Maps for Lost Lovers

by Nadeem Aslam

(London: Faber and Faber Limited, 2004)

Trade Paperback, 369 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780571221813, US$14.95

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

“A human being is never what he is but the self he seeks.” —Octavio Paz

From the Cover: Somewhere in England, not long ago … In an unnamed town Jungu and his lover Chanda have disappeared. Rumours abound in the close-knit Pakistani community, and then on a snow-covered January morning Chanda’s brothers are arrested for murder. Maps for Lost Lovers tells the story of the next twelve months. What follows in an unravelling of all that is sacred to Jungu’s brother and sister-in-law, Shamas and Kaukab. As the seasons pass Kaukab tries desperately to maintain her Islamic piety as she struggles to come to terms with the double murder and its corrosive effect on her family. Maps for Lost Lovers opens the heart of a family at the crossroads of culture, community, nationality and religion, and expresses their pain, longing and desires in a language that is arrestingly poetic, a language that also gives vivid and beautiful life to the landscape, the light, the insects, the birds.

My Review: Nadeem Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers is an interesting book. Much like Monica Ali’s Brick Lane, Maps for Lost Lovers deals with the obstacles that Muslims face in contemporary Britain. What Aslam does that is different is the whole story is extremely over-the-top. It is very melodramatic. The violence is extreme. The shock value is extreme. Everything that Aslam does in the novel to progress the story is over-the-top. Why? Well, I believe that Aslam has written his story in this way so as to make it nearly satirical or farcical. It is the idea that no one can be that violent or that unforgiving or that merciless in real life … but it illustrates the problems that are really there under the surface of the Muslim community in Britain, and we can now recognize them for what they are, and confront them, and—hopefully—rectify them. However, it is a thin line to walk, because if what one sees in real life is not as violent as Aslam portrays in Maps we might not recognize it for what it truly is.

However, in spite of Aslam’s excessive violence, this is a very lush and poetic novel (Aslam is, after all, a poet before an author) and his prose is simply beautiful. Take for example, this passage: “The harsinghar tree in the courtyard, which dropped its funereal white flowers at dawn, had more flowers than usual under it during those mornings, as though the branches had been disturbed during the night. Shamas was no believer, but imagination insists that all aspects of life be at its disposal, the language of thought richer for its appropriation of concepts such as the afterlife” (82). It is a very beautifully crafted novel.

Like Ali, Aslam also confronts the conflicts and contradictions that arise between men and women in Islam, and the double-standards that sometimes come up because of those conflicts. This is especially pertinent in Maps as it applies to the idea of honor killings, as that is the central plot point around which the rest of the novel revolves. Aslam confronts the idea of these so-called “honor” killings and, again like Ali, presents both sides of the issue and then allows the Reader (along with the characters of the novel) to come to their own conclusions. It makes for provocative reading, and that makes Aslam’s Maps for Lost Lovers a treat to read.

Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

(New York: Scribner, 2004)

Trade Paperback, 415 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9780743243315, US$14.00

ABCD Rating: ACQUIRE

“Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides ach of us; only at the beginning, when we’re absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.” —Ivan Turgenev

“A man’s character is his fate.” —Heraclitus

From the Cover: After an arranged marriage to Chanu, a man twenty years older, Nazneen is taken to London, leaving her home and heart in the Bangladeshi village where she was born. Her new world is full of mysteries. How can she cross the road without being hit by a car (an operation akin to dodging raindrops in the monsoon)? What is the secret of her bullying neighbor Mrs. Islam? What is a Hell’s Angel? And how must she comfort the naïve and disillusioned Chanu. As a good Muslin girl, Nazneen struggles to not question why things happen. She submits, as she must, to Fate and devotes herself to her husband and daughters. Yet to her amazement, she begins an affair with a handsome young radical, and her erotic awakening throws her old certainties into chaos. Monica Ali’s splendid novel is about journeys both external and internal, where the marvellous and the terrifying spiral together.

My Review: While my educational and scholarly pursuits lie chiefly in the field of Contemporary American Literature, I have found myself fascinated by the genre that deals with a multiethnic Britain. Monica Ali’s Brick Lane falls squarely into that niche as she explores the conflicts and contradictions that a decadently Western Britain poses to an Indian Muslim woman.

