Modern Good Reads discussion

This month's book discussion will be about two great books:
The Road to London by Adriano Bulla
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I look forward to hearing what you think about the books. What you liked, didn't like, etc.

:)

Congratulations to both winners of the April BOTM.

Linda wrote: "Congratulations to both winners of the April BOTM."

Thanks, Linda, on behalf of The Road to London as I am only her scribe. May I join you in congratulating John Green as well?

May I also thank Kenneth Fore for nominating her and everybody who has been supporting her so enthusiastically in posts, reviews, articles etc. I am overwhelmed.

I am a bit of a 'hands off' person, but if there are any questions anyone wishes to direct to me, I'll be honoured to try to answer them.

Ade

Stephan wrote: "Adriano Bulla, I do have a direct question for you. How far would you say The Road to London is a gay novel and how far would you say it's a novel with a gay protagonist. And how d..."

Hello Stephan, I read your post a couple of days ago, but I did not reply straight away as I wanted to give readers time to respond should they have wished to. I apologise for keeping you waiting.

The Road to London is a novel with a gay protagonist, and a gay protagonist who has straight encounters (even if unsuccessful) and even falls in love with a girl. The Road to London is a 'she' by the way, so, in case, she would be a lesbian, but I have never asked her what she does in bed... By this I mean that I am very wary of categorisations: although they may offer an identity and a safe environment for new formats when they are young, the risk is ghettoisation.

Straight readers should, and ought to, be fine with the Boy being (or turning) gay. In the end, I never complained that most of the novels I read have straight protagonists. There are many women who read novels with gay protagonists, fewer men, if I am not mistaken, and that will have to change... Unless one is consciously or unconsciously homophobic, there is no reason why one should only read novels if they have straight protagonists. My motto is that you don't need to have hairy feet to read The Hobbit, so why should you be gay to read gay literature?'

Thanks for your question,

Ade

One of the many beauties of The Road to London is how much it leaves to the imagination, like all good peotry. I think its appeal is universal to say it's a gay novel is to say that the Bible is a Jewish book. I read Ade Bulla's novel a while ago and have reviewed it and blogged about it because it is so unique and so good. It deconstructs the novel a little like Picasso deconstructed art. Not everyone will like it but you really cannot forget it!

Roger wrote: "One of the many beauties of The Road to London is how much it leaves to the imagination, like all good peotry. I think its appeal is universal to say it's a gay novel is to say that the Bible is a..."

I agree about the great literary qualities of the novel. I also agree that it has the unique power to leave gaps for the reader to fill in. It's basically what Eco Umberto would regard as a perfect novel, which leaves space for the reader to go along 'inferential walks' while triggering the imagination at the same time. The fact that readers have read this novel in so many different ways and it appears without any difficulty is an astonishing fact. To me, it means that this is a novel that turns itself onto the reader, inviting, I would say seducing, the reader to become an author. Maybe that's one of the reasons why Bulla prefers the readers to comment. The novel fires images, sounds and emotions at you, then it is up to you to add your own life experience to 'fill in the gaps'. In doing so, it becomes part of you.

I used to run a poetry magazine many years ago, and Bulla sent in a manuscript of some of his poems, when he was still a green poet not yet accredited with inventing new forms. It was clear from then that he wanted, almost forced readers to become co-authors. In his poetry, at least at the time, the gaps left for the reader to fill in were huge: what he requires of the reader in some of his poems is to know the whole corpus of Western Literature. So, his poetry remains for the very few. The novel is different though: it makes things very easy for the reader. He has 'narrowed the gaps' in his prose to the point that they have become inviting rather than daunting. What he has kept is his incredible literary voice.

Thus, it so happens that I have just run into a photograph of the manuscript of The Road to London: https://www.goodreads.com/photo/autho...

Apart from bringing back memories, it is clear that in this passage he reaches what you call on your blog 'heroically poetic' tones. I understand heroically as being close to epic.

What this novel likes doing is 'appropriate' other writers' voices yet make them his own. I will get to this particular passage in a second, yet what I find the most impressive appropriation is Dickens Charles's voice. I think that's one of the things with Bulla: there is no doubt that he writes from experience and with feeling, but he is also an incredible virtuoso. Wasn't Dickens meant to be 'inimitable'? And yet every time we find a description of the grey city, Bulla is showing that he can copy Dickens's style. He reduces it to one of two paragraphs, which again, makes it very manageable for the reader, and adds his surreal style to it, but the Dickens is there.

