5/5
I have never written a book review before. This may be strange for a literature student, but as often as I have felt like it would be a good hobby to take up, nothing has yet compelled me to actually write a traditional review of a novel. That is, until The Goldfinch. Donna Tartt’s tour de force has made such an impression on me that I decided it would be morally wrong to not try to share it in some longer lasting form than one of my ineloquent, mid-reading tweets that went along the lines of, “Oh my god, this book is f***ing awesome. #TheGoldfinch #Tarttisagod #ohmygod”.
I discovered Donna Tartt through my mother’s book club, which had planned to read The Goldfinch, but, upon realising that it was only available in hardback, decided that it was too expensive and opted for Tartt’s first and highly acclaimed novel, The Secret History, instead. By the time that news got around to my mom, I had ordered The Goldfinch for her from Amazon and it was displaying itself prominently on our living room side-table, having already arrived. (Thanks, Prime shipping.) My mother is an impressively fast reader (a trait that I did not inherit in the slightest), so she quickly ploughed through The Secret History and started on The Goldfinch and was insisting that I try one of them because she couldn’t put them down and wanted to discuss them with me. I read the former of the two first and it also is a striking novel that deserves its own review in the future. Right now I will focus on the latter.
To begin, The Goldfinch follows the life, from adolescence through adulthood, of Theo Decker, beginning with his traumatic experience of a terrorist bombing of a New York museum, in which his mother dies and he acquires the Carel Fabritius painting of a chained goldfinch, which in the hopes of protecting he ends up stealing and carrying with him for most of the novel. Theo develops an obsession with the painting that evolves into a mixture of passion and shame, evoking a sense of Dorian Gray, as he tries to protect and hide it from the chaos that surrounds him. The plot covers a broad range of subjects, including abusive parenthood, descent into drug use and the criminal underworld, New York social elitism, art history, and, oddly enough, antique dealing. Tartt weaves conspiracy, mystery, romance, and action into her story without ever falling into the dangerous territory of genre fiction. By the end of the 700+ pages, you will know the myriad of characters inside and out, having been sucked into their whirlwind lives.
This is a beautifully crafted book - physically. The book, as a tangible object, tries to convey the experience of discovering Fabritius’ painting covertly. The cover artwork shows a bird peeking through a rip in its paper wrapping. The title and author’s name are printed in a handwritten, pencil-style font on the wrapping. Within the first few pages, you will find a copy of the painting, a small print that is attached along its top edge, as though it were glued inside the pages for only your viewing. Throughout your reading experience, you can refer back to the painting as the narrator rhapsodises about it.
The protagonist, Theo, is the narrator. There is a sense of Fitzgerald’s Nick Carraway about him, but he offers a more intimate familiarity and openness. If you do not connect with Theo, you will likely not enjoy the novel. You are in it with him, from beginning to end, pulled into his secrets, his highs, and, most crucially, his grief. I read an interview in which Donna Tartt said that her goal is to create an “immersive experience – the kind of book that you can absolutely lose yourself in”1. The Goldfinch definitely provided that for me. It left me reeling. I think I am still, in fact, reeling. Every time that I am reminded of one of the otherwordly characters throughout the day, a strange sense of familiarity, comfort, and secret knowing floods my mind in the way that truly fantastic fiction does.
There have been some mixed reviews of the novel, going along the lines of ‘love or hate’, though it is widely praised, and is currently short-listed for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction. Reading The Goldfinch from an academic standpoint, I found that it was perfectly constructed, offering such depth of narrative voice, brimming with motifs and subtleties, and presenting such a robust plot. Any inconsistencies of character that I thought I spotted along the way were all accounted for by the end of the narrative. I have only just started reading Tartt’s other book, The Little Friend, but comparing The Goldfinch with The Secret History, it feels that both novels interact with each other, engaging with shared themes and issues, and existing in similar ‘universes’ of characters and setting. I think that The Goldfinch more fully achieved what The Secret History began twenty years previously.
It always cheers me to find a piece of contemporary fiction that I can undoubtedly class as beautiful literary writing, especially one that engages with current social and cultural issues while still maintaining its role of storytelling, rather than preaching or lecturing. If you are looking for a novel that you can sink your teeth into, that pulls you into an exploration of the human psyche, and from which you can come away having learned something, then The Goldfinch should be at the top of your reading list.
On queer politics, literature, ideology, academia, and living in different countries.
