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Expect this to be a review filled with quotes because I don’t think my own words alone could give a good enough idea of what the book is actually like :)

There are many characters in this book (as there are many people in a squadron). Some of them appear more often, some of them rather rarely. The one who appears the most is the one I have considered the main character and, coincidentally, is my favorite one. Yossarian is, at first, described by one of his friends as having “an unreasonable belief that everybody around him was crazy, a homicidal impulse to machine-gun strangers, retrospective falsification, an unfounded suspicion that people hated him and were conspiring to kill him“. At first the reader sees him as somewhat ridiculous, and doesn’t know what to make of him. The same can be said about the book, filled at first with all sorts of absurd episodes, seeming strange but not necessarily to be taken seriously. Even the timeline is messed up, the events being presented in what looks like random order.

And yet, as the pages are turned, more and more facets of Yossarian (and of the story itself) come to light. The reader gets to see that, far from being the paranoid and irrational creature presented in the first pages, Yossarian is actually “an intelligent person of great moral character“. He is indeed afraid of dying (aren’t we all?), but most of all he doesn’t want to waste his life uselessly. The same happens to the book. Even the timeline fixes itself, and, as events progress, more and more important issues are being revealed. In a war people die. Some profit off it. Some sacrifice the lives of others for their personal glory. The naive ones get killed. All these are obvious in a way even before reading, but they are made more poignant by the events in the book. The author doesn’t emit judgments, he just narrates the facts, and it’s these facts that are the striking part.

Now consider all this wrapped in a thick layer of sheer absurdity. Yossarian’s superiors keep raising the number of missions a pilot has to fly before being sent home (they do this so often that there are pilots, like Hungry Joe, who completed the “tour of duty” several times, because the number of necessary missions changed before anyone who completed the previous number had time to receive his papers and go home). The efficacy of a bomb run is not measured by the number of targets hit, or whether they were hit at all, but by how nice a pattern they offer when thrown. One of the characters is considered dead after the plane he officially was on exploded, despite the said character being right among the people who observed the accident. The mess hall officer is involved in some shady business involving supplies, a business that occasioned his being offered an important position in almost every city in the world (he is the mayor of Malta, the Caliph of Baghdad, the Imam of Damascus, the Sheik of Araby, the Vice-Shah of Oran, and many more), and also enabled him to fight on both sides of the war.

In this context, the idea of the Catch-22 feels right at home. These days, a “Catch-22″ is the name one gives to a no-win situation, due to circular and self-contradicting logic. Which is the exact meaning the term had in the book, as, whenever there was a certain type of situation, someone was bound to invoke the said catch. Even if the actual wording varies now and then (“‘Catch-22,’ [...] ’says you’ve always got to do what your commanding officer tells you to.’“, “The men don’t have to sign Piltchard and Wren’s loyalty oath if they don’t want to. But we need you to starve them to death if they don’t.“, “Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can’t stop them from doing.“), the feeling of illogicality and contradiction is the same. Interestingly enough no one has ever seen the Catch-22 in writing (Yossarian thinks it doesn’t even exist), but everyone obeys it because the Catch-22 itself states that no one wanting to apply it has to show it to the one it’s being applied on.

A few more quotes that I liked:
The first appearance of the infamous catch:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

One of the absurd moments that flourish throughout the book:

‘Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?’

The question upset them, because Snowden had been killed over Avignon when Dobbs went crazy in mid-air and seized the controls away from Huple.

The corporal played it dumb. ‘What?’ he asked.

[...]

‘Où sont les Neigedens d’antan?‘ Yossarian said to make it easier for him.

‘Parlez en anglais, for Christ’s sake,’ said the corporal. ‘Je ne parle pas français.‘

An idea I found cool because I myself have never thought of it:

To Yossarian, the idea of pennants as prizes was absurd. No money went with them, no class privileges. Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

And a description of one of the characters, Major Major Major Major:

He was polite to his elders, who disliked him. Whatever his elders told him to do, he did. They told him to look before he leaped, and he always looked before he leaped. They told him never to put off until the next day what he could do the day before, and he never did. He was told to honor his father and his mother, and he honored his father and his mother. He was told that he should not kill, and he did not kill, until he got into the Army. Then he was told to kill, and he killed. He turned the other cheek on every occasion and always did unto others exactly as he would have had others do unto him. When he gave to charity, his left hand never knew what his right hand was doing. He never once took the name of the Lord his God in vain, committed adultery or coveted his neighbor’s ass. In fact, he loved his neighbor and never even bore false witness against him. Major Major’s elders disliked him because he was such a flagrant nonconformist.