I think what appeals most to me about Ali’s writing is that she is dealing with many of the same themes and issues and problems that American authors like Sherman Alexie, Charles Johnson, and Paul Beatty are dealing with in their writings, only with a British cast. Instead of L.A. or New York, Ali deals with—obviously—London. For Ali London can be sophisticated and savage at the same time. It can be empire and colony simultaneously. She plays on all of the stereotypes of immigrants in England (much as Beatty does with inner city life in L.A. or Alexie does with Native Americans) only she does it in such a way that is not offensive, but rather it blows apart all of those stereotypes. She turns the ideas of the “Barbaric Muslim” back on to the white Londoners who perpetuate that idea making them the barbarians, turning the marginalized into mainstream and vice versa.

She does this inversion not only with the Outsider-Insider dichotomy but also with the female-male relationships, especially how those relationships work within Islam. There is a strong feminist critique of the Islamic religion and a woman’s place within the religion. It is very provocative, the way in which Ali challenges these norms through the character of Nazneen. Ali has Nazneen go through a series of questions and answers about Islam and a woman’s role, working through the arguments and counterarguments, allowing the Reader to come to their own conclusions, just as the character of Nazneen comes to her own.

The other aspect of Brick Lane that I found interesting is like a lot of contemporary British authors, Ali draws on her British literary heritage. In particular, there are many Shakespearean overtones to the story (in the most overt Chanu, Nazneen’s husband, is a Shakespearean scholar), and taken as a whole, they show Ali’s connection to the history of British literature, as if she is saying, “I don’t look like Shakespeare, but I am a part of him and he is a part of me. We are both British authors.” The novel also draws on the 19th Century tradition of adultery novels (such as The Scarlet Letter) only with a contemporary twist. In the traditional novel of adultery, the adulteress ends the novel punished for her sin. Yet, Ali updates this ending and Nazneen is in fact, rewarded—so to speak—and even thrives. It is, an empowerment ending, a confirmation of Nazneen’s coming of age as a woman and a celebration of women, and even a celebration of the Islamic woman.

Brick Lane may not be a book for everyone, though I would highly recommend it. Ali’s ability to portray the struggles that an Islamic Indian woman in contemporary Britain is going through is nothing short of amazing, and the messages and themes that Ali tackles are epic in scope yet incredibly focused to the experience of women like Nazneen.

New British Poetry

edited by Don Paterson and Charles Simic

(St. Paul: Graywolf Press, 2004)

Trade Paperback, 191 Pages, Poetry Anthology

ISBN: 9781555973940, US$16.00

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

From the Cover: New British Poetry presents the exciting work of thirty-six poets from England, Scotland, and Wales. In compiling this groundbreaking anthology, T.S. Eliot Prize-winning poet Dan Paterson and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Charles Simic followed two rules: the poets should be chosen should be born after 1945 and should have at least two books published in Britain. The resulting anthology collects some of the very best work of a new generation of poets who have come of age since Larkin and Hughes. From established poets such as Andrew Motion and James Fenton to mid-career poets such as Glyn Maxwell and Kathleen Jamie to the most recent T.S. Eliot Prize-winner Alice Oswald, the work is fiercely intelligent, often irreverent, and engaged with traditional forms and an exhilarating range of styles. A generous sampling of each poet’s work is included. As Don Paterson writes in his Introduction, “this group of poets represents some of the most intelligent and imaginative writers working in the English language today.” New British Poetry is destined to become a landmark anthology, introducing many important new voices to North American readers.

My Review: In the first place, this collection put me completely out of my comfort zone and depth of knowledge that I when I saw it on the required reading list for my British Contemporary Lit class, I was—to say the least—wary. Poetry is not and has even been my strong point. I just have never been able to get into poetry like I am able to get into prose writing. The novel and its secrets are something I can unlock … poetry often remains opaque. Secondly, it is British poetry. Most, if not all, of my undergraduate work and research has been in American letters and I “get” what American authors are concerned with, what they’re writing about and what they have to say. The Brit’s sensibility in writing is something that often escapes me. So, to have to read, analyze and discuss British poetry filled me with a sense of dread.

However, diving into the poets and poems that Paterson and Simic chose for this anthology, I found myself more engaged in what was being said and how it was being expressed than I ever thought I could be. Much of this poetry is very good and some of it is absolutely amazing. There are some stinkers, but not only is that purely a matter of taste but it’s also to be expected in an anthology such as this. Not every poem can be a home run, no matter how carefully the editors make their choices.

