine Goring to be impeccably dressed and fine-looking, but not drop-dead gorgeous the way that Everett is. But somehow, Everett makes it believable that Lord Goring should be devastatingly handsome, with a profile as sharp as his words.)

Banned Books

Here is the list of the top 110 banned books (of all time), according to the American Libraries Association. Not being raised in either Europe or America, I am not au fait with some of the cultural and political complexities of book banning in the US. I know better now, but it used to amaze me how straight-laced the Americans were back in the Victorian and Edwardian ages, especially compared to their European counterparts. This banned books list is a long one and contains some really strange and unexpected titles. The religious ones, fine. Huck Finn? Yeah, we know about the potentially explosive racism angle. The salacious and the scandalous, perfectly understandable. But Little House on the Prairie was banned?

The exercise: Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've read part of. Underline the ones you specifically want to read (at least some of).

#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain (A childhood favourite. I can see why it was banned back in the days, but this is a GREAT piece of children's literature)
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (Assigned book for English Literature. A tough slog, but good stuff)
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne (I was too young to appreciate this when I read it the first time. The second time I read it was after seeing bits of the horrendous film version with Demi Moore. I had to re-read the book to cleanse my mind, and found it wonderfully rewarding.)
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (Assigned book for Eng. Lit. But I would have read it anyway)
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (Book? Musical? Movie? I love the musical and know most of the lyrics by heart. I cannot say the same for the book, but the book is by far a greater work of art. It is a stupendous achievement.)
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker(The original and the best horror novel. So creepy and atmospheric and truly bone-chillingly terrifying.)
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by EdwardGibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (My favourite Hardy novel after the Mayor of Casterbridge, which was another Eng Lit assigned book. )
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce (I was in University and surrounded by flyers proclaiming numerous Blooms Day events. I beat a path to the library and spent a month with Ulysses. This is not a book that I will read for fun, but I recognise what a monumental achievement it is.)
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell (Eng Lit assigned book. This was an easy read.)
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (I owned a battered copy that my brother had recovered from a stack of disposed books at his school library. It had neither front or back cover. I re-read the book a few hundred times as a teenager. I own a nicer copy now, with a proper cover, and still re-read it often. Outside of the Austen oevre, this is probably one of my favourite novels, for its atmospheric writing and understanding of the growing pains .)
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (Not sure why, but I couldn't really get into Steinbeck. I had this book on loan for 3 months, and could never get to the end of it.)
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Capital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence (This book is NOT smut. I think it is a beautifully written character study, with a romantic sub-plot.)
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (Well, I had to read this because it was the cool thing to do back in university. The strange thing is that I don't actually remember much of it. It is the ultimate dystopia novel, the grandaddy of the genre, but it hasn't left an impression on me. Strange.)
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchel (I read this as an impressionable teenager in an all-girls school. This was the swooning 1000 page romance that my schoolmates and I cried over. Except that the heroine was a bit of a brat. And the romance wasn't really that romantic since everyone was lying to everyone else. But we were 15, what did we know?)
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker (I really liked this book. It is so much better than the movie, which was a decent cinematic experience but doesn't pack the punch of the written version. Very touching, very real.)
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (This is a work of genious. Yes, the subject matter is uncomfortable, and illegal, in many places. But it is so beautifully written and so wonderfully constructed. This is a book that challenges and rewards at the same time. Just brilliant.)
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Emile Zola (I kept reading about how Emile Zola was supposed to have written such scandalous novels. Well, I found both Nana and Therese Raquin rather mild. Conceptually dangerous, but executed with such taste and class that I could not imagine being outraged by it.)
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

Tally: 30 that I have read in their entirety. 16 that I have read in parts. Not bad. Not illicit-materials- smuggler calibre, but not bad.

Recently Read: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

This is not a proper review, just a series of thoughts.

My HP readership history:

I saw the first two HP movies before reading any of the books. The movies did not particularly entice me to read the books, as they were entertaining but ultimately did not really convey enough wonder and magic. And okay, here's my snob's confession: I did not really see myself finding much enjoyment from reading what were essentially children's books. Not that I have anything against children's literature at all. In fact, one of my favourite books last year was Mark Haddon's "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time". My impression at the time was that the HP books were aimed at very young readers aged below 10. More Enid Blyton than Robert Louis Stevenson, as it were. The book covers did not help correct this mistake impression, neither did the first two movies.