Thoughts on the ending: I am not sure how I feel about the ending. I mean, I definitely like it a lot, I just cannot decide whether it was simply perfect or just good. The book ends with show spoiler

What I liked most: The sheer absurdity of some of the situations, especially near the beginning. To mention a random one, Chief White Halfoat, an Indian, told the story of his tribe, who was chased from place to place because every time they set up camp anywhere, that place was brimming with oil. In Chief’s own words:

We were human divining rods. Our whole family had a natural affinity for petroleum deposits, and soon every oil company in the world had technicians chasing us around. We were always on the move. [...] Soon whole drilling crews were following us around with all their equipment just to get the jump on each other. Companies began to merge just so they could cut down on the number of people they had to assign to us. But the crowd in back of us kept growing. We never got a good night’s sleep. When we stopped, they stopped. When we moved, they moved, chuckwagons, bulldozers, derricks, generators. We were a walking business boom, and we began to receive invitations from some of the best hotels just for the amount of business we would drag into town with us. Some of those invitations were mighty generous, but we couldn’t accept any because we were Indians and all the best hotels that were inviting us wouldn’t accept Indians as guests.

Or, another random one, Doc Daneeka’s indignation at his word being doubted when he has declared himself unfit for war (note that ha was a perfectly healthy man):

They had to send a guy from the draft board around to look me over. I was Four-F. I had examined myself pretty thoroughly and discovered that I was unfit for military service. You’d think my word would be enough, wouldn’t you, since I was a doctor in good standing with my county medical society and with my local Better Business Bureau. But no, it wasn’t, and they sent this guy around just to make sure I really did have one leg amputated at the hip and was helplessly bedridden with incurable rheumatoid arthritis. Yossarian, we live in an age of distrust and deteriorating spiritual values. It’s a terrible thing,’ Doc Daneeka protested in a voice quavering with strong emotion. ‘It’s a terrible thing when even the word of a licensed physician is suspected by the country he loves.’

Or another random one (last one, I promise):

As a member of the Action Board, Lieutenant Scheisskopf was one of the judges who would weigh the merits of the case against Clevinger as presented by the prosecutor. Lieutenant Scheisskopf was also the prosecutor. Clevinger had an officer defending him. The officer defending him was Lieutenant Scheisskopf.

What I liked least: I cannot say anything remotely bad about this book. I was a bit worried at first, when the characters were introduced and there seemed to be so many of them, enough to lose track of, but with time I got to know everyone so I was able to tell everyone apart.

Recommend it to? You know, this is one of the most controverted books out there. I was amazed to notice there are plenty of people who started on it but put it down after a while (lots more than with other books). On Goodreads for example the book has at the moment over 1300 one-star ratings (presumably all of them from people who couldn’t finish it). However there are also 18402 five-star ratings (yup, more than 10 times the bad ones), making one think there must be something to this book after all :)

Subjectively, I for one have liked the book very much. I got a bit lost in characters at first but I persevered and I am immensely glad I did so. This makes me, of course, to want to recommend the book to everyone around me. And I do. With the caveat that, well, some people find the first hundred pages a bit hard to get through.

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The mythology of the imaginary world the author has created is very detailed; so much so that at first I had a bit of trouble keeping the hang of who was what — however, I soon got to know everyone and things started making sense. Started being wonderful, actually. There are, at first, two clearly separated kinds of things: real, the ones everyone met with at times in their daily life (gleemen, the village Wisdom (a wise woman who is said to be able to heal people and to read the future in the wind), Winternight, the Bel Tine festival, etc.) and the ones everyone heard about in stories only (the Trollocs, the Aes Sedai, the Fades, and lots more). Some of the things in the latter category are even thought to be the product of someone’s too vivid imagination, that’s how rare they are.

And yet, all of the sudden, Rand’s world and the others’ is turned upside down, all things they barely believed in coming to life. Trollocs attacked, all of a sudden. A Fade/Myrddraal made itself known to boys of certain age. An Aes Sedai and a Warden turned out to have been in their midst. And I, I was fascinated by this sudden process of legends becoming tangible :)

There are a lot of concepts that were obviously inspired from real life, and it was interesting to see Jordan’s take on them. To name but a few, the Light is their good force (makes one think of God, especially when one sees the way it’s mentioned in daily life — “Light keep you!”, “Light, did you see that?”; they believe in a Creator too but the Light is the divinity they refer to in their every day life). The name of the evil one is Shai’tan. The Children of Light, an organisation with its own rules and ranking system, is the Andorian equivalent of Inquisition. Saidin and saidar, the male and female forces, make one think of Yin and Yang (especially as their symbol seems to be quite similar too). The Tinkers, the travelling people, are very much like the Gypsies of old: earn mend pots, travel in wagons, dress in vivid colors and are said to steal whatever they can get their hands on (what I liked most about them is that “They’re looking for a song. That’s what the Mahdi seeks. They say they lost it during the Breaking of the World, and if they can find it again, the paradise of the Age of Legends will return.“). And so on.

