Timothy Findley

[Basstrap]

I don't know who is familiar with this author, but you should surely read some of his books.

Book Review

I just finished reading Not Wanted on the Voyage, and am convinced there is nobody who put down this book after starting it. Surely, it is the most imaginitive books I've read in a while.

It's an account of Noah and the ark...though with a very bizarre slant. Noah is a tyrant who kills kittens for experiments and sacrifices everything he kills as a way to justify it in his mind. His wife is an aloholic and love her cat...who can talk...and who is in heat but afraid of mating because her several past litters have been plunde5red by noad for scientific experiements.

Yahew (God) is old and has food in his beard. He is a manic depressive, caused by the state of the world. (on his way to see noah he gets killed seven times.
People say he is dying
When he sees noah do a magic trick in which he pours water into a bottle and the penny at the bottom dissapears...he gets an idea in his head to do something similar...on a larger scale
-------------------------------

believe me!! when they get on the ark it gets disturbing...almost too much so.
"this marvellously fantastic fable, an awesome and poetic rendition of the ancient one, is tender and terrifying, humourous and heart-rending, abundant in implication and questions for our own desperately hurting and threatened world"

 

[Michael Griffiths]

Timothy Findley was an amazing author. I haven't read Not Wanted on the Voyage, but The Wars and Stones (a book of short stories) were incredible. We read The Wars in Canadian Literature. It's really a book everyone should read. It depicts the 1st World War by weaving layers upon layers of the psychological, the emotive, and the broken reality of the human condition during such a bloody war. This book could be made into a 1000 movies, each one being completely different yet completely true to the story -- and yet collectively still not having all of it covered. Yet it's a rather short novel. Amazing.

 

[cujo]

Amazing, yet further still amazing.

Has everyone agreed... yet?



Listen to Michael.

 

[Michael Griffiths]

I love that adjective. It's simply, "amazing".

"Tell 100 people you're the best band in the world, and 50 will believe you."
- Noel Gallagher

 

[The_Sweetest_Thing]

Mmm hmmm...The Wars is simply a terrific book. it was a course requirement in high school, but of all the books we read in my final year, I enjoyed it the most. There are 101 emotions and ideas running through it, yet it never feels fake or contrived. Rather, you truly feel the confusion and terror that the narrator displays. It's a bit fragmented as well--but all the better to help get the reader understand the terror of WWI.

 

[SkeeK]

I've read The Wars, The Butterfly Plague, and Famous Last Words. THe Latter was really good. so was the first. The Butterfly Plague was interesting to me because it was totally fucked up. He's a good author, I did an essay on him for my Canadian Lit class last year. I really want to read the Piano man's Daughter.

 

[u2popmofo]

Sounds interesting. I'll have to see if I can find one of his books outside of Canada.

 

[Basstrap]

Famous Last Words was great as well.

I couldn't help but feel it was all true