The Complete Booker

Laura's Review - Oryx and Crake

2012-01-30T15:32:00.001-05:00

Human society, they claimed, was a sort of monster, its main by-products being corpses and rubble. It never learned, it made the same cretinous mistakes over and over, trading short-term gain for long-term pain. It was like a giant slug eating its way relentlessly through all the other bioforms on the planet, grinding up life on earth and shitting it out the backside in the form of pieces of manufactured and soon-to-be-obsolete plastic junk. (p. 243)

Snowman, formerly known as Jimmy, lives in relative solitude, sleeping in a lean-to and scavenging for food and water in a city destroyed by a disaster. He wears a watch, although it no longer functions, and covers himself with a bed sheet as protection from the sun's harsh rays. Snowman also watches over the "Children of Crake," a group of ... what are they? People? Aliens? And how did all this come to pass?

Snowman's entire life is set sometime in a near future, that bears some resemblance to the world we know today. The story takes us back to Snowman's childhood, when his father worked for one of many corporations using science to "improve" the world. Through genetic engineering, they seek to evolve human and animal life to advanced forms, free from perceived weaknesses. But of course that comes with a price to people and society. Snowman and his best friend Crake spend their days in typical boy/teen pursuits, like videogames, but even these have a somewhat sinister aspect. As they grow up, their paths diverge -- Crake is more scientifically minded, and is recruited by a renowned university -- but they meet up again in their 20s, along with Oryx, a beautiful woman they have both admired for years.

Along the way, Margaret Atwood leaves tiny clues, so the reader begins to envision what will happen, and how Snowman ends up as possibly the last remaining human on earth. It's both gripping and highly disturbing. Atwood considers her work "speculative fiction," not science fiction. And Oryx and Crake has the requisite dystopian and apocalyptic elements. It's not my usual fare, but she is so good at it, I could easily imagine Snowman's world, and see the path to it from the world I know today. In writing Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood said she intended to give one answer to the question, "What if we continue down the road we're already on? How slippery is the slope? What are our saving graces? Who's got the will to stop us?" And frankly, her answer is bleak. It could be a wake-up call. Or we could all just continue down the road we're already on ...

Cross-posted from my blog

Athena K's Review - Oryx and Crake

2012-01-30T14:35:00.000-05:00

I had the fortune, or misfortune perhaps, to read this book during the recent major snow and ice storm in the Pacific Northwest. Ice collected on our trees and brought down massive branches onto the electrical lines (to dramatic cracks and snaps!) across the region. We lost power Thursday morning and didn't get it back until Monday night - nearly 5 full days of dark and cold. It was an ideal setting to read this novel about a horrifying dystopia set not too far into the future.

Jimmy/Snowman is perhaps the only human left alive on Earth, following a massive plague of dubious origin. He co-exists with various animals and people (?) who have survived as the result of genetic engineering - the rakunks, pigoons, and wolvogs, as well as the Children of Crake, a humanoid race created by Jimmy's childhood friend. Perhaps what is so frightening about the world described by Atwood via Jimmy's flashbacks is that is seems so possible - large self-contained communities owned and run by massive corporations, human obsessions with aesthetic perfection and agelessness, and even (and most horrifying to me) the ChickieNob chickens that have been modified to grow 12 legs and no heads. Atwood criticises several social institutions and trends by taking them to their extreme but logical extension, with compelling results.

Atwood doesn't wrap nearly everything up, and I am still uncertain about the nature of the love between Jimmy and Oryx/Oryx and Crake, and she leaves the end unresolved and big questions completely up to the reader's determination. Sometimes I find this way of completing a novel lazy, but in this case it was perfect. And as usual, part of the brilliance of this novel was Atwood's facility with words - creating them, twisting their meanings, and substituting them for each other.

Of course, it could be that I was in a post-apocalyptic mood, but I thought this was a fantastic novel - FAR superior to Vernon God Little which won this year.

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro

2012-01-26T22:59:00.000-05:00

Originally posted at Book Rhapsody (December 9, 2011).

***

Image from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

Intro

There’s something endearing about the title of this novel. It sounds like the ultimate request of someone who is deeply in love, which when not granted, would render the person incapable of going on.

This novel spurred a lot of attention by holding the reputation of being the most recently published book in Time Magazine’s list of 100 Best Novels. It’s exactly that reason it got me reeling. I thought that it should be The Remains of the Day instead, although I only read that after reading this. And the release of Never Let Me Go’s film adaptation only piqued my curiosity further.

I made it a point to read the book first before watching the film. I immediately bought a movie tie-in edition once it was out in the local book stores. Since I read it last year, a lot has already been said, both from the lovers and the haters. I even unofficially moderated a book talk regarding this, and I haven’t written anything about it yet.

So I guess now is the time.

The Rhapsody

My name is Kathy H. That’s the opening line. It’s not exactly something that you would find in the department of great opening lines. But really, there’s a sense of mystery in this simple introduction.

Why is her surname just that, a lone letter? If one does not have an idea on what the novel is about, the reader might think from that introductory sentence that the narrator is a porn star. But all suppositions are dropped as the narrator immediately tells us what she does and how old she is.

She’s a carer. Shouldn’t that be a caretaker, or a caregiver? What difference would it make anyway if she is either one of the two? And what is she caring for?

She’s caring donors. She’s in her thirties, I think. I imagine she’s 31, or maybe 28. I cannot remember, but wherever her age exactly falls between the two numbers, it’s still a relatively short time to live one’s life, even if one is only shooting for the fifties.

So she’s dying? Not yet, but that would be soon enough, especially if she does not do well on her first donation. So there’s a second donation then? Or even more? And why would she donate her organs if that would endanger her life?

Well, that’s the way it is, at least for her, and the likes of her. What is wrong? What is she anyway?

She’s a clone. The film adaptation hastily explains that in their world, the medical sciences have discovered a fool-proof method of cloning humans. Oh, so this novel is science fiction then.

It is, loosely, but a nonreader of science fiction does not even realize this. The scientific framework is almost stripped off the novel, so there’s no talk of the omniscient eyes of Big Brother in 1984 or the explanation on how those drugs work in Brave New World. I think that this in itself is a commendable feat.

Oh, it’s a dystopian novel then. It is. It’s yet another study of a society’s disintegration given a certain set of conditions. The world is cloning people so that people can use the clones’ young, healthy organs to extend their lives. Their human lives. Which explains why Kathy H is rummaging her life before she ends her career as a carer and start a new one as a donor. Could you even call those two as careers?

There’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I haven’t read it yet, but I think it’s about humans falling in love with clones. What reason would there be to read another novel about clones then if you have already read Dick’s novel? I daresay that this is not largely about clones. I think it’s more about people resigning to whatever is left to them. It’s about ceasing to struggle and accepting things as they are, and this could be the more sensible choice.

That somehow explains this notorious question: why didn’t those clones run away and live happily ever after? Security over them is not too tight, and they might have had a chance if they tried, right? Why this helplessness? Why this stupidity?

Final Notes

That question is also raised by book critics, putting it in such a way that made it look like the author overlooked a grand flaw in building a plot. I myself wanted the protagonists to escape, but in the end, I thought it would be a whole different thing if they did escape. I might not even have liked the novel if that happened.

Ishiguro mentioned that he was not interested in the possibility of escaping and rebuilding lives. He was after exactly what he wrote, an exploration of a life doomed, growing up with all these insinuations that you are different, that you have to look for yourself and for your kind, being fed with all the subtleties that not any one of you can be a bus driver or an actor or whatever it is that you hope to be, realizing that you cannot lose a thing that never was yours, realizing still that you can hardly own what was never meant for you, and realizing further that whatever you lost cannot rush back to you in perfect condition on the shores.

That one may only have scraps for a life, and to want more will just break you apart. And to contain all these will surely wring the inner tumult out of your skin. And after that, a sense of disquiet. A wrangling mix of hope and despair. A stillness, disquiet still, and waiting, waiting.

Marie C. Reviews The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes

2012-01-26T10:35:00.000-05:00

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes. Published 2011 by Random House.

Winner of the 2011 Man Booker Prize and latest novel by acclaimed British writer Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending is a must-read for any reader of literary fiction. The book tells the story, in his own words, of middle-aged Tony Webster and his lifetime of regret around his relationship with two people- Veronica, an ex-girlfriend, and Adrian, a close friend from school. Lifetime of regret isn't quite right; he doesn't find out until very late in his story that he has any reason to regret but when he does, it's as though the weight of all of his decisions crashes upon him and he's left to sort through the rubble alone.

The theme of the novel is laid out early, as a high-school-aged Adrian is talking to a teacher about how to write history fairly: "That's one of the central problems of history, isn't it, sir? The question of subjective versus objective interpretation, the fact that we need to know the history of the historian in order to understand the version that's being put in front of us." And herein lies the central challenge of this book. Tony is telling this story from the future, after the events have taken place; in the opening pages, as we're getting to know the characters, their futures, and Tony's, is hidden from us but not from the man telling the story. He knows things we don't yet, and these things color the way he tells the story. We can't understand anything he's saying until we know everything and we don't know everything until the very end.

Therefore, re-reading The Sense of an Ending is mandatory!

However the book is short enough, and more than wonderful enough, to make a reread easy and worthwhile. Soon after this point in the story, Tony meets Veronica, and their relationship forms the basis of the rest of the book. Even after their romance ends, they continue to interact in meaningful ways; one could say that Tony's relationship with Veronica is the central and defining one of his life, even as he tries to argue that other women were more important. That lie is one of many, maybe not lies exactly but self-deceptions Tony tries to sell the reader. The final secret is revealed obliquely, which tells us something about Tony's ability to process what he's learned and face it.

The Sense of an Ending is a wonderfully, intricately crafted unreliable-narrator story starring a perfectly ordinary man who, through one act of cruelty by whose impact he himself seems baffled, upends four lives for years to come. It's also the story of his reckoning and acceptance of what he's done as well as his ultimate irrelevance. And it is a book that deserves an immediate re-read. But you'll want to- you really will. It's just that good!

This counts towards the Complete Booker Perpetual Challenge.

Athena K's Review - Sacred Hunger

2012-01-25T11:47:00.000-05:00

This is my first re-read in my Booker challenge, so I have to admit to already knowing I love this book. I think this might have been my fourth time through, but having the focus of needing to write a blog post helped me enjoy the writing in a new and deeper way.

This is a novel about the triangle trade in the mid 1700s, and is it about the struggle between greed, profit, humanity, enslavement, liberation and civilization - some pretty heavy themes that I traditionally associate with American literature (though Unsworth is British). So much about this book is exquisite: the depth of the characters, the fluxuating narration style, the the vivid metaphor and rich language, and the incredibly moving story. The juxtaposition of Erasmus and Paris was a perfect tool in playing out the contradictions and moral pitfalls of the various aspects of the slave trade. And even though there are probably a hundred named characters in the novel, each character, no matter how minor, came across as a complete and real person, with a purpose in the narrative.

