CB # 21 - 23 Post-Modern Love Stories

Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan

The Rehearsal by Eleanor Catton

                Just to start, I'm sorry I've abandoned this blog for most of the summer. I've been reading all summer, but I've had a lot of problems figuring out what to write about the books I've read. Since it's been a while and I have a huge amount to move through, I'm just going to review my summer books by theme. This grouping is going to make the least sense and I know that, so I figured I'd get it out of the way  first. It's full of post-modern love stories, and I consider these ones post-modern because of the way that they play around with narrative.

Super Sad True Love Story

                Lenny Abramov is a 39 year old schlub in love with 24 year old Eunice Park. He’s the child of  a Russian father who slaves as a janitor, while she’s the daughter of an abusive Korean potierit. The question is: does Eunice Park see anything in Lenny?
                Super Sad True Love Story is set in the near future. America is on the brink of financial collapse. People don’t write any more, they “verbal” or send images. Everyone is constantly being rated on their appearance and what they’ve revealed about themselves online, and sexuality has been reduced to a cheap, crappy version of pornography. There is no such thing as privacy, everyone transmits everything about themselves. Girls wear transparent jeans and the English language seems reduced to obscenities. Through all of this Lenny keeps on writing in his diary and keeps on reading books, even though they are seen as smelly artifacts of a bygone era.

                The novel is told from both character's perspectives, Lenny through his journal, and Eunice through her emails to her family and friends. Lenny is a bit of a sad-sack, and doesn't have enough perspective on life to really see understand the destruction of liberty that is happening all around him. Although Eunice is obsessed with looking good, she doesn't have the same need to be remembered for posterity, and her communications seem to have more value since she is trying to reach out to people.

                I’m not one hundred percent certain how I’m supposed to see Lenny. I’m much closer to Eunice in age, and I understand her initial disgust with him. They meet in Rome, where Lenny is trying to find rich clients who want to live forever using Post-Human Services.  Lenny falls for Eunice immediately, without any real reason other than her beauty, oh and the fact that she’s been abused by her father. Apparently that’s appealing to Lenny.

               But there's still something about this book that got to me. It's about how love is always possible, it's about the importance of liberty and although it is a super sad love story, there's something really appealing about everyone, even as they disgust you.
(ETA: As mentioned in the comments, this book is really, really funny, however, I also found it really sad too)

A Visit From the Goon Squad

                My friend called this a collection of short stories, and I sort of have to agree. Each chapter is told by a different narrator, and he or she tells about a key moment in his or her life. The stories connect, the same characters reappear throughout the stories, but there isn't a cohesive narrative to this novel. It doesn't matter too much, since it's all about the moments in between. It's sweet, lovely and confusing. The stories switch directions and flip back and forth in time. When I first heard about this book (everyone and their dog has reviewed it and loved it), I was told that it focused on the music industry, and it does, but that's not what it's really about. It's about using music as a theme to allow the tidbits of people's lives to show through. Characters work in music industry, or tried to be musicians, or just love the silences in a song, but it doesn't add up to more than that.

                The problem for me was that each chapter helps you understand the current character, but you, the reader, still want more information.You want the before and the after, but all this book gives is a few fleeting moments. It's all middles, but not even complete middles. It's a beautiful book, but it doesn't leave you satisfied. It leaves you craving more, which is probably a good thing.

The Rehearsal

                A young girl has a relationship with her high school music teacher. He argues that it was completely consensual. It's probably a familiar sounding story, something that you read once in the newspaper, or in your favourite news blog, but it has nothing to do with your life. The Rehearsal is about the person who reads about it in the paper and forgets that real people were involved, and it's also the other girls who find out about the affair, and it's consequences for them.

                The main characters are three girls who go to the same (female) saxophone teacher: Bridget who rather bores the teacher, Isolde, the younger sister of  Victoria who had the affair, and Julia, who might be a way for the saxophone teacher to relive and hopefully fix her own mistakes. When these girls talk to their saxophone teacher they reveal their fears and desires, and they are both mystified and drawn to Victoria, because they cannot understand how it happened.

                On the other side of the novel is Stanley, who has started his first year at a drama school. The students are supposed to create an original play, and they decide to write it about a major news story, the girl and her teacher. As the novel winds its way through these characters' lives, their stories become more and more interconnected.

                I liked this book but I also found it really unsettling. We never find out much about Victoria, and her motives always are unclear. Other character's try to figure out what happened, but there is no way for them to know the truth. Also, characters regularly speak theatrically, even when there isn't a stage in sight. All subtlety is striped bare and people say intense truths to each other, with no consequences, or even a reaction. It's almost as if the reader gets to read the truth without any of the politeness and camouflage of ordinary conversation. 

CB #5 Mockingjay

Mockingjay by Suzanne Collins    (YA)

                Possible spoilers to every book in the trilogy (I’m sorry)

I thought that this was the perfect conclusion to the trilogy. In fact, I feel like it’s the only right way for things to end.   The Hunger Games can be seen as about the way that suffering can be unreal entertainment when it’s not happening to you. The Capitol’s citizens don’t seem to realize that real children are dying as they watch it on the big screen. Innocents are forcibly destroying each other for their own survival, and the Capitol places bets. In Mockingjay, the fight comes to the Capitol and its children, but it doesn’t make everything better for those in the Districts. Instead Mockingjay is about the way that violence and power struggles can only be damaging. At least, that was how I saw it.

