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We've all heard of the terrible suppression of abuse in the Catholic Church in recent times. All over the world, stories have spilled out about the abuse of children in the Catholic church, and a church hierarchy that failed to act in a way to stop the abuse. This book is about a similar abuse of power, but this time in the Anglican Church in New Zealand.
Deans applied to be ordained as a priest in the Anglican Church in 1982. A priest in this institution is (unlike a Catholic priest) entitled to be married and entitled to be female. As was normal practice, Deans was given a spiritual guide and mentor. This man was to become her abuser and the man she risked everything to expose. Deans was unfortunately not the only victim of this man, as she was to find out women had been assaulted and abused by him before and reported him, but to no avail. Deans and some of the other women made it their mission to make sure no more women got hurt and to make sure the Anglican Church took responsibility to make sure the same thing could not happen again.
This book is a daring one. The man involved is not named - although I believe he has since been outed. Deans aims to show the respect she feels for the church and in the same breath wishes to expose those who would give that church a bad name. This woman is obviously gutsy and to stand up to her abuser like this and to demand change shows a survivor attitude that resonates throughout the book. Deans writes exceptionally well and shows us the battle for recognition she faced, as well as how this battle affected her personal life.
This is a brilliant book about brave survivors taking into their hands a fight and a responsibility, which was to forever change the outlook of the Anglican Church in New Zealand. I would recommend it to all.
Janet Frame is one of my favourite authors of all time. It seems she was a modern-day Virginia Woolf. Her way with words is absolutely magical. This was her only book to be set in the United States. The main topic of this book is death. Dr Talbot Edelman, our narrator, is a post-graduate medical student working in New York and researching death. We learn early on that he does this because death has always been repressed in his family; people have died or been dying and have suddenly disappeared and been pushed out of the imagination. Talbot discovers, as we do by reading this book, that death has become a taboo and dying has become the most lonely place of all. He experiments on his dog, Sally, his most faithful companion who he breaks and puts back together, because he loves her and because he couldn't bare to harm anyone else.
Talbot comes to meet Turnlung, an old man who seems to resemble his dead grandfather. Talbot comes to befriend and research Turnlung, an author and a man who has moved to New York, not to live but to die. The existence of Turnlung's existence is quite questionable from his entrance into the story. We wonder if he exists or if he only exists for Talbot.
Above all this book is a critique of the way that Western civilisation deals with death - we brush it under the carpet, we don't talk about it for fear of being viewed as morbid, we ignore it and we brush past it in day-to-day life, it is inevitable but it is completely silent. Talbot's experience with death in his family sets him up for a life of wondering and researching the taboo of death and in his own way his world becomes mythical as he obtains custody of a buffalo in the zoo.
This is an amazing book and I take something new from it every time I read it.
I read this book for a class I am taking on sexuality this trimester. Pretty much the entire course is based around Foucault's conception of sexuality so although it's been a long time since I finished it (I am extremely behind on book reviews), I can remember the essence of his argument. Foucault's take on sexuality is in contrast to the one in vogue at the time - that is the repressive hypothesis, which expounded that 'natural' sexuality had been repressed and ignored by all levels of society, in particular the bourgeoisie. The social movements of the 1970s sprang out of this as an opposition to repression that was seen to be taking place. Foucault argues against this belief, indeed his argument is almost totally a social constructionist one. Rather than a repression of sexuality, Foucault saw quite the opposite; an explosion of discourse surrounding the topic of it, beginning in the Victorian age.
Foucault also puts forward in this volume that concept of bio-power. The juridical model of power assumes a hierarchy with those at the top of hierarchy as oppressing those beneath. Bio-power, by contrast involved a range of techniques aimed at controlling the body and populations. This power exists not just at the top, but rather is enabled at every level of society in what Foucault terms cycles of pleasure and power.
Foucault is the most cited social scientist ever. He has overtaken Marx, Freud and Weber in this accomplishment. He has become the beginning of a much larger move towards focusing on a constructed society and a less obvious model of power. There are many critiques people make of Foucault, many of them are fair critiques. I'm not writing for a journal so I'm not going to delve right into my criticisms of Foucault's novel.
I found this work surprisingly easy to read, after hearing people talk about his writing in the same words they talk about Max Weber's. It was a relief to be honest to be able to get through this book and actually understand what he was on about, which is often difficult with other authors. I would definitely be keen to read more Foucault, I just wish I wasn't so bogged down in assignments!
I am a pretty avid lover of the the few Dickens books I have read, but I have to be honest in saying that I wasn't the biggest fan of this one. The plot centred around the title character who spends much of his time gallivanting around the country saving children from cruel orphanages, acting in theatre extravaganzas, pitting himself against his self-possessed uncle and saving his sister from an unwanted marriage. I found Nicholas' character unconvincing from the beginning and the storyline was a bit too good versus evil for my taste. The female characters had no real strong role to play it seemed, but just served as damsels in distress, so that Nicholas could eventually swoop to their rescue.
There were some interesting characters who surpassed the clear divide described above though. Newman Noggs sides himself with Nicholas and his family, but works as a clerk for Nicholas' evil uncle Ralph. We learn that despite Noggs' good intention, his judgment is often clouded by his addiction to alcohol which fuels his erratic behaviour. John Browdie who starts off disliking Nicholas also has a role to play. He is unaccustomed to the learned nobleness of Nicholas and his contemporaries and in him the reader is able to find some comic relief and a believable character. The book's weaknesses though come through more strongly in the weak female characters, the hometown hero and the evil characters where evil seems to be only for the sake of more evil.
Of the works by Dickens that I have read, I would far more recommend Bleak House or Oliver Twist, both of which have a more realistic depiction of the social commentary that made Dickens' work so famous.
