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Welcome to this week’s blog, and apologies for the delay. Here’s a roundup of your comments and photos from last week, including a memoir that approaches alcoholism in a surprisingly fresh way, a great current Chilean writer and a mounting pile of summer reading choices.
fingerlakeswanderer recommended Sarah Hepola’s Blackout:
I teach creative nonfiction, and reading memoirs is part of my class preparation as I teach new books each semester so that my students stay current in what is out there. I didn’t expect to like Blackout. It’s a memoir of getting sober, and I have read a number of memoirs about alcoholism in the past. But I was surprised by just how good this book was.
[...] What sets this apart is Hepola’s facility with words. I have banned my students from writing about their drinking exploits because they’re just so damn boring, but I never felt that with Hepola because the prose surprised me. Her use of metaphor, her use of imagery, her ability to describe emotions, all pulled me in and allowed me to feel tenderness toward her, instead of the usual impatience one feels when listening to a drunk once again make excuses. I liked this book so much that I will most likely teach it next semester.
This short, taut novel excavates the ghosts of Chile’s military past - the disappearances, the repression and the paranoia – to examine how the power and deceptions of memory shape our understanding of the past. Revered writers and critics, such as James Wood and Junot Díaz, have been heaping praise on Zambra with good reason. I will be certainly be tracking down more of his work.
First, the original by Jane Austen which was a razor-witted, delectably-written delight. Secondly, the 2014 version produced by Val McDermid under some sort of scheme called The Austen Project whereby contemporary authors reimagine the original novels. I’m a third of the way through McDermid’s attempt and it’s not bad as such; I’d describe it as serviceable. Which in this particular context, of course, means it’s rubbish. Unutterable hubris on the part of these modern authors, I would say. They deserve to look as shoddy as they inevitably will do. (This is wild speculation and prejudice on my part. I have no intention of reading the rest.)
I found Douglas, the narrator, very endearing in the first half but really disliked him in the second half. His memories of his emotionally abusive relationship with his young son were very disturbing. I thought Nicholls had deliberately set the book up in two halves to manipulate the reader – making us believe Douglas was a sweet guy, then showing him to be something quite different but there’s no real judgement of his behaviour. I think we’re still expected to like him and feel sorry for him at the end of the book. A very weak second half.
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