Tag Archives: Books

8: Heave

From the Fall 2012 VPL book sale.

Read in February/March 2013.

Heave opens with Seraphina “Serrie” Sullivan running away from her wedding. This scene frames the story; the rest is told in flashback, starting from Serrie’s childhood.

I found the voice kind of hard to get into at the beginning. More drug-addled musings. Yep, it’s a theme.

At age 20, Serrie is in 3rd year university. She’s homesick (even though she’s only in Halifax, a short distance from home). Her bffs are Dearie and Elizabeth. Serrie is an alcoholic, like her dad, and has been since she was 14. She has a professor who’s kind to her, who notices she’s missing class, and tells her she should be thinking about grad school. Her brother Percy is doing an MA in Toronto (i.e. he’s perfect).

Serrie overdoses and ends up in the psychiatric hospital. She isn’t depressed; she’s young for her age. She doesn’t want to be an adult because it seems life gets worse the older you get.

Martha, Serrie’s mom, is depressed. She’s lamenting giving up her dreams and makes Serrie feel bad for being young / still having dreams. Cyril, Serrie’s dad, is oblivious. He’s too busy collecting outhouses. Yes, you read that right.

Anyway, when she gets out of the psych hospital, she gets a job in a pie factory (really!), where she meets Hans, this rich German dude.

You know how terrible things are always befalling certain people? And at first you’re like, “omg! that’s so awful!” but after the eleventy-billionth dramatic thing in a week/month/year, you’re like, “wtf dude, what’s with the constant drama? I haven’t had this much drama in my entire life!” Except you don’t actually say that because everyone would give you the side-eye and call you out for being mean and ostracize you even though they’re thinking the exact same thing. Well, that’s kind of what this book felt like. There was some good stuff here, but omg. Drama overload.

Well into the book there’s a big reveal, but it’s foreshadowed throughout. Watch for it!

I will say, with the framing device, most of the book in flashback, girl going crazy because she doesn’t want to grow up, this reminded me of The Language of the Goldfish. The difference being TLotG is a skinny novella, and Heave is a 300+ page epic.

7: On Writing Well

On Writing Well: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction by William Knowlton Zinsser

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Borrowed from the VPL.

Read in February 2013.

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Here are some notes I took. I feel like I’m quoting myself; so many of these points are things I say all the time.

“Our national tendency is to inflate and thereby sound important.” (7) We think if a sentence is too simple, there must be something wrong with it. ha!
Simplify! Clear the clutter.
“My reason for bracketing superfluous words instead of crossing them out was to avoid violating the students’ sacred prose.” (17) ha!
carpentry analogy: simple and solid first, learn to embellish later—comes with practice
deliberately embellishing is like wearing a toupee. be yourself. (I need to remember that one.)
first paragraphs and pages can be discarded!
use “I”—take responsibility for your ideas!
write for yourself, in the sense that you shouldn’t worry “whether the reader likes you, or likes what you are saying or how you are saying it, or agrees with it, or feels an affinity for your sense of humor or your vision of life” (27)
think about how you writing sounds—read aloud
usage changes, but…
- avoid jargon. be precise.
- be liberal with new words and phrases.
- be conservative with grammar.
think small—try to leave the reader with one provocative thought
nonfiction can be literature; it’s not inferior to fiction
interviews:
- take notes; record only as backup. “Be a writer. Write things down.” (70)
- quotes will need to be moved around, spliced together—but do not fabricate!
places are second only to people
memoir—narrowness of focus, like a window or photograph into a life
science writing
- “describe how a process works”—exercise that helps people learn to write more clearly
- think of science writing as an upside-down pyramid—start with one fact the reader needs to know, then build from there
jargon = people wanting to sound important. hahaha. yes.
“I consider it a privilege to be able to shape my writing until it’s as clean and strong as I can make it. … Students, I realize, don’t share my love of rewriting. They regard it as some kind of punishment, or extra homework. Please—if you’re such a student—think of it as a gift. You’ll never write well unless you understand that writing is an evolving process, not a one-shot product.” (187-188)
distinction between a critic and a reviewer: “As a reviewer your job is more to report than to make an aesthetic judgment.” (215)

This was an older edition of the book, so some of the examples and advice (try a word processor! you’ll like it!) were dated. There’s a newer, 20th anniversary edition that I’m sure resolves those issues.

