(no subject)

Over the weekend, I finished The Eye in the Door, and then, because I was so thoroughly wrapped up in the trilogy, went ahead and read The Ghost Road. Unfortunately, I really didn't find The Ghost Road to be quite as good as either of the two previous books of the trilogy. I wish I could remember what I thought when I first read the books, but it was quite awhile ago, and I find that I can't. Somehow, The Ghost Road just didn't seem to have the impact on me that both Regeneration and The Eye in the Door had. The writing is still excellent, and Billy Prior's journals from France are particularly good, but it just doesn't quite come together the way the others do. I think the main problem with it is that I'm just not as interested in Rivers's memories of his anthropological expeditions as I am in his current role of army pyschiatrist and the relationships he establishes with his patients. Plus, I really like the ambiguity that surrounds Rivers in the previous two books--his enigmatic sexuality, the mysterious, half-remembered bits of his childhood, the unexpressed intensity of his feelings for his patients. He is really the heart of the trilogy for me, and somehow his role in the final book just doesn't seem as fulfilling to me. Nonetheless, there are a few scenes that are absolutely heartrending: the scene when Hallet dies, trying in vain to say "It's not worth it," the bit when Wilfred Owen sees Hallet in the pool, and of course the ending. And even if the final book isn't quite at the level of the first to, it is impossible to deny the towering achievement that this trilogy represents. Just remarkable. I don't know when the Booker Prize was more thoroughly deserved.

After wrapping up Queen Pat's magnum opus, I started reading The Moor's Last Sigh by Salman Rushdie. I haven't read anything of his since reading Midnight's Children four or five years ago, and I had forgotten how much fun he is to read. He's a writer who's not afraid of making you work, making you concentrate a little bit to follow his sentences, but if you do the work the payoff is great--he's an incredibly witty writer. I've only barely begun The Moor's Last Sigh, but I'm already seeing some interesting stylistic similarities with Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. I'll have to see if they persist.