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Jan. 20th, 2004 06:12 pmAnother long lapse. Oh well.
Since I last posted, I finished The Birthday of the World, which was absolutely lovely. It was a pleasure to return to some of the worlds on which Ursula LeGuin's other stories and novels have been set. I love the ways in which she manages to use these other worlds to show her readers truths about our own lives and our own world. And of course, her writing is just lovely.
After that, I read another lovely book: The Light of Day by Graham Swift. I like the direction that Swift has gone in with his last few books. He seems to be focusing somewhat less on erudition and more on character and emotion. Both Last Orders and this book are in this trend, and I think that it makes them much more compelling to read than some of his earlier books, such as Out of This World or Waterland. Waterland makes a particularly good example: it has a very touching story embedded in it, but the story is woven through with so much other stuff (the social, political, and environmental history of the fens, for instance) that the reader can get rather far from the original story before being pulled back by the author. The result is a book that is more impressive than moving. So I'm pleased to see that Swift kept to his current direction with this book. I also particularly liked the way he used isolated vignettes, and the stream of memory to tell his story. The story was about the past as much as it was about the present, and his manner of telling the story seemed particularly suited to that aspect of the book.
Since I last posted, I finished The Birthday of the World, which was absolutely lovely. It was a pleasure to return to some of the worlds on which Ursula LeGuin's other stories and novels have been set. I love the ways in which she manages to use these other worlds to show her readers truths about our own lives and our own world. And of course, her writing is just lovely.
After that, I read another lovely book: The Light of Day by Graham Swift. I like the direction that Swift has gone in with his last few books. He seems to be focusing somewhat less on erudition and more on character and emotion. Both Last Orders and this book are in this trend, and I think that it makes them much more compelling to read than some of his earlier books, such as Out of This World or Waterland. Waterland makes a particularly good example: it has a very touching story embedded in it, but the story is woven through with so much other stuff (the social, political, and environmental history of the fens, for instance) that the reader can get rather far from the original story before being pulled back by the author. The result is a book that is more impressive than moving. So I'm pleased to see that Swift kept to his current direction with this book. I also particularly liked the way he used isolated vignettes, and the stream of memory to tell his story. The story was about the past as much as it was about the present, and his manner of telling the story seemed particularly suited to that aspect of the book.
