On our second day at the Machu Picchu site, we hiked Huayna Picchu.

The hike was steep and the altitude made it more difficult but we moved at a pretty good clip. The path wasn’t straight vertical, and there were more than a few valleys.  At times it was difficult to see much, and at other times the brush would break and the view back to Machu Picchu would clear.

At the summit we went through the small passage that allows entry to the highest point of the peak that overlooks Machu Picchu, and had one of the best views I’ve ever seen.

When on the grounds of Machu Picchu it’s somewhat difficult to get a sense of the scale, and while it feels expansive it’s not possible to get a sense of just how unbelievable it is by modern standards.  The palatial grounds, the isolation, the terraced land, the sheer cliff drops surrounding it seem fantastical.  The surrounding areas aren’t completely excavated and it’s impossible to know the condition of the surrounding land in the time the grounds were used but there is a clear sense that this land and this location were used spectacularly.

After taking in the sites and taking in the requisite photos we hiked down the back of the mountain.  The mountain here was extremely steep, but we were rewarded with uncrowded trails and more breathtaking scenery.  After seeing some more ruins on the back of the mountain we logged back out of the site, and wandered around Machu Picchu a little more before catching our train back to the hills of Cuzco.

Polyp is ‘paper architect’ who has reached academic acclaim on a large number of unrealized buildings.  His ego, though, is fully realized.  He believes his accomplishments are beyond dispute, and he acts like it.  He’s minimalist, and Mazzucchelli emphasizes this in his drawings and the blues with which he illustrates Polyp.  He enters into a relationship with Hana, who is his polar opposite, a sculptor who works with found objects, and whose ego is underdeveloped for her talent.  She is warm and emotional, and Mazzuchelli’s drawings with soft lines and red tones support this.

The book isn’t linear, and the relationship between Polyp and Hana is only shown in retrospect for the majority of the novel.  The book is set after Asterio and Hana’s divorce, and Asterio is living out of the academic world in middle America where he’s reinvented himself as a meddling mechanic, living with the boss and his wife, who believes she’s a mystic of some sort.  This segment of the book is rendered in yellow, and it’s a nice contrast to the competing blues and reds of Polyp and Hana’s relationship.

Like any great novel, the plot isn’t necessarily unique but it does explore the relationships between individuals in a way that is uncommon.  Because it’s a graphic novel, there is little need for exposition outside of dialogue, and Mazzuchelli uses his drawings to highlight the difference between Polyp and Hana, and even between Polyp pre- and post-divorce.  By taking the protagonist out of his element so forcefully, and it is forceful, the author allows himself to really explore, and soften, Polyp.  I’ve never seen color used in this way, and making this book in black and white would make it lose a lot of its appeal.  Only in the end do we find a fully colored world, and it’s clear that both Asterios and Hana have changed significantly enough that the previous emphasized perspectives have been overcome by both characters.

The Orpheus theme that pulls Asterios and Hana apart and brings them back together is really nice.  Hana’s work on a production of Orpheus leads to their divorce, and Asterios makes the journey through what must be his version of hell to find her again.  His journey, though, is as much one of self-discovery as it is to find a lost love.  The ending, however, is just as tragic.  I wanted to find it metaphorical, but Mazzucchelli makes it very clear that it’s a literal ending.  It’s heartbreaking, but wonderful.

When I think of graphic novels, I don’t usually think of silence.  I imagine exposition where I am told what to think, what to look at, and with little room for ambiguity.  This book, though, is full of voids, which makes it wonderful.  The drawings don’t overpower the dialogue, or vice-versa, and the sections that focus on one or the other move the plot forward because they’re exploring the back stories of the main characters.  There aren’t major sections where Mazzucchelli doesn’t use both his writing and drawings to bring the two closer together or push them apart.

This review hasn’t done the book justice, but I find that my lack of knowledge on the format makes it hard for me to talk about it with any sense of direction.  I’ve already opened select passages of the book numerous times, and it’s not just because my book stockpile is low right now.  This novel is fantastic.

