Lord of the Flies

Lord of the Flies is another of those books that everyone else seems to have read at school. It is an extraordinarily powerful book, and I find it slightly depressing to have spent a whole academic year studying As You Like It, and to have studied Silas Marner TWICE...when we could have been reading Lord of the Flies. Ah well - I suppose I get to read it now with full enjoyment, rather than having to pick apart the symbolism in the pig's head on a stick, or the significance of the face paint!

A word of warning - as everyone apart from me seems to have read LOTF, I will be giving away some of the events and ending, so if you haven't read it and might, look away now.

The power of LOTF, I think, lies in the portrayal of the transition from an orderly "British" society to a savage society with its own set of rules and behaviours. When the group finds themselves stranded on the island, they initially attempt to create a culture which mirrors that they have seen at home - what would an adult do if they were here? Intentions are good - we will build shelters, keep a fire going, and one group will find food for the rest. However, intentions are not strong enough to keep the boys from doing, basically, whatever they like - the battle around the fire becomes a central theme of the book, and acts as a symbol of the decline of authority and ordered society.

I was really affected by the examination of tribal behaviour in this novel. There is evidence of it at the start, in that many of the boys in Jack's choir/hunting troupe never exist as individuals with names, but just as a group of boys in black caps, and the "littluns" are never numbered and named. As Jack develops into a more bloodthirsty character, and eventually achieves his first kill for food, he demonstrates that he has the power in this environment, where the ability to provide food has become more important than the ability to think, keep order, and address practicalities. Two separate "camps" emerge - boys are initially tempted across to Jack by the promise of meat and then, following the tribal dance where Simon is identified as the beast and beaten to death, Jack's leadership in violence and ruthlessness makes fear the deciding factor.

Although all of the hunting tribe are involved in the two murders, the nameless/faceless nature of most of them means that the sense of blame is attributed mainly to Jack and Roger, and this very much conflicts with the sense of personal responsibility for ones actions that is a core element of our society. Can the hunters be blamed for their actions? Of course - but when the mask of the facepaint has been applied, and darkness has fallen, the boys no longer operate as individual humans but as a pack of animals, and there is no sense of individual choice there at all.

Piggy is very much an anomaly in this society. His choice of name is significant, given that the only animals on the island which provide sustenance are pigs; as a reasoning voice who is physically unsuited to a life in the wilderness, Piggy is always doomed. He is gradually reduced to, symbolically, an animal to be hunted - severely short-sighted, first one lens of his spectacles is smashed and then the hunters make a midnight raid to steal them in order to light their fire. Piggy is then blind, unable to function - an animal, meaning that Roger is able to roll the rock down the mountain, giving Piggy no chance of escape. Piggy's death represents the final loss of reason, and from this moment Ralph becomes a hunted animal. Crazed by the idea that he needs to remove Ralph (in order to remove the accusation of wrongdoing?), Jack is determined to hunt Ralph down and the island is pretty much destroyed in doing so. Had this battle been followed to its conclusion, Ralph may have been hunted down and killed, but the tribe would also have destroyed their livelihood - the fruit trees and pig habitats were burning as Ralph emerged from the forest and found himself at the feet of a naval officer.

The irony, of course, is that it is Jack's attempt to burn Ralph out of the woods that has created a fire large enough for a ship to see. Suddenly, in front of an adult, they are small boys again, and the battle becomes a game, rather than a matter of life and death. The story ends here, with rescue in sight, leaving open all sorts of questions - how will they reintegrate into British society? Will Jack become a "normal" boy again? Will they ever be punished for the murders of two of their group (not to mention the disappearance of a littlun at the very beginning)?

Golding's pace of writing changes through the novel, changing from a "jolly japes on an island" tone to become ever more urgent, darker, and threatening. I'm sure I haven't written anything here that hasn't been said before - it has a great power to invoke feelings, sensations and moral musings. Spectacular book!

Holiday reading

One of my favourite things about going on holiday is having time to read- time to pick up a book, get absorbed in it, and keep on reading till the end because there's nothing else you have to do. Fabulous.

