Henry VI Part Two by William Shakespeare

It is time once again for me to get too big for my boots and review the work of Shakespeare with the continuation of the Henry VI plays. Obviously the last play ended with the tone set for much political intrigue and turmoil to come, so I was expecting bigger and better things. I got them.

In the second instalment of the trilogy, the action is squarely focused on England and the escalation of political factions and ambitions that go unnoticed and unchecked by the eponymous Henry VI, who is ill-equipped to handle life at court. And it is incredibly entertaining. Personally, I do love political intrigue and uncertain allegiances, as it allows for incredibly complex plots to be hatched as well as equally complex character interactions. This play has it in abundance: first in the combined efforts of court figures to rid themselves of the Duke of Gloster, Lord Protector, in order to forward their individual ambitions, as well as the Duke of York working to make his claim as rightful heir to the throne. Stuck in the middle of all this is Henry himself, a young man more suited to the life of the clergy than that of royalty, and his inexperience and timidness encouraging the more sly and ambitious of his courtiers. It's a recipe for disaster, and it's a glorious sight to behold.
In the last Shakespeare review, I mentioned the staging in the BBC adaptation; this is a practice that I will continue in this reviews as well as others to come. With this adaptation, it follows the same format, with one sound stage for all the different locations, but I felt it worked better in this second part, as the scope wasn't so wide as it was in the first part. The performances were overall a solid affair, with only the occasional moment which seemed suspect which brings to mind mainly Frank Middlemass' decision to ham it up for Cardinal Beaufort's death scene; a particularly strong performance would be Julia Foster's Margaret, who I thought captured her slyness and selfishness perfectly. The only odd decision made in this adaptation that really stuck with me was the incredibly odd editing style in the battle between York and Old Clifford in the fifth act: never before have I seen slow motion shots so strangely, and in this case poorly, utilised.

Overall, this was a marked improvement over Henry VI Part One, both in terms of the writing itself and the adaptation. This may well be my preference for politics over big battle scenes, but it nevertheless feels stronger for the comparative lack of fighting. I look forward to the conclusion of this trilogy. 4/5

Next review: Blackest Night by Geoff Johns, Ivan Reis, Oclair Albert & Joe Prado

Signing off,
Nisa.

The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

This is one of those books that I picked up on a whim really. I'd heard it mentioned on a blog somewhere, but otherwise knew nothing, and I suppose it appealed to the part of me that likes to learn about other cultures, considering the obvious Indian viewpoint. So I went into this completely blind, and more than a little tired out from How the Dead Live as well as more essays than I could count. I think this was the change of pace that I needed.

The Mistress of Spices follows an Indian woman named Tilo who runs a spice shop in California. On the surface, she's a normal old woman, if unusually observant. What her customers don't know is that she is the eponymous Mistress of Spices, which means that she can communicate with the different spices in her shop and use their latent mystical properties to help the Indian immigrants who visit her shop. There are, however, certain rules that Tilo must follow in order to stay in the spices' favour and thus keep her powers, such as staying impartial, dispensing wisdom and help equally to those who enter the shop; this rule in particular is broken as the novel progresses, as she gets intimately involved in the lives of several of her customers, especially that of an enigmatic American who arouses in her the most forbidden of feelings for a Spice Mistress: love. 

I will just state this so that it's out of the way. I love the use of spices as a medium for magic ability. It creates a sense of structure that tends to be missing in a lot of books involving magical realism. Pretty much every event in the book can be traced back to a moment in which Tilo made use of particular spices. The outcomes can usually be traced to how the spices consider Tilo at any one moment too: while most of her spells at the beginning go pretty much as expected, the more rules she breaks and the more emotionally invested she is, the higher the likelihood is that they will backfire on her in some way, particularly if she has to actively impose her will on to the spices. I think that the fact that the spices could be considered this kind of multi-headed/hive mind character makes the magic system really interesting and different. 

In terms of characters, this is an ensemble cast, so even if you don't like one character, there's bound to be maybe two or three others that you do like in their place. The only ones who get any real in-depth characterisation though are Tilo and the American (whose name you do find out, but I shan't spoil it for you). 