One of the aspects of the writing that really struck me this time around was the prevalence of metaphors related to slavery, and the various ways in which people and even objects can be shackled, caged, and enslaved - including and especially the drive for profits, the Sacred Hunger of the title:

It is always through arbitrary combinations that experience enslaves the memory. New shackles were being forged here, in the light-filled loft, amid smells of oil canvas and raw hemp and tar, the creeping fringes of the sail-cloth, his feelings for Sarah Wolpert and for his father.

I first read this for part of an interdisciplinary college course called "Slavery and Labor in Film and Literature" - and it was by far the best part of that class. It is still one of my favorite of all of the Bookers I have read - and I couldn't recommend it more highly.

Rose City Reader's Review: Sacred Hunger, 1992 Winner

2012-01-24T15:32:00.000-05:00

Barry Unsworth won the 1992 Booker Prize for Sacred Hunger, his incredible novel about independence, madness, duty, dominance, justice, suicide, loyalty, greed, hope, commerce, power, family, culture, desire, violence, education, marriage, politics, philosophy, self-doubt, government, fatherhood, adventure, friendship, and pride.

And slavery. Specifically, British slave trade in the 1700s. William Kemp stakes his failing fortunes on a slave ship to ply the "Triangle Trade" of selling English manufactured goods to African slavers, slaves to Jamaican sugar plantations, and sugar to England. He installs his nephew, Matthew Paris, a heretical and bereaved scientist seeking to escape his tragic past, as the ship's physician.

When things go horribly wrong with Kemp's plan, his son Erasmus vows to restore the family fortunes and good name, culminating in his obsessive journey to the swamps of colonial Florida to find a rumored Utopian society of ex-slaves and sailors, governed, he fears, by his hated cousin.

Whew! There is a lot going on in the 600+ pages of this gorgeous and horrible and wonderful story. To say that Sacred Hunger is engrossing barely touches the surface. True, Unsworth's main characters live in their heads more than their hearts – little is shown about their emotions beyond anger or pride. Instead, Unsworth focuses on the doubts and hopes that drive William, Erasmus, and Matthew, explaining that "doubt is the ally of hope, not its enemy, and together they made all the blessing" these men had in their tragic lives.

Sacred Hunger is a book that will keep any reader thinking for a long time after the amazing plot concludes.

(Review also posted on Rose City Reader.)

Laura's Review - Good Behaviour

2012-01-21T18:29:00.000-05:00

For certain families, keeping up appearances in public is of prime importance. The St Charles family is one of these. Daughter Aroon, now the ungainly, unmarried daughter, looks back on her childhood at Temple Alice and how expectations of "good behaviour" ultimately brought unhappiness and even tragedy. Aroon and her brother Hubert grew up in the care of a cool and distant mother and a philandering father. Mummie preferred to look the other way, rather than confront Papa's infidelity. Papa loved his children on one level, but preferred riding, fox-hunting, and women to life at home. When Papa is wounded in the war, his convalescence provides Aroon and Hurbert an unexpected opportunity to enjoy a new level intimacy with their father. Mummie remains aloof, and can't hold back a sadistic glow when she realizes her husband is unable to ride.

As Aroon grows into a young woman, she sets her sights on Hubert's best friend Richard. She wildly misinterprets his behavior towards her, and convinces herself they are lovers. She fails to see what's obvious to the reader: Richard and Hubert are much more than friends. When Richard suddenly goes off to Africa, Aroon continues her delusion, sure he will return for her one day. When a letter finally arrives, she is at first disappointed -- until she finds a way to infuse each paragraph with hidden meaning.

Inevitably, the family's fortunes change. They have lived way beyond their means, with a bad habit of stuffing every bill into a drawer. Their solicitor knows the score and tries to help, but Mummie and Papa are compelled to maintain the illusion of wealth and society, so their irresponsible spending continues unchecked. Even in the most intense and private situations, good behaviour rules:

When the last speechless hand-grip was completed, Papa, Mummie, and I were left in the hall, with empty glasses and the empty plates; funerals are hungry work. We exchanged cool, warning looks -- which of us could behave best: which of us could be least embarrassing to the others, the most ordinary in a choice of occupation? (p. 113)

Good Behaviour landed Molly Keane firmly on my favorite authors list. Her characterizations are classic examples of an author showing, not telling. At an early age Richard is "caught" reading poetry in a treehouse. Richard and Hubert go to great lengths to be together alone. Slowly, the reader comes to realize they are gay. It's brilliantly done. She conveys emotion with similar skill. When Aroon goes to a party alone and finds she's been paired with an older, misfit of a man, her pain is palpable. And yet there are also moments of delightful wit, such as Mummie's visit with neighbors, when she finds the primary bathroom already in use. Her host directs her:

'You'll have to try the downstairs. I'll just turn out the cats. They love it on a wet day.' I could imagine them there, crouched between the loo and the croquet mallets and the Wellington boots and the weed killer. (p. 157)

My Virago Modern Classics collection includes several more books by Molly Keane (who also wrote under the pseudonym M.J. Farrell). I can't wait to discover more of her talent.

Cross-posted from my blog

Athena K's review - Bitter Fruit

2012-01-20T14:32:00.001-05:00

Set in post-apartheid South Africa, the Ali family's broken relationships are on display in this miserable little novel. The Bitter Fruit of the title is embodied in Silas Ali's warm beer of escape, white Kate and Julian's experience in the newborn democracy in which they are no longer wanted, and, most especially, Lydia Ali's son Mikey, born after her rape over 19 years ago.

Achmat Dangor's expression of all of this bitterness is in the various troubled sexual activities, encounters and desires of his cast of characters. They include the violence of rape, the apathy of unwanted marital sex, inappropriate seduction between age groups, infidelity, homosexuality (female and male), and incestuous urges and actions of all kinds: father/daughter, mother/son and nephew/aunt. After a while, these sexual encounters lost their shock value - and did not appear to have any other important value. This theme seemed like a badly-contrived plot device in lieu of an actual story or compelling characters, and I was over it long before it was over.

Other themes that I might have found interesting emerged late in the story, including the amorphous definition of race and the plurality of religion possible within a single family in modern South Africa. Perhaps because I was not a native reader I had a hard time figuring out each character's racial identity - and I couldn't determine whether this was because of my ignorance in picking up on cues particular to the country, or whether it was intentional on behalf of Achmat Dangor. Religions seemed a bit more obvious, and the way each character is liberated and also confined by his or her religious upbringing was teased out nicely. However, it wasn't enough in the end to encourage me to care about the characters at the climax of the action, or to care about the unresolved pieces.

Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee

2012-01-19T02:13:00.001-05:00

Originally posted at Book Rhapsody (September 30, 2011).

***

Image from http://www.barnesandnoble.com/

Intro

I got this at regular price back in college. I bought it even if I found the cover unappealing: a stray dog on a barren dirt road. I am not into judging books by their covers, but nice covers sometimes help. It’s hard not to be drawn to a book with a sleek cover design.

Oh yes, this novel is a Booker winner. The author is a Nobel laureate. The author is among the top authors who have the most number of books in that 1001 list. With all these, expectations are raised notches higher.

And yes, Disgrace is agreed to be his best work. How did his best work fit into my reading taste?

The Rhapsody

Disgrace lives up to its title: it is a disgrace to the author’s supposed reputation. That’s straight enough, I think, but really, I am in no mood to talk about this book because I remember nothing good about it.

Some things first. This is the only novel of Coetzee that I have read. I think it will be the last one as well. No doubt, he writes beautiful sentences. It’s just that I don’t like him. His words fail to captivate my attention.

Actually, Coetzee’s concern for animals is endearing. I think this is one of his major causes. He even integrated this in his novel. You see, it’s not only the book cover that has a dog in it. The other half of it is teeming with dogs.

Which is not to say that I don’t like dogs. Okay, so let’s talk about the novel itself. Disgrace is about this professor who carelessly goes into an affair with a student. The object of the liaison comes from a rather influential family, so our disgraced professor is chucked out from the university.

He then lives with his estranged daughter in a rural backdrop, and the two are disgraced again. How? The unattractive and tomboyish daughter is raped and his father, our protagonist, could not do anything about it.

Then silence. And then the dogs. The father starts looking after the dogs in the dog pound. Or is it a dog clinic? And I don’t recall how it ended. I don’t even care.

You see, I cannot find anything to attach myself with this supposedly grand novel. I think something is wrong. I think I just didn’t get it. So when I checked for the novel’s reception, it’s supposed to portray the modern South Africa. Nice, but I don’t even know what South Africa was before. I have an idea what apartheid is, but really, that is just some strange, distant thing if you are in a country where there is only one color.

I think this book explores the problems of communication between father and daughter. Yes, they found themselves in the most unfortunate situation. But isn’t communicating your thoughts and feelings always a good starting point to come up with a resolution? Yes, the daughter was raped. Yes, the father was helplessly assaulted. Do I smell crushed egos getting in the way? Pride as well?

Why is it so hard to swallow something so tasteless?

Final Notes

Oh, I remember just now that I can still give Coetzee another chance. I have yet to find a copy of his other famous work, Life and Times of Michael K. I hope that one would redeem the author from the slight disappointment that I had with Disgrace.

Or maybe I could just lower my expectations even just a bit? I can’t really help it though, especially in the case of Nobel laureates.

The Nobel Prize for Literature is the ultimate award that a writer can get his hands on. But yes, this prize is also one of the most controversial. The winners are almost always unknown in a worldwide scale. There have been accusations that the prize favors European writers, but what the hey, the Nobel remains as it is: a prestigious award. It adds a sense of importance to the person whom the award is given to, and we could not really do much about it except trust that the people behind the Nobel are doing a brilliant job.

Tony Messenger - 1970 Shortlist - Eva Trout - Elizabeth Bowen

2012-01-18T19:04:00.001-05:00

Do any of you enjoy tackling “The Times” crossword? If not surely you know of it? The crossword where “Player getting six, duck, then fifty batting is a test opener” equals “Violinist”( Six = VI. Duck = O. Fifty = L. Batting = IN. Is = IS. Test opener = T. You are meant to think this is about cricket and the misdirection is compounded by the fact that both the start ('player') and end of the clue ('test opener') appear to refer to the game). And the crossword is made up of 32 odd clues, all just sitting there in front of you and you have not a sniff of how to decipher it.

Got the mental idea? The picture? Well translate that into 300 or so pages of sold text and you’ll be part of the way there to understanding conceptually at least, or even “enjoying” Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen. In all honesty I can safely say, that to date, I have not come across a more challenging book from the Booker list (of the ones I’ve managed to finish that is – some have been too tiresome to even pursue to the end).

