I changed my mind about about “The Hundred Foot Journey” by Richard Morias. He needs a new editor for a start. NB: It was a reader’s copy that I read, however it has already been published outside of Australia so of course there are no major changes going to be made.
The book started out promisingly. I was enchanted enough to want to take it home to continue reading. It wasn’t long, though, and as I have earlier said, that I was continually pulled out of the story by the incredibly annoying voices Morias gave the Indians in the story (ie leaving out pronouns and prepositions), apart from the first-person narrator. Further down the track, I noticed I was getting increasingly more frustrated by the narration swapping from first person, to, oh-so-conveniently, an omnipresent narrator so the reader knows what is going on ‘over the road’ and in other people’s minds. There may have been a sentence somewhere that stated “I was told this later on by …”, but if there was, it was purely a convenient way to get around plot, and, frankly, it did not work. The fact that I noticed it was happening and that I was very frustrated by it is enough to show it is a problem.
The story ran out of steam toward the end. I increasingly veered between wishing that the damn thing would just finish, and wondering where in hell this was going, and was it actually going anywhere? The narrative just plain fizzled. It was is if the author himself ran out of steam at the end and just didn’t know what to do with it.
Disappointingly, a 2/5 for me.
And so, with that done, I am back into ‘The Slap’. I’m ambivalent about this one. I started out thinking it was a daring, provocative, wonderful piece of Australian literature. I’m nearly finished (can’t believe I’ve read nearly half of it this evening), and though it’s close to un-put-downable, quite frankly, it’s a, well, **** book. Provocative, yes. Daring, perhaps, if you consider the idea of using the ‘c’ word incessantly, daring (I just consider it filthy and unnecessary). Chock full of masturbation and sex. A positive–it does make you ponder the question ‘when is it, if ever, okay to physically punish a child?’; it forces you to look at where you stand morally on the issue. However, there is not one character to really like in this book. Some are thoroughly detestable, some are so pathetic you want to give them a good slap around the ears yourself, but what they are are human (except that they are human only in seemingly negative ways … I don’t know if there is a positive character trait to share between the lot of them). Definitely better than the first one mentioned in this post, and worth reading if you aren’t too delicate!
THREE SLEEPS until the end of semester, ‘summer holidays’. I have a take-home exam due Monday night (ie two essays that I only got the questions for a week ago) … Gwen Harwood, and Wuthering Heights. I have the Gwen Harwood portion finished; I’ll be slaving over Wuthering Heights this entire weekend. THREE SLEEPS until I can read as much as, and whatever, I want. Hallelujah! A trip to Perth, Western Australia in November, helping out in the shop in the lead up to Christmas … and … still those details to work out about my Secret Dream Job that will be starting soon.
May all beings be happy (because I sure as hell am!).