Another book review! “Hurrah,” I hear you cry! “I’m so glad
Gerry is reading books and telling me her thoughts on them.” That is definitely
something I know you are thinking and maybe even saying out loud to loved
ones.
As always, if this isn’t your bag baby (imagine me saying
that with a slight Austin Powers vibe) then please feel free to not continue.
This week’s book review is based on a book that took me two
weeks to read. For a book with only 375 pages it shouldn’t have taken me nearly
so long. This was because this one was a bit of a stop-starter. Good enough for
me to want to continue to finish it but not great enough for me to have that
desperate need to know what happens next.
The book is this one:-
The blurb is this:-
In the late 1930s, two men - Yaacov Markovitch,
perennially unlucky in love, and Zeev Feinberg, virile owner of a lustrous
moustache - are crossing the sea to marry women they have never met. They will
rescue them from a Europe on the brink of catastrophe, bring them to the Jewish
homeland and go their separate ways. But when Markovitch is paired with the
beautiful Bella he vows to make her love him at any cost, setting in motion
events that will change their lives in the most unexpected and capricious of
ways.
Goodreads have
rated this 3.86 out of 5, a rating which I have no problems with.
I discovered this
in the Magical Realism section of the bookstore, a genre which I am rapidly
getting into and enjoying. Magical Realism is a bit of a tricky genre to define
and many books that may be in this section are not quite ‘magical’ and lean
towards more ‘real, literary fiction’ while some I would consider to be less on
the ‘real’ and so ‘magical’ that they may as well be camped out in the fantasy
section. This in itself is not a bad thing but has probably been done by
publishers who feel that books will sell more if they aren’t hanging out
alongside dragons and witches.
Wikipedia (ah yes, highbrow research stuff there) provides a
length description of Magical Realism here. The article does
list several authors as being writers in this particular genre including
Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Alice Hoffman and Angela Carter.
I have yet to read GGM however he is famous for books such
as One Hundred Years of Solitude and Love in the Time of Cholera. As for Alice
Hoffman and Angela Carter, well I love both those ladies.
One Night, Markovitch does share some similarities with GGM
and Angela Carter. Much like GGM and other Magical Realism books the language
this book was originally written in was not English. This book was translated
into English from Hebrew as the writer is an Israeli national. She is also a
journalist, screenwriter and a clinical psychologist and this novel was her
debut. Mad props go to her for this. Honestly she can take all the mad props. The
similarity she has with Angela Carter is style of writing but I will come onto
this a little bit later.
I’m going to digress massively for a moment (you will notice
I tend to digress massively a lot) and go over two things, both of which do
have a purpose to this review, but please bear with me.
Thing Number One
Ahem.
In Orson Scott Card’s book Characters and Viewpoints, which
I am currently re-reading, he goes over the MICE quotient. These are four
elements that are present in every story, however the balance in which these
occur tends to differ. Some stories may have all in equal measure whilst others
can tip more towards one element then the others and in some cases do this to
an extreme.
The elements are:-
Milieu – all about the story settings – the society, the
weather, the planet. This is very much ‘world creation’ at its finest as this
is what is of the upmost importance in this element. An example would be ‘The
Wizard of Oz,’ our focus isn’t so much on Dorothy or her hopes and dreams
(beyond getting home to Kansas) but the fantastical world of Oz.
Idea – seeking information and making new discoveries. The
story asks a question and this question must be answered by the close. Mystery
stories are idea stories, ‘who killed so and so?’ etc. Apparently a lot of
speculative stories are based on the idea element. This is because those
authors are often asking ‘why?’ or ‘what if?’ What if society separated people
into castes? What if people could travel through time? What if crime could be
prevented before it happened? Answers on a postcard for those references.
Character – the journey of an individual character
throughout the course of the story. Their place in their world, how their
thoughts and feelings and actions impact them and others. How do they change as
the course of the story progresses? Do they change? How does this have an
impact upon their lives?
Events – Something has just happened. Could be good, is
usually bad. This is the trigger for the rest of the story. How is balance and
order restored? Does it get restored or does a new order have to be introduced?
