"Pinay:Autobiogrphical Narratives by Women Writers, 1926 to 1998" edited by Christina Hidalgo

Pinay: Autobiographical Narratives by Women Writers, 1926 to 1998 edited and introduced by Christina Pantoja Hidalgo (2000, 260 pages Ateneo de Manila Press)

On November 12, 2009 Hilary Clinton acting in her role as Secretary of State of the United States made an official visit to the Philippines.   During her visit  she said the Philippines is ahead of the USA in giving women leadership roles.   She referenced the fact that since World War II there has been two women presidents of the Philippines.    ( When Hilary Clinton said one thing the women of the Philippines need is a corruption free government the people can trust the TV camera turned its focus on the women leaders in the podium behind her.   Sadly there records are no better than their male counterparts.)

Pinay: Autobiographical Narratives by Women Writers, 1926 to 1998 is collection of short pieces by Filipino women on a range of topics.   Some of the articles are extracted from books, others from newspapers, some from old family journals and some were written for the book.   All were written in English.    The fact that the articles were written in English limits the social range of the writers in that only college graduates can write with any fluency in English.    The further one goes back in the 20th century (up to say 1920) the closer to standard English is found in the writings of Filipinos.   Under the US colonial rule English was mandated as the language of instruction in the public schools.     After WWII many began to see the focus on English in the schools as showing a lack of national pride so over all written English declined up until about 1990.   It is now the vehicle of instruction in elite universities and private high schools.  

There are six sections in this book.   The first is devoted to growing up and going to school.    These articles focus on childhood memories and the extreme importance of family.   One of the best articles is "Growing up Protestant in a Catholic Country".  

Section two is devoted to the lives of Philippino women during the Japanese occupation in World War II.    There are still a few members of our family with personal memories of this period.   I hope we can record their stories before it is too late.   Many of the stories are very related to issues in the Women Unbound Challenge as they are about women left alone, women victimized solely because of their ethnic background and women losing their childhood to war.  A lot of how Filipinas were treated depended on the temperament of the local commander of the Japanese forces.   Some tried to enforce decent behavior on their men and some gave them free reign to do whatever they wished to the local populace.    As Japan began to face defeat, as the articles show, they began to take it out on the locals.    One of the most interesting articles deals with the reopening of the University of the Philippines right after the war. 

Section III deals with falling in love and marriage.    It is said all over the world when you marry someone you also marry their family and for sure that is true in the Philippines.     The cultural of the Philippines is very romance oriented (not quite sure how to express this correctly).    You see this in the articles.    To explain it a bit, the best selling western classics in the Philippines are the works of Jane Austin and the Brontes.     There is almost no legal divorce in the Philippines.   As a partial result of this, in my opinion, their is a high rate of births out of marriage (medical birth control is also looked very much down on by the Church).   Abortion is completely illegal under all but the most dire circumstances.    

Section IV deals with maternity.     Partially as a result of the teachings of the Catholic Church, there is great reverence given to the role of the mother in Philippino culture.   When Cory Aquino (a former president-widow of Nino Aquino) recently passed away she was mourned as if the mother of the country had died.    The articles in this section cover topics ranging from dealing with sibling fights in the family to the joys of big family gatherings.

Section V deals with the job market and focuses on the transition of young Filipino women into the work place.    The Philippines is a very very appearance conscious country.    There are none of the laws to protect people from discrimination in employment that exist in the UK and elsewhere.   You commonly see ads for big corporations saying applicants must be under 26, over five foot two,  and attractive plus have a pleasing personality.     One of my wife's female cousins, in her mid-twenties, recently applied for a job at a major department store.   She was told by the female human resources person that she could be hired but first she had to raise up her dress so her legs could be inspected as the store was known for having attractive female sales persons in short dresses.   This was done not in a way to degrade just as fact of employment.    There are articles about starting a restaurant. attending law school and working as a journalist.

One of the big aspects  of life in the Philippines is that millions and millions of parents, husbands and wives have to leave their family sometimes for up to two years to go out of the country to work so they can send money back to their families.   Many a small town in the rural Philippines is largely supported by earnings from those working outside the country.    The range of jobs go from maids (a maid in Hong Kong gets free room and board and makes twice the pay as a Philippino office worker) to heart surgeons and super tanker captains.   These long periods away from the family are hard on everyone, especially on the children when the mother is gone.    The articles show the turmoil in the mind of women who work off shore.   Of course they worry if their children are ok and most worry about the fidelity of their spouses.   Many are in fact single mothers who leave their children in the care of a relative.   I   know of  one case where a woman works as a nurse in a  hospital in London (she obtained a master's degree from an English university at her employer's expense) and now she supports twenty relatives in a small town in Luzon.     I have met in small towns a few people who worked 20 to 40 years in the USA or elsewhere where there is government social security.   The day they were able to get a pension they went home.   Often their children were grown  now barely knowing them.   The articles cover issues like home sickness, looking for love in another country, feelings of isolation, and living in cultures where all Asians are lumped together.

If I could make a change in this very well done collection I would have liked the articles to be longer.   There are excellent short biographies of each writer from which we can see the career paths of the women authors.  (It is an elite list of authors).   It would have been interesting to hear from some of the millions of people  in squatter shacks next to the huge malls and luxury condos but these people have no ability by and large to write in English.
 

Pinay: Autobiographical Narratives by Women Writers, 1926 to 1998 has a very well done introduction.   The book is worth reading for anyone interested in increasing their understanding of the life of Filipino women.   It also give us brief samples of writing from 40 or so POC women.   This book is available on Amazon.com (the cost new is $25.00 USA-I hate to say this but I would not suggest one pay that much-some times it is on Amazon for less than ten dollars and some larger libraries may have it).    It does focus entirely on middle class or above women.  (Middle class women in the Philippines have full time help.)-The book also lets us see what happens in the historical case of one POC group having colonial domination over another.