People often say that Jordan was heavily influenced by Tolkien, and that the plot is similar to the one in the Lord of the Rings. They are more or less right, as there are many elements in the book that make one think of Tolkien. However I would dare to say that the plot, albeit very interesting (with a few incredibly captivating moments now and then), is not necessarily the main attraction of Jordan’s work. Neither is the character development — I could say that it is actually the book’s weak point, because while the characters are believable and interesting, their emotions and dialogue aren’t always up to par. I for one felt quite meh about the relationship between Rand and Egwene, especially when the latter was being jealous — but I digress. As I was saying, the most interesting feature of the book, what makes it truly special, is the way Jordan has managed to create a living and breathing world around his characters. We are treated to detailed descriptions of villages, monuments, cities and people altogether, all forming in a colorful background behind our characters’ deeds. And it’s worth mentioning that, at least in this first volume, the author managed to present it all in such a manner that is never boring. I understand that this becomes a flaw later on, as the amount of detail tends to overcome the actual plot in some future books, but right now, after reading just this one, I am charmed.

When it comes of the characters, I very much liked the way Jordan chose to treat women. There are no damsel in distress in this book. The women are just as willing to go the needed lengths as men are; they are also, magic-wise, the more powerful, since they are the only ones able to touch the True Source. Quite a cool concept for a novel set in a medieval-like world.

Interestingly enough, my favorite character of them all was Lan. Even the author said about him that “Lan is simply the man I always wished I could be.“. My teenage self would have been head over heels fascinated with him. He is a very capable warrior, with a noble heart, always putting the interests of others ahead of his own. He is not talkative, but spends his time studying the surroundings, as any Warden on the run is supposed to be do. Yet he does notice things one would think he wouldn’t, and that shows most of all when it comes to who his love interest is (unfortunately I can’t spoil that but I was very excited about that part). Oh, and did I mention he is also of (very) noble blood?

Opposed to him, the three main characters (Mat, Rand, and Perrin) are nothing but boys. I liked Rand a lot because his emotions are very believable, and his heart is good. Perrin is the strong one, who thinks slowly but always thinks things through. As for Mat, he is the claimant of the “my least favorite male character” honor. He is supposed to be a mischievous lad, but not a bad one. However he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut (annoying!!) and is too preoccupied with finding treasure for my taste (this happens to also be his doom, at least in his book, haha).

Mat’s female equivalent, “my least favorite female character”, is Egwene (pronounced eh-GWAIN). She is very young and she’s also Rand’s love interest, so I suppose she is meant to be likable rather than not. Well, she does have her qualities — strong willed, courageous, loves being part of an adventure even if it’s scary at times — but she is also a bit of a bully, and also a bit annoying towards the end. I probably named her as my least favorite not because I disliked her but because I fully liked the others. Moiraine (pronounced mwah-RAIN), the Aes Sedai (EYEZ seh-DEYE), powerful and with lots of knowledge. Nynaeve, the young Wisdom, very capable and taking her responsibilities very seriously. Quite annoyed with men, but a good tracker herself. Both (Moiraine and Nynaeve) are promising characters and I am quite curious to see how they’ll develop in the future books.

Two tiny quotes I liked:
At one time, this is said about one of the Travelling People: “he moved as if he were about to begin dancing with his next step“. A bit of nice imagery. :)

The folks in the Two Rivers are said to be pretty stubborn, and I liked their way of thinking: “[...]the Light will take care of us all. And if the Light doesn’t, well, we’ll just take care of ourselves. Remember, we’re Two Rivers folk.”

Thoughts on the ending: There are people who call it rushed, but I have actually liked it. show spoiler

What I liked most: Interestingly enough, although in real life I’m not fond of the idea of predestination, I was quite captivated by the idea of a Pattern comprising all lives.

“The Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Ages, and lives are the threads it weaves. No one can tell how the thread of his own life will be woven into the Pattern, or how the thread of a people will be woven.”

It seemed to me that somehow being a part of a bigger pattern gave everyone’s lives meaning, and I liked that. Not to mention I enjoyed trying to imagine how the said pattern might actually look (yeah, I know it’s not a literal pattern, but I love imagining it nevertheless). As such, I was also bound to like the notion of Ta’veren:

“You see, the Wheel of Time weaves the Pattern of the Ages, and the threads it uses are lives. It is not fixed, the Pattern, not always. If a man tries to change the direction of his life and the Pattern has room for it, the Wheel just weaves on and takes it in. There is always room for small changes, but sometimes the Pattern simply won’t accept a big change, no matter how hard you try. [...] But sometimes the change chooses you, or the Wheel chooses it for you. And sometimes the Wheel bends a life-thread, or several threads, in such a way that all the surrounding threads are forced to swirl around it, and those force other threads, and those still others, and on and on.”

I love the imagery of that :)

What I liked least: Can I say the Prologue? It started out so sudden I was finding it all very confusing, so much so that I almost put the book down (of course I didn’t consider it seriously, as I knew the book must be quite good to have sparkled such interest, but for a moment I did consider it nevertheless).

