Guest Post: Casual Vacancy

I mentioned a little while ago that I finally got to read The Casual Vacancy by J. K. Rowling. Hurray! My friend Zach and I were very excited when it was announced (we are both Harry Potter nerds) and we both downloaded the preview chapters that were released a little before the book hit shelves. Zach bought it and, after a few false starts, finished the book during Christmas break. After having it checked out from the library for almost seven months, I finally buckled down and had it finished in a week. As the title says, this is a guest post by my friend Zach! I figured ya'll are probably tired of hearing me talk about my point of view, so I asked Zach to share his thoughts on the book. 

When I heard J. K. Rowling was going to be releasing something entirely new, entirely not Harry Potter, I was ecstatic. Don't misread that; I love Harry Potter. But something brand new? I was excited. From the beginning, the level of detail presented in introducing the characters and simply telling the story was incredibly meticulous. However, painting mental pictures of the book was never difficult to say the least. And, just to get it out of my system, if you pick this book up thinking that you’ll be reminded in some way of Harry Potter, forget it. (But don’t let that stop you from reading it!!) Rowling has crafted a completely new tale that is not for the faint of heart, but is definitely one with much to say.

Upon entering into this novel we find ourselves in the small English parish of Pagford, which is not too far away from the hustle and bustle of the local city of Yarvil. Barry Fairbrother, who serves on the Pagford Parish Council, suddenly dies due to an aneurysm upon arriving at a restaurant to enjoy a would-be anniversary dinner with his wife. Nothing too crazy, right? Wrong. Fairbrother’s sudden death was like removing a keystone from the parish itself. Slowly but surely, Pagford began to societally cave in upon itself.

Fairbrother’s death tipped the balance of a heated battle within the Parish Council over whether or not to disassociate Pagford from its financial responsibilities to the Fields and hand it over to Yarvil. The Fields was a cheaply built public housing estate that was built to resolve post-WWII housing needs. Many in Pagford wanted nothing to do with the Fields because it brought the likes of the city too close to rural Pagford and was inhabited by many drug-ridden residents and terribly misbehaved children. It was a taint of sorts on the well-being of Pagford.

Having been born in the Fields, Fairbrother advocated strongly for keeping it within Pagford’s jurisdiction because of the great opportunities and support that Pagford could provide which Yarvil could not necessarily provide, such as a great education (from which he himself benefited). With Fairbrother’s death, his voice on the council was gone and the vacancy allowed for the anti-Fielders to more easily purge Pagford of their menace once and for all.

Fairbrother’s vacancy did more than just escalate the argument, however. The argument brought out the worst in people, tearing apart families that were just barely holding together previously. Simply put, one man’s death caused all hell to break loose.

In reading The Casual Vacancy, I found an appallingly realistic representation of the messed-up lives of many everyday people. I say ‘appallingly’ because I honestly had no idea just how bad some people can have it. The poverty, the drugs, the misery some children face because they fail their parents’ expectations, self-inflicted cruelty to numb life’s pains...it’s all here. If you think you know what’s going on in someone else’s life, guess again. Hiding behind a mask is all too easy, and Rowling exhibited that rather well.

One major issue that was really brought to my attention spawned from the whole debate over the Fields: how do we appropriately accommodate the poor, drug-ridden, misbehaved people of this world who live barbarically? I definitely do not believe that ignoring the problem is the correct solution, even though it is definitely the easy one. Why would I help someone who is purposefully ruining his or her life? Because every life on this earth matters. It would not be right to hand these people free solutions, but I believe that those who are in a much better position are meant to help out those who are not as fortunate, even if they choose to live like pigs. Someone needs to shine the light into these people’s lives to let them know there is more to life than shooting up or living wildly in squalor. I’m not completely sure what the solution looks like, but the answer is definitely not ignorance. 

Sometimes I struggled to grasp the overall plot in this novel, as it was a little circuitous and seemingly non-existent at times. Sometimes the incredible detail took away from the overall conflict. However, The Casual Vacancy cleverly inserts you into a community whose social fabric collapses as the result of one man’s death and allows you to witness many different troubled lives, how they all seem to mysteriously interconnect, and the slow-in-coming realization that the social dilapidation of the community cannot continue.

If you pick up The Casual Vacancy, prepare to keep track of many characters and their various experiences. You may even have to take notes just to keep up (my mom is currently doing just that). I am not sure that I would hastily recommend this book to many people; however, I feel that if you are ready to be faced with a rather raw picture of life, can survive without too much obvious forward-moving action for a fair chunk of the book, and are willing to learn many new words (unless you are a walking dictionary), give Rowling’s latest work a try. While a little slow-paced, I can honestly say that I enjoyed this book. It was quite the eye-opener, but on the whole it was a well-crafted tale of a small town’s miseries with many lessons to be learned, all brought to you by good ol’ J.K.

