Librarians Recommend:

Brief and Informal Book Reviews

For the most part, the book reviews we’ve published lately have been reviews of books sent to us by publishers, and aim to help librarians in the selection of books for their libraries.  To this end, we have a set of Instructions for Reviewers and a list of Materials  available for Review.  However, I’d also like to hear about other books that you have read lately and that you’d  recommend or otherwise expound upon.  The structure of these reviews can be more informal and brief than those included in the regular book review section; think of those times you’ve cornered a friend to tell her about a book you just finished reading.  I’m looking for enthusiastic recommendations and heartfelt raspberries – tell us if you really disliked a book, too.  Please email these to me.  Thanks!  Kristi Austin.

Byatt, A.S.  The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye: Five Fairy Stories.  Vintage Books; 1998. (Trade paperback ISBN: 0679762221)

I’ve enjoyed many of Byatt’s books, especially Possession and The Matisse Stories, so I was delighted to find this collection.  Fairy and folk tales were my favorite reading as a child, especially those that told me something about a culture that was foreign to me; I avidly consumed fairy tales from Ireland, Japan, Russia, Native America, Hawaii, Scandinavia, and Australia, with equal fervor.  It’s been a long time since I indulged this guilty pleasure, since fairy tales are for kids, right?  But Byatt’s are not.  They are wondrous stories for adults.  Several are retellings of authentic tales, and some are from her own imagination.  The title story is a novella about a “narratologist,” a college professor who studies folk and fairy tales.  Her story becomes a fairy tale itself, as she is granted the usual three wishes and tries to spend them wisely, being a sensible scholar. 

Aside from the title story, this volume includes “The Glass Coffin,” “Gode’s Story,” “The Story of the Eldest Princess,” and “Dragon’s Breath.”  These stories are rare gems in that the reader can view them as literary works, complete with symbolism, metaphor, and other devices; or one can just sit back and enjoy them as beautifully written, entertaining stories.  The book is illustrated with reproductions of old woodcuts, which add an air of antiquity to the pages.  I recommend this book for adults who still have a yearning for the magic and fantasy of fairy tales.

 --Reviewed by Kristi N. Austin

Conrad, Joseph.  Heart of Darkness.  Third edition. Norton; 1988. (A Norton Critical Edition. ISBN 0393955524)

 This summer, back when I had time for discretionary reading, I read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.  It was the first Conrad I’d read, and I must admit that my curiosity about its relationship to the Francis Ford Coppola film, Apocalypse Now, was a factor in my decision to read the novel.  I could not have known how rewarding that decision would be, nor how intoxicating I would find the tale.      

 Marlow is the central character of the novel, and his tale is told by an unnamed narrator.  Early on, Conrad, speaking through the narrator, reveals what the reader should expect. During a late night gathering aboard the Nellie, a cruising ship, the narrator begins, “But Marlow was not typical (if his propensity to spin yarns be excepted) and to him the meaning of an episode was not inside like a kernel but outside, enveloping the tale which brought it out only as a glow brings out a haze, in the likeness of one of these misty halos that, sometimes, are made visible by the spectral illumination of moonshine.” (9)

 So begins the story of a journey up a dark and mysterious river in the Congo.  Marlow and his crew are on a mission to retrieve Kurtz, a successful agent of an ivory trading company who needs to be replaced and whose entire operation is in jeopardy.  Their experiences, and the eventual outcome of the mission, provide the plot for the novel.

 What you get enveloping this tale--to use Marlow’s words--is a dark commentary on the roots and outcomes of colonialism.  Just beneath the purported ideal of bringing a better life to the uncivilized, he suggests, lie motives of greed and power, at a tremendous cost to the conquered.  Throughout, the novel is crafted with such exceptional skill that reading it is at the same time riveting and effortless.  The film can be said to be only loosely based on the Conrad novel, and it suffers by comparison.    

--Reviewed by Sandra Shropshire