21st Century Literature discussion

This is a place to discuss the book as thoughts occur to you. Feel free to place spoilers in your posts, though, if you can be less free with your thoughts the first week it may lead to better discussion as we go along.

Just started and my first surprise is that it's very funny. I've laughed out loud a few times at the dry humor. Considering the topic I had no idea. The humor is working to bring out the heavier emotions in the beginning of the story too. I don't think this book is going to take long to read.

I started late. But I am already falling in love with the writing. The observation that if five prayers couldn't prevent a fire a sixth wouldn't put it out, the staunch English philanthropist, have charmed me. I am won over.

I found a lot to love about this book. It is gutwrenching and beautiful. I look forward to some indepth discussion of the characters, as I thought the way the author tells their individual stories was impressive.

I've been thinking about how Natasha and Ramzan acted when finding themselves prisoners the second time. Both faced and survived their first ordeals but when faced with a recurrence, Natasha acted without regard to herself, while Ramzan wanted only to avoid the pain. Or did Natasha take the action she did to avoid the pain she had previously suffered? And did Ramzan's choice really save him from pain?

Linda wrote: "I've been thinking about how Natasha and Ramzan acted when finding themselves prisoners the second time..."

I didn't make that connection at all (both prisoners for the second time), but it's so obvious! And I think you're dead on in pointing out how the responses of these two characters are diametrically opposed. Nice!

Learned today of Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto, 2014 Neustadt Prize winner. Am now asking myself if am motivated enough to read it to compare with ACoVP.

http://neustadtprize.org/noted-mozamb...

I'm in.

Linda wrote: "I'm in."

I'm very sorry to realize that Couto's works do not appear to available in ebook editions, at least Kindle ebook.

Linda wrote: "I found a lot to love about this book. It is gutwrenching and beautiful. I look forward to some indepth discussion of the characters, as I thought the way the author tells their individual storie..."

Finished the book tonight. Linda, I resonate with your description of "gutwrenching and beautiful."

I'm glad somewhere I read a review that said the story came together in the concluding pages. Not sure I would have stayed with it otherwise -- and it helped that I was able to renew my library copy! While I had a wait a few weeks ago, now our system seems to have multiple copies available. I will be sorry if its readership drops too precipitously. Hard as it is, I found it a book well worth reading. In a strange way, amidst the horror and sadness, it seemed to me to end on a note of hope, perhaps even redemption. In addition, the author commented in his end notes on the recovery occurring in Chechnya.

The book brought back memories of reading Night of Stone: Death and Memory in Twentieth-Century Russia by Catherine Merridale, a fine book I read in the months after the death of my husband (8/2001) and of 9/11 (many were lost from the communities surrounding; our son had been working a summer job in the Financial district just weeks before) when I was trying to make sense of death, grief, memory, and living on.

Ripped from the headlines -- http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/01/wor.... What is the truth?

I just finished this.

I definitely liked the book. I thought there were some wonderful turns of phrase and some very real moments, laying bare some very real stuff.

But I expected to love it more, and I can't quite put my finger on why I didn't. Maybe partly the skipping chronology (although that did really come together at the end), maybe the references to what would happen to a character in ten, twenty, fifty years time -- this seemed a little heavy-authorial for me.

Probably the biggest thing was that although I loved much of the lyricism, for me, it almost seemed laid on too thickly. I think sometimes I would have preferred plainer prose, so as not to draw attention to itself, and to leave the moment, to leave what was happening, to be the star.

If it sounds like I didn't like it, that's not the case, but I'd heard so much raving about it that I perhaps expected too much. As it was, it was a well-enough-written tale about people in a too-little-known war, with some beautiful prose and a set of endings that (for me) nearly pulled it into the realm of the very good, instead of the simply good.

The endings were each very well judged, and the biggest emotional pull of the whole thing for me was Akhmed and Dokka's reunion; extremely moving scene, very well set-up.

The whole thing reminded me quite a bit, in tone and in where it all led, of Rohinton Mistry's 'A Fine Balance'.

Terry wrote: "...maybe the references to what would happen to a character in ten, twenty, fifty years time -- this seemed a little heavy-authorial for me. ..."

Terry -- more so than in Egan's A Visit from the Goon Squad ? (Sorry, I haven't checked whether you even read it.)

The future was handled differently in the two books, but I think Egan prepared me to accept it here.

P.S. -- I'd be interested in what you think in a few months, Terry.

This is one of those books that I didn't much like at the time I read it, and I'm not sure "like" is a right word even now. But its impact on my thoughts about other historical events and what I have observed in the news subsequently has increased over time.

Lily, I'd be interested in your comparision of Constellation with Visit from the Good Squad. For me they are so different in content that I would never think of comparing them.

Haven't read 'Goon Squad'.

I don't doubt that the events and themes will stay with me from this book. I just think that the way they were presented to me detracted slightly from the themes and events themselves.

Of course it's often futile to compare different authors, but immediately after finishing this, I picked up 'Let the Great World Spin' (ready to moderate next month's discussion), and after only a few pages I was thinking 'yes, yes -- this is what I was missing'.

It's hard to put into words... for me it's a certain getting the message across without really seeming to try too hard, for beautiful prose to always be in the service of character and scene and making me believe, for me to forget that I'm reading a book and be *there*, for the messages and themes and insights to be an emergent property of me reading the text, not to be in the text itself...