Recommend it to? Anyone who enjoys epic fantasies? Actually, I fell in love with it while reading so I heartily encourage anyone to at least give it a try :)

See also
Schema of the places where the characters travelled in this book
A background of the history of the world in the Wheel of Time series

This book is followed by:
The Great Hunt

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The book is developed on two planes: the particular, dealing with Newland and May’s personal life, and the general, expounding on the high society’s mores of the time. While the former was interesting, I was captivated by the latter. I was amazed to discover a world completely opposed to my image of New York, a world ruled by rigid moral codes and manners, a closed circle where only a precious few have access. While I have read about this kind of people here in Europe (I think almost every country had such circles of “blue bloods” that lived the same way as those in the book), I would never have imagined it was the same in America too (I don’t have a particular reason why not, I just couldn’t imagine it).

For this reason the parts of the book that interested me the most were Newland’s musings on society. I loved to see the way he was struggling to reconcile his upbringing and the old fashioned thoughts of the people around him with his sentiments that things should be different, that (as an example) women should be as free as men, and that things aren’t necessarily to be done the way everyone else does them. Newland is at times ahead of his time (and I was fascinated by him each time that happened, as I believe it’s not easy for one to challenge the convictions one grew up with), and at times just as prejudiced as his peers (“It was easier, and less dastardly on the whole, for a wife to play [the part of faithful spouse] toward her husband. A woman’s standard of truthfulness was tacitly held to be lower: she was the subject creature, and versed in the arts of the enslaved.“).

At first sight the very opposite of him is May, the beautiful and serene woman that is well on her way to turning into a perfect copy of her mother. Newland sees her as incapable of growth and quite unable of thinking on her own (“As she sat thus, the lamplight full on her clear brow, he said to himself with a secret dismay that he would always know the thoughts behind it, that never, in all the years to come, would she surprise him by an unexpected mood, by a new idea, a weakness, a cruelty or an emotion.“). Yet the author does at times offer the reader clues that, although she doesn’t show it much, May is capable of more depth that her husbands credits her with; however she is too trapped in the conventions of the age, that require for a woman to be a good housekeeper more than anything and just leave the thinking to the husband.

Speaking of the age, I had fun noticing the few mentions of technological advancements some people at the time expected with wonder to see in the future, and I regarded them as nice touches of the author’s (the book was released in 1920). For example Countess Olenska (if I remember correctly) is very excited at one point about the idea of a telephone perhaps being able to “transport” voices from street to street, or maybe, wondrously, even from town to town. Also, at another point someone mentions “visionaries who likewise predicted the building of ships that would cross the Atlantic in five days, the invention of a flying machine, lighting by electricity, telephonic communication without wires, and other Arabian Night marvels“. Almost all of these came true by the time the book was written (for example the first successful crossing of the Atlantic by plane was done in 1919, by Alcock and Brown). For some reason I loved these small details; I know it can be said that the mentions of then non-existent technology make the book seem a bit dated, but I prefer to think of the characters as imagining the future with wide-eyed innocence (unlike the jaded people of today), adding yet another dimension to the title (the age of innocence = the age of long ago, when people were still untainted by technology).

And speaking of the title, I have spent quite a bit of time trying to figure what the title was meant to refer to. First of all, naming the book “The Age of …” was clearly a nice touch, since the book is, more than anything else, a picture of a certain time and age. How about the “Innocence” part though? That I have had a bit more trouble to place because, while the people were highly judgemental and so everyone tried, on the outside, not to break any moral code, very few of them actually are what might be called innocent in the long run. And then I thought that “The age of innocence” is actually an ironic name for what would have better been called “the age of keeping up appearances”, and then it all made sense.

Thoughts on the ending: The last chapter takes place 26 years after the previous one. While it deals with the changes in Newland’s life too (nothing that I’ll mention here so as not to spoil the book), the author doesn’t miss the opportunity to show the reader the changes in the society. A lot of progress has been done, and young people of the day are feeling a lot more free than the ones before them did: codes of conduct are more relaxed and people are less judgemental, the city starting to sound at last like the New York I was expected to see all along. The age of innocence has ended; the age of freedom and opportunities has arrived (and I am thankful to the author for mentioning this part, expanding thus the little bit of knowledge about old New York that I have gathered while reading the book).

A quote I liked, regarding that (out of Newland’s musings comparing the old with the new):

“The difference is that these young people take it for granted that they’re going to get whatever they want, and that we almost always took it for granted that we shouldn’t. Only, I wonder – the thing one’s so certain of in advance: can it ever make one’s heart beat as wildly?”

What I liked most: All the insight it offered regarding the way the things were in New York back then. I feel so naive now but there were a lot of things I have found surprising while reading :)

What I liked least: Nothing. Well, I did get a bit confused at times because of the names, as some people’s first names were others’ last names (there is Newland Archer and the Newland family, for example; there is an Emerson Sillerton and a Sillerton Jackson; and so on), but this was more of a source of amusement than anything else, without detracting a whit from my enjoyment of the book.

