The Cellist Of Sarajevo

I have always loved stories about war. I know that sounds a little morbid, but these are the stories that speak powerfully to the dignity and generosity of the human spirit while under extraordinary duress, and that is a beautiful thing to be included in. This weeks unforgettable book, The Cellist of Sarajevo by Canadian author Steven Galloway, is an elegiac, imaginative, and extraordinary novel, inspired by an actual event during the siege of Sarajevo in 1992. It explores the brutality of war and the redemptive power of music. Crafted with unforgettable imagery and heartbreaking simplicity, this book speaks forcefully to the triumph of the spirit in the face of overwhelming despair.


The Cellist of Sarajevo captures with taut, painstaking clarity, the events and atmosphere surrounding the siege of Sarajevo, the longest in modern warfare. The novel’s linchpin is the true story of a cellist who resolves to play Albinoni’s Adagio on the same square every day for 22 days in honor of the victims of a massacre that took place there. Everyone has a different perspective on the cellist’s motivation, as they wonder aloud what he is trying to prove, beauty having become mostly a source of irony in their desolate lives. But the cellist is more than a symbol of resistance; as one of the characters, Arrow, listens to him play, "she leans back into the wall. She's no longer there. Her mother is lifting her up, spinning her around and laughing. The warm tongue of a dog licks her arm." The Cellist unites the stories threads, as his music becomes the backdrop to each page.


Chapters alternate between the perspectives of three primary characters, acting almost like three short stories pieced together. There is Arrow, a young woman who has gone from university shooting champion to crack sniper, taking aim at the men in the hills who are besieging Sarajevo. When she is eventually ordered to commit a different kind of killing, she must begin to question who she is and why she kills. Listening to the cellist, Arrow "let the slow pulse of the vibrating strings flood into her. She felt the lament raise a lump in her throat.... Her eyes watered, and the notes ascended the scale. The men on the hills didn't have to be murderers.... She didn't have to be filled with hatred. The music demanded that she remember this, that she know to a certainty that the world still held the capacity for goodness. The notes were proof of that."


Kenan lives with his wife and two children, in a small apartment with no water and only intermittent electricity. He has struggled to avoid engaging in the conflict, but every four days must venture out to the old brewery and get water for his family and elderly neighbor, an undertaking that has him nearly paralyzed with fear, where each wrong step can lead to death, or worse, loss of dignity. "One moment the people are walking or running through the street, and then they drop abruptly as though they were marionettes and their puppeteer had fainted."


Lastly we meet Dragan. His wife and son have, he assumes, escaped safely to Italy so he is now living with his sister and her husband. As he takes circuitous routes to get to his work and food at the bakery, he recalls its past as he's faced with its present: "Every day," he muses, "the Sarajevo he thinks he remembers slips away from him a little at a time, like water cupped in the palms of his hands, and when it's gone, he wonders what will be left. He isn't sure what it will be like to live without remembering how life used to be, what it was like to live in a beautiful city."


With exquisite writing, this gripping novel transcends time and place. The Cellist of Sarajevo is a testimony of the strength of the human heart, and the possibility of the survival of the human spirit in the direst of circumstances. Galloway shows the reader the simple lives of his characters while defining the essence of what it means to be human, making the novel a universal story, and forcing the reader wonder what he or she would do faced with similar circumstances. As Galloway points out in his short introduction: “The themes and characters exist wherever ordinary people find themselves caught in war. Sarajevo could be Lebanon or Chechnya or Iraq or a half-dozen other places”.


Galloway’s style is spare and unadorned – a mirror to the skeletal city and its emotionally numbed inhabitants. “Arrow wonders what will be left standing when morning comes, whether there will be any noticeable difference in the appearance of the city. There must come a point where so much has been turned to rubble that ruining a little more makes no difference. It’s possible that point has already been reached.” Although Galloway’s characters weigh the value of their lives against the choices they must make, he effectively creates a fifth character in the city itself, capturing the details among the rubble and destruction that give added weight to his memorable novel.


