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Book Review

Review of The Heart Goes Last

October 1, 2018

Atwood, book, literature, review, science fiction

The Heart Goes Last, by Margaret Atwood, is a quasi-science-fiction story set in the modern United States. Technically, it could be in the near future, but there is nothing to suggest it isn’t set in the present time.

The setup is (post-)apocalyptic alright, but in an individual way. Jobs disappear, social cohesion collapses, people live in the streets. However, the focus is on Stan and Charmaine, who are unwilling to live in their car anymore, and so sign up for Positron. It is a place promising security, safety, bliss; ad infinitum. That is the catch, however. Just like Hotel California, you can check ~~out~~ in any time you want, but you can never leave.

Let me start by saying this: I like Margaret Atwood’s style.Check the Critical Reception section in the article about The Other Side of Dreams to get a hintI like the way she introduces a deeply introspective narrative style, giving her characters life. As a result, I really had high hopes about The Heart Goes Last. Disappointingly, my expectations were shattered.

I have read countless books, both as a casual reader and from the perspective of literary criticism. Honestly, I never remember a narrative disintegrating so completely. Let’s see the details.

Nominally, *The Heart Goes Last* is about freedom versus security. But, sadly, things fall apart pretty rapidly

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Review of The Bell Jar

June 6, 2018

Book Review, Criticism

Bell Jar, book, criticism, depression, review, Sylvia Plath

I have a confession to make: I never liked Sylvia Plath’s poetry. Call me old-fashioned, but I have a real problem with modern poetry, and Sylvia Plath is no exception. Now comes another confession: I shamefully admit (the shame is double since I have a PhD in English literature) that I didn’t know that Sylvia Plath had written a novel. The Bell Jar is her only novel. Furthermore, it’s a semi-autobiographical* work.

*I don’t get the term “semi-autobiographical”. Deep down, all works are autobiographical, because they are based on the author’s subjective experience of the world. But if we want to make a separation between fictional autobiography and non-fictional autobiography, The Bell Jar is definitely a sample of the former category.

Review of The Bell Jar — Depression might appear peculiar from the outside – and that’s how The Bell Jar occasionally does, too

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Review of Elleander Morning

April 3, 2018

Book Review, Criticism

book, fiction, review, speculative, writing

Speculative fiction is a genre dealing with what-ifs. In this context, Elleander Morning belongs to what one might rightfully (and whimsically) call “WW2-whatif-fiction”. We’ve had several stories dealing with an alternative world where Nazi Germany has won the Second World War. The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick probably remains the point of reference, though in recent years Fatherland by Robert Harris has also received quite a bit of attention.

Elleander Morning is indeed such a novel, with a sort of a twist: the Second World War has never happened. The reason? A young woman – Elleander Morning – travels to Vienna before the outbreak of the First World War and kills a mediocre artist called Adolf Hitler. Many decades later, in the early 1980s, Elleander Morning’s granddaughter, Lesley, discovers a book. It’s a complete history of World War Two, including marvelous photographs that cannot be dismissed as a forgery. Something odd is going on, but what? Well, that’s a damn good question. One that sadly not even the author, Jerry Yulsman, seems to have been able to answer.

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