Good, but not the one

Charlotte Gray
By Sebastian Faulks

Maybe I’m falling out of love with Sebastian Faulks. Until this book I had an intense, passionate relationship with his novels, from The Girl at Lion D’Or to Engleby (and even Devil May Care). I lapped up his insightful characterisations. I couldn’t get enough of his scene setting (especially in On Green Dolphin Street). And I figured that if I could ever craft one sentence as elegant as the worst thing he had ever scribbled, I’d be a happy writer.

But Charlotte Gray left me unmoved. It felt mediocre. Perhaps within Faulks’ fine oeuvre, it is mediocre but in the greater world it’s still top class – and I’m just being mean. Or perhaps it is that after reading so many of his books, one reaches a saturation point and more variations on a theme are uninspiring.

I am overstating the problem. Charlotte Gray is refined, eloquent and emotionally intuitive. The plot lines certainly drove me forward and the language is tight and smart. I just felt that it was somewhat melodramatic. Faulk’s heroine is shy, uncertain; her emotions are frequently torn. These are perfectly realised in his prose. But I found it difficult to connect with her: her human inconsistencies are somehow not altogether convincing (which is a shame because Faulks is usually good at them). There were certain things she would be unable to do… but she did them anyway. The central thrust, the search for her lost airman, loses its power because it is pushed so far away from all-consuming alternative plotlines (compare this to, for instance, Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, in which Ingram’s quest remains firmly on the agenda). It is feasible that her circumstances superseded Charlotte’s raison d’être, but Faulks could have managed the situation for his readers better.

The novel’s insight into occupied France and the various agents operating within it is of high value; Faulks’ weaving of this into plotlines is to be commended. I just wish that Charlotte Gray had more of a heart, or that Faulks had more successfully shown me it.

A scary thought

Frankenstein
By Mary Shelley

The book that founded science fiction had been on my reading list for some time. But it wasn’t until I came across a copy of Shelley’s classic wedged in between all the Dracula books in a shop in Whitby that I decided to embrace my inner demons and tackle Frankenstein.

Above all else, Frankenstein defined a new genre. Shelley used both the wonder and horror science as a way of exploring deeply philosophical themes from identity to family to discovery and, classically, existentialism. But not only this novel profound, it is also deliciously readable: Frankenstein is as startlingly original as it is enchanting. From the opening section, in which Walton describes to his dear sister his arduous journey and discovery of Victor Frankenstein, through that character’s misendeavours and terror, this novel holds the reader’s attention in a grasp not unlike that used by its monster to throttle his victims.

The novel also achieves a great structural success. When Victor is found by Walton, I had certainly forgotten that I was reading his account and that this would inevitably catch up with the present. It was perfect timing. Like Victor, Shelley crafted something that will stay around for a long time, as it underpins the ever-growing sci-fi genre. Goodness knows what would have happened without Frankenstein. That’s a scary thought indeed.

A collision course of style, scene and sex

Crash
JG Ballard

The best thing about JG Ballard is that, as a writer, he refuses to be pinned down or hemmed in. He will not let a certain genre or style take control of his work. Instead, he relies on his own imaginative power to tell a unique story every time. Never can this be more evident than in this novel.

Crash details how, after surviving an automobile accident, James is drawn intensely to other car crashes and their victims. Suddenly an entire new world opens up for James, who is guided through it by the mysterious and magnetic Vaughan, whose own car accident changed his life. The pair prowls the highways of southwest London photographing car wrecks and meeting other survivors. The obsession quickly becomes sexual in nature, and so we are introduced through James to a fascinating collection of sexual experiences where the mechanics of cars play an active part. On paper, this sounds crude, but Ballard stirs his surreal fantasies into a new, entirely conceivable reality. Within the world he creates in Crash, this kind of sexuality is perfect, possibly even normal. Never once does Ballard’s invented world falter. It remains a tight, well-conceived universe drawn by a master.

However, one wonders whether Ballard had to spend too much time characterising this world and fleshing out its realistic protagonists that he skipped over the chance to weave in a strong plot. The book does indeed have action, development and suspense but it definitely lacks in drive: Ballard could have revved up the stakes somewhat with a little more complexity to the actual story.

