Happt to say goodbye to Ibsen

Book seven done. But it was a terrible ordeal.

The Master Builder and other Plays is a collection of four of Henrik Ibsen's lesser known plays: 'Rosmersholm', 'Little Eyolf', 'John Gabriel Borkman' and the titular 'The Master Builder'.

Now, I have never read Ibsen before I tackled 'Peer Gynt' as book six of this reading adventure and I can't say I loved that well known work so I guess it shouldn't surprise me that I didn't get into Ibsen's B-list collected here.

Trouble is, I liked the B-list plays better than 'Peer Gynt'. That, of course, isn't saying much.

Okay, so I have to learn to accept that Ibsen's characters will be broadly drawn, that their behaviour will be melodramatic to say the least, that the plots will be rooted in 19th Century politics and social mores. That they will revolve around a single, central male figure whose neuroses will wash over the female characters who surround them.

But I don't have to like it.

I found these plays to be stilted and over-wrought. And too long.

If Ibsen has one talent I can find to admire, it is the ability to imagine very interesting relationships (both familial and psychological) between and among his characters. But they all come down to serving the master. Who (spoiler alert) generally dies at the end.

Perhaps that's why, of the four, I found 'Little Eyolf', the least objectionable. The play's death scene takes place early and the characters manage to find an interest approach to addressing the impact of that death.

Next up, Laurence Sterne's A Sentimental Journey, an 18th century comic travelogue that is, mercifully, quite short.

Rather be reading Rowling

Can you tell that I'm not enjoying Ibsen much? How long have I been reading The Master Builder and other Plays?

I can always tell how much I like a book by how long it takes me to read it. By how little inclination I have to pick it up whenever I have a moment.

Harry Potter? I'll pick a Harry Potter book up even if I have only a moment or two to read. Ibsen... oiy.

I have to keep working on it, I guess, but goodness knows I'd rather be reading Rowling.

Ibsen and Watts: a deadly combination

The good news is, I managed to read book six in this quest in just three days. The bad news is, I thought Peer Gynt was awful.

And I don't know what was worse, Henrik Ibsen's ridiculous play or Peter Watts' heavy-handed, patronising translation of it.

I was prepared to be charmed by this 1867 Norwegian play, to be delighted by it and to enjoy its loose versification after the density of the 18th-Century novels I've been reading. I even got quite excited when I realised that, like Lennox's The Female Quixote, Peer Gynt features a main character who over-indulged in romantic fiction/fairy tales as a youth and lost track of reality as a result.

But as my reading of this play progressed, I got more and more frustrated with it. I know, the scholars will tell you all kinds of wonderful things about Ibsen and this particular play but, as a lay reader who is reading for enjoyment, this thing is a bust.

It didn't help that Watts, translating it for the Penguin Classics edition, took great liberties with the original text and even bragged about it in his silly footnotes. All too often, he makes comments that amount to the following: "the literal translation of this passage would be X but I didn't think modern readers would understand that so I made it Y".

Awful. But, it's book six in the bag at least.

And now I'm on to book seven which is (the horror the horror), a collection of Ibsen's plays: the Penguin Classics book The Master Builder and other Plays. I am trying to glean some hope from the fact that Watts isn't responsible for the translations in this one.

Lamenting the rapid resolution of painstakingly established plots

Five books, seven weeks. Uh oh. I'm in trouble.

I have finally finished my reading of Charlotte Lennox's wonderful novel, The Female Quixote, which is book five in my reading adventure (to borrow Arabella's word). Wonderfully whimsical but with a strong moral core, this 18th-century novel was a real pleasure to read.

If it has one real weakness, and it's a weakness I have also found with Radcliffe's books from approximately the same period, it is that the author takes a very long time to set out and establish the main problem of the novel but a very short time to resolve it.

In this case, Arabella spends much of her life (and the first 360 pages of this novel) suffering under the misapprehension that the real world of 1750 operates by the same rules as the world of 17th-century French romance novels. This misapprehension leads to any number of hilarious experiences and to a rather delightful conundrum for the book's male hero, Mr. Glanville, who adores Arabella for her wit, her intelligence, her goodness and the loveliness of her appearance but who finds her intoxication with the world and customs of romances a source of great exasperation and public humiliation.

