The Snow Child, The Line of Beauty and To the Lighthouse

A fairy story within a fairy story? I'm not of fan of fantasy novels, otherwise this captivating novel by Eowyn Ivey would have gained more than three stars. The Snow Child's setting of deepest Alaska is quite intoxicating, Ivey's descriptions of the landsape are truly some of the best I have read. However they do get a little repetitious, the book would have been even better if a hundred pages less. Indeed, it could have ended magically halfway through when it takes a different turn. I must admit the story of Jack and Mabel escaping tragedy and setting up a farm in the harsh Alaskan countryside of the 1920's, only to be visited by a mysterious girl, was not an obvious choice for me. But I found the writing pulled you in and took hold.

It sounded like my kind of book. London in the 1980's and Nick Guest has moved into the West London home of a friend from Oxford, whose father has become one of the new Tory MP's. And The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurts was winner of the 2004 Booker Prize. But had I realised that Nick was gay? I dont think so. But as the story unfolds, his relationships with two men over the decade were actually quite interesting. But what I did find a little tedious were the set piece dinner parties, birthday parties, wedding anniversaries and holidays that seemed to go on forever. So for the second book running (Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September" is the same) there is very little plot. Just the same people meeting and talking. It is difficult to imagine that the Feddens would have accepted Nick so readily into their fold, given the dangerous aspects of his private life and that Gerald Fedden's situation in politics is such a public one. But the members of the family are very well drawn, Gerald, his wealthy wife Rachel,son toby and daughter Catherine. Nick seems quite useful to them all in different ways. I do have to give credit to the writing. If it were not for Hollinghurst's prose, I would have given up. But he does write superbly well. In the end, there are events that happen through this pretty long novel, that eventually come to haunt the powerful conclusion. It might just have been better if we did not have to wait so long.

It's hard for me to be fair about To the Lighthouse written by Virginia Woolf in 1927 (my first try at one of her novels, and the last) as I actually gave up before I reached halfway. I cannot remember the last time this happened to me. I actually found the prose almost unreadable, basically because it is so boring. Some of the sentences are extraordinarly long. Is Woolf trying to be experimental? Give me a good modern novel any day. Thank goodness for Kate Atkinson. Just starting her book of short stories and the first two are already a delight.

If only I had read this first:
Complexity of experience
Large parts of Woolf's novel do not concern themselves with the objects of vision, but rather investigate the means of perception, attempting to understand people in the act of looking. In order to be able to understand thought, Woolf's diaries reveal, the author would spend considerable time listening to herself think, observing how and which words and emotions arose in her own mind in response to what she saw.
Complexity of human relationships
This examination of perception is not, however, limited to isolated inner-dialogues, but also analyzed in the context of human relationships and the tumultuous emotional spaces crossed to truly reach another human being. Two sections of the book stand out as excellent snapshots of fumbling attempts at this crossing: the silent interchange between Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey as they pass the time alone together at the end of section 1, and Lily Briscoe's struggle to fulfill Mr. Ramsey's desire for sympathy (and attention) as the novel closes.
Modernism
To The Lighthouse and its characters often display elements of the Modernist school of thought. Characters such as Mrs Ramsay disparage Victorian ideals of society and question both the existence of God and the goodness in man. Furthermore, the transience of man is emphasized as a central theme alongside nature as an eternal and sometimes menacing force with the omnipresent potential to consume humanity.