I am reading this book for these challenges

Memorable Memoirs

POC Reading Challenge (over 40 view points from POC women)

Women Unbound Challenge (1 of 3 non fiction selections to be read)

Mel u

"My Son's Story" by Nadine Gordimer

Johannesburg in the Times of Apartheid

If you are visiting from the class project on Nadine Gordimer, you are very welcome here-feel free to leave any comments or questions you may have-Jan 13, 2011

My  Son's Story (1990, 277 pages) is my first venture into the very large corpus of Nadine Gordimer.   Gordimer (1923-) was born in Johannesburg South Africa in a time of institutionalized legally mandated white supremacy.    Citizens were legally classified as either pure white, black or colored by the government. (Indians were also treated as a separate class of citizen.)   Where one could live was determined by your race.   Where you could go to school was determined by this.  In most areas, only whites were allowed to use the libraries, for example.   The wealth of the country was concentrated in the hands of whites.    Here is a good summery of the history of racial relations in South Africa (from Wikipedia.com):

"Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times, but apartheid as an official policy was introduced following the general election of 1948. New legislation classified inhabitants into racial groups ("black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian"), and residential areas were segregated by means of forced removals. From 1958, Blacks were deprived of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally based self-governing homelands called bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states. The government segregated education, medical care, and other public services, and provided black people with services inferior to those of whites.


Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance and violence as well as a long trade embargo against South Africa.[1] A series of popular uprisings and protests were met with the banning of opposition and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders. As unrest spread and became more violent, state organizations responded with increasing repression and state-sponsored violence."

My Son's Story is set in the decade prior to the beginning of the end of apartheid (1990) as a state policy.   It details in a masterful way the effects of growing up mixed in this enviornment.    A very big part of the evil of the policy is the harm it does to the souls of those raised under it as Gordimer shows us brilliantly in My Son's Story.

There are five characters that matter in this novel.   Sonny, a mixed race political activist and the father of late teen age Will and his slightly older daughter Baby.   He is married to Aila who is a beautiful, very mature almost gently regal woman.   One day Will sees his father at the movies with a white woman, a blond named Hannah who his father met through his political contacts.   (Hannah is mentioned as blond over and over - maybe this is a bit heavy handed on the part of Gordimer).    The son is shocked.   He begins to feel hatred as well as jealousy toward his father as he too wishes to be with a blond woman rather than the sort of woman society feels he should have.   The first woman for whom he has a sexual desire is a woman his father is committing adultery with.   Hannah is not at all a bad person.   She is very involved in the struggle for human rights in South Africa and is solicitous about Sonny's family.   Sonny (Gordimer does point out for us the irony of calling a mature man in a position of leadership  "Sonny" and sees the proliferation of such names as one of the insidious effects of state policies) feels deep guilt over his unfaithfulness to his wife.    He wants a white woman so badly he will risk everything to be with Hannah.

My Son's Story does a wonderful job detailing the small intimacies that make up a good marriage.   Sonny has a very good wife and a very good marriage.   Sonny is also a deep reader of Shakespeare and Kafka.   Sonny's daughter Baby is a bit rebellious but nothing real bad.   I noticed as the action of the novel changed the prose style changed.   In a great set piece in which Gordimer describes a riot the tone and the syntax of the prose comes to unite with the plot action to make us feel we are in the middle of the riot.    Sonny does come across as a man who totally on his own has internalized much of Shakespeare.   As we read his thoughts we think what he might have been.    We see the many ways in which apartheid effects the characters.   Baby begins to act out in a way calculated to offend those in the community who admire her mother as a beautiful and dignified person of mixed blood.   Will and others in the work continually speak of tribal blacks as dangerous and undisciplined.   Much of  the self esteem of the son comes from looking down on blacks.    Some will question the exact motives of Hannah as we are not taken very deeply into her psyche.  

There is a lot in My Son's Story.    There is a very knowing portrait of the growth of intimacy in a marriage.   We see how the father's adultery affects his children and his wife as well as his commitment to the movement.   We see the inside of courts and prisons.    To me My Son's Story is a work of small gem-like   observations and fine subtle nuances.   I felt a powerful intelligence behind this work.    I learned, among other things, how labor policy under apartheid was behind to a large extent the spread of aids in South Africa.    In the three figures of Alia, Hannah and Baby we have a commentary on women in this society.    At some point one must wonder if the gentle refinement of Alia is really the result of her parents raising her to be a person very unlike the stereotypical notion of a nonwhite woman.   Maybe she is bound by this.    There is a very subtle suggestion that Alia may have her own affair also but we are left to decide if she did or not on our own.    Baby is acting out.   In her late teenage years she is dancing in the streets in skin tight clothes and shorts to music very unacceptable to her parents.   

There are interesting and exciting things that happen in the plot line.   At times Gordimer does seem a bit heavy handed in being sure we do not miss things.    She received the Nobel Prize in 1991.   She is very active in human rights organizations.    It should be noted that some in South Africa  see her as paternalistic and condescending in her treatment of blacks both in her work and in her social activities.

I am glad I read My Son's Story.   Maybe it is a bit heavy handed once or twice but it is beautifully written and a very high intellect shines through the book.  

I see this as a suitable read for the Women Unbound Challenge given its treatment of the three women.    We see how a marriage is ruined by the binds of race.   Sonny would never have cheated on his wife with Hannah if she were not white.    Baby breaks away from her father and partially asserts herself also but to explain that would be a spoiler.    


Mel u

"Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit" by Jeanette Winterson

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit (1985, 171 pages, English) by Jeanette Winterson is not the first of her books I have read.   I really loved her Powerbook, both for the beauty of the writing and for the thematic matters explored.   I knew as soon as I finished that book that I wanted to read other works by Winterson.   I loved her style and the intermingling of realistic narration with magical realism and folk tales.

Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit is told in the first person by a late teenage female, Jeanette.

She is an adopted child being raised by very fundamentalist Christians.   Her parents, especially her very religious mother,  see the primary goal of life as to avoid sin.   The primary sin appears to be sexual acts.   Winterson does a marvelous job of conjuring up for us the hyper-binding atmosphere in which the central character is raised.   The mother is  literate, being a lover of the work of Charlotte Bronte and she has internalized much of the poetry of  William Blake.   She believes in a literal devil who might well be living across the street.   Anyone who is not like her and anyone whose ideas are not like her faith is not simply misguided or mistaken but is to be seen as actively evil.   The world is divided up into a small group of people destined to be saved and the rest to be dammed.   It is a very closed and cramped world in which our protagonist has grown up.    In this world the most evil thing there is seems to be sex.   We get the impression the mother may have a bit of a past she is not telling her daughter all about.   She does admit to a premarital encounter with a handsome semi-stranger.   Somehow we feel the mother does not preach so much against the evils of sex because she hates it but because she likes it so much.   The father in the work seems to have decided just to stay in the background for the sake of peace.  

