Holly's Books 2 and 3: Evelina, and Caleb Williams

So here we are, a month and a half into the year, and I'm finally writing about books number two and three. At this rate, I will end up with exactly half of my goal by December... oh well. And to top off my exceptionally slow pace, both of these are books that I read for class - had they not been, I wouldn't have finished them at all. Anyway.

Evelina by Frances Burney was published in 1778 (I think). It chronicles, in epistolary form, a naive young girl's debut into society. Think Jane Austen, only less interesting. You follow Evelina from assembly to assembly to play to garden to assembly, listen as she obsesses about Lord Orville, the most boring hero ever invented (one of the people in my class described Lord O as a "manners machine," and the phrase fits), and watch as she becomes, perpetually, "mortified" by everything and anything. If all of this is not exciting enough, everyone Evelina comes into contact with expounds upon her beauty and her "sensibility," fighting for her attention and affection. I didn't realize how annoying Evelina was until around page 150 or so, but once I did, it was difficult to get through the next 250 pages. Not to say that Evelina didn't have its high points: Captain Mirvan, who Evelina presents as a buffoon and a burden (because he lacks any sort of manners), is actually hilarious and seems to have more common sense than most of the other characters in the novel - he just doesn't see the need to conform to social conventions.

And, okay. When I think about the novel's plot, it actually was a pretty good book. If I were a young girl living in late eighteenth-century England, I probably would have loved this novel. Being a young girl living in the twenty-first-century US, I thought that cutting half of Evelina's content would have helped its cause: less assemblies, more old lady foot-races. That stuff's hilarious.

Next: Caleb Williams. Same class, different book. This one was written by William Godwin (husband of Mary Wollstonecraft, father of Mary Shelley) in 1794, the year after he published his massive political treatise, Enquiry Concerning Political Justice. Caleb Williams is about a servant who finds out that his master has killed someone, and who is then persecuted by his master for his knowledge. Again, the plot is interesting I suppose - but so incredibly verbose. The first third of the book (120 pages) is the master's backstory. The middle part drags. Things really don't pick up until the last part of the book, at which point there are only 130 pages left. And sprinkled throughout are moments where Godwin gets up on his soapbox to talk about the political and social system in 1790s Britain. Which, granted, is the reason he wrote the book: to bring his multi-volume treatise down to terms that us normal folk can understand. And, granted, it can be interesting.

With that said, I think I might be one of the few people in my class who read the who book. Most people said that they skipped around until they found parts of the book that actually had some bearing on the plot. The Marxist kid said he skipped around until he found parts of the book that had nothing to do with the plot (ie: the soapbox). I thought it was interesting to see how Godwin fit the two together, especially since this is touted as the first novel to have an explicit political agenda. That's really not reason enough to read this novel, though. I can't really think of a good reason to read this book, in fact.

Holly's Book 1: She's Come Undone by Wally Lamb

Wally Lamb's debut novel, She's Come Undone, is something I've been meaning to read for ages. It's been on my "To Read" list for years, a book mentioned in passing by older family and friends and referenced on occasion in my Contemporary American Women's Fiction class last semester. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't read it sooner, because it's been sitting on my shelf for years. Maybe I was intimidated by its size (465 pages - that's kind of big, right...?) or its cover (a woman's head floating bizarrely in a cloudy sky above a bright blue ocean), but whatever it was, I'm glad I finally got over my fears. She's Come Undone is an easy read, and pretty darn good in a book-clubby way.

The novel begins with Dolores Price as a child, smart-alecky and sure of herself, dealing with the effects of her parents' marital problems. From there, it follows her journey through failed relationships, trauma, death, and ultimately, mental and physical recovery from the harm inflicted upon her by others and by herself. With Dolores, it seems that growth is a one-step-forward, two-steps-back sort of deal - and at times, reading about her extended recovery annoyed me. Looking back, though, I have to appreciate it. That's the way life is and the way people are: damaged, damaging, growing and ungrowing and growing again. And Dolores is quirky and entertaining throughout, even (sometimes especially) at her most apathetic.

While Dolores is a character entertaining enough to sustain the novel by herself, I loved most of the characters she develops relationships with, all of whom affect her in one way or another. The cast of secondary characters ranges from the obvious (mother, father, grandmother) to the more obscure (high school guidance counselor, wall paper hanger, even a beached whale). Again, true to life, some of these characters stick around and understand their impact, while some merely pass through Dolores's life. All are well-developed and interesting in their own right, but they became more interesting as the story progressed and I saw more and more clearly how they fit like puzzle pieces into Dolores's journey. In this novel, Wally Lamb manages to time everything perfectly without making anything seem contrived.

One of the things that most amazed me about this novel was the author's gender. Maybe this seems unenlightened of me, but for the first hundred pages or so I had to keep checking the author's photo for proof of his masculinity - and every time, there was Mr. Lamb staring back at me. I know that men can write female characters and women can write male characters, etc etc. But there's something almost unsettling and almost amazing about the extent to which Lamb accesses a female voice/perspective/experience, writing this character's growth and development over 30-plus years from childhood into adulthood. In Dolores, I recognized myself and the women around me; more than that, though, I caught glimpses of things I'd forgotten from childhood and things from adulthood that I have yet to deal with. How is it that Lamb knows things about being a woman that I didn't know until I read them in his book? How ever Lamb does it, Dolores rings true from the first page to the last.

A lot of crap happens to Dolores in She's Come Undone - and at times, Dolores herself does "come undone." Even though the novel chronicles her journey well into adulthood, I think it could accurately be categorized as a coming-oh-age story. It takes time for Dolores to deal fully with the trauma she experiences as a young girl, and that, in essence, is what this book is about: a woman learning, finally, to be okay with who she is and who she has been.

A bit about us: Holly Jean

Holly: I'm really excited about this project even though I'm one of the world's slowest readers. I love reading though, and I'm glad for an excuse to read for pleasure - that is one thing that I don't mind turning into an obligation. I just finished The World According to Garp by John Irving (yesterday, when I should have been writing this term paper), which I enjoyed; I then started Soul on Ice by Eldredge Cleaver (this morning, when I should have been writing this term paper). Oh well...

I'm a junior at UCF, majoring in English Literature. I love what I'm doing right now, but I have no idea what I'll do in the future. I love being outdoors, travelling, and learning about new things. I studied abroad in England this summer and backpacked around a bit, which was amazing. I loved waking up each morning and deciding for myself what I would do all day - where I was going, how I was getting there, etc. It was fun to be able to just sit in a cafe and read if I wanted to, or go on an impromptu hike. When I got back, I decided that I wanted to learn EVERYTHING, signed up for six classes (four of them being lit classes), and have regretted it ever since (ughhhh term paper; two pages down, only eight to go). I'm taking four classes next semester, and I'm really looking forward to it! I'm excited to start reading new books and everyone's posts!