I had quite a stack of books to read, but I picked up C and an hour and a half later, I was engaged, finally making myself put it down shortly before midnight. I picked it up again this morning, and I hardly ever give myself permission to read during the day! This should say a lot about how I am loving the weird and unusual and captivating C.
Now, how lucky am I to open the Internet while ago only to learn that C has been shortlisted for England’s prestigious 2010 Man Booker Prize for Fiction? In fact, it is favored 2 to 1 to win! WOW! So, it won’t be long until I finish this one! By the way, the Englishman McCarthy is already popular for his first novel Remainder, which I’m now sure I will also read. He also wrote Tintin and the Secret of Literature.
In a nutshell, and I am only halfway through C, keep in mind, the novel revolves around a very dysfunctional early 1900s English family, in which the parents pretty much let the young daughter and younger brother choose their activities without any supervision. The father teaches deaf children at their estate by instructing them how to recite classical literature, particularly the tales of Persephone and other gods and goddesses of the classical Greek underworld. In fact, once annually, he stages a Greek pageant in which the pupils, who are fully costumed by the deaf mother of the family, slowly and painstakingly recite their assigned lines. All the parents of the students attend, being oh-so-proud of the progress their precious, previously non-speaking children are making. One more thing about the very strange mother, she is also highly involved in the cultivation of silk worms, who feast on the mulberry trees on the English estate, and she even chooses native berries to dye the silk all sorts of vibrant colors, and she likes poppies the best! So, the preteen daughter and younger brother have free reign, so to speak, their parents being highly involved in their own interests, both being non-traditional parents. The housekeeper is the one who seems to watch over the children at all, this being very sporadic, at best.
As the years pass, the reader watches the highly intelligent young girl, now a mature teenager, develop an extreme and detrimental interest in bizarre science experiments and in the natural science field in general, including beetles and all kinds of botanical growth, while the brother “Serge” becomes equally enamored of the telegraph and the use of the Morse code, so much so that he communicates with the entire world! Tragedy strikes, which I will not let out of the bag, and Serge is sent to recuperate at a European bath which is run by a mad doctor.
This is how far I have reached! Stay tuned for the final blog on this remarkable and provocative novel whose vocabulary, setting, plot, and character development serve to make me realize the merit of its nomination for the Man Booker! How glad am I that C jumped out of the stack at me last night!
Click here to read Part 2 of Nan’s blog
-Nan
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