Bathing in Banville

The Sea
By John Banville

As readers accustomed to a beginning, middle and end, and characters that remain consistent across a few hundred pages, we often forget that human beings are complex creatures. A writer’s challenge is to distil those complexities into the written word and therefore create a truthful, perhaps even universal, story. But Banville sees that task as too large (indeed, it is probably impossible). Instead, he starts with form: how to make the appearance of the words work for the story itself. By deliberately choosing to tell this story through his protagonist’s memory and a few images of the present day, Banville acknowledges that we are nothing if not a sum of our experiences. He knows that while we think the present is the most relevant time frame to us, actually it is our past that has shaped and continues to develop who we are. Banville makes this argument not in the story of his novel but between the lines – simply because of the way he writes it.

On top of that, the art historian protagonist through whose experience we feel the loss and love that define the novel would naturally appreciate beauty of the form. And Banville delivers. The Sea’s delicious prose wraps gently against the reader’s ankles at first. It is an invitation to the protagonist’s exciting memories. But soon the depths of his prose are apparent: the reader knows it is in the hands of an extraordinary writer – one who is able to be economical yet deeply descriptive. Through this, Banville achieves the status of a truly great writer’s writer. And he is able to say something profound within the space of a short novel. As in life, in The Sea, there is no beginning, middle and end. It is a much more complex work than that.

Partly cloudy with more than a chance of patchy rain

Ordinary Thunderstorms
By William Boyd

I was truly intrigued by William Boyd: a successful and acclaimed British novelist that I had not yet tapped. So when a friend at my book group suggested Boyd’s latest book, I was genuinely excited. Even reading the blurb on the back of the book got my eyes watering with anticipation. A literary thriller about a man who has to untangle himself from 21st century existence after it looks like he committed a murder, calling into question his whole identity and poking at the idea of social cohesion? I was about ready to pop.

Instead, I flopped. The novel starts off well by setting up the story and hinting at the debate mentioned above (and promised in the blurb) but after about a quarter of the way through, it started to flounder. Gradually, over the following 300 pages I became more and more disappointed. By the end, I felt deflated, as if Boyd had sucked all the life out of me by stealing the time I had invested in this inadequate, dastardly novel.

In the end, there is no debate about having to forego the trappings of 21st century life. Our hero, a classic fugitive-what-didn’t-do-it, gradually sheds his modern, middle-class identity. But there is no analysis of this process – which the character, an academic, would surely have thought about. We are told that he is intelligent, but it is not clear from his thoughts. Why not? The answer is because Boyd is far too busy creating pantomime villains who run pharmaceutical companies. The stereotypes are all there: the power-hungry careerist, the privileged but foolish board member, the devious foreign investor… not to mention the former SAS bulkhead hired to track down our man. The number of words Boyd wastes on ‘characterising’ this mob of archetypes would have been much more effectively spent on providing the insightful analysis promised by the synopsis and opening section.

Finally, there is just something about this book that reeks of the inauthentic. From the stereotypically evil corporate villains to the streetwise scoundrels our hero comes across, I don’t think Boyd is capable of writing any of them. I am happy to let novelists alter city landscapes and even their social trappings to suit the book but Boyd’s characterisations of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe are so way off, as if they are whirlpools of social horror, that he should have invented place names. Moreover, the language spoken by their unfortunate inhabitants is embarrassing: “You keep chillin’, man” / “You dey got problem?” / “The electric he go be difficult. We have many problem.” I don’t speak street, but I’d bet that this is completely wrong. Where did Boyd do his research? Watching The Bill?

The adventure of a lifetime

Darwin and the Beagle
By Alan Moorehead

Before the year is out, I am still intending to visit Down House in Kent, the house where Darwin lived with his family for forty years until his death. Until I make it down there one weekend, I am satiating my thirst for Darwin-lore through other means. Earlier this year I read The Rough Guide to Evolution. This week I saw Inherit the Wind at the Old Vic. And now I have just finished Moorehead’s marvellous companion to Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle.

Packed with paintings, illustrations, etchings and photographs, as well as Moorehead’s entertaining and finely crafted prose, this book is a real treasure. It is more an adventure story than a history book. Moorehead has a way of making the reader feel part of this fantastic voyage. By concentrating almost exclusively on the five years Darwin was at sea, the book can go into detail about the places he explored, the people he met and, of course, the creatures he found.

I would have welcomed a little more description of what it was like to be at sea, the rivets and awls of the journey, so to speak. Otherwise, I cannot fault Moorehead’s fascinating study.

