Wow, it has been FOREVER since I posted. Okay, so people who know me well, know I read voraciously, I read like some people drink, hence the title of my blog right? Okay, well these same people that know me well also know that if I'm not particularly enthralled with a book or if in fact I HATE IT, then it takes me FOREVER to finish it...I drag my feet, find other things to entertain myself, daydream about all the other books I'd love to read...So, I finally finished A Discovery of Strangers early this(Saturday) morning. I was determined, it's already 4 days overdue, and I didn't want to be paying for a book that I wasn't really that into, but OH WELL. So, I REALLY wanted to like this book...Wiebe's writing was compared to Faulkner, who I absolutely adore and idolize as a writer, and so I was super excited. Yes, that was a fairly good comparison, but somehow I found myself getting distracted on a fairly regular basis and just plodding through, having to constantly reread whole pages because I wasn't paying attention to what was going on. I liked a lot of parts of the book, though. The most prominent female character, Greenstockings, was a great protagonist. Her passages(for the most part the book is narrated from many characters' points of view, in stream of consciousness format) were beautiful and showed her intelligence, strength and knowledge of her own self-worth. She speaks frankly about love, her love for the white explorer Robert Hood, and her feelings towards her lover Broadface, and her parents and sister. Her observations of her world are lovely and heartfelt, but not in a flowery sort of way. In one passage when she is watching Robert Hood draw her she says(via 3rd person omniscient POV) "Why does he keep trying to make her outline on paper? If he wants it, why doesn't he feel it with her face between his hands? Perhaps she can tell him that--her lips, if he felt them with one hand surely his other one could find them too, even at the end of a pencil or brush. He is different, so quick to understand and so stupid, she says to him whatever she want and even without words he often does not know anything. Her hand lifts the blazing stick as she considers that: she has never thought it before about a man; she will tell him anything, whatever has always been unspeakable, his incomprehension gives her freedom" (Wiebe 160). Greenstockings' very pragmatic outlook towards the men, both white and native is also very interesting...especially in light of the fact that Keren and I have had many discussions of her research of the rampant sexual abuse of women in native communities(both between partners and family members). I think that our discussions coloured my reading of the book a little, because I was constantly on the look-out for how men behaved towards women, whether or not they were treated like a commodity, etc(I guess circumstances surrounding a reading of any novel, outside events occurring in the reader's life, serve to colour any book that you read). At one point during the novel, Greenstockings is kidnapped and raped by one of the native guides along to help the whites, it is a brutal brutal attack, told from many different sides, and does display to an extent how a woman is a possession or meant to be possessed by the men of the community. Rudy Wiebe did some things very well, that I was glad to have read...When the white men are all starving to death, the written word at that part is exactly how you would imagine one to be thinking while they are deliriously dying from lack of food, the insanity eating away at your brain. That part was tough to read and follow, but you did feel like you were living it(remember Benjy in The Sound and the Fury? As hard to follow at times as that). The other thing that I found to be really interesting was how the author tried to depict native thoughts on the oncoming of white civilization, its inevitability and perhaps their own demise because of it...it is of course with great hindsight, but one can also imagine their apprehensions towards an unknown possibly destroying their way of life...If they only knew how bad it would get for them, they probably would have killed all of the white explores on the spot...One of the funniest parts of the book was when the natives are talking about the white man "creation myth". They CAN'T wrap their heads around it, and told from their point of view it IS hilariously unbelievable. Okay, so all in all, I wasn't CRAZY about this book, but it had some decent parts. I don't feel like it was a waste of my time(at least not WHOLLY a waste), though it reminded me a lot of when I read Virginia Woolf...most of the time I read her I spend going "What the fuck are you talking about?" But when I reach the end, I usually feel like a better person for having read her. This is also one of those times where I take a hard look at my own writing and what a reader may think of MY stuff...It's so easy to be critical when you aren't the writer...Anywho, in the words of Queen, another one bites the dust. GGs-18, Pulitzers-15.