Review: Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe

Title: Moll Flanders
Author: Daniel Defoe
Genre: Classics
Publisher: Penguin Classics
First published: 1722
Pages: 244

Rating: 6 out of 10

Moll Flanders is the tale of an innovative woman who will stoop to the lowest of trades in order to be a "lady." Married five times, Moll is at varying times a thief, a whore, a convict, and a prisoner.

This book was interesting, though not exactly a page turner. Defoe, as is to be expected, is quite fond of rambling on about every little detail, which is accentuated due to a lack of chapters or page breaks.

Few characters are given a name, which can also make the book a bit confusing. Even Moll never reveals her true name, always insisting to the reader that Moll Flanders is just a nick name she is given later in life.
I got more than a few of Moll's many husbands confused at different points, because they were all "him." Eventually everyone just became "that guy" in my mind.

I liked the character of Moll, because she was different, and certainly unique for a book written in Defoe's time. She seems shameless and unscrupulous from the very beginning, which she seems to justify in her mind as a way of survival.
When her friends and comrades in crime are hung, Moll voices no sorrow over their deaths, only fear that she may soon share the same fate.

There is no doubt that Moll is not exactly a blameless character. She uses her beauty to snare potentially rich husbands, and she mentions a few times having children and then they are never mentioned again. In fact, I remember her saying that she had "gotten rid of" her children, or some similar phrasing, by giving them to a friend or family member. She has a few very low moments, such as when she steals a piece of jewelry from a young child, or when she steals a family's things while their house is burning down.

However, there is something likable to Moll, and I would never classify her as one of those hero-villain types.
Perhaps it is how clever and innovative she is, just trying her best to make her way in the world the best that she knows how.
Her schemes becoming increasingly creative as the book progresses, and I loved when she began her disguises - a man, a lady, a beggar, a widow, a foreigner.

Though Moll is always calling herself "wicked" or "sinful," she seems unwilling to fully acknowledge it.
Such as, just after she has stolen something, she says:

"I confess the inhumanity of this action moved me very much, and made me relent exceedingly, and tears stood in my eyes..., but I could never find in my heart to make any restitution."

When Moll is at least caught in her schemes and locked in Newgate Prison, I felt that I knew her for the first time in the story. Defoe's writing style doesn't exactly allow you to become all that close to Moll through out the story, but we feel that we have seen her entire life leading up to this point when at last she is thrown into the jail.

She seems to fear Newgate more than anything, perhaps because it forces her to think of herself as not a great lady, like she always strove to be - but a common criminal.

I loved how even after thrown in jail and sentenced to death, Moll never ceased her scheming, and rather than sink into despair over the verdict, she immediately begins planning a way out of it.

*Mild spoilers in the next paragraph*

The ending surprised me a little, as I had honestly expected Moll to meet as unfortunate an end as the rest of her life reflected. But the ending was, instead, a happy one, and I closed the book smiling.

This is a good character study about a very interesting, notorious woman.

Review: Memories of My Melancholy Whores by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Title: Memories of My Melancholy Whores
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Genre: Literary
Publisher: Vintage
First published: 2004 (as Memoria de mis putas tristes)
Pages: 128

A friend gave me this book as a gift while we were sitting in a cafe. He encouraged me to just read the first few pages, and so I did. "Memories of My Melancholy Whores" is a sparsely written, simplistically poetic little book. The presence of the narrator and the evocative voice of the story can be sensed from the very first paragraph.

I'm glad that I read a few pages into this book before I even knew what it was about. From reading the back cover, I got quite a different impression. A ninety year old man, who is apparently an avid supporter of the local brothel, decides to have a "night of wild love with an adolescent virgin." What?
However, Marquez writes the story skillfully and tastefully, focusing on the characters rather than whatever sexual encounters they may have. Despite the description, I just couldn't feel anything but good things about the main character, whose name is never given.

A curious side note that I have to include is that I kept finding odd little similarities between myself and the Narrator peppered through out the plot. He is obsessed with age, rises early for no particular reason and drinks coffee, keeps detailed lists, doesn't like movies, and "has always written."

That sentence, for some reason, very much stuck in my mind. The Narrator tells the reader "I have always written."
Though it was such a small sentence, the context and the simplicity of it struck me. It seemed that for a moment, the reader catches of glimpse of Marquez himself in the old man.

It is the spare, quick peeks at something deeper that makes this book so enchanting. The author does not need to write a long, drawn out novel here because his soulful writing adeptly fits everything into a few words.
Another sentence that I really loved was when the Narrator said that dead souls go to New York (pg. 15, Vintage Books 2005). Interesting.

I enjoyed the story line as well, which was meticulously stitched together without having too much structure. There is more to this book than just the plot, and it does wander a bit, but somehow, in a good way.

(There may be some spoilers in the following paragraphs).

I love books that allow you to ponder and consider the characters after you read them. This one is one of those.
Why does the Narrator not take his chances to make love to the girl in the brothel? He instead spends hours and hours sitting on her bedside as she sleeps, imagining what she is like, even going so far as to convince himself that he has guessed her name, Delgadina. He develops a "connection" with her, a relationship, that does not actually exist.
Rather than the author portraying him as a perverted, twisted old man, he becomes a beloved old soul who has never had a chance to find love, and is forced to simply invent it for himself.

