Group Read, September 2017: The Laws

Our group read for September 2017 is The Laws by Connie Palmen. Please join the read and post any comments here.

Looking forward to this one! But I have to get a Thomas Bernhard in first while I travel to Vienna. Seemed kind of obligatory. When I'm back to Amsterdam next week, will start on Palmen.

Does everybody else coordinate reading with geographical location when possible?

>2 annamorphic: normally I'm too busy to get much reading done while traveling but in my pretentious youth I did read Graham Greene's The Quiet American at the bar of The Continental Hotel in Saigon which appears regularly in the novel.

>2 annamorphic: When we go on vacation I always try to read some litterature from that country. (And if it's within the realm of the possible I try to read it in the original language as well.)

So Bernhard is an obvious choice in Vienna.

>3 puckers: totally impressed!

I started reading In Search of Lost Time on a bench in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral in August of 2004. In May of 2010 I traveled to Paris again, with about 150 pages left in the last volume. My plan was to finish it sitting on the same bench. It didn't happen though. I just couldn't get into the book for whatever reason. I finished it later in the year, at home.

Back to The Laws.

I read the book in a couple of days. It isn't very long (200 pages) and the structure looked potentially interesting: seven chapters each dealing with seven men through whom a female student analyses her life. Unfortunately I found it all rather dry -lots of philosophical talking and not much drama/emotion. Each of the men appears and then disappears which given the apparently short time frame, the closeness of some of the relationships, and the static location didn't strike me as very realistic. Maybe I'm just not the target audience for this book.

Philosophy hub? I'm not a big fan of philosophy.

>6 BentleyMay:
Your description reminds me rather of Lizka and Her Men by Alexander Ikonnikov, where each man represents a distinct post-Soviet "type". Any comparison?

>9 Guanhumara: Sounds like a similar approach. In this case each man represents a different vocation, and a different view of "the laws" of living - The Astrologer, The Priest, The Artist, The Philosopher, The Physicist etc. On paper it could have been an interesting variety of perspectives, but I didn't find it so.

>1 puckers: I always try to read books set in a place I am travelling through - either before I go or while I am there.

It was an interesting premise, I found some parts more interesting than others. The narrator's voice was rather detached, which made it harder to empathise at times. I would be interested in reading more by the writer, but I am not sure that this book was my cup of tea.

I've finally started this one and am not enjoying it at all, despite it's being set (in Scene 1 at least, when she is a student) in the Pijp, in a bookstore, not long before I was a grad student here. So it should be so geographically appropriate! But coming right after two really great books, Old Masters and The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman, it feels weak. I'm not getting why it won this big prize when it was published. Hoping that it gets better.

I'm also thinking that what must have been casual, colloquial Dutch has been hard to translate and that it might annoy me less in Dutch!

Boring! I thought the book was a huge disappointment, and I just don't get why it's on the list.

The chapters are named after each man's characteristic (the astrologist, the epileptic etc.) and that pretty much illustrates the problem with this book: Read as philosophy the book is superficial and read as a novel, none of the characters are interesting or brought to life.

Overall a disappointing read. Of course, I might have just missed the point entirely.

Ditto. I finished yesterday and also found it a little boring. Interesting premise though. I wonder if it just doesn't translate well?