Guessed the books?

In my last post I asked you if you could guess to what books do the quotes in the reading room in Lyme Park belong. Here are the right answers:

1) Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago
2) Roald Dahl's James and the giant peach

3) Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

4) A.A. Milne's Winnie the Pooh
5) Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights

Lyme Park: First Impressions

good adaptation

bad adaptation

I first read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice in 2005. I became a fan immediately and therefore, I became a hater of that same year's film adaptation - with Keira Knightley and Matthew Macfadyen-. It's a beautiful film but not well adapted. I think most people (who have read the book) would agree that the best adaptation, incredibly loyal to Austen's words, is the 1995 series with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

It is not a secret that Jane Austen was inspired by Chatsworth House to describe Pemberley, Mr. Darcy's humble flat. And though the actual Chatsworth house was used in the 2005 film and even the mini-series Death comes to Pemberley, it was not used in the 1995 series. Pemberley in that series was "played" by Lyme Hall in Lyme Park. You can watch here a little video from the 1995 adaptation, to see the locations I am talking about, and compare it to the photos you will see further on.

What did Jane see?

In the last 9 months, I have visited Lyme Park 3 times. A lover of the 19th century British literature like me cannot but walk up and down those hills, and around that astonishing manor, and put oneself in the shoes of one of those writers. I know Lyme Hall is not Jane's Pemberley, but it will do until I visit Chatsworth house.

Can you see yourself in the story?

Lyme Park is part of the National Trust.Visiting the house or the gardens (and the lake) requires paying a ticket. Prices vary depending on whether you visit only the house, only the garden or both. So far, I have visited only the gardens and that has been enough to let my imagination fly.

Yeah... I could live here.

Or even in a tent here

If you have seen the video I mentioned before, you have probably seen the lake in which supposedly Mr. Darcy likes swimming,

Mr. Darcy is there, diving.

also the gardens where Lizzy and her aunt and uncle walk,

Aren't these roses beautiful, Mr. Gardiner?

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man...

... in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

But Lyme Park is not only beautiful architecture, gardens, lakes, etc. They also care for us: book lovers. Next to the shop, there is a lovely little reading room. You can take any book from the shelves, sit down in one of the sofas and read for as long as you want... well, until 5pm, when they close. Some of the things I like the most from this room are the quotes on the walls. There are 5 quotes from different books. I guessed 3 out of 5. Can you guess them all without cheating?

 Give it a try! I will post the right answers in a few days.

The narrator in the Divergent series

This is not just another review on the Divergent saga. I have finished reading the trilogy, watched the film based on Insurgent (yes, based, because it has nothing to do with the book and it changes some of the big themes of the books), and also read the 4 short stories about/from the point of view of Four… so let me rant again about the narrator.

**BEWARE OF THE SPOILERS**

Veronica Roth

If a writer chooses to use the “easy narrator” (first person, internal monologue)- as Veronica Roth does along the whole Divergent series- this does not mean the writer will not face any problems while narrating. When giving voice to Tris, Roth finds no obstacles because, after all, she is a woman and, without coming into differences in feminine personalities, she knows what a teenage woman thinks (thus all those “He touched me! He touched me!” moments in Divergent). But she doesn’t know what a male teenager thinks. In Insurgent, the way Four phrases his thoughts in the conversations he has with Tris about their relationship, sound a bit too feminine for a man like Four. When I started reading Allegiant, I was shocked to find now we had 2 narrators: Tris and Four. My first thought was: Roth got carried away again.

Meyer did it in Breaking Dawn and it works fantastically well because 1) for some reason I won’t mention here, Bella cannot keep on narrating, she’s physically unable to do it so another character narrates; using a new narrator is completely reasonable, and 2) the difference in the narrating style is very clear which makes it easy to follow, enjoyable, and it helps you deepen in this other character’s personality and motives. Also, G.R.R. Martin changes the narrator’s point of view in every chapter of his A Song of Ice and Fire series but, unlike Roth or Meyer, he narrates in the third person, thus proving his writing and narrating skills.

Roth’s decision of using 2 narrators in Allegiant, though, was not that clever. At first, as I said, I thought Roth was just following a sort of trend because there was not a single reason why Four had to narrate certain chapters. But then, Roth did something I did not expect, something that justifies the use of 2 narrators, that to be honest, I hoped Collins had done in The Hunger Games but she didn’t and Roth was brave enough to do because it closes the whole circle of that character. Bravo, Mrs. Roth. BUT, let’s not get too excited yet. Roth uses 2 points of view, but again, she’s unable to give them different voices. There’s no way, as a reader, to tell who is narrating. Tris? Four? We know it by the context… and because at the beginning of every chapter, we are told in big letters who is the character narrating that chapter. But we cannot tell it by the style or the choice of vocabulary. Again: Four is too feminine.

When I came across this idea, I thought I was being too harsh. But then I read the introduction to the 4 short stories. Let me quote the first few lines: “I first started writing Divergent from the perspective of Tobias Eaton, a boy from Abnegation with peculiar tension with his father who longed for freedom from his faction. I reached a standstill at thirty pages because the narrator wasn’t quite right for the story I wanted to tell.” I’m glad her editor someone else thought what I thought. As I always say: write only about what you know.