Dispatched

So it has taken what, a week or two, to send it, but finally my Alice Munro book is on the way.  (Well, it was on the way on Saturday.)  I had thought that buying it within twenty minutes of the Nobel Prize being announced, I would thus miss the subsequent rush and stock-depletions, but apparently not.  I had fears, having noticed that it hadn’t arrived, and also, after checking, that it hadn’t been shipped, that it would never get here, that it would be lost in the system and I’d have to chase up a refund or something; thankfully that wasn’t the case.

Catton (she who wrote The Luminaries) strikes me as a bit like Jonathan Franzen, come to think of it; at least in the way she is telling her story so far.  She is a bit more microscopic in her structure than Franzen, though, but there is the overlapping stories that shed light on each other, sort of.  Well, shed light on each other in a linear way, as opposed to say, Cloud Atlas, where there’s hints that travel forward and backwards in the actual text as you read it.  One wonders – with Franzen, especially, I suppose – whether there isn’t something Stoppard-esque going on with it; that sense that makes us feel as if we’re smart when we watch his plays.  Franzen overlaps – no, overlays is probably a better word – his narrative, and as each recognition pings against the cranium we feel a sense of accomplishment.  Even though it’s being very, very cleverly spoonfed to us.

131/whatever.

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