I think this should be required reading for 1st year university/college students. So much of it is stuff I find myself explaining to 3rd, 4th, 5th years—but I never know how much takes. Especially with certain students who seem to interpret tips like “simple is better” to mean “I’m too dumb to understand your deep thoughts,” having a “textbook” that backs me up might make them more likely to take my advice seriously.

6: Mean Boy

Mean Boy by Lynn Coady

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

From the fall 2010 VPL book sale.

Read in January/February 2013.

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The protagonist of Mean Boy is Lawrence (formerly Larry) Campbell, age 19. He’s from Prince Edward Island and is attending Westcock University in New Brunswick. It’s 1975.

The title is ironic. On page 35, he says, “I am trying to be meaner these days…” The highlight of Lawrence’s university experience is the poetry class he’s taking with his hero, poet Jim Arsenault.

Lawrence uptalks, which distresses him. Jim calls him “Larry” which annoys him.

Jim has been denied tenure, much to Lawrence’s consternation (he would have gone to the University of Toronto if Jim hadn’t been at Westcock). He and some of the other students (Todd and Sherrie) in the poetry class decide to write a letter to the admin and get all the students to sign it. The petition feels like a transgressive act to Lawrence and Sherrie.

Meanwhile, there are student/prof drinking-parties at Jim’s house and a poetry reading by Dermot Schofield, Jim’s frenemy + fellow poet, which turns into a comedy of errors. Oh, an awesome subplot featuring Lawrence’s cousin Janet that turns out to be not what you think. Instead, Lawrence learns a lesson about distancing yourself from your family in order to be able to write about them.

In the end, everyone’s flaws are revealed.

I guessed that “Westcock” was actually Mount Allison and a quick search confirmed that supposition to be correct. And it turns out that the character of Jim Arsenault is based on real-life poet/Mount Allison prof John Thompson, which apparently cheesed off some people who knew him. Interesting.

I’ve read all of Lynn Coady’s books prior to this one (Strange Heaven, Play the Monster Blind, Saints of Big Harbour; her latest, The Antagonist, is on my shelf). I read Strange Heaven because it was lauded at the time, and while I thought it was good, I didn’t really get the upop. I had the same feeling with PtMB and SoBH. Good, but missing… something. imo. Obviously others thought they were perfect. But Mean Boy, Mean Boy I loved. The ending gets a little crazy (I can’t seem to escape drug-induced hazes in fiction of late) but I will forgive this because endings are hard.

Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All!

Finish Your Dissertation Once and for All!: How to Overcome Psychological Barriers, Get Results, and Move on with Your Life by Alison B. Miller

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

One-sentence synopsis: “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, I’m going to finish this dissertation!” Yes, all I kept thinking about whilst skimming this were Stuart Smalley‘s daily affirmations. From the title I was hoping for something directed at people who are already in the midst of working on their dissertations—more concrete ideas about speeding up the process. Essentially I’m already doing everything suggested in this book. So while it was an affirmation (ha) that I’m on the right track, sadly it offered no magic bullets. Will continue to plod. (Have started to think Evelyn Hunt Ogden‘s suggestion to hire someone to help with monotonous tasks wasn’t such a crazy idea after all.) Recommended for anyone floundering at the “I don’t know where to start” stage.

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5: Refuse to Choose

Refuse to Choose! : A Revolutionary Program for Doing All That You Love by Barbara Sher

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Borrowed from the VPL.

Read in January 2013.

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I saw this mentioned The Clutter Museum:

One of my favorite career-finding books, and one I recommend regularly to my students, is Barbara Sher’s Refuse to Choose. In it, she describes ‘scanners,’ bright people who are simultaneously and/or serially interested in diverse and sometimes divergent subjects and careers.

and for obvious reasons was intrigued.

Sher’s opening anecdote is about reading university course descriptions, wanting to take everything—and her sadness on realizing she couldn’t:

The conventional wisdom was overwhelming and seemed indisputable: If you’re a jack-of-all-trades, you’ll always be a master of none. You’ll become a dilettante, a dabbler, a superficial person—and you’ll never have a decent career. Suddenly, a scanner who all through school might have been seen as an enthusiastic learner had now become a failure. (6)

She describes different types of scanners. I was skimming along, identifying with a characteristic here and there, when I reached the ‘jack-of-all-trades’ type, which is so me, it’s ridiculous (right down to the detail that jacks don’t have the clutter problem that other scanners do). Some highlights:

do you have more certificates and degrees that most people—all in different disciplines? *cough*
are you good at just about everything you try? / have you ever thought your problem would be solved if you were good at only one thing?
many things come easily to you so you sometimes underestimate their value
you “have often complained that being good at almost everything isn’t the same as being great at one thing.” (202) !! I say this all the time.