Zach is a music and tech loving guy, majoring in Business Information Systems. He plays drums Sunday morning (one of four instruments he knows well), when home from school. While preferring to read sci-fi or fantasy fiction, he is also reading a lot of theology stuff right now. (This interest probably stems from a  C. S. Lewis course from last semester, but this has not been confirmed). To complete the nerd image, Zach is a HUGE Doctor Who fan and is super psyched for the 50^th Anniversary Episode this fall. You can follow Zach on Twitter (@zkantner) and check out his blog, Cacophonous Thought. 

Observations from The Last Station

I started reading The Last Station by Jay Parini the other week. I've since finished two three other books. This is no reflection on The Last Station; actually, I picked it up as my in between book. See, I'm always reading at least three books at a time. Sometimes more, sometimes less and some I read more actively than others. But through all of that, I always have an in between book. It might be a fluff novel that I read before bed or read over breakfast. It stays the in between book until I've finished with my main book...unless the in between book proves more interesting than the main book. Then I switch off until I've finished the one and switch back to the other.

I promise it isn't as confusing in real life as I've just made it sound.

Anyway, I've just finished a book last night (I finally got around to reading & finishing Casual Vacancy!) so I've picked up The Last Station as my main book. I am only about 20 or 30 pages in, not far at all, but I ran across this quote this morning and it made me pause: Fiction is for people who have not yet properly begun their search for God.

The character speaking, Chertkov, is a character you despise from the moment he opens his mouth. Everything about him reeks of disdain and superiority. (Though I'm not sure that is entirely a bad thing. To fully dislike a character, before he is fully known, based only on a few pages says more about the talent of the author than the preference of the reader, I think.) When he shares this gem, he says it with the utmost conviction and disdain for those who haven't come to as an enlightened place as he has. But all of that aside, I whole heartedly disagree with his statement.

Chertkov talks about authenticity and dedication to Tolstoy's views on life and God. In a letter in the book (fiction or real? could be a bit of both really, which is almost more dangerous than one or the other.) he talks about the Gospels being important, more important than whatever we think we understand about God.

To generalize fiction as a path separate from God or even a search from God is ridiculous. Taking Tolstoy's views into consideration, or at least his fictionalized views, the Gospels are held in high regard. The Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, chronicle the life and ministry of Jesus Christ. In it, there are countless examples of Jesus saying, "The kingdom of God is like..." and telling a story to describe and illustrate a kingdom message. In helping people on their way to understanding who God is and what kingdom living looks like, fiction is used. 

The people that Jesus told those stories to had the Old Testament, too. It is full of factual events, all pointing toward a coming Messiah. With the facts staring them in the face, they still didn't understand what Jesus was about. That, I believe, is one of the reasons Jesus uses stories. Stories make us see sense and reason when we don't want to see it in the stark reality of our own lives.
We can easily say, "Oh, you ought to say this" or "I can't believe that person treated her like that! How horrible!" to characters in a story but fail to realize that we've just been rude to that single mom in line at Target or completely failed to treat our families (they are people too, ya know) with kindness.

C. S. Lewis would have something to say to Chertkov about his views on fiction, too, I believe. His Narnia stories are full of allegory, pointing us to Christ and His story of our redemption. And though his friend, J. R. R. Tolkien hated allegory, he also saw the importance of myth and stories. 

I've spent more than a week trying to wrap up this post and currently have three different ways of ending it. I won't use them though. I'll use this one. There is something in Chertkov's view that rubs me the wrong way. I think it is because I have read so many books that not only help me on my path to God but also encourage me onward through the hard parts of life. I've had books reduce me to tears when a biblical truth is translated to modernity. 

Perhaps I'm way off here. Maybe I'm over-reacting. Truth is, The Last Station really isn't about whether fiction has importance or not. For me, though, it's made me really look at fiction and why I read it. 

Why do we read? Is it to escape? Is it just for fun? A love of words? What draws us to fiction? I don't think it really matters. I think the great thing about fiction is that five different people can read the same book and see five different things. Every book we read, I think, teaches us something about ourselves that we otherwise wouldn't know. And as a lover of learning, I don't think that is such a bad thing. 

