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I read the short story version which seemed incomplete.(!) Wasn't into it enough to track down the full story.
What a strange sad book. I didn't really understand why Cho and Wo were bringing the end of the world... Although the Nirvana mention was a tip... I suppose that means the Rulers were human too? Still, there must have been more to it than that.I wonder, what made the angel dolls? I suppose it didn't survive them.
Interesting concept, well-written, but I don't feel I got anything about of it.
Divine Endurance, the wisest cat that ever lived: memorable.Craig Laurence's review will give you an idea of the book: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show..."A strange novel set in a far future Asia. Abandoned androids (in the form of a young woman and her cat companion) travel .... [M]ixes political allegory, metaphysics and a touchingly beautiful lesbian love story. Told in a desultory, opiated prose."I should pull down my copy. I think it's based (in part) on her travels in South Asia as a
A strange novel set in a far future Asia. Abandoned androids (in the form of a young woman and her cat companion) travel to what is now Indonesia, which is embroiled in an post-apocalyptic political turmoil. The androids are programmed to grant humans their greatest desire. Both androids fulfill their duties, with rather dark consequences. The novel mixes political allegory, metaphysics and a touchingly beautiful lesbian love story. Told in a desultory, opiated prose.
I did like this strange story very much. The post apocalyptic, sci-fi implications were what drew me to read it but what I actually enjoyed it for were the vivid characterisations of the main actors in it and the fairy-tale like atmosphere of the story. It does have some problems as a novel however; The reader gets more than a bit lost, at times, almost as if you can feel the author losing their grasp on the plot, or maybe their interest and then recovering and continuing.It has a lot of things
I wanted to love this so much. The collection of Jones's essays I'm reading now is so smart and enjoyable that I just expected her fiction to be brilliant. I'm definitely going to try something else by her, but I found Divine Endurance to be a bit of a mess. Some exciting ideas, but too little character development and too little world building.
The beginning is fairytale like but it soon goes to harsh reality. I like the writing and many of its themes are quite relevant in real world (iykwim).
'You are the best dead hand I have ever seen,' said Cho to the relic. She scratched in the crust of the mound, and found a sleeve. It was a beautiful colour, with shining embroidery. She found a foot too, but the foot was not so interesting. It had lost its leg, and lost its slipper. There was something tangled up in the little bones, a thin fine line of something. She tugged and the mound stirred, as if the dead person felt it."Derveet wasn’t looking for shelter. She had come to the Peninsula t...
I really wanted to like this and liked the beginning a lot, but then it got scattered and what was happening became unclear and it threw too many other characters and political factions at me. It came back together somewhat at the end, but I'd rather have just followed Cho and Divine Endurance and Derveet more closely all the way.
A young girl robot is raised in isolation by an ancient cat robot as technology fails all around them, her brother as an infant was released into the world so as the system that supported all technology on the world has gone into meltdown she goes on a quest to find him and some purpose for her life… she has not yet met a real person…
Gwyneth Jones is a very talented novelist. Divine Endurance is subtle and complex and is one of the least predictable books I have read. The plot twists and turns yet flows effortlessly, taking on multiple perspectives and addressing weighty subjects with a light touch. The story starts by following the main character, Chosen Among the Beautiful, and her Cat, the titular Divine Endurance, as they make their way through a landscape of fractured, bomb-blasted wastelands, ruined temples and war-tor...
An amazing book in that I barely understood what was happening but stuck with it for the poetry and the entropy. The author explains all in an afterword which also reveals a deep understanding of multiple genres.
An Intriguing book, set in a post-apocalyptic Asia. It was first published in 1984, and it feels like it must have been ahead of its time, with its refreshingly non-Western cast of characters, and explorations of the spectrum of sexuality. It's as complex and challenging as anything Jones has written (I know that I read its sequel many years ago, but I can't remember anything about it that relates to this first book), but at the same time is one of her more reader-friendly books. Plus, of course...
The author has some great world-building ideas and details and I hope she uses them in another story. But the characters here never interested me and I began skipping sections hoping for something to happen. It was just boring instead of magical. Not sure why.