I took a day train from Vienna to Budapest, and met two girls on board who were studying on an exchange program from the Seven Sisters universities in California in Rome.  Since I was traveling alone and there were only two of them, we decided to travel together.  None of us had exact plans, and we cemented an itinerary over a game of cards on the train.

After visiting the Royal Palace, we stopped by a grocery store outside St. Matthias for lunch.  It was a wonderfully unassuming but filling lunch eaten on a student’s budget from paper bags on park benches.  This structure surrounded the church and I enjoyed it more than the interior of the church because by this point of the trip I was already growing tired of looking at marble statues, and being pushed by old women on tour groups who clearly didn’t think I was holy enough to be in the same church as them.  Perhaps they could sense what I was thinking about them, because then they may have been right.  Anyways, to wander up and down the stone structure and see the more modern Pest through these tiny windows was peaceful.  It felt almost like looking into the future (I should have asked the mean women from the church if that’s what it was like – they were old enough to know), and it was unlike anything I’d seen previously.  It was an easy day, and this was the highlight.

The three of us spent the rest of the day together but split up on our second day in the city.  They moved too slowly for me, and I’m sure I was too hyperactive for them.  Sometimes, a one-day acquaintance is long enough.

Grossman’s protagonist Quentin Coldwater thinks he is an underappreciated genius and has the sullen attitude of one.  He hides from others in the imaginary world of Fillory (read: Narnia) and is convinced that if life were really like it was in the Fillory books, he would be content.  So, of course, he finds himself admitted to a magical school called Brakebills (read: Hogwarts) where he believes he’s been given the chance to live that life.  Once Grossman has established this framework and makes sure you know that he knows that you know he’s riffing on your favorite childhood magical novel he begins to have fun.

Quentin’s alliterative name and magical abilities don’t make his life any easier.  He doesn’t understand Brakebills, and he still struggles for self-assurance and a sense of purpose.  While he is talented – Grossman hasn’t wandered that far off the archetypal tale – things don’t fall into place.  He can’t get the girl, Alice (not Lewis Carroll’s – she’s too sharp for those books), being a magician is hard, and he can’t figure out what it all means.  He makes his way through school only to enter adulthood with nothing but magic to entertain himself.  It’s more valuable than a liberal arts degree, because it comes with the ability to manipulate the world in ways other can’t, but it doesn’t give him purpose.  His abilities isolate him from the real world, and he wastes time with his other aimless magical friends in drugs and drink.

Luckily for Quentin, his frenemy Penny finds a way to make the magical quest real, and Quentin and his ragtag group of aimless wizards suddenly have purpose.  They go to Fillory itself, which turns out to be real, for a quest.  Throughout the novel Grossman drops threads of Fillory, and its’ creators back story, so jumping into the frame he’s created is a lot of fun.  Needless to say, Quentin doesn’t find happiness here, either.  Rather, being confronted with his dream and finding it less than satisfactory makes him even more sullen.  There is a wonderfully dynamic quest in Fillory, evil speeches of the antagonist and all, but Quentin leaves with less than which he came.

This, it seems, has been Grossman’s message all along.  There is no magic pill to make things better, not even if you have magic.  Life is still messy, humans are still humans, and nothing could change that but your attitude towards what you’re doing.  Quentin never really grasps this, but if he did than Grossman’s riff on children’s lit wouldn’t work.  Grossman’s world is dependent on grit, dirt, and disillusionment.  It’s a beautiful world, but there are no easy endings.

It’s a fine message, and it’s fun to watch the characters get there because Grossman creates some very nice imagery to make the ride smoother.  The semester abroad at Brakebills is worth the price of the book alone, and the trip to Fillory is everything it couldn’t be in a book that editors/authors wanted targeted to children.  It’s a very original world, and the few flaws in Grossman’s story had more to do with things that happen out of frame to move the plot forward, and don’t detract from the world he has built.

The dialogue is crisp, and the characters are realistic.  Their hubris and rivalries help pull the book forward because in Grossman’s world magic is just a distraction for human interaction, the most magical and unexplainable phenomenon of them all.  And in the end, Grossman shows why that’s the way things have to be.