Among my absolute favorites are “Shibboleth” by Michael Donaghy, “Little Red-Cap” by Carol Ann Duffy and the best poem in the book (in my estimation) “Fundamentals” by Ian Duhig. There are others, of course, “Sound Bite” by Fred d’Aguiar is brilliant in its deconstruction of the media and military; “That Old-Time Religion” by Peter Didsbury is irreverent and hilarious and owes so much to Milton’s Paradise Lost; “The Bacchæ” by Donaghy is a great Country Mouse-City Mouse-esque take on the London party/club/rave scene; Duhig’s “Chocolate Soldier” shows the dark underbelly of Victorian Imperialism and his “The Lammas Hireling” is such a fun and eerie poem that it’s hard not to just post them here and let you read them for yourselves; and yet, it is “Shibboleth,” “Little Red-Cap” and “Fundamentals” that so captured my attention that I want to focus on those ones for a moment.

“Shibboleth”: The poem’s title, is a word that refers to features of language and particularly to a word whose pronunciation identifies its speaker as being a member or not a member of a particular group. This fits with the poem’s theme of discovering infiltrators through the knowledge of trivia, and also fits with the common idea—whether it is correct or not—that Allies, especially American Allied troops, during WWII used the knowledge of American pop culture trivia to discover German spies within their ranks.

As the poem states, and as Hollywood perpetuated, a knowledge of (or lack thereof) such trivial things as “Cheetah,” Betty Grable’s gams, Bogie’s films, or Babe Ruth’s home run record, or who the New York Yankee’s played in the World Series, could be deadly. That’s the sense of urgency that this poem seems to be trying to convey. This is especially explicit in the final stanza of the poem as the narrating soldier shaves, intoning, almost liturgically, the “Christian names of the Andrews Sisters,” in the hopes that one day, such information will save him as he approaches the pickets and is confronted by a sentry late at night and is asked.

His being able to recite such a trivial piece of information could clearly mean he is not a German spy, though I am intrigued by the completely different sense that this poem takes on when one imagines the speaker as a German soldier preparing to infiltrate (or already having successfully infiltrated) the American and Allied lines, and now trying to keep up the charade by trying to remember the “Christian names of the Andrews Sisters” as the unfamiliar Anglican names are formed on his Teutonic lips as he shaves, waiting for the time when such knowledge fails him and he is found out. This particular interpretation gives the poem a whole different kind of urgency that I find very intriguing.

“Little Red-Cap”: There is a long history of authors and poets re-telling the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” (done most famously by Angela Carter in her short stories “The Werewolf,” “The Company of Wolves” and “Wolf-Alice” (all found in the anthology The Bloody Chamber) and Carol Ann Duffy is doing exactly that: adding her own vision and ideas of what “Little Red Riding Hood” means, though Duffy’s poem seems to be strongly influenced by Carter’s story; compare the final line in Carter’s “The Company of Wolves”—“See! sweet and sound she sleeps in granny’s bed, between the paws of the tender wolf”—with this line from Duffy’s poem, “I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for / what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf? / Then I slid from between his heavy matted paws […]”

To me, this seems to be a very strong influence, though to be fair to Duffy, the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” has always been very highly sexually charged. It has been variously interpreted to be a classic warning against becoming a “working girl” or prostitute, with the red cloak being a stereotypical symbol of the 17th Century French prostitute (the time in which the story first comes); a parable of the sexual awakening or maturation of young women, the red cloak here being the young woman’s menstrual blood or hymen with the wolf threatening the young girl’s virginity and also as a warning against sexual predators lurking in the “dark forest” of the world.

Duffy brings a new twist to this story with Little Red Riding Hood being both sexual conquest (“I clung till dawn to his thrashing fur, for / what little girl doesn’t dearly love a wolf?”) and saving woodcutter (“I took an axe to the wolf / as he slept, one chop, scrotum to throat, and saw / the glistening, virgin white of my grandmother’s bones. / I filled his old belly with stones. I stitched him up.”) making her both the victim and victor of the poem and story. This twist brings a 20th Century sensibility to a 300-year-old cautionary story, and makes it a tale that is current and immediate to female readers of the current age: they do not need to fear sex, but they also do not have to be the victim anymore.

“Fundamentals”: This is, perhaps, my favorite poem in Paterson and Simic’s anthology. Duhig has captured something very special and unique in his poem “Fundamentals”: the intersection of missionary and carnival barker, the clash of 19th and 20th Century sensibilities.

As Contemporary Britain comes to terms with the effects of its 19th Century imperialism, Duhig shows just how ridiculous some of these efforts were, and just how far from Christian dogma they really were.

