First 50 (Friday) - The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood

The First 50 Project is something that I made for myself to help me get through my backlog of books. I own over 200 books that I have not read, not including ebooks, but my first love is new books. In order to help reconcile my warring book lust and guilt, I came up with the First 50 Project. My goal is to read at least the first 50 pages of all 200+ books. Here is my latest First 50 Book:



5. The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood
2000
Nan A. Talese
Winner of the Man Booker Prize and Time Book of the Year.
*My paperback edition by Anchor Books was purchased from Borders.

First lines:
Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge. The bridge was being repaired: she went right through the Danger sign. The car fell a hundred feet into the ravine, smashing through the treetops feathery with new leaves, then burst into flames and rolled down into the shallow creek at the bottom. 

Tragedy seems to follow Iris Griffin in the opening pages of Atwood's novel. A series of newspaper clippings chronicle the deaths of first her sister, then her husband a couple years later, then her niece in 1975. Interwoven with the clippings are excerpts from Laura's novel, published posthumously by her sister. Laura's novel, The Blind Assassin, seems to be the story of a man who is wooing a woman in secret through another story. It doesn't pick up Iris's story until 1998. She is an old woman, living alone, her writing shaky as she tries to put pen to paper to tell her story.

The first 50 pages are a bit of an enigma. We don't see enough of anything to get a real sense of it. Iris herself tells us she doesn't know why she has decided to sit down and write. But yet I didn't want to stop when I reached page 50, and I'm not sure why. The Iris storyline is just getting started. The world of the novel within the novel (within the novel?) is weird and somewhat off-putting with its science fiction landscape, buried cities, and vestal virgins, and the lovers have not been introduced enough to have personalities. 

It has been several weeks since I read the first 50 pages, and looking back I'm not sure why it was so compelling, but it was. I don't have a good sense yet of what the novel is like, and I know that I will have to read more to figure it out, and because it is Atwood, I am sure I will finish.

First 50 Friday - Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

The First 50 Project is something that I made for myself to help me get through my backlog of books. I own over 200 books that I have not read, not including ebooks, but my first love is new books. In order to help reconcile my warring book lust and guilt, I came up with the First 50 Project. My goal is to read at least the first 50 pages of all 200+ books. Here is my latest First 50 Book:



4. Netherland by Joseph O'Neill
2008
Pantheon
256 pp.

First line: The afternoon before I left London for New York--Rachel had flown out six weeks previously--I was in my cubicle at work, boxing up my possessions, when a senior vice-president at the bank, an Englishman in his fifties, came to wish me well.

Summary of what I read:
Netherland is a post-9/11 novel. In it, Hans's wife and son have decamped for London following the 9/11 tragedy. A native Englishwoman, she tells Hans that she no longer feels safe in New York. Hans is left behind. In the absence of his family, he turns to his childhood sport of cricket to help fill his time. A friend named Chuck Ramkissoon is mentioned, but we do not meet him in the first 50 pages. Years later, Chuck has been found murdered and Hans is contacted by a reporter seeking information.

My thoughts:
In the first 50 pages, there is what feels like a lot about cricket and a little about Hans and his family. For most of it I was bored and not sure I could make it through even 50 pages, but I'm glad I persevered. Somewhere after page 24 it picked up for me. I'm still not sure if I will go back to it, but I'm glad I gave it a better chance than I was initially inclined to give.

First 50 Friday - Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

The First 50 Project is something that I made for myself to help me get through my backlog of books. I own over 200 books that I have not read, not including ebooks, but my first love is new books. In order to help reconcile my warring book lust and guilt, I came up with the First 50 Project. My goal is to read at least the first 50 pages of all 200+ books. Here is my latest First 50 Book:



3. Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris
2007 
Little, Brown and Company
387 pp.
Winner PEN/Hemingway Award for Best First Novel in 2008

First lines: We were fractious and overpaid. Our mornings lacked promise. At least those of us who smoked had something to look forward to at ten-fifteen. Most of liked most everyone, a few of us hated specific individuals, one or two people loved everyone and everything. Those who loved everyone were unanimously reviled.

Then We Came to the End is set in an advertising agency in Chicago, but it is a satire about the state of the American workplace in general. As the first lines show, it is written in the first person plural. It's hard to summarize because of the interesting viewpoint. 

In the first 50 pages, we are introduced to a few characters: Tom Mota and Chris Yop stand out. We all know the personalities, even if we've never really worked in an office environment. It reminded me a lot of the movie "Office Space" and a little of my current job, although we don't have any personalities quite like the ones depicted in the novel! The book is presented sort of as a string of anecdotes. It makes sense as I am reading it, but it is hard to describe. It has a flow, but it is not always linear, but somehow it works.

Reading the first 50 pages was a lot of fun. If I were a book blurber, I would describe it as a rollicking good ride. I didn't want to stop, and I hope I have time to get back to it soon.