The title character is born a beautiful young girl, her life of poverty dooming her to prostitution starting from a very early age. The story, the brilliant and sensuous language, the characterization and use of magical realism… It’s huge in scope, so difficult to summarize. It’s been a while since I’ve read a modern book I believe has the staying power to become a modern classic. Told from shifting perspectives, including that of the ghost of a young black boy lynched decades ago, it’s a short and rich novel. The lovely Jesmyn Ward has written another moving story set in Mississippi, this one about a family ripped apart by the slow death of the matriarch from cancer. Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward (Women’s Prize for Fiction, longlist)
The best thing I can say about ACO is I finished it. The second part is much more interesting, once main character Alex is finally arrested for his crimes, and re-programmed, for lack of a better term. The first part was difficult to read, partly for the made-up language Burgess creates (which wore on me) and constant, gratuitous violence. It’s about a young man literally addicted to violence, the leader of a pack which wreaks nightly havoc on an English town. Not a fan of random violence and rape, I wrote this off as not for me. I’ve been putting off reading this one since the upset wrought by the first few minutes of the Kubrick film. Books Read March 2018: A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess (for library classics book group) On this April 1, it’s the coldest it’s been in years, hovering around freezing. I was too ill, no desire to leave the warmth of my home and comfort of my sofa. I’d hoped to take a short vacation in March. This year, March threw in a nasty virus, gratis, getting me three days off work in which I was too sick even to read. It’s also my birth month, meaning I have an excuse to binge buy books. The TV reverted to its usual function: background noise for napping and covering the surface of my TV stand, while looking impressively large. And there were no Olympics, no television distracting me. Lie: I had no such faith, but told myself things could hardly go further south.
I had faith March wouldn’t let me down, unlike my crappy January and February.
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