I think almost anyone who selects this novel to read among the many many 1000s of others they could have read will know in advance that it is a story about a young woman giving into and coming to cherish her sexual desire for other women.   You know in advance pretty much what is coming and the very long build up to this some how increases our suspense in spite of that foreknowledge.   The opening half of the book creates such an oppressive atmosphere that I am very much looking forward to something happening, anything really!.   There is no sense of the pleasure of life in the upbringing of Jeanette (the central character bears the same first name as the author  and apparently Winterson was raised in an atmosphere very like that described created in the book).   

Near the opening of the book Jeanette asks her mother  about two women who jointly own a paper shop.  These  women  are old enough to have a husband but for some reason do not.    When Jeanette asks her mother about these women she is told do not associate with them and above all do not get to know them.  

There are numerous interludes in the book in the form almost of fairy tales or fables.   These fables were simply delightful interludes to me and help illuminate the themes of the book.   Part of the general theme of Winterson's work is how we create myths for ourselves to help us give meaning to the events in our life.

As we knew she would, Jeanette does have her first sexual encounters with another woman.   No graphic details are given.   It is as though the puritanical gloom of her raising has quite turned her from men and has left her with little real relish for sex in any form.  She loves her female partners but we sense no deep passion in these opening encounters in her life.   I do not wish to give out too many details as a lot of people will eventually read this book.

It is beautifully written.   I in fact enjoyed the fables that were interludes more than the main narrative but I think that is just my quirk.   I do think  Powerbook  a greater joy to read in terms of the wonderful prose of Winterson at her best.   Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit gives us a brilliant look at the atmosphere which some how turns Jeanette into an embodiment of the very thing her up-bringing is most against.   

This book is one of my selections for the GLBT challenge.   It's relevance there is obvious as it is, I think, a core text in that area.    I also think it is a very good read for the Woman Unbound Challenge.   It shows a woman moving away from the very binding atmosphere in which the protagonist was raised and turning to  sexual partners that would be completely unacceptable in terms of the religion in which she was raised.   I should note that I am not of the mind set that any novel where the author is a homosexual female (or male) should be counted as a GLBT read or as a novel appropriate for the Woman UnBound Challenge but Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit is a paradigmatic work for both these challenges.  

Off the books I have reviewed there are three works of fiction that I think would be good choices for the GLBT Reading Challenge: 

Quicksand by Junichiro Tanizaki -Japan-1928-this work actually has  more of an open erotic element than Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit-If you read this book, I think you will find it hard to image it was written over 80 years ago.

February Flowers by Fan Wu-a coming of age story about two female university students in modern China

Hardboiled by Banana Yoshimoto-a novella concerning a woman's only gay relationship -Her novel Kitchen also touch on themes related to the challenge but it is not directly focus on related issues.

I also posted a review of a biography that is very relevant to the GLBT challenge-The Man Who Killed Rasputin: Prince Felix Youssoupov and the Murder That Helped Bring Down the Russian Empire  by Greg King -Prince Felix in his personal preferences was gay but did marry and have  children as part of a dynastic duty.    This book purports to show the factors that caused his development and does have some interesting data on upper class gay brothels in Czarist Russian and early 19th century Japan.

This book is being read for these challenges

Women Unbound

GLBT Challenge

Simply British Challenge

Global Reading Challenge

Second Chance Challenge  (read a second book by an author you have already read)

The Read Before I Die 2010 challenge

Mel u

"Out" by Natsuo Kirino

Out by Natsuo Kirino (520 pages, 2004, translated from Japanese by Stephen Snyder) is the second work by Natsuo Kirino that I have read.   I  read her shorter Real World and posted on it in August.    I had a pretty good idea what to expect in Out, a cold razor eyed look at the life of  unskilled women working in a factory.   I knew there would be violence, most everybody would be corrupt in one way or another and there would be vivid scenes of sexual abuse.   It is also a book about the rebellion of a woman against her very oppresive husband through the ultimate act of rebellion.

Out centers on four women, just like The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki does.   In The Makioka Sisters the women have problems such as low quality servants, deciding what suitors one of  the sisters should accept and debating over which of the numerous houses the family owns each sister should live in.   In Out the problems center on rent, abusive husbands and dysfunctional children.   If there are servants in their families they are it!   They  may not dress their boyfriends in expensive English Tweeds like Fusako in The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea or be worshiped for their beauty like Mitsuko in Quicksand.    They are kind of throw away women in Japanese society.   They have issues that block them from the world of corporate Japan.   Maybe they are half way acceptable looking to the men in their world (factory workers, security guards, loan sharks, lay- abouts of various sorts) but they are not in any way valued by the men in their lives.   They are interchangeable.   If one quits her job at the box lunch factory where they all work, nobody really cares.   No one is going to go through any elaborate courtship procedure with them for any objective at all.  

Out is  very much a fun crime novel.   It kept my attention all the way through but maybe in part you are waiting to see what terrible thing will happen next.   We get to know the women in this book well.   If you saw them on the subway in Tokyo you would not see anything special about them.    The four women lead characters are kind of friends (work friends) but when things turn nasty they turn on each other.   There is no sisterhood in this world.    The central plot of the book (this is not a spoiler it is on the inside cover!) revolves around the women's joint efforts to cover up the fact that one of the women has murdered her long abusive husband.   A number of characters from the dark side of Tokyo get involved, we get to hang out in some sleazy nightclubs.  Prostitution is seen as a career path worth considering to the women in this world.  They do not do but it enters their minds.   They see that women who sell themselves to rich men seem to have a much better life than women who work the night shift at a box lunch factory.    Maybe this is only in their minds and the long term future of such an occupation is very bleak but it seems a way out at times.  

Out is escapist reading but not just that.   It gives us a look at how real women live in Tokyo.   It is pretty fast paced and a lot happens.   It is easy to follow.   Out sold millions of copies in Japan

To me Out is for sure a good selection for the Women UnBound Challenge.   It completely focuses on the lives of four women of different ages, from their early 20s or so to mid 40s.   It shows the struggles they go through  trying to manage their families.   It gives us a very close hand look at their relationships with the men in their lives.   We feel we knew how these women lived and felt and related to each other.

I endorse Out for those who like crime novels that focus on the seamy seedy side of a big city.   There is very strong sexual violence.   If someone was interested in reading a first Japanese crime novel I would, of the books I have  read, suggest they read her Real World.  It is only half as long as Out.  Out is a better written more exciting book than Real World but it is twice as long and if you are neophyte in the Japanese novel it is too long a  crime work to start with.   If you like Real World (most goodread.com reviewers give both books from 3 to 4 stars) then you will like Out more.

