Reading Changes

I've recently made a new rule for myself to avoid purchasing or attempting to read a book by a new (to me) author if I've already purchased but not read another work by the same author. Pessl has a new book coming out this year, but I own both Special Topics in Calamity Physics and Night Film and had not read either. I decided to read Night Film first, as I remembered being intrigued by its synopsis and the first several pages I read.

I understood it to be literary fiction, but 50 pages in, it felt more like typical genre fiction--not that I never read genre fiction--specifically, noir, which I typically dislike. The protagonist felt like a cross between Sam Spade and Mikael Blomqvist: a disgraced journalist who gets caught up in a mystery involving a reclusive film director. I think I need to stop being seduced by books about filmmakers; this is the second I DNF.

The prose got on my nerves fast, especially the overuse of italics. I wondered if perhaps this book intended to do what Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island does, which is exaggerate genre tropes and style for the purpose of representing a character's point of view. After skimming some reviews, it didn't seem so, and i wasn't willing to continue reading to find out.

Somehow, sometime, I became allergic to the term "family saga" and avoided books labeled as such. I don't know why. The term brings to mind farmhouses and domesticity, kids and family secrets, struggles that are often first world problems I couldn't care less about. But, like stories about Manhattanites and the French Revolution, it's simply a strange prejudice I've come to embrace because SO MANY BOOKS. A girl has to find a way to not feel the need to read All the Things, right? Especially a slow reader like this girl. Yet inevitably such black-balling will make me miss out on some great stuff.

The Moor's Last Sigh is explicitly described in its synopsis as a family saga, and boy does it earn the saga aspect. Instead of summarizing the plot myself (a daunting task), here's an excerpt from the back of the book itself:

Booker Prize-winning author Salman Rushdie combines a ferociously witty family saga with a surreally imagined and sometimes blasphemous chronicle of modern India and flavors the mixture with peppery soliloquies on art, ethnicity, religious fanaticism, and the terrifying power of love. Moraes "Moor" Zogoiby, the last surviving scion of a dynasty of Cochinese spice merchants and crime lords, is also a compulsive storyteller and an exile. As he travels a route that takes him from India to Spain, he leaves behind a tale of mad passions and volcanic family hatreds, of titanic matriarchs and their mesmerized offspring, of premature deaths and curses that strike beyond the grave.

 

The "titanic matriarchs" were my favorite part of the story: Moor's mother, Aurora, her mother, Belle, and her mother, Epifania are all forces to be reckoned with. In addition to these often outsize examples, there are musings on motherhood itself in the context of India, its prominence in popular culture and national pride. There are many musings in this book on everything you might think of: family, class, race, religion, art, storytelling, history, and more. This sounds like it could be boring, but Rushdie avoids that handily via the entertaining voice of Moor, the narrator, and the sheer power and acrobatics of his prose.

When I first began reading the book, I was reminded of Lawrence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, an early novel where the narrator begins with his forebears...and never even reaches his birth. Both books are also suffused with comedy, though Shandy is more of a farce. Moor begins narrating his story in the present, in exile, and shifts to his great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, and his own early life, occasionally returning to the present to remind us of his circumstances before we get there near the end of the story. There are moments when Moor doubts what he's been told of his family, but he never closes the book on an interpretation. Through Moor's telling of his family story and origins, a story of India also emerges. As an American, most of it was new to me.

All the characters in the book are fascinating and distinct, and the storytelling and language engages as well. And that's without the magical realism that makes the story feel even more epic and a bit whimsical. It's another element of the narrative that brings to attention the act of storytelling. Though you can feel the magical realism throughout, when it's revealed that Moor ages physically twice as fast as a normal person, it kicks into high gear. It leads to all sorts of complications for Moor, some uncomfortable to read, but most of all, along with a withered hand, makes him desperate for love. It doesn't take long for that desperation to lead to his (almost) ruin.

The Moor's Last Sigh is an amazing journey and my first Rushdie. I'll happily read more.

It was about time to say that I'm finally reading the fifth book in The Mortal Instruments series! I'm not even halfway through yet, so I think this will be the last blogpost of the month (there will be of course the monthly wrap-ups).

Usually I don't do seperate reviews for each book in a series, but just a review about the entire series at once when I've finished the last book.

The thing is though: I've forgotten what happened in the previous books (mostly) and I think I've finally found the reason: I don't care that much about fantasy books anymore. I was never a fan of fantasy, but once in a while I loved reading about vampires, whitches and wherewolves, but I realised I don't love/like those books anymore.

I think that's because I've discovered so many great genres recently and I already loved contemporary books or just books about different cultures, societies and areas because I learned something from them and they made me feel! Because of that last thing I love dystopians as well and I'm excited to start reading more classic dystopians (as y'all know I have been reading George Orwell's books lately and I'm so excited to read more like those in the future!). The thing with fantasy books is is that there usually isn't a moral or anything that makes me feel, but just an adventures time and I'm just not in the mood for that anymore (I never was actually, but sometimes I did want to read something like that).

I'm glad I don't buy that many book at a time so I don't have huge tbr piles with unread books that I'm not interested anymore in reading them and that I can decide to leave a genre for what it is. I'm still going to finish this series though, but I'm glad I finally know my favorite genres.

This was more a topic that I wanted to talk about then a ''Currently reading-post'', but whatever haha.

What is your favorite genre? How did you find out what books you like and which ones you don't?

A strong collection of hidden histories, full of magic and myth that doesn't always get seen. Not every story was pleasing or easy to read but the collection was more worth the time to read.