A real adventure

Elephant Adventure
By Willard Price

Stumbling across a fun-loving Red Fox edition of one of the Willard Price Adventure books recently in a second-hand bookshop, the ten-year-old lad in me leapt with excitement. I first read the adventures of Hal and Roger Hunt, as described by Price, when I was a schoolboy. I found them to be the perfect way to learn about the natural world (entire islands floating down the River Amazon?!), its inhabitants (tapirs, chameleons, giant insects to name a few) and the spirit of adventure (the sons of a zoologist up against jungle beasties, poachers or tribesmen known for cannibalism).

On second read, the book still delivers. I found myself hooked as the adventure unfolded and Hal and Roger had to track down the son of the tribe they’re staying with on the Congo/Rwanda border. Not to mention the overall mission of capturing an elephant to sell to a zoo in Tokyo.

That does all seem very dubious now, though. I’m not sure I like the idea of capturing animals for zoos (I personally don’t visit zoos). The books are tremendously good at educating people about different animals around the world and why we should respect them and preserve their place in the biosphere. But still, the reader is left with the impression that man is superior to the members of the animal kingdom and I’m not sure it sits easily with me anymore. Price’s treatment of humans is even more problematic. While his characters have the knack of finding remote indigenous populations that speak Oxford English, they do not treat such people very well. The Hunts are in many ways respectful of native people, acknowledging, for example, that they can teach Westerners very much. But in many years the Hunts undermine their hosts. “Hal had no patience for native superstitions,” is one line that had me chuckling.

Casual racism aside, the books are rollicking good reads. And just in the same way that we now read Tintin, I think that they can still be enjoyed. I certainly had fun again.

Booker of Bookers (Okri was robbed)

The Famished Road
By Ben Okri

This is one of those books that make a writer like me consider giving up. What is the point of fiddling around with words when someone like Mr Okri has already captured on the page everything that can ever be said? For such is the achievement of this Booker winner that it seems no other writer can ever come close. The Famished Road is an immense, epic and adorable series of beautiful images and happenings. This is wonder, captured. No superlative of hyperbole is possible; for its coherence alone this novel should have beaten Midnight’s Children to be named Booker of Bookers.

The story follows the adventures of Azaro, a spirit-child who has chosen to take human form and live among people. His traversal of the spirit-human world brings with it consequences, confusion and, well, inter-dimensional conflict. Of course, Okri would never use such crude terms: he speaks of “death’s embrace”, of “chaos and sunlight” and “dwellers in their own secret moonlight”. But to extract such phrases from the text in this way denigrates them: the reason why this novel is so powerful and affecting is its relentless stream of coherent images. They trickle from one another like a stream hopping over rocks and coursing through a curving valley. Okri has encapsulated a perfect nature and, more impressively, humankind’s place in it.

In contrast to my last review, I could write about The Famished Road until my fingers drop off. I could probably write more pages about it than there are pages in the novel itself. The heartbreaking thing is that none of my words would come anywhere near the beauty of Okri’s. But that won’t stop me trying.

Victorian insight

The Diary of a Nobody
By George and Weedon Grossmith

Although I enjoyed this book very much, I feel that I don’t have a lot to say about it. The Grossmith brothers have put together a very fine piece of satire on the Victorian middle class and for that I commend them. The diary is written in clean, simple prose, refreshingly distant from the style of some of the so-called great Victorian writers. Yet the book reveals a great deal about Victorian character. Through Mr Pooter’s experiences, the reader learns an awful lot about Victorian etiquette, ambitions, financial pressures, class systems, humour, employment – not to mention DIY. In this way it is an incredibly useful history book, more entertaining than a textbook and more accessible than a Dickens social epic.

Charles Pooter is indeed a vivid character of comedy and one whom I would love to encounter in a public house near Holborn or off the Strand. He takes himself so seriously – except when making one of his typically naff jokes. In this way, Pooter is expertly brought to life. In addition, Weedon’s illustrations help you picture him and his peers as they trot around London. What great companions they would make for an evening in the boozer.

My criticisms are expected but fair nonetheless. I wanted desperately to hear more from Pooter’s longsuffering wife Carrie. The scaffolding for some of the humour seemed too obviously constructed and not subtle enough to produce the level of humour that it should have. And finally, towards the beginning the diary entries are so obviously written for a magazine column that they don’t lend well to the book form. However, after a while the reader is firmly in Pooter’s world and enjoying the ride.

Grim up north

Talk of the Town
by Jacob Polley

This review was first published in Notes From The Underground.

