A Prayer for Owen Meany

While in my early days of high school, I read one of my favorite books of all time, The Cider House Rules by John Irving.  I quickly started seeking out other books by John Irving, and managed to start and never finish both The World According to Garp and A Prayer for Owen Meany.  In my quest to read all of the books I have never completed on my bookshelf, the time came to reopen the world of Owen Meany and figure out why I was never able to finish this book all those years ago.  After finally finishing it this time, I can’t quite answer the question as to why I couldn’t get through it the first time, but I think the direction from which I came at the book this time around made the reading experience, while more difficult in some ways, much more satisfying when my journey was complete.

The novel starts out by introducing us to John Wheelwright, of the Gravesend Wheelwrights, a long line of distinguished citizens and influencers within the Northeast.  John Wheelwright is the narrator of the story and is relating his tale as a middle-aged gentleman living in Canada and talking about his best friend from childhood, Owen Meany.  Owen is a small boy, and by small he means physically small rather than young, with a voice that, upon hearing it, you will never forget.  Owen considers himself to be an instrument of God after a foul ball that he hits in a Little League game kills John’s mother.  He feels that God has taken his hands for a higher purpose and he will see that mission through, whatever it takes.

The early parts of the book are lighthearted recountings of John’s childhood with Owen – the games they played, the people they encountered – and winds through the timeline with no regard to linearity.  And while it may sound like a distracting way to read a novel, Irving’s chapters (none of which are shorter than 40 pages) are aptly titled to explain an object, or an event, that eventually ties together beautifully with the climax of the novel.  The later chapters are told in strict chronological order, and the shift creates a sense of building tension until the finale, leaving the reader slightly in awe of how Irving managed to take all of the blatant hints and seemingly meaningless events and create a master plan that couldn’t have simply come from his imagination.

With a title like A Prayer for Owen Meany, it can readily be assumed that this book does not have an entirely happy ending.  In fact, the ending of the book is stated matter-of-factly throughout the novel in various ways, however the exact circumstances do not come to fruition until the last pages.  But the force with which the ending hits you made me grateful that I was at home by myself as I read the last pages, because I was sobbing for these characters that I had grown to love.

But the most important impact this book has on the reader stems from the master plan that Owen believes God has for him.  I was raised in the Lutheran church, and beginning in my junior year of high school, I began to have what my mother considered to be a crisis of faith.  It started out as merely a question of whether the Lutheran church was the right place for me, or whether the other various denominations of Christianity held something different, something more, that would strengthen my connection with God as well as my earthly community.  Through learning history in school and reading books on the subject, I began to fully understand the atrocities that had been committed in the past in the name of Christianity and also to recognize the cracks in the current system, particurlarly in the Catholic church.  And then, with an Introduction to Islam class my sophomore year of college, I fully understood for the first time how at their core, Judaism, Christianity and Islam were the same religion with the same set of core principles to hopefully lead them to a glorious afterlife with the same God.  And yet the wars and the bloodshed and the hypocrisy are rampant in each of these, and I decided then and there that I would remove myself from the religious community.  I would like to say at this point that I have no prejudices against any person that practices any of these religions, rather having moral and ethical issues with the religious dogma.  I have to admit that I do have issues with the hypocrites and the fanatics, however I recognize that these people come from every religion, and so again can be traced back to a flaw in the system.  While I deeply wanted to believe that a higher power existed, I couldn’t quite come to grips with how to identify this being as the notions that I entertained to personify this nameless power stemmed from my Christian upbringing.  And so I chose the path of agnosticism, later told by a friend that I was more of a deist, and thought I had put the issue to bed.

But during the course of reading this book, an event in my personal life shook me to the very core, and I found myself angry and frustrated and wanting someone to blame.  And I felt, for the first time in a very long time, that there actually was someone to blame, or to question, to try and make sense of an event that just didn’t seem to fit in the puzzle of my life.  For I still want to believe that I have a path as well, and while it may not be as apparent and righteous as the path that Owen was put upon, it is mine, and I realized that I desparately want to find it again.

