Klein boekje, bijzonder verhaal ergens tussen kinderverhaal en volwassen. Vermakelijk ( )

Lanny is a young boy, fascinated by the natural world and collecting objects. His dad commutes to London for work everyday. His mother is at home writing a violent thriller. He has art lessons from Pete, a famous artist with some controversial work behind him. They live in a picturesque village where acceptance is problematic. The novel is told from the perspective of different characters, including Toothwort, a sort of green man figure, that is used locally as a warning to children and who moves around unseen as a shape shfter overhearing conversations. Snippets of these conversations are wound through the text in wave form. The style is a poetic prose one. In many ways this short novel is an easy read, the story has a beginning, middle and ending. The subject of a child going missing is hard to read and the blame game and media circus and police presence is brutal. Fantasy is woven through every nugget of real life. An enjoyable read. ( )

Not going to rate, because this book clearly was not for me, but I appreciated the weird, unique talent that compiled it.

Lanny "déjà vu all over again"
Review of the Strange Light paperback edition (May 14, 2019) of the original Faber & Faber hardcover (March 7, 2019).

I was probably fated not to love this book after my experience with the eBook edition which I briefly summarized in Warning Review: Avoid Microscopic Kindle Edition. I did give the book another chance though and was able to source a paperback copy from the library. This was mostly readable, even of most of the bizarre curlicue fonts, except for a sequence of pages 89-91 where the gobbledygook nonsense is even printed superimposed on itself.

See photo at https://scontent-ord5-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/434412145_26034430556155717_8...
Photo of pages 90-91 of the paperback edition

That just angered me all over again. The feeling is enhanced when you actually try to read some of that stuff and it is basically meaningless with no relationship to the main plot. I suppose it is meant as the OCD ramblings of the mythological spirit named as Dead Papa Toothwort who plays a possible antagonistic role in the proceedings.

The rest of the story did have its charms. A young boy Lanny is taken under the wing of a resident elderly artist Pete Blythe while his mother Josie is busy writing a crime novel and father Robert is off in the big city doing something in the investment banking field. About 1/2 way through Lanny goes missing and the village joins forces in the search. There is definitely an outstanding sequence where mother Josie interacts in a dialogue & a stream of consciousness back and forth with a cantankerous neighbour woman named Mrs. Larton. That was at least worth the price of admission.

However it is points off for a gratuitous butchery of a hedgehog scene and the stupid use of the unreadable font passages. A 3-rating is my compromise. ( )

Warning Review: Avoid Microscopic Kindle edition
Review of the Strange Light Kindle edition (May 14, 2019) of the Faber & Faber hardcover original (March 7, 2019).

Ok, this is an exception as I almost never do DNF reviews, but I only got 10% or so into this Kindle edition with the microscopic curlicue fonts* which were just irritating and made me angry, so I abandoned the book in this format. This is a review about the format medium and not the book content. Perhaps on a tablet or large screen this would not be a problem but I enjoy the Kindle for its portability and I found it totally unreadable on the relatively small screen. I have put in for a library hold for the physical book instead.
If you are curious as to what I am talking about, here are some sample images:
See screengrab at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/430096908_25959590970306343_5...
See screengrab at https://scontent-ord5-2.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/431879554_25959451003653673_2...
Images are screengrabs from the Kindle mobile phone app as those were easier to screenshot, and not from the actual Kindle screen. The relative sizes between the regular font and the tiny fonts are the same on the slightly larger Kindle screen.

Footnote
* The texts in curlicue font are actually individual graphic images. Enlarging the font of the main text does nothing for the graphic images, they remain tiny. You would have to tap on each word or phrase individually as a graphic to enlarge it. I was not prepared to spend that amount of time on it. ( )

A strange and beautiful prose poem. A fable about the hypocrisy of life in a small community, a mother’s love, and the magic of unbridled childhood imagination. ( )

I along with many critics loved Porter's unique debut a couple of years ago, Grief is the Thing With Feathers, which used the mythological crow figure and a prose-poetry style to tell the emotional struggle of two children and their father after the sudden death of their mother/spouse. So when Porter's second novel was published, I was first in line on the library's holds list for it.

Porter's style is much the same, a storytelling mode that blends prose and poetry. This blend is more even in the first part of the book, where Porter includes phrases of text (snippets of conversation said to be being spoken in the story's village) arranged visually like a modernist poem might be. The prose meanwhile takes a stronger hand in the latter part of the book.

Similarly also we have a mythological being brought to life at the center of the story, pulling many of the strings. Here though the character, Dead Papa Toothwort, is considerably more difficult to understand and get a grip on than Crow was. Dead Papa Toothwort is something out of the dark and primitive woods, rural and uncivilized, strange and unfamiliar, triggering humanity's fears and anxieties. He's something out of England's pagan past, with uncertain motives.

