A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

I was unsure how to begin my review of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol published 1843 because after completing the novel I realized that I preferred the 1951 film version starring Alistair Sim.  I felt bad about that since Charles Dickens isn't just any author.  But I think the reason I preferred the 1951 film, which I have seen many times, is it's a pretty accurate retelling of the novel and so once I got around to reading the book I didn't find alot new to discover.

Then too, there is Alistair Sim's marvelous portrayal of Ebenezer Scrooge, putting all other Scrooge portrayals to shame.  In comparison, the Scrooge we meet in the novella needed to be fleshed out more in my opinion.  One scene from the movie for example is missing from the book and I think it needed to be there.  It's the scene in which Ebenezer, in his late twenties, is standing by the bedside of his sister Fan, the only relative who loved him.  She is dying having just given birth to a son, Ebenezer's nephew Fred, who Ebenezer will go on to blame for her death. 

That scene is missing from the novel and without it it's harder to see why Scrooge turned out so bitter because despite the cruelty of his father, Ebenezer goes on, at least in his early years, to have a good life.  He becomes an apprentice to the jolly and generous, Mr Fezziwig.  Ebenezer becomes engaged to a young woman he loves named Belle but years later she breaks up with him because she states that Ebenezer's love of money has replaced her in his heart.  But how do you go from Mr. Fezziwig and Belle to Ebenezer becoming so hard?  The interim death of Fan is the most logical explanation.  The book hints at this but the film is quite clear.

All of this said I am glad I read A Christmas Carol for my 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic novella.  I have also read Great Expectations and though I have yet to find the Dickens' book with my name on it so to speak and may never do so I so admire Dickens. He never forgot what it was like to be poor, particularly a child growing up in poverty.  As Scrooge's nephew Fred tells his uncle at one point:

There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say, Christmas among the rest.  But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round - apart from the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys". 

It has been said that with his novel A Christmas Carol, Dickens pretty much invented Christmas as we have come to know it today, the family get togethers, the sumptous food, the dancing, the singing and the spirit of reaching out and being a little nicer to each other during the Holiday season.  It shows the power a novelist could have back in the 19th century and how we could use a novel to come along today that speaks  to these times and the dilemna we find ourselves in but novelists no longer have that sort of influence on the culture as they once did.  Thankfully we still have great authors like Charles Dickens whose books still speak to us about what's going on.

Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden

Stored in my kindle and around my apartment are loads of unread books and this year I vow to change that.  So, first up from my backlist pile is Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden published 1939.  I discovered this novel and author through a website I subscribe to, Early Bird Books.  The plot of Black Narcissus which centers around a group of nuns living in an isolated corner of the world and the challenges they face sounded interesting.  I knew that an acclaimed movie had been made of this book.  Would the novel also be worthwhile?

And so when Black Narcissus begins it's the early 20th century.  A small group of Anglican sisters has been sent by their religious order, the Servants of Mary, to a remote region in he Himilayas to start a girl's school and a medical clinic.  The nuns have been invited to do so by General Toda Rai who owns most of the land in the area including the Palace at Mopu where the sisters will house their school and medical clinic.

General Rai wants to bring progress and education to the local people. He is also embarrassed by the Palace at Mopu where his father when he was alive kept his wife and concubines.  By inviting the nuns into the palace, which they rename the convent of St Faith, the General  hopes to erase the memories of what went on there.  But as the book progresses it becomes clear that the divide between the nuns and the local Hindu population is not going to be bridged.  The local people have been living their way of life for thousands of years and are happy to continue doing so.  Instead it will be the nuns who are shaken by their life in the Himilayas: the beauty and sensuality of the region,  the people, the culture, the hard work building the school and the isolation begin to affect the sisters profoundly, testing their faith.

Sister Ruth for starters is unbalanced and should never have been sent on this journey.  Sister Honey loves the children she cares for but gets too involved which leads to trouble.  Sister Philippa becomes obsessed with creating a beautiful and expensive garden, neglecting her other duties and then there is Sister Clodagh the young Sister Superior.  Mother Dorothea before sending Sister Coldaugh to the Himilayas expresses her doubts to a colleague about the young nun:

She has always felt herself just a little better than anyone else.  What makes it so hard to deal with, is the fact that she undoubtedly is.  She has great gifts and one can't deny it.  But one day I think she'll learn to know herself.  I have always found it wiser to let God teach his own lessons in his own time".

Sister Clodagh is the central character in this novel and a good part of the book takes place inside her thoughts which begin to drift back  to her years as a young girl in  Ireland.  I liked Sister Clodagh and another character that interested me was Mr. Dean, General Rai's English overseer tasked with helping the nuns build the convent.  The sisters meet Mr. Dean on the first day of their arrival, a handsome man with an amusing smirk on his face about what the sisters have gotten themselves into.  He's been living by himself in this remote region for years, knows the dialect, the people and the customs.  Mr. Dean doesn't have any desire to go back to England and one senses, as with Sister Clodagh, that there's a story there, that he's running from something.

