British Novel Week 8

The book for the final week of the British Novel is At-Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien. The author spent 5 years writing At-Swim. According to Gass's introduction, it was a book that Joyce loved and Hitler hated. According to Anna Clissman, At-Swim is an anti-novel if you rely on the following definition by M.H. Abrams: "... a work which is deliberately constructed in a negative fashion, relying for its effects on omitting or annihilating traditional elements of the novel, and on playing against the expectations established in the reader by the novelistic methods and conventions of the past." The narrator of the story, who is never given a name, is a university student who spends more time in his room, sleeping and writing than he does at the university. The narrator is writing a story with Trellis has the main character. Trellis, the owner of a public house, also spends more time sleeping and writing than attending to business. He, too, is writing a novel. So, we have stories within stories which made for some slow reading. This book was probably the most difficult and the least favorite of the 8 books I have read for this course.

British Novel Week 7

This week's novel is Brighton Rock by the English author and playwright Graham Greene. The novel opens with the line "Hale knew they meant to murder him before he had been in Brighton three hours..." Greene himself states that he began the book as a "detective story" but that "the first fifty pages of Brighton Rock are all that remain of the detective story." Greene employs the third person omniscient point of view in this novel. The view shifts among a selected number of characters. As the story progresses, tension builds. The death of Hale at the beginning of the novel sets a series of events in motion. Ida, a companion with Hale just before his death cannot accept that he died without anyone asking why. She becomes his avenging angel. Members of a small time mob commit more murders in an attempt to cover up their involvement in Hale's death. Rose, an unsuspecting waitress becomes the center of focus for both a mob member and Ida who is running her own investigation on Hale's death. This novel has suspense, death and pits good against evil. The novel was made into a movie in 1947 and again more recently with a 60's setting. The movie would be worth seeing based on the suspenseful story line in the novel.

E. M. Forster

The book of the week is A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh. Waugh was a 20th century British novelist and journalist. His father was a publisher and his brother Alec was an editor. Waugh attended private schools as a boy and later Oxford University. Waugh used family circumstances and acquaintances as settings and characters for his later novels. A Handful of Dust employs black humor to comment on the social norms of the time. Waugh utilizes black humor and satire to comment on British imperialism, the decline of the aristocratic estates, adultery, divorce and death. The third person narrative form makes the novel easier to read than the stream-of-consciousness technique employed by previous British authors. Tony and Brenda are the novel's main characters. Tony's priority is his ancestral home. His wife, Brenda, discontented with the isolated, estate life, travels to London. She takes a flat there and only returns on week-ends. The longer she is gone, the more distant she becomes from her life with Tony at Hetton Abbey. Brenda's next step is to take a lover. She finally requests a divorce and the alimony will cost Tony his ancestral home. At first he goes along with the idea but then refuses to give Brenda a divorce if it means that he will lose Hetton Abbey. Tony leaves his home to get away from everything but ends up lost in the Brazilian jungle. He is presumed dead by everyone back home but actually ends up held captive by a Mr. Todd in the jungles of Brazil. In addition, Tony is forced to read Dickens' books daily to Mr. Todd. Waugh's use of black humor keeps the novel entertaining to the very end.

British Novel Week 5

Lady Chatterley's Lover reflects third-person omniscient narration. This was a welcome relief from the stream of consciousness technique of our previous weeks. Lawrence explores class differences in England along with industrialization. The main theme of the book is sexuality. Connie, Lady Chatterley, is married to Clifford. After only one month of marriage, Sir Clifford goes off to war and returns paralyzed from the waist down. He spends the rest of his life in a wheel chair. At first, Connie is content with an intellectual life versus a physical life. It is Clifford's intellect that excites her. As time goes on, the isolated, intellectual life at Wragby Hall wears on Lady Chatterley. A lover enters the picture but only for a short time. Then Lady Chatterley forms a sexual liason with Mellors who is Sir Clifford's gamekeeper. Connie's sexuality is awakened. This union turns out to be the union of a lifetime in the physical, sexual sense. Eventually, Connie's only goal is to leave Wragby Hall and spend the rest of her life with her lover . The novel ends with both Connie and Mellors waiting on divorces from their significant others. Also, the couple is expecting the birth of their child in the Spring. However, the irony is that with freeedom comes separation. They cannot be together until Mellors' divorice is final. D.H. Lawrence wrote Lady Chatterley's Lover in the 1920's. It was immediately attacked and later banned in his home country. In 1928 it was published in 1928 in Italy. It was not until the Penquin Books Trial in 1960 that Lawrence's book was published in Great Britian.

British Novel Week 4

The book of the week is Passage to India by E.M. Forster. This was the author's first book in over a decade and his last book. Forster actually lived in India which makes the story more believable to me. It is a very sad story about the clash of two Cultures. The British have colonized India and brought with them their own English value system. Rather than understand the Indian people, they have decided to live separate and apart from them. The people of India and the people of Britain have different cultures, religions and ideologies. An accusation and trial pit the English against the Indians. The few characters who try to bridge the gap between East and West are practically ostracized. No one really wins. I did find this book so much easier to read than the previous books that utilized the stream-of-consciousness technique.

Week 3 British Novel Class

It is Week 3 of my British Novel class. The book of the week is Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. I actually enjoyed reading Mrs. Dalloway. Virginia Woolf utilized the stream-of-consciousness technique for this novel. However, it was much easier to read than Joyce or Ford. Woolf's choice of words seemed simpler and more modern. That may have made it easier to read. I located the story in a film starring Vanessa Redgrave. The film came out in 1997 and seems timeless. I was able to draw on the visuals from the film while reading the book. Clarissa Dalloway is the central character of this book. The whole book encompasses one day of her life. Through the stream-of-consciousness technique and memories the reader is shown what Clarissa was like in her youth before she became Mrs. Richard Dalloway. Also, we view what she is now. Mrs. Dalloway is a celebration of Clarissa's life. Through memories, everyday lives and a suicide, we realize how tenuous life really is. Clarissa celebrates life through her morning walk, her selection of flowers and her parties.

It is week 2 of my British Novel class. The reading assignment for this week was Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier. The story is told by the narrator John Dowell. He opens the book with the statement " I don't know how it is best to put this thing down - whether it would be better to try and tell the story from the beginning, as if it were a story; or whether to tell it from this distance of time..." The narration jumps back and forth in time. The reader is left to figure out the sequence of events based on the narrator's disconnected thoughts and perception of the characters and of the events. We want to believe Dowell because he was there and he was a witness to the events. Unfortunately, Dowell was viewing social behavior and his perceptions of this behavior. All is not as it seems. The characters were acting one way in public and another behind closed doors. Dowell is duped and deceived by both his wife and his friends. Is Dowell a reliable or unreliable narrator? Dowell was viewing social behavior for 9 years and never seemed to look beyond the social norms of the time. However, as the story unfolds and the truth is revealed to Dowll, he does pass it on to the reader. By the end of the story, we have all of the events, perceptions and truths that Dowell is able to provide.