I feel fortunate that I have this book as part of my personal book collection, and feel that at some point later in my life I will be revisiting Owen and John, hoping to take another piece of wisdom from their story.  5 out of 5 stars.

I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell

So, my job has been a little slow for about the past two weeks, and as I was lamenting this fact to a friend of mine, he suggested that I check out this book, which he happened to have in PDF form.  Perfect for reading while making it look like you could actually be doing something important.  This book, a recounting of stories from one Tucker Max, would have been a quick read anyway, but when you’re doing nothing but reading for about 6 hours of your day all told, I managed to finish this one in about two, two and a half days.

Part of the reason that this reads quickly is due to the format in which it is written.  Basically Tucker Max started his own website a few years ago to blog about the scenarios he managed to get himself into involving women, alcohol, or some combination thereof.  I have to say at the outset, this book probably is not for everybody.  If you don’t enjoy hearing drinking stories that border on make-believe or about the latest way a playboy has managed to use or abuse a woman, you might as well just stop reading this entry now, because you’re sure as hell never going to read the book.

While this book is great literature by no means, it is definitely an entertaining read.  At many points during the book, which of course I’m reading clandestinely at my desk, I thought I was going to have to stop because the urge to laugh out loud for extended periods of time hit me over and over again.  As he points out at the very outset of this book, the author is by no means a good human being.  He doesn’t try to justify himself in anyway, or even to say that his behavior should be a model for anyone else.  Tucker Max simply sets out to recount his escapades, and recount he does.  While they never exactly fall flat, some of the stories are definitely a better read than others.  He starts off with the story he feels is the best (I did visit his original website while reading this book, tuckermax.com, where he said so himself) and goes on in a somewhat descending order from there.

The concept of the book really is nothing new, as all of us can probably think back to hundreds of times we related a particularly funny drinking adventure or a rather embarrassing sex romp.  But how many of us actually have taken the time to write it all down, and more importantly, write it in a way that makes a complete stranger who has no idea who you are think it’s entertaining?  Plus the sheer number of stories that this guy has is simply amazing.  Some of you may read it and think to yourself, there’s no way that all of this is true.  I for one, who have a friend similar to Tucker Max in many more ways than one (and he would consider that a compliment), really believe that all of this did happen.  I also think that sometimes, it’s not the story itself that’s necessarily all that charming, but rather in the way you tell it.

Reflective of our modern society in format and in content, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell by Tucker Max is one of those books that picks you up and takes you along for the ride.  Enjoy, my friends.  3.5 out of 5 stars.

Deception Point

The third novel by Dan Brown, Deception Point takes us to the Arctic Circle where NASA has discovered a meteorite that contains evidence of advanced lifeforms from outer space. When civilian scientist Michael Tolland and NRO Specialist Rachel Sexton are brought in to verify NASA’s claim, they are unknowingly forced into a dangerous game of cat and mouse with an unknown but highly trained opponent that will stop at nothing to kill them over information they have uncovered that calls the data into question.

Adding another element of intrigue and scandal, the storyline also follows Rachel Sexton’s father, Senator Sedgewick Sexton and his campaign to unseat the current President at any cost.  Verbally attacking NASA for months and secretly accepting donations from prominent members of the movement to privatize space exploration, the announcement from NASA sends Sedgewick and his campaign reeling, and hot on the trail to uncover any holes they possibly can to get their campaign up out of the dirt.

Similar to his earlier novel, Digital Fortress, Dan Brown takes his reader into the behind-the-scenes world of our government, including the NRO, a secret intelligence organization and NASA, one of our more infamous endeavors.  In what has become his signature style, the fast-paced storyline is inundated with explanations of various subjects, ranging from how best to excavate a meteorite from a glacier to what a megaplume is to the strength of the sense of smell of the hammerhead shark.  While the author never gives us any information that doesn’t fit neatly into his storyline, it sometimes feels through this narrative as if he really has a case of ADD and is simply trying to justify his vast knowledge of trivia by piecing a story around the facts.

