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I just finished reading a prose novel, Old Filth by Jane Gardam. It was funny, touching, sad, amusing, and made me glad I wasn't alive for WWII, but I'm not actually going to really review it. I will say it's worth a read, though. Give it a try. I'm not sorry I read it at all, though I won't be reading it again.
What I found most interesting about this book, enough for me to blog about it, was how it was NOT what I normally read. When I read prose, it tends to be fantasy/sci-fi, or mystery, or thriller, or a any combination of the same. As I read through Old Filth, I kept waiting for something to happen. I mean, there was no quest to be fulfilled, no couple to watch come together, no spies to evade, no parcel to deliver, no murder to solve, no vendetta to settle...just the life of an 80 year old man with some unusual circumstances, meeting a few unusual people among all the boring ones, told with lots of timeline jumping. To give the author credit, I was never confused by the timeline jumping, and that is difficult to pull off. I must tip my hat to Ms. Gardam for this. She also managed to make the seemingly plotless story interesting enough to keep me reading.
To sum up, the book was very slice-of-life. Granted, there was a little mystery in what happened as a turning point in the main character's childhood, but it wasn't played up nor stressed throughout the book. Even the reveal wasn't met with any fanfare, neither in the character's reaction to it nor in the way the story was told. It just....happened.
Maybe that's the point. Like life, it just happened. *scratches back of head in befuddlement*
Anyway...still glad I read it, if only for the amusing lack of plotty direction. I was never bored with the book, and that is saying something...*wanders off in search of some fluffy manga to read*
What I found most interesting about this book, enough for me to blog about it, was how it was NOT what I normally read. When I read prose, it tends to be fantasy/sci-fi, or mystery, or thriller, or a any combination of the same. As I read through Old Filth, I kept waiting for something to happen. I mean, there was no quest to be fulfilled, no couple to watch come together, no spies to evade, no parcel to deliver, no murder to solve, no vendetta to settle...just the life of an 80 year old man with some unusual circumstances, meeting a few unusual people among all the boring ones, told with lots of timeline jumping. To give the author credit, I was never confused by the timeline jumping, and that is difficult to pull off. I must tip my hat to Ms. Gardam for this. She also managed to make the seemingly plotless story interesting enough to keep me reading.
To sum up, the book was very slice-of-life. Granted, there was a little mystery in what happened as a turning point in the main character's childhood, but it wasn't played up nor stressed throughout the book. Even the reveal wasn't met with any fanfare, neither in the character's reaction to it nor in the way the story was told. It just....happened.
Maybe that's the point. Like life, it just happened. *scratches back of head in befuddlement*
Anyway...still glad I read it, if only for the amusing lack of plotty direction. I was never bored with the book, and that is saying something...*wanders off in search of some fluffy manga to read*
