Reviews for Dominica

The average rating for Dominica based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-26 00:00:00 Leslie Cagley I first finished Part I of Don Quixote fifty years ago, and, although I never got around to reading Part II, over the years I managed to convince myself that I had. I suspect this may be true of many other readers as well, for when people share their favorite parts of the story, they invariably mention the battles with windmills and wine skins, the inn courtyard vigil and the blanket toss, but hardly ever bring up Don Quixote's vision in the dark cavern, the manipulations of the Duke and Duchess, the wise decisions of Governor Sancho, or his master's fateful final battle with The Knight of the White Moon. Yet it is here, in the second part, that the world of “Quixote”—inspiring in its romance, sharp in its realism, magnificent in its variety—becomes surprisingly post-modernist and uniquely profound. From the first, Quixote is complex and subtle. It is never a crude contrast between a crack-brained pretender to knighthood and his slow-witted “squire”: Quixote is only crazy on the subject of knight errantry, and Sancho, although naïve and illiterate, is a shrewd man filled with proverbial wisdom (albeit often inaptly applied). In spite of misfortune, they are never mere comedians slipping on the banana peel of existence; every slapstick trouncing they receive offers them yet another opportunity for reflection (often while literally on their backs, smarting from their recent wounds), and it is these discussions, filled with plausible arguments and vast logical gaps, that generate much of the rich humor of the book. Like Didi and Gogo, they are existential clowns, striving to understand a baffling world at least as foolish as themselves. Reckless passion and a kind of rough chivalry pervade the novel's world of folly. The shepherds and goatherds may eat their simple meals around a crude campfire, yet they understand—and admire—pastoral poetry and the noble act of pining away for love. Each wandering wayfarer in the Quixote landscape seem eager to relate some lengthy tale of Romantic obsession and adventure. All this makes our Knight of the Woeful Countenance seem more like a variation than an exception, his devotion to exemplary deeds and his Dulcinea not so much a social aberration as a dedication to one bizarre strain of a still flourishing tradition. It is in the second part, however, that “Quixote” succeeds in surprising the reader. Cervantes published this sequel almost ten years later, spurred to do so by his outrage at the printing of an unauthorized continuation by an Aragonese called “Avellanada.” In Cervantes sequel, the knight and his squire soon learn that almost everyone they encounter on the road is familiar with their history, having read not only Cervantes but Avellanada as well. (Not surprisingly, the Don and Sancho condemn Avellanada as spurious nonsense.) These “readers,” upon encountering our heroes, freely share with them their own interpretations of the pair's adventures, and some of them—notably the Duke and Duchess—actively participate in the narrative by constructing elaborate pranks, the basis of even more marvelous deeds to come. These two things cause a contradictory movement in our characters' consciousness: they become at once more self-reflective and more deeply committed to their fantasies. By the novel's end, these reflections on the nature of the self and the nature of narrative have caused Sancho to become wiser and allowed the old Don to face his death clear-eyed, without his chivalric illusions. Something happens here which is almost astonishing: in “Quixote” we can sense the novel--not only this particular novel, but the novel considered as a form--becoming aware of itself. Cervantes' casual foray into meta-fiction—which may have started with his human impulse to ridicule the Aragonese thief who hijacked his narrative—becomes an endless quest for an Eldorado rich and strange. The novel seems to mature and become self reflective, newly aware of how consciousness constructs narrative, how narrative may in turn alter consciousness, and how such alterations may further refine the nature of narrative itself. The vast treasures of the quest now lie before us: the works of Fielding, Sterne, Dostoevsky, Proust, Joyce, Nabokov, and many others. Yes, what happens here is astonishing: in “Quixote” we overhear the soul of Western fiction at the moment it begins to talk to itself.

Review # 2 was written on 2014-06-15 00:00:00 Mcool Doc Book two of Don Quixote is even better than the first, largely due to the meta fiction element the author introduces in response to the unauthorised sequel written by another author published before his own was released. The ending is also genuinely moving. A book truly worthy of the ‘classic’ label’. My next book: The Avengers vol. 7: The Age of Khonshu