The Last Bookshop

In the small amount of time when I'm not reading, watching TV, sleeping or working, I'm reading through a bunch of the blogs I follow. I've just switched my reader to feedly (thanks a lot, Google Reader...) and I have a lot of catching up to do.
I stumbled upon this gem tonight (found originally at The Last Bookshop blog) and there is something about it that just makes me smile:

Simple reading & Slowing down

According to Goodreads, I am 10 books ahead of my reading schedule and 55% done with my challenge. I'm really excited about making progress with this years challenge, but right now, I'm going to take a bit of a break.

I still have at least 5 books I need to review to be totally caught up, but I'm not going to do that right now. Right now I'm going to tell you a little bit about my relationship with books.
I already told you a little about how I fell in love with books last year. How that one book and the simple act of rereading it brought me into this crazy world. When I was in sixth grade, I read Gone with the Wind. I was inappropriately proud of this accomplishment because it was HUGE. I mean, seriously. This book is like 800 pages. And I read and understood it, mostly. I think that is when I fell in love with BOOKS. Not just books "oh how I love to read" but "it's huge and I'm gonna read it all and I'M BETTER THAN YOU because I can."
So, okay, a bit of an attitude problem there. I think I'm over that now, but I still get an insane sense of accomplishment when I finish a book over 400 pages. I love detailed stories that NEED that many pages to tell a story. 

Stephen Lawhead wrote a series called The Pendragon Cycle. It is five books long and even though each book is only about 450 pages (as a comparison, books 3-7 of the Harry Potter series are anywhere from 400-700 odd pages), it takes FOREVER to get through. In fact, I still haven't finished. I think I just got my hands on Pendragon (the fourth book in the cycle) around senior semester and didn't get very far.
I hear you saying, "Well okay, Harry Potter is seven books and by your own admission the last few books are huge. How does it take you forever to read a cycle of five books that have fewer pages?"
And this is when I tell you about the brilliance of Stephen Lawhead. He takes the story of Arthur and Camelot and pulls it back at least three generations. Before Arthur, before Merlin--long before any of them. He writes with such attention to detail and story. When I describe his writing, I usually liken it to Old English tales, like Beowulf. Sometimes it is hard to get through, but when you do, it is worth it.

And yet, sometimes, that is not what I need to read. I love ... and the only word I can think of here is "trudging" through a long series. The word choice alone shows that at times it is a bit of a chore. And that is part of the reason why I think I love young adult literature. The writing style is at times simple, (not stupid) but the content is not. Plus, as a rule, I can blaze through them in no time at all. Enter John Green novels. 
But unlike some adult series, young adult novels (especially John Green) speak to the reader in a very real way. The Pendragon Cycle is a good story; An Abundance of Katherines speaks to me about love and loss. I think that by nature, no matter how story driven Young Adult novels are, they always tell us something about ourselves. See also, Harry Potter. I think that is something you tend to lose in adult fiction. 
I almost went this entire post without owning up to my Nicholas Sparks weakness. Oops. There it is. 

At the end of the day, I love reading books that make me think. Books that make me USE the very expensive four year degree I earned. But sometimes, I need a break. And sometimes, that looks like young adult books, Nicholas Sparks books, and lots and lots of TV. 

PS I've finally finished Eureka. If you haven't seen the show, please. Do yourself a favor. Go watch it. It is hilarious. 

The Paris Wife by Paula McLain

I had seen The Paris Wife advertised all over the place last month and after a year of saying, "I really want to read that!" I decided to give it a go. 
Now I'm not going to say it was as bad a Juliette, but I will not be recommending this book to anyone. Ever. 
I was excited to read this book because it is about the first wife of Ernest Hemingway. Even if most of the story is fiction, I like reading about the lives of writers. No matter how much you read in biographies, or even autobiographies, there is something really fascinating in seeing another writer put the famous person in question into real life situations. I am a huge C. S. Lewis fan and have read his autobiography many times. There is still something, possibly magical, about seeing Anthony Hopkins portray Jack on screen that makes me all giddy inside.

I am not huge into  Hemingway history. I've read a bit of his work for school and after watching In Love and War, I read A Farewell to Arms. Well, I started reading A Farewell to Arms. (Though after Pat's reaction to the book in Silver Linings Playbook, maybe it's good that I didn't finish it.) I can't say that I'm an expert on his life. Maybe if I was more of one, I would have found this book more interesting. 
I found it intriguing at all because it's about the woman behind the man. Well, the first woman behind the man. Also, it's Paris in the 20s.Talk abut the golden age of writing! (And as another side note, I watched Midnight in Paris shortly after finishing this book. So good! I loved it! Part of it really resonated because of what I had read about other writers of the time. Also, Tom Hiddleston was F.Scott Fitzgerald. So. Yeah...)
Hadley Richardson is twenty eight and practically an old spinster by the time she meets Ernest Hemingway. They fall deeply in love and are married less than a year after they meet. Their relationship is tempestuous; Hemingway is a man who is first married to his work and married to Hadley second. Or, as time goes by, maybe not even to her. 

