Outside Reading: Book Review #3

 Book Review: "Forbidden Planet"
By M.G. Lord
published December 29, 2010

     In M.G. Lord's book review of "How I Killed Pluto," by Mike Brown, he uses critical perspectives such as feminism and formalism for his analysis of the novel. Without quite giving the reader a definite thumbs up or down for the book, M.G. Lord skillfully highlights what he believes to be the novel's positives and negatives, allowing the reader to make their decision about the book for themselves.

     Lord begins by telling the reader the surprise he felt when he realized the novel was actually not really about Pluto and the decision on the ninth and tenth planets at all. Instead, his most memorable part of the novel was the "scene in which Brown groggily dumped cat litter instead of detergent into his washing machine," because of his exhaustion from taking care of his new baby daughter (1). This leads to his feminist critical perspective of Brown's book. "How I Killed Pluto," unexpectedly turning out to be the "chronicles of infant development," causes M.G. Lord to believe that much of the novel is a stand on gender discrimination in science.

      After discussing the feminist aspect of the piece, M.G. Lord moves on to discussing it with a formalism perspective. The writer identifies one of Brown's strengths in the novel as the emotional element added to the scientist. Although occasionally "stopped by irrelevancies," readers are "swept along by the thrill of a gigantic story" (2). Using fantastic tone, Brown shares his emotional experience with the reader, allowing them to feel the excitement and aggravation along with him. Although M.G. Lord emphasizes positive elements of the novel, including the tone and feminist stance, he also questions the importance of the magnitude of time spent reading and writing about his fathering experience. Is it symbolic? How is it related to Pluto? And after his emphasis on female scientist would women really be taken seriously after writing a book with so much of that content in it? Lord does a great job leaving the question open for the reader to think about and make their own judgements, only giving a slightly implied opinion.

       Some connections between this book review and English class could be the attention paid to feminism. In "Death of Salesman," we had a large discussion on Linda's character and the other women characters of the novel. Also Ophelia's character in "Hamlet" is another female character we spent a while discussing. We seemed to focus on typical female stereotypes, whether they are show up in the play or the writer is going against them.

       Overall, M.G. Lord does a great job communicating the feeling and content of the piece, using feminism and formalism critical perspectives. He gives a clear enough, but subjective view of the novel, leaving much of it for the reader to discover when they read the book.