Star of the Sea

By Joseph O’Connor
Really I picked up this book because it was on sale (only $3.95!) and because the cover blurb mentioned something about a monster stalking the decks of a ship, at night. So naturally I thought it would be about vampires. Really, there should be some kind of government inquiry into book jacket blurb writers because needless to say this book has nothing to do with vampires. OK, possibly I am obsessed with vampires, but what would you think the word “monster” is meant to represent, particularly when associated with “night”? (Apart from werewolves, maybe).

Lack of vampires not withstanding, this book was actually very absorbing. When I am trying to recommend a film to someone, I might say “I wouldn’t mind paying full price for that” or “Cheap Tuesday flick, man” or “Wait for it on video, bud” or just a bald “Don’t bother”. I think Star of the Sea classifies easily as a Cheap Tuesday book, possibly even a “Wouldn’t mind paying full price”, so feel free to ask for a lend of my copy.

The Star of the Sea is actually about the Irish potato famine. There are many characters involved, one of whom is a poor Irish peasant who has been appointed the task of murdering an Irish aristocrat on the trip over the Atlantic to America. Though the present-day plot is set on board, there are many flashbacks, in order to highlight who the characters are and how they got that way. It is very successful in showing the reality of the famine and how shocking it must have been; also the realities of travelling by ship back then and how yucky that must have been; also also some of the realities of immigration, and how enormous a decision this must be.

There is even a bit of post-modernism in there (I think it’s post-modernism, anyway, you post-modernists will have to tell me) where the aspiring author character despairs of writing a novel about the famine because it is impossible to write about something so terrible. And yet – we are reading a novel about the famine!! How post-modern.

The book is written as if it is a “piecing together of the facts”, well after the events occurred, and so is written from many different viewpoints and includes parts written as the Captain’s Log, unpublished memoirs or fiction by some of the characters (drawing heavily on actual factuals, of course) and so on. Also, in between each chapter the author has included an extract from letters written by Irish immigrants to the US. Chapters are subheaded things like “In which are sketched certain recollections of The Star of The Sea; the condition of her passengers and the evil which stalked among them”. (Seriously, stalking evil-doers? That can only mean vampires!). I found this all a bit of overkill and distracting from the story; I think it would have worked much better had the author left out all the frilly clever bits. All the chopping and changing made the story seem a bit overworked and diminished its credibility, rather than adding to it. I think the author did A Lot Of Research for this book and By Gad He Was Going To Use It All.

Still – it did make me stay up past my bedtime.

Rating: 7.5 out of 10

Why I Write (2006)

By George Orwell
This books is actually made up of four of Orwell’s essays, of which “Why I write” is the first and one of the shortest. The longest, which makes up the bulk of this volume, is called “The Lion and the Unicorn” and is a call for the reform of England’s system of government. Orwell wrote this essay in 1940, during the World War II, and it is interesting to compare Orwell’s hopes for the transformation of England (and of other countries) to the changes that actually occurred. I think Orwell would have been disappointed, having strong leanings towards socialism. I must look up when 1984 and Animal Farm were written, because they seem to present a fairly gloomy view of the future and of human nature, in contrast to the feeling of hope that permeates this piece of writing.

Apart from Orwell’s apparent fondness for the word “got”, a word I despise (The Lion and the Unicorn is full of “We’ve got to do this” and “We’ve got to do that”), I think Orwell is my ultimate writing role model hero pin-up boy and I’m going to read all his books. His writing is so good! (Concise, smooth, seamless…). Also, his writing has a passion behind it, which never hurts, and it is nice to read something infused with a sense of energy and hope for a change – so many books have a melancholy air. (I’m looking at you, Tolstoy and Murakami).

This book is part of the “Great Ideas” series that has recently been published by Penguin Books. Other titles in the series include Machiavelli’s The Prince, Darwin’s On Natural Selection, Nietzsche’s Why I am So Wise, Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and, one I personally can’t wait to read, Hazlitt’s On the Pleasure of Hating. Expand your brain now!!

Rating: 9 out of 10

The Leopard (2006)

By Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
What can you say about a book that is an acknowledged masterpiece? It is beautiful, terribly sad, frequently amusing (in a sly kind of way)…not a book to read if you’re looking for an upper, though. Apparently it also made a lovely film, but I haven’t seen it so I can’t add my two bits on that.

The Leopard tells the story of the dying days of the Sicilian nobility, during and after the 1860 revolution, led by Garibaldi, that resulted in a unified Italy under King Victor Emmanuel. The main character is the Prince, Don Fabrizio, a Sicilian nobleman, who reflects on the changes to his country and way of life, while negotiating the rise of a new and increasingly wealthy middle class and the corresponding decrease in the fortunes and status of his own family. The novel seems to be about betrayals (personal and state), the sadness of things ending, the feeling that lives have been wasted, mortality, yet this is all presented gently and eloqently, so the the sadness steals over you while you think you are just enjoying the language.

I do wish I could read Italian, so I could read the original and then compare it to this translation. I wonder how different they are? It must be like writing a whole new book…well, kudos to Archibald Colquhuon (the translator), kudos. I remember being disappointed with Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, because I thought the writing would be more beautiful than it was – it felt kind of clunky, and I wondered if the original Italian novel was more lyrical and poetical, or if Eco just wasn’t a poetical kind of guy. No such worries here, though.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10