  Kirino is Japan's most celebrated crime novelist.   She has written it looks like about 20 works.   So far four have been translated into English according to Wikipedia and goodreads.com.  (One of her works is not in print)   I will read Grotesque in 2010.  

Mel u

"February Flowers" by Fan Wu

February Flowers by Fan Wu (2006, 239 pages) is set in 21st Century China.    It centers on two women and their relationship to each other.   The central character and narrator, Ming, tells the story as a long flash back to her university days and her relationship with Yan.   Seventeen year old Ming is bookish, driven to succeed, devoted to her parents and naive in the ways of the world.    She has had no romantic experience whatsoever and accepts the official Chinese line that there are no homosexuals in China.    She lives with three other young women in a dormitory.   She is an avid reader of western classics as well as Camus.   She also reads and studies classical Chinese literature.    Her father was a well known scholar before he and her mother were sent for several years to work among agricultural peasants as part of the massive re-education program of Mao.    The father is back to his teaching and his reading now but his potential to be a great scholar was destroyed and you can see her parents live a cautious life.   Yan on the other hand is 24, quite a bit older than the other college students, worldly, attractive and dressed in a fashion that she seemingly cannot afford.   She has a cynical woman of the world wisdom that can dazzle her much young women friends.   (Seven years is a big age gap when you are 17).  

We do not at first know that much about Yan.   Ming wonders how she can afford the fancy clothes.   Ming says she has a part time job but will not say doing what.   Yan reveals that she was molested at 13 and has had a boyfriend.  (We later find out she has had many boyfriends).   Yan slowly begins to probe Ming concerning any sexual feelings she may have.   She asks Ming if she would like to have a boyfriend.   The atmosphere of the university is very puritanical and the university police have a right to raid lover's lane type places.   If  a student is caught there, the university officials may notify her parents.   Slowly Ming begins to develop feelings she does not understand for Yan.   Yan has contrived to undress in front of Ming several times.   The story line unfolds as a coming of age and wondering if I am a lesbian plot.   Keep in mind Ming has been raised to think only decadent foreigners are homosexuals.  

February Flowers is an interesting look at university life in modern China.  It is a credible coming of age story and the internal tension in Ming is well done.   The book is a bit slowly paced.   It is a good account of friendships between women.   We also see how terribly important family is to all the women.   We are made to feel  the attraction of Ming for Yan is real.   In the part of Yan, we sense she uses her ability to sexually attract men and women as a kind of a game, a power matter.    We see the results of the her involvement with numerous men.    In an erotically charged and quite not what I expected scene we see what is sort of Ming's first sexual encounter.    As the flash back ends we see what Ming is making of her life.   We sense she still does not fully understand her sexuality and may be too deeply programmed to accept her desires.  

To me February Flowers fits in well within the themes of the Women Unbound Reading Challenge.   We get a look at the lives of young women-17 to 24-enrolled in a Chinese University.   We see how the expectations for women in terms of family obligations shapes their world more than it does of the male students.  We see how even in 21th century China, a woman is expected to remain relatively naive sexually before marriage whereas there are no such strictures on the male students.   We see how women who cross the line are viewed.   We see the effects of the one child policy on families.  

The official biography of Fan Wu (from her personal web page) reads like a case study of a woman overcoming huge obstacles.   

"Fan Wu was born on a state-run labor farm in mainland China, where her parents were exiled during the Cultural Revolution. Despite poverty and isolation, the farm provided her with boundless freedom and joy. In 1985, her parents left the farm, bringing her four older brothers and her with them, and settled in Nanchang, capital of Jiangxi Province.

In the mid-90s, after graduating with a bachelor's degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Sun Yat-Sen University, she went to work in Shenzhen, the first Special Economy Zone in China, transformed from a fishing village to a bustling metropolis in ten years. During her three years there, she held varied jobs and traveled extensively, witnessing the unprecedented economic boom, as well as the exploitation of workers from poor provinces and the countryside. In 1997, a scholarship from Stanford University brought her to America, and after earning an MA in Mass Media Studies, she joined Yahoo!, a Silicon Valley-based Internet company, where she worked in market research and editorial for more than seven years before devoting herself to writing."

February Flowers is well written (the book did drag a bit).  It is easy to read and follow.  I am glad I read it for the look it gave me at unversity life of young women in modern China and I enjoyed wondering if Ming would ever give in to her feelings for Yan.   I endorse this book (with the reservation it is not "high art" or close to it) for a semi-light read.   It does have one scene of a near x rated nature.   Most Goodreads reviewers gave it three stars and I would also.  

Mel u

"Shamela" by Henry Fielding

Shamela (1741) is Henry Fielding's biting and hilarious response to Pamela (1740) by Samuel Richardson.   Fielding, most famous as the author of Tom Jones and Joseph Andrews published this work under the name Conny Keyber and in fact never acknowledged authorship but it was from the start known to be his work.  

Pamela, told in epistolary fashion, is the story of a young country maid whose master continually makes many improper advances on her.   We see her attempts to ward of his advances and her virtue is eventually rewarded by her  marriage to her master. We also see her  transformation to an upper class wife.  Throughout the work Pamela is seen as a complete innocent, utterly naive in the ways of the world.

Pamela  was   extolled as an account of how virtuous young ladies should deport themselves.    It has been widely condemned by some as suggesting the women are simply commodities who lose their value when they lose their virginity.   The master is clearly a near rapist exploiting his position of power to abuse Pamela.   Other than his money, he seems a completely despicable person.

In Shamela (44 pages) we learn from the letters Shamela writes her mother that this was not quite how things were.   Shamela (that is revealed to be the real  name of Pamela) completely plans it all out.   She wears clothing designed to flatter her figure.    She allows the master to kiss her breasts while she fends him off by so inadvertently pushing him away with her hands in a way calculated to inflame him  even more.   Of course a simple country girl like Shamela is deeply humialated by all this and it is not her fault if her hands went astray during the encounter.  After all a simply country girl like Shamela did not realize  the master might somehow be more inflamed by this accident than reproached by it.

Here is some of the maternal advice that Shamela receives in a letter from her mother

When I advised you not to be guilty of follow, I meant no more than that you should take care to be well paid before hand, and not to trust to Promises, which a man seldom keeps, after he hath had his wicked Will.   And seeing you have a rich fool to deal with, your not making a good market will be the more inexcusable.