Jacks have so much talent, but that’s not all they have—they are the ones who show up and deliver. They do the job. With all these qualities, they should be hugely successful in business or the arts or some profession. But they rarely are. (203)

Truth.

Almost without exception, this type of scanner is gifted at something you don’t find on career lists: Catching the ball in a team situation. Bailing out the other players. Saving the day. (205)

She describes jacks as ‘rescuers.’

If you don’t have the needed skills, you’ll learn them fast, because you know how to learn. (206)

Yep. It’s always driven me nuts how job descriptions say stuff like ‘must be familiar with X’ or ‘must know how to use Y program’ b/c even if I’ve never done X or used Y, I can figure it out in like, a day. So no big deal.

She suggests scanners are best suited for an ‘umbrella career,’ i.e. one that allows you to do many of the things you enjoy—like freelance writer or researcher. heh 🙂 Indeed.

Throughout the book there are strategies for dealing with being a scanner. A lot of these are things I already do in my own way. The central one is keeping a ‘scanner daybook’—essentially a writer’s notebook—where you write all your random brilliant ideas 😉 down so you’re not overwhelmed/distracted by them.

While much of the book was a confirmation of stuff I already know, it’s always nice to get validation that you are not the only one, that you are a recognized type! Being a unique snowflake is overrated. Plus, now I have this post I can refer people to when they want to know what’s up with all those degrees. I can’t help it! I’m a jack-of-all-trades!

Immediately after finishing Refuse to Choose, I read this essay by Michael Dirda. Scanner alert!

When I talk to friends and editors about possible projects, especially about projects that might come with a significant cash advance, they usually suggest a biography. Sometimes I’m tempted, but the prospect of spending years researching and writing about someone else’s life offends my vanity. I don’t want to submerge myself in another man or woman’s existence, I want to write about me, about the books and writers that I like. And I want to be able to finish any commitment within a year at best, so that I can get on to something else. I have, it would seem, the temperament of a reporter—always intensely interested in a subject for a short while, but soon ready to move on to the next assignment.

4: Mourning Diary

Mourning Diary by Roland Barthes

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Consists of the notes Roland Barthes took after the death of his mother, Henriette. She was widowed (via WWI, that recurring theme) when he was a baby and they lived together most of his life. The notes are transcribed as they were written, one note to a page. There’s a center insert with family photographs and scans of a few of the diary notecards.

(Sidenote: I didn’t realize Barthes had a brother. Specifically, a younger half-brother (Michel) born out-of-wedlock to his mother when Barthes was 12ish. This info seems to be elided from his standard bio; it isn’t on his Wikipedia page. Kinda weird, because reading MD, it seems like they were pretty close. Makes Mme. Barthes seem more human, less martyr, too!)

It’s likely the notes would have become the basis for a book but Barthes died (he was hit by a truck and succumbed to his injuries) only months after the diary stops. So what’s here are basically personal/private notes not written for a public audience. Except it’s Barthes, so…

At the same time, I think calling the diary whiny/self-indulgent (as I saw in some reader reviews) is silly because it’s a diary. If you can’t whine in your diary, please. 🙄

Some quotes:

In taking these notes, I’m trusting myself to the banality that is in me. (17)

Solitude = having no one at home to whom you can say: I’ll be back at a specific time or who you can call to say (or to whom you can just say): voilà, I’m home now. (44)

Depression comes when, in the depths of despair, I cannot manage to save myself by my attachment to writing. (62)

I have not a desire but a need for solitude. (91)

if these ‘changes’ … make for silence, inwardness, the wound of mourning shifts toward a higher realm of thought. Triviality (of hysteria) ≠ Nobility (of Solitude). (95)

M. and I feel that paradoxically (since people usually say: work, amuse yourself, see friends) it’s when we’re busy, distracted, sought out, exteriorized, that we suffer most. Inwardness, calm, solitude make us less miserable. (100)

Only I know what my road has been for the last year and a half: the economy of this motionless and anything but spectacular mourning that has kept me unceasingly separate by its demands; a separation that I have ultimately always projected to bring to a close by a book — Stubbornness, secrecy. (231)

Reading this got me thinking again about the difference between loss by death vs. loss by leaving again. When someone dies, those left behind still have their (good) memories. This, I think, makes it hard(er) to move on, because it’s possible to dwell in the past, in happy memories of the person who is gone. Whereas, when someone leaves, those left behind can’t dwell in the past—at least how they’d always remembered it—that’s gone. If it’s to be remembered, it needs to be reconstituted/reconstructed in a completely different way. So while death-loss drags you backward, leaving-loss pushes you forward. It almost forces you to move on, because there are no happy memories to return to.