Recommend it to? I, for one, have loved it and I glad to have read it, so naturally enough I recommend it to everyone :)

I read this book for The Classics Circuit – yay! Interested in more Wharton reviews? Click here for the full schedule of the tour.

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This is a children’s book, which means that most characters are quite nice (and no one is actually evil). I for one have very much liked Charlotte, mostly because she seemed to me quite smart to figure it all out, and also because she was quite a proper young lady (that’s the adult in me speaking). I bet I would have liked Clare very much too (although from what Emily said of Clare she was a bit too proper for me to like), however unfortunately the author has chosen to follow Charlotte everywhere she went, so the reader had no chance to know Clare first hand. Other interesting characters were Emily (who was a wee bit too spoiled for me to actually like) and Miss Agnes Chisel Brown (the daughter of the family where Emily and Charlotte lived for a while), a young woman I couldn’t help feeling rather sorry for because she led a seemingly dreary life, the only highlight being her memories of her dead brother Arthur.

A part that I have found most interesting was the one regarding the idea of identity. Lost in a time not her own, Charlotte tries hard to hold onto her idea of self, her knowledge of being Charlotte not Clare. Also, she is always very interested in the way people around them reacted to Charlotte becoming Clare and Clare becoming Charlotte, because one would expect that anyone knowing one of them would realize that something was wrong the very moment the switch happened. And yet it seems like no one ever suspects the change, at least not at first, a thing that confuses Charlotte quite a bit. This reminded me in a way of a book I read a while ago (I think it was Terry Pratchett’s) stating that people only see what they expect to be seeing, and they sort of imagine away the rest — precisely what happened in this circumstance, with people who expected to see Clare seeing Clare, and people expecting to see Charlotte seeing Charlotte. Speaking of which, I am quite curious actually about how much different were they exactly (from the physical point of view), too bad we are never told (although people who knew them both usually said they were very different, but only after a while).

Two quotes I liked:

“And, she thought, uncomfortably, what would happen if people did not recognize you? Would you know who you were yourself? If tomorrow they started to call her Vanessa or Janet or Elizabeth, would she know how to be, how to feel, like Charlotte? Were you some particular person only because people recognized you as that”

and

“But when she put her fingers into the water and pulled a marble out, it was small by comparison with those still in the glass, and unimportant, too. It was like the difference between what you long for and what you find–the difference, for instance, between Arthur’s image of war and his experience of it.”

Thoughts on the ending: The ending was just as nice as was fitting for such a book and partially predictable too. show spoiler

Also, I was very sad to discover that what I have read is a “revised edition” and it lacks a scene (nothing very important, according to Wikipedia, (show spoiler

What I liked most: I absolutely adore the title :)

The idea of having the two characters try to communicate with one another was also quite cool (too bad it wasn’t expanded on a little).

What I liked least: Too short and a bit too vague? I very much liked this book but I would have loved it to have a bit more “flesh”, to tell us about the experience from other people’s point of view too (Clare’s is the one I was more curious about, since she went into the future not the past).

Recommend it to? Anyone enjoying children’s books. This is a very light volume (I read it in one sitting) but quite enjoyable (albeit I for one would have like a bit more detail hehe).


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As the author puts it in the prologue, the book is an exercise in describing “the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh.“. It tells the story of the life of Christ, from this very point of view: the feelings the human part of Christ might have felt at one time or another. Mr. K’s Christ is not the serene person we might have in mind when we think of Him of the gospels; he has moments of peace, but he also has moments when he is angry, afraid or feels lust. Overall, this Christ is so utterly, so incredibly human that one can only resonate with his plight. Sure, it can be said that this whole process is demeaning to the godly part of Christ, he being considered the one without sin (and he says it himself in the Bible that even thinking of sinning with a woman is just as sinful as the deed itself). However I tend to be in the opposite camp: after all, we are taught that Christ was just as much human as he was God, which makes it very plausible that he had all the basic human feelings too.

To think that the book opens with Jesus being a cross-maker! A cross-maker, working on the Sabbath, in an effort to defy God so much that He’ll leave him alone, and working up more and more anger seeing how useless his battle was (““Yes, yes,” he murmured, “you understand perfectly. Yes, on purpose; I do it on purpose. I want you to detest me, to go and find someone else; I want to be rid of you! [...] and I shall make crosses all my life, so that the Messiahs you choose can be crucified!“). But God still, ceaselessly, calls to him, and despite his not feeling up to the task (“I can’t! I’m illiterate, an idler, afraid of everything. I love good food, wine, laughter. I want to marry, to have children. … Leave me alone!“) Jesus has to give in in the end, especially as his whole being was thirsting for God despite the unjust way he thought himself treated.

