THE STORY OF DON JUAN

TITLE: THE STORY OF DON JUAN

AUTHOR: ALESSANDRO BARICCO

Illustrated by Alessandro Maria Nacar

Pages: 91

Date: 23/10/2013

Grade: 5

Details: Part of the Save the Story Series

            Received from Pushkin

  Children’s Books through

  Nudge

Own

Don Juan, the man who loved women. Who loved all women and had to be with as many of them as he possibly could. Because Don Juan is also the man who is only afraid of being bored.

“Don Juan isn’t an imbecile, he’s just a man who loves women, and he loves them so much that it’s impossible for him to love one alone.”

The story starts with a man entering the bedroom of a beautiful young woman who is engaged to be married. Thinking the intruder is her fiancé, the woman allows the man to kiss her only to realise that he isn’t who she thought he was. When the intruder tries to leave the woman’s house he encounters her father, the Commendatore, who he kills in a sword-fight.

The same evening, Don Juan – because that is who the intruder was – encounters a woman he married in the past, only to leave her the very next day and learns that her brothers are looking for him, determined to restore their sister’s honour and kill him.

Next thing Don Juan knows he has the police, the brothers and their swordsmen as well as the ghost of the Commendatore out to kill him. Inviting all his adversaries to his house on the same night can never lead to a happy ending.

Don Juan is a tale about morals and asks a rather interesting and – as the book says in the epilogue – hard to answer question:

“Are we guilty when fulfilling our desires means others are hurt? Or are our desires always innocent, and is it our right to try and fulfil them?”

This is the third title in the “Save the Story” series I have read in recent days and I have to say this one impressed me as much as the previous two – “The Story of Gulliver” and “The story of Antigone” – did.

As I explained in those earlier reviews “Save the Story” is an initiative to ensure that great stories from the past are not forgotten through retelling them for a new generation of readers. The way in which this goal is achieved is rather clever. While nothing about the original story is lost, the retelling is done in such a way that the stories are truly accessible for younger, modern readers. In these books we find subtle hints to remind the young reader that the story is set in the past, such as:

“They went off like rockets – rockets didn’t exist at the time, of course, but just so you understand.”

And while these books are aimed at readers from age five upwards (although I do feel that readers that young would need to have the stories read to them), they do not talk down to the reader. Quite the opposite in fact. I love that these books serve a dual purpose; they introduce (young) readers to wonderful and time-defying stories which can be enjoyed in and of themselves as well as be used as a springboard for a discussion about important and even philosophical questions.  

I know I’ve said it before but I can’t help saying it again; these are gorgeous books. The quality of these editions is a lot better than you normally come across when reading books aimed at children. The books look and feel luxurious and with both beautiful fonts and wonderful illustrations – not to mention the classical stories – these books would be a proud addition to anyone’s bookshelf.

Alessandro Baricco is of course the author who first came up with the idea for this series. As far as I’m concerned that was a strike of genius. In these days when it can be a hard struggle to get children to abandon all the electronical temptations surrounding them in favour of a good book it can only be helpful to have books this attractive to help us tempt them.

THE STORY OF ANTIGONE

TITLE: THE STORY OF ANTIGONE

AUTHOR: ALI SMITH

              Illustrated by Laura Paoletti

Pages: 100

Date: 21/10/2013

Grade: 5

Details: Part of the Save the Story Series

             Received from Pushkin

             Children’s Books through

             Nudge

Own

In this retelling of Antigone’s story, originally written as a drama by Sophocles around 422 BC, Ali Smith takes the surprising and original decision of having a crow as the narrator. It is the crow who observes young Antigone while she decides to go and bury one of her brothers after a terrible battle which left both her brothers dead – one a hero and one deemed a traitor. The king of Thebes may have decided that his nephew Polynices was a traitor at the time of his death and as such doesn’t deserve a burial, twelve year old Antigone can’t bear to leave her brother’s body out in the open to be eaten by animals and slowly rot away. Fully aware that the penalty for honouring her brother’s remains will be her own death, Antigone still goes out of the city to find his body and bury it.