Our “story” is that of early 20’s Eva Trout, living with one of her ex-teachers, Iseult, and her husband, Eric, and “working” with the local clergyman’s family, the Dancey’s. Eva is about to come into a significant inheritance and her Trustee, Constance, as well as her guardians are concerned by her mental state. The novel opens with Eva taking the clergy children on an outing to the castle where she spent sometime in boarding school, only for her to exclaim that this was to be the venue of her honeymoon.

The book is split into two equal parts (both at 151 pages in my edition) set eight years apart. The second half, simply called “Eight Years Later”, Eva’s ruminates about the time we discovered in “Genesis”, the first part.

We have characters like the albino Elsinore, who nearly drowns in a lake, references to Dickens (Iseult and Eva visit Bleak House) and hundreds of concurrent threads or red herrings:

Horrible sea storms used to beat about. Seven miles out lay the Goodwin Sands. (Yes the Goodwin Sands.) Weeks after a cattle ship came to grief, bloated animal carcases, many of them burst open by putrefaction, “tumbled and beaten out of shape, and yet with a horrible sort of humanity about them,” continued to be washed up on to Viking Bay. Flaubert, reflected Iseult, would have been interested. Henry James, less so. What now one came to think of it, had James, that Dickens really had not? Or if he had, what did it amount to?

Throw into the mix hundreds of words no longer used in common day language and you need a copy of the Oxford Dictionary bedside just to figure out what on earth Elizabeth Bowen is talking about. Has anybody come across “cabalistic” and “verdigris” on the same page before? How about mullions and embrasures in the same sentence? Throw into the mix different voices or views for each chapter, using narratives, diaries or letters to oneself?

Time, now? Midnight, exactly midnight. The Equator. Tomorrow’s today. We dawn on a better word, like a Chekhov ending. Dope. This could be the moment for me to go. This is a moment handed me on a plate. Yes, but the car’s gone to the sea. No car: no matter, because I am not going. No intention of going. Here I stay, ils ne passeront pas. I married, this is my marriage. This is my crime, I intend living it out. I can’t turn back, the path has grown behind me. What was I once?--- who cares. What can I never be again? Intact.

Back to the crossword theme, I used to have a bit of a rush when I could work out one or two clues, but never knew the feeling of fully figuring out a whole puzzle. But I do know there are people who can decipher them every single day – just the same as there would be people who could give me 500 reasons to revisit this book.

As Elizabeth Bowen says late in the piece “Life is an anti-novel”.

I’m sure there will be numerous high brow literature types out there who will poo-poo my struggles with an icon of the literary world, but I’m not too proud to admit I’ve never finished Joyce’s Ulysses and know I never will. And this novel, although obviously rich in subtext, themes, existentialism et al read too much like a text one would tackle for a thesis for me to thoroughly enjoy. Nowadays, I’ve slipped into the 21^st century lazy culture and need to be transported, not feel like I’m back in a University. I suppose that it’s a pity books like this aren’t written anymore, but then again I’m pretty sure the market for them would be small!!!

Cross posted at my blog.

Thanks to h2g2.com for the “How to solve the Times crossword” article where I lifted the example.

Laura's Review - In the Country of Men

2012-01-18T07:00:00.002-05:00

That visit has remained with me ever since. Whenever I am faced with someone who holds the strings of my fate – an immigration officer, a professor – I can feel the distant reverberations from that day, my inauguration into the dark art of submission. Perhaps this is why I often find a shameful pleasure in submitting to authority. … And this is also why, when I finally think I have gained the pleasure of authority, a sense of self-loathing rises to clasp me by the throat. I have always been able to imagine being unjustifiably hated. (p. 159)

When his father disappears one day in 1979, nine-year-old Suleiman’s life is forever changed. Just a short time before, the same thing happened to his best friend Kareem’s father. Instead of spending long happy summer days playing with neighborhood boys, Suleiman tries to make sense of his world. He acts out his emotions and uncertainty, turning on Kareem instead of offering support.

Under the Qaddafi regime, Libya had become a place where dissent was dangerous. Counter-revolutionaries were rounded up for interrogation; some never returned. Suleiman’s mother Najwa tells him Baba is on a business trip, and consoles herself with “medicine” (alcohol, obtained illegally). She has her own demons, having been forced by her family to marry when she was just 14. To protect Baba from investigators, Najwa and a family friend Moosa burn his books and papers. But Suleiman nearly gets caught in the web when a strange man begins asking him questions about Baba and his associates. In one of the more horrifying scenes Suleiman, Najwa, and Moosa watch a public execution on television. At the end, the TV broadcast returned to images of flowers and nationalistic music. And life went on.

Suleiman grew into a man, but one with emotional scars that would never heal. Hisham Matar writes convincingly, and from direct experience: his own father disappeared many years ago, and to this day Matar doesn’t know what happened to him. When he describes the televised execution’s impact on Suleiman, you know he’s also talking about himself:

Something was absent in the stadium, something that could no longer be relied on. Apart from making me lose trust in the assumption that “good things happen to good people,” the televised execution … would leave another, more lasting impression on me, one that has survived well into my manhood, a kind of quiet panic, as if at any moment the rug could be pulled from beneath my feet. … I had no illusions that I or Baba or Mama were immune from being burned by the madness that overtook the National Basketball Stadium. (p. 198)

This book started slowly and quietly, but the tension steadily grew. I was drawn into the family's story, and felt quite emotional reading about how the events of 1979 affected Suleiman for the rest of his life. This is a very powerful book deserving of its 2006 Booker Prize nomination.

Cross-posted from my blog

J.G.'s Review - Midnight's Children

2012-01-12T06:54:00.005-05:00

Sadly, not my cup of tea. This unruly, exuberant, at times fantastic (in the magical realism sense) novel was just too too much for my taste. I won't dispute that it's probably my own darn fault that I didn't get it; I don't know nearly enough about India's religions, culture, and politics. But it blunted my enjoyment to feel almost the entire time that I was missing various pieces of information that would have allowed me to understand it much better.

Rushdie's narrator, Saleem Sinai, tells his family's story, both to the listening ear of a fictional female companion who is both caretaker and fiancee, and in the guise of writing the book itself. This framing device lends some structure to what is otherwise a sprawling multi-generational tale. How sprawling is it? Wikipedia lists 89 characters for its 533 pages.

Saleem's tale is filled with fanciful details, such as a couple who live happily in a basement, accessed through a hole in the floor concealed by a carpet; his enormous nose and enhanced sense of smell that allows him to smell emotions; a sister who sets fire to shoes; prophesies, supernatural powers, switched babies and renamings; and his murderous arch-enemy Shiva who kills by squeezing victims with his knees. All this against the political and social backdrop of India's birth to independence from colonial rule. It's a story as detailed and intricate as any embroidered sari.

Still, this novel missed the mark with me (and perhaps the target is somewhat to blame). I had trouble connecting the dots, I like my literature more neatly organized, and I kept thinking of J.R.R. Tolkien, who said, "I cordially dislike allegory in all its manifestations, and always have done since I grew old and wary enough to detect its presence."

I'm sure many adore it -- after all, it won both the Man Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Prize (it's my double winner for the Battle of the Prizes: British Version), and was voted Best of the Bookers. I won't dispute that it probably deserves adoration. All I'm saying is that it just didn't happen for me.

Excerpt:

She had spent the morning alone with giggling Zohra and the echoes of the name Ravana, not knowing what was happening out there at the industrial estate, letting her mind linger upon the way the whole world seemed to be going mad; and when the screaming started and Zohra--before she could be stopped--joined in, something hardened inside her, some realization that she was her father's daughter, some ghost-memory of Nadir Khan hiding from crescent knives in a cornfield, some irritation of her nasal passages, and she went downstairs to the rescue, although Zohra screeched, "What are you doing, sisterji, that mad beast, for God, don't let him in here, have your brains gone raw?" . . . My mother opened the door and Lifafa Das fell in.

Note: this review is also posted on my blog, Hotchpot Cafe, along with reviews of various other Booker and non-Booker books.

J.G.'s Review - Sacred Hunger

2012-01-12T06:35:00.003-05:00

This book snuck up on me. Given its plot -- an English merchant sends a ship into the Golden Triangle of 1750s slavery, taking trade goods to Africa, bartering for slaves there and transporting them to the New World, and planning to return to England with rum or sugar -- I was not eager to read it. It promised to be a long slog of 630 pages, made essential by my quest to read all the Booker winners and my participation in the Battle of the Prizes - British Version.

Instead, this book turned out to be a rare joy. It is handsomely crafted, with a nice framing device, the thorough but not leaden flavor of historical research, and interesting and thoroughly humanized characters, including Erasmus Kemp, the son of the ship's owner, eager to make his way in his father's world of commerce, and Matthew Paris, Kemp's disgraced cousin who travels on the ship as its doctor and conscience. Unexpected twists and turns lead to a splendid mystery/confrontation/resolution that involves my very own backyard of colonial Spanish Florida.

I read all this with growing excitement that a prize-winning English novel could smoothly devolve from Liverpool via Africa to my home state, within the same general fictional time frame as other books I am eager to read (Bartram's Travels and Hitt's Wekiva triology). All roads lead to Florida's wilderness for me these days.

Even if you are not similarly enthralled by Florida, this novel offers a rich reading experience far beyond the events of its plot. The fate of the Liverpool Merchant turns out to involve the varying motivations of men of commerce, the challenges of navigating social conventions when they contradict one's own beliefs, and the possible perfectibility of human social and personal relationships in a primitive paradise. Unsworth's ability to stay true to his tale while skillfully exploring these larger issues makes this novel one of the Booker's best.

Excerpt:

Hughes the climber, on lookout in the crow's nest, heard the shouted orders and felt the ship quiver through her length as she was brought closer to the wind. A mackerel sky was building to westward, with dark banks of stormbreeders low on the horizon. But there was some sun still, lying flat on the sea. He watched the gulls which earlier that day had found the ship. They were following on the starboard side, fewer now, but in good number still, which made him think they were in for no more than light squalls. . . . He noted again how the birds rode the wind, how the dying sun flashed on their breasts. Below them the sea was riven with gashes. The wind was rising. He looked away from the birds at last, to eastward. The horizon on that side was pale and clear still and Hughes saw, faint and ragged but unmistakable, the shapes of land. He cupped hands to mouth and bawled the fact to the darkening sky.

Note: this review is also posted on my blog, Hotchpot Cafe.

Angus - Intro and Progress

2012-01-11T23:16:00.000-05:00

Hello! I am Angus, a huge fan of award-winning books, particularly the Pulitzer, NBA, Booker, NBCC, and IMPAC winners. I've been blogging for five years now, but I started focusing on book blogging just last year, January 2011. You can check out my book blog, Book Rhapsody, to find out more about the books that I read and like.

