post your unpopular literature opinions?

[MrShannon385]

Curly was the best character in mice an men

Another upopular one. I am always envious of people who hated The Bell Jar and found it unbelievable and self-indulgent.

I don’t hate The Bell Jar and in fact I found it funny and insightful but there’s no denying some of the issues are hard to read about.

I have to put in a defensive word for James Joyce here. Ulysses would probably top my list of my favourite books in the world. It's multi-faceted. It's full of tensions and contradictions. It's gratuitous. It's hilarious: laugh out loud funny in places. It's tragic. It's lowbrow (advertising, pop culture and music hall songs permeate it). It's highbrow (Homer, obvs; Artistotle, contemporary pragmatist philosophies and a good smattering of idealism as well). It's a palimpsest. It's sexual (scrub that, it's unmitigated pornography in places). It's inhibited. It's lyrical and poetic yet rooted in the ordinary, it's idiosynchratic, it's a window into working-class Irish tongues, attitudes, occupations and interests of the day. As far as literature is concerned, it's unique.

It's pretentious, for sure, and there's a tension between working-class Dublin and literary elitism. But Joyce a 'bad' writer? Not on this planet!

+1 for Atonement, which IMO is 'neo-modernist' the same as the likes of Sarah Waters and John Fowles are neo-Victorian. The many literary allusions he uses in that text (Woolf and Richardson's Clarissa being two that spring to mind) find their parallels in the novel. Which is 'Briony's' novel: who we know is an unreliable narrator who has founded her life on lies.

Brideshead Revisited I haven't read - never really fancied it much but have a few credits to use up on audible - but of Evelyn Waugh's efforts Vile Bodies is simply brilliant (Stephen Fry did a film of it called Bright Young Things, its original intended title) and Scoop isn't bad either. It's a mockery of modernism and the superficial media class of the day. Vile Bodies also has a direct pisstake of Ulysses. Miss Runcible, the racing car driver, is my absolute favourite character: she rocks!

I read them all, cover to cover. Loved them, but yes it's a dark forest out there.

He messed up there then because Beowulf is short! The others aren't but they are all to be heard rather than read. I wonder if LOTR is better heard than read?

@SerafinasGoose - Joyce has a bit of a reputation for turgid prose like Henry James or Dostoyevsky.

Never found him too bad though.

Always thought if it's an author you really enjoy you can read a book of any length by them - off the top of my head my list in that category would include Fielding, Dickens, Eliot, Tolstoy, Mailer, Vidal, Monaldo e Sorti, Eco and even Neal Stephenson, Stephen King and Robert Ludlum

gosh I LOVE that book, and have never met anyone outside my family who has even heard of it!
edit - failed quote... was aimed at @TitusMoan re the Rats of NIMH 😅

I didn't like The Bell Jar. Loved Evelyn Waugh's novels. Not read Joyce, LOTR or Atonement. I tried to read something by Ian McEwan and gave up.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow I don't disagree that she writes about women trying to secure financial security alongside emotional security. My point is that the women always end up with a man who is both wealthy and 'good.' This was pure fantasy for the vast majority of women at the time (and often still is when there's significant wealth involved ).

Jane Austen wrote about the world she and her readers knew where gentlewomen had to make a good marriage. She did have Harriet married to the industrious farmer Robert Martin who was very much not a 'gentleman' but was a decent man.

But was anyone writing about the experiences of the working class women then? Would anyone have published such books even if they were written? And who would have read them? In the early 19th most women were illiterate. Jane Austen was writing more realistic novels than those who preceded her so critising her for writing books that you now perceive as fantasies is unfair. TBH, having grown up in a rural middle class family in the mid 20th century, there is much about her world that is very recognisable to me (my parents definitely talked about who would make suitable spouses for myself and my siblings) even if I had more options to escape the marriage market through education.

Austen, the Brontes and Mary Shelley were quite early in the piece for English novelists let alone women. I prefer Eliot and Gaitskell to all three but they were quite the pioneers and all their books are readable

@JaninaDuszejko forgive me, I should have made myself clearer, I'm not comparing the romances in Austen's books to those of the working classes at the time. I'm just pointing out that vanishingly few gentlewomen made love matches of the sort she describes. The books wouldn't have been anywhere near as popular if they had described reality as opposed to fanstasy. Austen's own biography and those of the Bronte sisters are far more telling, to give six random examples.

I thought The Bell Jar was pretentiously written (reading it now I'd probably think, "Ah, she was YOUNG, she was just showing off her wordcraft, we've all been there," but reading it as a teenager I was much less forgiving and may have had how I felt about Sylvia Plath's poetry at the back of my mind) but didn't find it unbelievable or self-indulgent. I thought the narrative and the characters were credible and engaging.

And, contrary to the views expressed on the thread so far, I really enjoyed White Teeth and saw sharp and funny observations rather than racial/cultural stereotypes. The Chalfens in particular deserved to be in a sitcom.

I'm glad I'm not alone re: Wuthering Heights. Horrible characters, load of tosh.

Re: Ian McEwan, I only liked two of his books, one being The Children Act and the other one about the robot (can't recall the title off the top of my head, think it's something like The Machine and Me? Hated Chesil Beach, Atonement and couldn't finish the latest one about a young pianist being sexually abused by his teacher.

@ManAboutTown me too - and the Austen books are top notch escapist romances (feel like I’m being a bit bleak now!)

Jane Eyre is very dull and Rochester wouldn't have fallen for her in a million years.

For me, books come in two categories. Books I read once and never again or books I read over again as I enjoy them.

White Teeth, I had high hopes for as there was a lot of hype around Zadie Smith before and when it came out. I read it and enjoyed it, but it’s not a book I’d read again, which is a shame. I do recall the characters and plot but not enough to engage me for more than one reading.

Me too and I also like her poetry. I think Sylvia
Plath is a bit of a marmite authour, you either like her or you can't stand her.

The Bell Jar is of course semi-autobiographical and for me I could sense that authenticity coming through. It might have appeared pretentiously written had it been written by someone who hadn't gone through such experiences, though.

autobiographical books written about mental health I absolutely recommend are Lauren Slater's books especially Prozac Diary and Welcome to my Country. Prozac Nation by Elizabeth Wurtzel is fantastic, like a cross between The Bell Jar, Girl Interrupted (the novel was way better than the film) and Catcher In The Rye but on steroids.

I like Jane Eyre a lot and Agnes Grey but I will say that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall beats all other books by the Bronte sisters hands down. Wonderfully ahead of its time. Image read Lynn Reid Banks A Dark Quartet, and I feel that Anne would have been my favourite Bronte.

Yes I laughed out loud at that. He is feeling very awkward at the inhospitable nature of his hosts and when he sees a basket of kittens he admires them to try and break the ice. Unfortunately it's a basket of dead rabbits waiting to be skinned and cooked. That's how I remember it anyway. I love WH, but a romance it ain't.

That was the only bit of WH I liked! A bit grim of me and it's very random but every other bit if WH was utter bollocks.

I picked McEwan's The Cement Garden off the shelf one day (it's DH's), but didn't get further than a passage graphically describing incestuous abuse. Grim.

I LOVE LOTR. I often listen on Audible to the first book, because the first part is very funny and a real 'road' novel, and there's something very cosy about it. After that it does degenerate into lots of names and beards, though.

Yes The Cement Garden is depressing. The film is so bleak.