When Order of the Phoenix came out two years ago, I came around to realising that JK Rowling probably did not write a 800 page book for readers aged below 10. Then I found out that my brother had read all the books and had also purchased OotP. I considered reading OotP, but was told that it wouldn't make much sense if I only knew the HP world through the first two movies. To appreciate OotP, I would basically need to read PoA and GoF, relying on the movies to fill in for the first two books. It all just seemed so much effort at the time and I had as always, at least 20 other books on my planned reading list.

One day last year, I was feeling slightly under the weather and not up to reading anything too heavy. My brother had left his much read copy of Prisoner of Azkaban in the living room (it's usually in his car as his stand-by reading material while waiting for people or stuck in traffic - he had told me that it was the best book in the series and the one that most repays rereading). I had just seen Chamber of Secrets on HBO a few nights earlier (I think this was around the period before the movie PoA was to be released). More on a whim than anything else, Prisoner of Azkaban became the first HP book I read and remains my favourite in the series (but more on that later). I was instantly hooked. I went through the other books in about a week, including the mammoth Order of the Phoenix and the only slightly less mammoth Goblet of Fire.

Thoughts on the JK Rowling:

JK Rowling is not a great writer, in the sense that you could not label her a modern-day Austen or Faulkner. Amongst contemporary authors, she lacks the edge of genius that elevates the likes of Beryl Bainbridge and Salman Rushdie to greatness. I certainly do not think that she suffers in comparison because she writes children's literature. LM Montgomery, Lewis Carroll, CS Lewis and Louisa May Alcott are all great writers of children's literature. JK Rowling is not a great writer because she lacks the deft use of language of these authors and their innate sense of how to structure and pace their work. That said, Rowling is a great story-teller, with a gift for imaginative flights of fancies and inventive plots. Her richly detailed Potterverse is testament to her talents.

Thoughts on the HP Series as a whole:

The books are wonderfully imaginative, and full of the wonder of magic. To me, they are far superior to the movies, that have been able to show us much because of the "magic" of visual effects but have left us little of the magic of our imagination.

I think the reason that JK Rowling has struck a chord with adult readers is that magic aside, the books are rich in characterisation. Harry Potter himself is a wonderful creation. As the books are told from his point of view, his is the most developed of the characters. I liked the fact that Rowling has written Harry as a very ordinary boy, who happened to have a significant destiny. Unlike his father, Harry is not a brilliant student, although he is a great Quidditch player,the one skill that Rowling gives him that distinguishes Harry from other students. To me, Harry is the Everyman hero, he is not obviously extraordinary but will save the world because of his courage, loyalty and sense of friendship.

Rowling has surrounded Harry with a colourful collection of loyal friends, schoolmates, professors and various members of the wizarding community. True to the dictates of children's literature, they are drawn economically but with enough detail that for the most part, they are never just plot devices and appear to have real personalities.

I have found it fascinating how the books have matured as their readers grew up. In the first two books, the characters were drawn in broad strokes, particularly the Muggle family of the Dursleys. Dudley and Uncle Vernon seemed less like characters than caricatures. I think this handicapped JKR in later books, as she was stuck with cartoon-like character attributes that were so extreme that it was difficult to soften them.

In PoA, we had Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, two complex grown-up characters. We learnt a little about Snape's past interaction with Harry's father, casting new light on this most interesting of the Slytherin characters. In GoF, we met Rita Skeeter and various unsavoury politico-types from the Ministry of Magic. We learnt of Hagrid's half-breed origin, lending a real gravity to this gentle giant. Somebody died in GoF (in an excellently written scene), and a even more devastating death came in OotP. From PoA onwards, Harry's world became darker and his struggles more difficult. While the first two books had Harry and friends triumphant against Voldemort, books 4 and 5 set us up for the return of the Dark Lord to power. By the end of OotP, the wizarding world was at war.

