Review - Northanger Abbey

I really couldn't stand Pride and Prejudice, when I read it, a fact I've made no great pains to disguise. But I was determined to get all the way through a Jane Austen book without chucking it across the room at any point, and Northanger Abbey made this easy on me. The tone of the novel is quite fun, and it was quite easy for me to see the cleverness and wit of the author I'd heard so much about and hadn't liked or noticed very much in Pride and Prejudice. Any complaints I might have about the character -- her ignorance, her silliness -- are sort of necessary for the plot to proceed as it does. I think if the novel had been much longer, I'd have got a bit sick of the tone, but it was just the right length, I think.

Reviews - The Blind Assassin

I'm not as enamoured of Margaret Atwood's writing style as I feel I ought to be: something about it just doesn't quite do it for me. But aside from that, The Blind Assassin is amazing. The structure of it, the framed narrative, is really interesting, and the way bits of information unfold quietly until suddenly, and only near the end, you see the full picture. I like to think I was reasonably on the ball, and picked up various hints fast enough, but I thoroughly enjoyed the process of that.

I thought it was slow to start, and even as much as two thirds of the way through I was having trouble staying put and reading as much as I wanted to. But the last one hundred pages, as things came together, I really loved.

And one thing will always endear this book to me -- a quote from it:

All stories are about wolves. All worth repeating, that is. Anything else is sentimental drivel.
All of them?
Sure, he says. Think about it. There's escaping from the wolves, fighting the wolves, capturing the wolves, taming the wolves. Being thrown to the wolves, or throwing others to the wolves so the wolves will eat them instead of you. Running with the wolf pack. Turning into a wolf. Best of all, turning into the head wolf. No other decent stories exist.