And so it begins. Judging by the apostles mentioned, Mr. K has used the Gospel of John as main source (the only one where Nathanael was one of the followers). Which isn’t to say that Bible is followed to the letter. It’s actually interesting to notice how the author has handpicked a few elements in the Bible and distorted them a bit, to serve as a basis for the legends about to be born not as the legends themselves. For example the visit of the three magi has not actually happened, it all was a dream Mary had one time. Mary’s husband has become paralysed on the very day of their wedding, a way to explain how Mary remained a virgin until Jesus was born. Jesus walking on water and inviting Peter to join him is also a dream that only hints at its possibly being true. At the other end of the spectrum we have Jesus who is literally slapped and he literally turns the other cheek (a thing that I don’t remember actually happening in the Bible, I only remember this being advised).

There are of course some moments that have been kept faithful to their Bible telling though. The one with the stoning of Magdalene is almost one of those — I say almost because. unlike in the Bible, in this book this is the very scene where the cross-maker becomes the Son of God in the eyes of the people. The author has nevertheless preserved the very essence of the moment, the “Let him among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone!” part, and the way everything is narrated makes this one of my favorite scenes in the book.

The author has done a great job depicting the general atmosphere of the time, that of urgent expectancy: most people (Judas among them) feel that the Messiah should arrive any day now, and they are constantly looking for Him and taking what they think is steps to clear His path (alas, one of these steps was planning the murdering of Jesus himself but oh well, at least they had good intentions). Here or there though there are also a handful of people (Old Zebedee for one) content with their earthly lot and thinking all the talk of Messiahs nonsense (“[...] it seems that wherever you go and wherever you stop, you find a cross. The dungeons are overflowing with Messiahs. Ooo, enough’s enough! We’ve been getting along just fine without Messiahs; they’re nothing but a nuisance.“). It should be perhaps noted that the Messiah was seen by many as an overturner of the current way of life, someone who will help the Jewish people shake of the Roman yoke (a thing that very much explains why mostly poor people dreamed about His coming while the well-off didn’t much care). I was actually very much disappointed later on, during the book, to discover how few of Jesus’ followers went with him out of conviction and how many of them did so hoping that they are on the road to riches, honors and greatness (“Impressiveness, rank, clothes of silk, golden rings, abundant food and to feel the world under the Jewish heel: that was the kingdom of heaven.“).

An unexpected portion of the book deals with the fact that Jesus and Mary Magdalene knew each other as children, and they were actually in love. But God did not let Jesus marry her, and it’s for this very reason that Magdalene has turned to selling her body (“In order to forget one man, in order to save myself, I’ve surrendered my body to all men!“). It’s not only her though, as Judas and even Barabbas were previous acquaintances of Christ when a carpenter too. Speaking of which, it was very interesting to observe many of the apostles-to-be before the event that was to forever change their lives: John was a very religious young boy, Peter was a fisherman, his brother Andrew has lived in the desert for a while, Judas was a blacksmith and so on) — people with day to day lives, a “detail” I haven’t given much thought before.

Someone I had trouble liking was Mary, although I did partially understand her. She is a simple woman and wants nothing more from life than what she considers her due: her only son to take a wife and give her grandchildren. Granted, Mary’s life has been a hard one, what with her husband being unable to move or speak for many years now, and her only son considered crazy by some (herself included). And yet I cannot help finding her reactions exaggerated (although I admit that perhaps they weren’t so at the time): she scratches her cheeks, beats her head against stones and once she even wants to curse her own beloved son. A very contrasting image to the one we have of Mary in the Bible, where she is aware of Jesus’ role on earth and accepts it, despite its leading to her own heartbreak.

What I liked most: What I took to be the sermon on the mountain. First of all that is one of my favourite parts of the Bible. Because of it I paid particular attention to the moment in the book and it didn’t disappoint. At that moment Jesus was not yet a full fledged Messiah, “a gawky bird he was, struggling to twitter for the first time“, and yet his whole being was struggling to get God’s message across. A message of love, a message that was rather badly received by the people around him (who expected something different), and Jesus’ authenticity was doubted by some. I very much like these parts, where people have issues with what Jesus has to say, because they sound very real to me — I mean, if someone came and told you to believe something completely opposed to your innermost thoughts, would you jump and take it for granted, or would you have to struggle with the new ideas for a while?

A quote to better illustrate the idea:

Andrew was infuriated. He extricated himself from his brother’s grasp and went and stood before Jesus.

“I’ve just come from the river Jordan in Judea,” he shouted. “There a prophet proclaims: ‘Men are chaff and I am the fire. I have come to burn up and purify the earth, to burn up and purify the soul so that the Messiah may come forth!’ And you. son of the Carpenter, you preach love! Why don’t you take a look around you? Everywhere: liars, murderers, robbers! All are dishonest—rich and poor, oppressed and oppressors, Scribes and Pharisees—all! all! I too am a liar, I too am dishonest, and so is my brother Peter over there, and so is Zebedee with his fat paunch: he hears “love” and thinks of his boats and men and how to steal as much as he can from the wine press.”