My favourite book in the series is PoA, by a mile. Tightly plotted and a real page turner, it has the happy position of being the "middle book", more mature in tone than the first two books and less gloomy and dark than the books that followed. PoA ends on a triumphant note as Harry and Hermione manage to save Sirius Black. And yet there is a sadness underlying the triump, as Sirius is on the run and Remus Lupin has lost his job after Snape reveals his werewolf background. The book foreshadows the coming darkness but is itself a good balance of despair and hope.

Harry in PoA is also "between" phases. He is no longer a child, and not quite yet the difficult teenager that he will become in GoF and OotP. He is genuinely sympathetic and likeable, as are Ron and Hermione. I particularly liked Hermione's character development in this book, she was as loyal a friend as Harry could ever hope to have.

In PoA, there is plenty of plot development that happens not only because of events, but because of characterisation. We get a glimpse into the past, when Harry's parents were at Hogwarts and are introduced the the quartet of Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs. We find out about who did what the night that Harry's parents died and how more than one life had since been wrecked.

PoA also introduced my favourite HP character, Remus Lupin. He is amongst Rowling's finest creations - a genuinely good man, a wonderful teacher and a werewolf. Rowling drops phrases that economically describe the difficulties that Lupin has faced - shunned all his adult life, difficulty finding employment, his ill and prematurely aged appearance - and we appreciate anew how much more admirable it is that he has remained kind and likeable, and a good teacher.


Thoughts on Half Blood Prince:

This was a very enjoyable read, especially after the relentless darkness and angst of OotP. There is a war raging on in the background, but the tone of the book is considerably lighter. While Sirius' death at the end of OotP seemed to plunge Harry (and the reader) into even deeper levels of depression, the death in this book, and the aftermath, was genuinely moving. The last chapters pack a real emotional wallop and the book ends on just the right bitter-sweet note. What I liked best is that Harry had grown up and matured since the last book and is much less of a pain in the neck in this book. This makes a big difference to my enjoyment of the book as much of it is told from Harry's perspective.

Apart from the death of a major and beloved character, not a lot actually happens in HBP. Much of it seems to be Rowling setting up for the grand finale in book 7. Even the title of the book - Half Blood Prince - did not seem to have a clear connection to the story-line (mainly because there really was not much of a main plot), unlike in the previous books. I can only assume that it will become important in Book 7 that we know about the Half Blood Prince, because otherwise, there isn't much that is that edifying about the fact that Harry did rather well at Potions for one year.

We learnt a lot about Voldermorth/Tom Riddle's past, in a series of Pensieve episodes. I greatly enjoyed these, although they were not really moving any plot forward and were more expositionary than anything else. It was good to have a change of pace, to learn something about the history of Harry's nemesis. On the face of it, these passages appear to suggest that Rowling had chosen a rather meandering way to tell us about the Horcruxes and that Tom Riddle likes Hogwart alot. But I have no doubt that these memories will become vital to the events of book 7.

Much of the book was also Rowling's dropping of hints and red herrings, particularly about Snape and Draco Malfoy. And yes, also about Dumbledore. She has truly mastered the art of diversion and misdirection in her writing, using Harry's POV narrative to great effect. I think that perhaps Rowling's true calling is as a writer of mysteries or detective stories.

The main event is of course Snape's apparent murder of Dumbledore. I haven't a definitive stance on the great "Is Snape Evil?" debate. I think Rowling has been very deliberate in not revealing anything that will tip the argument conclusively one way or the other. For every clue that she drops in favour of one side of the debate (eg. Snape stops the other Death Eaters from killing Harry), she drops a hint for the other (eg. Snape's expression of loathing before he kills Dumbledore). I am inclined to think that it cannot be as cut and dry as Harry seems to think - that Snape has to be a Death Eater that has re-pledged his alliance to Voldemort. Snape has been written with great ambiguity - truly unlikeable but seemingly redeemed by Dumbledore's faith in him, although essentially still a mean-spirited person who cannot let go of his hatred of James Potter. His motivations , whatever they are revealed to be, should hopefully be just as complex as his character has been written to be so far.