I enjoyed Black Narcissus.  There is a haunting quality to this book.  You feel as you get deeper into the novel that a crisis is coming, you just don't know what form it will take.  Rumer Godden does a good job in creating intriguing characters and her descriptions of the beauty of the Himilayas is also well done. I closed Black Narcissus thinking that I would like to investigate what else Rummer Godden has written because she tells a good story..

My Book Choices for 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge

Here are the twelve novels I plan to read this year for the 2019 Back to the Classics Challenge and thanks again to Karen K at Books and Chocolate for hosting this event.

19th Century Classic -  The Way We Live Now by Anthony Trollope - I have been introduced to Trollope through Brian Joseph's excellent book blog, Babbling Books, and so this year I will read what many consider to be one of Trollope's best novels.

20th Century Classic -  Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I loved the first novel in Wilder's Little House Series and Farmer Boy is book two which I'm pretty certain I will love as well.

Classic by a Woman Author  - Excellent Women by Barbara Pym - Ruthiella at Booked for Life, Lark at Lark Writes On Books and Life and JaneGS at Reading Writing Working Playing are all Pym fans and that's all the encouragement I need to give Pym a try.

Classic in Translation -  The Wreath by Sigrid Undset - Never read her but I have been hearing about Undset's acclaimed Kristin Lavransdatter saga for some time now and The Wreath is book one in that series.

Classic Comic Novel - The Code of the Woosters by P. G. Wodehouse.  Skimmed Jeeves In The Morning many years ago and Bertie Wooster is hysterically funny without even realizing it.

Classic Tragic Novel - Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad.  A great novel about how we may think we know how we'll behave in a crisis but until the crisis hits, we really don't know.  Been described as a novel of guilt and atonement.

Very Long Classic  - The Adventures of Augie Marsh by Saul Bellow - Years ago I read a bit of Dean's December but Augie Marsh is the novel Bellow is most known for, one of the great novels and novelists of the 20th century.

Classic Novella -  A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens - I have seen the movie starring Alistair Sim many times.  A marvelous story about how it's never too late to turn one's life around for the better.

Classic from the Americas or the Caribbean  -  A House for Mr. Biswas by V. S. Naipaul.  This novel is set in Trinidad.  I read Naipaul's A Turn in the South years ago which I was quite impressed with and so I am looking forward to A House for Mr. Biswas.

Classic from Africa, Asia or Oceania (includes Australia) -  The Good Earth by Pearl Buck which is set in China where many of Pearl Buck's novels take place.  Read it possibly in high school and the novel made a big impression and so I'm hoping that will still be true when I read it again after all these years.

Classic From A Place You've Lived  A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith.  Okay, I've never lived in Brooklyn but I have lived in New York City for most of my life and Brooklyn is a borough within NYC so I figure I'm covered.

Classic Play - Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare.  Not proud of the fact that this is the only Shakespeare play I've ever read and it helped that our high school English teacher walked us through it line by line.  So I have decided to reread Julius Caesar to see how much I retained.

Thanks to everyone who has stopped by to read my reviews here at Reading Matters.  It means so much to me and I wish everyone a Healthy and Happy New Year.  Now, on to the reading!

2018 Back To The Classics Challenge - Wrap Up

Thanks to Karen K at Books and Chocolate for hosting the 2018 Back To the Classics  Challenge.  It was my first year taking the challenge and I am happy I did.  So, here are my wrap up thoughts for each of the 12 classics that I read in 2018:

1. 19th Century Classic - New Grub Street by George Gissing.  My favorote book from the 2018 Classics Challenge set in the publishing world of 1880's London, a world in which talent plays second fiddle to how well one's books can sell.

2.  20th Century Classic - Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurtson is right up there with New Grub Street as being my favorite novel from the 2018 Classics Challenge.  For me its a novel about love and the scene I will remember is Janie Crawford standing outside her house looking up at the sky for a sign from God about why he would do this terrible thing to her and her beloved husband Tea Cake.

3. Classic by A Woman Author - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte. I felt this was an exceptional novel dealing with some important issues, alcoholism, spousal abuse, child custody and the importance of who you marry.  These are issues just as relevant today as they were in Victorian times.

4. Classic in Translation - The Decameron by Giovanni Boccacio is one of the classics of the Middle Ages and set during the time of the Black Death.  The novel consists of a total of 100 stories told by ten young people who have moved to the country outside Florence to escape the plague   It's amazing how forward thinking Boccaccio was not only for his time but some of his stories would have the censors howling today!