The “missionary” in Duhig’s poem is one part Victorian missionary (probably Anglican or Episcopalian), one part carnival barker and one part P.T. Barnum-esque showman. This is, looking back across the gulf of the last 100-150 years, what most of these missionaries embodied: the clash of pulpit and barker’s podium.

This is especially evident in Duhig’s missionary in that he seems less concerned about what could be said are the true fundamentals of Christianity and more concerned with these three things: “our God is different from your God, our God is better than your God / and my wife doesn’t like it when you watch her go to the toilet. / Grasp them and you have grasped the fundamentals of salvation” before moving on to perfunctory baptism and then the more important business of training native colonial subjects in the art of modern warfare and gunmanship.

This is what the imperialist effort was all about, the conquest of nations (especially those “uncivilized” ones in Africa and Asia and the Subcontinent) and then turning those subjects of the Crown into efficient cannon fodder for the next conquest (usually using tribal and racial prejudices and feuds to advantage).

“Fundamentals” captures all of these ideas and manages to marginalize them and make them seem off-hand or even inconsequential in light of the bigger facts of God, Queen and Country.

I guess that the bottom line here is that this collection of poetry is more than worth the cover price, if for no other reason than for these three poems alone. The rest of the gems that Paterson and Simic have collected in New British Poetry are simply icing on the cake.

The Short Stories: The First Forty-Nine Stories with a Brief Preface by the Author

by Ernest Hemingway

(New York: Scribner, 1986)

Paperback, 499 Pages, Short Fiction Anthology

ISBN: 9780020518600, US$9.95

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

From the Cover: At the age of twenty-two, Ernest Hemingway wrote his first short story, “Up in Michigan.” Seventeen years and forty-eight stories later he was the undisputed master of the form and the leading American man of letters. The Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway, introduced here with a revealing preface by the author, chronicles Hemingway’s development as a writer, from his earliest attempts in the chapbook Three Stories and Ten Poems, published in Paris in 1923, to his more mature accomplishments in Winner Take Nothing. Originally published in 1938 along with “The Fifth Column,” this collected premiered “The Capital of the World” and “Old Man at the Bridge,” which derive from Hemingway’s experiences in Spain, as well as “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber” and “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” among the finest of Hemingway’s short fictions. As Clifton Fadiman observed in The New Yorker: “I don’t see how you can go through this book without being convinced that Hemingway is the best short story writer … using English.”

This collection contains the following stories: “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “The Capital of the World,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Old Man at the Bridge,” “Up in Michigan,” “On the Quai at Smyrna,” “Indian Camp,” “The Doctor and the Doctor’s Wife,” “The End of Something,” “The Three-Day Blow,” “The Battler,” “A Very Short Story,” “Soldier’s Home,” “The Revolutionist,” “Mr. and Mrs. Elliot,” “Cat in the Rain,” “Out of Season,” “Cross-Country Snow,” “My Old Man,” “Big Two-Hearted River: Part I,” “Big Two-Hearted River: Part II,” “The Undefeated,” “In Another Country,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” “The Killers,” “Che Ti Dice la Patria?,” “Fifty Grand,” “A Simple Enquiry,” “Ten Indians,” “A Canary for One,” “An Alpine Idyll,” “A Pursuit Race,” “Today is Friday,” “Banal Story,” “Now I Lay Me,” “After the Storm,” “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” “The Light of the World,” “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen,” “The Sea Change,” “A Way You’ll Never Be,” “The Mother of a Queen,” “One Reader Writes,” “Homage to Switzerland,” “A Day’s Wait,” “A Natural History of the Dead,” “Wine of Wyoming,” “The Gambler, the Nun, and the Radio,” and “Fathers and Sons.”

My Review: In all honesty, what does one say about Ernest Hemingway? That is not just an affectation either. I am genuinely stumped. What could I possibly say that could constructively add to what has already been said about “Papa”? Minimalism? Of course Hemingway is minimalist in style (many of the Moderns were) but it is only textually that he is minimal. There is a wealth of meaning and description in the subtext of Hemingway’s writing that is enhanced by and outweighs his minimalist writing.

