NOTICE: (Updated March 5, 2010)

Beginning December 19, 2009, Books 'N Border Collies will be posting but only intermittently while I pursue personal goals. I plan to share some reading I'm doing, but there will be no reviews. I will, however, be sharing my exploration of vegetarian cooking and the cookbooks and websites I use to educate myself. I hope you enjoy it!

Lezlie



Sunday, June 7, 2009

BEDLAM

by Greg Hollingshead



"Conspiracies, plots, and paranoia are sweeping through London in the last days of the eighteenth century, and James Tilley Matthews has been caught under false pretenses and locked up in the city's vast, crumbling asylum. As his wife, Margaret, tries desperately to free him, political forces conspire to keep him locked up. Margaret's main adversary is John Haslam, the asylum's chief apothecary, a man torn between his conscience and the lure of scientific discovery: as James becomes more famous -- and more unhinged -- he becomes a valuable specimen for the young doctor and a pawn in a grand political conspiracy. Based on real people and events Bedlam: A Novel of Love and Madness is a brilliant evocation of a city teetering between darkness and light, and a moving study of every kind of madness." (From the back cover of the Picador edition)

Bedlam was not what I expected. For some reason I was thinking it would be a book along the lines of The Nature of Monsters. I don't know why I thought that, and that's not what it is. The story is mostly political, moved along slowly and seemed to expect more familiarity with the French Revolution than I possess. I didn't love the book, but I didn't dislike it either. The prose was lovely and the glimpses into the lives of the inmates and employees of Bethlam (aka "Bedlam") were fascinating. I wished there had been more of that. The intricate international politics went mostly over my head.

I've always felt that even a book I'm not crazy about has qualities that make it worth my time, and this one ended up having numerous passages that spoke to me personally even while I was wishy-washy about the story itself. I was surprised at how many little colored flags were sticking out when I was finished! Here are just a few examples:

"[I]f humankind is ever to deliver itself from bloodshed, then every person must understand they have the same worth as the next and each a free and full say in the common good. Estimate another's worth as greater than your own, and it follows that another's is less. From inequality it's a slippery slope to intolerance and from intolerance to resentment and resentment to oppression if you can and slaughter if you can't, so why make that first mistake? Until this primary human principle has been understood, how can the future not be perfect mayhem?" (p. 211)

"People tend to grant an oracle figure leeway. They like to stumble away from a godhead with something to think about." (p. 285)

"I considered how you can think of yourself as a certain sort of person yet watch yourself behave as quite another; and how easy it is that disjunction becomes simply how things are with you, and your failure to reconcile that contradiction, whenever it noses its way to awareness, you tell yourself is only the small, private price you must pay awhile longer yet if you would achieve such-and-such a worthy end." (p. 338-39)

"Brains are prone to certain kinds of error. One is assuming they were capable then of what they are only now." (p. 383)

See what I mean? Bedlam was okay, but I love these quotes and I would never have seen them if I hadn't read it. I know this doesn't begin to hold true for most people, but more and more I am of the opinion that no book is ever a complete waste of my time.



6 comments:

Teddy Rose said...

Wonderful review Lezlie. It was very honest and fair. I love how you pointed out the good parts.

Jane said...

Great quotes from the book! It sounds like it was a little heavy for summer reading. But you gave it a very fine review anyway.

Anonymous said...

I agree that even a book that I don't enjoy might warrant some beautiful passages.

Lezlie said...

Teddy Rose ~ Thanks! I can't think of a book I've ever truly disliked so much that I couldn't find a single nice thing to say about it.

Jaimie ~ Weren't they great? I read them over and over and figured I might as well share them. I didn't think it was going to be as heavy as it was.

Matt ~ I'm excited to see you here more often, too! It will be fun to compare notes on some of those crazy classic books. And on the not so good books with great quotes. :-)

Lezlie

Ladytink_534 said...

Political novels bore me to tears so I'll be skipping this one. I agree with you, these are good quotes though.

Lezlie said...

Ladytink ~ I don't mind some politics, but I was really hoping for more of life in the asylum. But at least I got the cool quotes! :-)

Lezlie