While reading this book, I was traveling in Montreal for some dance workshops. One morning I walked into the studio to see everyone in the class warming up to Bob Marley. It was kind of an odd sight, seeing all of these graceful ballerinas singing and pulsing along to the music, but it was also a wonderful reminder of the power of music. In this single room were people from all over the world, including England, Spain, Russia, and Canada, and even though they all come from different places, speak different languages, and were raised differently, they were all brought together by this song.

“At once an expansion and a deepening of the thematic concerns that weave themselves throughout his work and a glittering testament to the power of art to counteract hatred and division.... Galloway’s novel, bursting with life, is a vivid reminder of the power of art to dispel the darkness.”

As a dancer and dance teacher, I have studied many styles of dance and choreography. One of the things that you learn when choreographing is to use a certain sequence several times over. This helps the audience stay engaged, and refocuses the attention back to the main story of the dance. Within the first few pages of this book, there was a phrase that was repeated several times. “It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expended in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the first instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.” It was poetry. It was so impacting and memorable that I couldn’t stop thinking about this phrase throughout the rest of the book. It was after reading only the first few pages that I fell in love with this story.


I find that when I read certain books, they spark an interest in something else that I want to know more about, as was the case with this book. Since I knew basically nothing about the siege of Sarajevo, I went online to find out a little more, and came across this very interesting article from the London Times. It describes Verdran Smailovics, the real cellist, displeasure at finding his photograph on the original dust jacket of this book. The article also includes author Steven Galloway's reaction to Smailovic's dismay at being the inspiration for a fictional character, while bringing up some very interesting points. “I never stopped playing music throughout the siege. My weapon was my cello. But if I do not get justice now I will burn it back in Sarajevo.” My Tip for this book is to indulge in topics of interest to you. Do a little research, find out more on the subject, and enjoy learning something new. Below is the link to view the article, and I suggest taking a look at it, for it brings a somewhat new perspective to someone affected by fame and their actions.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article4083037.ece

The Golden Mean

I have been in a novel phase over the past couple weeks, but that's usually what happens over summer. Perhaps it's an old habit from school. All year we read our textbooks, learning about biology, history, and mathematics, so when the long anticipated summer finally arrives, and we have a choice in what we read, we jump at the opportunity to indulge in compelling stories, wondrous hero's, and intriguing protagonists. Which brings me to this weeks book, The Golden Mean, by Canadian author Annabel Lyon. Again, I discovered this weeks book resting on the bestseller shelf, but it was not the the awards plastered to the front cover that caught my attention, it was the cover itself. The picture is of a young man draped across the back of a white horse, as they walk through the water. I have never felt a particular attachment to a picture, painting, or work of art, but I unabashedly fell in love with this picture, and I wanted to know the story behind it. Within the pages of The Golden Mean the dusty dead are resurrected. Annabel Lyon brings Aristotle, flawed and brilliant and, unexpectedly, human, back into the world. It is an exhilarating reminder that we are not very far from history.


On the orders of his boyhood friend, now King Philip of Macedon, Aristotle postpones his dreams of succeeding Plato as leader of the Academy in Athens, and reluctantly arrives in the Macedonian capital of Pella to tutor the king’s adolescent sons. An early illness has left one sons with the intellect of a child; the other, who will become Alexander the Great, is destined for glory, but struggles between a keen mind that craves instruction and the pressures of a society that demands his prowess as a soldier. Initially Aristotle hopes for a short stay in what he considers the brutal backwater of his childhood. But, as a man of relentless curiosity and reason, Aristotle warms to the challenge of instructing his young charges, particularly Alexander, in whom he recognizes a kindred spirit, an engaged, questioning mind coupled with a unique sense of position and destiny.


Over the next six years, the worlds of this man and boy collide, combine, oppose, and complement each other. Aristotle struggles to match his ideas against the warrior culture that is Alexander’s birthright, so elegantly highlighting the plight of a lonely thinker in a world that prizes soldiers. He feels that teaching this startling, charming, sometimes horrifying boy is a desperate necessity. And that what the boy, thrown before his time onto his father’s battlefields, needs most is to learn the golden mean, that elusive balance between extremes that Aristotle hopes will mitigate the boy’s will to conquer.

