Postcard from the edge

Pyongyang
By Guy Delisle


Animation is big business in North Korea. It sounds surprising but Delisle assures me that it is true. Scores of foreign cartoonists and animators spend time working in Pyongyang’s studios. As part of his job, Delisle served two months working in Pyongyang – walking the smart streets and enduring the fake smiles – and then came home and wrote this fascinating insight into the world’s strangest regime.

His simple but sophisticated drawings reveal the North Korean’s character, at the same time as telling a wonderful story. Delisle’s book does not have a plot as such; it is a mere collection of events and anecdotes about North Korea. But for that reason alone it is an incredibly valuable artifact. His disinterest in politics (other than, at the most obvious level, Pyongyang’s stunning absurdity) is also noteworthy. His view is surprisingly refreshing, as it takes a superficial glance at North Korea. In this way, it manages to make a stronger point than one would with a political polemic. Subtle, humble and immensely entertaining, Delisle’s book should be read by anyone interested in that odd, worrying little country.

(An)other masterpiece

The Other
By David Guterson


In 1972, Neil Countryman meets John William Barry during an 800-metre race. Both are teenagers from different schools, and very different backgrounds. The racetrack meeting changes the course of their lives forever. It is from this moment, until late in Neil’s life, that Guterson’s novel unravels. Drifting effortlessly between schooldays, college years and adulthood, from mansions to the rainforests of Washington State and to basement apartments, The Other tells of an extraordinary friendship underpinned by the fierce intelligence and eccentricity of John William.

Guterson’s novel is a fascinating rumination on the choices we make in life, how they affect our character, and vice versa. It is an accomplished study, executed finely by a master craftsman: in John William, Guterson develops an intricate character over the course of the novel, a character that feels fully formed at the start and yet grows in complexity and depth as the novel progresses. Equally, of course, Guterson is so very skilled at explicating a character in the space of a single sentence (as seen in The Country Ahead of Us, The Country Behind).

The Other is a novel so sublimely sorrowful and joyful at the same time. It reflects life beautifully: at times tender and at times harsh. Uplifting and crushing. Comic and tragic. Reading it, I felt that it was part of the world, like a carving on a huge rock face that has existed for centuries in the forests Guterson describes so well. The Other exists timelessly, for its wisdom and tenderness. Like John William, it should be celebrated for it. Guterson’s power seems to be growing. Long may it continue.

An adventure in time

The Hills of Adonis
By Colin Thubron


Although Thubron spent four months on the trip, he produced a concise travelogue not 200 pages long. His book is sharp and insightful, offering glimpses into daily Lebanese life in the 1970s. However, I expected more than ‘glimpses’. After his four-month trip, Thubron could have been in a position to characterise the people of his host country with more depth. It frustrated me a little: Thubron is clearly a good writer, a fine observer and an enticing guide. I wish he had married these more, and woven a richer tapestry of Lebanese character.

Instead, the writer focuses on Lebanon’s place in history. His trip sets out to explore Lebanon as an ancient land, populated by the gods and cults that spread around the world. His quest is there in the title, The Hills of Adonis. And, to his credit, Thubron does warn us that his book will involve “a long walk down the corridors of time and thought”. He certainly succeeds on his own quest: to uncover the relationship between ancient gods and the landscape that gave rise to and nurtured them.

I think it could have been even more enjoyable and more powerful if Thubron had tied together the ancient with the living. Comparing the Lebanon of antiquity and modernity would have been a worthwhile challenge, and possibly much more of a quest.

First impressions

The Good Soldier
By Ford Madox Ford



Having read some of the finest novelists of the modernist generation, from Conrad to Woolf, I drifted towards Ford like a caver exploring cracks in the earth. Ford, it turns out, is a particularly deep hole: a seemingly endless cavern in which the reader can lose himself… and his will to live.

Let me explain. The Good Soldier, regarded by many as Ford’s masterpiece, follows the fortunes and misfortunes of Edward Dowell and friends. The two couples at the centre of the tale fall in and out of love with several characters, including each other. Dowell is ostensibly telling the entire story; this is where Ford’s craft becomes apparent. Dowell is an arguably unreliable narrator, an inconsistent and confused storyteller. His narrative unfolds in the same way that we encounter life: that is to say as a blend of the present and images of what we have previously experienced. It is a truly remarkable device; Ford is the master practitioner.

Because his accomplishment is so complete, Ford has also crafted an astonishingly bewildering, destabilising and irritating novel. I do not mean that it is bad; on the contrary, precisely because Ford leaves readers with an entirely realistic impression of his characters, he has written a very fine novel indeed. But it also means that it is difficult and challenging. Very rarely is such a novel an intellectual joy also.

I cannot make sense of everything that happens in this book – my memory is infected with Dowell’s failings as a storyteller and human being. But that is simply reflective of life, for we do not remember every detail. The novel is, in my mind, an incomplete set of images, a series of impressions… for that reason it is beautiful.

War stories

The Fixer: A Story from Sarajevo
By Joe Sacco



Sacco’s mighty war-zone reportage has educated me about the Israel-Palestine conflicts and the Balkan war of the Nineties. His books tend to be rather epic in scope (spanning years, populated by several protagonists and taking into account various perspectives on the same conflict). In The Fixer, however, Sacco looks at the Balkan war through the eyes of a single individual, as he reports Neven’s experiences of the conflict. This Sacco conducts with journalistic objectivity, while simultaneously providing a personal, tender characterisation. Neven, the fixer of the title, spins wild stories which teeter, Sacco is told, on the convergence of fact and fiction. Nevertheless, Neven’s insights into the warlords, gangsters and politicians who ran the war are priceless.

Sacco’s harsh dialogue and punchy historical reports drive the narrative along quickly – indeed, the reader is in for a rollicking ride as the story zips back and forth in time and here and there in location, from trenches to kitchens to cabinet members’ chambers. The reviewer’s final word must go to Sacco’s immense talent as a cartoonist: realistic, full of character and exciting to behold, Sacco’s illustrations in this book will grab your eyeballs and command your attention. An elegant, surprising book.

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.