mrs. dalloway.

Here is something brave to admit: Up until a week ago, I hated Virginia Woolf. As a girl with feminist tendencies and as an English student this attitude seemed sacrilegious and shameful. I avoided her and her books and this is why:

As it goes with younger siblings, I appropriated clothes, ideas, stories, catch-phrases, music, books, films etc. from my two very cool older sisters. This has lessened somewhat over the years as we've all grown older, but appropriation still happens. One of the things that trickled into my sixteen-year-old consciousness was the intriguing name 'Virginia Woolf' and her subsequent greatness. I remember surreptitiously stealing my sister's copy of To The Lighthouse (which I actually still have. Sorry, Shani, let me know if you want it back...) and settling down to read it. I got about halfway before my brain exploded leaving bits of wrinkled confusion splattered against the window. I put it aside and decided to wait a year or two, feeling terribly insecure about my stupidness and convincing myself that I would be much smarter next year this time.

And a year or two later I attempted In Between the Acts. And once more, I got about halfway and realised that the sentences were so slippery and frustrating that I had been reading the same page again and again. Woolf was nonsensical, utterly annoying, repetitive, vague, cloudy, long-winded and I was simply too stupid to see the supposed genius in all of the above. And this made me cross. What enraged me further was that my friends all seemed to be delightedly flying through Virginia Woolf, reader her as casually as one would pick up Archie Comics. They loved her and I couldn't see it. All I could see was some wolf-like shape of a woman throwing strange words at my face which I didn't understand.

So when I saw A Room of One's Own and Mrs. Dalloway appear on our course outline this year for English, I became all sulky. Damn Modernists.

Needless to say, all I needed was someone to iron out all the wrinkles, give me a bit of context, a bit of biographical information and tell me what to look out for when reading her books. (On a more personal note, I had to remind myself just to read Woolf slower than I read any other author). And I was converted. I no longer hated her... quite the opposite, it just shows that English lecturers can make or break a book. In my case, our lecturer salvaged an entire author.

A Room of One's Own is sad, hilarious and inspiring. And I have falling completely in love with every character in Mrs. Dalloway, jaw just about dropping at the patterns, connections and descriptive genius that constantly occurs throughout the book. I finished reading Mrs. Dalloway about an hour ago, sprawled on Rose's bed. (Rose's room is a magical room, the envy of everyone in the house because the sun insists on gracing her double bed almost all day. Tess and I sometimes sneak in when she's out to indulge in an afternoon of sunlit reading.) I read the last page and sighed happily because I am not a boy, because the sun is incredibly lovely and because Virginia Woolf and I are friends.

And so, I no longer have to avoid Virginia Woolf in conversation and in bookstores. I can now embarrassingly but comfortably join the ranks of other upper-middle-class feministy girls who read and adore suicidal females authors with gusto and enthusiasm.

the shipping news.

First Tessa's mom gave it to her, then Tess passed it on to me and now it is with Jess. I like how books can flit from one person to the next and never be labeled as 'whorish' despite how many people they go through. The Shipping News by E. Annie Proulx is one of those books that simply must get passed on because one can only appreciate its true starkness and beauty if one reads it.

Although, I must admit that while Tess was reading it she raved and referenced the book so often that I felt like I had read it in some previous life. Annie Proulx has one of the most fascinating styles of writing I have ever encountered. She writes so casually and poetically that she can be talking about the most traumatic series of events and describe a darkly violent scene that you aren't even properly aware of it until a few pages later. You'll read something that is pretty twisted and sick, skip along a few pages and then pause, asking yourself the question, "What just happened? Did that just happen?".

And the names! Ha! Every single character in her book has the most bizarre name yet you couldn't imagine that character with a different name. I don't know how she thought up those names but it just shows that at the end of the day, imagination is still highly prized and important. And the plot, especially the beginning, is so sad but so matter-of-fact that you couldn't possibly get mopey about it, just deeply thoughtful and obsessed with the book.