I do believe that DD is well and truly dead, although the folks at Dumbledoreisnotdead.com make a few pretty convincing arguments. Rowling has gone on record saying that she has written HP in the tradition of other literature where the hero's journey is one that he ultimately makes on his own. Dumbledore's death,sad as it is, has a purpose in this grand scheme.

This is also the "shipping" book. Befitting a bunch of 16 and 17 year-olds, hormones are on the loose and relationships are formed and broken-off. I keep out of the HP fandom by and large, but I know about the rabid shipping communities, in particular the Ron/Hermione and Harry/Hermione camps. With this book, Rowling settles the issue - Ron and Hermione will happen in Book 7 and Harry likes Ginny Weasley - although the Ron/Hermione development has been rather obvious to me since GoF, and even in PoA. The Harry/Ginny dynamic was set in motion during CoS, and her active role in OotP was a giveaway that she would be Harry's object of affection. All the passages on 'snogging' were rather fun, although Rowling isn't quite as deft with teenaged romance as she is with the fantasy elements. What she did manage to convey was the sheer turbulence of emotion that these teenagers experience.

In a nod towards the maturity of its protagonist, this book reveals adult relationships that a younger Harry might have paid less attention to. The pairing of Lupin and Tonks was a nice touch by Rowling. The revelation of this relationship at the end didn't take me by surprise, because she had dropped clues liberally throughout the book. I had also thought that OotP established a comfortable camaraderie between the two characters and a step up towards a romantic relationship was not unexpected. Rowling hints at the complexities of the emotions on both sides, contrasting this more adult relationship (which will carry baggage, not least of which is Lupin's lycanthropy) with Harry's less complicated relationship with Ginny. Perhaps these relationships, together with Bill Weasley and his fiance Fleur, are meant to illustrate the power that Voldermort knows not - the ability to love. Even Draco Malfoy's seeming redemption at the end appears to be motivated by love for his family (In my books, this is a very slight redemption, if it is as such. Draco Malfoy might love his mother and be a 16-year-old caught in over his head, but he is a thoroughly spoilt, sadistic brat and a racial supremacist to boot. It will take a lot more than losing his resolve to kill Dumbledore to render him completely sympathetic.)

It was a bonus to learn about Lupin's mission with the werewolves and his history with Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf who bit him as a child. Greyback is as malevolent a creature as Rowling has ever written, as evil and repellent as even Voldemort himself. I hope that Greyback will appear again in Book 7. It would seem strange to introduce him only for one book, when the werewolf sub-plot holds such promise.

The big plot points that will carry to book 7 are the Horcruxes and the identity of R.A.B. I fully expect R.A.B to be Regullus Black, so we can revisit scenes from the first Wizarding War, possibly exploring in depth the dynamics of the Black family, not only Sirius and Regullus, but their Death Eater cousins Narcissus Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange. These scenes from the past would also perhaps lead to a resolution of Snape's motivations, his relationship with Voldemort, Dumbledore and James Potter.

The Horcruxes are an interesting invention, and will set things up well for a treasure-hunt like plotline. I imagine that even while Harry has decided not to return to Hogswart, the search for the Horcruxes will lead him back to his beloved school. My suspicion is that there is a Horcrux connected to an object owned by Gryffindor, and that object will be found at Hogswart. It might even perhaps be something that has been innocuously mentioned in previous books, or even something that had been close at hand to Harry throughout his years at Gryffindor Tower. (Oh, here's an idea: the Sorting Hat is a Horcrux! Heh, wouldn't that be interesting.) I don't plan to go back and comb all the previous books for additional clues, but I think the Internet HP sleuth community should already be on the job.

In summary, Half Blood Prince is clearly a "bridge" book, rather like the Two Towers was a bridge in the LOTR series. It is exposition heavy and leaves a million loose ends to be tied up. It lacks its own central plot, because it mainly functions to drive the series forward to its conclusion in the final book. Because of that, there is a sense of incompletion at the end of HBP, rather like having read the first half of a novel that has had the rest of its pages torn out (that's what I meant by JKR lacking a great writer's skills with pacing and structure). That said, I think this is the best HP book after PoA. Not a lot happens, but we learnt something new about important characters, especially Voldemort, Snape (well, we got more ambiguity, but heaps of clues to ponder over for two years) and Harry himself. The expositions will reward rereading as we try to find the real clues and tie them together. Finally, HBP makes us feel as well as think. It is the first HP book that succeeds in being emotive without accompanying overwrought drama that cause the more cynical to roll their eyes a little (Harry's all-caps and exclamation-pointed shouting in OotP being a prime example). Rowling honours Dumbledore with a movingly written funeral chapter. Almost as moving was the gesture of friendship extended by Ron and Hermione to Harry in the final two pages. It reminds us that in the final analysis, the true magic that Harry found at Hogwarts was loyalty and friendship.