It’s grim up north. And Jacob Polley knows it. He opens his debut novel opens with the sentence: “Town stinks.” Chris, the novel’s 14-year-old narrator, then elaborates on the odour’s composition, perfectly and succinctly dumping his audience in the middle of dirty, industrial, crumbling Carlisle. Readers are lugged by Chris through the cluttered homes of the town’s residents, along its grey streets and into neglected parks littered with teenagers and tramps. Excitingly, Chris’s reach extends even further, to the surrounding villages and the countryside which, with its boggy marshes, is just as unwelcoming as the urban sprawl.

But Polley knows there’s much more to the north than the grimness. He knows that the people who populate Carlisle have fascinating stories to tell and, moreover, a distinctive way of telling those tales. So the author adopts a demotic voice that sparkles on every page. It captures expertly the characters’ thoughts and words, as if they are not invented by a writer but rather have steamed from the chimneys over the “bicky factory”. All Polley seems to have done is drag them down from the groggy air above Carlisle and paste them onto the page. It is a towering achievement. Never once is it self-conscious or contrived (which it could so easily have been); the triumph of the novel’s form is that it both subverts and celebrates English.

In fact, Polley records an entirely new vernacular, a feat not unlike that of Russell Hoban’s in Riddley Walker. In this way, he elevates this novel’s setting above 1986, the year in which it is set, to another time. Such is the distinctive power of this language that Talk of the Town exists in 1986 and some undefined, post-apocalypse, dystopian future. To some extent, this perfectly characterises countless post-industrial northern towns, especially those that were unable to scratch out a new identity for themselves in the late 20th Century. Carlisle, like many other crap towns by the end of the eighties, was left hollow. Only a coarse residue remains in its core.

It is this through which Polley wades with Talk of the Town. The novel tells a simple story about Chris, a young lad who, on the last day of the summer holidays, is worrying about the disappearance of his closest friend Arthur. Chris begins his search, which leads him to, among others, local “gorilla” Booby Grove, his menacing buddy Carl ‘The Black’ Hole and gobby Gill from down the road. Chris is alone in his search; he never pairs up fully with any other character. This makes him seem worryingly vulnerable as he slips into Carlisle’s more dubious corners, home to frightening foes and adult worries. Talk of the Town is definitely a coming-of-age story – but not in a rosy, nostalgic way. This is Chris waking up to the harsh realities of living in a crap town where there is little to do except sniff hairspray, tease tramps and make choices with heavy consequences: “Sometimes yer do summit and yer dunno where it’s gonna land yer, says Gill… But yer never know before it comes if it’s gonna be a good change or a bad change. Yer just know that doin this thing’ll change the most stuff round the most.”

Here is Polley’s final accomplishment: he has managed to regale an adventurous story with dazzling language and a crisp, poetic insight. Through this book Polley’s success is secure. Let’s get everyone talking about it.

The (bitter) taste of paradise

Zanzibar
By Giles Foden

Alpha-ordered my bookshelves. Scrubbed the skirting boards. Written a concept album. There are so many things I could have done with my free time this past week. Instead, I chose to read Giles Foden’s Zanzibar. What a mistake! The thing about this book is that it is very much like the island of its setting: from a distance, it is enticing and exciting but up close you realise that it is filthy, full of problems and a disorganised mess. Despite this, Zanzibar itself is still charming; Foden’s novel is not. I was drawn to Zanzibar, like so many other lemmings, by the achievement of Foden’s previous work The Last King of Scotland and the fact that it is set in one of the world’s most culturally and historically fascinating places. But what a disappointment!

The novel follows a young American as he arrives on Zanzibar and starts work on a coral protection programme, a(nother) young American as she graduates from the Bureau of Diplomatic Security and is posted to the US embassy in Tanzania, and a self-styled American ‘Arabist’, an expert in terrorism perpetrated by supposed Muslims. Oh, and there is a young Zanzibari man who is duped into joining al-Qaeda and ends up plotting and executing a bombing at the US embassy in Tanzania.

There are so many things wrong with this distasteful little book that I don’t know where to start, but with Khaled (the Zanzibari) is as good a place as any. What could have been a sensitive, detailed examination of how a young mind is brainwashed into believing a violent theology is, in Foden’s hands, turned into a confusing, disappointing portrayal. Poor Khaled is a two-dimensional character with less depth than a puddle on a dry day. Worse, in the end, he is reduced to a repentant simpleton: “ ‘Do not thank me. Thank Allah. His voice spoke me. It spoke me and told me to give up this trick. To do some things I should have done long time before.’ ” Who would ever speak like this?!

