Fly Toward Grace

Hello, readers! Yesterday morning I finished Against the Day--finally!! I was starting to think it would be 2012 before I finished it. Overall, I loved the ending. In fact, of the five parts that the novel is separated into, the fourth and fifth are the best ones. I say this because it was here that the narrative was most clearly written. Either that or I had gotten used to the style. Either way, it didn't require as much going back in the book to make sure I knew what was happening with whatever character was brought up, and it made for a much nicer read. ATD could get really complicated sometimes; what seemed like minor characters were brought back into the narrative after hundreds of pages of absence, and years lapsed between the appearance of main characters, making it hard to keep track of everyone's goings and doings. Bulgaria, Constantinople, Iceland, the American frontier, Vienna, Paris, Venice...the characters of ATD travel back and forth all over the world, which doesn't help the reader in trying to follow some character storylines.

Such a long and complex novel, with many sub-plot lines, can be hard to conclude. Pynchon, however, did a beautiful job. There was an obvious and necessary growth in the major characters, and the reader truly feels how characters, both as individuals and a group, are molded into the adults they become. The conclusion seemed to narrow in on the more important motifs of the novel.

While the fourth section of the novel took place during WW1, which colored the conclusion with gloom, despair, and confusion, the fifth chronicles the end of the war. This leaves the reader with a small feeling of hope, of moving on...of having survived another day. 

I really hope one day soon I can read this book again. Why is there never enough time for books?! There are so many I would love to go through a second time, and yet so many still left unread! I started V. and The Color of Magic yesterday, but haven't had much of a chance to really get into them. Now I'm wondering if I should keep reading them at the same time... Anyways, enough rambling for now. If you have a lot of free time, are interested in fiction heavy with historical allusions and witty wordplay, and don't mind really grappling with a novel, I recommend this book!!! Bon reading, everyone!