Henderson the Rain King

Saul Bellow (1915-2005)

Now this is a novel. Bellow manages to weave brilliantly complex characters with both philosophical discourse and a rollicking plot. Eugene Henderson is a brash, privileged, wealthy North easterner. He is manic, troubled and to an outsider could be considered insane. He takes shots at cats, rails against his wife, shows up in French churches hammered and wants to become a doctor in his early sixties. Henderson is endearing rather than annoying because we get to see what's going on in his head. As crazy as his act is, it kind of makes sense.
Henderson is telling his story after the fact. He's returned from Africa and is back in the US. He has a voice in head that keeps saying, "I want! I want!" He isn't satisfied and he doesn't know what it will take to fill his yearning. He meets a guide named Ramilayu who serves a protector and voice of reason. Henderson comes into contact with two tribes from whom he learns about life and what he needs to live. There is a lot of philosophizing in the Henderson , I'm talking pages and pages worth. But it's not only readable, but it's enjoyable because the characters are interacting with each other and revealing a lot about themselves in the process. Dahfu, king of the Wariri, plays on Henderson's personality to trick him into becoming the Rain King. This intense relationship forms the basis for the second half of the book.

Rating 9/10: Loved it. Also, exploding frogs.

The Return of the Native

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Thomas Hardy, old reliable. Some pastoral England, a good love story, a realistic look at relationships and sex free of Victorian restraints and you've got a Hardy novel. All these are present in Native but it can't overcome one thing, this novel is frightfully boring. I'm talking stultifyingly, Math for Liberal Arts 101 at eight AM boring.

We're in Egdon Heath, a small town located in the desolate rolling hills of mythical Wessex. Sounds like a cool setting, right? Bonfires on hills, rolling fog, crazy storms, yeah, I can get down with that. The problem is nothing happens for the entire first half of the book. We meet some characters: the feckless Thomasin, conniving wishy washy Damon Wildeve, the nosy Diggory Vann, and the scheming Eustacia Vie. Eustacia is sort of intriguing, she wants out of Egdon, and is desperate for the bright lights of Paris. That's why when Clym, the Native of the title, returns from a lucrative job in France, she's all about meeting him and hitching her star to his ascending wagon. Keep in mind this is 200 pages into the book and we haven't even met Clym.

So we end up with Thomasin and Wildeve as a couple and Eustacia and Clym as a couple. It's obvious from the start of these relationships that Thomasin/Clym and Wildeve/Eustacia should be the matches. What follows is a series of farcical misunderstandings so ridiculous Georges Feydeau rejected them. Simple details are left out of conversations, meetings are missed by minutes, people infer things that are patently wrong, and then a bunch of people die. In a door slamming farcical comedy these misunderstandings are funny, in a tragedy it just seems kind of dumb and pointless.

Rating 3/10: Shouldn't be a classic. Too boring, not one likable, or really even interesting character.