Shamela, as her mother pointed out, has already had a romantic encounter with Parson Williams.   Her mother is quite afraid her daughter will follow her example and tie herself to men of no economic value out of romantic attraction, only to be discarded once the bloom of youth is gone.   Shamela is a fast learner.   Her master returns home in a coach and she springs into action

I immediately run up to my Room, and stript, and washed and drest myself as well as I could, and put on my prettiest round ear'd Cap, and pulled down by Stays, to shew as much as I could of my Bosom, (for Parson Williams says that is the most beautiful part of a Woman) and then I practised over all my Airs before the glass.

Her mother advises Shamela not to worry once she gets the Squire to marry her she can indulge herself with Parson Williams or any other man she fancies as long as she is discreet.   One day the Squire comes into Shamela's room.   She pretends to sleep while he climbs into bed with her and takes considerable liberties with her person.  Just in time she awakes and begins to weep that a man she so loves would try to take advantage of her before marriage.   At last the wedding day arrives.   She tells her mother all about it.

Henry Fielding

In my last I left off at our sitting down to Supper on our Wedding Night, where I behaved with as much Bashfulness as the purest Virgin in the world.   The most difficult task for me was to blush.   My Husband was extreamly eager and impatient to have supper removed, after which he gave me leave to retire into my closet for a quater of an hour..I employed the time in writing Parson Williams, who as I formed you in my last, has been released, and presented to the Living with the Death of the last parson

Shamela (her nickname is "Sham"-I guess Fielding wanted to be sure his readers got that this was satire!) then pines for a man just out of prison who seduced her, using his position to his advantage just as he had done many times before.   As married life proceeds Shamela explains how a wife should use the misbehavior of a husband to extract the most guilty gifts from him.

Nothing can be more prudent in a wife, than a sullen Backwardness to Reconciliation;  it makes a husband fearful of offending by the length of his punishment.

As the marriage proceeds we see how Sham is preoccupied with finding ways to be with Pastor Williams.   She presents him to her husband as her spiritual adviser.   We see, Shamela alas does not, that the Parson cares nothing for her other than as a source of gratification (that is really not a big deal for him as it can easily be obtained) and hopes to find away to use her marriage to the squire to extract large donations to the church.  Shamela is both the shammer and the shammed.  

There are letters by several different persons in this work.   Each person has their own style of writing.   The spelling and punctuation were different in 1741 than they are now of course.   Shamela is depicted as an avid reader and has educated herself well above her station.   She is a very smart woman treated without condescension by Fielding.   Her mother has learned some hard lessons and tries to pass them along to her daughter.   Her mother knows Shamela is a fool for a handsome well spoken man like the Parson and tries to guide her daughter without browbeating her over her mistakes.   Clearly the mother has made some mistakes of her own.   The mother does profit from the marriage as was part of her intention all along, of course.   

Shamela is a very funny Novella.   Pamela is often portrayed as an anti-hero by feminist critics.   She is seen as a near fool whose whole purpose in life is to get a wealthy near rapist to marry her.   Her conditioning does not allow herself to enter into any sort of romantic encounter with a man she does not love so her economic needs force her to deceive herself into thinking she is in love.  Once married, it is obvious to every one but Pamela that
 her future husband will abuse her and lose interest in her as she ages.   Now the question becomes if Pamela is the feminine anti-hero is Shamela a hero?   Is Shamela an 18th century woman asserting her rights who has the intelligence to see through the claims of the squire to love her?    Shamela knows what she is doing with her master, Pamela is in bad faith and either does not know what she is doing or more likely has it buried very deep in her consciousness.   (It has been about 15 years since I read Pamela and Clarisa.   There is a great deal of depth and artistry in these works.   Both of them have lot  to tell us about issues related to this challange.   Richardson was not, as he is often portrayed, a literary oppressor of women.  Clarisa is one of the longest novels in history).

Shamela is also a fool for Pastor Williams.   It looks like Shamela will out grow the Pastor as she ages and settles into her role of wife of a squire.   She is into The Reading Life and this has helped he develop her self consciousness and her insight.   My first guess and hope is Shamela will long outlive her husband and will go own to have lots of adventures, use the squires money to buy books and fancy clothes for herself and her mother.   I think maybe Shamela will always have a weakness for an attractive but somewhat wicked young man of the lower gentry but she will learn to have fun with that.   Pamela will end up a widow also but she will not be able to escape the roles society has imposed on her.   Shamela is a woman with a much greater sense of freedom in her life than Pamela and is much more in control of her life than Pamela. 

When I first decided I would include this work in the Women Unbound Challenge I had some serious reservations.   After all it does show a woman whose life revolves around a man and this  is not quite in accord wth the values of the challenge.   But then I thought more, Shamela has to live in her times, she has to use the only assests she has.   She does this well and is in charge of her life more than we might think.   As I predicted, she will out live her squire husband and be a well off woman fully in charge of her own life for many years.   There were very few options for advancement to  a lower class woman in England in 1741.    Shamela in under fifty pages gives us a vivid look at the life of an 18th century woman that we can today relate to, believe in and even like.  

Shamela can be read without reading Pamela first.   You may need to slow down a bit when you read it and the spelling and punctuation seem eratic by our standards.   To me it is a very funny very well written book that any one with a sense of humor and a little patience with the sentence structure of another era will enjoy.   I see it as totally deserving of a place on the Women Unbound Challenge.   We can learn as much from it as we can from the very poltically correct works of the 21th century.  

This is my fourth post for the November Novella Challenge.   I enjoyed participating in the challenge a lot and hope to be back in November 2010.

"The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood

The Handmaid's Tale (1985, 389 pages) is the first work by Margaret Atwood that I have read.    It is in the genre of the dystopian novel. It is about an alternative future in which a church group has taken over the United States, which they rename "Gilead".   The setting is the late 20th century in what used to be Cambridge Massachusetts.  

The narrator of our story, which begins right before the church take over, is married to Luke.   She and Luke had an affair while Luke was married to another woman.  Luke divorced his wife and married Offred and the two of them have a three year old daughter.   One day she goes to use her ATM type device and it will not work.   The clerk in the store tells her that it is saying invalid account number.   She is indignant and says she will call her bank.   When she gets to her job at the library she calls the bank over and over for hours but she cannot get through.   Her very nervous male boss calls the all female work force to a meeting.   Everyone is being fired as of now.   All libraries in Gilead are to be closed.   When she gets home she finds out that it has been declared illegal for women to have bank accounts.   Their balances are to be transferred to their husbands or fathers.   If they have no husband or father the government will keep the money.   Women should never have worked in the first place.   This is explained as a blessing to the women as they will no longer have to burden their minds about money.    From now on it will be illegal for women to have jobs, read or for female children to receive any sort of education.   This is all presented as a wonderful lifting of burdens by the very paternal government.   Luke vanishes one day.   Her child is taken from her as only children born in a first marriage may stay with their parents.  Divorce, birth control and abortions are strictly illegal.   In order that children may be born in a religiously proper fashion, no pain killers of any kind are allowed at child birth

Women can only be in certain roles in society.   This is explained to them as a wonderful thing and woe unto a woman who does not love these ideas.