Recently Read: The Handmaid's Tale

I don't know why I never discovered Margaret Atwood before this. She is a Booker Prize winner and in her native Canada, something of a national treasure.

The Handmaid's Tale is a modern classic, one that is studied in university classes both as an example of "dystopia" novels as well as an expression of the fears of the feminist movement in the 1980's. I had not known any of this when I started reading the novel, knowing only that it was recommended by many liberal-leaning North American women who have grave concerns over the right-wing idealogies of the current US administration. They said that this book is a chilling portent of what may happen if the religious right seizes control.

I read this book during my daily train commute, and had it done within a week. Atwood's prose is simple and elegant. Her ideas may be elegant but are anything but simple. She tells us the dangers of religious extremism by depicting a post-revolution world where America has regressed into a sort of pseudo-Victorian state. In the Republic of Gilead, men are in charge, everyone praises the Lord, television, advertising and commerce are things of the past and most chillingly, selected women are designated as "Handmaids". These are women who are of child-bearing age, who are unmarried, or forceably separated from their husbands because only marriages between previously unmarried people are considered valid. In this dystopia, childbirth rates are alarmingly down, and these Handmaids fulfil the role of ensuring the continuation of the species. They are assigned to high ranking officials of the new regime, to live in their homes, together with their wives. They has only one responsibility: to become pregnant and give birth.

The titular Handmaid is Offred - "Of Fred". Fred is the name of the Commander to whom she has been assigned. She has her own name, but we are never told what it is. All the handmaids are identified "Of" whomever they are assigned to. This book is told in the first person, from Offred's perspective. In the first few chapters, she describes her daily life as a handmaid and her relationship with the Commander and the members of his household. Her relationship with the Commander's wife is prickly and uncomfortable. I found this to be one of the most interesting aspect of the book. Written by a feminist, this is a fascinating exploration of two very different women living in very circumstances, one seemingly more privileged, but ultimately, both equally hellish.

Everymonth, during her fertile period, Offred, the Commander and the Commander's wife perform the Ceremony. This is the monthly attempt at impregnating the Handmaid, with the wife participating to symbolically establish that the Handmaid is simply a proxy womb and that any child conceived is spiritually of husband and wife. The Handmaid is nothing more than a necessary third middle man. This part of the book showed how religious fervour can be twisted into very strange practices.

The first person narrative ends on an ambiguous note, with Offred being whisked away by the Commander's driver, Nick. Offred and Nick had become lovers, and she sought solace in him, driven into his arms initially by the Commander's wife in an attempt to get Offred pregnant and out of her life (I believe that the wife knows her husband to be infertile). Luke claims to be a member of an underground resistance group. Offred puts her fate in his hand, while not entirely believing if he is telling her the truth.

The best part of the book for me is the Historical Notes at the end. This is set sometime in the future, many years after the timeline of the main narrative. It is in the form of a keynote speech being delivered at an academic conference. The speaker, Professor Piexito is speaking about a brief period in American history when the USA became the Republic of Gilead. He is speaking about a set of recorded tapes, narrated by a woman who lived in Gilead. We learn that Offred had narrated her tale on these tapes, that they were recovered from an underground safe house. In the style of a typical academic lecture, the Professor examines the context of the tapes, the techniques to establish its origins and the methodology of attempting to identify the narrator. He narrows down the identity of the Commander to two possible men named Fred and tells us more about Gilead and how it came to be, in the process. Ultimately, there is not enough surviving evidence to establish who Offred herself is or what became of her.

