The Children's Book

Wow! What an amazing book.

(Warning: spoilers)

So many of the characters were richly drawn and completely believable. The level of detail about so many topics was surprising and very thought provoking. The only difficulty was the level of assumed prior knowledge in some areas and I had to do a bit of googling to know what she was on about sometimes. However I do not see this as detracting from the book at all - if anything it enriched the experience.

I started feeling really sad as I got close to the end as I did not want to leave the characters and I was starting to wonder how Byatt could possibly wrap it all up. But I was very satisfied with the completeness of the ending and the feeling that things were left as they should be. Byatt has taken the reader through some enormous changes in her characters and the world they live in and it is all portrayed so smoothly and convincingly.

My only discomfort is that Herbert Methley did not seem to get his comeuppance. I really, really wanted him to be disgraced or humiliated in some very public way. But I guess a male character getting away with his level of pompous and self-indulgent destruction of other peoples (i.e. females) self-worth is entirely in keeping with some of the major themes.

Not surprisingly Dorothy was my favourite character. I think the whole scene where she bites to defend herself is just fantastic. I felt like cheering!

Power Politics

I have just finished reading "Power Politics" by Arundhati Roy.

It is a a collection of her excellent political essays and is definitely worth reading. She is obviously very passionate about advocating for the disadvantaged and taken-advantaged-of masses, not just of India but of the world. I have included links to some of the essays in case you want to read the whole thing - they are not too long and are easy reading.

"Power Politics: The Reincarnation of Rumpelstiltskin" is a thought provoking critique of the insatiable beast of globalization.

"The Algebra of Infinite Injustice" is a biting but fair attack on the foreign policy of that other insatiable beast, the USA. While Roy clearly puts the blame on the rich and powerful puppet masters, she does not completely exonerate the "average American" and drops a few of her poetic bombs their way. My favorite example:

"Here's the rub: America is at war against people it doesn't know (because they don't appear much on TV)."

To make sure you get her point, she prefaces it perfectly with a very telling quote from a newscaster on Fox News, September 17th 2001:
"Good and Evil rarely manifest themselves as clearly as they did last Tuesday. People who we don't know, massacred people who we do. And they did so with contemptuous glee." Apparently the newscaster then broke down and cried.

And in "War is Peace"*, referring to the government rhetoric/spin doled out via the mainstream media as medication she has this to say:
"Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been -- a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government."

While I would love to fully enjoy a virtuous and contemptuous snicker at the expense of these "curiously insular people", I am also acutely aware that I too am curiously insular and that just occasionally reading about injustice is not the same as opposing it.

* Interestingly "War is Peace" apparently had a different, and delightfully more provocative title originally: "Brutality Smeared in Peanut Butter. Why America Must Stop the War Now."

A New Kind of Christian: A Tale of Two Friends on a Spiritual Journey

I have started reading 6 of McLaren's books, and now I have finally finished one.

"Started" because by the time I get about a third of the way in I shove the book away in disgust because his writing style drives me mad! He frequently and elaborately refers to and second guesses what the reader's response might be to what he is saying. And my main response is to think "Just get on with it". Anyway, at least he has found an outlet in his fiction to carry on the conversations he likes to imagine himself having with his readers.

At least now I feel I have some idea of what his ideas/position/theology are. I can identify with many of the points on which he differs from orthodox Christianity. Some of his ideas are both refreshing and challenging.

Now I need never read another Brian McLaren book in my life (though I am not entirely sure why I thought I needed to in the first place).