With Tilo, the reader gets the majority of her backstory in the first few chapters, covering her journey from her home village, where she was lauded as a mystic and feared by the rest of her family, to her life in the guise of an old woman in California. The American's past is more drawn out in comparison, as he decides to tell Tilo about his life through several different meetings. Both are fairly sympathetic, yet incredibly flawed people, and their attraction to one another is, if a little odd when you consider them as a couple from a more objective viewpoint, very sweet and with good chemistry. 

Overall, I really liked this novel, especially following the utter loss I was at after How the Dead Live. I would be more than happy to recommend this, as it is incredibly readable and very well written. 4.5/5 

Next review: Henry VI Part 2 by William Shakespeare 

Signing out, 

Nisa. 

How the Dead Live by Will Self

Oh boy, where to begin with this one? Will Self is one of those authors that I've known about for a long time, but had little actual information on his work. I'd seen him a few times on the rare occasion that I watch TV nowadays, but that was about as far as my knowledge went. So when I saw How the Dead Live on sale, I figured that there was little harm in trying it out. Now that I've actually read it, I'm not sure how much more I know about him.

How the Dead Live follows the late life and afterlife of the narrator Lily Bloom, a generally cantankerous and unpleasant old woman. In life, the reader sees her deal with her two daughters: Charlie, the elder daughter who is pretty much a non-entity amalgamation of everything that is socially acceptable, and Natasha, a needy and manipulative junky. In death, she has to contend with a calcified foetus obsessed with pop songs from the 70s, three manifestations of all the fat that she's lost, gained and regained through years of dieting and the angry soul of her long dead son. From that description, it sounds pretty damn interesting. And at times it is. But for the most part, it just left me confused. Not confused in a plot sense: in that respect it's pretty straightforward. It left me confused as to how I'm meant to feel about all of this. For instance, the spirits that Lily has to exist with make it sound as if the afterlife is some incredibly strange Twilight Zone type of place; it's really not. All the afterlife is in this is normal life, except you don't need to breathe, eat or sleep. After a while she even begins to ignore or forget the weird manifestations around her. Considering she's the narrator, that means that the reader begins to forget them too, which I don't think should be the case; they're what interested me on the blurb, so for them to be forgotten so easily is really disappointing. Although I suppose that that may be the whole point: have an afterlife that is exactly the same as life, and you minimise the fear and reverence surrounding it. I guess my main problem with this book is that at times it seems clever and witty, but there's always an underlying current of irritation at the very cleverness that typifies the novel's tone; much like my opinion of what I've seen of Will Self, now that I think about it. I think the only thing that I really genuinely enjoyed was the ludicrous nature of some of the deaths. Take Lily, for example. She is diagnosed with terminal breast cancer at the beginning of the book. After a few chapters, it spreads to the brain, thus making her demise imminent. It's when the cancer hits her brain that it gets funny; she begins to rave and lose control of her actions, thoroughly freaking out everyone around her. That doesn't sound all that funny, but if you have even a passing knowledge of cancer symptoms, it's pretty damn obvious that this is not how cancer works. Generally, when you've got a brain tumour, you get some headaches and then you die; quick and relatively quietly, not gibbering like a loon. That was pretty much the only thing that I liked without reserve, simply for the ridiculousness of it. Otherwise, I'm still not sure what to make of this. I don't dislike it, but then I don't particularly care for it either. I feel like it provoked something for me mentally, but I couldn't tell you for the life of me what that thing could be. I guess all I can say is that I feel uneasy because of this lack of knowing. Maybe that was the point all along.

I honestly don't know what to say about this overall. I don't feel I can really say either way whether this is a good or bad book. I guess if you're looking for a "clever" book or you like Will Self, then yeah I could recommend this. Otherwise I'd probably give it a miss. 2.5/5

Next review: The Mistress of Spices by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

Signing off,
Nisa.

A quick update

Hey guys, it's been a while since I updated this, huh? I noticed how long it's been since I wrote anything for this, so I figured that I owed you an explanation as to where I've been and how I'm getting on with How the Dead Live.
In terms of what I've been doing, it's been the month of essay writing for uni. I've hardly stopped for weeks. I am getting to the end of them though, so there should be more activity from me very shortly. As for the book, I'm getting there, slowly but surely. I imagine that I'll finish it over the next week or so. Hopefully.
Sorry about the long silence there, but things will be catching up soon, I promise.

Signing out,
Nisa.

