Review: "The Europeans" By Henry James

The Europeans is an absolutely delightful novel!  Fun from the first page through the last.  Also, it is really more of a novella and can easily be read in one or two sittings.  The Europeans was written by Henry James in 1878.

The Europeans is actually a 'flip', if you will, in the normal Jamesian plot-line.  In other words, rather than the story of an American expatriate in Europe, this is the tale of two American expats who come back to visit family in New England.  This is the story of Eugenia, the Baroness Munster, and her younger brother Felix Young, who leave Germany because of her disintegrating marriage to a German prince.  They end up moving in with the Wentworths, relatives on their late-mother's side of the family.  I gotta say at this point too, the reader is gonna fall in love with Gertrude Wentworth--pretty much like everyone else in the novel!

Obviously, the staid New England Puritan Wentworths and their neighbors are largely over-awed by their European cousins, but everyone settles in after a bit and 'the good times roll'.  Felix is an artist--a genuine good natured fellow and free spirit--and a big hit among all of his American friends and family.  Eugenia, the Baroness, is a bit more of an enigma, and everyone minces about around her, but she too is actually a good soul.  She ends up being a positive influence on several of the novels more important characters.

Romance abounds among all of the young people, and while it is fun to watch the flowers of love open and blossom, it is also worth following James as he guides the reader through the comparisons and contrasts between the pragmatic European continental sensibilities of Eugenia and Felix, and the fresh, but restrained New England practicalities of the Wentworth son and daughters and the Acton brother and sister.

This a free-spirited, flibbertigibbet novel that asks for nothing more than that the reader sit back and enjoy it.  It ain't deep, it ain't all that serious, it is simply a heck of a good little story that upon finishing you realize that you're very glad that you read it.  And you know what?  I'll read it again sometime.  Solid four of five stars for me!

***

The Europeans
By Henry James, 1878
Penguin Classics Edition
Softcover, 179 pp.

Review: "The Firebrand" by Marion Zimmer Bradley

I finished reading Marion Zimmer Bradley's The Firebrand early this morning, and found it to be an excellent book, and one that I look forward to rereading again at some point in time.  This novel, at just over 600 pages, tells the story of the Trojan War from the perspective of Kassandra the Prophetess, one of the daughters of Priam and Hecuba, the king and queen of Troy.  Zimmer Bradley does a terrific job of incorporating the commonly accepted mythological elements of all of the major characters in the novel, including several of the gods and goddesses, e.g., Apollo, Zeus, Athena, Aphrodite, Hera, Poseidon, and even the great Earth Mother herself.  I have to say that I was quite intrigued with Zimmer Bradley's character development of the great Achaean warrior, Akilles, and the portrayal of his rage, which is the subject of Homer's epic poem, The Iliad.  Zimmer Bradley may be closer to the truth of the matter with Akilles than that generally thought, but I'll leave the reader to form their own opinions.

While the novel is clearly intended to be read for its fantasy entertainment value, there is also the intriguing thread of cultural anthropology woven throughout that causes the reader to at least consider the differences between the matriarchal societies of some earlier Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures and the inexorable establishment of the more widespread patriarchal system in the Bronze and Iron Ages.  For example, she explores this in a social context through the roles of Priam, Hecuba, and even the Amazon leader, Penthesilea; as well as through the role that religion and religious beliefs played with the Trojans, Achaeans, and other tribes and peoples encountered in the novel.  It might be easy to just attribute this to Zimmer Bradley's brand of literary feminism, but I personally choose to think that she is really trying to remind us of the Myth of the Goddess, and that the balance of female and male in our own psyche is important even now.  Zimmer Bradley's portrayal of Kassandra in telling this story is compelling and thought-provoking.  Frankly, I enjoyed this novel even more than her wildly popular The Mists of Avalon.  This was a well-written story and a real page-turner from start-to-finish.  I have given this novel 4/5 stars.

***

The Firebrand
By Marion Zimmer Bradley
Hardcover
Simon & Schuster, 1987, 608 pages.
ISBN--0671641778
[This book is from my personal collection]

Literary Blog Hop: My Most Difficult Read -- "Blood Meridian" by Cormac McCarthy

The folks over at The Blue Bookcase sponsor "The Literary Blog Hop," a weekly meme, that gives all of us who read and write about books an opportunity to find and make new friends, and exchange ideas.  This week's question was submitted by Debbie Nance at Readerbuzz--

"What is the most difficult literary work you've ever read?  What made it so difficult?

At first blush I thought that this'd be a snap.  Then I re-read the question again.  "What is the most difficult literary work you've read?"  Ahh, well then, I guess I can't talk about the dozen, or more times, that I have tried to read Ulysses by James Joyce, and ended up hurling it across the room in frustration several days later.  Yes, gentle reader, I even broke the back of an edition of Ulysses in one of my momentary fits of rage and frustration.  I have since entered a 12-step program that has kept me Joyce-free for nearly fifteen years now, and I have never injured another book.

Okay, back to the question at hand.  My answer to the question must surely be Cormac McCarthy's horrific novel Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West published in 1985.  While not profoundly intellectually challenging like one of Joyce's novels, or something by Pynchon, McCarthy has basically put a small thermonuclear device between the covers of this novel, and then double-dares you to open it and read it.  This novel is probably the most relentlessly brutal and savage novel that you'll ever read.  I compare reading this novel to looking at and trying to decipher the meaning of a painting by the Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch (1450-1516).  Blood Meridian is ostensibly based upon a series of historical events that occurred along the U.S./Mexico border region from Texas to San Diego in the mid-19th century, involving a gang of outlaws (the Glanton Gang) led by the fictional 'Judge Holden'--a man so evil that he almost defies description.  And like Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, the novel is loaded with biblical references and imagery.  The ending is vintage McCarthy too, i.e., completely and totally unexpected.  Harold Bloom considers McCarthy's Blood Meridian to be one of the great American novels of the 20th century and called it "the ultimate western."  Bloom and several other critics have compared it to Melville's Moby-Dick in its literary quality and importance to the American canon.  Even though it is a tough read, every time I read Blood Meridian I am able to discover something new, kind of like peeling an onion, layer-by-layer and gain a better sense of the novel's message.  I have come to the conclusion that Cormac McCarthy is the modern-American equivalent of Thomas Hardy--bleak, dark, and that fate and chance play a major role in his plotting.

Is Blood Meridian McCarthy's best novel?  Well, the critics would sure have you think so.  For me though, I think that I like his much earlier novel Outer Dark (1968) even more; and then his "Borderlands Trilogy" that includes All The Pretty Horses (1992), The Crossing (1994), and Cities of the Plain (1998) are truly amazing novels that I re-read every few years.  And for those of you who have read McCarthy's No Country for Old Men (2005), or saw the recent film adaptation by Joel and Ethan Coen of the same title; well, you obviously have an understanding of McCarthy's penchant for unrelenting violence and a difficult ending.

Well, there it is--my most difficult novel to read--Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy.

***