Said, don't you boys tempt the devil. But it been one brawl of a night.
Half-Blood Blues by Esi Edugyan
Somewhat ironically, I'm really bad at book summaries, so I apologize for not doing this justice. The book follows a group of jazz musicians living in pre-war Berlin as they try to deal with their own intragroup problems in an atmosphere of growing intolerance and tension. Edugyan does a remarkable job of exploring the problems of the time (and of our time, I would argue), creating real people, all of them with their own flaws and limitations. The main character, in particular, is on one of the most flawed, and we get to see him struggle with his own jealousy and guilt, in both the 1940s and 1990s.
So anyway. This book. My god, this book is so gorgeously written. (Although apparently a lot of people who read the book found the style challenging and "inconsistent"? I mean, there was a slight shift in style between 1940s!Sid and 1990s!Sid, which... I personally think is stupid, because people definitely change how they talk based on the culture and who they associate with?* So it's not that surprising, PLUS it is a pretty standard literary device to designate different POVs/eras. But I know at least one of the people who were complaining said they couldn't get over the combination of gorgeous prose and 1940s black Baltimore dialect, which makes me so angry I want to leap through the Internet and punch them.) I just fell in love with the language, though, Edugyan's descriptions, the flow and rhythm of the narration.
He got this booming voice, and when he talked it overwhelmed the air, shoved it aside like oil in a cup of water.
On lifetimes: Hell, I known this was it, this was our moment, our lifetime. Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.
On passing: Ernst had secured us brown Aryan identity cards months ago, but we still wasn't comfortable. "Just don't do anything foolish," he done told us. "Don't draw any attention to yourselves. They're good forgeries, but they're not perfect."
So we passed, sure. But there was passing, and there was passing. Sometimes it seemed we'd passed right out of our own skins.
On jazz: The music should've sounded something like a ship's horn carrying across water - hard, bright, clear. The kid, hell, he made it muddy, passing his notes not only over seas but through soil too. . . . He talked against us like he begging us to listen. He wailed. He moaned. He pleaded and seethed. He dragged every damn feeling out that trumpet but hate. A sort of naked, pathetic way of playing. Like he done flipped the whole thing inside out, its nerves flailing in the air.
Jazz, you guys. And aside from Edugyan's gift for writing about music, this paragraph is amazing to me in its open acknowledgment that jazz--at least some of it!--is a way to deal with anger. I mean, I know I don't have the experience, I know I'm not qualified to really talk about it with any kind of depth. I'm basing it off of interviews I've read, though, on the way the music makes sense when you listen for the anger riding along under the notes. Music was a way to release repressed anger, hell, any kind of repressed emotion. Repressed humanity, really, that happens when an entire culture doesn't give you the right to grow up or feel anything beyond forced good humor.
On mercy: I don't know, I guess mercy is a muscle like any other. You got to exercise it, or it just cramp right up.
The main strength of the book lies in Edugyan's style, the rhythm of her words. I did really enjoy the subtle exploration of racism and otherness, especially in wartime Europe, but I found the repeated mistakes of the main character to be a little tedious, particularly his struggles with romance. (He is such a selfish asshole, and I don't know why his love interest put up with him or his jealousy. But then again, I also really hate reading about love triangles and jealousy anyway, so your mileage may vary.) And fair warning, there's a fair bit of offhand "look at that girl, ain't she hot" going on.
TL;DR: Cool setting, beautiful language, but the plot was almost entirely focused on the relationships between the characters. I would have liked a little bit more to be going on, but that's my own personal preference. And I'm going to end this with a quote from someone else's review, because it sums up my own response so perfectly: "...intoxicating enough to send you crate-digging through a record store's back room for anything like it."
ETA If you happen to dislike this style of writing, that is totally fine, but I have a weirdly thin skin for people who make sweeping statements as fact instead of as personal opinion (e.g., "This was inconsistent and bad!" instead of "Not my style!"). I just like it when people acknowledge that their own personal opinion is not the only one in the universe? Which is something I need to work on. But. Yeah. I did not want to break my OWN rule and make a sweeping statement of how terrible people were for not liking the prose. No one is terrible! Everything is beautiful. We are all okay.
