For Feisty Feminists

Book 14 in Cannonball Read 2 

I consider Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon to be the first novel I read that felt like it had changed my heart, and my life, for good. After reading Song of Solomon, mostly in one night for an English class, I devoured all the other novels she had published except for Tar Baby, which I never managed to finish. Morrison always captured my imagination, and made me feel like her books were about epic themes, about the meaning of life itself.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying, flash forward eight years, and I found myself reading Love and feeling like it was homework, not something that touched my soul. In fact, I can see why some people dislike Morrison, if they don’t get the same feeling from her other books, as Love contains many of the same themes, the same weirdness, and the same tone that usually veers towards magical realism for me, but here plays as just unconvincing and not realistic.

I could tell you more, but meh. Not a great book, and that’s coming from a Morrison fan, so if you’re not a fan, stay away. If you’ve never read Morrison, start with Song of Solomon, Beloved, or even Paradise.

Book 13 in Cannonball Read 2

Catching Fire is a sequel to Collins’ wonderful Young Adult book, The Hunger Games.  Catching Firedeals with a brewing rebellion that Katniss may have inadvertently helped to instigate. While it is not quite as compelling as The Hunger Games, and takes a bit of time to really take off, it is nevertheless worth reading to revisit the characters and see what Collins does in expanding the themes in a story about an all-powerful government that constantly reminds its citizens of their servitude and powerlessness, and requires them to convincingly feign enthusiasm at the government’s oppression.

Collins takes a long time catching the reader up on what has been happening to Katniss and Peeta, the boy she pretended to love in order to win the hunger games, a grisly fight to the death engineered by the government.  Continuing with the idea that the government demands not just obedience, but happiness at being obedient, Katniss is told by the president that during their upcoming victory tour, she must convince not just the public, but he himself, that she is in love with Peeta, though he knows this is not true (read the book for the convoluted reasons that this is necessary to quell rebellion). Of course, knowing that she must act the part or suffer the consequences only makes her more desperate and highlights the ways in which she falls short.

Collins also highlights the difference between Katniss’ poor coal-mining district and the Capitol, where they watch the games for entertainment, not because they are forced. Those who live in the Capitol are portrayed as frivolous and unaware: in one scene, Katniss must spend time comforting her hair and makeup team, although she is the one facing possible death; in another scene, Capitol partygoers gorge themselves on food, then drink a liquid that makes them vomit so they can continue to eat, unaware that Katniss and Peeta regularly see starving children back home.  It is a fairly nuanced portrayal of privilege - these characters are blissfully unaware of the hardships of others, and they act in insensitive ways not out of malice, but out of their own ignorance; yet Collins does not let them off the hook, and makes it clear that their ignorance is hurtful to others regardless of the intent.

Catching Fire really gets going in the last third or so, during the following year’s hunger games. Like the first book, there are twists, uncertain and shifting alliances, and rules that constantly change. Because of the groundwork laid in the first part of the book, the end of the book is particularly powerful. There is a third book in the works, and I definitely plan on reading it, as the world is endlessly intriguing in and of itself, not to mention the cliffhanger plot.

Book 12 in Cannonball Read 2 

Bright Lights, Big City is a novel that some folks would deem great, but I just found annoying. It’s the story of a young man in New York City who drinks and does cocaine, and doesn’t like his job.

At this point, I thought, ‘who cares?’ but I kept reading because it was for a book club, and, to be frank, it was 170 pages and an easy read.  The book is somewhat interesting because it is written in the second person (i.e. ‘you’ and ‘your’ instead of ‘I’ and ‘my’ or ‘him’ and ‘his’), but even this device fades into the background and does not provide any great new insight.

It turns out that the main character is dealing with the failure of his marriage to a model who left early on because she was not getting what she wanted. At many points in the novel, while he was lamenting his wife leaving and mentally berating her for being so shallow and callous, I could not think anything but ‘no shit, you’re a sad sack selfish piece of shit, no wonder she wanted to leave you.’

In the end, Bright Lights, Big City was an even bigger crock than I had assumed. SPOILERS AHEAD - it turns out that he’s actually all fucked up because his mother died before his wife left him, and he has not dealt with his grief yet. This revelation comes across as a cheap ploy, and I was not impressed. You bury something like that 150 pages into a 170 page book, and it comes across as the main character being willfully obtuse.

Mostly, I just can’t feel empathy for some dude who finds his job meaningless, and wants to stay out drinking and doing drugs all night. Haven’t we all been there - at least the job-hating part? Maybe I’m just having an epic failure of sympathy, but I find little to recommend here, and little originality.