BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture English Culture The 199 Steps

I'm opening this thread for our discussion on The Hundred and Ninety-Nine Steps. I hope to get a start on it tomorrow.

Happy reading!

Hi Karyn, I'll check in tomorrow then. I have read about half the book so will get busy on the other half. It's a very good book and not something I'd usually read so it's been great.

Joan

I'm only into the first pages, but I will say that I love seeing the English terms for things!

Well, I finished. It only took about 2 hours to read. At least it had a concrete ending, unlike The Crimson Petal and the White, which is his other book that I read.

I thought it was a bit graphic, but overall, I really enjoyed the story. I won't really go into detail about it though, because I don't want to spoil it for anyone. I'll wait until you have all read it.

I want your thoughts on this book being a "meditation on the nature of sincerity." I thought that was an intriguing description of the book prior to reading it, but I really have to think about what that means.

I'm still reading. I'm going to be out of town this weekend and not sure how much computer time I'll get at the hotel but I'll try. Good question to contemplate while finishing the book tho.

Joan

I finished it the other night. I'm not sure what to make of the "nature of sincerity." I may go back through and read it again.

HI All,

I only have a couple minutes as we are traveling. Will be back to my schedule tomorrow tho and can write about the book. I've nearly finished it. So far I'm not sure about the "nature of sincerity" either.

I do like the historical side as I love history. Her processes of restoring the document and finding out the 200 year old mystery are well done! Shows how slow and tedious some of that is but exciting when you unravel a mystery.

Joan

Joan> Well, it is exciting at first...the mystery, I mean. I think it falls rather flat at the end. Not sure if you're at that point yet. But I was kind of let down.

TBunny> What did you think? Were you surprised by the findings of the letter at the end?

I finished the book this weekend and returned from a trip out of town. I think the mystery had to end as it did to show Siam that she was the one who was right about the true nature of people and having faith in people. She was really thrown for a loop when it seemed Marcus was right in his cynicism.

Another thing that kept me reading too tho was to see if she really was dying of cancer. I personally don't have sympathy with the "I don't want to know" approach as I used to work in the operating room and saw too many people who let their curable cancers kill them that way.

All in all I'm not sure she was a very sympathetic character, I guess in that I couldn't identify with her. Sometimes I have trouble with the way men write about women. In fact I rarely read books written by men unless they are non-fiction. I just think men write about how they THINK women are. I know there are people who handle their life the way Siam did but I'm not sure she's someone you'd call a heroine.

Any thoughts?

I was glad she ended up with the one she ended up with tho! I think she got the best of that deal. Don't want to ruin it for anyone who isn't finished.

Joan

The end of the letter didn't entirely surprise me; I sort of had it figured out. Even so, I did enjoy the mystery aspect of it.

I also loved the imagery, though I think it had less to do with the description of the town/sea than my memory of it. As I pictured her standing on the end of the pier, I remembered thinking how rickety it looked and that I *didn't* walk out to the end. I remember hiking up the 199 steps, seeing the graveyard and church, looking over the wall toward the abbey... I don't know if those things came across as well to someone who hadn't been there.

I guess overall I found the characters a little flat. We got a glimpse into Sian's character, but not enough to really round her out, and we got even less on Mack. I do remember having the same thought as Joan regarding a MAN writing about being a woman.

Yes, I think you're right about the characters not being very rounded out. We only saw one side of both their characters. The way they bickered, I wondered what they saw in each other. I think Mack might have just been angling for someone to take his father's dog!

I wish too the author had explained the significance of the dream she kept having. She seemed to feel that Mack was going to try and kill her but why? Did I miss something in that?

I did like the imagry too and the author had some great phrases in the book. I'd love to actually see the 199 steps. We're taking our first trip to the UK when my daughter graduates college next year so I'll make a point of going there.

Joan

I agree about the dream -- I kept looking for its significance beyond the obvious. I looked back at the name of her hotel room, wondered why the dream came to her, why the dream was about *her* and not the actual victim, if Mack was the killer in the dream, then I wondered if the dream went away after they read the letter, etc.

And I would have liked more history on her boyfriend and Bosnia - might have explained her initial mistrust or fear of Mack.


ps - I took my niece to UK in 2005 for her high school graduation - my friend took us to Whitby. It's out of the way but certainly worth the trip!

This is the problem I had with the book, and it's something that this author tends to do. He leaves a lot of loose ends. He takes the story in directions that don't seem to have any connection to the main plot. If you ever read The Crimson Petal and the White (which is a great book, by the way, even though it frustrated the heck out of me), you'll see him do this on a much grander scale.