Other details I liked: the relationship between Jesus and Judas (my favorite ever, show spoiler

Does God’s will change, then, Rabbi? asked John, surprised.
No, John, beloved. But man’s heart widens and is able to contain more of God’s will.

What I liked least: The part where Jesus was in the desert. I was expecting it to be somehow “muddled” since I thought he’d be half hallucinating after spending all that time without food or water, but I didn’t expected it to be that long. I even ended up skipping some lines now and then. Darn.

Recommend it to? Anyone up to a story of the life of Christ a bit different than what we were taught. It’s not an easy read (the writing is beautiful at times but heavy at others) however the ideas explored might be worth the time.


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Predictably enough, I didn’t know what to make of Mary at first. Almost as soon as the reader gets to know her she is in a rich guy’s arms, vainly enjoying his attentions and mostly disregarding the customs of the day. And yet, bit by bit, her true motives are uncovered: she indeed wants to be rich, but mostly for her father’s sake. Perhaps an understandable enough reason given the poverty all around her, and yet I couldn’t honestly say I liked her. But Mary’s best moments are after Jem proposed, after she realized the true owner of her heart. She never wavers in her decision of no longer leading Mr. Henry (the rich guy) along, and she starts acting like one would expect of a honest girl in that time.

Jem on the other hand is a bit one-faceted, as he is, all throughout the book, as perfect and unwavering as he could be. He is so good I couldn’t help liking him (especially as he had every quality to be wanted in a guy back then), and yet I cannot help but wonder whether I would have liked him better with at least a tiny flaw of his own. (Actually, to be honest I probably did like him better perfect as he was, but he would have been a lot more believable a wee bit flawed). My other favorite characters were Margaret, a friend of Mary’s (with very straight ethics and with a heart of gold) and her grandfather Job Leigh (whose sadness on losing his daughter and joy on discovering he had a granddaughter make one particular scene one of my very favorites in the whole book).

This is the first book of Gaskell’s and at times it shows. For example, it started off quite slow and I had a bit of a hard time getting into it. And yet, once I got to know all the characters and their conflicts, I was hooked and I couldn’t read fast enough. Unfortunately it slows down again in the end, after the murder trial (yes, there’s going to be a murder too), with a section that is more moralizing than anything else, but were I to draw the line I had a great time reading and the good parts compensated the slow ones by far.

Reading it was like reading two books actually: a classical romance, with a love triangle, strong feelings and unrequited love, and a murder mystery, albeit a bit predictable, very enjoyable because of the emotional involvement the reader has with the characters by the time the murder is introduced (a very skilful move of the author’s in my opinion, to get us care for the characters first then put them through such trials). The book is also, without a doubt, historical fiction, as the author, seemingly very interested in the issues of the time, has dedicated many pages to the conflict between factory-workers and factory owners (a central issue of the times), and also described in minute detail the lives of the former, the way they lived and the way they and theirs have been affected by the events. The poverty and the desperation of the people left without a way to feed their family are so intensely written they feel almost tangible at times, offering the reader perhaps a new insight in the events (for example we very rarely, if at all, stop to think that industrialization back then, while a sign of progress, has been very unkind to a certain group of people, whose work was deemed no longer necessary and who were left to starve, or “clemming”, as the author puts it).

A quote, describing London as seen by John Barton:

They’re sadly puzzled how to build houses though in London; there’d be an opening for a good steady master builder there, as know’d his business. For yo see the houses are many on ‘em built without any proper shape for a body to live in; some on ‘em they’ve after thought would fall down, so they’ve stuck great ugly pillars out before ‘em. And some on ‘em (we thought they must be th’ tailors’ sign) had getten stone men and women as wanted clothes stuck on ‘em.

What I liked most: The author seems to have put some effort into describing as accurately as possible the strained relations between the masters (the factory owners) and the hands (the members of the Traders Union). Each side has its reasons analysed as objectively as possible, and each side’s weak points are exposed. I have very much liked this approach, both because I have learned a thing or two from it (knowing very little about 19th century Manchester), and also because it made it easy for me to relate to both sides (since they both were right in their own way) and it made me became all the more intensely involved in “what happens next”.

What I liked least: Almost everything that came after the trial. The moralizing bit where “the master” (Mr. Carson) meets “the worker” (John Barton) and they sort of talk their differences away was a bit too much for me (and I was quite sad to see that since I had delighted in the way the master/worker topic was treated thus far).

I did like the “happily ever after” finale though (not a spoiler, doesn’t everyone expect such an ending in a classic book?)

Recommend it to? I definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys the classics. To fans of historical fiction too as it’s an interesting glimpse at the life of that place and time.

I read this book for The Classics Circuit – yay! Interested in more Gaskell reviews? Click here for the full schedule of the tour.