Bleak? Yes … and no. It’s bleak kind of hope that Hemingway offers in his writing. In his stories it is often termed as “The Nada,” or the idea that there might be something out there bigger than us, but what that is, no one can know. It is a strange kind of religion, so to speak, one that say’s it is indeed bleak in the world, but that we shouldn’t give up hope. For example, in his short story “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place,” Hemingway writes: “Our nada who are in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee” (383). It is still a prayer but the God that it addresses is not one that the speaker expects an answer from. It is, at best, an indifferent god, but a god nonetheless. Thus, bleak hope.

Machismo? In spades, my friends. In spades. It is in his subjects as well as in his worldview. Horse racing, bullfighting, boxing, hunting, fishing, “The Strenuous Life,” these are Hemingway’s credo and concept of what constituted masculinity. Cynicism? Or is it just a realistic worldview and not one that is falsified or idealized. We had a long discussion (argument?) about whether or not Hemingway is cynical or just realistic in my Modern American Lit class, I come down on the Realistic side of the argument because, as with the bleakness in his writing, there is an element of hope that comes through, however small.

Irony, detachment, micro v. macro views of things, fragmentation, in medias res ... these are all things that Hemingway uses in his writing, but honestly, these would all amount to nothing if Hemingway was not as talented a writer as he is. Hemingway manages to use all of these elements in his stories and yet they never feel forced or formulaic. Hemingway’s short stories have a very organic and sincere feel to them. They are wonderful little vignettes that are simply amazing to peer in at.

My favorites? “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “The Capital of the World,” “The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “Hills Like White Elephants,” and “A Clean, Well-Lighted Place” are, to my mind, some of the best pieces of writing I have read in a very long time, and of these, “Macomber” and “Kilimanjaro” are the crème de la crème. The absolute genius with which the stories are constructed and the sense that Hemingway is taking on what it means to be a man (a topic that a lot of my undergrad research has dealt with).

While I love to read in all its many forms—novel, novella, chapbook, audiobook, drama—the short story is far and away my favorite form of the medium. There is just something about being able to sit down and read a complete story from start to finish in five to ten minutes. It is a truly satisfying experience, and made all the more satisfying when the short story is written by Ernest Hemingway, one of the real masters of the style in the 20th Century.

A Streetcar Named Desire: 25th Anniversary Edition

by Tennessee Williams

(New York: Signet, 1974)

Paperback, 142 Pages, Drama

ISBN: 9780451167781, US$4.99

ABCD Rating: BACKLIST

“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” (142)

From the Cover: A Streetcar Named Desire is one of the most remarkable plays of our time. It created an immortal woman in the character of Blanche DuBois, the haggard and fragile southern beauty whose pathetic last grasp at happiness is cruelly destroyed. It shot Marlon Brando to fame in the role of Stanley Kowalski, a sweat-shirted barbarian, the crudely sensual brother-in-law who precipitated Blanche’s tragedy. Produced across the world, translated into many languages, and recreated as a prize-winning film, A Streetcar Named Desire has attracted one of the widest audiences in contemporary literature.

My Review: To be quite honest, I don’t exactly know where to start in talking about Streetcar. There is just so much to this play. I read this for my Modern American Lit class and as I am looking at my notes scrawled across the inside back cover of my copy of the book and most of it is unintelligible gibberish right now at a quarter to ten at night the day after finals. I guess my brain’s shut off for the summer.

So, what do I think of Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire? I actually liked it. I really did. I found there to be something very interesting in the idea that what Williams has done is taken already existing forms of drama and literature and molded them to fit his own world view. In particular I can see two older forms that Williams has subverted for his own ends: (1) the heroic journey and (2) the fairy tale.

According to Joseph Campbell, the Hero’s Journey (or monomyth) has three basic parts: Departure (or Separation), Initiation, and Return. There are various parts of each of these three ideas, but it is interesting to see the character of Blanche DuBois as the tragic hero in the same vein as Oedipus, Achilles and Hamlet. Where Williams departs is that Blanche has fallen before we meet her, whereas the traditional tragic hero falls through the course of the journey. Now of course, the thing that the American Modern movement does is take the old traditions and mold them to the needs of the Interwar Period. In the case of Blanche and Streetcar what this means is that although Blanche has fallen before the play starts, it means that she can fall even further than she already has.

For Blanche, her hero’s journey is comprised of:

• Departure (or Separation): Blanche loses the family estate and moves in with her sister and brother-in-law in New Orleans.

• Initiation: Blanche is raped by Stanley, beginning the Blanche’s second tragic fall.

• Return: Blanche’s Return is a return that is safe for her, in her mind, and she is committed to an asylum.

