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I finished Kate Chopin's The Awakening last night. It's a very short book--more of a novella than a novel--but it feels complete despite its length. This could be due to the fact that there is very little plot, although that doesn't seem quite right... Perhaps it would be better to say that there are very few events in the book, and even when there are events (a dinner party, say, or a day at the races) Chopin is much less interested in the event as event than as a backdrop for the way her characters feel and the things they think. It is very much a novel of interiority (the antithesis of Oh, Play That Thing!), but the lack of action does not make it boring. On the contrary, Chopin has an amazing ability to capture a mood and make her readers feel it. I'm thinking particularly of the haunted, moon-lit night on Grand Isle when Edna learns to swim, and the way she feels so strange afterward--lethargic, yet intensely alive--as she lies in the hammock and will not go in to bed.
Edna grew on me immensely over the course of the book. I liked her well enough at the beginning, when she was just a serious and slightly out of place young mother, but I loved her by the end, once she had developed into an intense woman, a woman who responds always with too much emotion and not enough thought... I mentioned in an earlier post that there were moments when I identified with Edna, and as the book went on those moments came more and more frequently, until, in the last twenty or thirty pages, I found myself nodding and sighing along with everything she felt. Is that good writing, or simply a degree of universality in her story?
And the ending... What to say about the ending? It was not a satisfying conclusion, but I'm not sure that this story could have an ending that satisfied. Perhaps there was no other way for the story to end. That's a sad thought, but not as sad as thinking of some of the other possible outcomes that the book might have had. I was neither stunned not heartbroken by the ending; I responded instead with a sort of sad resignation that wasn't what I would have expected of myself. The book as a whole affected me much more deeply than I expected it to.
I am very intrigued to see what our book club discussion will be like on Sunday.
After finishing The Awakening, I started reading Talking It Over by Julian Barnes. I took it out of the library at the same time that I got The Awakening, just because it's been such a long time since I've read any Barnes. Thus far it is proving to be very clever and British and fun, but I've only read twenty pages or thereabouts, so I draw no conclusions yet.
Edna grew on me immensely over the course of the book. I liked her well enough at the beginning, when she was just a serious and slightly out of place young mother, but I loved her by the end, once she had developed into an intense woman, a woman who responds always with too much emotion and not enough thought... I mentioned in an earlier post that there were moments when I identified with Edna, and as the book went on those moments came more and more frequently, until, in the last twenty or thirty pages, I found myself nodding and sighing along with everything she felt. Is that good writing, or simply a degree of universality in her story?
And the ending... What to say about the ending? It was not a satisfying conclusion, but I'm not sure that this story could have an ending that satisfied. Perhaps there was no other way for the story to end. That's a sad thought, but not as sad as thinking of some of the other possible outcomes that the book might have had. I was neither stunned not heartbroken by the ending; I responded instead with a sort of sad resignation that wasn't what I would have expected of myself. The book as a whole affected me much more deeply than I expected it to.
I am very intrigued to see what our book club discussion will be like on Sunday.
After finishing The Awakening, I started reading Talking It Over by Julian Barnes. I took it out of the library at the same time that I got The Awakening, just because it's been such a long time since I've read any Barnes. Thus far it is proving to be very clever and British and fun, but I've only read twenty pages or thereabouts, so I draw no conclusions yet.