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Feb. 5th, 2004 07:37 pmMy oh my, I keep leaving these long gaps between entries, and then I have to write about six books all at once. Well, without further ado...
After finishing The Light of Day, I read The Man Who Wasn't There by Pat Barker. It was very good, although I find that I keep comparing everything she writes to the Regeneration trilogy and saying "Well, it didn't quite have the scope of Regeneration." I guess it's just hard to live up to such a masterful accomplishment. But, that doesn't mean that her other books aren't excellent in and of themselves, and The Man Who Wasn't There is certainly a good book. I love the way she's able to capture her characters so economically. One or two details, and you've got it. I also love the way that she is able to subtly underscore her narratives with a current of ambiguous sexuality. She really is a great writer.
After that, I read Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. The only other book of hers that I've read is Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which I read several years ago and really liked. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about Written on the Body, and I'm not sure how it compares to Oranges. They're pretty different books, and one could almost say that comparing them is like comparing apples and... (okay, that joke's too terrible for me to tell, even in my current state of exhaustion). Anyhow, Written on the Body is a very interesting book, and Winterson is obviously brilliant with language, but I'm not sure that it made the significant statement about gender that it was trying to make. The genderlessness of the narrator really didn't have that big an impact on me.
Okay, I have more thoughts, and a couple more books I wanted to remark on, but I'm way too tired right now.
After finishing The Light of Day, I read The Man Who Wasn't There by Pat Barker. It was very good, although I find that I keep comparing everything she writes to the Regeneration trilogy and saying "Well, it didn't quite have the scope of Regeneration." I guess it's just hard to live up to such a masterful accomplishment. But, that doesn't mean that her other books aren't excellent in and of themselves, and The Man Who Wasn't There is certainly a good book. I love the way she's able to capture her characters so economically. One or two details, and you've got it. I also love the way that she is able to subtly underscore her narratives with a current of ambiguous sexuality. She really is a great writer.
After that, I read Written on the Body by Jeanette Winterson. The only other book of hers that I've read is Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, which I read several years ago and really liked. I'm not sure exactly how I feel about Written on the Body, and I'm not sure how it compares to Oranges. They're pretty different books, and one could almost say that comparing them is like comparing apples and... (okay, that joke's too terrible for me to tell, even in my current state of exhaustion). Anyhow, Written on the Body is a very interesting book, and Winterson is obviously brilliant with language, but I'm not sure that it made the significant statement about gender that it was trying to make. The genderlessness of the narrator really didn't have that big an impact on me.
Okay, I have more thoughts, and a couple more books I wanted to remark on, but I'm way too tired right now.
