Monday, November 17, 2008

What I've been reading

I thought I might be able to come up with some witty comments as well as contrast the styles/voice/narration of the three books that I've read:
1. Arundhati Roy's God of Small Things
2. Richard Flanagan's Gould's Book of Fish
3. Rachel Cusk's The Lucky Ones

Unfortunately, I haven't been able to come up with anything except that of the 3 books, in terms of voice, Gould's Book of Fish is very distinctive (although the best I've read is Robert Bausch's The Gypsy Man). Roy's narration is almost melodic and the best word that I can come up with is that it has a "lilt" to it. Unfortunately, the narration jumps back and forth through time that (at my age) I was easily confused and kept having to go back to look at some chapters to verify the time line. Rachel Cusk's was interesting in that the collected stories in the book are all linked by characters that at first seem tangential to the original story. For me it didn't really have a beginning or and end although the narration was smooth enough to carry the book along.

I read these books mostly over lunch and I would not recommend (1) and (2) as "lunch" books. Some of the description of bodily processes almost made me lose my lunch.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You might be interested to know that Richard Flanagan's new book, _Wanting_, will be published in the US next spring.