The story also centers again on children, this time just one really. Lanny is an only child, and has an eerie connection to nature. The village, and sometimes his parents, are unnerved by him; he's considered a weirdo, "off with the fairies". In part 2 of the book, he disappears, and at that point the book gets a touch more conventional, showing "what really happens" in the minds of people when a child goes missing and suspicion and emotions run high. The story finally takes a wild swerve in part 3, with a set piece that reminds me of something out of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, before resolving the storyline.

All in all, not as compelling as Grief is the Thing With Feathers, but a good second publication from an author worth reading. ( )

This book reads like Jon McGregor; each chapter from the perspective of each character living in the village centred around a boy with learning difficulties who is well loved. The character which makes the book stand out is Toothwort, an old English folklore Green Man, who observes everything. Mentions of mermaids, spring-heeled Jack, the Green Children of Woolpit.
He also uses Sisyphus, Atlas and Echo as a comparison of the neverending pain in narratives, to being the parent of a missing child.
Quotes:"Say your prayers and be good too, Or dead papa Toothwort is coming for you"
The language poetic: "Deep inside a silvicultured English wood there's an old man sitting on a stump gazing at the roots of a fallen tree." and "Crepuscular" (appearing or active in twilight). ( )

4 A very immersive and unusual read. ( )

Lanny não pode ser lido sem vontade. É preciso estar aberto e entregar-se à leitura, é preciso estar dentro do livro para então ter uma experiência. Uma bela experiência! ( )

Weird and delightful and moving. ( )

I loved the contrast between Lanny, a sweet boy whose world is still limitless, and the chorus of anonymous villagers judging, boasting, gossipping, and narrowing the bounds of acceptability. Having the villagers read in different voices was a big plus of the audiobook version; you could really feel the collective scorn being heaped on. ( )

I'm so sorry to say that this book was quite a disappointment for me.
The story is very interesting: a kid, Lanny, is kidnapped by this sort of "incarnation of nature". His parents and an old artist friend of his must find him before it's too late.

Cool right? Well, could have been cool.
The book is only 200 pages (give or take) and tbh it only needed a hundred more to be more interesting. Most of the characters fell flat, because there was no time to get to know them properly, and honestly? I couldn't care less that Lanny disappeared. I was so much more interested in his mom and her grief.
I dunno, it just wasn't for me.
( )

I adore this book. It is grounded in the natural world and yet supremely magical. The writing weaves a tapestry made up of branches and moss and lost wooly jumpers and leaves and bones and birds nests and bottle caps. The prose winds its way through the three parts like a stream which leads into a river.

The story begins peaceful and languid, setting a calm and friendly pace as we get to know Lanny (a sweet, gentle, peculiar, and prescient boy) through his mother and father, and Pete, an old eccentric artist. The pace of the story mimics the pace of life in a small village. It's slow and comfortable. Time meanders here and we would feel safe but for Dead Papa Toothwort, a myth of the village, who creeps among its inhabitants listening in. We gets snippets of conversations as he moves through them... Some bitter, some funny, some lonely, some horny, some gentle, some jealous. He is a version of a Green Man legend and he feels quite menacing waking from the forest to judge the mortals who have lost touch with nature. But he sees Lanny and he sees the way in which Lanny connects with the natural world.

As we reach Part 2, the stream has not only met a river but has hit the rapids with Lanny's disappearance. The writing takes off at a pace. The town is manic with fear, suspicion, grief, blame, and gossip. The snippets of voices we heard through Dead Papa Toothwort are now front and center. It's almost a stream of consciousness of the village itself as we move through all of the thoughts and emotions of the inhabitants. It is rocky and anxious and the village is no longer the safe place we came to know.

Part three brings us out of the rapids into the wide, deep, cool waters of the river. It takes us into the magical world of Dead Papa Toothwort as he comes to the fore to bring us to the conclusion. The pace is slower again but not calm, not peaceful. The river here is deep and treading in the moving water takes energy but investing that engery is so rewarding. Papa Toothwort's forest is Lanny's forest. It is verdant, alive, primeval, and magnificent. It is to be admired, honoured, and respected.

This book took my breath away. It is a simple story but poetic in its telling. I fell in love with the prose and with Lanny. While it may have had a tickle of the mawkish about it (I am an exceedingly cynical person), I was willing to overlook it because it's just so fucking beautiful.

Needless to say, highly recommended. ( )

“I sit at work in the city and the thought of him existing a sixty-minute train ride from me, going about his day in the village, carrying his strange brain around, seems completely impossible. It seems unlikely, when I'm at work, that we have a child and it is Lanny. If my parents were here, they'd surely say, No Robert, you've dreamt him. Children aren't like that. Go back to sleep. Go back to work.”

This is an experimental novel which incorporates magical realism to relate the legend of Dead Papa Toothwort. It is told in three parts. The first part introduces us to Lanny. He is an unusual child who “marches to his own drummer.” His parents, Jolie and Robert, ask neighboring artist, Peter, to tutor him in art, and Lanny responds. The second part is a series of observations about a period of time when Lanny cannot be located. The third part relates the outcome and is written in a more traditional narrative style.