Dial is constantly comparing herself to her friends and the other artists she knows, defining her idea of the artistic temperament off of what her peer group has/has not achieved to try to find the will to create her own work.  When the book ends, Peale leaves open whether or not Dial’s methods and choices will result in a successful professional career (which is the undercurrent of success that nearly all of the artists described in the book use as a barometer of artistic success and maybe ability), but it’s clear that she has at least moved Dial closer to where she wants to be.  This becomes a major accomplishment, and if nothing else it’s clear Dial is comfortable where she is in the end, something she rarely appears to be until the last twenty pages.

Peale seems to use Dial’s sex life to examine Dial’s self-worth, and if this is Peale’s goal it’s effective.  The first-person narrative allows Dial to examine her relationship with her friends bluntly and honestly, but her sexual adventures with two major artists become a divining rod for her opinion of herself.  While the two men may be too archetypal for some readers, it’s one area that Peale uses to really let Dial have, or lose, control over herself.  Dial’s control over her body is an indicator of her ability to create art, and Dial speaks of it this way throughout the novel.

Lastly, this book was, I think, unfairly grouped in with novels like The Nanny Diaries or The Devil Wears Prada by the New York Times.  It has nothing to do with those books, which deal much more with the industry and the absurdity of other characters surrounding the protagonists.  This book is about Emma Dial; it is not about the art industry.  Thankfully.

This Scottish Highland cow was penned across the street from a bed and breakfast just outside of Inverness.  While he looks quite possessed, he’s really just reaching for the green grass on the other side of the fence.  He and his brethren were a welcome site around Scotland.  Placid tempers and wild manes.

Word of advice? If the afterword by Forster is included, skip it.

Review:  This book was chosen from a list of recommended fiction, and I would happily take back the time it took to read it.  I finished it out of spite, and if I would have picked it up in a bookstore instead of ordering it over the internet it would never have made it to the cashier.

The book begins in Beirut during the civil war, but the characters are so undefined that the story could be about two teens in any city who get into trouble.  The teens lack guidance and morals, and the author tries to make the connection that this is unique to wartime.  He uses the war as an excuse for immoral behavior but doesn’t give the characters enough depth to make even this understandable.  The author mentions The Stranger later in the novel in what seems to be an attempt to draw a parallel between his work and the existentialists.  While Hassam, the protagonist, may have something in common with the French prisoner (and perhaps he’s also trying to juxtapose the protagonist with the Frenchman, the Lebanese colonizer) but this falls flat and becomes laughable.  A stronger parallel would be that the author admired Bret Easton Ellis’s style and the hopelessness of his characters and the immorality of their actions.  Of course, Ellis writes of privilege and lack of morals, which contradicts the author’s premise that it’s war that leads people to act in this way.  And Ellis focuses on characterization.  There is none here.

The prose is sparse, incomplete, and tries to speak through its silence.  Unfortunately, the constant change of situation and inability to focus on character interactions makes this useless.  Instead, the author leaves plotlines by the side and simply moves forward.  The author moves quickly through situations that require explanation and finesse to made the reader understand why it is important to the story.  Instead, too many characters are introduced that serve indistinct and unclear purposes.

It could be argued that the point is exactly that.  This poor protagonist is overwhelmed by those around him and the situations in which he is involved.  That’s fine, if that were the case.  The protagonist doesn’t come to these realizations, and the author doesn’t help through his prose.  There are long descriptive passages, but none that compliment the isolation or out-of-place-ness of this character.  He’s simply a vehicle for the author to load on more and more unrelated plot points?  Lack of family?  Check.  Lack of religious conviction? Check.  Paris, the indomitable cultural powerhouse against bombs falling in Beirut?  Check.  The mossad?  Check.  Yes, the mossad.  Mentioned once, without explanation by a character constantly on the periphery, and then dropped as abruptly.  At this point I nearly tossed the book across the room.  There is too much without any character development or explanation for the lack thereof.

To add insult, the book ends with a glossary of terms.  If you need a glossary of terms at the end of the book you either added terms superfluously to make your book ethnic, wanted your book to be thought of as ethnic, or didn’t integrate the words that supposedly make your book ethnic into your plot and characterization.  Actually, here, I think all three apply.