Foden takes great interest in the stump of a central character who had his arm amputated and lost his wife. The effects of these occurrences are eschewed in favour of fetishist descriptions of the stump and appalling ‘insights’ into what it is like to lose a spouse (eg, “…wondering if he would have peace before the rising dawn. Or ever, until he saw… the edge of Being where the Prophet on his Night Journey received God’s instructions before returning to earth. The edge of Being, beyond which his Lucy was.” WHAT?!). Further, Foden characterises this puppet as merely critical of everything, which does not help us to understand him as a fully formed human being.

The novel’s heroine is pathetic: she has some sort of undefined attachment to a dead father (the fact that it is undefined is perfectly natural and worth exploring but Foden seems to stick it on her like a temporary tattoo). She has no real emotional core: we see how she responds dumbly to external stimuli rather than gaining an insight into her mind. Our hero is much the same, a bore about whom a novel should never, ever have been written.

Finally, the story itself is woeful. Considering it is supposed to be an adventure/thriller, the action takes place only in the fourth quarter (the first three are pap, failed attempts at tension-building and characterisation). If Foden really wanted to tell a decent story he would have thrown us straight into the action rather than wasting our time with the lumpy chaff that should have never made it out of his notebook.

This book is so disappointing and downright terrible that I could go on for hours. But I don’t want to waste any more time. I’ve got better things to do.

As expansive as the Masai Mara

Out of Africa
By Karen Blixen

Just as Africa is entwined with our DNA, this charming book is a part of our cultural consciousness. Blixen’s famous account of her time running a farm in the Kenyan highlands from 1913 to 1931 deserves its place in the canon. It is a towering achievement for both its humility and literary elegance.

Blixen’s book has no single narrative; it is a collection of experiences. Far from being scatty or incoherent, the author’s retelling of her memories gradually builds up a colourful picture of life on the farm, life in a colony and life in Africa. Blixen’s skill is in achieving all of this at the same time. She weaves contemporary political problems in with the timeless plight of those who live on the east African plains. It is never forced. Blixen makes few political comments, tending instead towards a more common-sense framework for which to represent the problems of the time. She never says that the white man’s imposition is wrong; she points out the implications of occupation. “It is more than their land that you take away from the people, whose native land you take,” she writes. “It is their past as well, their roots and their identity.”

Above any contemporary politics, Blixen is a canny observer of African life. She regales with fascination memories of the Kikuyu daily routine, dances and death rites. She reminds us that east Africa had been multicultural for centuries before the white man arrived: Nairobi’s Indian community, her own Somali servant not to mention the numerous nations within what became Kenya – all are painted vividly by our guide. For anyone learning more about colonialism and/or life in east Africa, this book is required reading.

Understated philosophy

Naïve. Super
By Erlend Loe

This delightful philosophical novel recently kept me entertained over two late-afternoon reading sessions. I would have welcomed a third and fourth sitting but, alas, the book is too short. Such is life! The beauty of the book, however, is that it expands within the reader’s mind like a flower coming into bloom. All Loe does is plant a few seeds inside his reader’s head. They are perfectly formed seeds, but Loe’s real skill is restraint. This is the key to a good philosophical novel: it should not dictate a worldview, just show its readers a handful of signposts and have them do the rest.

The story follows an unnamed narrator over a period of the three or four weeks since his 25th birthday. Failing to understand the meaning of life, the kind young chap abandons his studies and lives in the apartment that belongs to his brother who is away travelling somewhere (“He told me where he was going. I have written it down. It might have been Africa”). Our protagonist spends his days communicating to a distant friend by fax, buying toys and playing with a neighbour’s toddler. Eventually he travels to New York where the world opens up for him.

The boy’s penchant for lists (“Things I have seen today”/“Things that used to excite me as a child”) is continually entertaining, as is his naïve but charming point of view. Loe manages to colour him with both the understanding that everything is rather simple and the inescapable overload of life. That is Loe’s genius: understated philosophy. Very clever.

Tragedy at the farm

Rainbow’s End
By James M Cain

Reading this punchy novel is a little like spectator sport. The reader spends 200 pages watching trashy, working-class Americans fighting over a bag of money (and the aspirations of what to do with it). It’s like a crass ‘social experiment’ documentary screened on Channel 4. But Cain’s achievement is that while the people in this novel are entirely fictional, their portrayal is infinitely more accurate than that of any reality TV participant.