Again, it sounds like I'm really down on Constellation -- I'm not. I was just expecting it to be something incredibly special from everything I'd heard, and felt it didn't quite get there for me. It was still a solid, often very well-written book with some great insights, but when put up against something like (after admittedly only fifty pages) McCann's evocation of moment, of scene, of the transcendent and the everyday, it didn't quicken my pulse the way it seems to have for many others.

I do wish I could write endings quite like that, though.

I am a really hard marker, by the way. I figure I only have time for two thousand odd books (maybe closer to three if I'm lucky). I figure there must be at least that many out there that are absolutely first-rate, so I kind of see every 4 days (or whatever) spent reading a book that doesn't quite measure up as lost time.

When I'm using star ratings on Goodreads, I save five for the absolute top-notch, stone-cold classics (only 35 so far out of nearly 500 rated), four for the ones I love but that are not quite there, and three for those I liked but felt were kind of wanting in some way. I don't, as a rule, finish books that are heading for two stars or less.

Linda wrote: "Lily, I'd be interested in your comparision of Constellation with Visit from the Good Squad. For me they are so different in content that I would never think of comparing them."

Linda -- my ONLY point of comparison (at least here) was the telling the reader of the fate of characters sometime into the future. In fact, I probably wouldn't even call that "comparison," more just recognizing a technique or style. Rather more like what I was unconsciously implying elsewhere when I suggested James Joyce as a recommended read among Irish authors. It is not that other literature is necessarily comparable, but there is a good chance any thing labelled "post-modern" has been impacted, directly or indirectly. Or somewhat like the impact of the Bible on most Victorian literature. In the Constellation/Goon case, it was simply what time span is it legitimate to include within the pages of the novel. (There may be many other earlier examples than Good Squad -- that's just the one that made me conscious of it.)

Lilly, thanks for explaining. I did not associate that technique with The Goon Squad, although now that you mention it, I guess it was used. I read Constellation in conjunction with the other books on the longlist for the 2013 National Book fiction award and it was used in at least two other selections -- Someone ny Alice McDermott and The End of the Point by Elizabeth Graver. I very much liked the use in those books and in Constellation because it was a way of my being able to know what happened in the future (after the time the novel ended) to characters that I liked. But, on reflection, this may not be the technique to which you are referring. I now think perhaps you are referring to telling the story out of order, sort of like the author in We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves starting in the middle. That techniques worked for me there.

Terry wrote: "I am a really hard marker, by the way. I figure I only have time for two thousand odd books (maybe closer to three if I'm lucky)...."

Terry -- [g] I'm probably down to 500 maximum. I've long loved the Mark Twain quotation: "Don't read good books. There isn't time for that. Read only the best." (I put that in quotes, but it is probably a paraphrase.)

The rub is always determining the "best." My rule has been if a book has given me one idea that is a "keeper," it has been worth my time. Also, occasionally, even what I might ordinarily call "trash" is "best," whether for mood or purpose or some other reason.

The vast majority of books I read get a three. If it goes below, it is either a great book with which I strongly disagree and perhaps even feel has had a pernicious effect on the world, or the book has probably been a poor choice -- at least at the time I read it, or it truly was just ok. I, too, try to reserve fours and fives for well above average or books that have somehow made a difference for me, although I can be a little careless with fours, especially for current reads. It amuses me when I look at my lists to realize that a number of the children/youth books that have managed to make my list have four or five stars. But when I ask myself whether they should be three instead, I hedge and say if I remembered them this many years well enough to record them here, I'll usually leave that assessment made when I entered them. Very much a system for my own reflections more than for influencing others. (I did give Constellation four stars, but I have not written a review for it.)

Linda wrote: "...I read Constellation in conjunction with the other books on the longlist for the 2013 National Book fiction award and it was used in at least two other selections -- Someone ny Alice McDermott and The End of the Point by Elizabeth Graver. I very much liked the use in those books and in Constellation because it was a way of my being able to know what happened in the future (after the time the novel ended) to characters that I liked...."

I'm clearly not being clear! What happens in the future IS the technique I have been trying to reference. I have not read the other two books you name. Sounds like it is an "in" thing to do? The MFA programs must be teaching it?

I do not know if the MFA programs are teaching it. I was taken with it appearing in that list, since it was not something I remembered encountering before. Alice McDermott has been teaching for writing (as well as writing prizewinning novels) for quite awhile. I've not read anything else she's written, so do not know if it is a technique she has employed in the past.

Elizabeth Garver is a decade younger and also teaches writing. I've not read anything else she has written either.

Linda wrote: "...Alice McDermott has been teaching for writing (as well as writing prizewinning novels) for quite awhile. I've not read anything else she's written, so do not know if it is a technique she has employed in the past...."

I don't recall it in either Charming Billy (been a good while ago) or After This (recent read), although the latter may have had some less obvious variants. I'd have to re-read.

Lily wrote: "Also, occasionally, even what I might ordinarily call "trash" is "best," whether for mood or purpose or some other reason...."

A little different reason for reading "trash" than I have realized to ever motivate myself, but I grinned when I saw this quotation for the day on Friday:

"A bit of trash now and then is good for the severest reader. It provides the necessary roughage in the literary diet."

Phyllis McGinley

Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Phyllis McGinley (born March 21, 1905) was known for writing humorous, satirical, light verse and enjoyed calling herself a "housewife poet."