5. Classic of Children's Literature - Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder.  I loved it.  It's the first book in Wilder's acclaimed Little House on the Prairie series and though I have a tendancy not to finish a series, this time it will be different.

6. Classic Crime Story - And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie.  I was expecting to like the book more than I did but when ten characters secluded on an island start dying off there isn't much time for character development.  Mostly though I didn't like the vigilante theme in which one character plays God.  But Christie is a major talent and I love Hercule Poirot.

7. Classic Travel or Journey Narrative - I chose Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan about a man who goes on a religious pilgrimage leaving his home so that he can  make his way to the Celestial City (heaven).  This is a major classic and some say a candidate for the first English novel (published 1678).  A great work of literature, although a rather fearsome view of God.

8. Classic With A One Word Title - Belinda by Maria Edgeworth is a novel Jane Austen admired so much that she has one of her characters mention Belinda favorably in Northanger Abbey.  Austen was right about this book and Lady Delacour in particular is a character you want to meet. 

9. Classic With A Color In The Title - The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare.  Published in 1958 and winner of the prestigious Newbery Medal for children's literature.  I enjoyed the book set in 17th century New England.  A book like this can inspire kids to find out more about what life was like in Puritan times.

10 Classic By An Author New to You - The Trial by Franz Kafka.  Kafka writes in a very understandable prose style and I really appreciate that.  As with Camus's The Stranger what Kafka was trying to say in the Trial is open to interpretation.  It's a disturning book but I finished the novel wanting to know more about Kafka and maybe check out his diaries and short stories.

11 A Classic That Scares You - The Sound and The Fury by William Faulkner.  I finished this book annoyed.  A stream of consciousness novel narrated in large part through the thoughts of a character with the mind of a three year old.  I knew I was in trouble from the first page and apparently I'm not the only one.  There is now a color coded version of tbis book so that the reader can more easily figure out who is narrating each part.

12. Reread A Favorite Classic - Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.  Held up very well, although Lennie not as I remembered.  In 2019 I would like to reread another great Steinbeck book Travels With Charley.

That's the wrap up and I have decided to take the 2019 Challenge and post my book choices in about a week or two.  A Happy and Healthy New Year to All and thank you for visiting my book blog.  I really appreciate it.

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan

The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan published 1678 is book twelve on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge (hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate) - choose a classic travel or journey narrative.  Its author, John Bunyan, was a Puritan minister  who would spend twelve years in Bedford prison for preaching when he was repeatedly told not to by the Church of England.  It was during his time in prison that Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress which has been described as a religious allegory.  I have had this book stored in my kindle for some time and the Classics Challenge was the incentive to finally give it a read.

And so when The Pilgrim's Progress begins an unamed narrator, possibly the author, has woken up in his prison cell.  He has dreamt that a character named Christian who has been living in the City of Destruction (the earthly world) has become terrified that the town in which he lives is doomed and that fire and brimstone will reign down upon it in the not so distant future.  Christian begs his wife and children to flee with him to the Celestial City (heaven) but they are afraid to leave the world they know and face whatever dangers might await.  Christian's family and neighbors think he has gone mad and so he sets out on the journey by himself.

Along the way Christian will be accompanied by two friends named Faithful and Hopeful.  But the road leading to the Celestial City is not straightforward.  Christian will encounter many obstacles: depression, ignorance, fear, greed etc which have caused others pilgrims to lose faith and turn back.   One thing the book seems to stress is that if you are going to go on a journey of whatever kind it helps to have companions.  Had it not been for Faithful and Hopeful during key parts of the novel Christian would not have made it to the Celestial City.

John Bunyan is a remarkable writer although his view of religion is a harsh one, a great deal of emphasis on the hell that awaits if you stray from the righteous path.  Still this book is a major classic which has gone on to influence countless authors and since the day it was published The Pilgrim's Progress has never gone out of print.

And so completes my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge and I made it just under the wire!  It's been a worthwhile journey and I plan to do my wrap up review of the books I've read tomorrow and thanks so much to Karen K at Books and Chocolate for hosting the challenge.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte published 1848 is the eleventh book I have read for my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by a woman author.  The Tenant of Wildfell Hall when it was first published was considered the most shocking of the Bronte novels (and that's saying something!) but I guess in Victorian times a woman fleeing her abusive husband and taking her young son with her to start a new life elsewhere was considered more scandalous than anything Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester could come up with. 

And so when The Tenant of Wildfell Hall begins it is 1827 and Helen Huntingdon and her young son have moved into Wildfell Hall, a run down mansion that has seen better days.   Helen has changed her last name to Graham so her husband, Arthur,  won't find her and she has let it be known to her new neighbors that she is a widow.  Helen keeps to herself and rarely ventures out to social gatherings.  One neighbor, Gilbert Markham (who narrates the book from the looking back vantage point of 1847) breaks through Helen's reserve. He takes a liking to her little boy as well.

