Five Books Down, Forty-one To Go!

I finished reading "The Conservationist" last night - again, it took me longer than I'd hoped, but I'm right back on schedule now. So, yay.

As I said in my last post, I really wanted to like this novel, and to be able to say nice things about it. It was not a bad book, in fact some parts of it (particularly the descriptions of the farm) are quite beautiful. However, I'm still not certain that I actually understood the book, or even the main character. I don't like not understanding a book, it makes me feel stupid. The result is that I end up not liking the book because it's made me feel stupid, which is unfair to the book but kind of inevitable. I'm not a good person.

There may be spoilers. I apologize, but in my attempt to understand this book spoilers are not a major concern for me. If they are for you, please don't say I didn't warn you. I'm trying not to Spoil, but I can't make any guarantees. Sorry.

Still with me? Ok, let's go.

My basic understanding of the book is that Mehring, the hobby farmer, feels he has lost the love of his ex-wife, his teenaged son, and his former mistress. He travels the world, flirts with women, over-sees the management of his farm, but feels unfulfilled, empty, unloved. The only consistency in his life comes from his land, and he slowly falls in love with it, until it also rejects him - in the form of a rather gross scene following a flood. Maybe it's Mehring rejecting the farm, as he has slowly shut himself off from the rest of his life. I'm not really sure. The final scene with Mehring on the farm was gross but inevitable. I thought it was a pretty good ending for the farm, which may actually be the protagonist of the piece.

The character of Mehring left me feeling unresolved, even a little dirty. By the second half of the book I was doubting his sanity, and by the second last chapter I was sure he'd lost his dang mind. The novel is filled with rambling train of thought passages where Mehring jumps from thoughts of his farm, his lover, his son, his workers, his indiscretions, all in a completely random way, and then back to where he started. There are also frequent imagined conversations, to the point where I'm still not sure if some parts of the novel were just fantasy sequences. It was very annoying for me, but I suppose it's just one of those artistic choices - you'll either love it, or you won't.

On the 'next book' front, I'm moving on to the winner for 1975, "Heat and Dust" by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. This week I have no dental appointments, no knitting night, and only two hockey games. In theory, I'll be able to finish this book early.

We'll see about that.

Happy reading!

Curious, But Also A Bit Confused

Ok, so I'm on book 5 this week, reading Nadine Gordimer's 'The Conservationist', which shared the 1974 Booker Prize with Stanley Middleton's 'Holiday'. Incidentally, 'Holiday' brings the total of books that I haven't been able to locate up to 3, so I'll be jumping ahead to 1975 once I finish 'The Conservationist'. I still haven't decided how I'm going to deal with these three missing books. I was hoping to get copies from a local independent book seller, but I haven't heard back from them on my request, I guess we'll see what happens.

I started reading this novel Sunday evening, and I'm about halfway through now, so it's been a fairly quick read. I want to say nice things about this book. I want to like it, even. Despite the style of Gordimer's writing. In particular her punctuation is irritating me, but I'm trying to accept it as a legitimate artistic choice. Really, I am. Especially since I realize that it is a choice many writers of " literature" make, although I'm honestly not sure why. There is nothing "wrong" with the story, and I want to like it. But the truth is, I'm not really sure what the story is.

I know what has happened so far in the novel, it's not as though I've been reading on auto-pilot, suddenly twenty pages on without knowing what I've read. It's just that I'm not certain of what point Gordimer is trying to get across to me. I put off writing this post for a couple days because I really hoped the story would become clearer to me, but so far no luck. Maybe I'm ten or fifteen pages away from clarification and tomorrow I'll regret this post. For now, though, I feel a bit lost.

The novel is a 'modern' work, set in South Africa of the early 1970's. There is, of course, racial tension, and also interesting environmental observations. Before I started the book I toyed with the title, wondering whether the conservation would be of a social status quo or environmentally based. It seems to me, so far, that it is in fact an ecological conservation - the main character owns a hobby farm and appears to be interested in maintaining native flora and fauna, to a certain degree. It is a bit of a contradiction, however, because it is still an operational farm, and his main business seems to be mineral sales. So, that's interesting.

The issue of race in a novel set in South Africa is a given. The opening chapter has the discovery of a black stranger murdered on the farm. The police response is partly horrifying, and partly comical. The man is briefly referred to throughout the novel, but never really as a man just as an object. It's a very alien concept to me, but at the same time it's really not that different from sex workers 'disappearing' in mainland British Columbia with no one raising an alarm. Once a society stops recognizing the humanity of any group, it's not a huge leap before they are being disposed of like a stray dog. It's very sad, but it's good to be reminded of how our 'group think' can lead us to commit horrible crimes.

The Indian family is also quite interesting. I don't have strong grasp of South African history, and it never actually occurred to me that society was even further divided. Not just 'white' and 'black' but also 'non-white' - living in a sort of limbo where you can own property and run a business, but not entirely legally, always with the threat of an eviction requiring constant bribe payments. It's definitely a situation where you can feel the pressure building, so I'm very interested in how that is resolved.

I'm aiming to be finished reading this novel by Thursday. I was hoping for tomorrow, but there's no way I'll make that. Currently all I really want is for this novel to coalesce in a coherent manner, and realize the potential of all these interesting aspects. I would love that.

*Almost forgot to include a photo!