Library Limelights 170

Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar. 1962. UK: Arcturus Publishing Limited, 2018.

It behooves me to upgrade my reading material with some classics like this. Yet it's hard to say much about the sad, lost, depressed, young Esther Greenwood depicted within, always conscious of the relevance to Plath's own life. When and why did a gifted intellect go off the rails? At times reckless (physically and verbally), at times paralyzed by depression, Esther drifts away from friends and college aspirations. She makes lists of her inadequacies. Aware that "something is wrong with my head" she half-heartedly tries suicide in different ways ... until she seriously damages herself. Lack of self-esteem can become a killer.

Institutions and treatment of mental patients in the 1950s-1960s are almost like looking back across centuries (yet One Flew Over the Cuckoo Nest informed those of us of a certain generation, right?). Perhaps our attitude toward them has changed, if spokespeople and education are doing a good job. May the world of psychiatry be able to lift away each bell jar under which so many people suffocate and struggle. Esther's words and story will always ironically bear a certain freshness for us that she could not feel herself. Beautifully written even with grim humour, let's sample her own words:

● Betsy was always asking me to do things with her and the other girls as if she were trying to save me in some way. (16)

● I never feel so much myself as when I'm in a hot bath. (27)

● The words fell with a hollow flatness on to Jay Cee's desk, like so many wooden nickels. (38)

● It wasn't the nice kind of rain that rinses you clean, but the sort of rain I imagine they must have in Brazil. (46)

● The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it. (77)

● Mr Willard must have thought I was crying because I was so glad he wanted to be a father to me. (87)

● Then I decided I would spend the summer writing a novel. (115)

● The reason I hadn't washed my clothes or my hair was because it seemed so silly. (122)

● Doctor Gordon's features were so perfect he was almost pretty. I hated him the minute I walked in through the door. (123)

● He just wanted to see what a girl who was crazy enough to kill herself looked like. (163)

● I didn't think they had woman psychiatrists. This woman was a cross between Myrna Loy and my mother. (174)

Electro-convulsive treatment, 1950s style:

I shut my eyes.
There was a brief silence, like an indrawn breath.
Then something bent down and took hold of me and shook me like the end of the world. Whee-ee-ee-ee-ee, it shrilled, through an air crackling with blue light, and with each flash a great jolt drubbed me till I thought my bones would break and the sap fly out of me like a split plant.
I wondered what terrible thing it was that I had done. (137)

Ivan Turgenev. Fathers and Sons. 1862. UK: Arcturus Publishing Company, 2018.

Right. Next in the classics department: a nineteenth century view of life from the Russian countryside. Arkady has finished at university and brings his friend Bazarov to visit his parents. Bazarov is a committed nihilist whose iconoclastic talk and sometimes vicious tongue immediately infuriate Arkady's elegant, old-fashioned Uncle Pavel. Nonetheless, Arkady idolizes his friend, taking him to visit family connections in the area. Both men immediately fall for the beautiful Anna; Bazarov, contemptuous of "feelings" and abstract thinking, who spurns art and creativity, is dazzled by her dispassionate opinions and bewildered by his devotion to her. But Anna has little or no feelings for anyone. It's a slice of life at a time of slow change in Russia; the emancipation of serfs is beginning. The difference between two generations could not be more pronounced, with Arkady eventually reverting to the very ways that Bazarov dismisses so sardonically. Then tradition demands a duel that involves some unbearably polite protocol.

One-liners:

▪ Pavel Petrovich met her at a ball, danced a mazurka with her, in the course of which she did not utter a single rational word, and fell passionately in love with her. (41)

▪ The estate had only recently been put on to the new reformed system, and the new mechanism worked, creaking like an ungreased wheel, warping and cracking like homemade furniture of unseasoned wood. (47)

▪ A young servant in livery conducted the two friends in to a large room, badly furnished, like all rooms in Russian hotels, but filled with flowers. (94)

▪ "If a woman can keep up half-an-hour's conversation, it's always a hopeful sign." (161)

▪ "Yes, my dear fellow," he commented, "you see what comes of living with feudal personages." (203)

Two-liners:

"Well, am I going to consider them, these provincial aristocrats! Why, it's all vanity, dandy habits, fatuity." (38)

"A pretty farce we've been through! Like trained dogs dancing on their hind-paws." (182)

Critical youth:

