Comments on: Review: Under the Harrow, Mark Dunn

By: letters and sodas: booknotes » Blog Archive » Under the Harrow by Mark DunnMacAdam/Cage, 2010

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:31:09 +0000

[…] for wordplay) but I hadn’t sought out or heard about anything else by Mark Dunn until I saw Jenny’s post about Under the Harrow back in June. The promise of another quirkily charming book by Mark Dunn was […]

By: Books are my Boyfriends

Books are my Boyfriends — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 06:20:14 +0000

I still need to read Ella Minnow Pea! And then I’ll read this. And then I’ll read the 500,000 other books I still need to read!

By: litlove

litlove — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 07:45:41 +0000

How interesting – I wondered where Mark Dunn would go after Ella Minnow Pea, which I did enjoy, although its illogical elements troubled me a bit. It’s funny how author’s imaginations often seem to create variations on a theme. Closed communities with crazy rules are clearly his thing, but nothing wrong with that!

By: Memory

Memory — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:57:48 +0000

I am also a fan of this sort of weirdness and I can’t believe I haven’t yet read something by Mark Dunn, so onto the list it goes.

By: Anastasia

Anastasia — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:32:25 +0000

In reply to Jenny. I think you might actually like A Handful of Dust; if you can get it at the library you might want to check it out. It's funny and horrific and full of Modern Characters. Shakespeare would be SO much better to leave sitting around somewhere than Dickens. At least with Shakespeare you could recruit people into doing the plays, and then you'd have a bit more entertainment.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:22:54 +0000

In reply to Anastasia. *laughs* I'd never heard of that Evelyn Waugh book! That's funny. I suppose Dickens makes a good set of "only" books because they promote good morals and there are a lot of them and they are long. When Oscar Wilde petitioned wildly to be permitted more books than just the Bible when he was in jail (poor old Oscar Wilde!), as I recall, they sent him Dickens. And that was all he had. The Bible and Charles Dickens. I'd have gone insane.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:21:38 +0000

In reply to Jeane. I hope you like them both! Ella Minnow Pea is my favorite of the two, but I'm partial to word games, and not so fond of Dickens. I wished I knew Dickens better when I was reading Under the Harrow.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:20:16 +0000

In reply to Heather. I know, I had no idea this book was out until I saw it in the independent bookstore in Soho. And I was so excited! He's only written a few books, but the two I've read have both been terribly clever and fun.

By: Jenny

Jenny — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 00:19:22 +0000

In reply to zibilee. I hope you like it as much as I did! I don't even like Charles Dickens, and I found the Dickens references in this book completely charming. It sort of made me want to love Dickens, but I still don't, I fear.

By: Anastasia

Anastasia — Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:01:53 +0000

Okay, this book sounds really cool. But! Why must it always be Dickens’ books that gets left in a pseudo-dystopic society?!

I just (sort of just, anyway) read Evelyn Waugh’s A Handful of Dust, which had Dickens’ books the only books available in a really horrible little living area (“town” is too kind). And I’m sure there are other books that do the same, though I can’t think of any right now. But anyway, what is it about Dickens that makes people want to leave his books sitting around deserted islands and abandoned hospitals and whatnot, and what is it about Dickens that people find them and then end up obsessing over those books for decades? They couldn’t have chosen a nice Alexandre Dumas or a Jane Austen or even a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle instead?

lol. 😛