May09_1
It's odd that a blog read by no-one is still a burdensome responsibility.
Here's an odd book read in May: 'The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation', futher subtitled 'Volume I: The Pox Party', by M T Anderson. What a title. The back blurb is enthusiastic but uncommunicative: "A tremendous read" - Nicholas Tucker, TES (what's TES?). I read the first page or so in Kinokuniya and came away with the impression that it was a fantasy borrowing its aesthetics and idiom from the 1800s.
It's not. This is a book about slavery in Boston just before the Revolutionary War, human scientific experimentation, about racism and child abuse. A boy and his mother are raised and educated in a bizarre Scientific Society in an extended experiment to resolve the truth or otherwise of Negro intelligence. It was an odd read because for most of the book I was reading it as wonky fantasy with a Gothic tone, not political parable (parable? more a tirade, a violent, angry rant against slavery and human evil). This book caught me by surprise, and by the time I'd caught up with it it shifted gears, the main character grew up and became mute, the narrative voice shifted to a stranger, and the story served only to advance the argument. I was infuriated by the shift, unsettled by the whole damn book. Volume II has just been released; I may not have the fortitude for it.
I've lost track of another book read in May so this account has already failed by the simple measure of comprehensiveness.
Here's an odd book read in May: 'The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Traitor to the Nation', futher subtitled 'Volume I: The Pox Party', by M T Anderson. What a title. The back blurb is enthusiastic but uncommunicative: "A tremendous read" - Nicholas Tucker, TES (what's TES?). I read the first page or so in Kinokuniya and came away with the impression that it was a fantasy borrowing its aesthetics and idiom from the 1800s.
It's not. This is a book about slavery in Boston just before the Revolutionary War, human scientific experimentation, about racism and child abuse. A boy and his mother are raised and educated in a bizarre Scientific Society in an extended experiment to resolve the truth or otherwise of Negro intelligence. It was an odd read because for most of the book I was reading it as wonky fantasy with a Gothic tone, not political parable (parable? more a tirade, a violent, angry rant against slavery and human evil). This book caught me by surprise, and by the time I'd caught up with it it shifted gears, the main character grew up and became mute, the narrative voice shifted to a stranger, and the story served only to advance the argument. I was infuriated by the shift, unsettled by the whole damn book. Volume II has just been released; I may not have the fortitude for it.
I've lost track of another book read in May so this account has already failed by the simple measure of comprehensiveness.
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