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Friday July 31, 2009
Books in July
- Jackson's Dilemma by Iris Murdoch [read by Juliet Mills]
It's a long time since I read any Iris Murdoch novels - probably not since I was a student at which time she was very much in vogue. I am not sure I understood them very well at that time - I was trying to expand my reading matter and everything was new to me. Even now, when I read AS Byatt, or Angela Carter, I find it hard to understand them - so maybe it was just that era.
This is her last novel and has engendered some harsh criticism which I think is unwarranted. I presume she had probably already begun to feel the effects of her disease, and there seems little point in saying what basically boils down to "it's not as good as her other novels". One critic complains that the people are not believable and date from a pre-war era - I think he is mistaken - the people are not 21st century, maybe not meant to be, but rather more from the 1960s I would say - one forgets how backward society still was at that time .... Literary criticisms when it was first published comment that "the writing is a mess" and sum it up as a "very odd book".
For myself I did find it hard to see the dilemma of the title. However it seems clear that the tone of the book relayed anxiety, and towards the end, Jackson sits alone and reveals a confused state of thinking which surely must have reflected some of the authors own confusion.
In addition, I'm afraid this novel was not improved by Juliet Mills as the reader. - Book Of The Dead by Patricia Cornwell [read by Lorelei King]
This was an interesting novel, as usual from Patricia Cornwell - gory but interesting. I do find the characters hard to empathise with - all of them actually - not just Scarpetta, who is such a cold fish, for all her Italian genes. They seem to behave in a wholly unbelievable way. A certain amount of irrational behaviour makes a book interesting, and is eminently believable. But all the characters seem constantly embroiled in battling with each other, and all seem victims of such weird hang-ups you can hardly see how they function in society - and that's not even the serial killers...
At he end of this volume Marino goes missing, and we have to wait for the next book for him to turn up again. Alive or dead I wonder? - Bare Bones by Kathy Reichs [Read by Barbara Rosenblat ]
I am firmly hooked on the Kathy Reich's forensic detective novels, which have a far more human heroine in Tempe Brennan than the comparable Kay Scarpetta. This is an earlier book in the sequence, than the other novels I have listened to.
These characters are believable and easier for me to understand - just classic detective novels, not psychological thrillers. Not so gory - more clinical - and not so weird.
So on that basis, is my approval good or bad for an author?!
Posted by Christina at 8:25 AM. Category: Books of the Month
