Book Review: A History of the World in 10½ Chapters by Julian Barnes

★★★★★ I’ve had ‘A History of the World in 10½ Chapters’ on my “to read” list for almost 15 years, but kept putting it off. Now I know why I was dithering. Despite the glowing commendations of university professors and English literature elitists, I simply could not warm to the text, clever though it was.

A loosely connected series of 10 1/2 short stories, art reviews, re-imagined histories, personal ramblings, epistolary travelogues and personal anecdotes; this is the epitome of post-modern fiction. Julian Barnes ties together his mish-mash of tales with the recurrence of woodworm & reindeer, pilgrimage & shipwreck, doubt & faith.

Eclectic. Unorthodox. Not to every taste. Let me say up front, if you like linear plot development, THIS IS NOT FOR YOU.

Settings include Mount Ararat (where the Ark made landfall), the moon, heaven, a jungle, a monastery, and a French courthouse. My main obstacles to enjoyment were the arrogant, foolish and misogynistic male narrators (complemented by the delusional, judgmental female narrators) and the author’s struggles with religious belief and Biblical history.

The voices are mostly male, including: a worm, an academic, a lawyer, an actor, an astronaut and the author himself. The story about the egotistical academic and the psychology of self-interest made me cringe and nearly put down the book altogether. In a similar way, the stories told from Barnes’ own point of view felt highly self-indulgent, like intellectual masturbation.

I did like the piece on Gericault’s “Scene of Shipwreck” which looked at the wreck of the Medusa and told the story of the boat, the survivors, the artist and the process. Nice bit of art analysis. I also thought the concluding story about the difficulties of making Heaven satisfactory was a fun little thought-experiment.

Putting on my feminist glasses, I have to suggest that the women in the book – an insane cat-lady obsessed with her ex-boyfriend, a religious fanatic obsessed with her dead father, a deceitful and narcissistic astronaut’s wife – are all utterly despicable and essentially defined by their relationship to significant men in their lives. Loathsome.

If you want something similar, only better, try the following…

1) Retelling of Noah’s Ark – Timothy Findley’s ‘Not Wanted on the Voyage’

2) Funny fake legal trials – Ian Frazier’s ‘Coyote V. Acme’

3) Bold, multilingual Victorian-era female explorers who brave exotic lands – Elizabeth Peters’ ‘Crocodile on the Sandbank’

4) Crazy American astronauts – Stephen King’s short story “I Am the Doorway” in the collection ‘Night Shift’

2 of 5 stars / bookshelves: read, 320 pages, Publisher: Vintage Canada (1990)
Read from April 2 to April 22, 2012

Comic Review: Marzi by Marzena Sowa

★★★★★ ‘Marzi’ is a memoir of childhood in Communist Poland, written by Marzena Sowa with beautiful illustrations by her French partner, Sylvain Savoia. The limited palette of grey, beige and orange worked well, giving an historical sepia look that reinforced the mood of poverty and limited resources. I liked Savoia’s puckish sense of humour, clean lettering and sharp ink lines.

Interesting to read these stories of deprivation, oppression and rebellion against a sinister but elusive “Big Brother” during the heyday of ‘The Hunger Games’. It’s not exactly post-apocalyptic, but Chernobyl is a close call.

Marzi’s Poland is a real world parallel to Katniss’ Panem, but told from the perspective of a small child who doesn’t understand what is happening around her. Marzi is not an emotionless warrior: she’s scared of spiders, likes sitting in trees and imagines the rich inner lives of ants and mushrooms in the forest. As an only child and a little girl in a big family, Marzi is awed and confused by her mother’s passionate Catholicism, but loves her factory-working, cigarette-smoking father and fears for his safety when the labour strikes start. She plays pranks like a brat, envies her neighbors, is a picky eater who hates meat. We read about her pets, her games, her clothes, her friends, her passion for France. All the things that make Marzi both unique and universal.

As an added bonus, I learned quite a bit about Polish history and geography including a mini-tour of Krakow with its fire-breathing dragon statue, Polish customs like the Christmas Carp, Polish farm life, and most of all Polish politics. Hard to believe that Marzi was born in 1979 and I was born 1977, and that all these things – Communism, Chernobyl, Catholicism – were impacting another little girl at the same time as my safe, plentiful, church-free Canadian childhood was taking place.

Liked this? You might also enjoy: Marjane Satrapi’s ‘Persepolis’, Jason Lutes’ ‘Berlin: City of Stones’, Chester Brown’s ‘I Never Liked You’, Jason Little’s ‘Shutterbug Follies’ or David Small’s ‘Stitches’.

4 of 5 stars / bookshelves: graphic-novel, 240 pages, Publisher: Vertigo (Oct 25 2011)
Read from February 21 to March 01, 2012