Blanche’s journey is in keeping with the Aristotelian concept of peripetia or a reversal of circumstances/fortune, the chief feature of which is that it has to be out of proportion to whatever it is that the hero may have experienced, and for Blanche being raped into insanity by her brutish brother-in-law is certainly out of proportion to what Blanche has done and gone through to this point. It is certainly not something she has deserved, or as Stanley puts it “We’ve had this date with each other from the beginning” (130). It is out of proportion because, as a tragic hero(ine), Blanche needs to have a tragic flaw. For Blanche that flaw is herself. Her own perception of herself as an elevated or aristocratic “Old Southern Belle.” Is this true? It doesn’t matter because as long as Blanche believes it, she will always be her own biggest problem again and again and again.

This leads into the second subversion that Williams creates in Streetcar, that of the fairy tale. Typically the damsel in distress is saved by the heroic white knight in shining armor on an armored charger. You can probably see where I am going with this, but Blanche is obviously the damsel in distress, however Stanley Kowalski is anything but the literary chivalric hero. He is primitive, has atavistic tendencies and uncivilized. He is the ogre instead of the shining knight; in fact, the play has no chivalric hero. The character that comes the closest would be Mitch, but even he falls short of that role. He is socially awkward and fails to come to Blanche’s aid when she needs him because his feelings to Blanche are poisoned by Stanley.

If you have never read A Streetcar Named Desire you need to. It is a truly American piece of writing.

Breaking Dawn (Audio)

by Stephenie Meyer

read by Ilyana Kadushin and Matt Walters

-Twilight Saga, Book 4-

(New York: Random House Audio, 2008)

Hardcover, 1.06 MB, 20½ Hours, Young Adult Fiction

ISBN: 9780739367698, US$60.00

ABCD Rating: DITCH

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age

The child is grown, and puts away childish things.

Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

—Edna St. Vincent Millay

From the Cover: When you loved the one who was killing you, it left you no options. How could you run, how could you fight, when doing so would hurt the beloved one? If your life was all you had to give, how could you not give it? If it was someone you truly loved? To be irrevocably in love with a vampire is both fantasy and nightmare women into a dangerously heightened reality for Bella Swan. Pulled in one direction by her intense passion for Edward Cullen, and in another by her profound connection to werewolf Jacob Black, she has endured a tumultuous year of temptation, loss, and strife to reach the ultimate turning point. Her imminent choice to either join the dark but seductive world of immortals or pursue a fully human life has become the thread from which the fate of two tribes hangs. Now that Bella has made her decision, a startling chain of events is about to unfold with potentially devastating and unfathomable consequences. Just when the frayed strands of Bella’s life—first discovered in Twilight, then scattered and torn in New Moon and Eclipse—seem ready to heal and knit together, could they be destroyed … forever? The astonishing, breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Twilight Saga, Breaking Dawn illuminates the secrets and mysteries of this spellbinding romantic epic that has entranced millions.

My Review: Now, I don’t know that I have been exactly fair to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series in recent months, perhaps I have been downright harsh at times, but the fact of the matter is the more I read these books, the worse they become. I’ve said it before, that perhaps it is Meyer’s writing (which is no great shakes by any stretch of the imagination) or perhaps it is Kadushin’s atrocious reading, but something about the audiobook editions of the series have turned me off of the books.

There is, however, two bright spots in the final book of the series, Breaking Dawn. The first is that the Listener (in this case me) does not have to sit through all 20½ hours listening to Kadushin read and say things like “woof” and “wooves” and “werewoof” and “werewooves.” Matt Walters takes over for the middle third of the novel and after listening to Kadushin for approximately a combined 108 hours (over the three and a third audiobooks) Walters is a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, it does not last and Kadushin comes back for the final third of the novel.

However, Kadushin’s obvious faults as an audiobook reader are overshadowed by the final third of Breaking Dawn. It is here that the book finally gets interesting, and the mythology that Meyer has been creating over the previous three books comes to fruition. The miscellaneous vampires that Meyer has created (in particular the Revolutionary War-era vampire Garrett and the Amazonian vampires) are wonderful and diverse, and the Volturi are as menacing as ever. The hints of a pre-Volturi reign by the Romanian vampires is intriguing and something that I would like to see developed more. A prequel of sorts. Sure, the end is a little anti-climactic, and the action is over before it even really begins, but when looked at as a whole (i.e. from Twilight to Breaking Dawn) I can see how it works within the over-arcing story Meyer has created.