So you can tell I liked the book. And so did Tess. And I'm certain Jess will, too. One of the nicest things about book-sharing is that once you've both read it you can rave about scenes and characters in a secret language that no one could understand unless they've read it. Even now, two weeks after both Tess and I finished reading it, we sometimes slip back into a 'Shipping News' conversation and after a grown-up, intelligent critical analysis of the book and its structure and themes etc. this conversation usually ends with us stupidly yelling at each other (quite loudly) with raised fists, "IT'S SO GREAT!"

I have boiled everything I like about this book into my two possible favourite things about this book. (That was nonsensical, awkward, adolescent sentence). Firstly, I love the fact that the main character is a middle-aged, overweight, unattractive man. It is entirely refreshing. Secondly, I love the fact that the book has weather.

This is a weather-filled book. It is mainly set in Newfoundland and the coast and tempestuous ocean seems to be another character who takes up quite a large portion of the book. I realised that when a book takes its own environment and surrounding into consideration it often slips into something more than a book and turns into a place that exists properly in your mind. And humans are greatly dependent on weather. I know that I am obsessed with weather. I'm not sure if this is just because I live at the Cape under a Mountain where clouds come and go with little warning, but weather brings out the human in one. This book did not shirk on the weather or the human. (Again, a completely nonsensical sentence?)

So here's the plan, put down whatever you are reading and read The Shipping News by Annie Proulx while I go find something else she has written.

the shattered chain.

I am struggling to write this post. Partly because half of my brain is thinking about Louis MacNeice and Modernist poetry (for an essay I have to write) and the other half is thinking about Marion Zimmer Bradley and feminist science fiction (which I finished reading the other day). I'm pretty sure you don't get two authors and genres that are more different. But let me try put that incredibly British man aside and focus on the American woman. (There are some labels you can't escape).

There is something shocking about Marion Zimmer Bradley's novels. Apart from her unforgettable name, her covers almost always involve a badly-drawn, out-of-proportion, semi-naked person. Which is slightly off-putting. But once you start reading, it becomes increasingly difficult to stop. Which is also a little disconcerting. The Shattered Chain is part of the Darkover series and this is the only one I've read from that series. However if I was going to become obsessed with a fantasy-land I'd be perfectly content with Marion Zimmer Bradley's world of Darkover, where patriarchy reigns in the most subtle and obvious ways and the only truly free women are the Free Amazons who have their own rules and boy, are they cool.

If boys dream about becoming a Jedi warrior, then I dream about becoming a Free Amazon. I would be able to run fast and fight with a knife and gallop on a horse and defend myself and have smart yet terrifying quips to any man who offended me. All the while being graceful and dignified. And I would have short sexy hair and be strong and alluring all at the same time. And I would be able to fly. (Ok, so the Free Amazons can't fly but I may as well indulge in the fantasy).

The thing I love about Marion Zimmer Bradley's fantastical world, is that it is never a case of men being the evil, domineering, bad-guys out to crush women. And the women are not always the brave and brilliant heroines fighting for the cause. Some of the female characters are just as awful and tyrannic as the male characters and some of the male characters are just as fair and lovely and charming as the female characters. Like a good feminist, she does not discriminate or simplify morals and gender. It is difficult to explain, but there are certain passages in her book where one thinks, "That's exactly it! Yes! Someone else thinks so too... Ha!" But those passages are difficult to pinpoint and describe.

It is interesting that she had to create an entirely new world in order to write about women who have total agency over their lives. But then, who, regardless of sex, has total agency over their lives? This gender issue becomes so circular and inter-twined that I find difficulty in talking (let alone writing) about it. This is where Marion Zimmer Bradley's avoidance of making things simply black and white turn into a highly confusing grey-mushy-philosophical question about men and women that is sort of making my brain explode right now especially because I haven't quite got rid of Louis MacNeice and his Oxford cronies teetering on the edge of my mind and this too-long sentence alone is begin to overwhelm me completely so I'm going to stop now.

This seems to be a messily-splurged post about something that I am not quite sure about. So, let me close off with my new-found suspicion of redheads. In The Shattered Chain there is a group of people who are can read minds and are highly psychic. These people are usually redheads. And now I don't trust them.