Cain expertly captures the spirit of his characters: a young man, aspirant yet nailed to his lot; his mother, a self-righteous, dysfunctional wench; and the air stewardess who literally drops into their lives, a Machiavellian glamour puss with a strategy. Plus sundry, well-drawn cast members: the weasely lawyer, the hick cousin and the wise and moral aunt. All you need is a bag of money thrown in and you can see how the shit hits the fan.

Cain’s skill is in setting up a plot that the reader stupidly thinks is relatively straightforward. Clearly, everything will be solved, I thought – having no idea how wondrously complex and dynamic the twisted plot would become.

The pages of Rainbow’s End are rich with punchy, bitchy dialogue. Between these lines – and this is Cain’s class – the author treats to almost universal insights: the desire to leave behind our lives and start anew, the promise of the future, and how this is dampened by the curse of the past. Rainbow’s End may be an American thriller, but there’s definitely something of the Greek tragedy about it.

Don’t read if you’re blue

Love in a Blue Time
By Hanif Kureishi

In this collection of short stories, Kureishi deconstructs instances of love and hate with skilful tenacity. Although it sometimes takes him a little longer than other short story writers to reveal the true nature of his characters, once he has done so the story that unfolds is often full of enjoyment for the reader. I particularly liked his regular character (although it takes different forms) of the loser, the unemployed waster who leeches off his friends and is what some would describe as a menace, others a genius. Kureishi is particularly good at humanising this kind of individual – and it works well in this collection.

We follow the adventures of adulterers seeking revenge, an amateur pornographer and his models, a couple with an alarmingly severe moth infestation which causes the disintegration of their marriage and their soft furnishings, and a drug abuser persistently abandoned by her supposed loved ones. These are just a handful of examples to demonstrate the richness and diversity of this collection’s cast. Every one of them could be any one of us, Kureishi seems to say, because we’ve all got problems. Most of these can be distilled to problems of love and hate. Far from being polar opposites or two sides of the same coin, love and hate are much more closely entwined – a fact that this collection exposes dramatically. That is an affecting sentiment.

Too Small

Goldilocks
By Ed McBain

In a small, Floridian town, a doctor arrives home late from a poker game to find that his second wife and their two young daughters have been brutally savaged to death by a maniac with a kitchen knife. There is no obvious suspect. At first the case is just another headache for the doctor’s lawyer, Hope, whose marriage is disintegrating. But soon Hope is drawn into an intricate web of lies, all with different motives. Some lies are simply to deceive, others to protect and some are to incite. It is Hope, not the slow police officers, who delves into the intimacies of several families to uncover the truth, finding a truly tragic story embedded in his small town.

Goldilocks is not the sum of its parts. McBain can do much better. Hope meanders along haphazardly funding clues and, curiously, keeping them from the police officers out of an odd sense of duty to his client – never realising that he could be implemented in the crime because of this. The tale does have its twists – which I enjoyed – but it never really changes direction. It feels very linear, like a long suburban avenue that in this novel McBain hopes will be a decent substitute for New York’s mean streets. Even the inclusion of wise-cracking New York escapee (whose name has to be Frank) is conceited and urbane. I couldn’t help feeling like I – and McBain – wanted to be back in New York tracking down real killers and drug dealers, not nutters guilty of murderous but small-fry family disputes.

McBain’s talent shines through in a number of sequences, though. His gift for writing punchy dialogue in police interrogation scenes elevates this novel above a pulp paperback. Still, I longed for intelligent cops dissecting gangs and playing big-time dealers off one another; I got wife swap gone wrong.

Epic Implications

The City and the Stars
by Arthur C Clarke

It took me some time to get into this story. I assumed it was your typical futuristic-utopia-with-one-disgruntled-resident tale. But once I understood Clarke’s world it took me to a whole new level and I was hooked. I could have happily forgotten the ‘real world’ and got lost in Clarke’s imagination.

This crafty novel is set in the distant future – about one billion years from now. Miraculously, humans are (sort of) still around. In a way, they’re flourishing – in a truly civilised city so advanced that residents can summon food, furniture and scenarios at will from the so-called Central Computer. The only negative is that the city is so self-contained it is in fact shut off from the rest of the world, said to be a barren, deathly desert, possibly at risk from the enigmatic Invaders who almost killed off the human race.