Aristotle wrote much about happiness, but if we are to believe Annabel Lyon, his own lessons were lost on himself. The Golden Mean shows us life through the great philosopher's eyes, and the view is largely cloudy. Cursed with both “a freakish brain” and a wit “as dry as mouse droppings,” this is a man for whom contentment exists only in the abstract.

Aristotle’s narrative expands to include brief, delightfully realized diversions into history, biology, science, literature, medicine, politics, and philosophy. The novel is full of vivid descriptions and impressive imagery, as in Aristotle’s description of the season’s first snow, which “comes whispering late one gray evening.... It seems to fall from nowhere, bits of pure colorlessness peeled off from the sky and drifting down, thicker now.”


I love the concept of this book, however the outcome for me personally, was somewhat disappointing. I was not expecting a grand and over exaggerated tale of love, war, and relationships, but I found the story to be quite bland. Perhaps it is because I do not have a lot of knowledge when it comes to this era, but I found the story hard to follow and lacking in personality. For me, the book read more as a footnote to a history and geography already known, rather than as a story that could stand on its own.


If you decide to read this book, I would suggest taking the time to do bits a of research as you come across things you are unfamiliar with. This book had great reviews, and I fear that because I did not take the time to learn more about the people, geography, and general history, I may not have understood, or recognized some of the story and relationships. Besides, even if research doesn't help you understand the novel, at least you will be a little bit more educated about ancient Greece than you are now, and a little more knowledge in any area never did anyone harm. 

The White Tiger

A couple weeks ago, while picking out Mister Pip from the bestseller shelf, I discovered a few other books of interest, including Aravind Adiga's debut novel, The White Tiger. The story is a funny and imaginative tour of a side of India not often highlighted in fiction. In refusing to wallow in superficial exoticism or South Asian family tensions, The White Tiger finds its own path to multifaceted success. It echoes masterpieces of resistance and oppression, and contains passages of startling beauty, making it both a riveting existential crime story, and an expose of social injustice.


"Balram Halwai is a complicated man. Servant. Philosopher. Entrepreneur. Murderer. Over the course of seven nights, by the scattered light of a preposterous chandelier, Balram tells us the terrible and transfixing story of how he came to be a success in life -- having nothing but his own wits to help him along". Balram is from the Darkness, a region deep in the heartland, where India's downtrodden and unlucky are destined to rot, where brutal landlords hold sway, children are pulled out of school into indentured servitude, and elections are routinely bought and sold. However, after being hired as a driver for a wealthy landlord, he manages to escape this undesirable place and move to Dali. From behind the wheel of the Honda City car, Balram's new world is a revelation. While his peers flip through the pages of Murder Weekly, barter for girls, drink cheap liquor, and perpetuate the Great Rooster Coop of Indian society, Balram watches his employers bribe foreign ministers for tax breaks, barter for girls, drink English liquor, and play their own role in the Rooster Coop. Balram learns how to siphon gas, deal with corrupt mechanics, and refill and resell Johnnie Walker Black Label bottles. He also finds a way out of the Coop that no one else inside it can perceive.


Balram's eyes penetrate India as few outsiders can: the cockroaches and the call centers, the prostitutes and the worshipers, the ancient and Internet cultures, the water buffalo and, trapped in so many kinds of cages that escape is almost impossible, the white tiger. "And with a charisma as undeniable as it is unexpected, Balram teaches us that religion doesn't create virtue, and money doesn't solve every problem -- but decency can still be found in a corrupt world, and you can get what you want out of life if you eavesdrop on the right conversations".


Balram's appealingly sardonic voice and acute observations are laced both with a sardonic wit and a trace of sadness. Despite his scapegrace behavior and racist convictions, he somehow manages to win the reader over.


Adiga's existential and crude prose animates the battle between India's wealthy and poor as Balram suffers degrading treatment at the hands of his employers, or, more appropriately, masters. Balram is a clever and resourceful narrator with a witty and sarcastic edge that endears him to readers, even as he rails about corruption, allows himself to be defiled by his bosses, spews coarse invective and eventually profits from moral ambiguity and outright criminality. It's the perfect antidote to lyrical India.


