Classic Challenge 2009

I'm happy to do this challenge again especially since I had a couple of leftovers from 2008.
My list is: Count of Monte Cristo
Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Far from the Madding Crowd
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Dead Souls

Snow by Orhan Pamuk

This is from a Nobel Prize winner (2006), a Turkish writer who is born the same year as myself and is a lifelong resident of Istanbul. It's a very interesting book although I found much of it sad but I guess much of it is meant to be sad. The basic story line is a Turkish poet who is living in exile in Frankfurt returns to his homeland to visit but one of his main objectives is to make contact with a woman who he has discovered recently divorced. He feels he may have a chance to win this woman now and so he journeys to a remote Turkish city to report on the state of affairs there but primarily to renew his acquaintance with this woman, Ipek, who he knew when they were all at university. The poet, Ka, is suppose to investigate the rash of suicides of young women who were in conflict with authorities over wearing their head scarves. They want to wear their head scarves as an emblem of their faith and the authorities, particularly the university, wants them to refrain from wearing them at school. The head scarves have become a symbol of faith versus secularism. This is a conflict that we're familiar with listening to the news from Europe. Ka has been living a rather desolate life in Frankfurt although he's relieved also to be able to leave Turkey whenever he desires. Ipek becomes the object by which he can achieve happiness if he can get her to return to Germany with him and share his life. Unfortunately, Ka and Ipek and everyone we meet in the city of Kars become embroiled in a bizarre political coup and the story goes on from there. There is a nice literary deceit in that the author also appears in the story as Ka's friend who is retracing his time in Kars after Ka's death in Frankfurt. Pamuk uses Kars as a cut off place, cut off by snow, in which to enact his story of love and politics. I don't claim to understand many of the cultural implications of the book but I did understand the terrible duality of Turkey, the bridge between east and west, and this seems to torment the society as the struggle to find their path. Will they be modern, like Europe , godless? or will they go the way of the Islamic republic or some variation of and think what they like regardless of facts? These are some of the important questions discussed in the book along with talking about everyday sorrows and joys, although joy seems to be a commodity in short supply in Kars. The review quotes make much of the literary angle of the book too, how a writer is creative and delves into the mind of his or her characters. I think all in all I liked the book and would try to read other books by this author. I recommend it as timely reading.

Classics Challenge Finale

Well, I'm finished! My list is:
Bleak House
The Golden Bowl
Les Miserables
War and Peace
The Cherry Orchard
The Sea,The Sea
I've enjoyed the challenge, the books were easier to read than I thought, but they took more time than I thought. I would like to do another classic challenge. It helps to have an external motivation because they do require more from the reader than a lot of modern fiction. Thanks for hosting. This is the only book group I partcipate in besides the mother-daughter at the library.

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov

This is my last selection for the Classics Challenge. I read an adaption by David Mamet because that was it for our library. In his foreword he explains that he views the play as a series of scenes repeating the same action i.e. frustrated lovers. I read the foreword hoping that it would help explain the play but I didn't really see Mamet's thesis. The story is an indolent woman returns home to her estate to find it on the chopping block (literally)! A wealthy businessman from peasant background devises a plan to save the estate by selling the cherry orchard for real estate development. She refuses to take any action and the estate is sold to the wealthy businessman who proceeds to chop down the cherry orchard. The indolent woman returns to her unfaithful lover in Paris and that's the end of the play. There are some subplots along with the main story involving lovers who cannot get together for various reasons. Everyone in the play is kind of irritating because they seem so inept and passive. I tend to see the play more as a commentary on the rot at the heart of Russian society, which is the very thing that Mamet is convinced it is not! The reason I think it's a commentary is that no one will take any action. They're living in denial as their estate is sold away, too busy having parties and histrionics. Also, the landowners seem incapable of work and the peasants seem incapable of leadership. The only person who takes action is the businessman who comes from a peasant family. So, I guess it's open to a lot of interpretation. In fact, this idea of being destroyed by debt has relevance right here right now! It was good to read a play because normally I don't and I have the Classics challenge to thank for that!

The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch

This is the Booker Prize winner for 1978 and I can see why it was selected. There are many beautifully written passages and the story itself takes some bizarre turns which lend an unknowable and mysterious component to the book. The basic story is as follows, a famous and jaded theatre personage retires to the (you guessed it) sea, ostensibly to devote himself more fully to personal development. He purchases a very strange and almost unpleasant house near an unfriendly village. He has what I would describe as mystical experiences and here is a passage from the book that describes one of those experiences. "Later I knew that I had been asleep and I opened my eyes with wonder and the sky had utterly changed again and was no longer dark but bright, golden,gold-dust golden, as if curtain after curtain had been removed behind the stars I had seen before, and now I was looking into the vast interior of the universe, as if the universe were quietly turning itself inside out. Stars behind stars and stars behind stars behind stars until there was nothing between them, nothing beyond them, but dusty dim gold of stars and no space and no light but stars." I am not a great reader for sound but even I found this to be poetry. The great movement in the book is that Charles (the theatre guy) is reunited with his lost love of his youth. From there the story descends into madness you might say but eventually there is redemption for Charles and tragedy for some other characters. It (the book) starts a little dry but then rewards the reader with great imagination.

Kya- War and Peace

I thought I would continue my Napoleonic era reading with War and Peace. Les Miserables dealt with Napoleon from a French perspective and War and Peace deals with Napoleon from a Russian perspective. War and Peace is a story with many characters and families mostly from the aristocratic circles. Their stories are interwoven with each other and with the invasion of Russia by Napoleon in the early 1800's. Along with telling that story, Tolstoy shares his thoughts about the meaning and mystery of life and man' s spiritual quest. Most of the major characters undergo important transformations. Tolstoy touches upon almost every aspect of Russian society through his narrative and characters. That I think is the genius of the book, there's a seamless transition between everyday life, the inner workings of the heart and mind, and the powerful social forces at work over which no one really has control. Although Tolstoy vividly describes the horrors of war, he also gives his characters the ability to transcend those horrors. The characters that are able to do that (whether they live or not) are the true "victors" of the novel. Outside of the length of the book, I did not find this difficult reading and I think modern readers are so thoroughly familiar with this kind of book that it's hard to appreciate how different it was for its' time.

The Unicorn by Iris Murdoch

Once I started reading this book, I realized I'd read it before and mixed it up with another book by Iris Murdoch. I really love this story. A young woman is hired to be a companion to another woman living in a remote and dramatic area by the sea. It could be Cornwall or Scotland, we're never told. The woman, Hannah, turns out to be a virtual but willing prisoner in this dramatic house by the sea. She is being punished for adultery and violence toward her husband who is not present. The companion, Marian, becomes attached to Hannah and is horrified that Hannah is a prisoner, willing or not. There are other interesting characters and the story is told from several viewpoints. The tale ends with a series of dramatic deaths and not much expanation. So, it's a mystery as well as an modern myth. There's room for a lot of psychological analysis. It reminds me a bit of Jane Eyre minus the happy ending because of course it's a modern tale! It would be an interesting book for discussion in a book club.