And Alvin isn’t happy. Like anyone who has ever looked up at the stars from his hometown, Alvin thinks that there must be more – and he sets out to break all the rules of his society to find it.

This could have been a simple allegory about how you don’t know what you don’t know. But not in such an expert’s hands; Clarke turns this story into a complex, philosophical exploration of identity, fear and discovery. And, naturally, he does it with an unsurpassed wonder. There’s plenty of gadgetry in this to woo any sci-fi fan: whooshing doors, silent but powerful transport and worryingly sentient robots. Clark uses all this to characterise the world of the novel and its inhabitants. Only a handful of times are there passages of unnecessary technical titillation. (And Clarke would probably be able to convince me that these are necessary.)

But most of the time we stay focused on the story: the first half is all exposition and exploration; then it becomes a fascinating debate – the exploration now is into ethics and existentialism. Throughout there is a real feeling of movement, of seeing the stars and actually reaching them. Clarke masterfully describes what that journey involves, how it changes the explorer and the society he left behind.

This really is a very wonderful story, a tale with epic implications. Not least because I feel myself reading a lot more sci-fi.

A Faulks in the Road

Devil May Care
By Sebastian Faulks (writing as Ian Fleming)

Up until recently, James Bond could have gone one of two ways. The novels describing his adventures were outdated and the films that had built on his legend were staid. It appeared that Bond could either wither away from our cultural consciousness or continue parodying himself on celluloid.

Actually, said many, there is a third way.

The masterminds behind Bond’s estate re-empowered the franchise with an excellent new cinematic direction and hired one of Britain’s best novelists to reinstall Bond on the page.
Bringing him back to the literary arena was a major test for Bond. I have read only two Fleming books, which I positively disliked. But I could look past Fleming/Bond’s racism, I could let his sexism go, I could even swallow his imperial arrogance – if only the novels were well written. Instead, they are dull fantasies with no brain and a lot of cliché. Had it not been for those early Sean Connery movies, Bond would have rightfully been forgotten. But he survived the end of empire and the British cultural revolution (testament to his adaptability, I’ll give him that).

And so we find him now in the hands of one of the most enchanting and exciting writers in Britain today. Faulks came as a surprise to many – but actually he was an obvious choice, having written about spies, foreign locations, historical settings and even diplomats incredibly well. Bond was a logical step. I wouldn’t be surprised if Seb had had a secret crack at 007 in the privacy of his study (so to speak). That was not to say it was easy. But Faulks has pulled it off, with the wizardry of one of Bond’s gadgets and the charm of the man himself.

Devil pulls Bond out of sabbatical to investigate a mega rich, mega eccentric Russian who is growing a lot of poppies not just because he likes red (no surprise there). Somehow uncharacteristically (more Marlowe than Bond), he is also drawn into searching for a beautiful woman’s kidnapped twin sister. Naturally, both cases are connected: the search leads Bond into the heart of Britain’s current cold war enemy Iran, plus Faulks’ familiar France and, somewhat inevitably, Russia.

Faulks accomplishment is extraordinary: he successfully blends Fleming’s Bond with a 21st-century mentality (this sounds difficult but the transformation is seamless: for example, his sexism is stripped out of his sexuality, fortunately leaving him no less Bond). Plus the final twist could never have been in Fleming but actually sits perfectly in Bond’s world – Fleming missed a trick.

Still, Faulks is true to his own voice: crisp sentences, instantly deep character insights and passionate dialogue – all again fit perfectly in Bond’s world. A page-turner, a romp and a remarkable achievement.

Pick a fix

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
by Stieg Larsson

I did not want to like this book. Its UK publishers have chosen an unfortunate cover design that makes it look at worst like a third-rate mystery and at best a thriller that tries too hard. Fortunately it’s neither of these things, but nevertheless I still had problems.

It takes a long time to understand what the story will actually be about – the reader is 100 pages in before Larsson unveils the central thrust: that a young girl went missing 40 years ago, that her aged uncle is now keen to claw her back and that he will expose the corruption in his powerful family to do so. He recruits a rebel with an axe to grind to do the hunting, and before long a social-outcast is in tow, dealing with her own demons while uncovering those of a terrible dynasty.

