Timothy; or, Notes of an Abject Reptile by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Terry's book club selection. I started it today while waiting for an xray.
From the perpective of a tortise who lives in a garden in England. His ponderings about humans, life and life in and out there. This is what I got out of the first 23 pages. Almost victorian prose.
Will post a review later.
It's later. I finished it last night. You have to be a gentle reader to totally enjoy this book. I am not a gentle reader. I enjoyed some of it but overall it was slow and stylistically it drove me crazy.
The characters are real. Gilbert White, a 18th century curate who wrote, "The Natural History of Selbourne" kept Timothy (who he thought was a male tortoise but in reality a female) for over 40 yrs in his garden. He journaled his every appearance and disappearance from hibernation. The book uses Whites journaling as a vehicle to show what the world (a small plot in Selbourne, England) encompassed; using Timothy as the protagonist.
Faintly interesting, times were more difficult; the living harder. The people much the same as today. I didn't learn all that much, although there is a glossery in the back for reference. Many of the flora and fauna needed to be explained in American english for those of us on this side of the pond. One learns about rooks, chaff, ewes, asparagus, the ponderous actions of a tortoise in a strange land. Timothy is not native to England, has come to England via a sailor some where off the coast of Turkey. (S)he speaks of the frailty of humans, God and our inability to see.
Sentence and paragragh structures made it tedious to read:
"The painstaking paradise of this garden. Adjoining fields. Plotting and measuring and planning. Cutting vistas. Raising obelisks and oil-jars. Touching up poor Hercules. Timming hedges. Amending this bit of earth and that bit. Mining chalk to spread on the filds. Digging basins to fill with black malm. Burying rank, stiff, wheat-bearing clay under loads of ashes and manure. Under marl, lime rubbish, peat-dust, soot from the malt-house, old rotting thatch. Woolen rags to be dug into the ho-garden. Half a barrel of American gypsum on the fourth ridge of Timothy Turners wheat."
Compelling isn't it?
Some of it was beautiful, some of the introspection spot on, but overall, the prose has a flow that gives fleeting moments, not fully realized moments. Makes me wonder why I need more than three word sentences of descriptions, but I don't wonder long.
From the perpective of a tortise who lives in a garden in England. His ponderings about humans, life and life in and out there. This is what I got out of the first 23 pages. Almost victorian prose.
Will post a review later.
It's later. I finished it last night. You have to be a gentle reader to totally enjoy this book. I am not a gentle reader. I enjoyed some of it but overall it was slow and stylistically it drove me crazy.
The characters are real. Gilbert White, a 18th century curate who wrote, "The Natural History of Selbourne" kept Timothy (who he thought was a male tortoise but in reality a female) for over 40 yrs in his garden. He journaled his every appearance and disappearance from hibernation. The book uses Whites journaling as a vehicle to show what the world (a small plot in Selbourne, England) encompassed; using Timothy as the protagonist.
Faintly interesting, times were more difficult; the living harder. The people much the same as today. I didn't learn all that much, although there is a glossery in the back for reference. Many of the flora and fauna needed to be explained in American english for those of us on this side of the pond. One learns about rooks, chaff, ewes, asparagus, the ponderous actions of a tortoise in a strange land. Timothy is not native to England, has come to England via a sailor some where off the coast of Turkey. (S)he speaks of the frailty of humans, God and our inability to see.
Sentence and paragragh structures made it tedious to read:
"The painstaking paradise of this garden. Adjoining fields. Plotting and measuring and planning. Cutting vistas. Raising obelisks and oil-jars. Touching up poor Hercules. Timming hedges. Amending this bit of earth and that bit. Mining chalk to spread on the filds. Digging basins to fill with black malm. Burying rank, stiff, wheat-bearing clay under loads of ashes and manure. Under marl, lime rubbish, peat-dust, soot from the malt-house, old rotting thatch. Woolen rags to be dug into the ho-garden. Half a barrel of American gypsum on the fourth ridge of Timothy Turners wheat."
Compelling isn't it?
Some of it was beautiful, some of the introspection spot on, but overall, the prose has a flow that gives fleeting moments, not fully realized moments. Makes me wonder why I need more than three word sentences of descriptions, but I don't wonder long.
posted by vivage @ 4/21/2006 06:19:00 PM
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