The weave of interlocking narratives combined with short chapters (two to three pages on average) keeps the storyline moving at an almost break-neck pace as the reader continues to move on to find out what comes along next.  And while I probably figured out the orchestrator of the conspiracy a little sooner than most, I definitely was kept guessing through most of the book.

While I always enjoy the uncomplicated nature of a Dan Brown novel, he seems to personally resonate with the Catholic Church conspiracies a little more than the governmental ones.  A good book to pick up for an airplane ride or to enjoy laying on the beach.  3 out of 5 stars.

Pride and Prejudice

I first read this classic novel by Jane Austen while in eighth grade and began my love of not only Jane Austen, but much of the British literature from this time period.  While I loved the book the first time I read it, I gained a much deeper appreciation for the story upon reading it for a second time.

The Bennett family is comprised of five daughters, Jane, Elizabeth, Mary, Kitty and Lydia, in a society where a family with no sons is generally worse off with the death of the father.  As the Bennetts are no different, Mrs. Bennett is set on marrying her daughters well.  During the autumn months, the Bennetts make the acquaintance of one Mr. Bingley and his party, new residents to the neighborhood.  An attachment is quickly apparent between Mr. Bingley and Jane, but the rest of the party appears to find friendship with the rest of the family beneath them, including Mr. Darcy.  Elizabeth takes particular offense to these slights, and quickly forms an opinion of Mr. Darcy as a prideful man with few manners.

Before Christmas, the Bingley party has taken their leave with no promise of a permanent alliance between Jane and Bingley, and with a broken heart, Jane follows the party to London.  Once there, she confirms Elizabeth’s suspicions that the parting of the two young lovers was not orchestrated by Bingley, but rather a forced separation by his sister and Mr. Darcy.  While Jane goes to forget her woes in London, Elizabeth journeys to visit her friend Charlotte and her husband Mr. Collins, a cousin of the Bennetts who stands to inherit their property upon the death of Mr. Bennett and who at one time proposed to Elizabeth without success.  While visiting, Elizabeth once again meets Mr. Darcy and their relationship continues to form from that moment forward.

While many of the rules of etiquette and ideas of courtship that drive the storyline are outdated to modern readers, the underlying narrative of two young people who form opinions of each other based on false first impressions is a timeless situation.  While most of us like to think that we are a good judge of character, the truth of the matter is that we make snap decisions about who people are within the first few moments of meeting them, and it usually takes quite a long acquaintance, usually supplemented with other people’s opinions and experiences, to change our minds.  And while it may not turn into the passionate love affair of Elizabeth and Darcy, we usually end up forming a stronger bond with these people than we otherwise would.

No matter how many different time periods I visit, I don’t think I’ll ever ceased to be amaze by how unique each one’s set of societal practices are and usually how different they are from our own.  The courtship rituals of the 19th century, with extravegant balls being about the only time two people of the opposite sex could interact and proposals of marriage coming almost without any sort of forewarning are evidence of an antiquated system.  And yet I don’t doubt that their feelings were any less strong, and sometimes wonder if by leaving the “getting to know you” aspect of any relationship until after the wedding bells keeps things interesting for much longer and lead to happier marriages.  With the current divorce statistics, we must not be quite doing it right either, or is it that we are simply looking for something different when we say “I do”?

A true classic novel, Pride and Prejudice is one that should be read by everyone at least once, if for no other reason than to remind us all that first impressions aren’t always the most dependable.  5 out of 5 stars.

