Poor Things by Alasdair Gray (336pp 1992)

Would I read more books by this author?
Most definitely.

Would I recommend this book?
Definitely.

To whom would I recommend this book?
It would have to be people who can stand a little weirdness and who can cut their way through the superficial carnal aspects of the book to see its real purpose and meaning.

Did this book inspire me to do anything?
Yes! I am planning a day in Glasgow to visit the main sites in the story. It will make an interesting excursion and give me a photo-journal opportunity.

I acquired this book in 2011 but have only gotten around to reading it now. I bought it while I was reading and loving “Lanark”. “Poor Things” has not disappointed. My reading it now was prompted by a friend who watched the Oscar winning film. This spurred me on to read the book before I watch the film.

Having loved Lanark I was expecting some weirdness. It was not as weird as I expected, but read like an historical fiction with one piece of Science Fiction at its heart. There is so much in the book I cannot see how a screen adaptation could possibly present all the content. My suspicion is that the film deals mostly with the sexual aspects of the story rather than with the primary focus of the book which is the presentation of political viewpoints and the promotion of political philosophies focused on improving the lot of the people rather than increasing the wealth of the wealthy. Comments by friends who have seen the film and reviews of the movie appear to support my suspicions. I intend to watch the film, but in my usual approach to screen adaptations I will not be complaining about how the film does not reflect the book, but rather enjoying the movie as something different from the book, but will be interested to see what was cut out of the story and what has been added in. Given the complexity of the main character I am not surprised it was an opportunity for Emma Stone to win an Oscar. I am looking forward to seeing her performance.

There are several themes to the story with a rather steamy thread running through the earlier parts of the book which, while the film may emphasise this, is primarily a means of hooking the reader to read on and then used as a vehicle to facilitate discussion on various political movements, their core tenets, and to present their impact on the population at large. Also presented are critiques of social norms that were, and still are, abhorrent to the sensitivities of the more liberal minded. It is a strongly feminist book so people should push through the misogyny presented in the early chapters to get through to the powerful messages that follow.

If I was to sum the story up in one sentence it would be:
“This is the life story of girl who experienced life in an accelerated fashion and grew into a determined woman who worked tirelessly to improve the lot of the poor through the advancement of medical practice and women’s rights.”

If I were to ignore the true messages of the book and simply describe it based on the superficial elements I could describe it as:
“The wife of Frankenstein was a nymphomaniac.” ( )

It's almost criminal that Yorgos Lanthimos read this book about child-rearing, feminism, socialism, classism, and patriarchy and made a movie only about sexuality. I loved the movie but now am so angry that he removed the full human condition from it. Bella - Victoria was an intellectual, a philosopher, a feminist, a scientist, and a political practitioner, and Lanthimos made her into only a sexual being. What a missed opportunity. I would love to see a movie based on the whole book. ( )

I read this after seeing the movie and wondering if the book it was based on could be anywhere near as bizarre. I know comparisons aren't fair because books and movies are very different kinds of media but I do it anyway. The biggest difference I found was that the movie left out Bella’s own version of the story which was nowhere near as interesting as McCandless'. So, while that part did add the element of an unreliable narrator, not including it was a smart move because I thought the movie's ending wrapped things up perfectly. Another difference was that the book had less sexuality and more commentary about sexual, social, and political double standards. Since a fair amount of the social and political commentary was satire of British and Scottish conventions, most of it was lost on me. Maybe if I knew something about the regional history and culture I would have liked this more than I did. As it is, I liked the movie better. ( )

My ILL request for "Poor Things" came without the dust jacket, so I got to enjoy this beautiful Scottish Thistle graphic embossing with an aphorism that Alasdair Gray credits to a poem by Denis Leigh. The book has frame story with four distinct parts, Lanthimos adapts the fun part. However, he does Victoria/Bella dirty because the most feminist part of the novel, the frame in which she tells her OWN story, is completely cut. She clarifies, disputes, corrects, truth-tells, shapes her own biography and political position in a far less fantastical and far more believable way, as happens to women who can't afford to live in fantasy land. Not so much fun as 150-odd pages of horny "wedding" and sex work, but there you go.

"My imagination had awakened. The imagination is, like the appendix, inherited from a primitive epoch when it aided the survival of our species, but in modern scientific industrial nations it is mainly a source of disease. I had prided myself on lacking one, but it had only lain dormant."

Due to ereader/ebook weirdness I didn't read the introduction until I'd finished the book so I was surprised by the ending letter. I actually think that's a decent way to read the book - it makes bits of the first 90% more irritating, but the impact when you reach the end is a lot stronger when you don't know it's coming. So I guess I'm not about to say anything that's a spoiler if you read the introduction (which is by the author and part of the story, to be clear) but if you want to try it a different way look away now, heh.

The book works by showing the life of a woman through multiple perspectives, with none giving a full and clear picture, and only at the end does she get to speak for herself as herself - and still, although she corrects some things, she glosses over most of the narrative and admits there are facts in there even if it's a fanciful story. Because the vast majority is told by and through McCandless, even the perspectives of the other characters are untrustworthy as we only see them through his eyes. There's a long letter from Bella in the middle, but again it's not entirely clear how much is edited by McCandless - and how much of Victoria disagreeing at the end is a retrospective embarrassment and editing of her past? And it's clear Bella/Victoria is not being entirely honest about a few things even at the end (the true story of what happened with Duncan Wedderburn can only be guessed at). And on top of that we have the judgmental introduction of Alisdair Gray (as character) where he insists McCandless's narrative is basically accurate, even if it has dramatic flair, and constantly reinserts himself through footnotes to justify it through historical fact (and fictional historical fact). The epistolary style and the shifts in reporting combine to give a lot of depth if you think about it and try and piece together a "real" story (you can't obviously, but it's interesting where your own ideas lead you)

My impression was of a story about multiple men - except Godwin - struggling to deal with one woman trying to make her own story and imposing their own stories on her that said more about them than her actions. Someone like McCandless was not as awful as the rest but could still only see her independence and beliefs as something borne from an essentially supernatural event - Frankenstein and Pygmalion combined - rather than something a normal woman in society could develop. He couldn't accept Godwin's goodness because it would make him feel too judged so he created a story about his "friend" to make him seem the pitiable one. ( )