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2: The Rules of Gentility & 3: Jane Austen: Blood Persuasion

Janet Mullany was one of our original forum hosts at Toasted Cheese.

Janet’s writing at TC:

“A Perfect Evening” (fiction in the September 2001 issue of TC)
“The Companions are Chosen” (Best of the Boards in the December 2001 issue of TC)
“Snow, the Seven, and the Moon” (Winner of the first annual Dead of Winter writing contest)
“Enter At Your Own Risk: The Strange, Twilight World of Writing Competitions” (Absolute Blank, November 2002)

In the decade since she left TC, Janet has published more than a dozen books. Amazing right? I figured it was about time we at TC checked out her work, so I headed down to the library and picked up a couple books.

The Rules of Gentility by Janet Mullany

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first book I read was The Rules of Gentility, which was what I’d call a gentle parody of Regency (Jane Austen era) romances. She pokes fun at the conventions of the genre, but in a way that shows her genuine fondness for it. A Bridget Jones influence was apparent here as well, especially in protagonist Philomena’s penchant for making lists of potential husbands, making this a kind of a regency/chick-lit mash-up. Janet’s writing always showed her sense of humor and that was readily apparent here. The story, with its increasingly improbable situations, was at times hilarious. Recommended if you don’t take these things too seriously.

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Blood Persuasion by Janet Mullany

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This, as you may have guessed, was a Jane Austen/vampires mash-up (and a sequel to Jane and the Damned). The protagonist here is Jane Austen herself (age 35, an aged spinster), who harbors a secret: she’s not-quite-human. She used to be one of the Damned (see JatD), but she took ‘the Cure’ and now she’s caught midway between human and vampire. She’s busy being a respectable spinster when her vampire buddies reappear as the new tenants in her brother Edward’s mansion. Their presence pulls Jane back to the dark side, which she resists less because she’s worried about her soul and more because she’s worried about not being able to write (a problem when she was previously Damned). I didn’t like this as much as TRoG, but that’s definitely a matter of personal taste; vampires (werewolves, zombies, ghosts, etc.) are really not my thing. Recommended for fans of the romantic vampire genre.

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1: Turtle Valley

Turtle Valley by Gail Anderson-Dargatz

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

So, way back in the day when she was just Anderson without the -Dargatz, I knew Gail. Not well, it was more a friend-of-a-friend situation, but there you go.

Previously I read A Rhinestone Button (in 2003) and A Cure for Death by Lightning (in 1999, which I weirdly remember because I read it on a trip). Which predates me keeping track of my reading, so no links. I can’t say I have any strong memories of either book, but then, it’s been a while! This is why it’s good to write things down.

Anyhoo. Turtle Valley. Purchased at the VPL Book Sale, October 2010:

Turtle Valley is set just outside Salmon Arm during the August 1998 wildfire. Some of the hyper-local place names are fictional (Turtle Valley, Promise), but the general geography is authentic. The fire was to the west of Salmon Arm and this is where protagonist Kat’s parents live.

She has returned home (accompanied by her husband, Ezra, and son) to help her parents move the possessions they want to keep safe from the fire to her sister Val’s garage (in Canoe, east of SA). They do this at what feels like a rather leisurely pace, intermingled with reminiscences, reconnections, and revelations.

Kat + Val’s father, Gus, is dying. Val thinks their mother, Beth, has the beginnings of dementia. Beth + Gus’s neighbor, Jude, is Kat’s ex. Kat married Ezra on the rebound. Ezra has had a stroke and Kat feels more like his caregiver than his wife.