The White Tiger is a vivid and penetrating piece of social commentary, attuned to the inequalities that persist despite India’s new prosperity and compromise modern India. It's a coruscating critique of contemporary rural India, but the real power of this book comes from its total lack of sentimentality and the consequent realism it thus manages.


The White Tiger is compelling, angry, and darkly humorous. Told with ambition, scope, and narrative genius, it has a mischief and personality all its own. It is amoral, irreverent, deeply endearing, and utterly contemporary, making it an unexpected and compelling journey into a new India.


I will hardly ever say no to reading a new book, however there are few that have made an everlasting impression, forcing me to read them over and over again. I must say, that although I found this book interesting, and am glad to have read it, it is not one that I will hold close to my heart. It kept me engaged throughout the chapters and the progression of the story, but I never felt a real connection to Balram, perhaps because I cannot relate to his life, ambitions, and desires. However, I am still grateful for the opportunity to discover a new character, and the invitation to enter a new and unfamiliar world. Even if I never read this book again, I have grown because of it, and I encourage you to do the same. Maybe not with this book, but challenge yourself to step out of your comfort zone and try new books, for you may be surprised at what you discover, in yourself, and in the world of literature.

Water for Elephants

When I was in elementary school we used to get scholastic book orders. Every few months you would get handed out a little catalog, where you could order a variety of books, then would receive them a couple weeks later. Looking through the colorful pages, staring, dog tagging, and highlighting the books I wanted, then waiting for the glorious day when the books arrived and got to take them home and add them to my book shelf, was one of my favorite things. Throughout the years this excitement for new books has continued, however it left me with a lot of unread pages on my shelves. Throughout the recent weeks I have been trying to not only read new books, but read books that I had bought previously, and never quite got around to.


This week I decided to read Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen. Like Eat Pray Love, I had begun reading this book, made it a couple chapters, but for some reason could not get into it. However, going along with the idea of actually reading all the books I have bought, I decided to give it another try, and am so thrilled that I did. Water for Elephants was beautifully written, illuminated by a wonderful sense of time and place. It tells a story of a love between two people that overcomes incredible odds in a world in which even "love is a luxury that few can afford".


In chapters that move flawlessly back and forth in time, from the rowdy circus atmosphere to the antiseptic corridors of the assisted living home, the world is viewed through Jacob Jonkowski, a ninety-something-year-old man's perspective, as he rages helplessly against the decrepitude of old age and the secrets of the past. In prose both poignant and infinitely tender, Jacob dwells in both worlds, revealing the wounds of the past and the sorrows of the present.


Stripped of everything after his parents’ untimely death, the twenty-three-year-old Jacob fails to sit for his veterinary exams at Cornell. Grief-stricken and robbed of home and future, he jumps onto a passing train, only to discover in the morning that it belongs to the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. It's here that Jacob enters an atmospheric, gritty world of freaks, drifters, and misfits, a second-rate circus struggling to survive during the Great Depression, making one-night stands in town after endless town.


When Jacobs veterinary skills are discovered, he is put in charge of caring for the circus menagerie, where the animals are mangy, underfed, and abused. He develops a guarded relationship with August, the head trainer, who is obsessively jealous and given to unspeakable cruelties, and his wife Marlena, the star performer and equestrian, with whom Jacob falls in love with. "Caught between his love for Marlena and his need for belonging, Jacob is freed only by a murderous secret that will bring the big top down." Uncle Al, Benzini Brothers circus impresario, is a ruthless businessman who cares little for man or beast, engaged in a quest for fame to rival the great Ringling Brothers circus. With his training in veterinary medicine, Jacob does his best to protect the animals from their harsh existence, especially Rosie the baffling elephant, and new edition to the circus, who he shares a deep kinship with, truly evoking the magic a circus can create.


Among a train filled with a raggedy tribe of miscreants and lost souls, friends and foes, skillfully humanized by Gruen, Jacob, the self-appointed protector of the downtrodden, is the only person who has a handle on a moral compass, and as his reward he spends most of the novel beaten, broken, concussed, bleeding, swollen and hungover. The circus, a world filled with freaks and clowns, with wonder, pain, anger and passion; a world with its own narrow, irrational rules, its own way of life, and its own way of death. The world of the circus: to Jacob it was both salvation and a living hell.