Friday, 11 April 2014
Thursday, 10 April 2014
American vs. English Education: The Big Difference
As an international student, people are always asking me what the biggest difference is between the English and American school systems. The answer is: exams. Since everyone keeps asking, I thought I'd write an overview of English exams and how they change the learning experience as a whole.
This is at the forefront of my mind right now because I am currently on Easter holiday, as they call our month-long spring break here, and exams start once the break is over. So it's revision1 time now. In the U.S., we don't have exams at pre-college level. In England, however, the entire education system is built on exams. When I started A Levels2, with no idea of what I was getting into, I had never taken an exam in my life, nor had I even taken a real test in about five years because I was a distance learner with an online school. At A Level, exams are marked by external examiners who have no association with the institution at which you are studying, and therefore have not involved in teaching you at all. The goal is for grading to be as objective as possible. This is a major culture shock in comparison to my experience of subjective American teaching, where, to some extent, teachers know their students; they know their learning history, their personalities, their parents, their struggles, and their strengths and weaknesses. Imagine going from that to having an absent stranger mark something that's worth 60% of your overall grade. At university level, our exams are marked by our lecturers, but they are still anonymised.
The big deal about English exams is that if you fail them, you will fail your year. Then you would have to go back to square one and start over. There are no opportunities for extra-credit work to pull up your grades. I found the experience of having to learn to take exams an interesting and stimulating challenge. As a humanities student, the major skill that I've gained from exams is being able to come up with an analytical argument or a reading of a text under pressure in fifteen minutes or less. It has helped build my intellectual confidence and I work a lot faster now because of it. However, there isn't much allowance here for different learning styles. Many people who cannot succeed at exams for any number of reasons cannot pass their A Levels and have to find alternative courses, such as BTECs3, or reconsider their place in academia entirely. Alternative education hasn't caught on here.
There is one aspect of exam, in particular, that has affected my daily learning experience both during A Levels and now at university (though this is based on a humanities, primarily literary studies, perspective). It is that students tend to study for the exams. There isn't a lot of coursework that we do throughout the term that contributes to our final mark. We have a couple of essays per module, and in my current year only one essay per module counts toward our module mark. Because we focus each essay and exam on one or two texts that we choose from the syllabus, many students have no motivation to study the texts that they are not writing on. This results in a lack of participation in seminar and even a lack of attendance. Some students choose to cram-study during the revision period, rather than put any effort in at all during term-time. And because, for my course, exams are all at the end of the year (May), that means that students are even less likely to be engaged during seminars that run, say, from October to December.
The issue that I wish I could tackle is the timing of exams. The easiest way to solve a lot of the problems of my undergraduate English literature exams is to have the exams take place right at the end of each module. Eliminating the end-of-year revision and exam period would force, or 'encourage', student to participate and be highly engaged during seminars. They would ask their questions during class, rather than saving them to ask lecturers privately, usually via e-mail, during Easter holidays. It would promote group studying, rather than sending everyone home for a month to revise in isolation. And, finally, it reduce a huge amount of stress that results from exams looming in the future throughout the whole year, blown far out of proportion, until they morph into a big, ominous mass of impending dates that will surely result in inevitable doom.
I'll finish there. I seriously need to get back to revising.
The big deal about English exams is that if you fail them, you will fail your year. Then you would have to go back to square one and start over. There are no opportunities for extra-credit work to pull up your grades. I found the experience of having to learn to take exams an interesting and stimulating challenge. As a humanities student, the major skill that I've gained from exams is being able to come up with an analytical argument or a reading of a text under pressure in fifteen minutes or less. It has helped build my intellectual confidence and I work a lot faster now because of it. However, there isn't much allowance here for different learning styles. Many people who cannot succeed at exams for any number of reasons cannot pass their A Levels and have to find alternative courses, such as BTECs3, or reconsider their place in academia entirely. Alternative education hasn't caught on here.
There is one aspect of exam, in particular, that has affected my daily learning experience both during A Levels and now at university (though this is based on a humanities, primarily literary studies, perspective). It is that students tend to study for the exams. There isn't a lot of coursework that we do throughout the term that contributes to our final mark. We have a couple of essays per module, and in my current year only one essay per module counts toward our module mark. Because we focus each essay and exam on one or two texts that we choose from the syllabus, many students have no motivation to study the texts that they are not writing on. This results in a lack of participation in seminar and even a lack of attendance. Some students choose to cram-study during the revision period, rather than put any effort in at all during term-time. And because, for my course, exams are all at the end of the year (May), that means that students are even less likely to be engaged during seminars that run, say, from October to December.
