This Other Eden
I took a look at the Observer’s review of this other Eden. This review goes into how Harding in other works bring carefully calibrated moments that humanizes his characters more. In this review he mentions Harding’s strengths to create single sentences that fleshes out the scene of a character, making them feel “harrowingly human”, and commends this book for playing to that kind of the strength the best. Along with the observation about the premise: the tragedy of a mixed-island’s eviction due to the, popular-at-the-time ideology of Eugenics. Harding himself doesn’t write about the ideology, the ‘battle’, but the people on their instead, and they’re various lives on the island, claiming that due to this the novel doesn’t match the ambition of the premise. He also notes that it doesn’t really judge any characters morally, for example: Shows that the man who delivered the eviction while also a prejudice follower of Eugenics, is still a struggling man who has to do his job for the sake of his family.
While I can’t make a comparison to Harding’s other work. When it comes to the reviewers claim of specialized sentences that fleshes out characters/action, I do believe there are definitely some sentences that are the topic of great discussion or just artistically puts the reader in the scene. Matthew Diamond admittance to his “involuntary repulsion to the presence of a negro.” Has a noticeable impact on the reader, completely changing how they look at the character that no other line from him has. The line that states that he wanted tell the Hospital workers testing the children that they were capable of speaking in Latin has been discussed to great lengths in class. As for scene writing, the Sentence “Inhale it into my lungs like a last meal of seawater soup” while not entirely bringing revelations in character emphasizes the harrowing event of the Hurricane.
I do agree that the book spends more time on the characters than the dilemma, we have entirely dedicated sections to fleshing out the characters, like the Lark parents and how Theophilus went from Fishing to household duties, and vice versa with Candace. I’d argue that this actually enhances the tragedy of the story since it gets the reader to truly know or care about the characters and what’s being lost in the process. It makes this more impactful. Though I don’t think this story has the goal to explicitly discuss about the nature of racism and instead lets the natural consequences of it play out as much as the natural consequences/actions of the other characters.
I also want to attest to the fact that this story doesn’t do a complete judgement on all parties involved, if this was a lesser story I feel it would go to great lengths discussing how evil Eugenics is, instead of letting its consequences on the islanders settle for the reader to take it for themselves. If it were also a lesser story it would be painfully clear to know the good guys and bad guys, especially in the story we have Apple Island itself is flawed, there is inbreeding, sexual assault and murder, even prejudice don’t escape them with Ethan Honey.
If I Survive You
Susie Mesure’s review of If I Survive You praises the variety of the episodic writing that allows for various different times, writing styles, and perspectives throughout the novel. However she claims this approach can only work far and comes into a couple trappings due to this formatting, claiming each segment wasn’t connected enough to justify their status as anything but a standalone title. She also seems to knock certain characters like Trelawney’s mother for ending up underdeveloped. Though, the paragraph ending of the book does neatly tie this all together into ‘something like’ a novel. Despite all this she acknowledges that Escoffery has his talents in writing and humor on full display whilst taking inspiration from other books.
I do believe that the ending itself can be enough to justify tying everything together in a story sense, and not just thematic cohesion. It is the point where everything that’s built up should pay off together and connect in a way to bring a satisfying conclusion, even if they’ve been divorced from each other before. Point is: The Ending in itself can justify the existence of these multiple short stories. That said, it doesn’t completely tie everything together, the lack of consistent progress and skipping around doesn’t make things quite as developed, as Susie said the Mom did feel underwritten despite her potential though I don’t think a non-episodic structure would fix that. There’s no immediate progression you would get in a traditional novel though they do connect in ways that would make the reader be completely out of the loop if they saw them individually, except arguably the ending. But when they do connect you start to appreciate things a bit more. Knowing what Delano went through in the semi-final chapter would add more perspective to his behavior in the final chapter.The Irony of “Growing up Cukie envied Trelawny’s access to his father” if the book didn’t illustrate Trelawny’s father isn’t exactly enviable. The stories compliment each other more than require each other.
I also agree that the format does help his strengths, Escoffry did seem comfortable writing this, and if this was more of a traditional novel with a 3rd person perspective it would’ve been too limiting or would require this to require more publishing than necessary.
Western Lane
Claudia Rowan claims the story doesn’t catch “emotional fire” and is a generally negative review. Talking on common points discussed in class, like the uncomplicated nature of the story, mainly. She claims that the writing lacks any true depth despite being about grief as it is Squash. The main character narrating this story: Gopi. To Claudia, Gopi’s narrative voice comes off as flat and emotionless, and frustratingly unmemorable unexcused by the idea that it’s all a manifestation of her grief. But despite all that, Claudia gives some roses to Maroo’s work. Claudia believes Maroo to be a writer with talent, and that talent is able to make its presence in Western lane. Complimenting her technical skill as a writer to metaphorize the character’s Grief as Squash, and how she perceptively uses the act of “ghosting” as another metaphor for how her family acts.
In my opinion I do agree with Rowan’s observation of the very simplistic story as observed by the class. But whilst I do understand her frustration at the narrator’s lack of deep voice. I could argue that there was a chance that there could be a way to find that depth in what she observes and how she observes it particularly that conversation her father had about Kahn, the Pakistani Squash champion leaving some room to wonder if she really knew the subtext behind what he was talking about when he said “Idians and Pakistanis are brothers”. Although this does have me wondering what would be lost if this book was written in third person. I have come to the agreement that this book would have improved if Gopi had more of a personality/input but I do think what we have currently could have its merits depending on the reader.
Prophet’s Song
Laura Hackett’s review first touches upon the risky nature of creating a dystopian fiction novel due to it being a heavily political message that can deliver some powerful insight on society or come off as incredibly ham-fisted. Because of this the critic has, complicated views on the book itself referring it as: Totalitarianism by numbers. Even making remarks directly responding to the main character’s dialogue “But what I am doing is keeping this family apart in a world that seemed designed on tearing us apart.” Saying that her dialogue is pretty obvious, but there’s some rare instances of more artistic writing but not enough to deter the feeling that this is as stated: By-The-Numbers totalitarianism.
I do agree that the Dystopian setting is not entirely original and the plot actually feels a little simplistic “Hollywood” like Western Lane, with the only “non-Hollywood” thing about it being its tragic ending, which even then isn’t unheard of most mainstream productions. I was accepting of the idea that the Dystopian setting/history isn’t the actual point and it’s taking a more “realistic stance” on a Dystopian setting unlike something like 1984 where the entire point of the book was the presentation of “Big Brother”. So I took it more as a character study of a mother facing the consequences of her political apathy/being trapped in this setting. But certain phrases suggest that make it look like the Book is more enlightened than I think it is. “and if you keep saying it over and over people accept it as true – this is an old idea, of course, it really is nothing new, but you’re watching it happen in your own time and not in a book.” for example brings up the unoriginality of the idea but, the fact that they brought up the tactic only in books brings into question, what about other real world historical examples of propaganda in an authoritarian state since this book takes place in the not so near future, and this was written during the Russian and Ukraine war. There’s no stated history besides a few lines of dialogue in how Ireland fell into this regime so it doesn’t seem to deliver any commentary on the history of totalitarianism and how it happens, which could be fine if this is a more anachronistic setting where the dystopia is more isolated but quotes like that makes it harder not to compare it to other stories.
As to the claim of the lack of subtlety in the main character’s dialogue made I partially agree,I think it’s par for the course her dialogue would be explicitly about the situation she’s in, but it makes sense since this story is mostly exploring her decisions on why she stay’s inside the country. I don’t think dialogue like that is explicitly written to make a larger point, though I wouldn’t call it successful if it is.