The highest status position is that of Wife of a government official.   There is a shortage of men in Gilead due to the very large number killed off in the civil war that the church take over produced.    High status males, called Commanders, are allowed to set up grand households.   Below Wife is  the position of Econowife.   That refers to a woman who may marry a lower status male but has to do all the house work herself and must have her children herself.   Next we have the position of Handmaiden.   There is a very low birth rate in Gilead, far below the replacement rate.   This is in part because atomic bombs were dropped on parts of the USA that resisted the church take over and radiation caused massive sterility as well as a very high portion of genetic defects.   Handmaiden's job is to have sex once a month with their Commander.  The wife is present and has a degrading  role to play.  The handmaiden wears a cloth bag over her head so she cannot see the Commander and to prevent any hint that this is a personal encounter.   Wives tend to hate handmaidens though it is illegal for them to directly kill them.   If someone does not fit into this new society or shows any sign of lack of enthusiasm for the new way of life they can be sent to what is called "The Colonies".   The colonies are those parts of the USA that did not accept the new government.   They were laid waste by atomic blasts.   Workers are send their to clean up the damage and bury millions of dead bodies.   Because of the radioactivity, the disease brought on by the unburied corpses that are everywhere and the extreme envirnmental degradation life expectancy in the colonies is three years.   That is also where the food is grown for Gilead, which may account for the low birth rates and the very high rate of severe birth defects.   Even though abortion is punishable by death defective babies, called "Shredders", are destroyed at birth.    Below the status of Handmaiden is the Martha who is a household servant that is not allowed to have children or marry.   Like the Romans and the Nazis, the rulers of Gilead know that subject people are best controlled on a day to day basis by their own kind.   The work of monitoring the women is done by Aunts, all of whom carry cattle prods on their belts and are fond of telling the women how lucky they are that there is no longer any degrading pornography, that they no longer have to strain their minds with decision making, that they no longer need fear rape  and that they are protected by their wonderful Commander.   If a woman does not agree fast enough she gets the cattle prod and worse maybe will be sent to the colonies.   We only learn gradually how the society works and how it came into place.   Everything is narrated by the handmaiden and she has access only to limited information, after all she is not even allowed to read any more.   Women cannot trust each other as they are trained to inform on negative thinkers.  The informant is showing herself to be a worthy daughter of the Republic of Gilead.   Men have various roles to play also.   Everyone but a Commander, who is also watched, has to wear a uniform based on their role in society.   If a Handmaiden fails to have a child in six years, she is rotated every two years to a new Commander, she is sent to the colonies.   Any child she has, as long as it is not a shredder, will be raised by the Wife or another family.   Once she has had a child and done her six years she can even dream of becoming an Aunt.   If she fails to have a child, most of the men have very low fertility rates, she is sent to the colonies.  

Gilead is beautifully realized and I at once believed it could exist.   There are a lot of questions that one will have in mind about how Gilead works but remember the story is told in the first person by a handmaiden who can ask no questions and is forbidden to read.   The Aunts tell the women  it will be easier on girls born in Gilead as they  will not have the burden of confused thoughts that the foolish custom of allowing women to be educated caused.   Now the women have no worries,  no decisions to  make, no children to rear (maybe Econowives raise their own children but we do not learn much about them or the Marthas), and a wonderful government to take care of them and protect them.   Of course every woman tells all she meets that she is so grateful for the changes.

This is the background in which the Handmaiden's Tale unfolds.  People being people not everything is really perfect in this paradise.   The unfolding of the story is wonderfully clever and imaginative.   Shocking and brutal things will happen but there is hope and the human spirit is far from defeated.    We will get to know the local Commander, his wife, some of the other women.   A commander can have multiple Marthas.   Barriers break down, the women compare notes and some strange relationships develop.   I was very taken when I saw the joy of the handmaiden when she got the chance to read some magazines.   Most preGilead magazines and books have, of course, been burned.  

The Handmaiden's Tale does a marvelous job creating an alternative future.   The characters are very well developed.    Anyone who has ever worked for a large corporation will see at once coworkers who would have made great Aunts.   The Handmaiden's Tale reminded me more of Brave New World than 1984.   To me, it stands with them as cautionary stories of the first order.   It is also very entertaining, fast paced and just a great story.   I have not relayed much of the actual plot line as it is so clever I do not want to spoil it for anyone.  

The Handmaiden's Tale seems like it was almost written with the Women Unbound Challenge in mind.   It is easy to follow and understand.   It is beautifully written.     I found myself completely taken into The Republic of Gilead. I hope my three daughters never have to live there.  It shows how women can be and often are their own  oppressors. It shows how people sell themselves for small worthless things.  It tells us something important about the reading life.   Dictators always try to stop The Reading Life.   A diverse range of  free reading has never ever been encouraged under any totalitarian regime, from the Romans on down to the days of Pot Pal in Cambodia where wearing glasses could get you executed.   The ending was a complete surprise and I loved how the book was closed.      She as written over thirty books so if anyone has any suggestions as to my second Atwood please post them.  

Mel u

"Hardboiled" by Banana Yoshimoto

Hardboiled  by Banana Yoshimoto (89 pages, 1999 translated by Michael Emmerich) is the third of her works  which I have  read.   It is a beautifully told story of a woman who goes to a mountain inn on the one year anniversary of her lover's death in a fire, the only female one among a number of males.   It is a story of a  half love brought on by the fear of loneliness.   It is a great ghost story.    Any fan of ghost stories knows a strange isolated inn can have some surprises

I'm a woman.   Once, just once, I went out with another woman,   She could see things that other people couldn't.  Maybe it rubbed off on me, or maybe being with her sharpened an instinct that I had always had, I don't know.