There’s a parallel between Ezra and Beth’s long-deceased father, who suffered from PTSD as well as a brain injury (cause: WWI). There’s another parallel between Kat/Jude’s relationship and the one between Beth’s also-deceased mother, Maud, and Gus’s deceased uncle, Valentine. There’s a third parallel between war and the wildfire (smoke fills the air, ash and sparks rain down, army trucks race past the house, helicopters and water bombers fly overhead). There’s a fourth parallel between the wildfire and Jude’s kiln (he makes raku).

And… there are ghosts.

To be clear, these are magical realism style ghosts. But there is plenty going on in this story. Did it need ghosts? I think no. I think the ghosts were superfluous. The story would have been just fine without ghosts. But it’s true I’m not a vwzg* person. I know other readers love the ghosts.

This story feels very personal. I try to avoid conflating author/narrator, but… Kat is a writer. She’s the same age as the author. They both worked as reporters for the Salmon Arm Observer. They both had husbands who had strokes. etcetera. Obviously a lot of this story is culled from real life. It made me wonder how the real-life counterparts felt about this story. How do you pull from real life so transparently and survive the backlash? That’s something I still struggle with, will maybe always struggle with, though I tell myself I need to get over my hang ups and just write.

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*vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghosts

21: This I Know

This I Know: Notes on Unraveling the Heart by Susannah Conway

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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I picked this up at Chapters on Robson while I was birthday present shopping. It was the last copy. It was that kind of day.

I read about this earlier this year when she was doing a blog book tour (I posted the quote that caught my attention here) and I started following her blog. The book interested me because it’s about navigating grief through a creative process.

[W]hen something bad happens that’s big enough to make you question your entire life, all the other hurts that are hanging around, all the wounds you’ve collected in your lifetime, will come out of the shadows and ask to be healed too.

This I Know (xiii)

In 2005, Susannah Conway’s boyfriend of two years died suddenly/unexpectedly from a heart attack. But there’s a parallel story of loss: when she was a child, her father left his family (Susannah, her sister and her mom) and moved to Australia. He wasn’t dead, but he was gone.

As I read This I Know, and the ways she worked through her grief, I couldn’t help thinking about what a difference how you lose someone makes in the grieving process. There’s a purity in grieving someone who has died vs. someone who has left. When someone dies, you get to keep your memories. You can reread the letters. You can look at the photographs. You can remember all the things you did together. These things are yours and no one can take them away.

When someone leaves, you not only lose them, you lose your memories—or rather, your memories are taken from you. All the mementos you thought were the most important inanimate things in your life (the stuff you’d rescue if your house were burning down) are now just reminders that what you once thought was true, you now know was false.

There’s also a difference in how people react to different kinds of grief. You’re not likely to hear someone say “you’re better off without him/her” to someone grieving a death (there are exceptions, I know). Everyone sympathizes/empathizes with the death of a loved one. But when a loved one leaves voluntarily, people just see someone who hurt their friend/family member. But for the person grieving it’s more complicated than that.

I don’t know if this book will resonate with everyone. I think those who share similar characteristics (read: introverted interdisciplinary creatives) will find it inspiring. For example, she writes of the exhaustion of needing to be ‘on’ all the time and writes of the luxury of solitude, the gift of time to herself. For her, being alone was a necessary part of healing. This is something I understand implicitly. (Though I’m not sure others do.)

When I have to my work—myself—out there, I do it with as little fanfare as possible.

This I Know (72)

Which is not to say I agree completely with everything. She does a lot of talking through her grief, whereas that’s something I hesitate to do. A long time ago, I read something about not talking too much about the things you want to write about because if you do, your need to write about them will dissipate and I think that’s true (at least for me). But she is, I think, a photographer first and a writer second. So maybe putting things into words doesn’t carry the same weight as it does for someone who’s primarily a writer. (Further to this point, I will be reading Emily Rapp’s forthcoming memoir The Still Point of the Turning World in 2013. She’s been writing through her grief at Little Seal.)

Susannah channels her grief into a journey of self-discovery that leads her to create her own perfect job for herself (she runs online photography-focused classes). This of course ties in perfectly with my theory that hitting bottom frees you to take risks that you otherwise never would have. This I Know is set up kind of like a workbook. At the end of each chapter there’s a ‘reflection’ with a suggested activity (writing + photography) related to the chapter topic.

One final quote I have to share (because of this and also this):

I once met [an artist] at a party whose words have always stuck with me: “Boyfriends come and go, ” she said, refilling my wine glass, “but my work is always there for me. It’s this rock I have in my life I can always rely on.”