Like most of the contributors here, I intend to read all the Booker Prize winners as long as I can read. Here's a list of the Booker books that I've been able to read and finish:

Offshore by Penelope Fitzgerald
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner
The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
Possession by A. S. Byatt
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
The Line of Beauty by Alan Hollinghurst
The Sea by John Banville
The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai
The Gathering by Anne Enright
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

Looks like I still have a long way ahead. I'm glad to have stumbled upon this blog. I'll cross-post my writings, past, present, and future, regarding Booker books. A little patience though, because I only write about a book at least six months after finishing them. It's my way of testing how good a book really is. Thanks and happy reading!

Athena K's Review - The Sense of an Ending

2012-01-04T23:36:00.001-05:00

The first thing I remember reading in this short snappy novel is its first Library of Congress Subject Heading. These types of headers are published in every novel catalogued by the U.S. Library of Congress (I'm assuming international readers aren't as familiar with them, but maybe I'm wrong - anyone?). I like to check them out to get a sense of a novel's themes, locations, and characters -- and because I'm a big nerd. The first subject heading tag read: "Middle-Aged Men -- Fiction." Not the most effective way to catch my attention.

Luckily, I read more. In fact, I read the entire book in one sitting because I couldn't put it down. The story itself was simple enough. In fact, the entire plot can be (and is) reduced to a single line of equation about 2/3 of the way through the book. But the way Barnes related the story, intermingling the main character's reflections, gave the story a powerful emotional charge. The bisecting of the story into two unequal parts was very effective, and I'm sure you can look to any number of other reviews for some truly fantastic snippets of quotes on memory, self-delusion, and storytelling. Once through the first time, I realized that I had probably missed picking up on an enormous number of tiny clues, and literary moments that would make a re-read thoroughly enjoyable. I will definitely read this book again.

Overall, I agree that this was perhaps not a "major" work - it was not an epic, it did not effect a major change on the way I read or see the world. But it was a thoroughly enjoyable, intelligent, and compelling novella. This win reminded me of the win of Ian McEwan's Amsterdam - another great little novel by a well-deserving author, and I'm not sad that it won.

Tony Messenger - 1970 Winner - The Elected Member - Bernice Rubens

2011-12-30T02:44:00.002-05:00

Eight years prior to this novel, Ken Kesey told us the story of Randle Patrick McMurphy through the eyes of the mute native American Chief Bromden in the haunting "One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest". Although similar in setting (a psychiatric hospital) this novel is not a "British" version of the American tale, and although sharing a thin theme around authoritative control it looks at the plight of the main protagonist through a number of eyes.

The story opens with Norman Zweck a one time brilliant barrister, the idol of his close-knit Jewish family, confined to his parent's old bedroom, drug addicted and suffering hallucinations. Rabbi Zweck, his father, and his sister Bella who still lives at home and wears white ankle socks, have no option but to have Norman committed to a psychiatric hospital.

The tale is one seen through the eyes of Rabbi Zweck, Norman, Bella and the estranged sister Esther, with their visions of guilt, blame and worries told for each character. Obviously Norman's psychotic tale being more self centered than the others (or is it?). Whilst in hospital Norman meets "The Member" another patient who continues to feed Norman's drug habits and his psychosis.

Norman shrugged helplessly. His mouth was full of vocabulary,yet there seemed no way to distil it in any kind of order. He let his mind wander away from the whole sorry story. He thought of the Minister. He missed him. He must have been discharged when Norman was in his deep sleep. He wished he could contact him again. What point was there in living this so-called sane way of life, when all zest was drained out of him, and all he was left with was a clear recognition of his own torment that hammered at his skull.

This is no ordinary Psychiatric hospital tale, nor a tale of the evils of drugs, but more a slowly revealing story of the family disintegration, their issues, foibles and the events which led to Norman's downfall. The pages describing Norman's visioning of silverfish and his overall addiction are so well written it is as though Bernice Ruben's has been through similar psychotic issues herself. Although, I should have picked the format straight off as the novel opens with the quote:

If patients are disturbed, their families are often very disturbing. R.D. Laing "The Politics of Experience"

This was the third novel from the 1970 shortlist that I have read and I can categorically state that it was head and shoulders above the other two novels, in the award stakes and it rates very highly on my list of favourite Booker novels. It was a pleasure to read, not too daunting, nor filled with Jewish themes, my only criticism being the ending leaves a lot to be desired (an ending I'll surely forget even if the character of Norman Zweck will stay with me for sometime!!!).

Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 1971 Winner - In A Free State - V.S. Naipaul

2011-12-27T18:53:00.000-05:00

“we all want to be free from something or free to do something. But when you get that particular freedom, whatever it is, do you not find something else that bothers you? When the headache is gone, do we not notice the backache? When the backache is gone, do we not notice that we are irritated at something or someone? We long for freedom, but our small freedoms do not last long! Our natural human angst – restlessness, agitation, discontent, or whatever we label it – kicks in to move us on to looking for the next freedom or the next vista of imagined happiness.”

Everyday Dharma – Lama Willa Miller

I know it is probably a tad strange to use a quote from a Buddhist self help manual to introduce a Booker Prize winner, however I couldn’t help myself, given the reference to freedom and that eternally searching human struggle, when faced with V.S. Naipaul’s Booker Prize winner of 1971.

Not a novel, but a novella with “two supporting narratives”, a prologue and an epilogue.

As mentioned by other reviewers the title novella “In A Free State” is probably the least accessible of the parts here, with a story set in an African colony, no longer British and undergoing a civil war between the King and the President’s tribes. The story centres on a journey of a white civil servant, happy to live in Africa, who has suffered a major nervous breakdown, and his female passenger as they return to the expected safety of their compound. A stop over at a cheap hotel, whereby they meet “The Colonel”, a relic of British rule, brings out the usual arrogance and racism.

The story is thick with descriptions of the landscape, weather, roads and passing landmarks, giving the characters a very insignificant place in the grander scheme of things. With the influence of colonial rule simmering in the background.

Suburban gardens gave way to African urban allotments with fewer trees, and at the edge of the town the land felt open and the light was like the light that announces the nearness of the ocean. Here, serving both town and wilderness, weathered painted hoardings on tall poles showed laughing Africans smoking cigarettes, drinking soft drinks and using sewing machines.

The prologue is a story of a well travelled tramp and his treatment at the hands of German, Greek, Italian, American, Egyptian travellers on a two day steamer journey.

“One out of Many” the tale of an Indian domestic who moves to Washington with his Government employer, a classic Booker tale of displacement.

“Tell Me Who To Kill” the story of a young Caribbean Islander who relocates to London to support his younger brother who is the pride of the family. A story of vanity, no yearning for home here but no homeliness in a foreign land.

The epilogue a very short story of a traveller in Egypt coming across Italians feeding local children at a roadside café as though they were zoo animals, and a culture clash when he regularly comes across a travelling Chinese circus troupe.

The sum of the whole is numerous characters searching for happiness, for freedom, for a sense of belonging in a foreign land– to be “In a Free State”.

All up a masterful work, but personally not one that resonates with me, with the shallowness of the characters in the main title work being a distraction and a bit of a let down after such promising narratives leading into the main body of the work. Understandable winner of the prize given the themes of displacement and “Britishness”, but not one of my favourites.

Cross posted at my blog.

Athena K's Review - Mother's Milk

2011-12-19T17:38:00.000-05:00

Edward St. Aubyn's quirky, scathing little novel touches on a resonant subject, which made for a surprisingly delightful and balanced read. The tale is narrated by three members of the Melrose family who are as a whole intellectual, self-centered and empty people. The narration bounces between characters with ease; from precocious 5-year old Robert who opens the book narrating the circumstances of his birth first hand in a bitter voice, to Patrick, the father of the family narrating his dissatisfaction with life resulting in substance abuse and infidelity, to Mary, the mother, and her preoccupation with mothering and spoiling her second son, to the detriment of all other relationships. They are a witty, sarcastic bunch who offer negative yet entertaining commentary on several subjects, including the wealthy and upper class, adherents of new age theories, and Americans (in general).

Alone, this style would become tiresome and unsustainable. But the book also offers commentary on the various ways in which families repeat the mistakes of their elders, or, in trying to avoid certain mistakes, swing the pendulum too far to the opposite side. Patrick is obsessed with his elderly mother's decision to leave her vacation home in the south of France to a New Age institution run by an Irish "shaman" upon her death rather than giving it to him. Mary is wounded by her mother's disinterest and uninvolvement in her childhood. Who knows what little Robert and Thomas will be attempting to recover from in the wake of their parents' choices. The power of parenting - and especially mothering - is explored in a wide variety of contexts.

This imperfect novel contains some absolutely delightful gems of description:

"His attention, which usually bounced from one thing to another was still...His mind was glazed over, like a pond drowsily repeating the pattern of the sky."

"They made their way back toward the stone table, trying not to smile too much or look too solemn. Patrick felt himself sliding back under the microscope of his family's attention"

"She went on decanting the poison of her resentment into him for the next two hours."

But the novel ends abruptly, and the witty and sarcastic voices do become a bit tiresome before it does.

Tony Messenger - 1969 Winner - Something to Answer For - P.H. Newby

2011-12-18T18:08:00.000-05:00

I had been trying to purchase a copy of the inaugural Booker Winner for a number of years, with not a lot of success. First editions, mint condition etc. were available for hugely inflated prices and it wasn’t until Faber and Faber recently re-released it in paperback that I was able to obtain a copy.

Let’s flashback to 1969 – a cursory glance at the internet will show you it was a time when man first walked on the moon, massive public rallies against the Vietnam War were being held, 300,000 people turn up to witness Woodstock etc etc. A period where the

USA

was dominating world headlines. So what about the British “Empire”? They managed to set up this quaint Literature prize for “any full-length novel, written by a citizen of the Commonwealth, the Republic of Ireland or Zimbabwe” with only living authors, who have written their novel in English being eligible. I must admit, since that time, they’ve done a wonderful job of promoting the Prize, creating controversy, pushing for headlines, attracting grand statements like “The prize has established itself as a British institution rather like Derby Day”.

Was 1969 a time when the British were attempting to assert their fading influence? Voila, let me pull a rabbit out of my hat, let’s create a literary institution!

How ironic that then that the first ever Booker Prize winner is a novel that through pathos, black comedy and farce questions the relevance of the Commonwealth. This ridiculous concept of “self”, of being “British”, of still maintaining an influence in world affairs is questioned throughout P.H. Newby’s hard to source and until recent times a forgotten novel.

