Blake, May, House
Jan. 27th, 2020 08:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearYesterday, I went to the William Blake exhibition at the Tate Britain. I've always liked what I've seen of his art, and discovered I knew more of it than I thought when I learned he was the artist for the illustrated version of Paradise Lost that I own.
As is often the case with art exhibitions, the pictures were generally a lot smaller than I expected, but no less powerful for it. I found some probably unintentional humour in one described as 'Gowned Man Examining A Book', since his huge beard obscured most of the pages. And also in the Hecate painting, which had a very bizarre donkey that looked drunk.
It was very crowded, but I was able to study the pictures as much as I wanted to, and am very glad I had the opportunity to go. The Ancient of Days was probably the most impactful, and was saved till last, but had also been on all the posters (and now a magnet on my fridge!). Still good, though!
Earlier today, I finished listening to Our House by Louise Candlish. I really must try to remember that I don't generally like thrillers (unless they're Jack Reacher) and should not get suckered into reading them because people tell me how shocking the twists are. This book really didn't do anything for me at all. It starts with a woman coming home after a few days away, to discover another couple moving into her house. The narrative is split between present tense scenes that continue from that moment, and also follow another character who is overseas; but the main strands are a podcast supposedly narrated by the woman, and a document written by her husband - and neither of these worked in my opinion. The podcast was way too long for a single episode, and the interjection of what seemed like Twitter comments made no sense. It suggested a kind of live stream, which had people all listening at the same time and commenting on specific parts as it went along - and that's not how podcasts work! And the husband's document didn't make much sense, either - in that position, nobody would write something that long or detailed, and would not narrate scenes with verbatim dialogue.
So, the structure annoyed me throughout and pulled me out of the story constantly. And the story wasn't that interesting, either. I suppose it was a somewhat scary representation of how things could quite easily spiral out of control, but it seemed like we were supposed to sympathise with the husband, while I thought he absolutely brought all the trouble on himself and only caused more problems by refusing to take responsibility for his actions. The wife just had things happen to her for nearly the whole book, and then went off the deep end. I saw all but the final twist coming, and that last one wasn't either shocking or particularly interesting in terms of its important to the story. So, very much not my thing!
Today, I also finished reading Frost in May by Antonia White, which is billed on the front as 'the unsurpassed novel of convent school life'. Is that a thing? Does this novel really have much competition in that category? It tells the story of Nanda, a young girl who has recently converted to Catholicism and is sent to a convent boarding school. It certainly does a good job of evoking life in the convent, as well as Nanda's internal struggles with the expectations of the school and her own expectations of her faith. It's not really very cohesive as a novel, though - there's not much of a throughline of plot, and it doesn't really go anywhere. At one point, Nanda plans to write a novel - she thinks it will be important to have a religious theme but "she feared that too much piety would conflict with a really exciting plot". Um, quite.
The, the last fifteen pages are really quite tense, leading up to a very abrupt and, what seemed to me, a very harsh conclusion. I didn't like the message of the book at all. The ethos of the school and the way it tried to mold the girls seemed really damaging to me. But then I disagree with a lot of things about organised religion, so I suppose different people would likely have different reactions to it. Still, I was invested in Nanda's fate by the end, and the setting in particular is very evocative.
As is often the case with art exhibitions, the pictures were generally a lot smaller than I expected, but no less powerful for it. I found some probably unintentional humour in one described as 'Gowned Man Examining A Book', since his huge beard obscured most of the pages. And also in the Hecate painting, which had a very bizarre donkey that looked drunk.
It was very crowded, but I was able to study the pictures as much as I wanted to, and am very glad I had the opportunity to go. The Ancient of Days was probably the most impactful, and was saved till last, but had also been on all the posters (and now a magnet on my fridge!). Still good, though!
Earlier today, I finished listening to Our House by Louise Candlish. I really must try to remember that I don't generally like thrillers (unless they're Jack Reacher) and should not get suckered into reading them because people tell me how shocking the twists are. This book really didn't do anything for me at all. It starts with a woman coming home after a few days away, to discover another couple moving into her house. The narrative is split between present tense scenes that continue from that moment, and also follow another character who is overseas; but the main strands are a podcast supposedly narrated by the woman, and a document written by her husband - and neither of these worked in my opinion. The podcast was way too long for a single episode, and the interjection of what seemed like Twitter comments made no sense. It suggested a kind of live stream, which had people all listening at the same time and commenting on specific parts as it went along - and that's not how podcasts work! And the husband's document didn't make much sense, either - in that position, nobody would write something that long or detailed, and would not narrate scenes with verbatim dialogue.
So, the structure annoyed me throughout and pulled me out of the story constantly. And the story wasn't that interesting, either. I suppose it was a somewhat scary representation of how things could quite easily spiral out of control, but it seemed like we were supposed to sympathise with the husband, while I thought he absolutely brought all the trouble on himself and only caused more problems by refusing to take responsibility for his actions. The wife just had things happen to her for nearly the whole book, and then went off the deep end. I saw all but the final twist coming, and that last one wasn't either shocking or particularly interesting in terms of its important to the story. So, very much not my thing!
Today, I also finished reading Frost in May by Antonia White, which is billed on the front as 'the unsurpassed novel of convent school life'. Is that a thing? Does this novel really have much competition in that category? It tells the story of Nanda, a young girl who has recently converted to Catholicism and is sent to a convent boarding school. It certainly does a good job of evoking life in the convent, as well as Nanda's internal struggles with the expectations of the school and her own expectations of her faith. It's not really very cohesive as a novel, though - there's not much of a throughline of plot, and it doesn't really go anywhere. At one point, Nanda plans to write a novel - she thinks it will be important to have a religious theme but "she feared that too much piety would conflict with a really exciting plot". Um, quite.
The, the last fifteen pages are really quite tense, leading up to a very abrupt and, what seemed to me, a very harsh conclusion. I didn't like the message of the book at all. The ethos of the school and the way it tried to mold the girls seemed really damaging to me. But then I disagree with a lot of things about organised religion, so I suppose different people would likely have different reactions to it. Still, I was invested in Nanda's fate by the end, and the setting in particular is very evocative.