The story is related in the somber tones of the Depression, the hardscrabble and often unscrupulous business of a traveling circus and the heartless despots who make their fortunes on the backs of men who must do anything to survive. Gruen spares no detail in chronicling the squalid, filthy, brutish circumstances in which Jacob and the circus find themselves. One of the many pleasures of this novel is the opportunity to enter a bizarrely coded and private world with its own laws, superstitions and vocabulary. Water for Elephants is a well-researched adventure into the weird and charming universe of the Depression-era circus, where the magic of the story and the writing convince you to suspend your disbelief.


Circuses showcase human beings at their silliest and most sublime, and many unlikely literary figures have been drawn to their glitzy pageantry, soaring pretensions, and metaphorical potential. Unsurprisingly, writers seem liberated by imagining a spectacle where no comparison ever seems inflated, no development impossible. For better and for worse, Gruen has fallen under the spell. With a showman's expert timing, she saves a terrific revelation for the final pages, transforming a glimpse of Americana into an enchanting escapist fairy tale.


Black-and-white photographs of real American circus scenes from the first half of the century are interspersed throughout the novel, and they brilliantly evoke the dignified power contained in the quieter moments of this unusual brotherhood. The grainy photos capture the unexpected daintiness of an elephant disembarking from a train, the symmetry of a marching band, a gaggle of plumed showgirls stepping gingerly across a patchy lawn, and the haunting solitude of an impeccably dressed cook, allowing for a very real image to form in your mind.


Water for Elephants was poignant, superbly plotted, and utterly transporting. It is that rare novel with a story so engrossing, one is reluctant to put it down; with characters so engaging, they continue to live long after the last page has been turned; with a world built of wonder, a world so real, one starts to breathe its air. I am hopelessly, unabashedly in love with this book, and my only tip for you is to simply read it. 

Mister Pip

Walking into a bookstore can be a beautiful and exciting thing. Knowing that within the loving arms of the bookshelves you can find, read, and learn about anything or anyone, real or fiction. As wonderful as this is, it can also be very overwhelming. When you are surrounded by countless books, it becomes hard to chose just one. However, in most Chapters stores, they have a display wall of staff picks, local authors, and bestselling books, and on days when I don't have hours to pursue hundreds of books, or just don't have the patience, I find myself standing in front walls such as these. They display a handful of titles, you can see all the covers, and sometimes there are even brief reviews beside them. It was there, in front of the bestsellers, that I found myself standing this week.


One of the first books I picked up was the 2007 Commonwealth Prize winner, Mister Pip, by New Zealand author, Lloyd Jones. After reading the summary, I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued to discover that the book Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens, was going to be one of the main subjects within this Novel. Having previously read Great Expectations, I thought it would be interesting to look at it from another perspective. Mister Pip is a fascinating story, flawlessly told, of a young girl trying to live in the world of a book, where things make sense and fate is predetermined, and in the world around her, where lives are being destroyed and nothing is certain. It is brilliantly nuanced examination of the power of imagination, literature, and reinvention.


Jones presents himself as a master storyteller, using the tale and voice of a young girl named Matilda to narrate this beautiful story. Set against the stunning beauty of Bougainville in the South Pacific during the civil war in the early 1990s, thirteen-year-old Matilda is at a loss to understand the violence that has torn apart her tropical island. Her village, caught in the cross fire of the conflict between government troops and local armed rebels, has lost its teachers. The only white man to stay behind, the eccentric Mr. Watts, object of much curiosity and scorn, takes over the post as teacher and begins to read to the class from his favorite novel, a battered copy of Charles Dickens' Great Expectations. And thus begins a voyage of imagination and translation. Initially flummoxed by the meanings of such alien words as frost and moors, Matilda and her classmates soon become entirely riveted by the story and identify so heavily with the orphan Pip that Victorian England becomes more real to them than their own hometown. Provided with firsthand evidence of the power of imagination, Matilda increasingly sees it as a way to survive and even thrive amid the chaos of civil war.