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

The Poisonwood Bible is one of those books that I have heard almost nothing but praise for. That tends to raise your expectations somewhat. Having finished it now, I will agree that it is superbly written, but I can't say that I loved it as much as the general consensus of readers.

The basic premise of The Poisonwood Bible is that of the Price family moving to an isolated village in the Congo as missionaries. The book is narrated by the five women in the family as they watch the mission slowly but surely fall apart over time. As a premise, it works fine. To be honest, that wasn't what made me pick up the book in the first place, but it serves as a very good basis upon which the break-down of family and society can occur.
So, I'll start with the positive. The narrators are all extremely well-written, to the point where I actually forgot that they were all imaginary; they comprise of Orleanna and her four daughters, Rachel, Leah, Adah and Ruth May, all of whom are written with recognisably different 'voices'. The only member of the Price family that we don't hear directly from is Nathan, the father of the family unit, which I think is probably a good thing considering how quickly he gets tiring as it is. I should elaborate on them individually right about now I suppose. Nathan Price is probably my second least favourite character out of the book, although I think that was intentional. He's your standard, bible-thumping religious zealot, unable to admit when he's wrong or when compromises should be made; a.k.a. he's the last person you really want to send into a completely alien culture. Orleanna was more sympathetic, if only because she has to put up with him constantly as well as look after four growing girls. She was pretty much neutral in my view for a lot of the novel, primarily for that reason though; while she's necessary to keep all these personalities in check, she doesn't really become interesting herself until about 400 pages in. Rachel is my least favourite character by far, simply because she embodies everything that I despise in myself and others: selfishness, overt materialism, stupidity, an unwillingness to pull her weight during desperate times, egotism, small-mindedness and a poor grasp of English. The last item might seem a bit petty in comparison to the others, but the way in which she butchers the English language made me want to punch her repeatedly. Leah, in comparison, is my second favourite character, probably because she reminds me of my sister a bit; she's the family tomboy, she's earnest, she's passionate, she lets her emotions blind her sometimes. She's a genuinely nice person, if flawed, and she brightened up the novel considerably. My favourite character though was Adah, Leah's twin sister; since she sustained brain damage in the womb, she's had to walk with a pronounced limb and rarely talks. Her silence masks a sarcastic, cynical streak as well as an intellectualism that I really wasn't expecting when I started reading; for me she kind of acts as an audience surrogate, as she seems to understand exactly why everything that her parents were expecting is falling apart. It was a refreshing change. Finally, there's Ruth May, who is about 5-7 years old during their stay in the Congo. She's a pleasant enough little girl, but, as I've said before, I'm not fond of child narrators, so her sections were pretty much neutral for me. Another positive aspect for me was the snippets about the native language there, which I found fascinating. Granted, I can see this being boring for those less interested in language, but I found it very interesting and I thought the way that it tied into the main storyline was very clever.
So now for the negatives. I thought the tone was a bit uneven. This is the only criticism I've heard for this before I read this, and I found it to be a valid one. After the Price family goes their separate ways, it doesn't quite fit right with the previous plot-line. If the novel had ended at about the 400 page mark, I would have been satisfied with that as a story. After that, it follows the individual narrators as they deal with their experiences in different ways, and while that was interesting enough, it felt like a sequel novella that had been stapled onto the end of the first narrative. It also got a bit too preachy about the wrongs that Western civilisation has caused African society. Don't get me wrong, I think that the West, Britain and America in particular, do have a lot to answer for in regards to colonisation and the implementations of puppet dictatorships, but I don't think it needs to be explicitly hammered into a reader's head for 200 pages. Kingsolver makes good arguments, but they seem more suited to an academic paper than they do to a work of fiction.

So, overall, what did I think? I liked The Poisonwood Bible, but not as much as the consensus made me think I would. I'm glad that I read this and I think it's a book that people should read, but I don't think it's something that I'll ever re-read. 3.5/5

Next review: How the Dead Live by Will Self

Signing off,
Nisa.

American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

This is an odd one to review. Then again, American Psycho is just kind of weird all around. I guess I picked this one up because it's one of those books which is infamous: it's controversial and the reasons for that controversy are pretty well known, but it's still something you have to pick up and read yourself in order to understand. It's been an interesting nine days reading it.