Back to the picture of the manuscript. There is a discussion in another thread about 'hidden references' in the novel. I suspect there are many more than we can imagine. Knowing his poetic work, I wouldn't be at all surprised if almost every word was a quotation. Here we see him quoting Paradise Lost's Book: the famous lines 'handed they went' and 'hands soft touching' have been re formulated into prose, yet keeping the rhythm of poetry (and his extended alliteration, almost the hallmark of his poetic language) and the human body has been split into two: hands and feet, which are clearly symbolic in the novel, hands very likely meaning unity and feet meaning power games and struggle. The theme of the sea dragging their feet on the sand, and being 'ordered' by the 'will of the Sun' to do so, is not just a reference to how human life is ruled by far-away powers, but again, a reference to Dante Alighieri, who often refers to God as 'another will', 'a higher will' etc... How this is managed in a few lines of 'prose' remains a mystery to me, but what it achieves is a passage that can be read at so many different levels, starting from the more obvious romantic encounter and moving into questioning free will, that readers can choose, according to their disposition, whichever way they wish to read it, losing nothing by their choices and only gaining if they add their own experience to the novel.

I forgot to add: apart from being a unique read, what I think this novel does in terms of Literature is that it makes it very accessible: it's really up to the readers to choose at which level they wish to read the novel, it's a bit as if Bulla had written many novels in one: the romance, the psychological fiction, the philosophical novel, even the erotica are all part of this novel, all running alongside and each enriched by but independent from the other.

Arinola, For me, a novel is a narrative story with a beginning a middle and an end. Novels are not poetry. Novels follow a timeline, generally. That's the kind of stuff I write. Then you come across something like Mrs Dalloway that has those elements but treats them as a stream of consciousness and that is attractive in that it's different. Many modern novels are a triumph of style over content and are a matter of personal choice; most of them have me closing the book at page 2. Then there's pretentious poetry. A novel is not poetry; poetry is poetry. I don't even like poetry, even though that damns my soul (apparently).

Now, Ade Bulla has done a kind-of Mrs Dalloway but has followed a gerneral narrative line but broken it down into present and past but in a way that you can follow and be intrigued by. He intermixes poetry and in many places his prose is clearly more poetry than prose and beautiful for that reason. That makes it accessible to people who profess to dislike poetry. I felt involved, drawn in. He asked me to consider my own ending but his was so touching and effective that I would never have dared. When I'd finished the book I wasn't sure what I'd read (stunned) but was sure I would go back and read it again and was also sure that it was a mould-breaker. So, when I wrote about 'deconstructing the novel', what I meant was an analogy between the novel and art or music. Picasso deconstructed art and re-assembled it, creating modern art. Stravinsky did the same with music. I felt that Ade Bulla had done the same with TRTL. Sorry if I was being obtuse!

I found The Fault in Our Stars a little too unbelievable. The young characters too clever and mature. I don't doubt that there might be youngsters like them out there but they didn't come off for me. I was finding myself quite bored.

The Road To London was a slow burner for me but then it did come together excellently and I admired the writing skills and was very impresed.
It would be interesting to see how straight men find the story. I could relate to some of it, but my life was very different.

Christoph wrote: "I found The Fault in Our Stars a little too unbelievable. The young characters too clever and mature. I don't doubt that there might be youngsters like them out there but they didn't come off for me."

I agree. I felt I was being lectured to, AND I felt it was being done by someone who didn't exactly know what he was talking about--you know, one of those blowhards you find all over the Internet. (LOL!!) And I hate depressing books like this where someone is croaking. I hated "Terms of Endearment," too. My MOM loves that Lifetime for Women Movie Network stuff. It's just me. (grin)

However, I *have* read books with young characters who are precocious and who have philosophical insights, although they don't always realize that's what they are having. THE OUTSIDERS is like this, but isn't laugh-out-loud funny. The funny ones are really great, though. When you read a book with a teen character who thinks she's got something right and she's really way off, but it isn't going to be a fatal mistake, you can laugh with her AND at her. The "Genius Girl" books are a little like this. At the risk of getting clobbered for talking about a book I had anything to do with, APRIL, MAYBE JUNE would be up the alley of anyone who wants to see what a REAL precocious/genius type teen would be like--and doesn't want to deal with the entire "poor croaking person" thing, although there are dark moments. You can LOOK INSIDE or get a free sample at Amazon. Just sayin'. I think THE EGYPT GAME got it right for the generation it was written for (although it doesn't always reach modern teens), and I believe APRIL, MAYBE JUNE gets it right for this generation.

