Netherland

Updated to add: Finished reading this book when I was away at home last week. Got lots of things to catch up on right now, so I'm going to pass this post off as the review one. Made for an enjoyable read the extremely non-linear and layered narrative.

I'm about half way into Netherland by Joseph O'Neil. So far the book has been about nothing in particular or about a lot of things, whichever way you look at it. The novel follows the life of a Dutch banker Hans van den Broek in a non-linear fashion. Set in around 2008 or later, the novel shifts in and out of Hans's childhood, focuses on his life in the post 9/11 USA and its impact.
The author talks about so many different things, one mainly being about how the protagonist finds solace in cricket. The writing leaves somethings unsaid, it's suggestive, leaving it to each reader to reach the depths he wants to. More on the book when I finish it. Here are some excerpts:

I can say quite ingenuously that I was attempting to counter the great subtractions that had lessened my life and that the prospect of an addendum, even one as slight as a new licence and a new car, seemed important at that time; and no doubt I was drawn to a false syllogism involving the nothingness of my life and the somethingness of doing.

~

The pleasantness of my Holland was related to the slightness of its mysteries. There obtained a national transparency promoted by a citizenry that was to all appearances united in a deep, even pleased, commitment to foreseeable and moderate outcomes in life. Nowadays, I gather from the newspapers, there are problems with and for alien elements, and things are not as they were; but in my day - age qualifies me to use that phrase! - Holland was a providential country. There seemed little point in an individual straining excessively for or against the upshots arranges on his behalf, which had been thoughtfully conceived to benefit him from the day he was born to the day he died and hardly required explanation. There was accordingly not much call for a dreamy junior your truly to ponder connections.

~

But surely everyone can also testify to another, less reckonable kind of homesickness, one having to do with unsettlements that cannot be located in spaces of geography or history;

~

Netherland was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2008. O'Neil's writing reflects familiarity with cultures, it doesn't come out as purely researched but with a grace that only someone who has experienced these different worlds can express. Curiosity sent me along to wikipedia (where else?!) to find out that the author was born in Ireland, grew up in different countries including Mozambique, Turkey, Iran and then in The Netherlands. He studied in London and currently lives in the Chelsea Hotel in New York (where this novel's protagonist also lives immediately following 9/11) with his family. No wonder.

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Now I wish I knew enough French to read a novel.

A few days back I read Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth which was written in French, originally published in 1864. Apparently, there are many English translations varying in the narrative and even the character names (in the version I read, published by TOR, pages 258, the nephew's name is Harry)

The adventure is written in a 'hard' science fiction style where the characters are driven by knowledge and knowledge alone, mostly devoid of layman human reactions to discoveries which was a welcome change.

However I found the translation testing my patience many a time especially the parts where Harry introspects, worries about his plight (ever so often). The narration here left much to be desired, was disconnected and dull. Curiosity and a mood to indulge in the author's imagination propelled me through to the end. I did enjoy the voyage to Iceland; learn't of it's capital Reykjavík, of its simple, laid back and educated people, of eiderdown hunters; the giants at the center, the volcano ride..

This would make for an enjoyable read for young adults and the original work in French (or a t least a better translation) would be the one to read in order to appreciate the state of science, discovery and invention in Europe about 150 years ago. Maybe I'll learn to read it one of these days. I'll definitely keep an eye open for a better translation of Verne's other works.

Copperfield

It's been more than a month since the last book, partly due to time spent reading snippets from books that are not novels and mainly due to the the one that took up all space and forced itself with authority the last few weeks.

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (published by TOR, pages 1001)
The best I've ever read. Period.

I'll just leave you with the Author's words, from the preface to the 'Charles Dickens' edition.

I remarked in the original Preface to this Book, that I did not find it easy to get sufficiently far away from it, in the first sensations of having finished it, to refer to it with the composure which this formal heading would seem to require. My interest in it was so recent and strong, and my mind was so divided between pleasure and regret - pleasure in the achievement of a long design, regret in the separation from many companions - that I was in danger of wearying the reader with personal confidences and private emotions.

Besides which, all that I could have said of the Story to any purpose, I had endeavoured to say in it.

It would concern the reader little, perhaps, to know how sorrowfully the pen is laid down at the close of a two-years' imaginative task; or how an Author feels as if he were dismissing some portion of himself into the shadowy world, when a crowd of the creatures of his brain are going from him for ever. Yet, I had nothing else to tell; unless, indeed, I were to confess (which might be of less moment still), that no one can ever believe this Narrative, in the reading, more than I believed it in the writing.

So true are these avowals at the present day, that I can now only take the reader into one confidence more. Of all my books, I like this the best. It will be easily believed that I am a fond parent to every child of my fancy, and that no one can ever love that family as dearly as I love them. But, like many fond parents, I have in my heart of hearts a favourite child. And his name is David Copperfield.

To two years

It was a wonderfully fine thing to have that lofty castle to myself, and to feel, when I shut my outer door, like Robinson Crusoe, when he had got into his fortification, and pulled his ladder up after him. It was a wonderfully fine thing to walk about town with the key of my house in my pocket, and to know that I could ask any fellow to come home, and make quite sure of its being inconvenient to nobody, if it were not so to me. It was a wonderfully fine thing to let myself in and out, and to come and go without a word to anyone, and to ring Mrs. Crupp up, gasping, from the depths of the earth, when I wanted her - and when she was disposed to come. All this, I say, was wonderfully fine; but I must say, too, that there were times when it was very dreary.

It was fine in the morning, particularly in the fine mornings. It looked a very fresh, free life, by daylight: still fresher, and more free, by sunlight. But as the day declined, the life seemed to go down too. I don't know how it was; it seldom looked well by candle-light. I wanted somebody to talk to, then. I missed Agnes. I found a tremendous blank, in the place of that smiling repository of my confidence. Mrs. Crupp appeared to be a long way off. I thought about my predecessor, who had died of drink and smoke; and I could have wished he had been so good as to live, and not bother me with his decease.

After two days and nights, I felt as if I had lived there for a year, and yet I was not an hour older, but was quite as much tormented by my own youthfulness as ever.

- From David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Excerpt credit