confusionbeggs on books.
A stream of consciousness tale of the eight days leading up to the signing of the Munich Pact, postponing the German invasion of Czechoslovakia, covering the thoughts of characters all over France. Sartre’s style is amazing, he switches narrator in mid paragraph yet the reader does not loose his barring, and the effect conveys the urgency and uncertainty of the times.
The last book in Sartre’s stunning Roads to Freedom series Troubled Sleep chronicles the fall of France to the Nazi forces and the blank, mute reaction of the French people. Sartre’s examination of people who have no long term plans takes the reader down different paths and is executed with amazing dialogs and narrations. The book doesn’t end on a happy note, more of a cross between releaf that the battles are over and fear of what is to come.
Identity takes the reader into the minds of the lovers Chantal and Jean-Marc. Through their thoughts we see how little Chantal and Jean-Marc really know each other, how they fail to understand each other and communicate their feelings. Each incident of the story is told from twice, one from Chantal’s point of view and once from Jean-Marc’s point of view. The wide gulf between the two’s perception of the situation is an insight into the problems lack of communication causes in our relationships.
Leo Tolstoy’s novel about love and life is as poignant today as ever. Anna’s stormy affair with Count Vronsky speaks to today’s world of unhappy marriages and struggles of divorce. While Levin pushes through the hurtles life sets down before him, as well as those he sets down for himself in a struggle to find happiness. No character is one-dimensional in Tolstoy’s Russia. Marriage for love is a concept that has really only been employed in a large scale for a few hundred years and Tolstoy shows us that the struggles we endure in the name of love today are nothing new, his characters are caught between social tradition and popular ideas and they can teach us all something.
Catch-22 is a hilarious account of life as a bomber pilot during WWII. Yossarian’s classic struggle to survive his tour of duty is beset on all sides by crazy people and people who want to kill him. The tongue-n-cheek humor and hilarious situations that Yossarian finds himself in are set against the all-too-real tragedy and horror of war. Many of the situations are humorous, but they are black humor and we need only turn our TV to CNN to be frightened into thinking how close we are to living those horrors out yet again.