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richardms1967's review against another edition
5.0
A wonderful debut from Lee Rourke. This is a novel of its time, a novel of today and the Britain of now. Yes, it's about boredom and the effect of boredom on the individual, but it's about so much more. It shows the brutality of Britain today, the blank soul at the heart of the nation and the stultifying effects of capitalism spun out of control.
It will probably take a couple more reads to fully understand what the author has achieved here, there's such a great depth in what he's written.
I'll also be interested to look back in five years' time to see how this book sits amongst other UK fiction. I'm sure it'll be viewed as a shining light for great, intelligent writing.
Very definitely recommended (and while you're about it, treat yourself to his collection of short stories - Everyday)
It will probably take a couple more reads to fully understand what the author has achieved here, there's such a great depth in what he's written.
I'll also be interested to look back in five years' time to see how this book sits amongst other UK fiction. I'm sure it'll be viewed as a shining light for great, intelligent writing.
Very definitely recommended (and while you're about it, treat yourself to his collection of short stories - Everyday)
jmbg's review against another edition
2.0
A book about a confrontation between man and the rather recent phenomenon of boredom.
Lee Rourke sculpts a logical connection between the roles that technology, violence, and boredom play in a 'modern context'—environmentalism, gangs, mobile phones, helvetica, terrorism, and Pong are mentioned. He constructs the plot as a series of reference points to myths, indefinite memories, and existentialist authors, and then brings the work together with perfectly executed dialogue.
The narrator aims to embrace boredom, but in sitting on a bench at a canal each day, he ultimately flees from the void that Rourke confronts him with. The Canal ends nebulously, death brings not sorrow, but rather a sense of doubt about what is 'real'.
Lee Rourke sculpts a logical connection between the roles that technology, violence, and boredom play in a 'modern context'—environmentalism, gangs, mobile phones, helvetica, terrorism, and Pong are mentioned. He constructs the plot as a series of reference points to myths, indefinite memories, and existentialist authors, and then brings the work together with perfectly executed dialogue.
The narrator aims to embrace boredom, but in sitting on a bench at a canal each day, he ultimately flees from the void that Rourke confronts him with. The Canal ends nebulously, death brings not sorrow, but rather a sense of doubt about what is 'real'.
ominousevent's review against another edition
3.0
A short literary novel about boredom promised to be very boring indeed. Oddly enough, The Canal is quite absorbing until things start to happen.
While we never really get a handle on why our narrator is so bored, or why he chooses to indulge his boredom by sitting on a bench and looking at a canal, his idle thoughts and triggered memories are vividly described, so that we don't really need to seek a deeper understanding.
However, his interactions with "the woman" (and, to a lesser extent, a gang of youths) are unsatisfying. The most frustrating dialogue I've read in some time leads to a loss of momentum that Rourke never really recovers from, and the sheer implausibility of the woman's experiences and opinions suggest that it's just as well the narrator isn't explained in any more detail.
While we never really get a handle on why our narrator is so bored, or why he chooses to indulge his boredom by sitting on a bench and looking at a canal, his idle thoughts and triggered memories are vividly described, so that we don't really need to seek a deeper understanding.
However, his interactions with "the woman" (and, to a lesser extent, a gang of youths) are unsatisfying. The most frustrating dialogue I've read in some time leads to a loss of momentum that Rourke never really recovers from, and the sheer implausibility of the woman's experiences and opinions suggest that it's just as well the narrator isn't explained in any more detail.
