OH MY GOD

Enough answers; a loophole that, although justifiable, I resent; an epilogue I resent all the more. But, to appropriate that disgusting adage, I am sad because it's over but happy that it happened. Massive love.

This was, of course, pre-Hallows revision. I started it expecting to be unmoved but then realising as it went on that, however much JayKay's cramming of details made it more of a recital than a novel, I care about the characters so much it doesn't matter in the slightest. I finished it extremely excited.

For God's sake, Emma: appropriating poetry that will always be better than your own does not make you a good author. Your fraudulence, in fact, is even more obvious than Sylvia Plath's meglomania. Get out of my house, slash just use your own frickin' words in the future, because some of the turns of phrase that were actually yours were kind of pretty (when they weren't being gushing or intrusive, that is). I suspect I only even gave this book a two because I am so interested in its subject matter - what a myth are Ted and Sylvia.

You, Milan Kundera, are a fucking charlatan. You talk down rather than out and tell us all you are a prophet. You thrust self-pity in our faces and expect us to identify with it and be moved. You want to be admired for your pop-philosophy, for your epiphany-per-page - too bad some of us have done the A-level and are fully aware that you are so heinous as to use ideas for the sole purpose of self-inflation. I’m afraid not all of us are as stupid as you expect; not all of us wish to be ushered into a world so bland it categorically cannot contain the wonder you seem to imagine you reek of. Readability does not a good book make. Your characters bore me. You disgust me.

Yours sincerely,

Liz

Well, sure it was funny, and I enjoyed the metaphysical timey-wimey elements, but it was no Myra, and smacked of being written solely to self-congratulate. Poor, Gore.

This book and I have a long and sordid history. This was my third attempt at reading it; the first two, for reasons I found even at the time of abandonment to be completely inexplicable, I could not continue past a certain point. Having completed it, I think the issue was that I hadn't grown to love the characters or care about the story yet ... it is true that it takes some time for that to happen. But when it does, it's massive. I love Tarrou and Rieux fiercely. Grand delights me. I even care about Cottard.

But most of all I love Camus. I love the man who weaves philosophy into literature and creates something that is as intensely urgent now as it was after the Second World War. I love the man who expresses my opinions more completely than I ever found them to be in my mind, and taught me something about myself and those around me, and maintains in spite of everything the belief that men are more often admirable than disgusting: I need to be told that. I do not always agree with him; I think his treatment of Father Paneloux was distinctly Amber Spyglass, and that it undermined his entire ethos: his death was far more the needless destruction of a valuable creature than a triumph over religion. But we can discuss that later when I die and go to the great library in the sky.

Largely pointless. If only I'd read this when I was thirteen - Sylvia's blundering self-obsession would have been so matched by my own that I wouldn't have noticed it. As it was, I felt as though I'd read all of this several times. In fact, I probably had, since I'm well-acquainted with a very thorough Plath biography and she barely even bothered to put veils over the fact that she was writing exclusively about herself (I suppose that would have made it a millimetre less shallow. Can't be having that). What was it she was described as by her peers at Cambridge? Shallow and brittle, false, dull. The book really is her.

This was another dream. It completely mesmerised me; so unsettling, such imagery. And good for fun, too: it's surprisingly hilarious to scream 'the horror! The horror!' at patently unhorrifying (or just slightly upsetting) things with my parents.

This blew me away, but I remain very baffled by the sudden turn at the end. It's been a very long time since I've had such a crush on a fictional character, but Myra's return to Myron kind of threw that all back in my face. The edition I have contains the sequel, Myron; I plan to read it soon, but I don't know how soon. I think I need a little while to mull this over.

Otherwise, Gore Vidal has made it into my list of top whatever people in the world. This was so bright, so funny, so alive, so visceral and, crucially, very, very interesting. Go Gore.

Much as I abhor rule 6, this is actually going really well.