In 1969 the immediacy of the 1956 Suez Canal conflict would still have been understood by a vast majority of the British public. Whilst the enjoyment of this tale does not require you to research the events of the crisis, assistance, in 2011, to understand a few more of the idiosyncrasies of the story is probably recommended.

In 1951 the British had 80,000 troops stationed along the Suez Canal, making it the largest military base in the world. According to historylearningsite.co.uk “to many in Britain the Suez Canal was a sign of Britain’s overseas power – to many Egyptians it was an emblem of an empire that harkened back to former times that many believed should have gone when World War Two ended.” What a magnificent setting for a novel that was eligible for a Commonwealth Writers Prize!

Onto “For Something to Answer For” itself, in a nut-shell, the narrative presented is about Townrow, a defrauding employee of a Trustee Company who is asked to go to Port Said by a widow, “Mrs K”, to help her deal with the recent death of her husband and Townrow’s friend Elie. On his journey Townrow comes across an enraged Jew who blames the British Government for not warning them of the dangers of the Nazi death trains

At no time did the BBC warn us about those trains. It is useless to deny it. Why was there no warning? We Jews did not know. We were told the men went to Germany to work in factories and on the land. Why did the British not say, ‘Stay away from those trains. Do not go on those trains. They are death trains. They will take you to extermination camps’?

this event becomes a recurring theme. Early on Townrow is mysteriously hit on the head and the whole novel becomes a haze of events. Is Townrow dreaming, are the events occurring, is he British or Irish, has he imagined a funeral for his friend at sea, did he meet his friend in the Arab part of town, did his love interest really disappear at the Greek Sailing Club, the themes are endless and recur with different results throughout.

You couldn’t answer for anything outside your own personal experience. And if you remembered your own experiences wrongly you didn’t count at all. You weren’t human.

Throughout the Booker Prize history a large number of winners and shortlisted novels have dealt with the theme of displacement, Naipaul, Rushdie, Zadie Smith, even this year’s “Pigeon English”, and the 1969 winner “Something to Answer For” also has the theme (somewhat in reverse with a Commonwealth subject being out of place in Egypt).

Scarcely knowing what he was doing or where he was walking he must have been looking straight into the sun because he was so dazzled enormous patches of black shadow seemed to hang across the brilliant morning. They were so black there might have been annihilation behind what they covered. The city hung in strips and patches. That was how he saw his own life.

At one stage reference is made to Victor Hugo’s “Toilers of the Sea” – a tale of displacement, sailors, unrequited love, desolation and ultimately shattered dreams. Is P.H. Newby throwing out bait here? Will the tale of Townrow end with a similar fate? No spoiler alerts here, so you’ll have to read “Something to Answer For” to see if there is a shared theme.

In summary this novel presented me with a number of challenges and to be honest it was a struggle to understand the dream like hazy state, the recurring themes with different twists each time, the relevance of characters and their fates. All up this was not one of my favourite reads from the Booker winners, and to be honest, sitting here in 2011, it is probably not even the one I would have chosen from the 1969 list to win the prize.

Enjoyable but no stand out – and, given this year’s “controversy”, one that would never have made the 2011 shortlist of “readable” works.

Athena K's Review - Jamrach's Menagerie

2011-11-30T15:15:00.001-05:00

This book should have been right up my alley. Something about sailing ships and survival stories have always interested me - and this one had both! Perhaps it is the distilling of the entire world into a small ship, a few people, to evoke the best and worst of human nature that I am interested in. I also really enjoy ship-story symbolism ala the Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Maybe that is why I feel slightly let down by Carol Birch's beautifully written story.

Jaffy is an 1850's London street urchin with no prospects, who, as a young boy, survives an encounter with a tiger and enters the world of Jamrach's menagerie of exotic animals. Jaffy befriends another young assistant, Tim, and together, a few years later, they set sail aboard a whaling ship bound for Indonesia in pursuit of what I understood to be a Komodo Dragon to add to the menagerie. But the ship falls under a mysterious curse, and the sailors must endure horrible, awful hardships (and that's about all I can say about that without ruining the most gripping part of the book).

Even though in many ways the story echoed off one of my favorite Booker winners the Life of Pi, my complaint with the book is not plot-related. It is that none of the characters, including and especially Jaffy, seemed well developed. I had a hard time understanding what motivated most of their actions, the basis for their friendships, and their inner lives. With more character development, the story could have been a coming-of-age story about Jaffy, or an analysis of the various ways in which we are all caged and free, or (and I think I would be most interested in this) a bromance about the relationship between Jaffy and Tim. But because the characters were always distant and misty, it fell short of these. And perhaps because it was unclear what the message or purpose of the plot was, the opportunity for the rich and deep foreshadowing and symbolism that I hoped for never materialized. Upon reflection, I think the dragon was just a dragon, which disappoints me.

But all was not lost. While Carol Birch seems to lack in character development she excels in scene-setting. Her locales are punctuated with bright colors, pungent smells, and rich detail. I agree with others that the London she describes is compelling, as are the Azores, the ship, and the sea during a storm. Even though I ultimately wanted more character, the atmosphere and gripping story resulted in a pretty good read.

Matthew's Review - The Stranger's Child

2011-11-29T15:33:00.001-05:00

In 1913, George Sawle brings the young poet Cecil Valance to his home, called Two Acres. There, he meets Daphne Sawle, Beorge's younger sister. After a week, Cecil leaves, but not before writing Daphne a poem about Two Acres. Cecil joins the Army and promptly dies in action, and with his death, his poem takes on mythical proportions. The Stranger's Child tracks the history of this family, the history of the poem, and the social history of English from 1913 to 2008.

It's unfortunate for Julian Barnes that I read The Stranger's Child so quickly after A Sense of an Ending. Not only does Hollinghurst's novel have a larger canvas, with room for nuance and depth, but Hollinghurst benefits from a particularly refined style of prose, one without obvious signposts directing the reader's attention to important themes. Both novels are similar in terms of the macrocosm: both have a revelation in the final pages, both are about the intersection of memory and history, and both follow an aging cast through the years. A Sense of an Ending, however, uses the pretense of an older man looking backwards. The Stranger's Child, with its focus on the shifting perspective of the past, takes a provisional look at history. What is lost in memory is lost in history, Hollinghurst seems to say.

If it seems like a discredit to either to compare one grand social novel to a smaller shorter novel about one man, then it is simply in service of showing how out of step this year's Booker judges were. In purposefully selecting a "readable" novel (in this case, substitute "readable" for "brief"), the judges have left out of the short list a great novel. The Stranger's Child is irrefutably a fantastic novel, filled with gorgeous, nimble and deft prose, sharpyl drawn characters that change and grow with time, and huge lofty ambitions. This is a novel about the temporal aspect of art, the changing social landscape, and what Jacques Rancière calls the distribution of the sensible. Only through the vale of time can something build meaning, which is an overly reductionist reading of his theory. None of these things are explicitly referenced in Hollinghurst's novel. Instead, he allows the story and semiotics to do the work, to allow the reader to understand what is being said about art and time. On top of this intellectual pursuit of art and knowledge, Hollinghurst engages in a social history of gays in England through the 20th century, building on what he did previously in The Line of Beauty.

The Stranger's Child is not merely an exercise in symbolism or social history, but also a deeply affecting portrait of socially unacceptable love throughout time. George and Cecil's dalliances in the woods at Two Acres are heartbreaking in that both of them will be required to marry of the opposite sex, and cannot engage in their affair openly. Hollinghurst returns to this pain in a tacit manner, allowing the heartbreak to filter through the mists of time thanks to the work of subsequent protagonists further into the novel. Hollinghurst employs similar tactics in this novel as in The Line of Beauty to naturalize the love affair as normalized. This is a fancy way of saying that The Stranger's Child remains a love story, despite its interest in grand themes of time and art.

Some famous author once said that there is a tendency to overpraise longer novels because of the sense of accomplishment accompanying the completion of the novel. A corollary of this is that there is an anxiety that "easy" means "less valuable". Using both of these axioms, one could argue that A Sense of An Ending is qualitatively superior to The Stranger's Child because it is succinct and a much more palatable read. I would completely disagree. The Stranger's Child is a monumental work of English fiction in part because of its wide canvas, its incorporation of a history of art and a social history, and because of its tricky structure. The Stranger's Child does more than Barnes' slight work because there is simply more room to work with, and has much more to say about the intersection of memory and history. Ultimately, Hollinghurst's novel says something complicated about the transformation of art through the ages whereas Barnes says something slight about the mysts of memory and the starkness of history. It helps that Hollinghurst's novel can be mapped into Hayden White's The Burden of History and Barnes' ideas can be dismissed as overly reductionist.

I cannot help but compare the two thanks to a similarity of theme and because they fit into the matrix of social novels that English writers seem to excel at. Suffice it to say, that even without Barnes' novel scuttling underneath the looming shadow of The Stranger's Child, I would have still loved Hollinghurst's novel. Of the Booker nominees I have read, this is surely the best and most deserving of the award. However, its exclusion from even the shortlist simply speaks the Booker's inability to remain relevant.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - The Stranger's Child - Alan Hollinghurst

2011-11-24T02:12:00.001-05:00

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

Wilfred Owen – Anthem for Doomed Youth – September – October 1917

As Julian Barnes reminded me in “A Sense of an Ending”, memories are not quite what they seem, however I distinctly recall having to study Wilfred Owen’s poetry in a boy only Private High School back in the 1970’s and at the time I surely thought “what use will this have in later life?” Well after 30 odd years I finally have a reference point of reading World War One poetry and it was put to some use when making my way through the readable (2011’s catchphrase) tome “The Stranger’s Child”. Does a novel become a tome once it hits 564 pages?

I must admit I did approach this novel with trepidation, given its size and the fact that I have previously found some of Hollinghurst’s novels a slog. As my edition’s inner sleeve announces:

In the late summer of 1913 the aristocratic young poet Cecil Valance comes to stay at “Two Acres”, the home of close Cambridge friend George Sawle. The weekend will be one of excitements and confusions for all the Sawles, but it is on George’s sixteen-year-old sister Daphne that it will have the most lasting impact, when Cecil writes her a poem which will become a touchstone for a generation, an evocation of an England about to change forever.

As each Part is introduced this novel jumps across decades, generations and characters, covering 70/80 years with the poet Cecil and the Sawles, George and the “sister” Daphne being the “common thread”. This novel would have 100’s of characters, some minor, some trivial, some you think are minor who suddenly become the centre of something wider, others petering out – very much mirroring our own lives and relationships (are our “best ever friends” at kindergarten still our “friends?). This is a monumental work where minute details are required (and added) and although early on I found them someone laborious I was entranced, even though at times confused (which one is Wilfrid again?). The raft of subject material: biographers, musicians, artists, book collectors and of course poets add a many layered mystical feel. I’m a person reading a book about someone researching a biographical book about a book writer, who knows a book collector….

