Favorite Fiction--2016

Some favorite works of fiction I read during 2016,

FIRST READS

Sarah Orne Jewett:
                  The Country of Pointed Firs
                   --my first reading of her masterpiece.  Why did I take so long to get to it?
                   --this is on my must reread list.

                   A Country Doctor
                   --this one is a bit weaker than the first, but still an excellent read. and better     
                      than 90% of the other works I've read this year.


Joseph Conrad:  Suspense
 --an unfinished novel set in the Napoleonic era.
 --a traveler gets involved with a plot of Napoleon's escape from Elba.

Ray Bradbury:         Farewell Summer

--the sequel to Dandelion Wine.  The tone is different in this one.  The boy resists growing up.

Graham Greene:    The Human Factor
--a spy novel.  The unmasking of a mole in the British secret service, told from the mole's point of view.

Nathaniel Hawthorne:: The Celestial Railroad and Other Stories
--a collection of some of Hawthorne's most well-known short works.
--decided to leave this in the First Reads grouping as there were several short stories that I hadn't read before.


Kazuo Ishiguro:   The Remains of the Day

--a great novel of repression and fear of commitment, set against the backdrop of WWII.   

--his master is a Nazi sympathizer and the butler refuses to go against his master for he  is the master.

REREADS:


Jane Austen:
                   Lady Susan/The Watsons/Sanditon
                   Northanger Abbey
                   Mansfield Park
                   Emma
                   Sense and Sensibility
                   Persuasion
                   Pride and Prejudice

--as always, great reading.  This was my fifth? sixth? who knows how many readings I've had of her works over the years.  They are just as good, if not better, the fifth? time around as the first.

A. Solzhenitsyn:   One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
--the title says it all--one day in a Soviet Union era gulag in Siberia, based loosely on his time there.  I like to pair this one with Dostoyevsky's The House of the Dead, his experiences in a Siberian prison camp during the reign of the Tsars.  Forced to make a choice, I would choose life there under the Tsars.  The treatment was cruel but  much more humane than under the commissars. 


Dostoyevsky:   "The Gambler"
--Dostoyevsky's great novella depicting the downfall of an gambling addict.
--great character study of numerous Russians traveling abroad. sometimes just for travel and sometimes to avoid debt collectors back home.  Comic figures trapped within a tragic story.


Evelyn Waugh:   Brideshead Revisited
--Flashback:  an English army officer finds his unit stationed  on one of the grand   
   estates and recognizes it as the one that had a great influence on him, beginning with
   his stay at Oxford.

--there's a great BBC TV adaptation of the book.  After watching it, I went out and 

   got the book.


Herman Melville:  “Benito Cereno”

--Melville's great novella regarding the slave trade and a very naive American ship captain.


Nikos Kazantzakis:   Freedom or Death

--his powerful novel set in Greece during the time of the Greek war for independence.
--as usual his characters come off the page at you.


Oscar Wilde:   The Uncensored Picture of Dorian Gray
--This is the first and censored version of Gray's novel.  To be honest, I can not see anything that
   would be more offensive than anything in the published version.  A classic example of changing
    tastes, I will includ this among the rereads for I have read this several times.


There were a number of enjoyable works that I read during the past year, but these are the ones that stand out.  While there  appears to be a large number of first reads, equal to the rereads, one should note that Bradbury, Greene, Hawthorne, and Conrad are all favorites of mine from way back when.  These are works by them that I've never read before.

Only two of the authors in the First Reads Section are new to me:  Kazuo Ishiguro and Sarah Orne Jewett and are now on my reread list.  Coincidentally, I read two books by both.  The other book by by Ishiguro will appear on my Favorite SF novels of 2016 list.


P.S.
Forgot to mention, but if you have questions about any of the authors or books, please ask.  I may not know the answer, but it's worth trying anyway.

Kazuo Ishiguro: The Buried Giant

Kazuo Ishiguro
The Buried Giant

In a review, Neil Gaiman calls this novel one "that's easy to admire, to respect and to enjoy, but difficult to love."   That 's a strange comment, but one that I have to agree with.


The Buried Giant is a mix of legend, myth, fantasy, and some history.  It is set in medieval England shortly after the death of King Arthur.  One of the main secondary characters is the aged Sir Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, who has a very dubious mission to fulfill.  Along the way, we encounter some enigmatic boatmen. And, here there bee dragons, also --well, only one dragon, Querig, who is also a bit beyond her prime years, and an ogre or two or three and apparently hundreds of pixies..  Oh yes, and several Saxons decide two elderly Britons might need protection on the road.

At this time, there has been a hiatus in the civil war between the native Britons and the invading Saxons, who seemingly have come to say, even though Arthur, who had managed to keep the peace, has gone on to the Westerly Isles.  However, a strange plague, the mist, has struck the British Isles--resulting in forgetfulness.  Peoples' memories are failing, both for recent and past events.  Only occasionally do some past memories emerge.  Moreover, not all are afflicted to the same degree and the degree of forgetfulness seems to fluctuate.  For example, Axl's memory seems to be improve as he proceeds on his quest.

Ishiguro has created a quest novel, one containing several quests actually.  One is that of the elderly couple, Alx and Beatrice, who set off on a search for their son.  They no longer remember why he left, but they do believe that they will be able to find him and that he will welcome them.  As it happens on all good quests, others join the elderly Britons--Wistan, a Saxon warrior, on a mission for his king; Edwin, a Saxon youth who has been injured; and Sir Gawain, who decides to aid the Britons and also to keep an eye on Wistan, whom he suspects is on a mission that may be opposed to his own mission, given him long ago by King Arthur.

Some of the episodes bring up echoes of other works.  One incident involving Wistan seems reminiscent of the Epic of Beowulf, while a second also involving Wistan, along with Edwin and a goat, seems Biblical in tone, specifically that of Abraham and Isaac.  But, again, I've often been accused of over-reading, so I'll leave it up to you to decide, if you read it.

If there is a downside, for me it would be Ishiguro's precise measured prose and the dialogue.  I had read his Remains of the Day and thought that style fit in perfectly with the setting of the novel--a mansion set in rural England, complete with numerous servants and landed gentry.  However, I felt it didn't fit in medieval rural England, most of whose inhabitants were peasants and country folk, and most of whom were illiterate.  However, the problem, to me anyway, was not distracting enough to cause me to stop reading and enjoying the novel.

Overall, I consider The Buried Giant a very interesting book with an unusual theme, well worth reading and thinking about.  I also plan on reading other works by Kazuo Ishiguro.