One of the themes in  the works of Yoshimoto is what loneliness and the fear of being alone can drive women to do.  The protagonist of Hardboiled, about thirty years old, never felt deeply for her former lover and seems to have developed her relationship with her more out of boredom than anything else.   When the relationship ends the narrator soon returns to her normal routine of life.   She had been raised by her mother, a beautiful woman who works in a bar.    The mother is depicted by the narrator as a good mother, a woman with many lovers but she keeps them away from her daughter.  

While at the inn, a woman comes in from the room next door.  She says she has just had a terrible fight with her prone to violence male lover and needs to stay in the narrator's room for a while.    She acts strangely so the narrator goes down stairs to get the manager.   The manager tells her that there are no other guests at the inn that night.    It seems a couple long ago had made a mutual suicide pact.   They brought enough pills to kill each of them.   The woman took much more than half the pills in order to spare the life of her lover.   Women in the inn have often spoken of being approached by a distraught woman.   The female manager of the inn is depicted at the start of the story by the narrator as being totally unattractive in looks and personality.   Events change the narrator's perceptions enough, or at least that is her excuse, that she ends up spending the night on the mat with the inn manager.   We get little or no sense of passion from the narrator, only the sense that she does what she does to avoid loneliness.  

This work is perhaps the most beautifully told of her works that I have read so far.   The production qualities of the book, published by Faber and Faber are very high.   Included in the same book is Hard Luck.    It appears that the two stories were originally published together.   Hard Luck is about a woman keeping vigil over her sister who is in a coma.   I will post on it soon also.   Some people see Banana Yoshimoto as kind of a "light weight" writer.  I do not.  Her works are short and the main characters are relatively young women.   She for sure is fun to read.    She evokes Buddhist  and Shinto themes in her stories.   She might not be the Japanese Dostoevsky but she is very smart, very knowing , she tells a great story and I have added her to  my read all they have written list along with Tanizaki and Oe.  I think I would start reading her works with Goodbye Tsugumi  and if you like than I think you would probably like any thing she has written.  

November Novella Challenge-a beautiful perfectly developed novella-this is my second work for this challenge-I committed to read one novella but may try for four, the second level.

The Japanese Literature Challenge 3-

Woman Unbound Challenge -I think there is a special kind of loneliness that women are prey to that men are not.   I know not every one or maybe most people will not agree with this but I think Yoshimoto sees it.   That is ok but Hardboiled shows us why a woman made the choices she did, what she did to avoid being alone.   Her mother was mostly alone also and we see the second generation effects of this.   

Mel u

"The Makioka Sisters" by Junichiro Tanizaki

The Makioka Sisters by Junichiro Tanizaki (1948, 530 pages, translated by Edward Seidensticker) is the

longest work I have read so far for The Japanese Literature 3 Challenge.  It is the fifth book by Tanizaki  that I have read.   Vintage press has twelve of his works in translation in print and I will read them all.  

The Makioka Sisters gives us a very intimate look at the lives of four sisters living in Osaka Japan.   It is set from 1936 to 1940.   Tanizaki is said to have written it during WWII to distract himself from the war.   The book is considered his master work.    The basic plot is simple.   It is the story of a merchant family whose fortunes are not quite what they once were.   They decide to remedy the problem by finding a wealthy husband for the second youngest sister, thirty year old Yukiko.
She has  two older sisters.  Tsurko the eldest has traditionally authority over her sisters now that their parents have passed away.   Her husband took her last name when he was adopted by her family and he is, in theory, the head of the family.   Sachiko is the second oldest and is considered to have the most gentle and warmest nature.   Her two younger sisters live with her most of the time.   Yukiko also has  younger sister who is portrayed as distinctly more modern than her very traditional older sisters.   She has a man in her life that she very much wants to marry, and everyone in the family likes the match as he is from a very good family.   The problem is she is not allowed to marry until all of her older sisters have married.   The fun of the plot turns on a husband hunt for Yukiko.   Yukiko acts like the totally obedient sister she is supposed to be but some how every suitor presented ends up being rejected.   One is simply way to old, one has six children, one has a mentally ill mother and one is simply too ugly.   Along the way we get a very detailed look at life in an upper class family in Osaka.   One sees in the work that there was a lot of regional conflict in Japan.   People from Osaka looked at those from Tokyo as very ill mannered and money driven, people from the Nagasaki area were simply too country and so on.  Of course people from Tokyo looked at those from Osaka as living in the past.   One of the saddest moments in the book is when the older sister and her husband most move to Tokyo to pursue a business opportunity.   We see what the sisters eat, how they feel about their husbands and how they exert control over their families.  A very fun part of  the book for me was when the sisters became friends with a White Russian Family who fled to Japan after the Czar was displaced.   The sisters are amazed by the vitality of the grandmother of the family.   When the Russia family invites them all over for dinner I could not help but laugh as we see them trying to cope with the food.   I was happy to see the sisters said they had all read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky.   When the Russian family expressed surprise at this they said that all educated Japanese had read them.  The sisters also become friends with some German neighbors.   One of the best moments in the book was when the Germans, who returned because of political events in 1939, sent them a letter.   There are several letters in the novel and each is marvelously done.   One oddity, to me at least, was the pride of the sisters in their ability to drink alcohol, mostly sake.    In fact it was sort of agreed that if a man was not a drinker at all he would not be considered an acceptable husband as he would simply be too dull.   The sisters hire private investigators to check out the back grounds of possible spouses.   A big issue seems to be how much time the men had spent in the pleasure quarters.   Too much and he was considered a reprobate but no visits there also was a point to ponder.   The sisters father was a habitual frequenter of gieshas after their mother died at an early age.   This seems to be a sort of socially acceptable as long as you do not talk about it.   We really are shown a lot about day to day life.    Each sister has her own  well defined personality and we really feel we know them.   I liked all the sisters.  One of the most suspenseful elements in the book concerned a dark spot that would come and go over the eye of Yukiko.   We get a good look at child rearing practices.   We hear a lot of gossip.   There is conflict among the sisters,  of course.   It was interesting that the husbands of the older sisters had both taken the family name.   Marriages were mostly arranged at the time and we get to see how that business works and meet the marriage broker.  (She knows the in the closet secrets of every well off family in Osaka.   Of course she is very discrete and only tells these secrets to the clients of her beauty parlor!)

Most goodreads commentators on this book have given it four or five stars.   I gave it five.   Some did say it was simply to dry and that it was boring. Those who disliked the novel seemed to feel it was too detailed in its treatment of the conversations and interior lives of  the sisters and their friends.  To me it was a wonderful book that took me into another world very much unlike my own.  Only a few passing references are made in  the novel to political events (the novel period is 1936 to 1940).   I wanted to believe the family would some how survive World War II without terrible suffering.  

