2015 Reading Challenge.

This year I will be taking part in the 2015 Reading Challenge that is doing the rounds on ye olde Facebooks. I have a few friends taking part as well, and have joined a few new forums for it so we'll see how that goes. If you fancy giving it a go here is the main guide.

   I will be doing one book per category, but know a few who are ticking multiple boxes. Reviews will appear on the blog sporadically of books that capture my attention in particular, otherwise mini-reviews will be put on my GoodReads account.

Good Luck!

Review: The Whole & Rain-domed Universe by Colette Bryce

An unintended trip to the local library saw me plucking this from the shelves. I'm slowly making my way through the poetry section and every poet there I haven't read yet. All of the credit must go to Wrexham Library who have an excellent selection of poetry, prose and non-fiction! *plays are lacking a smidge*

The unusual cover and the theme of rain brought me to this book - research for my own poetry in progress on Capel Celyn but more about that later. I'm extremely glad to pick this up; as with most books the blurb is often shrouded in mystery but this blurb says exactly what you'll find inside.

Bryce presents a 'personal reckoning' of her life, family, environment and culture that is raw and cutting in places, putting Derry and the Troubles into a tangible poetic force for the reader. I'm particularly bowled over by her sense of place and space, highlighting the limitations and possibilities that are constantly at work between the writer and their origins.

I was captured from the first poem, White  a beautiful quilt of poetry to swiftly pick up the reader in the folds of childhood, something we can all relate to, the importance of our development at this delicate stage speaks through 'the wordless place', which is a fascinating image for poetry, that does in fact convey up with words to a wordless space of images, scents, sounds and memory. The book more or less continues in chronological order, and I was pulled by the anchoring placement of some poems. After being conveyed to childhood Bryce takes us to Derry, a place that I have never been and hardly heard of, but paints a picture with very familiar colours, such as 'the sounds of crowds and smashing glass', it is the way that Bryce layers these images that make us feel at home.
      We move quite quickly to the Troubles with The Analyst's Couch and the 'Blood... / like HP sauce' - such familiar images to describe uunfamiliarevents envelops the reader into the time and place. Growing up in Wales I can pull elements from the text that reminds me of my own life, which is a sign of a very good poet, to involve the reader actively in the story telling, like in Don't speak to the Brits, just pretend they don't exist and 'a wasp stings him on the tongue/ 'Tongue' is what they call the Irish language', images and context such as this makes the poetry very isolating, internal reminders and quite painful times I can imagine, spun into words of silver.
     My absolute favourite poem of the book is one of the final ones, through quite a mature voice about a Mother A Simple Modern Hand, words taking the movement of writing and showing us that process. Crushing the hulk of words into dust that sings, the musicality in this poem with the 'mama - mama - emem - emem' dances from the page and moves the tongue in your mouth. The third section of this poem spells out the word Mother, forcing the reader to retrace their steps, like a reprieve in a song.
    The overall accomplishment of these poems is one tellingly very personal to the poet, the characters she involves, the family they may represent, the place becomes a person in it's own right and guides the reader through the lives of it's inhabitants. By the end you are welcomed in, to pick up a pint or a cup of tea and join in with the story telling.

Review: Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

 I'm not a squeamish reader, in fact I probably cherish most works that others would ban from the literary world, and I'm drawn particularly to those that cause controversy in culture. Lolita is a novel that has been warped completely by it's cultural references, it carries around a soiled reputation. naturally when I began reading I expected something troubling and scenes that I would have to spend days getting around. What I actually found was beautifully poetic prose, drawing me into the mind of Humbert Humbert, and manipulating me into accepting the world he was presenting. This has effected me much more than any graphic scene could do because it made me understand how consent and compliance in an act that is truly wrong can be given freely.

             Lolita is told through the middle-age voice of Humbert Humbert; the murderer, who is trying to explain himself fully to his lawyer and the courts and give a detailed account of his life leading up to the point of murder. Humbert has a self-confessed obsession with nymphets, this is the first realization we have to make in the novel, as Humbert isn't attracted to children... it is in  fact out of his control that nymphets show themselves within the small prepubescent window of girls; and we do see at times the nymphet shadow linger in older girls and woman. There are erotic scenes, particularly in the opening of the novel before we see Lolita, it is here that the narrator takes hold of your perspective; numerous times I felt myself quite disturbed by the beauty of these erotic scenes to be reminded a paragraph later that we are talking about a 9 or 12 year olds. After this introduction to the mind of Humbert in which he gets married as a ruse to disguise his pedophilia, betrayed and shoved unwillingly into the care of Charlotte Haze we encounter, finally, Lolita. 

         We are dealing here with a narrator who is sexually disturbed; after a thwarted love affair in his teens with his beloved Annabel, it seems his sexual development is completely stunted, I haven't come to the conclusion that his entire emotional development is also stunted but certainly the aspects relating to sexual relationships has gone down with it. This, I am convinced, is the main reason for his numerous mental breaks throughout the novel and his ultimate demise in the final section, and can be seen in his use of language to describe such breaks. When Humbert is a confident narrator we see that reflected in his luscious prose, manipulating and conspiring, later into the novel the events become staked and transparent, at times I took this to be the work of the author but in understanding the narrator it seems to be the only mode of dialogue he can bring to the reader and convey the happenings of his life.  

    I am convinced also that Humbert is the antagonist of this novel, HIS version of Lolita being the protagonist, I would go as far as to say that Lolita and Dolores Haze are two completely different characters. I have said this many times since reading the novel to various people, who probably think I should be sectioned, but Lolita is a bastard...  She is conniving, and false, a shallow seductress and brings many situations upon herself. It is too easy as a reader to become desensitization to the abuse within the novel. This of course is the girl that Humbert wants us to see, in this he is the victim, controlled by this little girl and her wild ways, the truth unfortunately is much more disturbing, and the very fact that he believes his own lies is more problematic for both the reader and culturally.  It is only as Lolita grows up that we are given small glimpses into the true horror of her life, as Humbert says that Dolores could have done so much with her life if he had not taken over her. We are also given very small glimpses (miss able!) into his methods of controlling her; his gifts, threats to the 'family unit' and the repercussions on her if she was to reveal the truth of their life together. A handful of times we are given the most harrowing detail about Dolores, she cried herself to sleep most nights, and that broke my heart.

   There are of course many other avenues of looking at this novel, but the most worrying and interesting to me is of my own compliance in the treatment of Lolita. The ruin of Dolores Haze.