What makes good literature?

I have been pondering this question for the last few weeks and still have no answer.  I remember starting the Da Vinci Code and not being able to get passed the second page as I just found the writing so dire.  I certainly know bad literature when I read it!


I am currently reading a Man Booker Prize short listed novel and I can not stop mulling it over in my mind.  There is absolutely no doubt the author is an artist with words.  The vivid descriptions, particularly of unpleasant smells, are phenomenal and make me gasp.  Boy, can she write!


However, the writing also contains oddities that have me confused.  The odd (non) sentence added in which doesn't flow with the rest of the novel...yet I'm sure there is a reason for this considering the control the author has in other parts.  Are they thoughts thrown in by the now older narrator? After thoughts?


On top of this, there are significant changes in the style of writing at different points of the book.  One section is particularly slow going and slightly laborious.  Normally I would think that this would mean I couldn't class it in my idea of good literature.  But, and this is where I am rethinking...the style always completely reflects the setting and scene.  So for example, in the section I just mentioned, the characters are on a long, slow, laborious journey by ship.  Has the author then, consciously shaped the style of writing to reflect what is happening to the characters and instil in the reader an appreciation of the characters' feelings?  Is she placing me directly in the shoes of her character? In which case, it must surely be classed as an example of great literature.  It certainly works when we feel a character's joy and pain but does conveying laboriousness and a sense of time moving slowly push a reader to far?


I am made to think yet again with the graphic description of an act that, we, in our twenty first century, comfy cultural westernised world, find unacceptable and immoral.  However, the author has NOT set her book in the current day but in the historical past, most likely the Victorian era (judged from the strong Dickensian feel).


I know that some readers have found this scene upsetting and have been critical in their reviews of the detailed description and its graphic nature.  However, as uncomfortable as I was reading it, I could only appreciate it for the realistic depiction of the scene and for the author not pandering to this century's expectations and instead remaining in the time frame of which her novel was set.  Surely she deserves only praise for this consistency?  It certainly can not be easy to cast off the conditioning of our own cultural upbringing to write a novel based on another!


Anyone who has read the book, may well guess what it is but I have chosen not to reveal the title yet as I have yet to finish it.  Once I have, I will write a full review.  By this time I hope to have decided on where I would place this novel.  For now I am left questioning every time I pick it up and read a few pages.


Surely an excellent novel should make us question our judgements and make us think? Or should an author leave us in no doubt as to their excellence?

Appreciation of Reading

Well who would have guessed it? As soon as the half term was over, it was full on again with the teaching role and this blog lay neglected, tucked in a corner of my mind, desperately trying to battle its way forward but weighed down under lesson planning and marking. Before anyone wants to say anything about the holidays that teachers get, I still worked everyday, I just had a bit of time in the evening to do something for me.  Easter is already looking very full of marking.  Typically I get 5-6 hours sleep a night and still am not on top of anything in the job or my home and feel I am always neglecting my own two children.

Quite frankly, I found myself feeling incredibly resentful that I was left with no time for my reading and could not  go to the book club I was going to join as I had not been able to read the book.  This meant I missed out on meeting the author and having those nagging questions answered.

I then read a quote about appreciating the gift of reading; it asked you to imagine life without it.  This made me think and think hard. I suddenly realised how much I am still reading.  I still read to both my children even though the eldest is 11 and a very competent reader.  We are reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy a few pages at a time and I am often taken aback by the descriptions it contains.  Utter poetical beauty.  I am also reading yet another Jacqueline Wilson number with my 8 year old daughter (this is the third on the trot by the same author!).


On top of this, I am teaching Of Mice and Men and A View from the Bridge, have just finished teaching Lord of the Flies, am reading Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde with another class and will shortly be reading another novel as yet undecided with a Year 7 class.  They may not be my choices and are mostly literature I have read time and time again but I should recognise this privilege.


My own daughter struggles with reading as does the occasional high school student and I see how difficult life can be for them.  I must be more appreciative of those special times I get to read to others and of the precious minutes I have for my own reading, even if I tend to fall asleep exhausted after only a few lines!