This week in Italy, as well as seeing many beautiful mountain views from hilltop towns, and making friends with lots of local cats, and eating some fabulous food, I have read:

A Town Like Alice

The Complete Adventures of Sherlock Holmes

Brave New World

PopCo (Scarlett Thomas)

A Week in December (Sebastian Faulks)

I also started reading Anna Karenina on the plane on the way home but that was always an ambitious ask after 3 hours' sleep!

Let's start with the non-list ones first.

Scarlett Thomas wrote The End of Mr Y, which was my favourite book of 2009. PopCo was published earlier, but shows the same level of creativity and storytelling ability as the End of Mr Y. Alice is a bit of a misfit working for PopCo - the third biggest toy company in the UK. She is reluctantly attending PopCo's annual creativity conference in Devon when she is selected, along with a small group of others, to remain behind indefinitely after the conference and develop a product set which will kickstart a craze amongst the difficult-to-reach teenage girl demographic. The concentrated seminars, designed to help them understand how a toy craze takes hold, makes her increasingly aware of and uncomfortable about the way toys and marketing are designed to manipulate children. This leads into some interesting questions of ethics, globalisation & trade. Alongside this story, Alice is working to crack a code left to her by her grandfather, and also trying to work out who is communicating with her in code within the PopCo centre. The author has clearly done her research and goes into extensive detail on codes, how they work, how they are decoded, different methods etc - but it always complements the story, and doesn't feel like it's just a show and tell of how much she has learned! There are other threads to the story too, and the whole thing weaves together to create a gripping, intelligent and frequently surprising work of fiction. I absolutely loved it, and couldn't put it down.

Secondly, Sebastian Faulks. I have mixed feelings about this one. Faulks' earlier work, particularly Birdsong/Charlotte Grey/Girl at the Lion d'Or, is fantastic, and they are some of my favourite books. However, more recently I've found him much harder to read - Human Traces was just too academic, and I struggled to engage with Engleby. So, I started A Week in December without massive expectations. It's set in 2007 in the context of the banking meltdown, and follows characters ranging from a hedge fund trader to a tube train driver. It's pretty readable but I don't think Faulks' modern style displays him at his best - the dialogue is a bit cliched and stilted. It might be that the event is too much in recent memory to have fiction written about it and to create a sense of originality. So, if you are a Faulks fan, I'd probably recommend reading it, but it isn't amazing.

Sherlock Holmes was the first book I read on the Kindle. It proved that the Kindle is very much a viable medium for reading, and I didn't really notice too much of a difference from reading a book. Well, that's not strictly true I guess, but it is easy to read on, doesn't strain the eyes, and it's actually quite nice that you can just switch it off, and on again, and it is in the same place - no need for a bookmark (lazy reader...!). Sherlock Holmes is, of course, great. Very readable, each case is a distinct story in itself, and each time the resolution is one which seems so simple, but beyond the capability of me as a reader to work it out! It definitely deserves its place within the top 100 list - I enjoyed it very much.

Brave New World is chilling, and creates a convincing image of the new society where babies are grown to fit the genetic characteristics required for the role they are due to play, and a caste system is created according to physical and intellectual ability - but this doesn't matter as all humans are conditioned from birth to be happy with their lot & capacity. When the striving for a "better" life is removed, and the individual does not feel that they should be capable of more than "just" working in a factory, for example, everyone is happy. And, if they are not happy, "soma" is provided, a drug which can be taken to numb emotional disappointments and distress, so that the unhappiness never truly exists, and passes by the time the soma wears off.Bernard is a member of the highest caste but doesn't truly fit in, and he is already dissatisfied with life, reluctant to take soma "holidays", and wishing for a lasting relationship with one woman rather than the now socially acceptable "everyone belongs to everyone". He then visits the New Mexico Reservation, and meets a woman who was cast out of acceptable society to bring up her son. The brave new world, when viewed through the eyes of John "the Savage", who is essentially viewing the world with the morals of Huxley's period of writing, does not seem as perfect as individuals are conditioned to believe. This is a fantastically constructed world, and does deserve its reputation, but it doesn't quite have the strength of 1984 - the characters are less engaging, and the writing is more distant. That's not necessarily to say that 1984 is better - Brave New World goes further in terms of the way that society has developed, and the way that this is maintained - but I did enjoy reading it more.

