"The Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

Book club choice
 This book was chosen before the pandemic and we will be discussing it on zoom next week.
  It was mentioned that this may not be a good book to be reading at this time, but this group of readers is committed and that plan was made before 2020 even started.

   Actually it wasn't really difficult to read this novel although it is 'dark'.  The whole story has an atmosphere of 'darkness'.
   A fictional Marlowe, had always wanted to be a captain on a steamer.  Through connections in London, he was able to accomplish this.
  When Marlowe acquired this job, he was working for a company.  He felt that something was not quite right, but did not understand the whole story.  He just followed his orders.  
   In fact, he was part of an organization that set up stations in the Congo, manipulating the natives, and taking huge shipments of ivory.
  There was not a lot of violent description, but a dark mood as you read about the way the white men treated the natives.  There were coffles of slaves as well as masses of sick and dying natives in the bush.  One station had heads on poles as decoration around their hut.  The white workers were inhumane and often went mad in the atmosphere of the jungle. Meanwhile, the council in Europe, the main organization, was making huge amounts of money.
  The story is simple and sad.  The description is beautifully written. "At night sometimes the roll of drums behind the curtain of trees would run up the river and remain sustained faintly, as if hovering in the air high over our heads, till the first break of day".

Joseph Conrad

   Although it is a fictional story,

 it is based on Conrad's experiences in the Congo. 

"The Unbearable Lightness of Being"

    Since the library is closed due to the pandemic, and book clubs are not possible, I delved into a pile of books that I have collected over many years.  I latched onto this novel, because it reminded me of the person who recommended it.  
  I was a teacher-librarian in the 1980's and often got into conversations with staff members about books.  I remember the male teacher that told me that this was his favourite book, so I bought it then.  And it has been stored with many other books that I have bought over the years.

   Milan Kundera is the author of this book and it was extremely popular in the 1980's.  Well, it is certainly dated and would not be popular now.  "The Guardian" (British newspaper) said that Kundera wrote about "the male gaze, fixed on the female body, captivated by it, and spinning an elaborate theory on the basis of what it sees there".
  Tomas, the main character does marry, but made it clear that he believed that love and sexuality had nothing in common.  
   
  Quote: "She seemed like a child to him, a child someone had put in a bulrush basket daubed with pitch and sent downstream to Tomas to fetch at the riverbank of his bed".
  That sentence was interesting the first time, but was repeated often.  Teresa, the child in the bulrush basket was actually his wife and her dreams were described in detail.  Episodes in her life (and her dreams) kept repeating. 
    The narrative of Tomas and Teresa was often interrupted by long philosophical ramblings.  And the presence of the communist party in Czechoslovakia is described in detail, as that is where much of the story takes place.  One more interruption for me was the references to musical compositions. 
  To put it gently, it was an unusual novel.

   Kundera was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, joined the Communist party, was expelled from the party and joined it again.  Eventually, after trying to reform the party, he gave up and moved to France.
  He rejected Nietzsche's concept of eternal return .  Interestingly, this is just the concept of a book that I read recently: "The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August"- coming back to the same life over and over.
  Kundera believed that Nietzsche had a 'heaviness', whereas Paremenides(a Greek philosopher), had a 'lightness of being'.  Hence, the title.

Hidden Valley Road

   We are isolated because of the world pandemic and when I saw that Oprah had chosen this book for her book club, I was very interested.  I am a sucker for interesting covers.  Who wouldn't want to read this book?
   I immediately bought it on my ipad and began reading.  I was engrossed from the first page.
   Don and Mimi Galvin raised these 10 boys, plus two girls that were not yet born when this picture was taken. 
   They lived on Hidden Valley Road in Colorado and the twelve children were born between 1945 and 1965. The mother was a woman of culture and the father was a man of the military.  It looks like a perfect family, if ever there was one.  And, of course, there is no such thing.  But this family had more challenges than you can ever imagine.  Six of the boys had schizophrenia!
   Interspersed in the family's story, is the scientific investigation of this disease.  Every theory over the years is explained in detail.  There was way too much detail for me.
   What I recognized from this heart-wrenching true story is that the disease devastates the whole family.  Everyone lives in fear of 'being next', as well as being traumatized by violence and abuse.
  Every review that I have read is glowing, but I have two problems with the book.  I have mentioned the detail of the scientific research.  My other problem is with privacy.  I realize that the author got permission from every living member of the family. Can a person with mental illness really give permission?  There were word-for-word conversations with one or another of the boys while in a psychotic episode.  I feel that we can get to the heart of the story without so much personal detail.  I knew that the author did great research for this book- reading family letters, diaries, medical records.  I have always felt that diaries are not to be read by anyone but the owner.  Everyone doesn't share my feelings of privacy.
  This is an important story to tell and the book was well-organized and much of it was extremely well written.  I just felt that the story could be told without so much personal detail.
  The family were used in the on-going search for a genetic marker for schizophrenia as well as better treatment options.
  I was engrossed at the beginning, but emotionally drained by the end.

"The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August" by Claire North

author

    This author is just as fascinating as the books that she writes.
   She was born in London, England in 1986, the daughter of author/ publisher Nick Webb.  She was writing during the school holidays at age 14 and that book, "Mirror Dreams" was published when was 16, followed by 2 more books published the next year.  She has now, at age 33, written many science fiction novels.  Her real name is Catherine Webb, but she writes under  pseudonyms Kate Griffin and Claire North.

   This novel was introduced to me by my grandson, Hunter, who had just graduated from engineering.  I knew that it would not be the type of book that I would choose, but I am always interested in what the grandchildren are reading.  
   We are now in the midst of a pandemic and what is better than a science fiction novel to distract your thoughts from the disturbing news every day?
   So I immersed myself in this novel. 
   I enjoyed the premise: Harry August lives the same life over and over and over. He is born into the same unusual circumstances every time (born in a washroom). 
  In each life, at age 3, he begins to recollect his past lives.  By his third life, Harry had not met anyone else with his experience and wondered if there was some purpose to his journey.
  Eventually, he discovers that there are other people in the world with the same experience. They are called kalachakras or ouroborans. Quote: "They loop perpetually through the same course of historical events, though their lives within may change." 
  And, then he connects with Cronus Club.  And here, I got lost in the history, geography, and technology of the world, as he chases clues left by other members of the Cronus Club and hooks up with a man who is trying to discover the nature of existence itself.
  I would never have believed that this novel was written by a woman in her 20's.