Antigone’s act of defiance doesn’t go unpunished but since this is a Greek tragedy in the truest sense of the word, it comes as no surprise that the King’s cruel treatment of young Antigone results in devastating consequences for him and his family. Because this is of course a story about power and those who would abuse it as much as it is a story about love and loyalty. Maybe Ali Smith explains it best when she explains her reasons for writing this story to the crow in the last chapter of this book:

“…that the story of Antigone, a story about a girl who wants to honour the body of her dead brother, and why she does, keeps being told suggests that we do need this story, that it might be one of the ways that we make life and death meaningful, that it might be a way to help us understand life and death, and that there’s something nourishing in it, even though it is full of terrible and difficult things, a very dark story full of sadness.”

Having the crow as the narrator of this story is a stroke of genius on Ali Smith’s part. The crow can describe the horrors of what happens to a body left in the open, without burial, in rather gruesome detail much easier than a human voice ever could. We expect some cruelty from animals like crows, and it will be much easier to accept the facts shared in this story – especially for young readers – when they come from this rather dispassionate point of view.

Like I said in my review of “The Story of Gulliver” these books are part of the “Save the Story” series which aims to bring classic stories to a new generation of readers because these stories should never be lost. All the stories in these books have a message to share; a message that was important at the time the story was written and has lost none of its importance in the years, decades or centuries that have passed since. These books give young readers the opportunity to become acquainted with important stories that have stood the test of time while at the same time giving them the opportunity to think about some big issues. And all of this is achieved without the books ever feeling preachy or educational.

This book is once again a work of beauty, and I am not only referring to the story. This is a high quality hardback with the words printed in a beautiful font in two different colours and accompanied by wonderful illustrations. This is the sort of book you will love to own, will be proud to have on your shelves and will want to keep even long after your young reader has moved on to other books and genres. In fact, even if you do not have a young reader in your life you could do a lot worse than getting the books in this series for yourself; especially if, like me, you’re only vaguely familiar at best with the classics being retold here.

THE STORY OF GULLIVER

TITLE: THE STORY OF GULLIVER

AUTHOR: JONATHAN COE

               Illustrated by Sara Oddi

Pages: 90

Date: 18/10/2013

Grade: 5

Details: Part of the Save the Story 
           Series

           Received from Pushkin 
           Children's Books through
           Nudge

Own

The Story of Gulliver is a modern retelling of Gulliver’s Travels and because most, if not all, of us are familiar with that story I won’t go into too much detail about those travels here.

No, in this review I want to sing the praises of a beautiful looking book, an inspired idea and a wonderful retelling.

First of, lets have a look at the book. This book, and the other titles in the “Save the Story” series are published in wonderful and very well made hard cover editions measuring about 20 by 25 cm (approximately 8” by 10” for those not thinking in metric measurements) with high quality paper, a wonderful lay-out, gorgeous illustrations and a beautiful font. These are books that were made to last, like the stories they retell are; books to be treasured and read time and again. In fact, when I requested this and two other titles in this series for review I had every intention of reading them, writing the reviews and then donating the copies to the library where I work. While I love books and have a hard time parting from them I don’t have an audience for juvenile fiction in my house anymore and donating them seemed a far better idea than trying to find a place on my already bulging shelves. Now that I’ve seen the books I’m not so sure I’ll be able hand them over though. Books this beautiful are rare and I’ve got a feeling that those shelves will just have to accommodate them.

As for the idea behind the Save the Story series, I think I love that even more than I do the appearance of these books. As it says on the books:

“Save the Story is a mission in book form: saving great stories from oblivion by retelling them for a new, younger generation.”

The idea for this series sprang from Alessandro Baricco’s mind working in close collaboration with Scuola Holden in Turin; a school dedicated to the art of storytelling in all its wonderful forms. The stories in this series cover a wide range of cultures (from ancient Greece to nineteenth century Russia), times and genres, offering young readers a wonderful opportunity to get acquainted with the wealth of fiction available to them in a language and style that will appeal to them.

As far as the “Story of Gulliver” is concerned, I don’t think there is any need for me to go into all the details since everybody will be familiar with it. And it is all here. We join Gulliver as he finds himself visiting Lilliput, Brobdingnag, the Flying Island and the land inhabited by Houyhnhnms (intelligent horses) and Yahoos (primitive human like creatures). And with Gulliver we discover that although we may think that as humans we are advanced, intelligent and good we do actually have sides to our culture that are nothing to be proud of. With Gulliver being forced to re-think everything he thought was wonderful about being human, the (young) reader is softly pushed into critical thinking as well, without the story ever becoming preachy.