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There is a special magic in number three, isn’t it? Welcome to the third stop of the Wilkie Collins tour! It is the first tour on The Classics Circuit and it plans to follow Mr. Collins as he visits a few of the book blogs in the blogosphere, in hopes of making new acquaintances. Feel free to visit the previous stops (1, 2) and the full list of the stops planned for the future. And, of course, enjoy this one!

Ever since first opening the book I was amused at the shape it way written in: letters and descriptions of events by various characters, in order to record a certain story “in the interest of truth“. The very same way The Woman in White was written, and, as I liked that book, I readily prepared to like this one in turn. At first it started out a bit slowly, but once things got rolling I could hardly put it down.

Were I to name a most amusing narrator, I would certainly choose Miss Drusilla Clack, a single woman dedicated to her faith and her charitable causes, so much so that she became a caricature of such a character instead of a multifaceted human being. Among her quirks we should note the fact that she considered sympathy for the sick a very un-Christian reaction and takes pride in giving tracts to people because that’s her idea of doing them good. A funny scene involving her is when she tries to force Lady Verinder into salvation by hiding books on religious topics all around the Lady’s house (and then she goes home so convinced she did good that she feels like a young girl again).

Another narrator that I have liked was Mr. Gabriel Betteredge, Lady Verinder’s house stewart. Despite his age (somewhere around seventy and eighty) he takes pride in doing his job well and he treats the people under him as kindly as they deserve. In the course of the book he has quite a few fits of the “detective fever”, as he calls it, but always in the company of someone better acquainted with the situation and more likely to make discoveries (it can be said that Betteredge would make a wonderful Watson while never being capable of being a Sherlock Holmes himself). Although I have mostly liked him he did have at times moments of feeling superior to other people (usually women), and then I usually got annoyed at him. But then I remembered his most interesting quirk (he believed the truth, the life and everything was to be found in the pages of Robinson Crusoe) and it made me smile again.

Here’s one of his “superior” quotes, just to form an idea:

“[...] it is a maxim of mine that men (being superior creatures) are bound to improve women—if they can. When a woman wants me to do anything (my daughter, or not, it doesn’t matter), I always insist on knowing why. The oftener you make them rummage their own minds for a reason, the more manageable you will find them in all the relations of life. It isn’t their fault (poor wretches!) that they act first and think afterwards; it’s the fault of the fools who humour them.”

Ugh.

Looking back I realize I have only mentioned things I have found amusing in the book. Don’t expect this to be a funny volume though — on the contrary, it is a very serious one as the happiness of the members of a whole family is at stake. Not any members of any family, but a cast of characters that the reader grows to like and root for, and as such their happiness becomes important (or at least that’s what happened with me). The atmosphere of the book is also rather gloomy, what with everyone suspecting everyone else of theft, with even a few deaths and illnesses thrown into the bargain. It is not a happy reading in any way, but it’s definitely a captivating one.

Here is a quote from the book’s preface by the author, illustrating an interesting side of the book:

“In some of my former novels, the object proposed has been to trace the influence of circumstances upon character. In the present story I have reversed the process. The attempt made here is to trace the influence of character on circumstances. The conduct pursued, under a sudden emergency, by a young girl, supplies the foundation on which I have built this book.”

The young girl in question is, of course, Miss Verinder. She is a complex character, young, pretty, gentle, kind hearted, but with an easily excited temper. A temper that made me actually dislike her at first (way too overexcited by everything around her for my taste), but as the story progresses her strong nature begins to shine through, and the book ended with her as my favorite character of them all. As far as her way of seeing things influences the narrative, it is obviously after a while that her decisions influence the book throughout, but I think the mystery would have been just as complete even without her acting in a certain way. But, of course, I agree that the author knows best so I will say no more.

Last but not least, T.S. Eliot called this book “the first, the longest, and the best of modern English detective novels“. It is hard to believe in this day and age, when detective novels are everywhere, that a little over a century ago the genre almost didn’t exist. And then Wilkie Collins appeared on the scene. While not entirely original (parts of it are inspired from real life), the book established the cornerstone of the genre, and some of its elements are still used to this day (large number of suspects, amateur detectives, the person who did it was the least likely of all, a local policeman who does a bad job at solving the case and more).

What I liked most: There is a certain scene where Rachel has a heated conversation with the guy she’s in love with. It’s my favorite scene and I liked Rachel at least twice as much afterwards.

What I liked least: I was less than enchanted by the “medical experiment” that helps solve part of the mystery. I found it quite hard to believe despite Ezra Jennings quoting from official (and I supposed real life) books. Sure, the author assures us in the preface that he had make sure this is what it would have happened, by consulting “not only [...] books, but [...] living authorities as well“. I do believe him of course, and yet that part of the narrative was decidedly the one I liked least.

Recommend it to? Anyone who likes classics and/or good mystery books.

See also
Audrey Niffeneger’s review of The Moonstone

Written by the same author:
Poor Miss Finch

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