The theme of word choice present in the story is mirrored in the writing. Matilda and the other children acquire lists of new vocabulary from Mr. Dickens’ work, and they learn the importance of choosing the right word with the right meaning for each occasion. Matilda struggles to pick the right words with which to tell her story, to translate the tale of her life’s greatest lessons into language that all will understand, to make the reader conceive of how it was on the island, how it was to meet Mr. Pip and journey across time and space with him.


There is a fittingly dreamy, lyrical quality to Jones' writing, along with an acute ear for the earthy harmonies of village speech. People are "silly as bats" and "argue like roosters". While his characters embellish their stories readily, his own approach is more controlled. The simplicity with which he describes the atrocities that take place is devastating. But it is the great faith that Jones has in literature, to effect change no less than to offer solace, that gives this extraordinary book its charge.


Not only is Jones’ story an intriguing map of literary discovery on a remote island, it is a sparkling and eloquent homage to the power of storytelling. With its direct and graceful prose, and every word precisely chosen to present the story in a unique and consistent voice, the sophistication of its telling is staggering, as Jones addresses head-on the effects of imperialism and the redemptive power of art.

"You cannot pretend to read a good book. your eyes will give you away. So will your breathing. A person entranced by a book simply forgets to breathe. The house can catch alight and a reader deep in a book will not look up until the wallpaper is in flames."

Jones’ breathtaking novel shows what magic a child’s imagination makes possible, even in the face of terrible violence, and what power stories have to fuel the imagination. Books hold so much knowledge and wisdom, giving us the everlasting ability to learn about places, people, and ideas, but they can also provide a safe haven, a friend, and a sense of optimism. I find this idea overwhelming, but in such a marvelous way. And so my tip for this book is to never forget the power of the written word. No matter what book you read there is always something to learn, and take away from it, always a safe place to go, and sense of hope to obtain.

"Mister Pip is conjuring of the highest order. With a wave of the literary wand, we are transported - mystified, breath-taken - into the mind of a child discovering the power of words, imagination and Charles Dickens, for the first time. We do not know how we made this journey, but therein lies the illusion: we are reminded that books can be, as surely as Mister Pip is, magic."

Late Nights on Air

Being a Canadian, I have read a deplorable amount of books written by Canadian authors. I seem to have this idea that things coming out of the United States are better some how. Whether it be music, television shows, movies, or books, I assume Americans are better at creating them. So this week I decided to help prove myself wrong, at least when it comes to novels, and read Late Nights on Air by Elizabeth Hay. The Ottawa born author writes about the power and intimacy of radio, and how we can fall in love with certain voices. The story is elegiac, exquisite, and creates enormous spaces with few words, making the reader party to the journey, listening, marveling, breathing, fearing.


In Late Nights on Air, the barren, treeless tundra of the Far North serves as a kind of reckoning ground for a clutch of characters. They're not visionaries, but all seekers in some way. The story is set among a group of people working at a small Yellowknife radio station in 1975. After being fired from his latest television job, a disgraced Harry Boyd returns to his radio roots in the northern Canadian town, as the manager of a station no one listens to, and finds himself at the center of the station's unlikely social scene. New and enigmatic, Dido Paris, both renowned and mocked for her Dutch accent, fled an affair with her husband's father, only to be torn between Harry and another man. The young and fragile Gwen came to learn radio production, but under Harry's tutelage finds herself the guardian of the late-night shift. And lonely but steadying force, Eleanor, wonders if it's time to move south just as she meets an unlikely suitor. Relationships are entered in and out of, while loyalties shift in surprising ways. Each of these characters come with their own unwavering back stories, and point-of-view shifts between them with such fluidity. Similarly the story moves back and forth in time in a way that feels only natural, demonstrating Hay's remarkable skill without actually making us aware of her at all.


As we come to learn about each characters history, and watch as they build and struggle with relationships, we also learn about the struggle in the north. The city is becoming divided over a proposal to build a pipeline that would cut across Native lands, bringing modernization and a flood of workers, equipment and money into sacred territory. This underlying event helps to provide a clear picture of the townspeople motives and morals, bringing some closer together, while others become strangers, as each person fights for what they believe to be right.