Helen and Gilbert are growing closer but they have a falling out when false rumors about Helen begin to circulate.  She decides to tell Gilbert the truth about her prior life, handing him her diary.  The diary takes up a great part of this novel and it is a fascinating journal, drawing you in regarding who Helen was before she married Arthur Huntingdon, her Aunt's warning about marrying him, Helen's naive belief that she could change Arthur and his descent into alcoholism, unfaithfulness, emotional abuse and Helen's decision to leave.

I found The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be an exceptional book and one theme running through this novel is that who you marry is serious business and not just for women.  Lord Lowborough,  for example, a character in the novel who falls in love with Annabella Wilmot who only marries him for his title.  He is a good husband and she betrays him at every turn.  Some have said that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall may have been Anne's response to Jane Eyre in which Mr. Rochester is reformed after going through trials and tribulations.  That's not the case with Arthur Huntingdon who gets worse as the novel progresses no matter how hard Helen tries to save the marriage.

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a very modern novel in many ways and yet all of what we have come to expect from the Brontes is there as well, most importantly the gifted story telling and so I heartily recommend The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

The Trial by Franz Kafka

"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us" - Franz Kafka 

The Trial by Franz Kafka published 1925 is one of the great classics of world literature and Kafka one of the world's great writers.   I didn't find him an easy read though and the problem was not his writing style which I found very understandable but rather as with The Stranger by Albert Camus (and the resemblance between these two novels is uncanny),  I came to the end of The Trial disturbed and unsettled regarding what the author was trying to say.  This tends to be the case with many of the great modernist writers of the twentieth century, Kafka, Joyce, Camus, Woolf etc.  It's not all laid out on the table for you and as a reader you have to dig deeper.

And so as the Trial begins we are introduced to Joseph K who has just turned thirty.  He lives in a boarding house and works as a middle manager at a bank.  He leads a solitary existance.  No friends or family to speak of and on this particular morning he is waiting for his landlady to bring him breakfast.  Instead two men enter his room telling him that he is under arrest.  Joseph K is not told the charges, nor is he taken into custody.  He is simply told by these two officials to go about his daily life and the courts will be in touch with him:

"What kind of people were they?  What were they talking about?  Which department did they belong to?  After all, K had rights, the country was at peace, the laws had not been suspended - who, then, had the audacity to descend on him in the privacy of his own home?  He had always tended to avoid taking things too seriously, not to assume the worst until the worst actually happened  ... he could of course regard the whole thing as a joke, a crude joke his colleagues at the bank were playing on him for some unknown reason, perhaps because it was his thirtieth birthday".  

But it is no joke and its not long before Joseph K is told to report to the court.  He is  given the address where he is to appear but he is not told the time and so decides to arrive at 9:00 AM.  However, when he arrives he finds that the courtroom is housed in an old tenement building with so many rooms and stairwells that by the time Joseph K finds the right room he is late and berated by the magistrate.  This infuriates Joseph K and he goes on a tirade about the unfairness of the legal system.  He leaves the building and continues on as best he can working at the bank with his court case looming over him.

Joseph K reaches out to various people along the way, an attorney, a prison chaplain, a court painter and they all offer him advise on the best way to proceed with his trial but its confusing advise and no one will give Joseph K a straight answer about why he was arrested and what he did wrong.  Women play an odd role in The Trial as well.  Either Joseph K is trying to begin a relationship with them or they are making a pass at him but it never works out and for this I think we would need to know more about Franz Kafka's life.

Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, Czech Republic to a German Jewish family.  His father, Hermann Kafka, was a tyrant according to his son, emotionally abusive, mocking Kafka's interest in literature, terrorizing him as a child, disapproving so strongly of Kafka's engagement to Felice Bauer that their relationship fell apart.  We know all this because in 1919 Kafka wrote his father a one hundred page letter in which he laid it all out.  Kafka never sent the letter but critics have speculated that the oppressive legal system that Joseph K encounters in The Trial where he is found guilty but never told his crime serves as a metaphor for Kafka's relationship with his father, although some have pointed out that when it comes to Kafka and his father we only have Kafka's side of the story.

But the Trial can be read in many ways.  An indictment on the legal system,  a criticism of nameless faceless bureacracies and critics have also noted the prophetic nature of the Trial published in 1925, two years after Kafka's death.  Franz Kafka may have written The Trial  to work out his own sense of guilt, depression and self doubt but The Trial also foresaw the nightmarish world about to descend on the 20th century with the rise of Nazism and then Stalinism.  The Trial is not a beach read but as with The Stranger by Camus, I finished The Trial wanting to learn more about Kafka and his writings.

The Trial fulfills book ten on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by an author that's new to you.