Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell

Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, 2004. Winner of the Hugo Award for Best Novel, among others.

I started reading it last night and I'm about half way into the 800 pg novel. Magic is back! Well, sort of, this novel is set in the early 19th century. Norrell, a bookish, socially inept, nervous, fussy character, is the older magician. He has two goals: to destroy all other magicians, and to work for the British government, i.e. military. In his attempt have Sir Walter Pole aid him in his latter cause, Norrell summons a faerie (more a demon creature) to resurrects Pole's recently dead fiancee, and makes a pact with the faerie which gives him half of the young woman's life. She is later enchanted, forced to dance all night for years at the faerie's balls, unable to tell anyone, and at one point, she says death would be better than her predicament.

Strange, his pupil has more natural magical abilities, though I wouldn't describe him as highly practical or intelligent. He seems happy-go-lucky, stumbling, agreeing to things that later somehow benefit him.

010 Of Love and Other Demons

It's been a long time since my last entry. I've been in China for the last few months. I came home to visit for a few weeks and leave again soon. I really missed reading in English while gone and so, during this break, I picked up a few books from the library.



Of Love and Other Demons by Gabriel García Márquez, 1994. 140 pages. I read this book quickly. I doubt I'll remember it. I think I'll have to read A Hundred Years of Solitude to do Gabriel justice.

Sierva María, born in a South American seaport to a Marquis, is bitten by a rapid dog at the age of twelve. Her father, dimwitted, has his life happen to him, while her mother, once a scheming beauty and keen business woman has, by the time we meet her, become an unfeeling, bloated, gassy blob, ruined by drugs and sex. Neither parent cares for Sierva María; She is raised by slaves, learns their languages, customs and beliefs.

A series of events are set off after Sierva María is bit by the rapid dog. Her father, desperate to save his daughter, hires a variety of witchdoctors and medicine men to cure her. Each treatment gets more outlandish than the next, and eventually news of Sierva María being possessed reaches the Bishop's ear. She gets sent to the Convent of Santa Clara to await for an exorcism.

Father Cayetano Delaura, a librarian under the Bishop is put in charge of Sierva María's case. He falls in love with her and one night, after smelling some of her possessions, flagellates himself. When he is found on the floor in a bloody mess by the Bishop, he declares:

"It is the demon, Father," Delaura said. "The most terrible one of all." (p.118)

The above line on the book flap is what compelled me to borrow the book. I did find interesting the preface by Gabriel describing the event which inspired Of Love and Other Demons. He was sent in 1949, as a reporter, to the Convent of Santa Clara when they were emptying burial crypts to build a five star hotel there.

They found the crypt of a young girl and still attached to the skull was 22 meters of copper hair. The tomb bore the name, Sierva María de Todos los Ángeles.

On to another take on love:



Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, 2005. The general public, and especially teenage girls, are nuts about this book. I found it on the fast reads shelf at my library by chance and picked it up. I read this book paragraphs at a time. Really good material for exercising how to read fast -- light, frivolous and cute.

Teenage girl, Bella, moves to a new town and is attracted to teenage boy who is actually a vampire. They fall in love. The plot does not move until four fifths into the book, meaning Bella's life is not in any danger until then.

It is not a fantastic book by any means, but it reminded me of the kind of books I enjoyed and how it felt to read as a kid. So that was cool.

009 The Pickup

The Pickup by Nadine Gordimer, 2001.


A rich white woman from South Africa falls for a Middle Eastern illegal immigrant. When he is deported, she decidedly buys two tickets and follows him to his village. After nearly a year and much effort, he is granted a visa into the U.S.; however, she tells him, two days before departure, that she will stay in the village.

Abdu, later identified as Ibrahim il Musa, hungers for the lifestyle Julie rejects while she desires the life in the village bordering the desert. Both believe the other is naive to want what they do not.

The Pickup is a complicated book about love, taking changes, identity, imagined places, seeking out the kinds of fantasies that are the opposite of what one knows, a hunger and drive to fulfill oneself, regardless of the opinion of others. Both characters are like that and through a series of events, they help each other reach the footholds of spaces where their imagined selves begin to form.

It's a book that sneaks up on you. Bravo.

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures

Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam, 2005.

Giller Prize winner by Canadian novelist and doctor, Vincent Lam.

Touted as the inside scoop on medical school and practice in Canada, this book follows four people through their pursuit and later, their practice of medicine.

I did not find the characters engaging: Ming, the focused Chinese girl who is cold, methodical, slicing into corpses without compunction; Fitzgerald, the alcoholic doctor who gets fired and later contracts SARS while working for a private medical company; Sri, the psychiatric and sentimental doctor who dies young; and Chen, whom I have no recollection of other than he married Ming.

The book peeps into the medical profession. The bottom line is doctors are human; they make sacrifices, grapple with doubts, walk in gray zones, and fib truths to spare people pain. Generally speaking, there are no surprises but there are specifics, that is, set up and details of choices that doctors must make.

A quick read with functional writing.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick, 1968.

A quick read. The writing itself is what I would call, functional, that is, it does the job but nothing else.

Set in 2021 after the World War, earth is full of radioactive dust, abandoned buildings slowly crumble, and debris or "kipple" encroaches into every living space. Most humans, encouraged by the government, have emigrated to Mars. Animals are scarce and ownership of one, depending on their rarity, signifies social status. Androids, built to ease life on Mars, become nearly indistinguishable from humans. Several kill their human owners and flee to Earth.

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter of rogue androids who've escaped to earth. He identifies them through an empathy test which is comprised of questions about dead animals. Appropriate verbal answers as well as speed and physical response times are measured.

We find that empathy and later, the will to live even in hopeless situations, are what distinguishes human from android.

This book inspired the movie Blade Runner. I watched that movie ages ago but remember little of it. An image of a very tall Daryl Hannah with wet hair comes to mind. The premise of Philip's book is good, and I wanted to know more of how people lived, both on Mars and on Earth; however, the book, as it should be perhaps, was focused on the "android/robot" literary conundrum: where does the dividing line lie?

Yes, as foretold by many a science fiction and Japanese anime writer, we will one day make androids who will be as human as we are. Whatever criteria we deem as requisite to be human, androids will satisfy them at some point. It's not that bad! Obviously there will be bad robots, but there will be good ones too -- look at Wall-E.