World Without End

A companion book to “Pillars of the Earth”, Ken Follett once again takes us to the world of Kingsbridge, a fictional town set in medieval England during the 1300′s.  The cathedral erected by Jack Builder is the centerpiece of a bustling township that has enjoyed years of prosperity and good fortune.  We open on All Hallow’s Eve to a little girl picking her way through a crowd during a church service, hoping to steal a purse of coins in order to help her family survive another winter.

This is how we are introduced to Gwenda, one of four children who will later learn a secret and bind them together through the course of the novel.  Merthin and Ralph, two brothers whose father’s purse was stolen, forcing them to live in poverty rather than the life of a knight’s children, Gwenda, the daughter of a former thief who can do little to support his family outside of hunting squirrels and having his children steal money for the family, and Caris, the daughter of a prosperous wool merchant.  After the initial meeting, we jump 10 years in the future as all four on the brink of adulthood.  The parallels between characters in Pillars of the Earth begin to form, as Merthin is a carpenter’s apprentice with a natural talent for building, Caris is helping her father with his wool business and seems to have less than traditional ideas of what she wants to do in her life, Ralph is a squire for Earl Roland and has shown early signs of an untameable bloodlust, and Caris’ cousin Godwyn is an ambitious young monk with his sights set on rising through the ranks of the Church.

The storytelling format is very similar to Pillars of the Earth with narrator duties passing from one main character to another.  This novel seems to be better rooted in its time period than Pillars as the characters seem to interact better with the events of the time period rather than seemingly free floating through history.  The Black Death and the Hundred Years’ War play pivotal roles in the lives of the characters, defining them and driving the plot forward.  Some frustrations in the narrative still exist – in Pillars, I found myself frustrated by the repetitiveness of the William/Jack & Aliena storyline where Jack & Aliena would try and advance something forward and William was there to thwart them.  In World, the frustration mainly stems from the Merthin and Caris love affair, for while both are very much in love with each other, Caris continually seems to ruin her chances at happiness by convincing herself time and again that a traditional woman’s role will cause her to completely lose her sense of identity and purpose.  While her feelings may have been slightly justified, her utter lack of confidence in Merthin to allow her to be her true self seemed forced.  Only by sheer luck does he stick around to be beaten down time and again.

Lastly, there’s Ralph.  The new William, this character serves no other purpose than to provide a source of absolute hatred and scorn from the reader.  In the first pages of the book, his true nature is revealed when he kills Gwenda’s dog for no reason at all except that it was there, providing a target for his arrow.  No sympathy for this character is ever built into the narrative, and it causes me to wonder if men felt a greater freedom to allow this type of personality to show back in this time, as if they belong more here than in our modern-day society, or if these are simply devices the author turns to as multi-dimensional villains are too difficult to create.

Once again, Ken Follett has created a world that draws the reader in and holds on tight.  A well-crafted story, that while it may have some of the flaws of the first book, does show growth in other areas.  If you liked Pillars of the Earth, I would recommend giving this book a read.  4 out of 5 stars.

Pillars of the Earth

I received this book from my parents for my birthday this year, and after having had it recommended to me by a friend last summer, I couldn’t wait to start reading.

It was quickly apparent that I was not going to be disappointed by this book.  Ken Follett is best known for his thriller novels and this book proved to be written in much the same style.  Taking place in medieval England, the central story revolves around the construction of a cathedral.  To most effectively tell the story that weaves in commentary on the social, political and religious landscape, the author periodically changes narrative duties between a variety of characters.

The story begins with a prologue outlining the hanging of a thief.  During the hanging, a pregnant woman with striking gold eyes curses the man’s accusers, proclaiming that the death of an innocent man will someday be avenged.

Skip ahead more than a decade to Tom Builder constructing a house for a young man of the country gentry for his upcoming marriage to the daughter of the Earl of Shiring.  This scene provides an introduction to Tom’s family, including his son Alfred, daughter Martha and wife Agnes, who we learn is pregnant with the couple’s third child.  Suddenly, a horse comes charging into the area where the workers are, almost trampling Martha.  It is William, the young man about to celebrate his nuptials, or so he was supposed to.  We find out that the young woman refused to marry him and so work on the house has ceased.  Tom is now out of a job and he and his family end up wandering the English countryside, starving out the winter.