The book ends on a short chapter about Jonathan Swift and his reasons for writing this book back in 1726. Since Swift wrote this book “in order to vex the world rather than divert it”, I imagine he would be delighted that this modern version of his classic will make a whole new generation think about the world and society they live in.

And finally, as far as that “whole new generation” is concerned; I’ve been trying to put an appropriate age-group to this book and series and have come to the following conclusion. I feel this book would be perfectly suited for children from about the age of five – provided it is being read to them – to about twelve. However, neither the way in which this story is told nor the contents of it has been simplified to such an extent that older readers, including adults, won’t get a wonderful reading experience out of it.

“Save the Story” is an inspired idea that has led to memorable stories being kept alive in gorgeous books written by talented and well known authors. I, for one, am more than impressed.

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

TITLE: PRIDE AND PREJUDICE

AUTHOR: JANE AUSTEN

Pages: 253

Date: 28/03/2013

Grade: 4

Details: Book Club Selection

             Kindle

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The Blurb:

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

When Elizabeth Bennet first meets eligible bachelor Fitzwilliam Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited, while he struggles to remain indifferent to her good looks and lively mind. When she later discovers that Darcy has involved himself in the troubled relationship between his friend Bingley and her beloved sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy of manners that follows, Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and superbly evokes the friendships, gossip and snobberies of provincial middle-class life.

It is very hard to write something original about a story that is ‘universally’ this well known. I mean there can’t be many people in the world who haven’t read the book or seen one of the many movies and TV-shows that have been based on this story. I know that I can never think of Darcy with imagining Colin Firth with his wet shirt plastered to his chest. And that brings me to my first issue with this book, which isn’t book related at all if I’m honest. I discovered that I really don’t like reading a book (for the first time I should add) when I’m already completely aware of the story in it. What is more, I don’t like having other people’s ideas of what the characters look like in my head before I have had a chance to form my own. With this book, unfortunately, that was unavoidable and I know it influenced my enjoyment of the story.

On the other hand, I did enjoy reading Pride and Prejudice. I liked the insight it gave into life at the turn of the 19^th century. I loved having a closer look at how the middle and upper classes lived and interacted. The descriptions of the interactions between those of different standing were as fascinating as it was unimaginable to this modern mind.

The way the title is reflected in the two main characters – with Darcy’s Pride running head first into Elizabeth’s Prejudice – was a joy to read and maybe not as specific to the time the story is set in as I would like to think.

And that brings me to my next observation. It is astonishing to think how little romance novels have changed over the past 200 years. In this book we find all the elements we would expect in modern novels: the misunderstandings, the dastardly villain, the broody and seemingly distant hero, the quirky and spirited heroine, the nice girl and the vixen they all make an appearance and play their role in the story. In fact, were this a modern romance I would call it predictable and uninspired so well does it cover every possible plot device. Remembering when this book was actually written I will call it clever.

Another thing that fascinated me was the social commentary Jane Austen provides in this story. The snobbery of the middle classes, the contempt of those in the higher classes for those they perceive as being less than them, and the importance of money when it comes to being able to marry someone made this story historically significant as well as an enjoyable read.

What I really appreciated in this book is the way in which Jane Austin allowed her heroine, Elizabeth Bennett, to find her own way and come to her own conclusions in a time when women were rarely alone long enough to think, never mind act, for themselves. As Colm Tóibín says in his book ‘New Ways to Kill Your Mother’ this is achieved by separating Lizzie from the family members who might influence her at crucial times in the story.

“Power instead is handed directly to the heroine and this power arises from the quality of her own intelligence. It is her own ability to be alone, to move alone, to be seen alone, to come to conclusions alone, that sets her apart.”

I also have to admit that after reading this book I’ve come to a new appreciation of P.D. James’ ‘DeathComes to Pemberley’. I’ve read enough reviews by others to realize that many readers disagree with me on this, but I find that her story gives a rather satisfying sequel to Pride and Prejudice. I may have to read that book again at some point now that I’m more intimately acquainted with all the main characters and back-stories.

Overall I have to say that this was a pleasant reading experience that I would probably have enjoyed more if I had not been as intimately aware of the story as I was.