She felt something similar, but worse in a way, about hundreds and hundreds of books she’d read, novels, biographies, occasional books about music and art – she could remember nothing about them at all, so it seemed rather pointless even to say she had read them; such claims were a thing people set great store by but she hardly supposed they recalled any more than she did. Sometimes a book persisted as a coloured shadow at the edge of sight, as vague and unrecapturable as something seen in the rain from a passing vehicle: looked at directly it vanished altogether. Sometimes there were atmospheres, even the rudiments of a scene: a man in an office looking over Regent’s Park, rain in the streets outside – a little blurred etching of a situation she would never, could never, trace back to its source in a novel she had read some time, she thought, in the past thirty years.

With views and opinions by many different characters, over numerous decades, this gives you the fading memory laden questioning from many layers feel – what is the truth here and will it ever be explained? And who is the stranger’s child? And as I have noted in some of my previous Booker Reviews from the 2011 long list there are similarities to another couple of works this year… in this case, Barnes’ “A Sense of an Ending” and Barry’s “On Canaan’s Side”.

To feel engrossed enough to agree with great passages, and then suddenly realise that you are reading a work of fiction, is a great achievement and although a number of characters I didn’t personally feel attached to, I was still entranced by the major part a “minor poet” who didn’t live that long, could play in innumerable lives.

All up I thoroughly enjoyed this book and now having finally completed the long list for 2011, I can firmly state that I would have included this in my short list.

Cross posted at my blog.

Athena K's Review - A Long Long Way

2011-11-22T12:11:00.000-05:00

It is fitting that my copy of Sebastian Barry's A Long Long Way contains quoted praise from J.M. Coetzee, whose novel Disgrace had me impressed and appalled (appreciative of the mastery and cringing from the subject) in a way similar to my reaction to this novel. A Long Long Way resonates with me - days after putting it down I can't get these images out of my head. Unfortunately, those images are scenes of gruesome death in the trenches during World War I (not exactly my favorite). But while I won't be wanting to revisit the topic for a while, I have to admit this was a masterful book, and I'm disappointed that it lost out to John Banville's snooze The Sea for the 2005 Booker.

Barry begins with a sympathetic and complex character, Willie Dunne, who takes the reader on a journey through the emotional landscape of war: terror, pain, loss and horror, yes, but also camaraderie, nationalism, familial love, and hope. But Barry's true gift is in describing the horrors of the war with gorgeous, poetic language. I especially admire his descriptions of the first chlorine gas attack ("it was the force of something they did not know that drove them shoving and gasping away from that long, long monster with yellow skin"); the awful thick mud encountered in the trenches, and the shattering cold of a winter on the front lines. These moments of description overcame my general aversion to war novels to the point where I can actually picture myself re-reading this book.

Willie Dunne experiences the worst of the war: the piss and shit and blood and guts and tears and panic of the Irish soldiers in Belgium and at home. My Irish history is a little rusty, so I needed to read up on the the uprising of 1916. But a detailed knowledge was not necessary to understand the passion and tragedy of their situation. Barry successfully made me feel emotional about an unexpected subject, and painted a vivid portrait that took me somewhat reluctantly into the trenches. It was deeply moving, and perhaps even scarring. But recommended.

Matthew's Review - The Sense of an Ending

2011-11-21T13:21:00.000-05:00

On the back of the hardcover, just above in the ISBN barcode, in the tiniest font, the book helpfully tells you that this is "Literary Fiction". Not just "fiction" but "Literary". This separates The Sense of an Ending from the rest of the unwashed masses of fiction, the novels without ambition to be about things. Certainly, Julian Barnes' Booker Prize-winning novel is about things. The first paragraph announces these great big themes of time and memory, alerting the reader that this is a Great Work of Fiction about Great Themes.

While this sounds facetious or dismissive, The Sense of an Ending is a readable novel. It helps that its length is easily manageable in one or two sittings. The best compliment I can pay this novel is that at 150 pages, it certainly doesn't overstay its welcome. Its brief length should not distract from the novel's lofty ambitions of theme.

Every novel should aspire to be something other than a ripping good yarn. This is particularly a factor in what differentiates a novel from a story: it does something new. The Sense of an Ending has great aspirations for telling a story about memory, ageing, and history wrapped up in a man's self-centered and average life. Tony Webster, the protagonist, pontificates endlessly about his own history, repeating the compulsion to pick over memories ad infinitum. Memories come to light after being forgotten for forty years, and then eventually, new history comes to light, changing how he perceives everything.

One can see that The Sense of an Ending wants to be a big novel packaged into a shorter more accessible work. It is the novel's compulsion to be literary that makes this story seem less. If there was ever a novel that felt like pure artifice, here it is. The reader can feel Barnes hovering over every sentence, filling it to the brim with meaning and symbolism, until the rather short novel topples over from the author's ambitions to be taken seriously. There is just so much material in this novel that pertains to the classical goals of high art that the story positively suffocates.

Anytime the story threatens to get interesting, Tony/Barnes derails it with long paragraphs about the fickleness of memory, or aphoristic language about old age. This is a novel where each sentence is designed to be the epigraph in another novel. This is not a compliment.

It might appear that I disliked, or even hated, the novel. Far from it. I enjoyed it for what it was, which was a rather simple and cleverly structured novel about history and memory and where the two should meet (again, another theme announced constantly with aphorisms). What prevented me from thoroughly appreciating the novel was the author's unsteady and forced hand, a presence wholly unwelcome. The story, characters, and theme should have done all the work, rather than the author or his arsenal of aphorisms.

[Cross-posted from my blog]

Laura's Review - The Sense of an Ending

2011-11-19T16:10:00.002-05:00

Now in his 60s, Tony Webster is retired, divorced, and taking stock of his life. He begins by recounting his youth and young adulthood, and his social circle, which revolved around Adrian, the aloof ringleader. These relationships falter on leaving school, and when Adrian begins dating Tony's former girlfriend Veronica. Years later, Veronica's mother passes away. Tony is quite surprised to learn she left him a bequest. He gets back in touch with Veronica, and makes a nuisance of himself in attempts to understand the bequest. The reader learns a lot about Tony's true self, even as Tony remains oblivious. As Veronica says repeatedly, "You just don't get it."

Julian Barnes packed so much into this novella, and yet I'm hard pressed to explain just how he did it. The plot appears straightforward, as everyday events unfold through Tony's eyes. But it is actually layered with complexity, requiring the reader to flip back and forth to see what they missed on a first reading. Little by little, you realize how much memories are influenced by what you want -- and don't want -- to remember. Small but important details can escape notice, leaving two people with completely different impressions of events. And sometimes these different points of view have tragic consequences. So it came as a complete shock when Tony finally "got it," and I understood what was actually going on all those years. Or at least I think I understand. I may need to read it yet again.

With a series of haunting images that set the stage, an unreliable narrator, and an overall sense of loss, this book will stay with you long after turning the last page. As Tony says:

What you end up remembering isn't always the same as what you have witnessed. (p. 1)

Cross-posted from my blog

Athena K's Review - Animal's People

2011-11-10T12:10:00.000-05:00

Animal’s People is a beautiful, heartbreaking story about one of the modern era’s most terrible tragedies. I knew very little about the Bhopal/Union Carbine Disaster that took place in India in 1984 until i looked it up mid-read. And although this novel is set in the fictional Indian city of Khafpur, a very similar thing has happened in at about the exact same time to this community.

Animal is born days before the disaster strikes. One night, there is a problem with the chemical plant in town (owned by the "Kampani"). Poisonous gas is released into the streets, immediately killing thousands of residents, including Animal’s parents and family. The effects linger, tormenting and killing thousands more with respiratory and nerve damage, and these effects continue on for years. Animal, our narrator, is struck with crippling disfigurement in his childhood, which the doctors attribute to the disaster, including the American doctoress Elli, who has set up a clinic to help those sickened by the disaster.

The novel’s backdrop is the ongoing court case. The Amrikan Kampani has eluded legal consequences in the nearly 20 years since the disaster struck. Apparently by bribing Indian authorities, it has paid no damages, had no assets seized, and has not been tried. The Kampani has not even cleaned the contaminated groundwater at the site of the old chemical plant, or told authorities what exactly was in the poisonous gas – claiming “trade secrets.” As with every great book these events are only a part of the story, but this backdrop particularly resonated with me. This novel should be read by all those politicians who have recently been claiming we should abolish or seriously downsize the EPA to enable corporations more freedom.

Animal is another great reason to read this novel. He narrates the book in a series of tape recordings, to be later transcribed and translated into English – a crazy vibrant jumble of Hindi/Urdu/French/English at that. Although he is vulgar, sex obsessed, and selfish, he is also a deeply caring, long-suffering, and hopeful supporter of his desperate community. And while occasionally Indra Sinha was a bit heavy handed on the “finding the humanity in the Animal” theme, I was ultimately brought to tears by Animal’s story.

The Gathering (which I also loved) won this year, but I can't help thinking it must have been close.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - Derby Day - D.J. Taylor

2011-11-03T00:00:00.000-04:00

Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. “Barry Lyndon” William Makepeace Thackeray

This is not a quote used in "Derby Day", but a pertinent one I think! It is not just the acknowledgement and a couple of quotes from Thackeray that shows D.J. Taylor’s affinity and connection with the 19th Century novelist.

Plans were all in place to have this one read and reviewed just prior to the Victoria Racing Club Derby that was run here in Melbourne on Saturday 30 October. For those of you not from Melbourne, this week is our Spring Racing Carnival, a time where we have a public holiday (yes a holiday for a horse race – the Melbourne Cup) and four days of racing at Flemington with the Derby, the Cup, the Oaks and more. People party for a week, eat and drink too hard, catch up with old friends, the race meetings themselves getting about 400,000 attendees over the four days but not many of them get to see a race!!!!

Foolishly I thought the racing theme of this novel would inspire me through a quick read. But I have to admit it, this novel was a slog, at no stage was I inspired to snuggle up for a few hours of reading, nor was I staying awake until the wee hours unable to put the book down.

Subtitled “A Victorian Mystery”, written in Victorian prose:

Sky the colour of a fish’s underside; grey smoke diffusing over a thousand house-fronts; a wind moving in from the east: London.

Clipstone Court lies on the western approach to Tottenham Court Road, slightly beyond Goodge Street, and is not much visited. There is a cab rank at which no cab was ever seen standing, and a murky tobacconist’s over whose lintel no customer in search of enlightenment from the copies of The Raff’s Journal and The Larky Swell that hang in the window was ever known to tread.

