Anna Seghers, Transit
There are plenty of war novels that traverse a familiar groove: the futility of war (Catch-22, The Good Soldier Svejk), the overwhelming scope of war (War and Peace, The Charterhouse of Parma), the radical expose of evil where it seems like there is none. Seghers' The Seventh Cross is an example of the last. We know, she knew, everybody kind of could have known that the Nazis were the bad guys, and they received important passive and active support from regular Germans with all kinds of motives. The Seventh Cross is notable in this respect because it was written and published during the war; people come to know the truth in all sorts of ways, and that novel was one of them. Important, but hammering home a point we all know.
Transit is instead a very weird novel, because it is about a German who refuses to leave Europe even though he has very good reasons to want to leave; more importantly, he has--through a series of misunderstandings--the ability to leave. But he doesn't stay for noble reasons, to resist the Germans or to rebuild Europe once it's over: he just wants to be a farmer and not leave. It's like Casablanca if Rick decided to stay but because all he really wanted in life was to run a casino. The novel is even more interesting because it is the exact opposite of the decision Seghers made for herself; it has strong autobiographical elements except that, well, everything the main character does is different than what Seghers did. And it this was it becomes an interesting book, but also a frustrating one: Exillituratur without the exile.
Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections
I read the first three stories. Every one was brilliantly done. Every one twisted the knife at the end. I decided to abandon it.
Charles Portis, True Grit
One of the hosts of my favorite podcast made an offhand reference to Portis, whose The Dog of the South I had read and felt indifferent about several years ago; I saw this while browsing the library shelves and decided to give it a go. Iconic, perfect, inimitable. Hard to say a bad word about it, except the part with the snakes at the end, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, though this was certainly the point.
Agatha Christie, And Then There Were None
Reading this one day and then watching Wake Up Dead Man the next was a real exercise in--actually, you know what, going to blog this separately.
Shirley Jackson, The Haunting of Hill House
I was required to read this in high school and did not especially like it, finding it to be well short of scary or horrifying. Maybe five years ago I read and enjoyed We Have Always Lived In the Castle, so I thought I'd give it another go. I don't dislike it as a book, but I also think I am not its ideal reader. One must believe something I don't to make the plot work, but I'm at a loss for what that thing might be. It moves along well until the wife and the other person show up and then there's just too many ideas trying to reconcile themselves in not enough space. Maybe I'm not really convinced that Eleanor was captured in any meaningful sense by the house?
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