And finally, A Town Called Alice. This is one of my mother's favourite books, and I believe one of my Grandad's favourite books too. I can't believe I haven't read it before. It centres around Jean Paget, who is a prisoner of war in Malaya and is forced to walk hundreds of miles, in a ragtaggle group of women and children, after they are captured - there is no prisoner of war camp to put them into, and so the Japanese keep them on the move. Jean takes the lead and proves herself to be "a damned fine girl". Following the war, she inherits a large sum of money and goes out to Malaya to build a well for the village where she spent 3 years towards the end of the war. There, she finds out that Joe, an Australian that she met during the war, was not killed as she supposed, and decides to go to Australia to find him. The second part of the novel is Jean making sense of Australian society, and deciding to make a difference. This is a really uplifting work, due to the strength of Jean's character, her ability to achieve anything in any situation, whilst being really an ordinary girl. It is also a love story. And it is beautifully written. I think it's going onto my list of favourites now too!

Onto Anna Karenina next, I think...

Of Mice and Men (and major book acquisition!)

I've just finished Of Mice and Men -another Steinbeck. Most people read this at school, and I can't quite work out why we didn't. I know that other classes did, as I was vaguely familiar with the story from having seen bits of creative writing based on OMAM on the classroom wall, but my English teacher clearly decided that our group was destined for other things!

So - the cultural background to OMAM is very similar to the Grapes of Wrath, in that George and Lennie are labourers looking for work, with no particular geographical base, ready to pick up and move on. The novel opens as they are heading for their next job.

For those who are not familiar with OMAM, Lennie is a strong giant of a man, who is intellectually limited - his understanding of the world is childlike, coupled with unfeasible strength which he is unable to control when he is scared - a recipe for disaster. George is smaller but cleverer, and has taken it upon himself to care for Lennie. Lennie, unfortunately, continually does "bad things" but never deliberately or maliciously.

They share a dream - to own their own piece of land, just enough to get by, where Lennie will be allowed to look after the rabbits. Realistically, this is never going to happen until they meet Candy, who has saved some money in anticipation of not being able to work, and offers it to George as long as he can live with them on the land, and be as useful as they can. Suddenly there is an exciting future...but Lennie's next "bad thing" puts that at risk.

I don't want to give any more detail for fear of spoiling the ending. Following Lennie's actions, George is left with a very difficult choice and I think, in the end, makes the decision that is best for Lennie. You may choose to disagree with me once you know what that is. However, there is some ambiguity around George's motivations - is he trying to do what is best for Lennie, or has Lennie pushed him too far by endangering George's prospects of achieving his lifelong dream?

It's a pretty quick read, and very accessible - good choice for a GCSE syllabus. It is an interesting insight into that world, and also into the way that ambition and desperation overcome the "natural" human instinct. I'm not sure I'd be particularly excited to read it again, and I'm not sure I'd include it on a list such as this, but it was a perfectly acceptable way of passing a couple of hours!

In other news, it was my birthday a week or so ago, and I was fortunate enough to receive about 15 new books, mainly courtesy of my brother making generous use of an Amazon wish list... This is very exciting - due to the speed at which I read, I very rarely have a queue of new books awaiting my attention. So, I am looking forward to getting into those. I also received a Kindle (e-reader) so that I can theoretically go on holiday without using 50% of my luggage allowance on books. So far, I'm really pleased with it - it's a good size and weight, and pretty easy on the eye as far as the reading experience goes. I'm going to be reading the complete Sherlock Holmes on this, so that review will also look at how it feels to read a book on the Kindle. I don't really know, so far, whether it will make any difference. Also, holiday coming up soon so expect a gap and then lots of list progress, if all goes to plan.