Late Nights on Air is as much about the how the characters relate to each other, as to how they relate to their environment. The final third of the book tells of four friends embarking on a six-week canoe trip where the evocation of the tundra - its emptiness, silence, and delicate beauty - is stunning, almost a new species of erotica. Hay beautifully portrays the tender bonds that are forged, and broken in such wild a place. I honestly didn't know how captivated I would become as the characters portaged and canoed for days, sometimes seeing no other living creature but a single ptarmigan or a caribou.


Indeed this is the True North, but not like we might imagine: "It was north of the sixtieth parallel and shared in the romance of the North, emanating not mystery but uniqueness and not right away. It had no breathtaking scenery. No mountains, no glaciers, in the winter not even that much snow." Sound, not sight, becomes the salient sense, which is natural with the radio, and Hay creates this effect beautifully. Admirably too, for it is hard to write sound. And not just those voices in the night, but also snow crunching underfoot, paddles in the water, crackling fires and birdsong. Truly, this is the most audible novel I have ever read.


"On the road below, a small man in a black beret was bending over his tripod just as her father used to bend over his tape recorder. Her father's voice had become the wallpaper inside her skull, he'd made a home for himself there as improvised and unexpected as these little houses on the side of the rock - houses with histories of instability, of changing from gambling den to barbershop to sheet metal shop to private home, and of being moved from one part of town to another since they had no foundations. All the little and large efforts of settlement intrigued her" This was one paragraph that stood out to me, but Late Nights on Air is filled with phrases and images that will capture your imagination, and take you to another place entirely.


Hay provides crystalline prose, keen details and sharp dialogue that sculpt the isolated, hardy residents of Yellowknife. A character in Elizabeth's book describes good script writing as having "simplicity, directness, and intimacy", and Late Night on Air achieves all three. Whether you love or hate the characters by the end of the book, you know them as well as our own skin. This book with teach you to respect the north; its timeless fragility, and its ability to both save and destroy those who venture there. Psychologically astute, richly rendered and deftly paced. It's a pleasure from start to finish.


Radio has become a such a common thing in our lives, that we don't even think about the marvel of it. With radio, we are able to share our thoughts, ideas, music, news, and communicate with people all over the world. Just the other night I watched the movie Pirate Radio. Although the vibe of Pirate Radio and Late Nights on Air are very different, they are both perfect examples of how radio can uplift people and truly effect peoples lives. My Tip for this book is listen to the radio. We all have our favorite stations, but try to listen to something new. You will expose yourself to new music, new voices and ideas, and will give yourself with the opportunity to grow as a person, building depth to your knowledge and versatility.

Wuthering Heights

The other day I came across some disturbing statistics on reading. According to a Jenkins Group, 42% of college graduates will never read another book. Since most people read bestsellers printed in the past 10 years, it follows that virtually no one is reading the classics. Although it’s unfortunate that the intellectual heritage of humanity is being forgotten we can use this to our benefit. By reading the classics to improve your mind you can give yourself an advantage. You will gain a bigger vocabulary of more uncommonly used words, therefore setting yourself apart. A larger arsenal of words enables you to express yourself more eloquently. You’ll be able to communicate with precision and create a perception of higher intelligence that will give you an advantage in work and social situations, and your writing and speaking ability will improve as a result. Ever notice how quotes, and character and plot references continue to come up in recent books, movies, and conversations? Having actually read the classics, will enable you to fully understand those many references, and will likely bring a clearer understanding of the bigger picture at hand. We like to believe, in our modern arrogance, that technology has changed everything. In truth, it feels the same to be alive today as it did a thousand years ago. The lessons of the classics carry as much weight as ever. They contain information that is directly applicable to your life. Reading the classics develops an understanding of the human condition and a deeper appreciation of modern problems.

"Somebody who reads only newspapers and at best the books of contemporary authors looks to me like an extremely nearsighted person who scorns eyeglasses. He is completely dependent on the prejudices and fashions of his times, since he never gets to see or hear anything else. And what a person thinks on his own without being stimulated by the thoughts and experiences of other people is even in the best case rather paltry and monotonous.

