Guardian Newspaper 1000 Novels discussion

In April we will be reading She by H. Rider Haggard for our War & Travel category - who's in?

I'm in!

I'm going to put my review into spoiler tags, so don't read unless you've already finished it. I read it a couple of years ago.

(view spoiler)[
2/5
This was quite the disappointment. It's not the misogyny, the constant racism, the assumption of great British Imperial values, because in the right hands they aren't automatic blocks to a work being a good read. No, the problem with this book was the sheer tedium of it.

Not only do we get pages of untranslated Latin, but chapters full of boring exposition and "fascinating observations" of tribal customs, most of which are anything but fascinating.

And, I'm sorry, but the concept of "hot-potting" that was supposed to fill me with terror just made me laugh because it was so ridiculous (awful for the victim, if course, but ridiculous in concept - and even more ridiculous in name, HR Haggard having obviously never been to Lancashire).

And the end was just an enormous let down too.

All in all i teetered on the brink of leaving just one star, but that felt a bit mean. (hide spoiler)]

I started it last night!

Just reading it now.

Dennis wrote: "Just reading it now."

Some books have stood the test of time. Those are the ones we call classics. She is not a classic; rather, it's a curiosity. Reading it was like taking a journey to a strange land, but not the one ruled by She Who Must Obeyed: rather, we have entered the land governed by the preoccupations of a 19th-century Englishman who's wrestling with the challenges that rationality poses to faith. At the same time, he exhibits but does not become aware of his own prejudices of class, sex, race, and religion.

I would not recommend this book to anyone but a cultural historian, and I would caution her to have patience if she's going to get anything out of it.

I enjoyed reading this novel. For sure, it follows the same pattern as King Soloman's Mines, but this has more of women's perspectives in it through Ustane and Ayesha. Being written in 1887 from the perspective of an Englishman who knows he is ugly and makes up for it through erudition, it is most certainly a reflection of the era of its writing - the British Empire.

I read the 2002 edition by the Modern Library Paperback Edition which translated all the Latin phrases used and had additional notes and definitions of things not typically known of in the 21st century.