Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter
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Book Reviews of Ship of Fools
Book Review: Learned Reading
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is more over based on the everyday lives of those who "thwart in human folly." Porter's style of writing is delicate and precise. If her style was a painting, it would be the Monalisa with all its graphics of language and detail.Book Review: Good, but trundling.
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm an avid, dogged reader, and I plowed through Tolstoy's War and Peace at a quicker clip than I managed Porter's Ship of Fools. I love Porter's short stories--I cannot recommend more highly purchasing her collected fiction in paperback--but her talent doesn't translate as well into the long work. Unfortunately, I found the characters in this novel uninteresting, the lack of plot without much underlying substance somewhat tiresome, and the entire book as slowly moving as the ship these characters are traveling on from Mexico to Germany in the 1930s. The writing is good, the observations sharp, but I had trouble engaging with this book and, therefore, found myself reading other things before picking it back up. Ultimately, this is a good book by a good author, but it probably is not worth the effort required to trudge through it.Book Review: Porter at sea
Summary: 2 Stars
I'm a pretty untiring reader, as long as I have faith I'm in competent hands, but I gave this book up at page 160, which was enough of an investment to convince me that Porter was lost, lost, lost. I'm an admirer of her short stories, but all she's done in this larger form is expand the cast of characters, forgetting to give them anything to do. The characters are really only cartoons, which Porter seems aware of, since she doggedly gives us paragraphs and pages of analysis for most of them. But in a novel, characters define themselves by what they do, not by what they think about themselves, or what their creator thinks of them. The sheer number of them just hanging around listlessly becomes so unwieldly for Porter that you feel sorry for her -- you can almost hear her thinking, "Wait, what about So-and-so, we haven't seen him come out of him cabin lately, maybe I'll have him get drunk and make a scene."Book Review: The Original is Much Better
Summary: 2 Stars
Does not surpass the original work published in the 1500's. There are better books. Read them first. This book lets the ship reach its destination and the fools get off. The book does not establish any personal attachment for any character to the reader; some catalogue of foolish behavior and temperment, but not as exhaustive nor as poetic as Original. At end of book, as a reader you feel like you were one of the fools along for the voyage for reading the book. Nice period piece that illustrates some of racial and ethnic prejudice at the time and forewarnings of the future.Book Review: Maybe it's just me...
Summary: 2 Stars
...but I abandoned ship halfway through. After enjoying the movie, and reading the great praise for author Porter, I assumed I'd enjoy diving into this good, long read. What I discovered was a rambling and excrutiating book...droning characterization page after page until I could no longer concentrate on the essentially non-existent plot.
I assume this is strictly for fans of Porter, who was a master at short story telling. She should have stuck to it. Anyone expecting a "Grand Hotel" or Maugham like saga will be sorely disappointed.
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