36
books
26 november 2013 |
www.exepose.ex.ac.uk
Exeposé
Condensed Condensed Classics Classics Artemis Fowl Eoin Colfer (2001)
“Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron.” Among my childhood literary friends, Artemis Fowl takes the cake as one of my favourites. The cool, suavity of Fowl himself and the tough as nails Butler were great characters. While the story of the book was strong, it was really the characters that won me. While they were technically the bad guys, you couldn’t help liking Fowl for thinking his way out of trouble. The idea of sci-fi fairies took a while to get used to, but Holly Short proved both sympathetic and heroic at the same time. She was a well-crafted antithesis to Artemis and the battle between those two characters and Artemis’ eventual turn to heroism, especially in the later books, was a joy to read. Artemis Fowl was a brilliant series and the first book set the tone beautifully. I can only sum it up in two words: film anyone? No? Just me then… THOMAS DAVIES
Alice in Wonderland Lewis Caroll Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its not-so-catchy sequel, Through the LookingGlass and What Alice Found There, have never been out of print since 1865 and 1871, respectively. Moreover, when I read about Alice and
Black Chalk Chrisopher J. Yates As a student of law at Oxford in the 1990’s, who describes himself as a “part time hermit” on his Twitter biography, Christopher J Yates’ book Black Chalk is the ultimate display of “writing what you know.’”It is at basic plot level, a tale of a game of consequences set in the fictional Oxford college ‘Pitt’, narrated by a hermetic ex-law student. Yet if these parallels were supposed to imbue our reading with a trust in what the narrator is saying, Yates manipulates ideas of truthful story telling with complicated representations of reality.
One of those ‘couldn’t put it down’ books that avid readers search for The novel has a dual setting. The larger, set in the third person, signifies the book that the main character, Jolyon, is attempting to write, but as information that Jolyon would not have been privy to starts seeping in to these sections, we her rabbit hole for the first time 134 years later, it’s clear why. I was a bit jealous of her adventures, and who wouldn’t be? Tea parties, talking animals,
notice the confused implications of an unstable narrator. Jolyon’s instabilities are put forward in the other setting, a first person account of his struggles in the present day, as he interacts with his obsessive neuroses and slowly falls apart, dwelling on the beginnings of a game which affected the lives of all six of its players. Eventually the story being written and the story being lived meet one another and we discover that fractured memories of the past are being fed into the story by darker influences than Jolyon realises. The book’s tag: “One Game. Six Students. Five Survivors” immediately portrays the novel’s overarching sense of mystery, which unfolds slowly as more and more pieces of the puzzle are teased out. Yates’ own experience as a puzzle editor enriches this technique, dealing out pieces of the story that we expect to fit in particular ways but that often throw us off from completing the puzzle until all the pieces have been revealed. The novel abounds with notions of gameplaying and strategy, exploring the ways in which players interact with each other and manipulate rules. As someone with undergraduate experience of Oxford, I understood all too clearly how the importance of winning and losing represent a huge part
of the competitive college atmosphere. Reading about an environment I knew so well, Yates’ writing filled me with a huge sense of nostalgia, with his understanding of the rich history of the city and the small nuances of Oxford life that he presents so perfectly. With its considerations of the dark psychology of people against the archaic backdrop of Oxford University, Black Chalk often feels like a contemporary nod to Brideshead Revisited, with its mode of fragmented writing calling to mind other novels that self- referentially struggle to write and read themselves; Tristram Shandy, Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, and O’Brien’s At Swim-Two Birds for example. Yates is a man who is incredibly proud of his first-born. He regularly tweets back admirers of the book with genuine enthusiasm. And so he should. Black Chalk is an incredibly gripping novel, one of those ‘couldn’t put it down’ books that avid readers search so often for. Its mixture of mystery, psychology, and fissured narrative style make Yates’ debut novel an absolute winner.
funny potions, walking cards, croquet games: it’s a middle-class child’s dream (quite literally, in fact!). It may be a children’s story with quite an obnoxious, arrogant, precocious little girl at its centre, but it’s a powerful book. Its vivid imagery and narrative structure, amongst other things, are unofficial benchmarks for the fantasy genre and together with the assistance of the dazzling Walt Disney adaptation, I am sure I can speak for everybody when I say that the images of white rabbits and mad hatters are ones that we will be forever acquainted with. Although I could rave about it all day, I couldn’t tell you exactly what I like about it even if you offered me all the tea in Wonderland. It flows seamlessly with no ‘...’ moments or (dare I say clichéd) cliffhangers, but that’s not the real reason why. It’s a classic piece of literature, and I’m sure that counts for something, but that’s not why. It’s fantastical, and I’ve always liked fantasy books, but I don’t think it’s that either. I realised what it was when I was reading it again when I was 18 (the standard 18-year-old thing to do, I know). Devoid of Disneyana that easily distracts you from the story, what appeals to me more than anything is that it has the rare ability to transform itself, like a caterpillar to a butterfly, when you read it as an adult. It’s still
bonkers, definitely, and the sorts of conversations she has with mice and dodos are still as entertaining as ever, but you can appreciate the literary merit of the story, i.e. the genius of Lewis Carroll. The book is absolutely ridden with puns, so many in fact, that simply passed over my head when I first read it. As well as having really witty tickles of the English language, they just enriched the nonsensicality of Alice and her world even more, but giving them to you out of context would be pointless. So, if you’ve not read it since childhood then it’s worth a revisit just for those and if you’ve not read it at all, then you should still visit it anyway. Or else it’s off with your head.
LAURA WILSON
It’s a middle-class child’s dream (quite literally!) Oh, and don’t worry, Alice, you can be forgiven for forgetting how to speak good English; “curiouser and curiouser” wouldn’t be what would come out of my mouth if I was “opening out like the largest telescope that ever was”...
Any Last Words? In a fit of nostalgia, this week we asked you to muse on what your favourite children’s books characters are up to now... I’m pretty sure Tracey Beaker would be a disgraced spin-doctor. SARAH GOUGH Alex Rider: living under temporary asylum in Russia after whistleblowing the secrets of MI6’s unethical surveillance techniques to the British media. RYHS LAVERTY I like to imagine that Hermione Granger has “gone Lindsey Lohan.” OWEN KEATING Mia Thermopolis is now Kate Middleton’s frenemy. TOBY CRADDOCK The Tiger Who Came To Tea is now a rather fetching hall rug. JOSH GRAY Tom Sawyer has most definitely abandoned any form of civilised life in his adulthood and is leading a robber/pirate band along the banks of antebellum Mississippi. CARMEN PADDOCK The very hungry caterpillar realised he was eating to fill a hole in his soul so finally sought the help he needed. He’s now married with two kids and is a succesful dietician. So that’s something postitive. LOUIS DORÉ Percy the Park Keeper now suffers crippling arthritis as a result of too much garden maintenance. KITTY HOWIE Winnie the Pooh would be in hospital suffering from untreated diabetes. As Piglet leans forward, he can just about make out Pooh’s last words: “I would do it all again... for just another drop of honey”. ROB HARRIS Biff and Chip are now ruling the world. CLARA PLACKETT Paddington Bear has been deported back to deepest darkest Peru. EMMA HOLIFIELD Milly Molly Mandy has become the ultimate hipster and is now known as M³. ELLI CHRISTIE
CONnOR McGOvErN