I’m not really going to comment on the narrative itself, but instead on the possible issues that people may have with it. I never saw this trilogy as being about a great love story. I felt that Katniss has too much to think about and do to have any time for romance. Sure there are two men for her to fall for, but I don’t think that Katniss understood either of them enough to really fall in love, until perhaps the very end. Especially in the first book, you saw how she went through the motions to keep both herself and Peeta alive.  For me, this trilogy is about the other kinds of love that exist: love for family members that is so strong that you’ll give up your life and your chances of happiness for them,  a love for truth that means you’ll sacrifice your life so that the “better” leader will survive the Games, and a love for friends. I can’t even see a Team Gale or a Team Peeta in this story, though apparently others have seen it this way. Katniss needs to survive long enough for her to have a life, before she can even think about love.

As well, in this novel we finally see the consequences of all of the fighting. None of the victors of the Games are fully themselves anymore. All the fighting means that they’ve lost any sense of stability they may have had before. I found this, though dark and troubling, very realistic. I honestly wouldn’t expect any of them to have stayed the same. I read another review just after finishing the books that said that Mockingjay was too dark in comparison to The Hunger Games. I have to disagree. Mockingjay is about consequences catching up to people. It’s about the complications of reality and politics. As well, The Hunger Games was about children killing each other, and that's never a cheerful subject.

Anyway, I really loved the trilogy and I would recommend it to anyone who loves dystopias or novels about political power struggles. If you liked the political aspects I would suggest that Megan Whalen Turner’s novels about Attolia, starting with The Thief. They’re set in a fictional kingdom in the past, but they’re as gritty and political as The Hunger Games.

CB #4 Catching Fire

Catching Fire by Suzanne Collins  (YA)

                Catching Fire is definitely the second book in a trilogy. It has the non-beginning and non-ending that sometimes happens with trilogies (think Pirates of the Caribbean). It’s not necessarily the fault of the trilogy format, especially since The Subtle Knife is my favourite of the His Dark Materials trilogy and Back to the Future II is just plain awesome. However, it makes me wonder if it wouldn’t have been better to have the stories of Catching Fire and Mockingjay put in one book. NB: If you haven’t read Hunger Games yet, you might want to stop reading.

You're still with me? Katniss and Peeta survived the game, but now the Capitol is basically out to destroy Katniss and her family’s life. They can’t do this overtly, because their entire audience loved the star-crossed lovers who could not live without each other story that Katniss used to save both their lives. However, Captiol saw her actions as rebellion and as the spark that may convince the Districts to rebel against the Capitol. Now Katniss must use all her skill to  convince the Capitol that she really does love Peeta.

Now I did have a few issues with this book so if you haven’t read it, you won’t want to read further.

                I HATED the idea of the Quarter Quell using previous victors. I know it was just a way to get back at the Katniss. This time there would be no way to save Peeta and herself, so she’s going to want to sacrifice herself to save the better person. I was mainly bothered by the way it brought the Hunger Games back into the novel. I know it adds excitement and tension to the story, but it felt cheap. It felt like a repeat of the first novel. What did surprise me was how many of the previous victors weren’t completely mentally destroyed by their experiences in the ring. Haymitch, Katniss' mentor, is an alcoholic, and there are a few drug addicts, but otherwise the victors are surprisingly stable. One roommate noted that this was probably because those who survived the ring were mentally strong and had an incredible will to live, and would never do anything that would harm their ability to survive. Once again, I would be a complete mess if I survived anything like that. All I'd do is cry.

               There were still a few things that I liked about this book though. I liked that Peeta pretended that Katniss was pregnant with their child. It’s one way to make the audience in the Capitol remember that those who fight are people too. I also liked that Katniss and Peeta basically ignored each other for a while after the Games. Of course they were forced to go around the Districts on tour together, but for a while they could pretend to be differnent people.

CB #3 The Hunger Games

 The Hunger Games  by Suzanne Collins   YA

                Here’s the thing about living with a bunch of library students. When one person’s read something that she loves… well she really want to talk about it. So once two of my roommates had read The Hunger Games trilogy, I simply had to or else I would be left out of the conversation. It was definitely worth it, and highly engrossing. I read the entire trilogy in a week.

                The first novel,The Hunger Games, was described to me as “Survivor meets 1984”. I’d describe it as Battle Royale but they didn’t go to high school together. In the distant future, the Hunger Games are an annual televised event in which two children (12-18) are taken from each of the twelve districts of what remains of North America and forced to kill each other. The victor is the only survivor and he or she brings honor (and more food) to their district. In reality, the games are a way for the Capitol to demonstrate its power over the other states. Every year they kill some of the district’s children, and therefore some of the district’s hope for the future.

                Katniss is the narrator and she’s prickly. Or at least she likes to think so. I know that she’s supposed to be hardened, but in my mind she’s really sweet. When her sister’s name is drawn for the Games, Katniss immediately takes her place. She doesn’t even think. So for me, everything she does is coloured by that act, especially when she acts tough. Unfortunately, the other person from District 12 is Peeta, whose act of kindness towards Katniss helped her turn her life around and care for her family after her father’s death. It’s hard to know that you may have to kill the person who helped you save your life.

                Sometimes Katniss is a little bit too media savvy as she plays the Games. She knows that there are always cameras so she tries to do things to win over the audience. She knows that they can sponsor her and send her food, water, medicine and weapons. Sometimes her savvy comes across as a bit much. However, other than that she comes across as a real person. I’ll talk about her relationship with love in the review for Mockingjay, because I think it’s an overall series issue for sure.

                Overall, I loved this book and as soon as I finished it, I had to read the other two. I would like to mention that the participants in the Hunger Games are far more brave than I would be. The second I was able to, I’d run as far away as I could and then cry in a curled up ball until someone found me and killed me. Instead, Katniss is able to pick up some helpful items, make some allies and SPOILER (but it’s a trilogy so you knew this) survive.