The author then introduces a brief, serious illness for Arabella at approximately page 360, followed by an intense (and very interesting) conversation between Arabella and her physician which manages to convince her of her long-held folly and to give up her misapprehensions in favour of the real world.

What she develops so lovingly in 360 pages, Lennox resolves, not so convincingly, in the final 20.

My reading of this novel was affected (quite happily, to be honest) by the many margin notes my partner Patti added when she first read it 20 years ago. I believe she read the book as part of a feminist literary course so many of her comments relate to the portrayal of women or the place of women in society (both the society of the book and the society of its author). Other comments reveal Patti's interest in the philosophy of John Locke, who would become the subject of her Masters and PhD theses.

All in all, a very interesting, very fun reading experience. But slow...

What was I thinking when I planned to read each book in this journey in just five days? My average, after finishing The Female Quixote, is almost 10 days per book.

Perhaps the next book on the shelf, Henrik Ibsen's classic play Peer Gynt, will help speed things up.

A woman so ridiculous

Yes, I'm still on book four. But at least it's making me laugh out loud.

Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote is turning into a really fun read, one that is getting me strange looks on the city bus when I suddenly break out laughing.

I'm quite enchanted by the fact that Mr. Glanville is completely mortified that he's fallen in love with a woman who is so completely out of touch with reality and yet remains completely incapable of escaping her charms.

Best line so far: "Mr. Glanville was still in terrible Confusion, and silently cursed his ill Fate, to make him in Love with a Woman so ridiculous."

And, even better, Lennox has now introduced a rival to Mr. Glanville for Arabella's affections, Sir George, who not only understands Arabella's odd obsession with romance literature but also knows such literature well enough to present himself as one of its heroes.

It's hilarious.

Lennox's writing makes me wish for more

The Female Quixote is turning out to be a much easier read than expected. I've ripped through the first 50 pages in a very short time and, once again, am really enjoying it.

I was worried for the first couple of chapters that Lennox would allow her central character to roll through 400 pages without being challenged on her quixotic tendencies. I don't think I could have taken that. You want to shout at the other characters: "Come on, folks, take her on. Call her on that stuff."

Well, sooner than expected, she's done so. Cousin Glanville challenges Arabella at page 45 of the World Classic's Edition of the novel and it's really well presented.

I am already thinking I need to find more of Lennox's novels to read since I don't think we have any more in the house. Trouble, of course, since I really don't need to add more to the reading list. And that's one of the real challenges of my commitment here: there are so many books already here that I really can't pursue any interests that crop up along the way. I can't go out and find more of Ann Radcliffe's novels, even though I thought the two I read were just fantastic, and now I have to content myself with just this one by Charlotte Lennox.

Yes, I'm mourning the loss of Lennox even before I've finished the first 100 pages of the first of her books I've ever seen.

One thing that I'm really liking about The Female Quixote is that Lennox never allows her character to become ridiculous. Arabella is presented with kindness and compassion; she is quixotic but never silly. And that's important to keeping this novel interesting: Lennox's sympathetic portrayal of her main character makes the book worth reading.

Three down... on to The Female Quixote

Book three completed. On to book four: Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote.

Okay, so things aren't gong exactly as I planned. Instead of spending five days on each book, I'm at about two weeks. Slow progress, to be sure. And I don't think Lennox's 1752 satire is going to speed things up any. Not that I expect it will be bad -- it's just 400 pages long, small print and densely written.

I loved book three: The Romance of the Forest. Radcliffe was a wonderful writer, even if she seems to have overdosed on travellogues somewhere along the way. And that's one of the other problems with a reading challenge like this: if I find a writer I very much enjoy, I don't feel I can take the time to track down and read all of her other books.

Oh well... rules are made to be broken, I guess.

I may have to use the fire place to thin the ranks of the unread books. What do you think?