Be forewarned, though, that is where my praise for the book ends. Matt Walters and the final showdown and characters are the only bright spots in an otherwise decidedly sexist and offensive book. Now, before I start getting inundated with complaints and threats and emails telling me I’m a horrible person, let me (1) remind you that comments are moderated and potty mouths will not be tolerated, and (2) explain myself.

There is so much subtext to this series that it is hard to know where to begin. A few weeks ago I was in New Orleans attending the Annual Conference of the Pop Culture Association of America. I mainly stuck to the sessions that dealt with Stephen King (as that was the field in which I was presenting my research) and with the Horror genre in general, but one session I went to was on vampires. Now, as much as I love a good vampire story or movie, I usually steer clear of vampire fandom because the people into that kind of thing can get (1) a little weird, (2) pretty defensive and (3) a lot weird. I avoided the sessions about Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer but this one was all about Bram Stoker’s Dracula so I figured it would be safe. What I didn’t realize was that the last presenter in the session was presenting her research on why vampires have suddenly become safe.

She presented some interesting ideas but I felt it was overshadowed by her fawning over Dracula like he was a matinee idol … that’s different from Edward how? Anyway, some of the points she raised were at how seductively dangerous Edward really is in that he presents an image of safety and security (something, she argued, girls coming of age in the post-9/11 world are desperately seeking) while in reality he embodies something very scary.

She gave as evidence the fact that Edward looses his senses when he and Bella consummate their marriage and she wakes bruised and sore, it is frightening rape imagery and yet it is seen as something beautiful shared between husband and wife. She also presented as evidence the fact that when Bella becomes pregnant, Jacob, Edward and Carlisle push Bella to have what is, essentially, an abortion. If find these to be very compelling arguments and to have them presented to me in this manner, I am surprised that I had not seen those connections upon first reading the novel.

For my own part, one of my major problems with the series in general and Breaking Dawn in particular is the fact that Bella is often held up by fans (and critics) as a strong woman who is a role model of feminine independence. I don’t know about you, but I find that Bella is anything but a feminine role model, and she is certainly not someone I want my daughter to emulate. She is often compared to Catherine from Brontë’s Wuthering Heights but I don’t know that that is a compliment. Catherine seems, to me at least, to be just as bad as Bella is and is not a character you want your daughter emulating.

Anyway, the bottom line here is (and it’s been the same bottom line for the entire damn series on audiobook) that unless you are a complete, utter and hopelessly die hard Twilight fan (and even then think long and hard about whether or not you want to sully your love of the Cullens with these atrocious audiobooks), give the Twilight series on CD or MP3 a wide wide berth. They are simply not worth any time or effort you put in to them. They’re just not worth it.

We'll Be Right Back After a Brief Pause for Station Identification

I just wanted to say that I haven’t forgotten about y’all over here at Bryan’s Book Blog. I know my stalk— ... I mean, followers have been anxious (You’ve been gone Bryan? Haven’t noticed…) and anyway, now that finals are over I’ve got five reviews in the pipeline that I plan on churning out. In the meantime, here is a post from Cake Wrecks: When Professional Cakes Go Horribly, Hilariously Wrong (a blog I highly recommend that you follow) that I think you will like. Jen over at CW titled it “The Twilight of Our Discontent” and I repost it here with the express written consent of Major League Baseball, the Network and Jen. Thanks! As soon as they are done I’ll get us back to our regularly scheduled programming, but until then, enjoy a little Twilight wreckage:

“The Twilight of Our Discontent” from Cake Wrecks

by Jen

Unless you’ve lived under a rock for the past year or so, you know about the vampire lust phenomenon that is Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series. Naturally, it was only a matter of time before a bakery, in an attempt to appeal to the “I’ll buy anything with Edward Cullen on it” crowd, decided to recreate the iconic book cover on a cake.

So here’s the cover:

Aaaand here’s the cake:


I’ll give you a moment.

[whistling]

Ready? Back in your chair? Good.

Now, can I appreciate the irony of a vampire cake that sucks?

Of course I can.

Do I mind that the apple is now a red bell pepper?

Nah, not so much.

Would I still like to know what the Wreckerator was smoking when s/he made those flabby-yet-disjointed amoeba arms?

[nodding] Yes, yes I would.


Kelly L., I know you have a stake in this, so I hope you won’t be cross when I say looking at this bite-sized sucker is making me downright batty.

[bowing] That’s five! Five puns! Mwah-ah-ah!

