BellaOnline Forums Travel and Culture English Culture The 199 Steps

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.