I hardly ever re-read a book. These are the next best – books I have never forgotten and books I would recommend to you.
I read this more than 25 years ago. It is a beautiful novel of a small island community facing the approach of modernisation. The style and format are original and captivating, the language poetic. The stories of the various characters, which start off being told separately, gradually become more and more involved and intermeshed as the novel progresses. As individual stories they are beautiful, sad, exciting, disappointing, hopeful and more; but as they become enmeshed you get a growing insight into the nature of a small isolated community with its trusts and suspicions, its histories and secrets, its shared outlooks and conflicting pressures. It is ultimately a story of hope and resiliance. It reminds one of mankind’s increasing understanding of the need to preserve such lifestyle options as well as assisting such communities to face inevitable change.
It is a book about a community by an author who is very much a part of that comunity and as such it is a book written with love. It is a book which should be given as a gift to friends.
Bradbury writes a sort of science fiction that comes from the heart. He writes about the feelings and senses of the people caught in situations caused by science. People on space-ships, operating machines, on other planets, in a fever, at a time when books are burnt. But his magic is recounting the pressures, fears and joys that influence the behaviour of his subjects. He finds stories and aspects worthy of consideration in the most unlikely places, a prarie station, a barbers shop, a Victorian sick-room and even on a blasted heath where knights in armour await the arrival of a deadly dragon which in another era is the Flying Scotsman on its way to Edinburgh Waverley.
Ray Bradbury’s imagination and creative power have produced several novels and many short stories. I have listed the title I remember best but reading any collection of his short stories will turn up little treasures.
The books of Robertson Davies are great reads. They are full of wonderfully human characters who are both interesting and full of human strengths and weaknesses. They lead extraordinary lives, get involved with fascinating activities and are tied up in intricate, multi-layered plots.
They are big books and all the more satisfying for that. Each trilogy has a thread running through the three books which is by turn obvious and obscure, immediate and distant. They are stories of hope, strength and courage. Whilst being erudite and learned they are nevertheless easy and captivating reads. Get one for your next holiday.
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