Interspersed with amusing quotes from “A New Etiquette; Mrs Carmody’s Book of Genteel Behaviour (1861)” (which scant research by myself shows is a fiction of Taylor’s doing, although I only did a quick check via Google):

The newly married young lady, fresh from her wedding tour, will generally find that the first few months in her new home are not a time of unalloyed pleasure. A wife will very properly devote her full attention to her husband, but a man will, necessarily, have a dozen extraneous interests: his business; his profession; his club; his stable; his acquaintance. Prudent is the wife who can accommodate herself to these schemes and happy the young woman who can survey them with a fond and conciliating eye…

And in the style of early Dickens’ or William Makepeace Thackeray’s novels with numerous concurrent characters coming into and out of the action. At one stage a Mrs Smollett is briefly mentioned and interestingly enough I had been thinking of Tobias Smollett and his “Adventures of Peregrine Pickle” or “The Adventures of Roderick Ransom” only a chapter or two earlier, “Derby Day” is created in a similar style but has nowhere near the pathos or caustic critique of the times.

The main protagonist is a Mr Happerton, who acquires a horse, Tiberius, that is favoured to win the Derby by none too honest means. The story covers his relationship with his wife and her ailing father, the fate of the previous owner of the horse, his daughter and housemaid, as well as his neighbour, Happerton’s side kick, the police, a mysterious jewel thief, as well as a couple of shady characters that bob up from time to time. There is more with new characters being introduced late in the novel, but unlike Dickens or Smollett their introduction seems quite false and almost forced.

I reserve judgement on this one as it was very well written, in what would be a difficult style to emulate, and wonderfully researched, but for some reason it didn’t grab me. Primarily because of the main character - I couldn’t care less about his fate, his motivations, nor his circle of so-called friends. And the opportunity to develop a deeper female lead (Mrs. Rebecca Happerton) seems lost to me, whilst she’s mysterious and not understood by neither her father nor her husband she is presented in a similar enigmatic style to the reader and to me this was an opportunity lost.

I can understand why this didn’t make the shortlist and it is probably one that I’ll forget I’ve read in a few years time, but overall a well constructed novel and one that would translate well to a BBC drama, with the downfalls, the period drama, the interdependencies, the “race to the finish line” and everyone’s fate all tied up in the running of the Epsom Derby.

I’m going to have a short break before I tackle the 600 pages of the last of the long list – Alan Hollinghurst’s “The Stranger’s Child”- electing to have a quick read of a friend’s first novel.

Cross posted at my blog.

Athena K's Review - How Late It Was, How Late

2011-11-02T14:28:00.001-04:00

Ohh boy. This was a hard one for me. I've never been into the stream-of-consciousness narration style, and this was that in a working class Scottish accent:

He pushed ahead. The wind felt familiar. It was a Scottish wind. Scottish winds fuck ye. They do in yer ears. Then there was the poor auld fucking flappers man yer feet, they were fucking swimming even his wrists, for some reason they were sore. Fucking bracelets man these dirty bampot bastards, desperate; nay fucking need.

I don't think I ever succeeded in getting past the style.

I really did try though. S. Samuels "Sammy" has been on a drinking binge and blacked out an entire day. Upon stumbling awake, he is apprehended by the police, beaten, and wakes up in a prison cell several hours later blinded. Perhaps permanently. James Kelman sets up all sorts of mysteries: what happened in the lost day? Where did Helen get off to? How was Sammy really blinded? What has Sammy been up to for money? How will Sammy's life change because of his new disability? But don't get your hopes up - this story isn't really about any of these things. This story is about Sammy, an idealist, a dreamer, dealing with his life in tatters and adapting to new situations. He is an intelligent man, street smart, with a head for stories and songs. He's incredibly stubborn - nothing gets his down for long. But he's also an addicted smoker (who can't stop thinking about his next fix), an alcoholic, probably a criminal, and certainly a potty-mouth.

Added to this is perhaps my biggest pet peeve: Kelman gave me no chapter breaks. Combined with the sentences and paragraphs that run on and don't end cleanly, picking up this book always felt disorienting and the narrative was made even more incoherent. 200 pages in I was dreading having to finish the novel.

Don't get me wrong. I'm sure there was a lot to like in this book, and some people certainly seemed to have loved it. The language and narration style were definitely unique, and Sammy has many redeeming qualities. But I'm just glad I finished it.

Laura's Review - The Book and the Brotherhood

2011-10-30T09:58:00.002-04:00

When a group of middle-aged Oxford school friends reconnects at a gala summer ball, they set in motion a series of events that forever change their relationships with one another. When Jean Cambus dances with David Crimond an old flame is rekindled, Jean's husband Duncan gets into an argument with Crimond, and Jean ends up leaving Duncan for Crimond (for the second time, in fact).

The rest of the group is stunned. Their personal and collective responses offer a way for Murdoch to explore various archetypes and relationships. The cast is rich and varied. Gerard Hernshaw views himself as somewhat in charge, but is tormented by childhood loss and a general sense of emptiness. His sister and brother-in-law have moved into his house and are increasingly putting down roots, but Gerard is unable to confront them. Rose Curtland has always loved Gerard but never acted on her feelings. Jenkin Riderhood is a quiet, unattached schoolmaster; Lily Boyne attends the ball as Crimond's date. Gulliver Ashe is a younger man who has been unable to find a job, and Tamar Hernshaw, Gerard's niece, is younger still.

Several years earlier, the group formed a "brotherhood" to finance Crimond's effort to write a political book, but the book has yet to be published. Each member of the brotherhood pays their annual dues, but demands nothing from Crimond; they are reluctant even to approach him about his progress. Even Jean cannot speak to him about it. And while this drama is in progress, several other subplots unfold involving the other characters. Tamar's youthful naiveté and conflicted relationship with her mother lead her into a situation with significant personal consequences. Gerard takes steps towards a relationship he never thought possible. Rose faces her spinsterhood with a stiff upper lip.

And then there's Crimond, the only character consistently referred to only by his surname. Arrogant and detached, when he finally finishes his book he loses his sense of purpose. He tries to engage Jean in some shocking behavior that culminates in one of the novel's most harrowing scenes. And there's still more dramatic tension as Crimond goes a bit off his rocker. Tragic events follow, made even more so as each member of the "brotherhood" feels somewhat at fault. One by one, Murdoch gets into their heads as they examine their role, dwelling on small actions that led to other actions that ultimately led to the tragedy.

The Book and the Brotherhood also serves as a forum for Murdoch's own ideology, which I admit often goes over my head. I enjoyed the character-driven nature of this book much more. I also felt it went on a bit long, and some of the subplots could have been resolved more quickly. Taken as a whole, this was fairly representative of Murdoch's work, even if it wasn't my favorite.

Cross-posted from my blog

Athena K's Review - The Clothes on Their Backs

2011-10-21T16:03:00.000-04:00

Okay, I know its from a few years ago and everyone is buzzing with thier year's award - but I am on the wait list for several 2011 books at the library and this is what I had access to.

I absolutely loved The Clothes on Their Backs, in large part because I was able to identify with the main character and see echoes of my family's history in the characters. I felt that I understood their emotional responses and motives for their actions. However, even though I really connected with the story, I can see why it didn't ultimately win the 2008 Booker.

Vivien is the only child of Ervin and Berta Kovaks, Hungarian Jews who moved to London in the late 1930s as the extreme persecution was beginning. Once in London, Ervin chooses to keep his head down and assimilate - never going out, never making friends, never traveling, never talking about the past - and as a result, Vivien grows up with almost no understanding of the country her parents came from, their religion, culture, language, or history. This set up resonated with me as a great-granddaughter of Eastern European immigrants to America, in a family that until very recently did not even know their former religion, language, or even the name of the village they came from. Perhaps my great-grandparents' attitudes were similar to Ervin Kovaks'.

But Vivien has an uncle Sandor, who came to London years after her parents did, and lived through the horrors of the labor camps during World War Two. Sandor and Ervin do not get along, and are in many ways opposite takes on life as an immigrant - one fading into a half-life to avoid detection and the other flamboyantly living life, and disregarding authority. Following a personal tragedy, Vivien defies her father and forges a relationship with her uncle, and in the process learns about her family history and her father's past. Throughout Vivien's story is a theme of the power of clothes: the transforming power of a new dress, the memories a pair of shoes can elicit, the class status associated with various types of clothes. And although this theme is pervasive throughout the novel, it never becomes overbearing or trite.

And as much as I connected with the story, I agree that it doesn't have the depth and fantastic language that The White Tiger had, and I'm sure not everyone connected with it as I did. So I'll concede this one to the Booker committee.

2011 Booker Prize awarded to Julian Barnes for "The Sense of an Ending"

2011-10-18T17:08:00.000-04:00

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes is this year's winner of the Man Booker Prize for Fiction. Read the official press release.

In a Booker Prize season fraught with controversy, Barnes had emerged as a favorite. Claire Armistead writes in The Guardian:

At just 150 pages, in two elegantly counterpointed sections, it is one of the shortest-ever winners of a major prize for the novel.

But what it lacks in length it makes up for in depth of philosophical inquiry about memory and the shakiness of the personal identity formed by it. The main character, Tony Webster, will go down as one of literature's great unreliable narrators: a man whose belief in his own guilelessness can only be challenged by direct confrontation with his past, and then only partially, and for fleeting moments.

The book was also favorably reviewed on this blog by Tony Messenger, here and Alex, here, and 3M's 2011 shortlist post links to yet another review (thanks to all of you!). Has anyone else read this book? Keep those reviews coming!

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - On Canaan's Side - Sebastian Barry

2011-10-18T06:16:00.000-04:00

Sebastian Barry has been short listed for “A Long Long Way”in 2005 and “The Secret Scripture” in 2008 and I’m at a loss to explain why hislatest novel didn’t figure in the final six this time around. One explanationcould be that similar themes of loss and ageing, memory etc is the feature ofJulian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending” but surely there is room for bookswhich cover similar themes (quite differently) on the short list? It could alsoexplain why “Half Blood Blues” is on this list over “Far to Go” both beingSecond World War tales or “Jamrach’s Menagerie” over “Derby Day” (which I’vestarted) with their Victorian themes and styles. Even “Snowdrops” getting ashort list gong over “The Last Hundred Days” and their Eastern Bloc themes.

However I personally I believe Barnes’ novella is a fargreater work than Barry’s, but having said that in my opinion this book is more worthy of theshort list than a couple of others that did make it.

We start off with our writer, Lilly Bere, completing a diaryafter the death of her grandson and each “chapter” is “First (etc.) Day withoutBill” as she flashes back 70/80 years and recounts her life in a mainly linearfashion right up until the present day.

Although Lilly is Irish she has settled in America and herfailing memory and heartfelt loss comes to the fore very quickly.

This is a heart wrenching novel, where each revelation ormeeting, reveals the diarist’s pain and a wonderful lament on loss and theinsignificance of a single life. Perfectly pitched and paced with flashes tothe present to break up the memories, it is very plausible that this could be a90 year old person’s diary.

