July: The Drowned World (3)

Although I did finish, the book, I must say that I wasn't particularly grabbed by it. I found the plot to be difficult to follow at times. I am not sure why - maybe I was just distracted by other things while reading, but I also think that the writing style was a bit clumsy. I think at times, I was also just not all that interested in the characters, and so that there was not a strong incentive for me to want to read on to find out what happened to them.

Part of the problem may also have been that I think I was expecting that the plot would be different. I was hoping that it might be set in a period of time that was probably about 50 years prior to when the story took place. I wanted to read about how people were coping with the rising temperatures, the melting of the polar ice caps, and a world that was tropical. I wanted to know if they felt any guilt towards the climate change, whether they felt they were responsible or not. However, they seemed to be past that point, and had accepted their tropical environment or at least to a level at which they were (physically) coping. Having said that, the book was showing how people cope with change, but more in the sense of they themselves reverting to primal instincts, which was actually quite interesting.

Before Allyson sent her message, I had also thought that the book was quite similar in subject to that of 'Lord of the Flies', showing the breakdown of society. However, because the social interactions in 'The Drowned World' were tenuous to begin with, the demise of society in this book had less of an impact on me that it did in 'Lord of the Flies'. Overall, I thought that there were a lot of interesting ideas that never seemed to be fully developed. In particular, I had also thought that there would be more development of the vivid dreams that Kerans and Miss Dahl experienced - they seemed to become a secondary issue, unless of course, the dreams became reality...