Reading Challenge - #10. The Chrysalids

I don't often go back and read books from school curriculum, but The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (1955) is one that I had to try again because I remembered bits and pieces and its either liked or utterly hated by readers. My husband absolutely hates it, and some of the girls in my book club remember liking it, except the ending.

I found I enjoyed it this time when I read it. I think it also helped reading it more than one or two chapters at a time over a long period of time. I was able to think about the story more as an overall arch, than just analyzing bits and pieces here and there as dictated by a curriculum and focusing on specific details instead of ones that actually stood out to me. 

Unless you've read the book, or had someone explain it to you, the largest and most driven-home theme in it is intolerance, and in this book, particularly religious intolerance based around looking and being different. "Mutants" they call them in the book. However, this is not an aspect of the book I really want to focus on, because let's face it, its been done to death and I'd rather focus on other things about the book that affected me more reading it as an adult.

Main character, David, and some of his friends are SPOILER: telepathic. When his Uncle Axel discovers this and warns David, 10 years old at the time, to keep it a secret, he tells David: "You'll understand when you're older how important it is." (pg. 31) His uncle is trying to protect him from the mutant 'cleansing' because David is just a child. But child or not, it does not matter to the religion of the 'True Image' in the book. I think Uncle Axel is trying to preserve a little of David's childhood innocence while he still can before the reality of his situation sets in too much. He thinks the truth might spook David and Uncle Axel doesn't want him to run away and get chased down and so on and so forth. Elaborate from there. Its not good to be frank.

Protecting the innocence of children is something humankind practices both consciously and unconsciously to varying extents. There are some very "sheltered" children and then there are those who sometimes know too much of the world than most would deem acceptable. There is a fine balance between keeping them too sheltered that they have trouble coping with the 'real world' as teenagers and adults and them knowing too much that they take too many risks with themselves and others or can't determine what is decorum and polite versus abrupt and abrasive. I have my opinions on child-rearing and I know which side of this spectrum I fall on, but just so we're clear: there is no right or wrong way to protect the innocence of a child, just a fine balance that parents have to battle with every day while raising their children.

As the religion of 'God and the True Image' is such a large part of the story of The Chrysalids, there was one part about the birthing of new children that struck me with an interesting similarity. When a new child is born, an inspector must be summoned to determine the child as "normal" and issue it a Normalcy Certificate. Until this is done, the family cannot even acknowledge that a new baby has come or inform any of the family of its arrival. The similarity came to me between this "Normalcy Certificate" and how history has displayed mankind's prejudice to the Jewish and Japanese people during the second world war. In the book they have to be declared as normal by the governing body, but our ancestors went out of their way to declare and issue documents to those who were deemed different from the rest of the population. Its just an interesting turn of the tables in a way I never thought of before.

It is established in the book, that dying rather than being caught hiding that you're a mutant/deviant/different is significant. There are several mentions to characters killing off others to protect them rather than letting them get caught by the authorities for being as they are. In particular, after David's little sister Petra is discovered to be a telepathic like him and a few others, she is deemed to be protected at all costs or killed to prevent her from being taken into custody. Even David and Rosalind, his cousin, have to discuss it with one another and David resolves to kill her if they get get caught even though he loves her.

I have noticed this has been a theme in things I have been watching and reading over the past few years. That dying is preferable to being caught and then, I would assume, tortured, beaten, broken physically and mentally. I can see the appeal to this theme and how others would come to this conclusion, but its still strange to me the prominence it has come to be represented in entertainment I have been enjoying lately. Maybe there is a subtle acknowledgement creeping into our collective minds that death is a preferable choice compared the the horrific and devious things people can do to one another when we think/believe someone else is in the wrong.

On a lighter, side note: I just realized the person on the cover of the book is the 'mutant' girl Sophie that David meets when he is a kid. She has six toes, which David knows is supposed to be wrong, but he doesn't understand why something so small would make her evil in the eyes of everyone else he knows. Can't believe I didn't catch on to that until now.

Anyways, sorry if that was TL;DR, but it is another one of the Reading Challenge list and I'm excited about that. I now have to switch gears again and get the Book Club February choice read before the end of the month. After that is The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides.

Book Club: January's Choice - Murder on the Orient Express

We had our first meeting after reading Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie at the beginning of February. "Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare." Reads the back cover of the copy I picked up for the month. This is an interesting factoid considering only two out of six girls in my book club even liked the book, and two didn't even finish reading it.

Despite the mixed reviews, we had a very productive discussion about the book. Who we thought the culprit was from the start and what we thought about the revelation of who did it at the end. The whole book was very "technical and clinical" and one of the girls described it has having "no atmosphere." I agree in that statement as there is little-to-none description of their surroundings, the train and all the character descriptions are given by other characters and not actually by the author. Which we all thought was a different way to do things.

Personally, I was one of the two who liked it, but by the end I thought there is no way that one person could guess right that many times in a row. Yes, I know it is a character in a book, but Poirot's detective skills are so Sherlockian without being Sherlock that I had a hard time believing it all. (Maybe because I am biased and like Sherlock Holmes more. Who knows.) Regardless, there isn't much development as to who Hercule Poirot is in Murder on the Orient Express, but because there are so many books written by Christie about him as the main character solving crimes, we all agreed that there has to be pieces about his past and character in other books.