The story begins, not at the moment of chaos, but when a pivotal character or
person steps into the scene. Our hero (or anti-hero) has entered the building.
Fantasy is predominantly event based. A dragon is waking up, white walkers have
begun crossing the wall etc.
If one of the above is more prominent then it just means
that a story is ‘character driven’ or ‘event driven’ for example. Remember a
character driven story can be rich with ideas or an event driven story can have
a highly detailed milieu.
Thing Number Two
This is my opinion and no one else’s – when I read a book I
often find myself considering whether the book has been written by a story
teller or by a writer. Of course it has been written by a writer but what I mean is whether they are story driven or prose
driven. Stories can have both obviously. I have read books which contain
wonderful stories and have been beautifully written and I sadly have read books
which clearly don’t contain either. Some stories that I have read have both
story and prose components but that it is clear to me that the author has
strength in one area over another. It could be that the author is more of a
story teller and that the tales they spin is their strength over their
individual writing style. Others may tell stories that are confusing or even
slightly boring but their writing is poetry in motion.
So how do these link into the book review? Well One Night,
Markovitch is very much a character driven story so much so that there almost
isn’t anything of the other elements. Instead of following one character we
follow many and though Markovitch is the main character he almost doesn’t feel
like the main character in what is his own book. Oddly enough this is in
keeping with the type of person he is. Very bland, very middle of the road and
very forgettable but this is by design and not by accident.
The timeline is vague but we follow the characters over a
large portion of their lives and for some it is right up to the end. These
characters experience life over the backdrop of the creation of Israel, World
War Two and several Israeli/ Palestinian conflicts. We never truly know or
experience these events ourselves because this story is not about those events,
we merely see these, sometimes only briefly, through the eyes of the
participants.
Unfortunately this doesn’t necessarily work here. For a
character driven story there are a lot of characters that we follow. And as the
book is written in third person it means we can skip from Markovitch to his
friend, to his friend’s wife, to the man his friends wife is having an affair
with and so on.
As we skip from person to person, time jumps with us. We
experience an event through Markovitch’s eyes and then we jump to the next time
period on (could be a week, a month, a year) but we jump into it from someone
else’s viewpoint. This means that you never get to feel the full depth of how
something has truly impacted a character. In short you get a taster session of
characters but never the full meal and sadly for such a strongly character
driven story this isn’t quite good enough.
Also the ending of the story doesn’t give you the endings of
each of the characters. I know this isn’t always the case with stories, but in this
one you feel like you are owed that at least especially as such a big deal is
made of their lives. This does mean that the ending is a slight let down as you
never get the closure that you are looking for and with a tragic incident
occurring toward the end of the book full closure on the affected characters is
very much needed.
I mentioned earlier that this writer has similarities to
Angela Carter and this is where my ‘Thing Number Two’ comes into play. There
isn’t much of a story. If you asked me what happened in the book in terms of
events there are probably a handful to talk about but as per above this is
because the story is truly character driven. However where this book shines is
in its writing.
The author isn’t a story teller (in my humble opinion) but
is a writer of some beautiful words. In this respect she is similar to Angela
Carter in that her descriptions of places and people are descriptive and yet remain
wonderfully sensual without being long winded. You feel immersed in the words
that have been written and the author has managed to successfully maintain this
standard throughout the story. Considering this has been translated from Hebrew
to English I would say this is extremely good going on the parts of both the
writer and the translators. Some Goodreads reviewers write that she is ‘purple
prosing’ however I would disagree and say that there is some pure poetry happening
within the books pages.
Would I recommend this book? Maybe not to the masses, no. If
someone is an Angela Carter fan than I would say go for it. However, if you are
looking for a beautifully crafted story that also has an exciting storyline
this probably isn’t the one for you.
If I could break the review into components I would give a 2
out of 5 stars for story but a 4 out of 5 stars for the writing. Overall I
would give it a middle ground of 3 out of 5 stars.
Let me know how I’m getting on with these reviews and if you
feel like I should just stop or something. I mean I’ll be honest with you now
though, even if you beg me to stop I won’t. I’m having too much fun.
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