A good friend loaned me this book, insisting that I read it because it was a favourite of hers. I hope she does not read this review because I appreciA good friend loaned me this book, insisting that I read it because it was a favourite of hers. I hope she does not read this review because I appreciate her friendship and intelligence and have no desire to cast stones at one of her sacred things. But when I read a book I do review it here and I may not be thorough, polished or even particularly interesting in my reviews but I am honest. My honesty has bias, I write about what I like and what I want to read and people are free to disagree…but this friend in particular I hope will not read this review.
“we spoke to businesswomen, actresses, students” claims Steinbeck toward the end of the book (p 207). To what end? asks the reader since the book is singularly free from any female perspective. We see Steinbeck and Capa sitting down to meals with men, listening to speeches by men, travelling with men, sending presents to men, stealing books from men, playing darts with men. Women appear as beautiful, or tragically under-ornamented and as good cooks. They have husbands who speak for them or they are loose women but dismissed for not being beautiful. Steinbeck and Capa have escaped from their wives and their domestic spheres to be in cosy relationships with men, consumers of female beauty and domestic labour.
I suppose this is why I avoid reading male writers these days, that when they represent women, they represent them for the heterosexual male gaze or from the point of view of catering to male agendas and make “needs”. They are depicted as wanting to be this, to be beautiful and nurturing and taking pride in their servitude. Strangely enough real women are not that way.
I had myriad issues with this book- in particular the American tone of superiority (even when humble bragging) and the toxic masculinities in it. The idea that this book goes below the surface to show some common-place shared humanity is a romantic one but not one that came across to me in the 212 pages of bullying, overeating, lecherous gazing, mocking and othering. I get that Steinbeck and Capa are seen as super-stars of their world (American literature and photography of the early C20th) but all I can say is any world that fetes them makes no space for the likes of me.
I feel unrepentant about my privileging of female writers in my own recreational reading. ...more
How do I say this! This book was exquisite and extraordinary. Thanks a million to beautiful Alice Walker for opening my mind and my heart this way (anHow do I say this! This book was exquisite and extraordinary. Thanks a million to beautiful Alice Walker for opening my mind and my heart this way (and note to young self in the past who was too scared to read this book I suspect you were right to wait until life had given you some experience before you attempted it).
The violence, abuse and injustice in the book are scarring! There is no redemption possible from a lot of what happens and keeps happening, the systematic domination of black women by men, by white people and sometimes even by each other's meanness and petty jealousies are treated with a great deal of honesty. Just when you think with a sinking feeling that the righteous anger, hurt and hopelessness caused by all this will be all you are in for in this book, enter women's ability to heal themselves and others, to survive, to grow and to love. This is a realistic love that can be in your face at times and there is hatred in the book too, not every bad deed is redeemed or redeemable. This is not an idealistic or airy-fairy book, the love is real and has dusty feet and an earthy odor.
But somehow in the fragmentation that is caused by systematic injustice families are built, kinship is affirmed and people teach each other to grow. Love of sisters, of former rivals, of daughters, and ultimately the men who are drawn into the orbit of the women's world (symbolised by working, feeding, cooking, cleaning, collecting and sewing) are also made new and learn to experience the depth of life and to love. Even then the book does not degenerate into an escapist celebration of some nebulous sort of "love" ideal, but there is still hurt and loss and even evil to experience even as the pull of the heart is toward home and toward love.
This book is profoundly spiritual, but it does not tell you what to believe. Like Shug the reader is left free to love and adventure as she herself decides. And after reading this I LOVE Alice Walker. But she did break my heart multiple times within this book that I wasn't able to put down!
(Trigger warning- just about every awful thing you can imagine happens in the book, at times to children. So read with self-care)...more
It was a hard slog reading this book where so many heartbreaking and soul destroying things happen to already poor people who have so little to begin It was a hard slog reading this book where so many heartbreaking and soul destroying things happen to already poor people who have so little to begin with. As I read, I began to identify a pattern, a theme of asymmetrical desire that makes up love; of misunderstanding and the way we construe others depending on our own emotional neediness, but we cannot read them.
There was an inability to communicate as each person, a misfit one way or the other navigated their own unique (and each in some way transgressive) identity comproised of social class, gender, race and complex web of needs and relationships. A sad book, a heavy book, it seemed to me like every single character in it was beaten into the ground and beyond and the portrait of life in the book ended up being about surviving not thriving- beyond joy or desire or connection or even dignity just the rugged will (or in some cases non-will) to live.
So why four stars? The way love and desire were portrayed in the book- so divorced from the more common romanticized view of marketised, contrived, produced perfection. People were loved for deep and unknowable reasons. People were ugly and loved, poor and loved, old and loved, fat and loved. The way love flowed in the book (albeit one way) was both relatable and humanizing since that is the way I love.
But the relentless and awful realism of poverty and hopelessness! I would have liked a ray of hope or redemption somewhere! Did I miss the point?...more
Now as an adult I can be somewhat critical of this book, but I must admit that when I first read it, it changed my life. It made me laugh, it shocked Now as an adult I can be somewhat critical of this book, but I must admit that when I first read it, it changed my life. It made me laugh, it shocked me, it made me go out and read every Vonnegut I could get my hands on which had an impact on my philosophical and spiritual perspectives which ultimately made me more critical, more playful and indirectly turned me into a post-structuralist. So that 14 year old girl that first read this book needs to give the guy 5 stars. As a 40 year old I give it 3 stars but I also acknowledge this book's significance to me. If you need your mind blown wide open try Vonnegut !!
And it's a fun read as well, especially if you are a writer as well as a reader :)...more
I am truly sorry I didn't love this book because everyone else seems to have been ecstatic over it. Because of this I tried to find something good to I am truly sorry I didn't love this book because everyone else seems to have been ecstatic over it. Because of this I tried to find something good to see in it and the closest I could come to is I mostly enjoyed Inigo and Fezzik (mostly) and thought their relationship was sweet.
But the Goldman/Morgenstern dichotomy...just why?? It gives Goldman a chance as often as possible to stand back from the text and preach (usually misogynist) opinions at us, but to me it added nothing to the reader's experience. Westley seems to be a reflection of Goldman's misogyny and Buttercup is everything I dislike in a heroine. She is passive and beautiful. Sure the populace loves her because she is beautiful but she actually seems to do nothing apart from walk among them and struggle with bad dreams and emotions. Oh and let all the male characters including her supposed true love talk to her in really disrespectful ways. She is portrayed as none too bright so really all she has going for her is she looks good and loves an abusive guy.
Then as to the other female characters...but they are all cameos, there is no other substantive female part so that this book does not even get near the Bechdel test. There are logical plot holes and anachronisms which are thinly papered over with what passes for humour and the disclaimer that "Morgenstern" did it.
I almost gave the book two stars because Inigo and his fighting ability and caring relationship with Fezzik were really lovely but there were traces of things I didn;t like (eg racism) even there and at the ending where both Westley and Inigo speak domineeringly to Buttercup within two pages I just felt irritated at how long I had tried to work with this book and not hate it.
I really, honestly cannot understand how so many female readers enjoy it...but I am guessing most people who read this review will be horrified and see me as a philistine for not liking it more! So be it....more
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