I also decided to watch the movie; the 2017 one, not the 1974 one. It starts off with building up the character background for Poirot, which the book does not at all touch on. So, that was nice. However, there were many, major differences between the movie and book. So many, I had to stop listing them while was taking notes because I could no longer keep track. The movie even attempted to be witty at times and the book was so very... Serious.

One of the big things that irritated me was the character of M. Bouc. In the novel he is a little ridiculous, but in the movie, he is like over-the-top ridiculous and I didn't like that at all. And some of the passengers took on characteristics and lines and roles of others that were in the book. Then, at the end of the movie, Poirot confronts the passengers on the train in a way that is absolutely and complete different than the end of the book. Took me right out of it.

Overall, the movie was good, well done to an extent, and the scenery was pretty. And I think most people would like it, provided they hadn't read the book and vice versa. They don't really do each other justice and are better off not being associated with one another. If that makes sense.

In the end, we all discussed whether or not we would read another one of Christie's books, and I think I would try another. Most likely Death on the Nile, as it is another one of her most famous novels. We're also all looking forward to reading our next book for February, which is of a completely different genre and writing style. Guess we'll see how that one goes compared to this one.

Reading Challenge - #9. The Light Between Oceans

January is over and I am home from my hot holiday in Mexico. I can say I feel a little bit successful in completing at least one book while I was on vacation, despite taking three with me. Maybe that just means my vacation was really good and not boring? Still, I would like to be a little more ahead in my Reading Challenge like I set out to do at the beginning of the month.

The Light Between Oceans by M. L. Stedman is a steady flow of emotions; guilt, love, loss and grief all circling the tragic story of an isolated lighthouse keeper and his wife. I haven't read a book that made me cry as much as this one did in a really long time. It ripped my heart out on more than one occasion. Beautifully written for sure.

Set just after the First World War, the story starts with Tom Sherbourne returning home to Australia. Looking forward to the isolation that an off shore lighthouse posting provides, Tom struggles with his dark memories of the war and his deep-felt guilt that he should not have arrived home alive when others did not. His new wife, Isabel, lets him feel again when he never thought he would, but his army training and adherence to the rules causes a rift when they find a dead man in a dinghy and a living baby girl on the shores of their island.

The author's description of the tolls that the war took on the town of Point Partageuse, from where Isabel hails, and Janus Island is just off shore from, is chillingly intimate and exquisitely written. (Pages 16-20 in my copy or the first part of Chapter 2) I read the sequence of pages a few times just to take in each detail and it really helped me to understand the guilt that riddles Tom's soul about the war.

Heart-wrenching, but also incredibly hopeful and loving, the ups and down in The Light Between Oceans are an emotional ride that had me looking for tissues. Between the loss of the unborn children that Tom and Isabel endure, the grief that follows each time, and then the eventual hope and love that arrives with the baby girl that washes ashore. The mesmerizing story M. L. Stedman weaves is felt in every word, page, character and intricacy of the tale. The loss, grief, love and guilt is felt by all, even those on the mainland far outside the isolation that is Janus Island. Their own losses, grief and hopes of the future are interwoven in one way or another with Tom and Isabel's plight, some very intimately and others in a greater sense.

One particular passage stuck with me, and even appears in the movie as part of a conversation Isabel has with Tom:

“Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent lost a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.” (pg 123)

This detail of Isabel's inner story gives a possible over-arching insight to the way many characters in the novel could be feeling about how the war has effected each of them, everyone they know and everything else in between. In particular, this memory helps Isabel come to grips with everything that has happened to her and her own attempts at motherhood and the decisions that she and Tom make about the baby girl and the dead man that arrive in the boat.

The Light Between Oceans main theme reminds me of a quote from, surprisingly enough, Jurassic Park III (2001). Said by Dr. Alan Grant, played by Sam Neill: "Some of the worst things imaginable have been done with the best intentions." The whole premise of this novel rides on the idea of 'best intentions'.

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Made in 2016 and starring Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander and Rachel Weisz, The Light Between Oceans film was just as much an emotional roller-coaster as the novel. I think having read the book and knowing all the more intimate details and thoughts of the characters and their back stories made watching the movie a lot harder and more emotional for me. I knew when every heartbreak and emotional turmoil was coming. I was a blubbering mess on the couch the whole time.

Also, because I really like all the main actors too, I think it really made the film that much more real for me. The scenery, music, and sometimes lack-there-of, sprinkled with the sparse dialogue and long shots of just Tom and Isabel out on Janus with nothing but the sound of the wind made the movie for me. However, this also made it more despairing, and some what lacking but also desperate in clinging to the internal struggles of the characters and trying to make the audience sense it, feel it, breathe it through them.

There were obviously things left out of the movie, but I felt most of them didn't effect the main plot or theme set out by the book and carried over onto the screen. Overall, I really liked the movie. I LOVED the book and highly recommend it. 

I really think I need to not read a weepy one next. In fact, The Chrysalids by John Wyndham is next.