A DANGEROUS AGE by Ellen Gilchrist: I pulled it at the libe because another book of hers was on a best 100 list. Only read 5-6 pages of the start, a couple samples later on and decided not to read. Women may like it, although the three women whose tastes I know would not. It is not well written. A quick judgment, but I only rate it as a 3 or 4.
THE SEA by John Banville is a Booker Prize winner. It is well written. I find the style interesting—the sections jump around in the whole of his past life as well as the current moment of the story. I wonder if Banville organized and arranged it carefully in that way, or whether that’s just the way it came out. I also wonder if Bannville’s wife had died recently when he wrote it.
It is written in first person by a man, widowed for about a year. He returns to the place where he grew up, and is trying to understand his life and himself through his writing. The book is filled with anger. His daughter who helps him in going back to his home town is angry also. I tend to see the book as lessons in how not to live a life. I’d guess Banville is an angry, unhappy man, not handling the death of his wife at all well. It probably has more appeal for older people, and more for males than females.
Hemmingway’s GARDEN OF EDEN was published in the 1980’s by his heirs, trying to wring the last bit of money from his estate. There is good reason it wasn’t published in his lifetime. He would have been ashamed to have it published. The writing seems amateurish, like practice writing. I feel sure it is autobiographical although it is written in third person.
There is a lot of description, not very good, using a large number of run on sentences with no punctuation. It is a love story. Hemmingway’s own with one of his early women. There is tenderness, and lover’s quarrels, and making up, and him writing, and her acting cute, and it all seems an accurate description of a teen age love affair with all the silliness of a couple immature adolescents. Take the commas out of the previous sentence and you have a sample of much of the style in which it is written. Hemmingway probably was adolescent when he wrote it. The author/main character ambivalently believes he is writing something adult and significant. I read more than I should have. Rating a 1 or 2. Don’t bother, unless you’re a teenager and might be able to identify with the characters and ignore the poor writing.
Hemmingway’s DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON is written by a far more experienced person and writer. He is detailing the bullfight as a Spanish institution that to his surprise he found he loves and enjoys. Written in ’31, it describes bullfighting as it was in the ’20s before reforms, such as protecting the picador’s horses from goring were introduced. He disapproves of the reforms.
As well as his own reactions and descriptions aimed at increasing people’s understanding of the drama, he analyzes the reactions of others into two groups, much too small a classification. Even in the first few chapters it is clear with which group his approval lies. He is a far right conservative on bullfighting and wishes people who don’t love it as it was in the 20’s would stop interfering, trying to stop it, reform it , etc. He enjoys the gore and blood, if you don’t, don’t read unless you enjoy arguing with an author as you read.
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