Dad’s and my challenge book for May and a re-read for me from grad school (the first time around!).

It was really interesting to go back and re-read this now, when vampires are such a hot topic: between Twilight and True Blood, they’re all over the place. But this? This is back when vampires weren’t sexy, or intriguing, or sparkly, or helpful to humans, or any of the other modern twists. (You know how every new vampire series needs to put its own twist on the old legends. Which I find it a bit of an authorial conceit.)

They were scary and murderous and preyed on you and sometimes, if you were really unlucky, turned you to evil. There is menace and malice creeping out the seams of this book. It did get annoying (to both of us) how the men just fawn over the poor innocent women…it’s definitely a novel “of its time” as they say.

Kept running into notes I had scrawled in the margins in whatever class I read this for (while getting a Literature MA): “This symbolizes the marriage ceremony” or “refers to King Lear”. Heh. Funny to come across those although most of it is stuff that you could easily still enjoy the book without knowing.

Dad and I also talked about how similar it felt to Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde which you may remember us reading earlier this year. As Dad mentioned, the multiple points of view, groping for the story, etc.

Some additional comments from DadReaction: Didn’t being AND becoming a vampire seem a LOT more complicated than the movies let on? To wit, Drac seems to be able to be out in daylight, he just has less power–and WAY less at sunrise and sunset. Then it seems like there are all sorts of transition stages to become one if you’re a victim–but you DON’T want to predecease Drac! No way!! That’s like a ‘get out of jail free’ card in monopoly, no? You skip the steps, even if the death is from natural causes–or, what?

Interesting, though, that it’s IMPOSSIBLE to read without filling in the blanks from all the movies you’ve seen. I keep wanting to tell the characters: ‘It’s a vampire, you morons!!!” And how weird, that van Helsing talks like Yoda.

I did get tired–o Lord, weary, weary–of all the FAWNING over Mina, those long adulatory passages from Herr Yoda.

Our challenge book for April.

GirlReaction: We both came to really like it in the end, Dad perhaps a bit more than me, but it was a bit of a struggle to get into. There were times when I felt he played a little fast and loose with the third-person narrative: i.e., if “we over here” don’t like “those people over there” they should be “they”s not also another set of “we”s. And I wonder if this book will have a lasting legacy; it’s VERY much a book of its time: of a world with “Office Space” and “The Office” and layoffs and recession/depression (and bonus for me: set in Chicago!).

DadReaction, first: Weirdest response: read one paragraph and thought ‘going to like this’. read two paragraphs and thought ‘can’t go on’–happens every time I pick it up!! There seems to be an underlying suicidal depression about it–maybe it takes me back to when I was desperately job hunting when you guys were tiny. Tres traumatic.

GirlReaction: That may have been part of my struggle with the book as well: my current-day frustrations with the bureaucratic office environment and at the point we were reading this, I had not yet given notice and it did seem each day like I might just be there forever, until I eventually died there and why am I reading a book about people just as unhappy as me…. Arggghhhhhh. However, at some point I did find my way to enjoying the characters and all their many tics and nuances, and I thought it really picked up after a bit. Really enjoyed the Lynn-centric section and the way that really evolved the action.

DadReaction, second: Finished the book of the month. Okay: officially declaring this the best book I’ve read this year. Amazing effects, some wallops. So weird that it was so hard to get into. But it did take off, as you PROMISED. More than that, though: really mesmerizing use of the ‘we’–it gave the narration a real spaciousness, as though this stuff was always happening, the way you really do feel at work, when it seems like you’ve been telling the same jokes forever. Great comic moments, but a real dive into seriousness–esp. with the Lynn episode, but also when you really believe Tom Mota COULD be blowing people away.

Some very teasing character developments, with Joe Pope and Jim and Amber and Larry, who all seem kind of throw away when they first come round but then he keeps circling them and they all kind of come alive. Oh, and then it was cool that he would mention other people you never heard of, just the way you do when you’re telling work tales.

What else? I’m starting to think we should declare a moratorium–wait, no, an outright, absolute BAN on all references to September 11, 2001–because, folks, there really have been worse disasters in history and it’s only the infantile Americans who don’t seem to realize that. Or realize that we have killed more people in its wake than we want to admit.

But that said, I loved the leap at the end with Hank’s novel and the VERY nice touch that it wasn’t this entire novel but only the part about Lynn. But the greatest part WAS the way the ‘we’ sort of surrounded you without ever becoming focussed and that wonderful, wonderful last line with just ‘you and me’ left. That’s from the Muse her ownself.

Oh, and wasn’t Janine sitting in the McDonald’s play area just a crushing image–and those jerks staring at her, and Joe calling them on it, and then they really feel their primal jerkiness. I thought a lot of it was LIKE Kafka but more fetching than Kafka, less distant and more able to draw you in, but still the same strangeness. And how about Benny’s totem pole?!! (Tres glad Marcia and Benny linked up.)

But now: ALL THAT SAID–why does it seem like IT REALLY DOES TAKE FOREVER TO READ!!!!!!?????????? I felt like I’d never get through it, even as I enjoyed each moment. (To be fair, my own exhaustion could have played a part in that.)

This was our March challenge book, technically a re-read for both of us and super short!

