Dorian

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
I debated my rating between 2 and 3, for various reasons. It's not, let's be honest, the most enthraling of novels. But, for a classic, it isn't half bad. In the end, it boiled down to this: while the writing, narrative and storyline generally were not my cup of tea, dragging in parts with overly wordy an completely irrelevant explanations of beauty, there is a great deal of wit, cunning and hideous irony to The Picture of Dorian Gray. The concept, the undertones and the sinister mood which presides is excellent, and yet I found myself as a reader, wanting more, as though the surface had barely been scratched. Never-the-less the classic ideal of ageless beauty, juxtaposed with the haunting horror of grotesque sins has become an archetype all it's own in the infamous painting. A brilliant concept, the portrait holds its own within the novel despite its rather background setting. Pair this sinister presence with the clever banter that seems to so mark Wilde, and the potentially dry narrative gains the flavor and interest necessary to keep the pages turning. As stated, I would have liked to see the concept taken further and explored more deeply, but overall was left satisfied.


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The Tale for the Time Being

A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
Nao is the type of girl who immediately makes you here friend. Though an outcast, dislodged in time and space, and -within her own world - society, she writes with an honesty and sincerity that grabs hold of the reader and pulls them in. Nao and I were, from the start, friends. And she refers to the reader as such, as she goes along - writing to the invisible someone who maybe, just maybe, is reading her thoughts so many years down the line. For her it does not matter who, or when, merely that you are there.

Ruth, is a reader like us. Having found Nao's diary awash in the sea, she forms what she feels to be a unique and solitary bond with the unknown teenage girl, reading her words as though the very act my bring life to her - save her from what seems to be the inevitable tragedy of her life.
Both reader and writer need each other - giving each other purpose, and therefore life, and Ozeki uses this relationship to her advantage as we as the public readers gain a sense of purpose in our own reading of the novel.

Real, in both her pain and her triumphs, Nao is the inner self, in many ways, her ever wise and peaceful Jiko, the outer. and we are as Ruth, caught somewhere in between, desperate to pull both together and save each.

While the novel holds a nice level of mystery and what is -in my own opinion - the poetic tragedy of uncertainty in that Ruth will never know for certain who Nao is or was, and what became of her life, the novel takes a turn which alters this. As we progress, there is a sense of fantasy with regards to the very words on the pages of the diary - as they appear and disappear. For me, this was a flaw in the flow of the reader/writer connection for although it elaborated on the importance of one upon the other, it took away the authenticity by applying it to an un-real and therefore removed form. While ghost, powers, and mystery certainly have their place,e and were used effectively in the novel, this one inexplicable aspect seemed not only odd, but unnecessary, and thus diminishing.

Still an intertwined tale of human dependency, A Tale of the Time Being challenges questions of time, space, and human form as writing transcends these planes to pull people together.

Girlfriend in a Coma

Girlfriend In A Coma by Douglas Coupland

Coupland is, truly, an incomparable author. Strange to be sure, his followers and fans range in opinion over what makes his works master-pieces, or failed attempts. Girlfriend In a Coma, titled after the song of the same name by the Smiths, this 1998 semi-futuristic novel strikes a fine balance between the minute realities of life, and the cosmic tragedy of apocalypse and has been widely referred to as one of his finer novels. It is masterful how Coupland can target the very essence of mundane life within the teenage characters who ground and narrate the majority of the novel - following them through the struggles of teen years, aging, and coming to terms with themselves, while weaving an eerily futuristic and socially critical world of comas, dreams, and end times.

The novel is split between three major points in time, and is told through 3 different narraters.

The first is narrated by a character well known to the other characters of the novel, and yet never fully known by the reader. Jared, introduced post-humulously, narrates in the voice of a deceased 17 year old 'ghost' for lack of a better word. The novel then switches to the point of view of main character Richard, as he narrates life after the coma, and everything that follows.
Following sections are told without the use of a narrator, only to return, in the final chapters, to the voice of 'spirit' Jared, again, to round of the novel.

It is in both the plot and the narrative itself, then, that Coupland plays with this balance between what is ordinary and real, and what is fantasy. As stated in an earlier review from the Times, it is "a disturbing, thought-provoking and moving novel. Girlfriend in a Coma has something of the quality of a fairytale, but it contains a sharp realism that makes the book scarily contemporary" (15 May 1999).

It is this focus on the individuals - the somewhat 'every-man' quality of Richard, kind caring and lost within himself - and the realism inherent in mundane life, that prevents the story from flying from the page in a whirlwind of disbelief as conceptual elements such as visions, ghost narrators and global doom hang over the plot.

Coupland's strength, of course, is in capturing the spirit of everyday people, his characters ever believable, relatable and -though flawed- thereby loveable. We want desperately for Richard to succeed, and yet we revel in his faults and failures, seeing in him the very same flaws we too possess. His devotion, too, to Karen - and indeed Coupland's devotion and attention to a character that is, essentially, off screen for the majority of the novel - is both endearing and intriguing, as it shows a measure of love and kindness we as readers both long for, and would like to think we too possess. It is a testament to Coupland's writing that he is able to make the reader continue to love and care for Karen despite no direct presence. Merely a background character, silent, she remains the fixture around which the story evolves and collapses.

For me it is the relationships, the honesty, and the simple realities, that make this story. Adding in the Canadiana so often found in Coupland's work - Girlfriend In a Coma takes place in his own city of Vancouver - the story became all the more real for me as I related to names and places. His detail with street names and landmarks foster a sense of familiarity that although specific to an actual location, allows the reader to feel as though they know the place - it is their own home town - whether or not they have been there. I, at least, found this to be true. For although I am Canadian, and take pleasure in the (often uncommon in popular literature) Canadian setting, I've never been to Vancouver. And yet, I felt I had. Simple detail, pulling you in to the story, allowed for a solid foundation upon which the reader could stand and therefore more readily accept the more fanciful concepts that are the hallmark of Coupland's dystopias and criticisms of the modern world.

A fast, quick read, Coupland with have you both connecting with his endearing characters, and questioning the very format of the world in which you live. At once acutely real and vastly fantastic, the pages will continue to turn as you follow the halting, tragic and - occasionally triumphant band of friends struggling their way from adolescence to adulthood only to find its really one and the same.

“there are three things we cry for in life: things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent.”