Somewhat ironically, I'm really bad at book summaries, so I apologize for not doing this justice. The book follows a group of jazz musicians living in pre-war Berlin as they try to deal with their own intragroup problems in an atmosphere of growing intolerance and tension. Edugyan does a remarkable job of exploring the problems of the time (and of our time, I would argue), creating real people, all of them with their own flaws and limitations. The main character, in particular, is on one of the most flawed, and we get to see him struggle with his own jealousy and guilt, in both the 1940s and 1990s.
So anyway. This book. My god, this book is so gorgeously written. (Although apparently a lot of people who read the book found the style challenging and "inconsistent"? I mean, there was a slight shift in style between 1940s!Sid and 1990s!Sid, which... I personally think is stupid, because people definitely change how they talk based on the culture and who they associate with?* So it's not that surprising, PLUS it is a pretty standard literary device to designate different POVs/eras. But I know at least one of the people who were complaining said they couldn't get over the combination of gorgeous prose and 1940s black Baltimore dialect, which makes me so angry I want to leap through the Internet and punch them.) I just fell in love with the language, though, Edugyan's descriptions, the flow and rhythm of the narration.
He got this booming voice, and when he talked it overwhelmed the air, shoved it aside like oil in a cup of water.
On lifetimes: Hell, I known this was it, this was our moment, our lifetime. Folks think a lifetime is a thing stretched out over years. It ain't. It can happen quick as a match in a dark room.
On passing: Ernst had secured us brown Aryan identity cards months ago, but we still wasn't comfortable. "Just don't do anything foolish," he done told us. "Don't draw any attention to yourselves. They're good forgeries, but they're not perfect."
So we passed, sure. But there was passing, and there was passing. Sometimes it seemed we'd passed right out of our own skins.
On jazz: The music should've sounded something like a ship's horn carrying across water - hard, bright, clear. The kid, hell, he made it muddy, passing his notes not only over seas but through soil too. . . . He talked against us like he begging us to listen. He wailed. He moaned. He pleaded and seethed. He dragged every damn feeling out that trumpet but hate. A sort of naked, pathetic way of playing. Like he done flipped the whole thing inside out, its nerves flailing in the air.
Jazz, you guys. And aside from Edugyan's gift for writing about music, this paragraph is amazing to me in its open acknowledgment that jazz--at least some of it!--is a way to deal with anger. I mean, I know I don't have the experience, I know I'm not qualified to really talk about it with any kind of depth. I'm basing it off of interviews I've read, though, on the way the music makes sense when you listen for the anger riding along under the notes. Music was a way to release repressed anger, hell, any kind of repressed emotion. Repressed humanity, really, that happens when an entire culture doesn't give you the right to grow up or feel anything beyond forced good humor.
On mercy: I don't know, I guess mercy is a muscle like any other. You got to exercise it, or it just cramp right up.
The main strength of the book lies in Edugyan's style, the rhythm of her words. I did really enjoy the subtle exploration of racism and otherness, especially in wartime Europe, but I found the repeated mistakes of the main character to be a little tedious, particularly his struggles with romance. (He is such a selfish asshole, and I don't know why his love interest put up with him or his jealousy. But then again, I also really hate reading about love triangles and jealousy anyway, so your mileage may vary.) And fair warning, there's a fair bit of offhand "look at that girl, ain't she hot" going on.
TL;DR: Cool setting, beautiful language, but the plot was almost entirely focused on the relationships between the characters. I would have liked a little bit more to be going on, but that's my own personal preference. And I'm going to end this with a quote from someone else's review, because it sums up my own response so perfectly: "...intoxicating enough to send you crate-digging through a record store's back room for anything like it."
ETA If you happen to dislike this style of writing, that is totally fine, but I have a weirdly thin skin for people who make sweeping statements as fact instead of as personal opinion (e.g., "This was inconsistent and bad!" instead of "Not my style!"). I just like it when people acknowledge that their own personal opinion is not the only one in the universe? Which is something I need to work on. But. Yeah. I did not want to break my OWN rule and make a sweeping statement of how terrible people were for not liking the prose. No one is terrible! Everything is beautiful. We are all okay.