Dead Papa Toothwort’s experiences are inserted in fragments of sentences that float across the pages in a wave-like pattern. The story takes place in rural England, where the villagers still retain many superstitions. The author examines parenting of a free-spirited creative child. The second part does a good job of pointing out how easy it is to judge others without all the facts. I found it extremely creative and a nice escape from reality, while still making relevant observations for today’s world.
( )

Enjoyed reading. Different from his first, but worth reading!

I can’t be the only one who occasionally picks books up on a whim, right? Especially lately, since I’ve been less and less up to date with new releases, I tend to just pick whatever catches my eye. So when the library had this book on their book picks for “getting lost”, I was very much into it. A story about a Green Man character, a being as old as the forest itself, who is so aptly named Dead Papa Toothwort? Oh, you’d better believe that I was invested.

As it turns out, I was right to feel that way. This story feels like going back in time, to the days when stories were told around a fire. From the very opening, Max Porter builds this atmosphere that is hard to ignore. A tiny town, full of people going about their daily lives. A being in the woods, watching. Waiting. Dissatisfied in the lack of attention to nature and whimsy that people have developed. That is, except for one little boy. One spot of bright in the dark.

Lanny’s character is hard to describe. He of course has the quintessential “little boy” personality, but he is so much more than that. He is the child that all of us were at one point, before the world tried to convince us that magic wasn’t real. Porter weaves a story, with Lanny at the center, that is full of intrigue and enchantment. Here is a boy who still sees the beauty in things. A boy who doesn’t care about fitting in, because that’s not what is important at all. I loved that his two parents were on such different spectrums about how to act towards him, because it felt like the way all of us are looked at by the world. It was gorgeously done.

Alas, I have to stop here or otherwise I run the risk of spoiling things on accident. I will say that this story definitely took a turn that I wasn’t quite expecting, but I loved it all the more for that. This is my favorite kind of folk tale. A little dark, a lot magical, and brimming with atmosphere. I truly recommend the audio book! Take some time, and get lost in this wonderful story. ( )

Well that was just really rather excellent. ( )

Not for me but a lot of other people like it. Max Porter is very intelligent, an excellent speaker, and an intelligent writer. I found Lanny, for my tastes, trying just a bit too hard to be different and clever. I personally felt that a slightly lighter touch on the style and format might have made the story / originality more fresh and accessible to more readers. No denying the cleverness of this novel but it just wasn't for me, sorry. ( )

Lanny by Max Porter is a magical book that tells the story of Lanny, a not quite typical boy, in a twisted, non-traditional and fable-like collage of words and images blown about by the winds of a shadowed folktale. I enjoyed it, and if you can abandon any expectation of a typically told tale, you will enjoy it too. More folktale than novel, it is deep and dark in the way that the best folktales are. Enter the realm of the Green Man, here called Dead Papa Toothwort, and fall into the story. ( )

I did not fully read this book. While reading, I felt like I might have caught something between dyslexia and ADHD. Perhaps after a palette cleaner and some time with mediation I can get back to this book, but I have no desire to twist my brain in knots right now, trying to understand where this story is going. It is a story right? ( )

28. Lanny by Max Porter
published: 2019
format: 213-page hardcover
acquired: February
read: May 19-22
time reading: 4 hr 5 min, 1.2 min/page
rating: 3
locations: England (a village outside London)
about the author born 1981 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England

I think the opening sentence sets the reader up for this a bit:

"Dead Papa Toothwart wakes from his standing nap an acre wide and scrapes off dream dregs of bitumen glistening thick with liquid globs of litter."

It's telling the reader up front that some variation of a child's boogeyman and obscure local myth will play a role. Lanny is child in a village an hour train ride outside London, his father a London commuter. Porter is maybe playing with the contrast of village and city life, or with tradition and modern life. Or he's just taking a turn on an unfortunate story. Regardless, reader should be open to adapt, maybe relax and open up our association with meaning.

Unfortunately, I never reached the right wavelength for this short book and its odd structure. I could call it a little gimmicky or a little lacking in self-awareness, but probably that's just me rationalizing why I didn't link into it (and projecting blame onto the author). But, anyway, I never got in tune. A miss.

This my twelfth book from the 2019 Booker long list. I have one to go.

2020
https://www.librarything.com/topic/318836#7169637 ( )

Perfectly enjoyable but fell between the stools of two superior (to my mind) novels - the fantasy isn't as fantastic as Lincoln in the Bardo, nor the portrait of a village as compelling as Reservoir 13. ( )

Sorry, but I just didn't "get" this story, I found the style of writing quite pretentious and difficult to understand. ( )

While it may not be for everyone, there’s no denying Max Porter has his own style. Written in an abstract, patchy way, Lanny reveals the story of a child gone missing, throwing an ugly light on the duplicities of human emotion and reaction. Though I found this style of storytelling a little too fragmentary, the book’s ultimately unsettling and effective in parts. Yet I can see how the style will frustrate for many rather than artistic. Either creative or pretentious and difficult to choose which. Good for those who don’t mind the surreal, a departure from traditional narrative, though I would urge reading a sample before purchasing. ( )