"Your uncle's a queer fish," Bazarov said to Arkady, as he sat in his dressing-gown by his bedside, smoking a short pipe. "Only fancy such style in the country! His nails, his nails ‒ you ought to send them to an exhibition!"
"Why of course, you don't know," replied Arkady. "He was a great swell in his own day, you know. I will tell you his story one day. He was very handsome, you know, used to turn all the women's heads."
"Oh, that's it, is it? So he keeps it up in memory of the past. It's a pity there's no one for him to fascinate here though. I kept staring at his exquisite collars. They're like marble, and his chin's shaved simply to perfection. Come. Arkady Nikolaitch, isn't that ridiculous?"
"Perhaps it is; but he's a splendid man, really."
"An antique survival! But your father's a capital fellow. He wastes his time reading poetry, and doesn't know much about farming, but he's a good-hearted fellow." (27)

Anna the enigma:

Like all women who have not succeeded in loving, she wanted something, without herself knowing what. Strictly speaking, she wanted nothing; but it seemed to her she wanted everything. She could hardly endure the late Odintsov (she had married him from prudential motives, though probably she would not have consented to become his wife if she had not considered him a good sort of man), and had conceived a certain repugnance for all men, whom she could only figure to herself as slovenly, heavy, drowsy, and feebly importunate creatures. (108)

Bazarov's mother Arina:

In her youth she had been pretty, had played the clavichord, and spoken French a little; but in the course of many years' wanderings with her husband, whom she had married against her will, she had grown stout, and forgotten music and French. Her son she loved and feared unutterably; she had given up management of the property to Vassily Ivanovitch ‒ and now did not interfere in anything; she used to groan, wave her handkerchief, and raise her eyebrows higher and higher in horror directly her old husband began to discuss the impending government reforms and his own plans. She was apprehensive, and constantly expecting some great misfortune, and began to weep directly she remembered anything sorrowful. ... Such women are not common nowadays. (146)

Stefan Ahnhem. Eighteen Below. 2016. Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 2018.

No question, this was the most complicated plot ever. The reader must pause at times to refresh the locales (well, I had to) as scenes switch between Helsingborg in Sweden and Helsingør in Denmark ― across the Øresund from each other. Fabian Risk in the first and Dunja Hougaard in the second are the main police detective figures, working on separate cases. Past novels in the series ensure their paths will cross in the most unexpected way. Fabian is burdened with Astrid his alcoholic boss, Sonja his unresponsive wife, and two recalcitrant teenagers, Theo and Matilda. Dunja has ongoing issues with Sleizner, the ex-boss who blacklisted her, plus currently being forbidden to investigate crimes against the homeless.

Wealthy Swedes have disappeared or committed suicide; when bodies are discovered, some had been kept in freezers. That's ghoulish enough, prompting desperate police work. But the violent nature of the crimes is over the top, taking the edge off a very compelling story. Victims galore as the different criminals exhibit fiendish originality ― in one case a mystery man whose identity changes like quicksilver, in the other some sociopathic young people. Complex personalities among the good guys only increase the pace from one suspense point to the next. Mixed feelings overall from me but no denying the author's talent.

Two-liner: Fabian could only capitulate in the face of Astrid's leadership. She had come in stumbling at the finish line, but had already lapped them several times. (54)

Fabian:

He'd had the chance to save his colleagues, but instead he'd frozen with the gun in his hands. (68)

The burning flame of their relationship had shrunk down to a tiny pilot light. (129)

"I want you to end your relationship with my wife and withdraw your commission." (145)

Fabian wasn't an alcoholic, but loneliness scared him just as much. (389)

Dunja:

As if that sleazeball Sleizner would be satisfied with just firing her; that was only the beginning of his plans. (59)

This time he would persist until she was so far past rock bottom that she would never make it up again. (78)

The rage inside her was thundering louder than road construction, and as soon as she had enough strength she'd ask him to leave. (437)

Unpredictability:

This kind of thing was what frightened her more than anything else. Seemingly random acts of unprovoked violence. Impossible to protect yourself from, coming out of nowhere while you were on your way home from work, wondering what you should buy for dinner. And chance was the only factor that decided whether the victim would be you or someone else.
Happy slapping.She'd heard the term before, had read about it in the newspaper and seen clips on YouTube. She knew exactly what it was. How it had started in England among working-class teens who had lost all hope for the future, how with the advent of smartphones they'd started going out in gangs, hunting down unsuspecting members of the general public.
The goal: a good laugh, and likes. (162)

Relentless harassment:

The problem was, no one knew what the hell Hougaard was up to. It was hardly surprising that Sveistrup was clueless, but so was everyone else he'd contacted. No one had seen her at the police station or near the scene of the crime. She wasn't at home either. It was like she had purposely gone to ground and was making sure to keep under the radar. No one had any idea what evidence she had sniffed out, whether she had any suspects, or how close she was to a breakthrough.
The nightmare scenario was that she would succeed in solving the case. If she did, all Sleizner's arguments against her would collapse. He would no longer be able to stop her from returning to Copenhagen. (308)