So, I suppose it makes sense to explain what American Psycho is about first, before I go into the weirder stuff. It's narrated by Patrick Bateman, a young successful banker in New York at the end of the 1980s, so basically he's a yuppie. So, as a typical yuppie, his life consists of things like eating out at expensive restaurants, buying designer brands and working out; basically your standard process of keeping up (very expensive) appearances. What makes Patrick different from your average yuppie is that he's a psychopath and kills people. Maybe. That description is pretty much the whole book. The first half is mainly several dinners with work colleagues and one night stands, described in mind-numbing detail and with the occasionally line of absolute psychopathic violence, which everyone summarily ignores or fails to react to. At around the halfway point, we start seeing Patrick killing people in person. Or at least Patrick says he's killed all these people.
You'll notice that I keep saying things like maybe and might, when referring to Patrick's psychopathic tendencies. That's because he is pretty unreliable as a narrator, including details that both prove and disprove the reality of the murders and other crimes he says he commits. And I find that really interesting. While the violence is a big part of the narrative, and the part that most people focus on, I found the psychological aspect of the novel more interesting. The idea that he could be imagining all or part of the novel is somehow utterly fascinating to me: if he is imagining the whole thing, then would that just make him an average guy who retreats into fantasy and drugs in order to cope with the boring reality that is the high-life? He certainly takes enough Xanax and what-not.
But, of course, the thing that everyone comments on is the unusually high level of violence. That's fair enough, as Patrick describes his kills in just as much detail as the various different outfits of his colleagues and the menus of various restaurants. There's so much detail that it's actually rather absurd. Granted, it might start off nauseating, but then it seems to skip merrily over some undefined line after which the violence just seemed silly and over-the-top. Then again, I might just be that desensitized. In any case, I actually found the more mundane offences like the huge amounts of bigotry and the utter shallowness and vapidity of his acquaintances to be the more offensive parts of the novel. Again, that might just be me.

Like I said, this is an odd novel to review. As a whole, I'm glad that I read the novel, but I wouldn't necessarily recommend this to everyone; it's what you could call an acquired taste. If you're a fan of social commentary in your novels and/or you possess a strong stomach, I would recommend this. If not, then you probably won't like it. 4/5

Next review: The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver

Signing off,
Nisa.

Angel by L. A. Weatherly

Well, this was certainly a surprise. I'll admit, I haven't read anything termed "Young Adult" for a while now, because the books of that age range that I've read before seem to fail at pitching to a teenage audience, usually writing down as if for a younger reader. And, to be honest, I was a little wary about Young Adult stuff involving romance since the unfortunate Twilight faze that is just about dying down now. But I picked up Angel anyway, as the premise looked good and it looked like light reading. I'm rather glad I did now.

As I said in my little introduction there, it was the premise that caught my attention. Not the whole "assassin falling in love with his sworn enemy" thing that the blurb focuses on, which is a bit of a lie anyway; no, my attention was caught by the fact that in this world, angels are parasites. The idea that a group of beings could openly feed off of people with their victims would be none the wiser, walking away believing wholeheartedly that the angels were loving and benevolent, is something that could be really frightening if utilised properly. But of course, horror is not exactly what most gels with the inevitable romance that this would have. To the book's credit though, it does create a lot of tension as our protagonists, Willow and Alex, travel across America with no way of knowing who they can trust other than with instinct. The plot follows them as they flee from angels out to kill Willow because of the strange gifts that she has possessed since birth. The plot is pretty straightforward as they travel cross-country, trying to find allies and/or a way to get rid of the angels that have invaded our world. But, to be honest, after the last couple of books I've read, I'm more than happy to have a simple plot to read. Besides, it isn't really much about plot, as most of the twists are pretty clearly sign-posted. It's more a character study of our two main leads, as they work through personal struggles with their pasts until they inevitably get together. As leads, they're likeable enough and I would be more than happy to resume reading about their exploits in the next book in the series, should I find it and pick it up. The romance between them is a bit corny and perhaps a bit too instantaneous for my liking, but it's harmless enough. At the very least, they have to sort through some personal issues each before they decide to start a relationship, which is nice. So yeah, I surprised myself by liking this. Go figure.

Overall, a very involving, enjoyable story, despite some little snags. I'd be happy to recommend this to those who are after a pleasant read or enjoy romance and I'm sure that I will pick up the next volume should I see it. 4/5

Next review: American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis

Signing off,
Nisa.