The issue that I wish I could tackle is the timing of exams. The easiest way to solve a lot of the problems of my undergraduate English literature exams is to have the exams take place right at the end of each module. Eliminating the end-of-year revision and exam period would force, or 'encourage', student to participate and be highly engaged during seminars. They would ask their questions during class, rather than saving them to ask lecturers privately, usually via e-mail, during Easter holidays. It would promote group studying, rather than sending everyone home for a month to revise in isolation. And, finally, it reduce a huge amount of stress that results from exams looming in the future throughout the whole year, blown far out of proportion, until they morph into a big, ominous mass of impending dates that will surely result in inevitable doom.
I'll finish there. I seriously need to get back to revising.
Friday, 4 April 2014
What Facebook Has to Do with Gender Identity
After many weeks of deliberation, I decided to change my gender identity on Facebook. It should be said that I’m not a fan of Facebook in general and I only joined the website last year after facing the difficulty of being involved in any social groups at university without being member. I prefer anonymity on the internet wherever possible. However, I am a fan of Facebook’s recent addition of fifty gender options that are inclusive of cissexual, non-binary, trans*, questioning, and personally and culturally defined genders. These options allow for both gender expression and biological sex identifiers. I feel that this is a big deal because the Facebook gender list will reach people all over the world, from many different backgrounds, regardless of politics, religion, etc. It is normalising gender variance on a worldwide public forum. As someone who has to explain the concept of non-binary identity on a weekly basis, I am grateful for what Facebook has done and I wanted to support it by taking the time to choose my new gender term. Small changes make big steps.
So, today I took advantage of the ability to share an unconventional aspect of my identity that is very important and closely personal to me with almost all of my peers. I spent a lot of time agonising over choosing between Facebook’s options of ‘non-binary’ and ‘gender nonconforming’. Minor details, but I chose gender nonconforming in the end, mostly because I wanted something slightly more specific, but still open-ended. (How I love queer paradoxes.)
I don't believe in binary gender to begin with. I view gender and sexuality as being measured on a three-dimensional, fluid, unstable model. Personally I don't feel that I relate to the way that our society defines or expresses femininity. I feel uncomfortable being referred to as part of a group of 'girls' or 'ladies' and I don't relate to traditional modes of femininity or the way that females are expected to act in mainstream society. In terms of my personality, I feel more 'male' in certain ways that I act, speak, and express myself than I do 'female', though I'm not sure those terms are necessarily correct in defining behaviour at all anyway. Overall I identify as non-binary. I'm still female - I just want to be able to define what that means myself and I don't want others to presume. Which is why I chose 'gender nonconforming'. My pronouns are still female (she/her/etc.).
It’s taken me years to reach a point where I understand myself on this level. It might seem trivial to everyone and a lot of people I know think that gender identity doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of the world. But it matters to me because I don’t feel accepted when I’m referred to as ‘one of the girlies’. Because when you synonymise me with the ‘bunch of women’ in your life, I feel physically uncomfortable. Because if you expect me to naturally behave in the way that women do, which is separate from the way that men do, you will be wrong. I am female and I am a woman, maybe even still a girl, but that probably means something different to me than it does to you. And that’s okay, that’s what’s wonderful about the society that I live in right now. I’m allowed to be unique and express myself honestly, which is a privilege that many people in other places don’t have. I encourage everyone to ask as many questions as you can about how someone you know identifies, whether it’s about gender, sexuality, ethnicity, politics, religion, or something else entirely. It’s time to start asking.
Preliminaries
It's far past time for me to start a blog. A friend of mine has been nudging me toward it for the past few weeks, so here I am.
At the point of writing this, I am an undergraduate in my second year of studying English literature at a university in England. I'm American by birth and spirit, but I think travelling and living in different cultures is essential for strong intellectual and emotional development. I want to be an academic and I'd like to change the world, but at the moment I'm learning to fulfill exam and assignment requirements while struggling with my own big ideas of how education should function.
My aim is to blog a bit about said cultures and primarily about things that I learn, daily injustices that I encounter, philosophical concepts, politics, activism, people, and, best of all, books.
At the point of writing this, I am an undergraduate in my second year of studying English literature at a university in England. I'm American by birth and spirit, but I think travelling and living in different cultures is essential for strong intellectual and emotional development. I want to be an academic and I'd like to change the world, but at the moment I'm learning to fulfill exam and assignment requirements while struggling with my own big ideas of how education should function.
My aim is to blog a bit about said cultures and primarily about things that I learn, daily injustices that I encounter, philosophical concepts, politics, activism, people, and, best of all, books.
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