I was a bit sad that nothing ended up happening with his housekeeper. She tells him, close to the beginning, that she "cried for twenty years over him."
This is a book that does not take long to read, but will not be easily forgotten. Another great Marquez book.

Review: The Lost Daughter of Happiness by Geling Yan

Title: The Lost Daughter of Happiness
Author: Geling Yan
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2002
Pages: 288

Rating: 2 out of 10

The beautiful Fusang is brought to the city of 1860's San Francisco as a prostitute after being kidnapped from her home in China. There, she is sold from brothel to brothel, continually crossing paths with Chris, a young American boy who falls in love with her.

I did not care for this book, and one of the main reasons was the way that it was written. The style was, above all, detached and bland. There were no quotation marks, something I always dislike (I always wonder why an author would choose to write this way?), and there were no chapters. It made the book feel even more like a droning narrative.
But more importantly, there was an omniscient sort of narrator, who wrote in 2nd person, addressing Fusang as "you," as if perhaps they are reminding Fusang of her own memories. Often, the narrator would tell Fusang to do things, or give her little bits of advice, such as "Look at the customer, now, that's it..." But later on, the narrator reveals herself to be a modern-day woman who was born 128 years after Fusang. So it just didn't make any sense.
And by the way, revealing the narrator's "identity" was utterly pointless and one of the most terribly laughable things I have ever, ever encountered in narrative fiction. This is never mentioned again, anywhere. It was just thrown in at random.
Then, it would sometimes switch to Fusang's story being told quite regularly, in 3rd person (much better). The problem was that these two different styles would often overlap and go over the same things. The narrator might say: "You walk down the street - watch where you're going, now!"
And then the other form of the story will pick that up a few pages later and say "Fusang walked down the street."
It was confusing, pointless, and annoying.

The second thing I did not like about this book was our heroine, Fusang, herself. She appeared to have few feelings about any of the events in her life. When she is married by proxy to a man whom she may never meet (he is in America, sending money back to his family), we cannot exactly tell what she thinks about this change. When she is kidnapped and sold into prostitution, she never betrays any emotion, either. Though it is always stated quite certainly that Chris loves her, it is never clear if Fusang cares for Chris at all.
Perhaps a lot of this could be blamed on Fusang's stupidity - the second reason I disliked her. Bricks have been known to exhibit more intelligence.
When she is kidnapped, Fusang allows herself to be lured away by a strange man onto his boat. When he has her tied up, he assures her that this is because "women crossing the sea aren't allowed to have two legs, it's a violation of ocean law." Fusang accepts this without question, and when she sees a member of her family running to the shore in an attempt to save her, she simply waves goodbye, smiling ignorantly.
She seems not to understand what being a prostitute actually is, even after she has been one for years, later in the story.
She forgets every man she has ever slept with, and when they remind her of their nights together, she simply smiles stupidly at them. Whenever she met Chris again, sometimes I would wonder if she even remembered who he was.
On the other hand, I did find tiny glimpses into the character I think Yan was trying to write. Fusang can at times a simplistically charming girl who remains unaffected by her tragic life, a girl who is too good to be ruined by it. She puts on lipstick not because she is trying to lure customers, but for the simple reason that she likes how it tastes. As many times as her madames beat her, she never makes any attempt to interest potential customers, letting them approach her instead.
But even with these occasional little bits of a personality, she was a heroine I found it very hard to root for.

The only thing that I found interesting about this book was the distinctly Asian feel to it, despite it being set in an American city. It was easy to forget that I was in San Francisco, as it seemed so Chinese. It is fascinating that there are so many Chinatowns all over the world, where the Chinese people have managed to retain their culture and set up a town within a city, just for themselves.

This sounded like such a good premise for a story - a rich young American boy falling in love with a Chinese prostitute. But Chris appeared only a few times, and their romance never seemed convincing. That combined with the bland heroine and awkward writing style ruined the book for me.

Review: In the Company of the Courtesan by Sarah Dunant

Title: In the Company of the Courtesan
Author: Sarah Dunant
Genre: Historical Fiction
Publisher: Harper Collins
Published: 2007
Pages: 385

Rating: 3 out of 10

I could find little to enjoy about this book. It is the tale of a famous Roman courtesan and her pimp (who also happens to be a dwarf) when they are forced to move to Venice and try to "start up business" there.

I simply could not like the narrator, Bucino. Was he in love with Fiametta or not? With his attitude toward her, and toward life in general, he came across to me as a bitter know-it-all.

The story of an important side character, a crippled young blind woman called La Draga, was far more interesting. The girl, whose name is really Elena, is a renowned healer, and many view her to have prophetic or witch-like powers. She is clever, resourceful, and wise. Whenever she was mentioned, I would hope that this time she would stay longer. But sadly, she was not the focus of the story.

The climax of the book involves her, but even so, I disliked it strongly. It seemed not to be a climax at all, simply an event. A large event, yes, but did it wrap up anything in the story at all? No. It barely even had to do with the story, in fact.

This was my second of Sarah Dunant's books, and I can't seem to like her writing style, her characters, or her work in general.