I Read Therefore I Am discussion

Comment as soon as you like but please hide any spoilers.

I charged through The Inheritors today. I doubt if I can do it justice. Mr Golding creates a wholly believable lost world and people -how they spoke, lived and prayed. A beautiful and tragic story - I loved it.

I know what you mean Lee. I read this quite a long time ago but it's a book that has stayed with me. Although I've borrowed The Paper Men, I think I might also read the inheritors again.

I've finished The Spire the other day, and thought it was great. It made me want to re-read the Lord of the Flies, to see what I missed the first time around (I didn't like it enough to understand the hype then)
I love how he sometimes uses a void to tell something, how he'll not point something out, or will have one of his characters see an image or say a word that will only reveil what's happening if you do the work of associating. A bit like in poetry really.

Great portrait of a religious delusion, and one that manages to escape the obvious trap to turn it's protagonist into a caricature of a person.

I'm glad you enjoyed it Jenny - I know what you mean about the way he hints at things - (view spoiler)[ like the death of the caretaker (hide spoiler)] and then a few chapters later, a tiny thing like a feather blowing round the cathedral is enough to make you realise what has happened. I also love the way that the cathedral itself with it's singing stones (such an eerie image) is almost alive and a major character in the book. In fact there are far too many things I like about it to say here - just a wonderful and unique book (as is The Inheritors)

Just finished The Inheritors which I read for the first time several years ago. While I remembered the general story, I had forgotten just how detailed it was and how haunting. I think we tend to forget that a variety of "humans" must have lived at the same time and therefore competed to survive. Well worth a re-read.

I'm also reading The Paper Men and finding it a rather strange book. What fascinates me about good authors like Golding is their ability to write novels which are so completely different from each other, not only in content, but in structure and style. I suppose that's what genius is.

Yes - the only other book of his I've read is The Spire - and the only similarity between that and The Inheritors is how very good it is.

Just finished The Paper Men last night and still mulling over exactly what I do think about it. On the face of it it's a very straightforward story. A famous author describes how be was stalked by a young academic who is determined to get him to agree to his being his authorised biographer. But that doesn't even begin to describe what this book is like!

The famous author is an alcoholic and seems prone to having whole days disappear on him. In addition there are some incidents and experiences which are so bizarre that even he isn't sure if they are hallucinations or reality. We therefore never know whether what he is telling us is true, true but coloured by his obvious paranoia, or a total figment of his imagination. In the narrative we get glimpses of things that have happened in his life but never any real detail. The end was so abrupt and so unexpected that I sat simply looking at the page in front of me and wondering what they would all do next.

It's intriguing and very different, not really like anything I've read before. Not sure if I'd recommend it to everyone but it certainly proves Goldings ability as a writer.

Sounds amazing - on to the TBR with it