George just wrote: "[I like it when] the pages of the book tell me something new and in a new way." That's exactly how I feel. I don't like the recycled stuff that is in most of the top novels today. Vampires (yawn), serial killers (zzzzz). If an author gives me insight into the eternal human condition, that author has really accomplished something valuable (instead of merely entertaining me and keeping me off the streets!)

I just wanted to thank you all for your beautiful comments.

Ade

Shalanna wrote: "Christoph wrote: "I found The Fault in Our Stars a little too unbelievable. The young characters too clever and mature. I don't doubt that there might be youngsters like them out there but they did..."

Well put, Shalanna. Have you read Submarine? There were similarities in style, although no cancer theme. Interesting young adult characters, though that were more believable than Fault in Our Stars. Nice talking anyway :-) And well done Ariano!

Christoph wrote: "Shalanna wrote: "Christoph wrote: "I found The Fault in Our Stars a little too unbelievable. The young characters too clever and mature. I don't doubt that there might be youngsters like them out t..."

Thanks Christoph, you are very kind.

Ade

As the month is, as we youthful people in London say, 'well over', and as I have in the last few days (has anyone noticed I tend to invert words? I like it, in the end, maybe I am 'inverted' myself, or, perhaps, it's due to reading Latin and Milton, who knows?) learnt how to use HTML (I always thought it meant web links, Doh!) and to use the Goodreads blog (I actually didn't know what a blog is, for me this Internettual world was just made of 'web pages', actually, I naturally understood the meaning of 'forum' of course, but blog? It sounded like a funny puppet to me, or a mix between 'plop' and 'bog', which, of course, put me off exploring this strange and novel feature of the modern world altogether), well, as I just have... I've put posts on my blog (that does sound weird...strange images are now flooding my mind) about themes and aspects of my little sister/child (yes, we do have a weird relationship, The Road to London and I) as well as a few other things here (hurray! I got to this end of this rather convoluted paragraph, or have I?... You will only find out by scrolling down... Or maybe you just need to look down the next line, or two, depending on when I can stop blabbering on with this totally useless, and yet, at the time of writing, believe me, this is becoming quite funny, though in a strange way, a few lines... Ok, I'll let you off this time; I shall now post the link, but not before I have ranted about how this autocorrect thing on Goodreads is mental... Come on! Ok, it insists of changing its into it's, assuming we can't spell, which I can put up with, but some of the words it invents!):

https://www.goodreads.com/author_blog...

Arinola wrote: "Shalanna wrote: "Christoph wrote: "I found The Fault in Our Stars a little too unbelievable. The young characters too clever and mature. I don't doubt that there might be youngsters like them out t..."

Thanks for the reply.

If "The Fault In Your Stars" made you feel enthusiasm then that is great and you shouldn't be swayed by my criticism.

I agree ( I think) about gay books and gay people. It is nice that "The Road To London" is a gay story but not exclusively. There is some sex but I would certainly not call it cliché or too intense.

If you find the time to read it, please let me know what you thought :-)

Arinola wrote: "Christoph wrote: "Arinola wrote: "Shalanna wrote: "Christoph wrote: "I found The Fault in Our Stars a little too unbelievable. The young characters too clever and mature. I don't doubt that there m..."
Thank you for replying and telling me your opinion. I am very relieved you liked it. Nothing';s worse than when you are full of excitement about a book and recommedn it but the other person does not 'get it'.
I agree completely, the points you picked up are so valid.
I am gay, too, and although my youth was much more sheltered there was an element of isolation that I hope modern openness will erase for future generations.
I love that this is not a purely gay book and did not limit itself to that one issue. Every person is so much more.

And yes, Adriano can write very well.

Christoph
:-)

I'm blushing! Sorry, I've just seen the last posts. Thanks.

Arinola, thanks, I love you. X

Christoph, thanks, do you want to marry me? X

Ade

I read "The Fault in Our Stars" this summer, and enjoyed it. It was very predictable, but was good nevertheless. I was warned I might cry, but managed to hold it together. ;) I think that if I saw the movie though, I would be crying buckets!