The book continues to follow Tom and his family as they make their way from starving, homeless, and searching for work to Tom’s stepson Jack becoming the master builder of the Kingsbridge Cathedral.  Throughout the story we have many pieces woven together from different narrators until finally coming to a quick head and resolution.

Although some of the characters were a little too one-dimensional (one in particular reminded me of a superhero villain, never changing, always looking for new ways to ruin the lives of the main characters) and the ending a little too neat and tidy (everyone gets what’s coming to them, for better or for worse), this was a wonderfully crafted story that took a man’s love for cathedrals and how they are constructed and turned it into a lively world alive with the characters who revolve around one of these central buildings.  While coming in a bit long at over 900 pages, the majority of the story moves along quickly, keeping you enthralled until the very end.  I highly recommend this book!  4.5 out of 5 stars

Rebecca

I’ve owned this book for years and after seeing it on the list “1001 Books to Read Before You Die”, I figured I might as well open it up.

The story is set in England in what I am assuming to be the late 1920s or early 1930s (women have short hair and wear trousers, but the idea of a woman as independent as Rebecca seems strange).  The Narrator (we never do learn her name) is the second wife of Maxim de Winter, an older gentleman she met while providing services as a travel companion to a woman in Monte Carlo.  It’s a whirlwind romance and within six weeks of the book’s beginning, we are sent to the mythical world of Manderley, an estate held in public awe.  We have learned during the course of their courtship that Maxim had been married to a woman named Rebecca and that she had tragically drowned in the sea near the estate.  The second Mrs. de Winter feels that she will never quite fit into the world that her new husband occupies and that everyone around her is silently judging her against Rebecca and not liking what they see.

While the Narrator’s main obstacle in the story is overcoming the ghost of her predecessor, another nemesis is introduced early in the plot by the name of Mrs. Danvers.  Various scenes throughout the book at first slowly, and then with increasing severity, paint Mrs. Danvers as a true female villain, most notably in a costume ball fiasco and an encouraged suicide attempt.

The book progresses along this course until a plot twist occurs to set up a resolution for our characters and their story.  I won’t give this part away for those that want to read the book.

I hated this narrator.  Maybe it’s that I have never been painfully shy, maybe it’s that I was brought up to believe that if you don’t like something about your current situation you change it, but I found this character to be a simpering, cowardly, whiner of a character that how she ended up where she did I may never know.  For the first 300 pages of this book she is haunted by the ghost of a woman she feels she can never be and that her husband will never love her because he is still in love with his first wife.  The “poor me” routine playing like a broken record grates on your nerves until you want to throw the book down in disgust.

Should you happen to make it to the plot twist after the climax, you realize why the author needed to make her narrator so wrapped up in her own head.  If she had been more self-aware, had demanded explanations rather than hanging her head like a kicked puppy dog, the twist would not have the same impact and we probably would have been left without the climax of the book entirely.  The resolution drags on for another 100 pages, leaving one last twist at the end that only serves to explain the beginning of the novel.

While I don’t regret reading this novel, I strongly disagree with those that draw parallels with this novel and Jane Eyre, a better novel about a woman in a similar set of circumstances.  The difference between these two characters, however, is that Jane demands answers, refuses to be a willing accomplice to anything, and has far too much pride in herself to be viewed as less than an equal (even if her economic station in life dictates otherwise).

Weak character arcs, a storyline overburdened with detailed descriptions and too neat of a resolution.  2.5 out of 5 stars.

And our journey begins…

Books have proven time and again to be windows to alternate realities, whether taking me back to Elizabethan England to spy on Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Leicester or off to the depths of space to a world that resides on the backs of four elephants and ride on the back of a gigantic sea turtle.

Join me on my exploration into the world of literature!