This book is deserving of its classic status. Some of its ideas about feminism might seem outdated now, but I think its message has a renewed relevance in today's world or rising fanaticism and fundamentalism.

The Booker Prize Project (Part 3)

The Booker Prize Honour-Roll 2001-2004

2001 - Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
I started reading this, and could not get through more than the first few pages. Again, it seemed to be one of those cases where I could appreciate the craftsmanship behind the book, but not the finished product. I think it was the story-line that I did not find particularly attractive (although as an Australian alumni, I have great affection for tales of Australia's history and lore).

2002 - Yann Martel, Life of Pi
A slim book, this one, and yet I could not sit down to finish it. There is something disconnected about it, like reading a complicated product manual that is jargon filled and which you don't really understand. To be fair, I have not gotten further than the first few pages, so this is an impression formed on relatively short acquaintance.

2003 - DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
I just bought this book and plan to read it after I finish Cloud Atlas and The Line of Beauty, from the 2004 Booker nominees list.

2004 - Allan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
I am reading this now. So far, it's a tumultous romp, very uninhibited and yet written with great control. The depiction of drugs and homosexual liaisons may be disturbing to some readers (and they feature rather prominently) but Holllinghurst knows how to use these to further his plot and construct his character, rather than just adorning the book.

In Summary
There are a fair few Booker winners that I have not read yet, especially the earlier ones. Of the more recent winners, I have attempted to read most but have not always found them to my liking. I suppose that a book-lover does not always love ALL books, not even prize winning ones.

I have been looking at the lists of nominees, and I have read a number of those that did not go on to win the Prize. In some instances, I may even venture to say that I have enjoyed these more than the winning books (or at least, have been motivated to read the non-winning nominees, while the winners were not appealing enough to get me started).But that's for another post.

The Booker Prize Project (Part 2)

The Booker Prize Honour-Roll: 1991-2000

1991 - Ben Okri, The Famished Road
This is a strange one; it's a book that I keep thinking I have read, when in fact I have not. It has since become a classic and is on my reading list.

1992 - Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient
- Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
I have read both books and own a copy of Sacred Hunger. I found Barry Unsworth's remorselessly dark and ultimately, a depressing read. There is no doubting the strength of his narrative line and the clarity of his prose, but the tale of slavery and greed was not entirely to my taste. I am glad to have read it because of what it had to say about the corrupting power of capitalist imperialism.

The English Patient, the book, is such a different animal from The English Patient, the movie. The book moves at a different pace, driven not by the doomed romance of the movie but by the unique voices of its cast of characters. I found this a fascinating read, cleverly constructed and written with great imagination and flair. I liked that Ondaatje was not afraid to make his protagonists unpleasant and sometimes unlikeable, something which the movie sought to do, but not as successfully.

1993 - Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
I was given this book as a birthday present. It took me a fair while to finish reading it. I can appreciate the cleverness and the humour, but this book failed to strike a chord with me. I cannot remember anything about it, apart from struggling through many of the early chapters, adjusting to the Irish vernacular that peppered Doyle's writing. I recall this as being earthy and honest (and I suppose, authentic, although I am not in any position to really know) and somehow not quite my cup of tea.

1994 - James Kelman, How Late It Was, How Late
1995 - Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
1996 - Graham Swift, Last Orders

Not read. Frankly, I know nothing of the James Kelman book. The Ghost Road was much acclaimed when it was released. It was a book I passed up on because it seemed rather bleak. It is, after all, about the culture of death in Europe. I think I may try to read the entire Pat Barker trilogy if I find the time, now that bleakness is not so entirely off-putting to me anymore.

Last Orders was supposed to be a sad book, from the blurbs at the back. I rarely seek out sad books, no matter how acclaimed, hence this was a book I skipped. I don't know that I have change my mind since then, so this book may not get read for a while yet.

1997 - Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
I bought a copy of this book, on the strength of its Booker Prize win, which was much reported in the local press due to the winner being an Asian. I read the first half of the book in a couple of sessions, so riveting did I find Roy's narrative. Thereafter, my reading pace slowed considerably as I found the story turning somewhat predictable and the prose taking a rather florid turn. The early chapters were fascinating in their descriptions of life in India, including the mundane details of domesticity and work. Roy was particularly effective in depicting family relationships and the customs of South Indian society, The love story was touching, yet at the same time, it was the one element in the tale that made the larger story seem more hum-drum, to me. In all, though, this is a fine work which I admired greatly for its skill in weaving a mystery into an exploration of human behaviour.