shimmer's review against another edition
5.0
The unnamed narrator of The Canal sets out to embrace boredom, saying, "It is the power of everyday boredom that compells people to do things -- even if that something is nothing." That tension between boredom as drive to action and boredom as stasis was the core of the novel for me, because as the narrator tries to repeat his (in)actions each day -- sitting on the same bench by the same stretch of canal, with the same woman and watching the same swans and office workers -- he struggles against changes internal and external alike. There's a recurring focus on transportation, from the airplanes he is a knowledgeable enthusiast of, to the canal itself, to cars and buses and even walking. And all of those, in one way or another, become destructive -- whether on the large scale like 9/11, or more localized acts of violence. The narrator embraces boredom and aims for stasis, but he also says, " And as our world becomes increasingly boring, as the future progresses into a quagmire of nothingness, our world will becoming increasingly more violent. It is an impulse that controls us. It is an impulse we cannot ignore." Violence is the inevitable outcome of ANY action, even the action of inaction, and all progress and change are creeping toward destruction in time. On the other hand, DENYING boredom leads one to "superfluous activity," eventually violent, so we're damned if we do and damned if we don't. The best hope is an infinite recursion of inactivity and self-extraction, such as the narrator tries to create by sitting at the canal, but unlike the static loop he manages to create in a game of Pong (probably my favorite passage of the novel), actual stasis isn't easy to come by.
I wondered, while reading, what a truly "static" novel would feel like, how dull it might be, and what kind of action it might lead me to as a reader. Because The Canal itself ISN'T boring, ratcheting up its sparse plot and raising the stakes as the story proceeds. Maybe a story arisen from boredom cannot succeed if it is actually the enactment of boredom. Yet I was always aware that by the novel's logic some destruction is necessitated by the actions of writing and reading -- a violence against the "real" world, perhaps, committed by stripping away its trappings to create something so tidy and constrained as a novel. It never let me forget that it was constructed, not something natural, because of its nameless, mostly veiled characters (eventually represented by empty, underlined spaces where names are conspicuously absent). As readers, we demand forward momentum and the familiar trappings of drama even from a novel about avoiding them, and the tension of being suspended in such a contradiction pushes us to ask new questions and reach new ideas. Like an infinite recursion of Pong which isn't quite a "game" any longer, and is waiting for us to find a new word.
I wondered, while reading, what a truly "static" novel would feel like, how dull it might be, and what kind of action it might lead me to as a reader. Because The Canal itself ISN'T boring, ratcheting up its sparse plot and raising the stakes as the story proceeds. Maybe a story arisen from boredom cannot succeed if it is actually the enactment of boredom. Yet I was always aware that by the novel's logic some destruction is necessitated by the actions of writing and reading -- a violence against the "real" world, perhaps, committed by stripping away its trappings to create something so tidy and constrained as a novel. It never let me forget that it was constructed, not something natural, because of its nameless, mostly veiled characters (eventually represented by empty, underlined spaces where names are conspicuously absent). As readers, we demand forward momentum and the familiar trappings of drama even from a novel about avoiding them, and the tension of being suspended in such a contradiction pushes us to ask new questions and reach new ideas. Like an infinite recursion of Pong which isn't quite a "game" any longer, and is waiting for us to find a new word.
verycarefully's review
3.0
A short literary novel about boredom promised to be very boring indeed. Oddly enough, The Canal is quite absorbing until things start to happen.
While we never really get a handle on why our narrator is so bored, or why he chooses to indulge his boredom by sitting on a bench and looking at a canal, his idle thoughts and triggered memories are vividly described, so that we don't really need to seek a deeper understanding.
However, his interactions with "the woman" (and, to a lesser extent, a gang of youths) are unsatisfying. The most frustrating dialogue I've read in some time leads to a loss of momentum that Rourke never really recovers from, and the sheer implausibility of the woman's experiences and opinions suggest that it's just as well the narrator isn't explained in any more detail.
While we never really get a handle on why our narrator is so bored, or why he chooses to indulge his boredom by sitting on a bench and looking at a canal, his idle thoughts and triggered memories are vividly described, so that we don't really need to seek a deeper understanding.
However, his interactions with "the woman" (and, to a lesser extent, a gang of youths) are unsatisfying. The most frustrating dialogue I've read in some time leads to a loss of momentum that Rourke never really recovers from, and the sheer implausibility of the woman's experiences and opinions suggest that it's just as well the narrator isn't explained in any more detail.
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