Category Archives: Fiction

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

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Too long, too uneventful, too false. David Copperfield’s life as a boy is dramatic and involving. As he grows older, his life becomes much less interesting. His role in the story is to observe other people’s behavior. Some of the characters he observes are enjoyable. Many are tedious.

The most repellent part of the book is the account of David’s marriage to a ridiculous young woman. As soon as David begins to think that his marriage was a mistake, his young wife develops a cough. Soon she is an invalid. Within a few chapters, she is dead. This allows David to marry a paragon of womanly virtue he has loved since boyhood.

In the end, all the good characters prosper, the evil ones do not. Happy endings usually make readers feel good, but, in this case, it didn’t.  (12/5/10)

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, translated by R. Pevear and L. Volokhonsky

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With an occasional break, it took me five months to finish the 800 pages of “Anna Karenina”, which more accurately might have been called “Anna Karenina and a Guy Named Levin”. Anna leaves her husband and son for the love of the dashing Count Vronsky. She comes to a very bad end. Levin is a philosophical, unsophisticated landowner who marries Kitty. She turned down Levin’s first proposal because she was in love with Vronsky. 

At the end of the novel, without any relation to Anna’s suicide, Levin decides that he has found some meaning in life after one of his workers tells him that some people remember God and live for the soul, while others are self-centered and greedy. He concludes that the good cannot be discovered through reason, because it is unreasonable. We learn what is good as little children and, in order to be happy, we need to accept what we were taught, without thinking too much, since “the good is outside the chain of cause and effect”. The church teaches “the main thing – faith in God, and the good, as the sole purpose of man”.

In the final two pages, Levin asks himself how to resolve the fact that millions of non-Christians have different religious beliefs than he does. He quickly decides that he doesn’t have the right or even the ability to resolve such a question. He concludes by observing that his life “has the unquestionable meaning of the good which is in my power to put into it”.

Tolstoy writes some very interesting passages of internal monologue, presenting what the different characters are thinking about their current situations or the conversations they’re having.  Overall, however, the novel is plodding. In addition, Anna’s and Levin’s stories might as well be in two different novels (they only meet in one chapter).

One reason the novel moves so slowly is that Tolstoy often goes off on uninteresting tangents, during which he presents some aspect of Russian society or culture, which must have been of more interest to his contemporaries. Anna, for example, disappears for long stretches, while Levin muses about such topics as Russian farming practices.

I probably should have expected not to enjoy “Anna Karenina” very much, because when I read “War and Peace”, I enjoyed the war and was often bored by the peace. There is no war in “Anna Karenina”, except in Anna’s and Levin’s souls. That may be one justification for telling their stories in the same novel, and makes some of the novel worth reading, but not enough of it.  (9/6/10)

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre

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A great spy novel, in which the unglamorous George Smiley identifies the Russian mole “Gerald” within British intelligence. Lots of flashbacks and vivid characters. It’s also the first part of a trilogy. I kept seeing and hearing the characters from the terrific mini-series that starred Alec Guinness as Smiley.  (3/18/10)

Four Novellas by Henry James

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Daisy Miller — An innocent but flirtatious American girl visits Europe and comes to a bad end, after scandalizing local society. A young American ex-patriate regrets that he didn’t try harder to win her. He realizes he has lived away from America too long, but stays in Europe anyway.

The Aspern Papers — A literary critic believes that a very old woman possesses love letters or other documents she received from the great poet Jeffrey Aspern before his death many years ago. The old woman lives in Venice with her niece. The critic plots to get access to the papers. The story has enough suspense to maintain interest, and suggests that Venice, at least in the 19th century, must be visited one day.

The Turn of the Screw — A ghost story and a really bad one. James applies his heavily psychological treatment of situations, glances and dialogue to the story of a governess and two children. It’s not clear until the end that the ghosts are real. The story is more annoying than frightening. The conclusion is anti-climactic.

The Beast in the Jungle — A man tells a woman that he believes something extraordinary will happen to him one day. They meet years later. She has not forgotten their first meeting, although he has. She agrees to watch for this great thing that will happen to him. Years pass as they keep meeting and talking. She knows what this thing will be, but dies without clearly telling him. He realizes too late: “he had been the man of his time, the man, to whom nothing on earth was to have happened”. She offered him a way to avoid his fate, by loving her, but he was too foolish and egotistical to understand. The story is written in James’s mature style, with words upon words, and very little clearly said. (2/22/10)