As for the letter I mentioned before...I'm not surprised it ended up the way that it did...but just to try and make the whole thing mysterious and suspenseful, only to have it turn out the way that it did - disappointing. But I understand why Faber wrote it that way. Yes, Sian needed to see some kind of good in humanity. But I'm not exactly sure that was accomplished. She and Mack became good friends, and then they just parted without any trauma on either side. It seems she preferred the company of the dog to the company of people, and she can just easily dismiss people and move on with her life.

Oh...Whitby is so great! I have photos of Whitby online, if you would like to look at them, let me know and I'll give you the link. Make sure to stop at York while you're up there too. York Minster is absolutely amazing.

I could gush on and on about how great England is, but that's what this site is already for anyway.

A couple of dumb questions -- just curious, was such an archaeological find ever uncovered at Whitby Abbey (the 60 skeletons)? Was the name of Thomas Peirson's whaling ship ever mentioned? Since Sian's hotel room was named for a ship, I thought maybe that was the tie between her and the dream.

I'm still mulling over "sincerity" - I would say it applies to the sincerity/authenticity of one's beliefs. Mack keeps poking fun at the Abbey as a tourist attraction, even mentions "fakery" in reference to creating a paper and resealing the bottle so it would look authentic. All which challenge Sian's belief that things are what they appear to be - esp. regarding the legend and austerity of St. Hilda and the Abbey. I agree, it has to end the way it does for her beliefs to be affirmed.

I'll admit, the tourist concept mentioned by Mack is kind of funny to me, because in general, places in UK are not anywhere nearly as commercialized as they are in the US. Prime example for me is Canterbury, legendary location of Camelot. You climb up a steep muddy hill to a field. Supposedly there are the remains of a rampart wall. We saw sheep (and a discarded bathtub). We actually missed it twice because it's not well marked and the car park is a ways down the road. In the US, that puppy would be lit up for miles, with blaring tumpets, a fake castle, kinds/queens running around, etc.

I couldn't find any information about this.

Ooooh...good point! I don't recall his ship ever being mentioned, and I didn't think to connect the name of his ship with the name of the room she was staying in. That would make complete sense.

I felt this way about Stonehenge. We would've missed it entirely if the tour guide hadn't pointed it out to us as we were pulling into the parking lot. It really is, sadly, underwhelming, although amazing to think about how it was built. And I also admire the spiritual importance of it. It just wasn't as big and majestic as I was expecting.

I felt the exact same way about Stonehenge. It doesn't help that the car park is across the road and you walk through the tunnel.

True that it is amazing for all it represents, but overall, I agree: underwhelming. I was much more wowed by Avebury, probably because of its scale and the fact that you can walk among the stones and around the circle. Even though Stonehenge is more intact (or compact, rather), I got more of a sense of spiritual AWE with Avebury.

I'm not sure what I thought of the book either. Some aspects of Sian's character just didn't ring true for me - I think it did have something to do with a man writing from a woman's perspective - like Joan and TBunny said.

Here are a few of my thoughts:

- I thought that her dream had something to do with her "cancer" - it was symbolic of her fear of having a tumour and being killed by it - but I thought it was interesting that in the dream the same sort of thing happens to her that had happened to Thomas Peirson's daughter Mary

- I thought that she struck up that friendship with Mack pretty quick! Maybe it's just the Canadian reserve I have, but I'd never just start talking to some stranger like she did. Within about 30 seconds, they're talking about his father's death, and all kinds of other things. But maybe for other nationalities that's more of a normal thing? That just struck me a kind of false, I guess.

- the 200 year old mystery bit I guessed pretty much right from the start, but I still found that whole aspect of the book interesting. I love a good mystery!

- the relationship between Sian and Mack sort of bugged me because they were always arguing, always misunderstanding each other, and always taking each other too literally and getting angry about it. They should have just lightened up a bit! Would have made for a better friendship between the two. But because of that, I liked how she ended up with the dog instead of him!

- one mistake I noticed - when Mack is talking about his research, he mentions that he's studying the virus that causes psittacosis. It's actually a bacteria, not a virus that causes that disease, and speaking as a hospital microbiology technologist, that jumped out at me from a mile away. It actually caused me to wonder if Mack was really who he was claiming or if he was an imposter, but then I thought it was probably just the author's error.

Cheers,
Andrea

I actually had a problem with the characters...period. They weren't well developed. Sian is one of those types that puts up walls between herself and other people, so I can understand the author not wanting to let us in and get to know her. But in order to like the characters, you have to get to know them somewhat. Plus, it's pretty difficult to develop a character in such a small number of pages. I wonder if that was his intention. It's obvious by now that I'm really confused by Michel Faber and his writing style.