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: The Classic Regency Romance—Now with Ultraviolent Zombie Mayhem!

by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

(Philadelphia: Quirk Books, 2009)

Trade Paperback, 319 Pages, Fiction

ISBN: 9781594743344, US$12.95

ABCD Rating: ACQUIRE

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.”

From the Cover: So begins Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, an expanded edition of the beloved Jane Austen novel featuring all-new scenes of bone-crunching zombie mayhem. As our story opens, a mysterious plague has fallen upon the quiet English village of Meryton—and the dead are returning to life! Feisty heroine Elizabeth Bennet is determined to wipe out the zombie menace, but she’s soon distracted by the arrival of the haughty and arrogant Mr. Darcy. What ensues is a delightful comedy of manners with plenty of civilized sparring between the two young lovers—and even more violent sparring on the blood-soaked battlefield. Can Elizabeth vanquish the spawn of Satan? And overcome the social prejudices of the class-conscious landed gentry? Complete with romance, heartbreak, swordfights, cannibalism, and thousands of rotting corpses, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you’d actually want to read.

My Review: Well … here we are … Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. One of the most hotly anticipated books of the Spring. It took me nearly a week to get my hot little hands on this book. It was sold out at the three local bookstores here, and it was not until Wednesday as I was on my way to New Orleans for an academic conference and I stopped at the Borders in the Houston International Airport that I was able to finally pick up this book! Imagine. I started reading immediately as I waited for my connection to the Big Easy and finished the book Saturday just as the plane was touching down in Salt Lake City. If it had not been for the conference (which was enlightening and engrossing) and all the time I spent in various sessions.

Now, before I get on to my reaction to the book, I need to make one thing clear: I have never read the original Pride and Prejudice. I never had any intention of reading it for pleasure, as they say, and probably would have only picked it up if I had been assigned it in a British Lit class. Now, however, after having read P&P&Z and discussing it with a friend (who has read P&P) I am curious to read it to see what Grahame-Smith left in, what he took out, what he altered and what he added, though, as my friend warned me, I probably won’t find Austen’s novel half as interesting as I found Grahame-Smith’s version.

And, with that said, let’s get on with my thoughts. This is, without a doubt, one of the most fun and funniest novels that I have read in a very long time. Grahame-Smith’s sensibilities (if you’ll forgive the pun) for what is absurd and ridiculous in the context of Austen’s novel (and yet—given the circumstances which he thrusts upon Austen’s England—they are not devices that are improbable) are absolutely wonderful. I don’t want to give away too many of the surprises that Grahame-Smith has in store for the Reader, but I have to say that what he does with Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy’s arguments and Elizabeth and Lady Catherine’s verbal sparring is absolutely brilliant, and nothing short of beautiful farce.

Then there are the zombies … hordes and hordes of zombies, or, as they are called in the novel, unmentionables (or at other times, Satan’s legions). Of necessity zombies bring an element of extreme violence. Now, when I say “extreme violence” I mean extreme violence … the disemboweling-someone-with-a-sword-and-then-strangling-them-to-death-with-their-own-large-intestine-extreme-kind-of-violence, and that’s just one example. As violent as this novel is, it doesn’t overpower the sheer farcical brilliance that Grahame-Smith has created by mixing a comedy of manners with The Night of the Living Dead.

I could not get enough of this book … the novelty of what Grahame-Smith has created is nothing short of pure enjoyment! Whether you’re an Austen Fan, a Zombie Fan, neither or both, you really need to pick up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I think I can honestly say you will not be sorry; this book has something for everyone.

I recently read that based on the success of P&P&Z, Grahame-Smith has signed a two book deal the first of which (no release date has been given yet) will be Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Killer which will be a fictional biography of ol’ Honest Abe with, you guessed it, vampires. What could be better than that? There is also an article, HERE, which discusses the success of P&P&Z and how Quirk Books has been inundated with other classic novel-zombie mash-ups such as A Farewell to Arms and Legs, The Corpse of Monte Cristo and As I Lay Bleeding. Honestly, a zombie novel written in either the style of Hemingway or Faulkner would be one I would like to see.

There is also, as with “real” books of this kind, a set of questions for Book Group Discussions. They are hilarious. You can find them HERE. Also, apparently the Hollywood studios are in a bidding war to see who gets to bring Elizabeth Bennett, Zombie Slayer, to the silver screen.

Oh. And did I mention that there are ninjas in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies? Well … there are. Lots of them.