This I Know (156)

20: Life Class

Life Class: A Novel by Pat Barker

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

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From The Book Shop in Penticton, Summer 2010:

And… Pat Barker reminds me why she is the best.

Previously on The Remainder Table, I read Liza’s England and wrote about Double Vision. Have I really not read a Pat Barker book since 2006? Yikes. That’s crazypants. *Checks Wikipedia* Ok, so not entirely my fault. Looks like she didn’t publish anything between Life Class and Toby’s Room, which came out this year, and I’ve read everything else except her first two novels (Union Street & Blow Your House Down). Her husband died in 2009; I expect that has something to do with the longer-than-usual gap between books.

With Life Class, Barker returns to World War I. This time the main characters are art students studying at the Slade. The Slade is real, as is Henry Tonks, one of the professors who appears in the story. If Madeleine L’Engle’s trademark is her crossover characters, Pat Barker’s is her use of real people as characters in her fiction.

When the story starts, it’s the summer of 1914. The main characters are Paul, Elinor, and Neville. Elinor’s already an accomplished artist, winning prizes for her work, but her family doesn’t take her painting seriously because she’s a woman. To them, painting is a nice hobby for a woman to have; it’s not work. Neville’s also producing good work, but he’s a bit avant-garde for pre-war tastes. Paul is struggling. He’s starting to think he’s wasting his money taking classes because he doesn’t seem to be making any progress. He goes to Tonks to talk about quitting. Tonks tells him he should stick out the semester and that he is improving technically. Then he says:

“Most people who come here are bursting with something they want to say, and the trouble I have with some of them is that they can’t be bothered to learn the language to say it in. Whereas with you it’s almost the opposite.”

Paul would have like to defend himself but didn’t know how. This wasn’t the criticism he’s been expecting.

“I do have a problem with life drawing. I know that. But I thought my landscapes were … Well. A bit better.”

“There’s no feeling.”

“Perhaps I’m not managing to express it, but—”

“I don’t get any feeling that they’re yours. You seem to have nothing to say.”

“I see. No, yes, I do see.”

“Well, then.” Tonks spread both hands on his desk, preparatory to rising. “I wish I could tell you what to do about it, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to thrash this one out on your own.”

“I don’t now what to do.”

“Why don’t you start by asking yourself: Do I want to paint? Or do I want ‘to be an artist’? Because they’re two very different things. And try to be honest with yourself. It’s not any easy question.”

Life Class (36-37)

Any of this hitting home, writers?

—Do I want to write? Or do I want ‘to be a writer’?

So the question then becomes ‘will Paul find something to say?’

When war is declared, all the men in the story plan to participate, but their motivations vary. Neville sees the war as a painting opportunity, and signs up with the Red Cross (partly because he’d never pass the army physical and partly because this will get him to the front lines faster). Toby, Elinor’s brother, seems to think it’s something he has to do (for duty/honor/country), even though everyone seems to agree with their father that he’d be of more use if he completed his medical studies first. Paul also doesn’t question enlisting, but the army rejects him. Like Neville, he signs up to work with the Red Cross. He starts out in a field “hospital” in Belgium.

There’s a lot of conflict/contradiction within Paul. He clearly doesn’t buy into any of the romantic notions of war. He’s tortured by what he sees. And yet… he’s compelled to be there. He can’t not be there.

Meanwhile, Elinor is being pressured to go into nursing (a “real” job) but she keeps resisting, even though she is made to feel that she is being frivolous by continuing to paint. For Elinor, her real work is painting.

I read some reviews that called Elinor unsympathetic. Reactions like that are exactly why the Elinor character is important. Essentially—

reader reaction : Elinor-the-character :: community reaction : Elinor in the story

It takes strength not to cave to that kind of pressure. In some ways, Elinor is stronger than any of the male characters. None of them were able to resist societal pressure to go along with the war in some respect, even though none of them were enthusiastic (ok, maybe Neville, who saw his opportunity for fame and fortune). Even Lewis, a Quaker, ends up at the same field hospital as Paul. Of course, you could argue Elinor has her head in the sand. But, then again, if everyone refused to participate, it wouldn’t make for much of a war, would it?

Along with the themes of war/love/class, which Barker keeps returning to, there are interesting questions explored here about the nature of work and what subjects are acceptable as art. What is the place of artwork that makes the viewer avert their eyes, turn away?

We might ask the same questions of writing.