Like I said, it was interesting. But...it was a difficult read. It wasn't really about Hemingway; it was about Hadley. It was how she dealt with things, her emotions and her interpretation of their relationship. And as silly as this is, it was hard to follow because they used so many nicknames. Nicknames for Ernest and Hadley changed all the time and at one point they use the same nickname for each other! It is really difficult for me to keep track of the characters. There wasn't a whole lot of dialogue in this book. It was an interesting concept, but not a terribly compelling read. 

My go to book about authors & romance is, you guessed it, Possession by A. S. Byatt. I'll keep my eye out for other fictionalized accounts of real life authors, though. Do you have a favorite almost-true novel?
 

Seating Arrangments by Maggie Shipstead

I know I know. I read this book in January and I STILL haven't got a review up for it!
This was another Goodreads find and honestly, I wasn't thrilled with it. Not everyone on Goodreads is thrilled with it either. One commenter recommend picking up The Paris Wife instead, which I would not recommend, however. 
It is called a satire in the publisher's description, but I'm not sure that is a good enough excuse for how vapid and selfish the characters in this story behaved. The story is about a family, led by the tiresome Winn Van Mete (who seems to care more about his own social standing than supporting and loving his family.) on the verge of a wedding. Winn's eldest and very pregnant daughter is marrying up in the world (much to the joy of her father) and their socialite wedding is take place at the family's vacation home on a pristine island in New England. Being surrounded by his daughter's beautiful friends, Winn can't seem to keep it in his pants, but discovers his self control at a very odd moment. While the wedding planning is wrapping up, his youngest daughter is making some rash and unwise choices to make her recent break up (she is a bit of a social climber too) not hurt so badly.
What some people praised as detailed and rich descriptions, in my mind were tiresome and stiff sentences. Like the author was trying to hard to be "great."
I know this is a bit of an odd review for me, but I just didn't like the book. I finished it. That is probably the best thing I can say about the book. 

Have you read it? Am I way off here? 

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

This book has been on my reading list for over a year. Well, for at least a year. I even started it last year but had to take it back to the library before I got overdue fines for it. Coincidentally, almost the same thing happened this year. Probably almost to the day. 

I was able to renew it and started into as soon as I finished The Paris Wife. The same night in fact. 

I don't know if it was because I had seen the movie (and cried gross ugly tears) and knew what was going to happen right at the start or if it was just the way Jonathan Safran Foer captures emotion. Whatever the reason, I got about 16 pages in and found myself crying. 

Maybe it is the subject matter. It isn't a secret. It is in every summary of the book out there and every review of the movie. It is the story of Oskar Schell and his life after his father died on September 11, 2001. 
Maybe that was the reason I just couldn't read it. I don't like watching fictionalized accounts of that day. I watched the movie World Trade Center with my freshman college class. I cried in front of a bunch of strangers (who thankfully became my friends). The images are still too real, too ingrained in my head. I can still see it replayed on the old TV set in my music teacher's basement. 

I realize that much fiction has been written about it, and will continue to be written about it. More films will probably be made about it in an attempt to memorialize the lives of those who were lost. I have no personal story to tell. No one from my family or distant relations was there. I know one family that lost someone from their family. You could say that I was pretty far removed, personally, from the horrors of that day. But it happened in my lifetime. It is very much a part of my story. 

Oskar Schell's story isn't just about loss. It is about the intense forever very Christ-like love his mother displays for him. The kind that you can't always see, but once you know it is there you realize it was keeping you safe the whole time you thought you were unloved and ignored. It is about discovering loss around you; even in your deepest, darkest, most sad day, others are existing in their own hell on earth. It is about the spirit of adventure and being constantly ready to learn, even if you make mistakes. You aren't failing; you are leaning 100 wrong ways to do something.  It is also about finding things: bits of history in Central Park, how things are connected in the world around us, and relatives you didn't you about.

If you can read fictional accounts about that day, please read this book. Tell me that was just like the movie, that they were able to capture the same emotions and story line. Tell me you cried at the movie and that the book made you a little misty eyed. Tell me the book spoke to your emotions and made you think. But, most of all, tell me the truth.