Poetry thrills, kicks, kills.

The Life by Malcolm Knox

Thrills: Reading a book that is

yeah, and but

willing to be poetic, to create its own language.

Really

no, forget it

it’s amazing. Giant barrelling six footers, eight footers, ten footers curling in from the edge of the page.

Forget it, forget it, FORGET IT!

Reading a book that is willing to tell a story through the language is fantastic. It’s energizing. It’s exciting.

State of Wonder - part 2

Is it true for most people that the second half of a book feels better than the first? The opening salvo may hook me (The Tiger's Wife was a cracker), but it’s often the second half that has the pace and depth I look for in a reading experience. It keeps me up later. For me, this often happens simply because I find the rhythm of the book, I get to know the characters and understand where their journey is taking them and why it matters. It’s a bit like surrendering my expectations of a novel and accepting what it is I’m actually being offered.

State of Wonder

It has occurred to me just how much reading one book by an author can shape how you read another book by the same author. Years ago – I don’t know how many – I read Bel Canto, which I thought was a fantastic book.  I remember the beauty of the language. I remember being held in the still heavy air inside the room with a famous opera singer and all the other people attending an important Japanese businessman’s birthday. I also remember the contrasting gush of relief when finally we managed to get out into the gardens.

The Tiger's Wife

The suggested reading list at the end of this book says a lot: One Hundred Years of Solitude; The Jungle Book; City of the Beasts; Ghostwritten and The Fall of Yugoslavia. The Tiger’s Wife does a great job of creating a country preoccupied with death. The reality and the threat of death are presented as the lasting preoccupations of a country waiting for then split in two by war. The old lean on superstitions and the young are made lazy and self-indulgent by it.