1998 - Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
1999 - J M Coetzee, Disgrace
Both not read. I remember reading the blurbs and thinking tha these were not the types of books that would appeal to me. Despite the subsequent award of the Booker Prize, I was not tempted to change my mind.

2000 - Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
I have not read this yet, but hope to do so. I had only recently discovered Margeret Atwood's work by reading The Handmaid's Tale. That was truly a chilling, gripping read.

The Booker Prize Project (Part 1)

This is an attempt at a feeble and high non-scientific experiment. What I plan to do is to go through the list of Booker Prize winners throughout the years (and nominees, in a separate exercise) and see how many I have read and of those, how many has left any impression on me at all. This may say something about whether prizes, especially one so prestigious as the Booker, actually get awarded to books that have longevity in the minds of typical readers. Not that I am sure I count as a typical reader, but I do read a lot, so I am at least an avid reader, if nothing else.

The Booker Prize Honour-Roll: 1969-1980

1969 - P H Newby, Something to Answer For
1970 - Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1971 - V S Naipaul, In a Free State
1972 - John Berger, G
1973 - J G Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
1974 - Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist and Stanley Middleton, Holiday
1975 - Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
1976 - David Storey, Saville
1977 - Paul Scott, Staying On
1978 - Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
1979 - Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
1980 - William Golding, Rites of Passage

"Heat and Dust" is the only one of these early winners that I have read, although I plan to get my hands on Nadine Gordimer's book, plus Iris Murdoch's and V.S. Naipaul's. I read "Heat and Dust" after watching the screen adaptation, which was very tastefully done. RPJ writes very evocatively, like many Anglo-Indian authors. She successfully conveyed the atmosphere of Colonial South Asia and the book spoke with an authentic voice through-out.

The Booker Prize Honour-Roll: 1981-1990

1981 - Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
Not read. And probably may not make a special effort to read it. I have tried reading the Satanic Verses, which is brilliantly crafted, but Rushdie's style somehow leaves me cold.

1982 - Thomas Keneally, Schindler's Ark
I read this after watching the Spielberg adaptation for the large screen, which remains one of the most haunting films I have ever seen. The movie reduced me to tears. The book was less emotionally wrenching but had details and layers that were necessarily left out in the movie. To me, these details enriched the remarkable story of Oskar Schindler. Of the books I have read set during periods of war, this remains amongst the most memorable.

1983 - J M Coetzee, Life & Times of Michael K
1984 - Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
1985 - Keri Hulme, The Bone People

All of the above are not read. Anita Brookner is in the "plan to" list. The Bone People has excellent reviews, but I would need to go to New Zealand again in order to work up the motivation to read it, I think.

1986 - Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
I loved "Lucky Jim". And I think I may have read The Old Devils during my period of reading English comic novels. I certainly remember reading Difficulties with Girls and the story line for The Old Devils sounds mighty familiar. Sadly, I can't confirm if I have read the book, which probably means it wasn't all that memorable. Notwithstanding that, Kingsley Amis was a genious.

1987 - Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
1988 - Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda

Both not read. I frankly know nothing about Moon Tiger, having not heard of the book before I began looking up the list of past Booker winners for this project. It does sound like the type of book that I would enjoy, being about families and having flashbacks to war-time Egypt. I borrowed Oscar and Lucinda from the Library once, and left it unread until I had to return it. I must get around to it someday.

1989 - Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
A book I have read three times. I love Ishiguro's control over the English language. He writes so lucidly that it seems that the butler in the book was speaking directly to me as the reader. The restraint in the writing mirrored beautifully the character of the protagonist. This is a book that defines novel writing.

1990 - A S Byatt, Possession
This is a beautifully written book; A.S. Byatt shows that she is a craftsperson that uses the language of prose to recreate the lyricism of poetry. The plot device was a little too "clever" for my liking, but the pace never dragged and my interest was held from beginning to end of a rather long novel.