{"id":405,"date":"2011-02-24T13:06:06","date_gmt":"2011-02-24T13:06:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/?p=405"},"modified":"2011-04-27T17:14:17","modified_gmt":"2011-04-27T16:14:17","slug":"book-battle-fathers-and-sons-vs-eve-green","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/book-battle-fathers-and-sons-vs-eve-green\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Battle: Fathers and Sons vs Eve Green"},"content":{"rendered":"

\nI recently read Eve Green<\/i>, by Susan Fletcher, on the strength of it garnering glowing reviews and having won a major award. I was utterly underwhelmed, and looked to Amazon<\/a> to see what real people thought of it. Opinion is divided: it’s either a beautiful, mysterious evocation of Wales or a dull trudge through an unlikeable, self-involved character’s tedious past. I fall squarely in the latter camp, but I wondered if that was partly because I was so smitten with Fathers and Sons<\/i>, by Ivan Turgenev, which I read immediately before<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n

\nSo, I’m pitting the two books against each other, but I decided that it wasn’t fair to choose the battleground myself; I want a good clean fight, here. Being the geek that I am, I had no trouble knocking up a simple random word generator<\/a>, to decide on the categories on which each book shall be judged. I used the ‘All Adjectives’ word list to generate 5 random categories.\n<\/p>\n

\nRound 1: Clear<\/b>
\nA tricky start for Eve Green<\/i>, as it comes out flailing with some oblique references and flowery language; for some people these are it’s strengths, but Fathers and Sons<\/i> lands a stinging blow with a title that tells you exactly what to expect, followed up by a flurry of descriptive passages that are the epitome of clarity. Verdict: Fathers and Sons<\/i><\/b>.\n<\/p>\n

\nRound 2: Immense<\/b>
\nInterpreting ‘immense’ literally, both books move on the defensive, as neither will break a toe if dropped on a foot. A few cagey jabs later, and this damp squib of a round is over. Verdict: Draw<\/i><\/b>.\n<\/p>\n

\nRound 3: Fluffy<\/b>
\nFathers and Sons<\/i> is on the ropes, reeling from an unprecedented attack by a cuddly toy dog from Eve Green<\/i>, but it rallies towards the end of the round as Eve Green<\/i>‘s darker heart asserts itself. The spectre of death haunts both of these distinctively un-fluffy novels, and it’s another tied round.
\nVerdict: Draw<\/i><\/b>.\n<\/p>\n

\nRound 4: Curious<\/b>
\nAfter a quiet couple of rounds Fathers and Sons<\/i> gradually builds up a strong sequence of curious punches: smack – inter-generational dynamics; smack – our place in the universe; smack – frustrated desire. Eve Green<\/i> is curious about human nature on a smaller scale, and counters with a few hits of loneliness and the nature of evil, but now looks like a broken book. Verdict: Fathers and Sons<\/i><\/b>.\n<\/p>\n

\nRound 5: Wandering<\/b>
\nThe episodic nature of Fathers and Sons<\/i> comes out swinging in this round, but its attack weakens as it becomes clear that the trajectory of Bazarov’s fate has been far from aimless. Eve Green<\/i> takes advantage with a few time-travelling blows, finishing with a pointless and devastating granny’s-dead-Cornish-sailor of an uppercut.
\nVerdict: Eve Green<\/i><\/b>.\n<\/p>\n

\nThe winner: Father and Sons<\/i><\/b>. A victory for both literature and websites with random word generators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read Eve Green, by Susan Fletcher, on the strength of it garnering glowing reviews and having won a major award. I was utterly underwhelmed, and looked to Amazon to see what real people thought of it. Opinion is divided: it’s either a beautiful, mysterious evocation of Wales or a dull trudge through an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[21],"class_list":["post-405","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-coding","tag-book-battle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":417,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405\/revisions\/417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monkeyshines.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}