There is little originality there, for sure. But it is Larsson’s intriguing approach that gives this thriller its edge. Tattoo is the first part in a trilogy published hastily after Larsson’s death. I suspect that, owing to his death, the trilogy did not receive much of an edit. For it is stunted by missing links crucial to a crime novel. Our hero Blomqvist has a daughter who performs no function (not even to characterise Blomqvist); we feel that she could be important to the story but she just is not (one wonders if she’s highlighted in later parts). Additionally, there are numerous passages in which Larsson eschews craft in favour of reporting blandly what happened. This way of telling not showing can be tiresome and distracting. The novel is also full of clichés (“coming up for air” during sex should surely earn him one of Literary Review's Bad Sex Awards) that really annoyed me.

That said, and although it could not be described as a tight thriller, Tattoo has its charms. The politics of running a respected magazine fascinated me and the central enigma itself did have me hooked (even if there were not enough options for the armchair detective to consider). I’ll be reading the second part when it is published in paperback, if only for a fix not love.

A mature voice

The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind
by David Guterson

It is alarming how effortlessly Guterson paints a character. He needs only a few words drawn into a sentence or two to show his reader almost everything about a character. Guterson’s skill is in giving his reader almost the whole person in an instant. It is a sensation so rarely found in fiction, that of seeing a character as vividly as you see the lady opposite you on the bus, as she yawns and looks apprehensively through the free newspaper at the outcome of dinner tonight.

This slim volume contains 10 short stories. Each contains a different cast of characters; although they shade the pages temporarily Guterson’s characterisations are so complete that you feel as if you’ve read an entire novel on every one. Each story in this touching collection manages to dismantle the minutiae of a man’s life (the old hunter who deliberately leaves behind his gun on his last trip, the brothers who have to move to the city so their father can work) while simultaneously looking objectively at how a man forges his identity: the experiments of childhood, the upheavals of maturity, the disappointment of age.

The collection shines with honesty as it explores the crises that trouble men of varying ages, exposing their flaws and their beauty. Country is an immense achievement in subtlety and precision of language. And it is also one of the most quietly affecting books I’ve read in a long time.

Full of excuses

The Member of the Wedding
by Carson McCullers

Like a poem, wrote McCullers, this novel had to be beautiful otherwise there would be no excuse for it.

A startling – but honestly correct – admission; McCullers was not wrong. Indeed, if it were not for the beauty in her fourth novel’s language this mere coming-of-age story would fall flat. For it is via precise prose that we are led into the world of Frankie, a twelve-year-old tomboy who is wasting away a long, steamy southern summer with her housekeeper and much younger male cousin. Instead of enjoying what she has in front of her – a sassy surrogate mother in Berenice and a loyal, adorable friend in John Henry – Frankie superimposes herself onto dreamed-up scenarios. Her most real and apparently believable dream is to be part of her brother’s wedding. Not content with having a part to play on the day, Frankie is convinced that she can join the marriage, that she can live a wonderful, classy life with her brother and sister-in-law. It is this central dream that forms the basis of McCullers’ novel, as Frankie deconstructs her own individuality as a twelve-year-old girl and asks philosophically how she can become part of a ‘we’.

Frankie spends the most vivid scenes of the book plodding around the kitchen, riling Berenice (the best black character written by a white writer from the time) and confusing poor John Henry. It is a book in which nothing much happens. But, on the other hand, everything happens. Epiphanies do not happen atop mountains; they occur at the kitchen sink. And so it is in her father’s sleepy house that Frankie does not quite come of age but merely begins asking the tough questions that will lead her to adulthood.

In the novel’s surprising central sequence, we follow the young girl into town. She wanders about aimlessly and begins somewhat of a relationship with a soldier. It is in this development that McCullers can explore the clash of childhood innocence with the corruption of adulthood. The passage is incredibly brave and could so easily have subsumed the novel’s focus. Instead, it is merely one step in Frankie’s blossoming – as she does with everything in her life, Frankie storms through it. She paves her own path, teaching readers who have forgotten that twelve-year-olds are naturally struck at that age by an extraordinary feeling of opportunity.

In writing a simple coming-of-age tale, McCullers must have felt the weight of opportunity. She chose one absurd but infinitely endearing desire for Frankie and built the story and her protagonist’s development around that. It’s a clever excuse.

Welcome to my book review blog!

Hello to everyone out there in the blogosphere and beyond.

Here you will find reviews of books I come across.

My reading list has no design. What I see is what you get.

Happy reading.

Adam.