Success!

It only took me a few months, but I’ve finally managed to make my way through The Corrections.  Once I put my mind to finishing the book, it really only took me about four days, even though I was determined at least a dozen times to put it down for good (like that Norrell and Strange tome).

There is something (as I believe I mentioned before – I’m too lazy to go back and look) that I don’t like about this book.  Something that disturbs me.  I thought perhaps it was something akin to my initial reaction to The Stone Angel in its portrait of old age.  I also considered that it was an almost crudeness similar to how I sometimes find sections of Pat Barker’s fiction.  Perhaps it’s a mix of those two things or something altogether different.  Perhaps it is too familar in some respects and the nerves – two in particular – it touches too fragile and raw at the moment.

And there are some beautiful passages – primarily at the end of sections, and those for me were the saving graces.  It is those that are keeping me from putting it into the “To the Library Donation” pile, which is where until 10 pages from the end of it I was still determined it would go.

Next on the agenda?  A return to The Blue Castle.