Reading between the lines

Took a break from reading for a while and got back to it with this classic. A few of the parts need historical references and I'll need to do some reading in history in parallel. Although we hold that it was not for a political function that God created Monseigneur Bienvenu, we could have understood and admired a protest in the name of right and liberty, a fierce opposition, a perilous and just resistance to Napolean when he was all-powerful. But what is pleasing to us towards those who are rising, is less pleasing towards those who are falling. We do not admire the combat when there is no danger; and in any case the combatants of the first hour have alone the right to be the exterminators in the last. He has not been a determined accuser during prosperity, ought to hold his peace in the presence of adversity. He only who denounces the successes at one time had the right to proclaim the justice of the downfall. As for ourselves, when providence intervened and struck the blow, we ...

The last part of the trilogy starting with "Berlin Game" and continuing with "Mexico Set", this book is in some sense an anti-climax. The spy story brings out a whole host of emotions that are so well told and thats what I like most about Len Deighton. The main character Bernard Samson (the book is written with him in the first person) grew up in divided Berlin soon after WWII with his father being a colonel in the British army. Some of the incidents about the English boy growing up in post-war Germany are incredibly touching. At the present time, Samson is near 50 years old and with British intelligence posted in London and specializes in German issues and their connectivity with Soviet Russia. He is in Berlin for an assignment and meets a German police officer over a case. The police officer remembers that Samson was with him in the same German school where there was a "crazy English colonel" who used to teach them football but couldn't kick the ba...

I never found Saul Bellow's books gripping but his choice of characters and plots make me read his books. "The Victim" starts off in a rather mundane manner with a typical middle-class youngish man in a not too exciting job and family relations more or less a mess. But the manner in which Bellow describes each facet of his life and puts them under the scanner is simply superb. The main character is Asa Levanthal who works in a publishing firm. "A man brought up on hardships should have known better than to cut himself adrift". This comes after Levanthal overcomes his early struggles to enter the civil service. When in the civil service, he finds life improving, enjoys the company of friends and meets Mary and becomes engaged to her. Its almost as if Levanthal takes this change from granted but fails to appreciate this new life. Maybe he just assumes that things will continue that way and good times are not something to constantly fight for. On hearing about Ma...