The Sportswriter by Richard Ford


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


52/100


While the merits of the book lie mostly in Ford's ability to write believable, interesting dialogue and pages-long conversation, I found it incredibly difficult to connect, or even really like the protagonist, Frank Bascombe. He is a man emotionless, or at least purposely emotionally distant from events and the people around him. "I don't think I have any ethics at all, really. I just do as little harm as I can," Bascombe tells Walter Luckett, both members of The Divorced Men's Club. Here is a man of wanton convictions, and to me, someone who lets life lead them instead the other way around. But it wasn't always like that for Frank, who took chances and gave up dreams prior to the beginning of the novel, which we are dealt in musing flashbacks. The events which carry the greatest opportunity for a profound link between the reader and writer (Ralph, his eldest son's death, and the consequential divorce from his wife) are all given to us from Frank's disconnected present, a narrative of little action and mostly retrospection. And this makes for a slow, dolorous read, which I questioned to abandon. But I guess one could argue this structuring was entirely Ford's purpose. As he writes towards the beginning, "All we really want is to get to a point where the past can explain nothing about us and we can get on with life."




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The Things They Carried by Tim O'Brien


My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Such a beautiful fusion of the horrors of war, and the introspection on life and how it affects the writing process. Sounds strange, I know. But it is wholly unexpected and wonderfully rewarding.




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Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys


My rating: 3 of 5 stars


50/100. I really feel I should have read Bronte's "Jane Eyre" before taking this on. There is a lot of ambiguity about the characters at times, which I guess Rhys is counting on her audience to have read the "sequel," if you will. So, that made the story slightly hard to follow. But there's a passion to the writing casting a moody atmosphere over the story, which is fitting, as our heroine is descending into madness and everyone seems frightened of the "zombi."




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Deliverance by James Dickey


My rating: 4 of 5 stars


49/100: Having never seen the movie, which itself is iconic, I was able to wade into "Deliverance" with a near clean perspective. I can only hope the film captures the raw intensity and page-turning suspense of the novel. The fight for survival, not only for the "city folk" from the "hillbillies," but the struggle to survive against nature itself is beautifully captured. Dickey seemlessly juxtaposes the fear modernization feels towards the untamed wilderness alongside the reluctance our harsh, aggressive, unapologetic past has to the unstoppable sophistication, progression, of our future, which will surely lead the past to its demise.




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