Fourth Estate A Book of Common Prayer, Contemporary Fiction, Paperback, Joan Didion
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Price: £8.99
Brand: Fourth Estate
Description: An engrossing examination of political and personal life in Central America, from the award-winning author of The Year of Magical Thinking. Writing with the economical swiftness and concentrated perception that has made her one of America's most distinguished writers, Joan Didion creates a gleaming novel of innocence and evil. Fourth Estate A Book of Common Prayer, Contemporary Fiction, Paperback, Joan Didion - shop the best deal online on thebookbug.co.uk
Category: Books
Merchant: Harper Collins
Product ID: 9780007415007
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Dimensions: 129x198mm
Keywords: The,classic,Of
ISBN: 9780007415007
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Author: Jon Linden
Rating: 5
Review: In this uncommonly excellent prose, Ms. Didion describes an incredible scenario of a revolution in a Caribbean country. The country is dirt poor. There is no good water, there are no proper sewers and there are few good roads, except the one highway that leads to the house of El Presidente. The people live in squalor and there are only a few people in this island of the damned who are in fact solvent. The story tells of the tale of an American lady, norteamericana, who comes to the island, for reasons even she herself does not know. Her life has been tragic and strange. Her child becomes an American revolutionary and is involved in the hijacking of a plan from California to Utah. She lives an underground life and has no connection to her parents, whom she rejects socially and economically. Didion's reporting style writing is almost a perfect match for telling the story of this obscure countries political corruption and the insurgency that exists within. She uses her incredible ability to turn a phrase and then to use it multiple times for an emphasis that is extraordinary in painting the picture of the world about her. Charlotte Douglas has come here to figure out something, but what it is hard to tell. She seems to be adrift in the impoverished lands of Boca Grande which translates to "Big Bay" or also as Didion points out to "Big Mouth." Those in charge do have big mouths and talk out of both sides of it. There is constantly a strange dance performed by the few landowning ruling class that is constantly trying to shift the balance of power on the island to accommodate their own personal purposes. In the ensuing revolutionary action, Charlotte is actually killed. She could have easily avoided this fate by leaving the country, but instead, she insists on staying and ends up shot and left for dead on the lawn of the abandoned American Embassy. The beauty of the story is in the writing more than the events. With pure journalist style mixed with incredible fictional reality, Didion creates what could be typical of the Central American/Caribbean countries and their constant revolutions. Many get caught up in them and never emerge. Charlotte is one who does not emerge. As modern fiction, the book has a style that is unique to Didion. The smoothness of the writing and the deadpan descriptiveness is purely hers. It is the one book that she has written that is truly appropriate for all Americans to read. The book is highly recommended for those looking to see great fiction encompass the horror of revolution.
Author: Amazon customer
Rating: 1
Review: If ever there was a case of the Emperor's New Clothes, this is it. Didion commands huge respect, mainly for her non-fiction writing, but she does not reciprocate with respect for the reader. This is one of those books which are written with an eye on the US EngLitt academic industry. You can see her inserting her significance and saying "Now pick up on that!" In other words, this is not an organic book but extremely contrived. The narrator, Grace, is a long-time resident of a fictive Central American republic, Boca Grande, who is dying of pancreatic cancer. She is drawn to a fleeing American, Charlotte, who for mysterious reasons decides to take root in this corrupt banana republic that has no bananas. Charlotte has had a tough life - her daughter has turned into a Patty Hearst-like figure (this was written in the mid-70s), she gives birth to a baby which immediately has a long and painful death; she has two abusive husbands who keep turning up. But she starts an affair with Grace's son, for no very good reason. I could write that phrase, "for no very good reason" over and over. Why do the husbands pursue her? Why does she entertain them for a moment? Why does the daughter turn terrorist? Why is Grace so drawn to Charlotte? Why? Why? Why? Every character in the book is shadowy, with the possible exception of the extremely nasty alcoholic first husband, Warren. There are so many things wrong with this novel that it's difficult to know where to start. First, the much-praised writing style, which goes something like this: Joan had to write a sentence. A profound sentence. She wanted it significant. SIGNIFICANT. (That should be in italics but I can't do that in Amazon) She had nothing to say. But she had to write it. She wanted it significant. (Italics again) Now, anyone who has to write like that in order to draw attention to the import of what they are saying, isn't doing their job properly. If I don't get the point, putting it in italics is not going to make me. Secondly, there's the setting. The portrait of Boca Grande, with its routine revolutions and changes of dictators, is, if not actively racist, so much a Hollywood cliche that it is comic. Graham Greene did this sort of thing so much better. Didion is trapped in an American imperialist vision which drains her setting of any kind of credibility. Which also takes credibility from the death of Charlotte, shot in one of the revolutions when she refuses to leave with everyone else who sees what's coming. Thirdly, there's the problem of Grace. I think what Didion is trying to do, as the title suggests, is to give a portrait of someone dying, who is searching for meaning in another death, in order to give her own life and death meaning. But she fluffs it. On the one hand, she gives Grace as narrator access to details, incidents and feelings which she could not possibly know. On the other, she emphasises her own unreliability, and there is much play with the impossibility of knowing or remembering anything. The last line of the book is, "I have not been the witness I wanted to be." It seems to me you can't have it both ways. There is a kind of savage humour here, which is a redeeming feature. Except that it is a belittling humour displayed by a narrator about a character to whom she is meant to be irresistably drawn. The narrative is arbitrary, by which I mean that any narrative tension derives from withholding information, rather than being inherent in character or situation. It's a fundamentally lazy technique. This is not an easy read, and frankly the rewards simply aren't there. Worse, this book is liable to make you quite angry at wasting your time and being treated with contempt. To quote Dorothy Parker again: "This is not a book to be lightly dismissed - it should be thrown aside with great force."