DadReaction: It WAS a shorty. Too short really–I actually remember it as being longer, but I liked the sense of being taken over by one ghastly part of yourself. It’s one of those stories–Jekyll/Hyde one of those characters–that seem to live beyond the actual story itself, like Don Quixote or Sherlock Holmes. Also liked the oblique narration, getting the story at second and third hand from these peripheral figures. Also: the way stuff develops while some of the characters are just going on with their lives and they have to catch up. Kind of a tiny little gem.

I remember really liking the Spencer Tracy movie of this; Michael Caine’s in one, too–I think he actually impregnates somebody as Hyde and they spawn this grotesque child. Let’s see–Hammer films had a Dr. Jekyll/SISTER Hyde teaser out and Jean Renoir, of all people, adapted the original–Stevenson’s, not Hammer–for French tv.
What did you think? It actually ranks as a comfort book for me, since I read it in High School and can always pick it up again–like Treasure Island. Looking forward to the next one…..

GirlReaction: As you touched on, the thing that strikes me most is how it is such a dramatic story but told in a completely passive manner. Two dudes, going for a calm evening walk, one says to the other “So you see that door? Let me tell you a story about it…” Yet the story is smack full of drama. The events have all already happened off screen, yet even in the retelling they are gripping. All the hearsay and facts gathered from different sources give it a real urban legend feel. I also love the emphasis on the science of the experiments. First he just wants to explore the duality he already senses in himself…but eventually science fails to overcome the darker side of his personality. As he unwillingly becomes more Hyde than Jekyll, the story shifts to fantasy from science.

Our February challenge book (we are alternating between 19th-century and contemporary novels this year).

I liked a lot of this book. But there were things I could’ve done without. Since we already reviewed it in sort of rambling fashion on Flickr, I’ll just paste in what we had to say there:

GirlReaction: I liked a lot of it but there were annoying things. some chapters where you couldn’t figure out who was speaking until WELL into them (must EVERYONE be first person?) or dialogue where it took some figurin out who the conversation was between and who was saying which lines. and then at the end of the book, it just…ENDS. midsentence even. eh? I prefer a bit more of a finale, even if you have a cliffhanger.

But it was really funny and clever and felt very much like Vonnegut to me. Vonnegut but with more details, longer sentences / paragraphs, and if Vonnegut wrote females as the main character (or important characters really). Vonnegut is easier to get through (generally both shorter and less literarily dense), but I felt like they shared some sensibilities.

I liked it more than Dad though. He eventually got kinda of annoyed with it and I think it’s tweeness. Like sometimes the reader shouldn’t have to work QUITE that hard. “Cleverness for the sake of clever”. Although now maybe I am being harsher than he was. Dad?

DadReaction: Yes–your summary of my assessment was pretty accurate. I thought all the guesswork was unnecessary and didn’t like the non-ending. He actually got you involved with his goofy people and then sort of sold them short. Still, still, VERY clever– e.g., Vigorous’ son living out the news, being Nixon, etc. The Vigorous-Lenore storytelling duo was super–but you miss her reactions when it’s just his story. I wanted to complete the grandmother saga.

To be honest, I probably would have loved this book when I was reading the first Pynchon books, Tom Robbins, Edward Whittemore (WHAT? You’ve never heard of Whittemore? Shame! Go, go, get Sinai Tapestry, Jerusalem Poker.). Then Again, I LOVED the last Pynchon–Against the Day–and I pick up Vonnegut effortlessly. This one, I kind of had to force myself through. Okay, but, once more, STILL, still, Lenore herself always drew me back. And Lang sort of grew on me–okay, so I really wanted to know how their story came out, and was denied that by a much too clever author.

So I like much of the creation, but I was not drawn to the creator. Telling fact that maybe sums it all up: haven’t recommended it to anyone and not really eager to read another by same author.

The January pick for Dad’s and my challenge this year. Somehow…I didn’t realize I’d read this before (it was a re-read for him, but he knew it!). I KNOW. The thing is, I bought a complete Dickens a million years ago when I lived in NYC (and definitely when I couldn’t afford it!) and one summer I read a TON of them on my daily commute. But that was…a long time ago. So when I first started reading this, I *thought* it was something I hadn’t read before. Then I kept finding turned over pages, and about halfway through it all came back to me.

The main thing Dad and I talked about with this one is how cinematic Dickens was in his details. Moments like describing a wine cask spilled on the cobbled street that then leads the reader’s “eye” to the door of the wineship, and in…and then the plot comes in again. One can really see the details around the edges of the action, as a (good) cinematographer would do, to give you a little moment of breath while still keeping you involved in the moment. Really lovely. Not SO descriptive as to lose your focus on the events at hand (as sometimes Proust can do), just enough to paint a fuller picture.

This was our challenge book for December. So much fun!!! Dad had read it back in high school and been totally traumatized. Then at some point watched the Orson Welles film of it and found it equally traumatizing. But somehow, to both of us, this time around it was just soooo farcical. Might make a good companion for a book we read earlier in the year “The Good Soldier Svejk”.

The end is a bit of a shocker just because the narrator has, for the most part, taken things so lightly until then that you sort of expect it to just keep going on forever. It was a lot of fun to read.