I think at this point, the only really likeable character was the dog. I really didn't care about Sian or Mack.

I got hung up on some of the conversations/bickering between Mack and Sian. It seemed forced in places and felt almost as if it was just for the sake of giving the history of Whitby, not for actually moving the story along.

However, I did love the reference to the Pitkin book! I have a ton of them from my travels and think they're just great. I may even have the one she refers to about life in a monastary.

I totally agree about the relationship between Mack and Sian. She didn't seem to be in the place of attracting good looking men and didn't seem like a very attractive or likable person so why did he start talking to her and why did he continue the relationship? And to what end? If he was interested in sex, it didn't even come to that. Since all they did was bicker, I couldn't see it going anyplace.

I was wondering if he kept kind of pursuing her with the thought that he needed someone to take his dog-lol. If I'd been her, that's what I would have thought which wouldn't do much for my self-confidence.

I'd thought of the dream in relation to what happened to Mary too but one problem with that was Mary was already dead when her father "killed" her and he did it for reasons of love and protecting her so those words that Sian heard in her ear when her throat was being cut would never have been uttered by Thomas to his daughter.

The thought of the "cancer" and the dream is interesting tho.

Yes, Karyn, I'd love the link to the photos.

It's funny what you all say about the non-commercialization of the sites in England. My sister and I are planning a trip to England for both our families when my daughter graduates from college next year. My sister sent me a link about activities for kids (she has a 6 year old boy) and the activities were all about historical sites and Shakespeare and noted British authors. She said "Guess their idea of kid's entertainment is different than ours-lol"

I was an English lit major in college and loved the British authors classes and discussions so I want to see all of that type of thing! It's funny tho that in the US kids entertainment swings more toward Disneyland type places. Even Gettysburg has been commercialized. I used to always take my daughter to historical sites and on tours of great homes so she's used to more elevated fare in attractions.

Joan

Here are the pictures...Robin Hood's Bay is included in this set as well. We were camping in nearby Fylingthorpe. There are tons of photos of the abbey, and in one, you can see the 199 steps (surprisingly enough, I didn't climb them...our group never went over that way).

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Thanks so much for sending the link! It looks fantastic. I sent it to my sister too so we can make it part of our trip.

I spent 2 years in Athens, Greece and 2 years in southern Spain and everything there was photogenic too. Everywhere you look, you want to freeze it into a memorable photo.

Joan

Wow, The book is a work in progress I feel. I'm left with too many loose threads.

Saying that, it's a short book, I enjoyed it but feel let down on completing it.

The characters are dry, is it that the whole of his writing is pretty emotion-free?

An interesting read, but too short. I think it could make a great film and as a longer mystery novel with some more life-like characters could be really good. I just get the feeling I'm a fly on the wall and not at all part of the charcters - they had no colour, no irritations - too bland.

But I did read it in one sitting, so it must have kept my attention!

Ill not be rushing out to find more of his work though.

Rachel - This is true of his novels as well...at least the one that I read. The Crimson Petal and the White is about...800 pages, I think. And there is one character you only really get to care about, and there were tons of loose ends. It was also written in 2nd person, which is rare and interesting.

Have you read Under the Skin?

I haven't read that one, is it by the same author.

I really enjoyed reading the book knowing others were too, then hearing their comments and able to add mine.

Anybody interested in reading another?
My first choice would be Spanish based, but English would be good too. What about an ex-pat book? An English person's experience of moving/living elsewhere?

Hi Rachel - might not be right culture but I'm just about to reread Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Vinegar Tom by Caryl Churchill, and Robert Frost poetry and would be glad to have some company/book gossip alomg. I love Garcia Lorca too!

Hi Siobhain,

Wow - Of mice and men, we read that at school, er 30 years ago.

It must be due a re-read, but I haven't got a copy.

I'm off to visit amazon... be back soon, maybe you've already finished? Don't wait for me if so.

Re: Lorca, I feel terrible that I've read so much about the man but not read any of his works, only bits in Spanish, best have a look at some of his books too..

That's great Rachel ! - I haven;t finished it yet - got interrupted half-way through (sorting out DS/school issues, also a new opportunity and Pancake Day here! - there's always something isnt there??)

I will start OMAM again on Thurs. - it will be interesting to share responses and see how interpretations might have changed in light of todays current affairs (recession looming, global warming,special needs etc)

After that its RS Thomas poetry!