This is my 3rd post for the Women Unbound Challenge.    The Makioka Sisters is a very closely observed look at four Japanese women, their families and their relationships with their husbands and how they raised their children.   We see how an unwanted pregnancy is dealt with.  We see the sisters having a great time just being sisters.   I could not help but smile when we slowly began to realize that maybe Yukiko did not want a husband to be picked for her by her older sisters or maybe she does not want one at all.  

The Makioka Sisters is to me a great joy and a master novel.   Readers of Jane Austin will at once relate to the themes of the book.   I would suggest that those wanting to get to know Tanizaki first read The Secret History of the Lord of Musashi and Arrowroot, if you like that read Quicksand, then Some Prefer Nettles. if you like these three works then read The Makioka Sisters.   Tanizaki had an interesting life.   For a brief period he was a dramatist in silent films.   I could not help but think when I read this that if were with us now (1886 to 1965) he would be an ultra rich novelist whose every work is sold to Hollywood for millions.  

A WOMAN in the Dunes-by Kobo Abe-a second look

In my post on A Woman in the Dunes by Kobo Abe I talked almost exclusively about what the novel seems to be saying or manifesting about the man.   We know the man's name, we know his job and we know a lot about his life passion entomology.   The man has a place in society,  he fits in and is valued for what he does and what he knows.   In most posts on the novel on Goodreads and elsewhere the focus is entirely on the man.   Then I started to rethink the book a bit.   It is not called Man in the Dunes.  

We first meet the woman when the male protagonist of the novel seeks a place to stay for a night and gets trapped in a giant hole in  the ground.   The hole in the ground is the home of a woman.   We find out that her husband and child were killed in a typhoon.   We only have a vague idea how she got there.   She has sex with the man or more bluntly said she allows the man to mate with her.   She shows herself naked to the man but it is not clear if this part of a seductive routine or if she like an insect without self consciousness at all.   We are given no insights into her thoughts other than that she has a foreknowledge of the fate of  man and that her life goal is to have a radio.   She does not wish to escape her circumstances.   She seems to see her existence as natural to her species.   Her essence is to be a woman used as bait to keep a man in a hole in the ground shoveling out sand that forever comes back.   In my initial comments on Woman in The Dunes   I went into existentialist interpretations of the novel,   focusing on the man trapped in an absurd meaningless situation.  Now, thanks to the stimulus of the Woman Unbound Reading Challenge I want to talk about the woman in the dunes.  The woman is the existential anti-heroine.   She, with no sense of doing it, is  utterly trapped by an essence, an essential nature that she is no more is aware of than a fish is aware of water.   She is used by the micro society  of the dune who,  not by conscious design, have fashioned her consciousness in such a way that she is useful mainly as bait for a man.   She does not question it.   If she was reflective enough to ponder the issue she would probably say something along the lines of "this what was meant to be" or see it as part of a supernatural design.   The woman maybe seen as evoking the fate of women in rural Japanese society.    Just as in Japanese society prior to the end of World War II, women and men were taught that there role in life, the essence of  their being, was to serve their overlords and their Imperial God, so the woman in the dunes sees no alternative to her life in a hole in the ground.   Expanded beyond this, the  WOMAN in the Dunes, is any woman (or man) bound by what she things is her essence when that essence is just a choice made for her by some one else to impose this on her.   Of course it regresses back.   

"Leaving Home" by Anita Brookner-Woman UnBound Reading Challenge

Leaving Home by Anita Brookner (2005) is the second of her novels that I have read.   In August I read and posted on A Start in Life.   I loved the opening sentence of that book.

Dr Weiss, at forty, knew that her life had been ruined by literature.

Some people, even those who enjoy reading Brookner's novels, say they are all sort of the same.   The all deal with older (or prematurely aged younger people, mostly women) lonely bookish people who live cautious closed in lives.   The women in both of these works have issues with their  mothers.   Both do research of fairly arcane academic matters, one on women in the novels of Balzac and Emma Roberts of Leaving Home studies and is writing a book about 17th century garden designs.   Both spend a lot of time in libraries.   Both spend a lot of time reading.   

Emma, at 26, decides it is time to leave home.   She leaves London to go to Paris to study.   She leaves behind her mother (who spends most of her time reading) and her dominating Uncle.   The family is financially comfortable but not rich.   Emma meets and slowly becomes friends with a lady working in the library she frequents.    Unlike Emma her new friend, about her age, more interesting looking that pretty, has men friends and a love life.   She persuades Emma to move from her small apartment into a hotel, thinking she might have an opportunity to meet men that way.   There are men in the library, we see their bent over gray heads.

Francoise, her new friend, is pleased to see Emma develop a friendship with a young man down the hall.   In the world of Francoise women are defined by their relationships with men, be they fathers, husbands, or lovers.   Emma subjects here own feelings to microanalyses but does not come to any conclusions that might direct her to a course of action.    Life will start for her when she finds a man.   Her ability to pursue her studies and her writings comes not from anything she has done but from money her father made in commerce.    Without her father's money, we cannot quite fathom what Emma would do and for sure she would not have had the leisure time to develop the interests she did.   These interests define and also limit her life.   If  the male professors who dominate her research field approve her work then her book will be published.     Emma moves back and forth from Paris to London, each  city has a strong meaning for her.  Some times it feels like Emma is a character in a 19th century novel.   Emma does seem to care less about what others think than an early 19th century heroine might.   

The language in the book is beautiful.   Some of the turns of phrase are amazing.   There are some interesting plot twists.   As you read this book  you can feel the loneliness of Emma.   In fact I thought if Emma could simply get involved in book blogging or blogs on 17th century history her life might have been much happier. She then would have not been so effected by a feeling she was disconnected from the world by the seeming narrow range of her interests.   Emma is involved in a very beige toned search for a suitable mate, not so much that she wants one as she wants to seem ordinary.

Anita Brookner wrote her first book at age 53 and has since then written 22 more of them.   As I said, some people say all her books are alike.   I would say read an extract of one of her works on line and see if the writing style appeals to you.    Her books do tell us a lot about the dynamics of power in relationships and the struggle of women to define themselves.    I could see myself reading one every 3 or 4 months.  They do have a kind of claustrophobic feel somehow and some Goodreads reviewers have found her work depressing.

Mel u