There are only a few enlightened people with a lucid mind and style and with good taste within a century. What has been preserved of their work belongs among the most precious possessions of mankind.

Nothing is more needed than to overcome the modernist’s snobbishness."
-- Albert Einstein

The whole point of my journey through literature is to read a great variety of books from different authors, genres, and eras in order to gain understanding, and therefor grow as a person and an intellectual. To read nothing but the classics would be as foolish as completely ignoring them. The aim is to combine the wisdom of the past with the innovation of the future, as the two are inextricably linked. This week I chose to read my second classic, Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte's only novel. It is the recounting of a tragic love story, and of happiness redeemed through the next generation. It's a fantastic, un-Victorian and imaginative work that is embedded in English folk-tradition and literature.


Wuthering Heights, is a harrowing tale of destructive passion and tragedy. This gothic book entwines romantic and eerie threads to unfold a story of relationships, set in the rustic northern English moors, a place of unpredictable weather and countryside. This story is narrated by Mr. Lockwood, a gentleman visiting the Yorkshire moors where the novel is set, and of Mrs. Dean, housekeeper to the Earnshaw family, who had been witness to the interlocked destinies of the original owners of the Heights. In a series of flashbacks and time shifts, Bronte draws a powerful picture of the enigmatic Heathcliff, who is brought to the Heights from the streets of Liverpool by Mr Earnshaw. Heathcliff grew up with, but remained socially beneath the other inhabitants of Wuthering Heights, forming complex and emotional relationships with the father and his own children, Catherine and Hinton. Heathcliff and Catherine become passionate, headstrong, and unpredictable soulmates, who remain separated by pride and social class, and after the death of Catherine, Heathcliff becomes increasingly isolated and alienated from daily life, experiences visions as he longs for the death that will reunite him with Catherine. It is only when Catherine's daughter, Cathy, and Hindley Earnshaw's son, Hareton, finally join happily in a loving relationship, that the winter of Wuthering Heights becomes the spring of Thrushcross Grange.


Unlike most novels, Wuthering Heights' protagonists are anti-heroes; the very antithesis of what a hero is supposed to be. Instead of compassionate and heroic, Heathcliff and Catherine are selfish and petty. Instead of being blissfully in love, Catherine marries someone else and breaks Heathcliff's heart. Too proud to tell each other their true feelings, they fight, storm and rage against each other, destroying themselves in the process. Most people dislike this novel, for its gloomy perspective, tragic outcome and psychological drama. However, Catherine and Heathcliff are perhaps more realistic than most other novel characters claim to be. They not only make mistakes, they cause debacles, completely devastate both people and places and ruin it all by blaming solely themselves.

The entire drama is a destruction of a human soul; how love can save and damn one man. Bronte brings in a whole new perspective on love. It isn't the epic ballad in tales, or the beautiful quiet bloom between spouses; this is rampant, tragic and interbred with other less desirable qualities until it is no longer recognizable until the very end. 
 

After reading and struggling with Dickens' Great Expectations, I was reluctant to read another classic. However, after having been reminded of how important that era of literature is, I was encouraged in reading Wuthering Heights, which proved surprisingly easier to read than my first classic. I found I was able to understand the plot and character development, as well as most of the dialogue. There was one character, however, that I struggled to understand any time he stepped onto the page. Joseph, the lifelong servant of Wuthering Heights, spoke with a broad Yorkshire accent that was incomprehensible to me. While reading Shakespeare in high school, our books had a translation of the lines on the opposite side of the page, making it much easier to understand and appreciate the writing. Remembering back to this, I found a website that translated Joseph's dialogue throughout the book. So if you struggle in understanding him as I did, my Tip is try out this website, or one similar, so that you receive all the details of this exceptional book. 

http://www.wuthering-heights.co.uk/josephspeech.htm

"It is as if Emily Bronte could tear up all that we know human beings by, and fill these unrecognizable transparencies with such a gust of life that they transcend reality." --Virginia Woolf