Reading 1001 Round-Up – January 2024

This months winners and losers….

The Saga of Gosta Berling by Selma Lagerlof. BOTM #1. What GR says: In 1909, Selma Lagerlöf became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. The Saga of Gösta Berling is her first and best-loved novel—and the basis for the 1924 silent film of the same name that launched Greta Garbo into stardom. A defrocked minister, Gösta Berling finds a home at Ekeby, an ironworks estate that also houses and assortment of eccentric veterans of the Napoleanic Wars. His defiant and poetic spirit proves magnetic to a string of women, who fall under his spell in this sweeping historical epic set against the backdrop of the magnificent wintry beauty of rural Sweden. Loved the setting, characters not so much.

My Thoughts: This is a series of interconnected vignettes featuring a lot of the same characters and not a cohesive narrative for that reason I felt disconnected from the story and minutes after putting the book down can remember little about it. What I do remember is the weaving in of folklore, fairy tales and legends.

The best bits for me were the descriptions of nature they really brought rural Sweden to life. The cold, the trees and the isolation.

3 Stars – read it for the locations unless you like unlikeable character in which case you can read it for them.

The Hothouse by Wolfgang Koeppen. Past BOTM Catch Up. What GR says: First published January 1, 1953. Thanks for that GR!

My Thoughts: This is a relatively short book at 216 pages and it only took me 2 days to read. The problem was I finished reading and cannot remember a single thing about it, literally nothing has stuck with me. I think this could be because it is the middle book in a trilogy of which I have not read the first.

Personally I gained nothing from reading this book and I am blaming me not the author. At some future point in time I will acquire the full trilogy and read as a set for now it is going back on the bookshelf.

3 Stars – My advice read the first book.

The Melancholy of Resistance by László Krasznahorkai. BOTM#2. What GR says: A powerful, surreal novel, in the tradition of Gogol, about the chaotic events surrounding the arrival of a circus in a small Hungarian town. The Melancholy of Resistance, László Krasznahorkai’s magisterial novel, depicts a chain of mysterious events in a small Hungarian town. A circus, promising to display the stuffed body of the largest whale in the world, arrives in the dead of winter, prompting bizarre rumours. Word spreads that the circus folk have a sinister purpose in mind, and the frightened citizens cling to any manifestation of order they can find – music, cosmology, fascism. The novel’s characters are unforgettable: the evil Mrs. Eszter, plotting her takeover of the town; her weakling husband; and Valuska, our hapless hero with his head in the clouds, who is the tender center of the book, the only pure and noble soul to be found. Compact, powerful and intense, The Melancholy of Resistance, as its enormously gifted translator George Szirtes puts it, “is a slow lava flow of narrative, a vast black river of type.” And yet, miraculously, the novel, in the words of The Guardian, “lifts the reader along in lunar leaps and bounds.” Hmm not what I thought.

My Thoughts: I am in the minority here but I here but I did not enjoy this book at all. The way it was laid out with no paragraphs put me off reading it at all and it was a struggle every time I picked the book up.

I am sure there was a lot of that went right over my head and honestly I am happy to leave it that way. This is not a book I ever intend to read again.

That said the other readers in the 1001 group all really appreciated it so this could just be me.

2 Stars – read it if you like solid chunks of text with no breaks.

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride. Other. What GR Says: Eimear McBride’s debut tells, with astonishing insight and in brutal detail, the story of a young woman’s relationship with her brother, and the long shadow cast by his childhood brain tumour. Not so much a stream of consciousness, as an unconscious railing against a life that makes little sense, and a shocking and intimate insight into the thoughts, feelings and chaotic sexuality of a vulnerable and isolated protagonist. To read A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing is to plunge inside its narrator’s head, experiencing her world first-hand. This isn’t always comfortable – but it is always a revelation. Definitely not comfortable!!

My Thoughts: This is not a book you can say you have enjoyed reading, the subject matter is way too bleak for that and while I struggled with connection while reading looking back on it the book has more of an impact.

The writing reflects the title, the sentences are half-formed, thoughts and feelings leap of the page, at points the language seems to be just random words but once you get into the rhythm of it you can follow the story.

This has the typical stalwarts of Irish fiction alcoholics, abusive families, sex, violence and depression. As you can imagine this is not a cheerful uplifting read and there is no happy ending. Realistic perhaps but bleak so bleak.

3 Stars – Short and not so sweet. Read this when you are in resistant mode you need your strength to cope with the story.

Have you read any of these? Let us know your thoughts.