Numerous other reviews and posts refer to the linkages toBarry’s other works so I won’t go into that detail here, and this novel is astand alone piece, which does not need you to have visited any of his otherbooks.

The only personal criticism I do have is I cannot understandthe inclusion of Martin Luther King as a minor character (unless it is Lillyname dropping?) and the ending I did have to read a few times as though I wasin a dream state. You’ll understand what I mean if you read this novel.

Personally I think this one should have been on theshortlist and although I still have 2 of the long list to go my shortlist wouldhave been:

The Sense of an Ending

Jamrach’s Menagerie

Half Blood Blues

On Canaan’s Side

Pigeon English

And for the sixth? I’m not sure but probably The Sisters Brothers

Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - A Cupboard Full of Coast - Yvvette Edwards

2011-10-18T03:03:00.001-04:00

I’ve been on holiday for a few weeks, hence no postings, butdid finish this novel just after I departed and wondered if it would grow on meover that time.

I personally don’t like to be too critical of first timenovelists as it would be a thankless task to germinate an idea all the waythrough the process to print, however it didn’t stop me having a crack at A.D.Miller. This time around I’ll be a little gentler, and deservedly so.

The back dust jacket of my edition states:

Fourteen years ago Jinx’s motherwas brutally murdered in their East Londonhome. Since the tragedy Jinx’s life has been poisoned by the part she played;paralysed by guilt, she has cut herself off from her husband and young son.Then Lemon turns up on her doorstep. An old friend of her mother’s, he wants torevisit events leading up to that terrible night.

We then enter into storytelling mode, flash backs, memoriesof childhood etc.

A novel that is craftily put together but one thatinfuriated me no end. The main character Jinx, tells the story and a moreselfish, passionately self-absorbed character I don’t think I’ve ever met. Ispent page after page boiling at her, and wondering how such a character couldbecome married, let alone pregnant. Why such a person’s story needed to be told?And how could we care about someone who is such a victim of all that happens inher world?

All of this infuriation could well be part of the masterplot as I presume people like this would exist in the real world, however Jinxwas so abhorrent to me I found it difficult to become emotionally attached toher plight in any way.

Unfortunately this novel also has a number of inexplicableholes:

1) Whywould Lemon believe a known cheat, liar and manipulator over his own wife?

2) Whydoes Edwards put a great passage about running and the cathartic properties ofsuch early on in the novel but not revisit it later?

3) Whythe numerous references to Mills and Boon? I must admit I haven’t read any oftheir books so this novel may well be a play on the older romantic lead fromsuch books.

4) Whywould Jinx let Lemon into her house in the first place?

5) Whatchanged in Jinx’s character that much to break down her marriage as she wassurely this way when she met her husband?

6) Whatis it with the coats in the title? What do they represent and why such scantreferences?

7) Whysuch a pitiful formulaic ending?

On the positive side I have thought about this book a numberof times over the last few weeks and it wasn’t a difficult read and I didfinish it (sometimes that is an achievement). A solid first novel in anutshell, but it was never worthy of the shortlist.

I’ll post a review of the other book I finished whilst on mysojourn, “On Canaan’s Side” shortly.

Cross posted at my blog.

Athena K's Review - The Ghost Road

2011-10-17T23:20:00.000-04:00

See, this is exactly why I decided to read the Bookers. I don't normally pick up a war book - in fact I usually run the other way. I would never have chosen to read this book by perusing the library or even on recommendation from a friend. And war novels are bad enough but WWI? seriously? Trenches, and new technology, and All Quiet on the Western Front and...? It happened before my grandparents were even born. We spent about a week on it in high school history and it didn't interest me then. I certainly didn't think it would captivate me now.

But it did. And as apparently historically sourced as this novel was, it wasn't actually about war, but about life, and the fact that so many things we take as Either/Or are really points on one long continuum. The novel first takes Sane/Insane. But who is crazy and who is sane? Is there even a clear line there? Or even more provocatively (and sadly, too many people can't see past this one) what does it mean to be Straight/Gay?

And how about Civilized/Uncivilized? By far the most fascinating bits of this story were Dr. Rivers' flashbacks to the time he spent as an anthropologist in Melanesia in about 1908 - the British Empire was about to Christianize and "civilize" the islands northeast of the Australian continent, and Dr. Rivers got a glimpse of the end of their traditional (un)civilization. And Pat Barker contrastes this traditional headhunting society with the total insanity of the European theatre of World War I just ten years later. Her portrayal of this clash was beautiful, terrible, and so very real.

Or how about the continuum of Alive/Dead? Njiru certainly sees it as a continuum, and at the end of the novel, Dr. Rivers sees it too. When does Billy Prior, our other narrator, cross that boundary -- is there a definite boundary there to cross? And the end of the book, just days before the end of the war, we are faced with the falsity of the dichotomy of War/Peace.

Excellent, excellent novel, and I'm even tempted to go back and read the entire trilogy, of which this is only the last book. Yes, of war novels.

Thoughts on the 2011 Man Booker Shortlist

2011-10-17T21:26:00.002-04:00

I've read 5 of the 6 shortlist titles and have written reviews on my blog. My ranking for the prize is as follows:

1. Pigeon English (my review)
2. The Sense of an Ending (my review)
3. Snowdrops (my review) OR The Sisters Brothers (my review) TIED
6. Jamrach’s Menagerie (my review)

The reason Snowdrops and The Sisters Brothers are below The Sense of an Ending is that I have mixed feelings about a 'genre' book winning the prize, but I loved the books themselves. I also have a longish post on my thoughts on the controversy surrounding the list HERE.

Athena K's Review - Parrot & Olivier in America

2011-10-14T14:43:00.000-04:00

I'm not sure why I thought I would like this book more than I did. I have to admit that I'm not a huge fan of the early 1800's Europe as a moment in history, but the look at America as a burgeoning democracy was enticing. However, the stylized language, as accurate as it may have been, was wearisome and cumbersome. It was longer than it needed to be. Character revelations came too late - I already didn't care about them or their motives or histories. Themes of incarceration, class in democracy, and the male friendship between the two title characters were not well developed. I was just bored.

The book follows Olivier, the snobbish son of French nobles in post-Revolutionary France, and Parrot, his reluctant English servant, who was originally trained as an engraver. Olivier is forced to escape to America to avoid a revival of the revolutionary feeling in Paris with Parrot, along with his French mistress and her elderly mother, under the guise of completing a book about the American prison system. Blah blah blah he has several encounters in the new world, a brush with the law and a failed romance. Parrot discovers a new life and artistic ability in America and is happy. Olivier is not.

Sure, there were some good moments - Peter Carey is clearly an expert even if I didn't care for this novel. I loved the insect metaphors he peppered throughout: people resembling wasps, silkworms, crickets and butterflies. I particularly liked his description of a French wine encountered in America:

I bemoaned the palates of the Philadelphians who had called his Medoc cold and sour. Miraculously, it was free of sediment, and rushed into my glass at that perfect stage of life. In a year it would be a dowager with a faded old corsage, but as it entered my mouth it was vigorous and manly, completely composed, its orchestra all present and correct. Oh heavens, that such small things make a man so happy.

Although this glass of wine sounds excellent, the rest of the novel just wasn't for me.

Laura's Review - On Chesil Beach

2011-10-13T12:56:00.000-04:00

Ian McEwan has a unique ability to make me love his books, despite making me feel so terribly sad. On Chesil Beach is the story of one young couple's ill-fated wedding night. The book opens as Florence and Edward are enjoying a private dinner in their honeymoon suite:

They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible. But it is never easy. They were sitting down to supper in a tiny sitting room on the first floor of a Georgian inn. In the next room, visible through the open door, was a four-poster bed, rather narrow, whose bedcover was pure white and stretched startlingly smooth, as though by no human hand. (p. 1)

Florence was scared to death, ill-informed, and disgusted by the few facts she knew about impending events. Edward was filled with desire, but also with intense fear of failure. The first chapter (33 pages) builds tension up to the point that Florence and Edward make their way towards that four-poster.

McEwan then leaves Edward and Florence in a state of suspended animation, and takes the reader back in time to understand how they met, their family histories, and their relationship. Florence is a violinist in a string quartet, and the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Edward was from more humble stock, but well-educated, and while he did not particularly appreciate classical music, he was very supportive of Florence. He also dutifully accepted employment with Florence's father, even though it was far removed from his field of expertise.

Back to the bedroom, where you can cut the tension with a knife. You just know things aren't going to go well for this couple, and their complete inability to communicate just takes things from bad to worse. It's not just that they can't talk about sex, it seems they can't talk about anything important. Their responses are all too human, but as McEwan shows, small acts of anger have lasting consequences.

At just over 15o pages, On Chesil Beach was a very quick read, but Ian McEwan is such a master at both characterization and drama that the book had enormous emotional impact.

Cross-posted from my blog

Alex's Review - On Canaan's Side

2011-10-08T19:51:00.001-04:00

I was so excited when I first tuned into an audio-recording of On Canaan's Side. The reader had a great Irish accent and didn't do American accents too badly at all..some of the writing is absolutely beautiful...

But I confess I found the tale a tad too long and bordering on - dare I say it - pap or sentimentalism or unnecessary storytelling.....there was a time when I thought - "Oh God - the narrator is 89 years old....how much further do we have to go - Martin Luther King's assassination, Kennedy's assassination, etc etc."

Call me heartless but I'm afraid I liked the front end of the book more than the back end.

Alex's Review - Snowdrops

2011-10-08T19:47:00.000-04:00

One of my new jobs requires a bit of travel - a 3 hour round trip all up. So I experimented to listening to audio books last month.

I really enjoyed just listening to the narrator's voice in Snowdrops - it was seriously sexy stuff. I am such a sucker for a British accent.

And there were some very funny lines in it - I will be using "The only free cheese is in a mousetrap" at least once this week!

And I like "Fish like to swim" as an excuse for drinking vodka whilst eating fish.

But perhaps these are old tired lines that I haven't heard before......

This book came in for a bit of trouncing on the Librarything Booker group read. Most readers did not feel any sympathy for the characters and found the female characters particularly ineptly drawn. Shallow. One-dimensional - that sort of thing.

It's not the kind of book I would normally read. And indeed that may be part of the problem. What kind of book is it? I think it has been touted as a mystery or a crime thriller type number. I don't think it really knows what it is.

It opens with the narrator writing a letter to his fiancee - a bit of a "By the way...you probably need to know this about me, before you say "I do" type confessional. I don't think I'll be spoiling anything by letting you know that you never find out if the narrator does get married in the end. That's part of the fun I suppose...imagining the response to the revelations.

The character certainly is an odd-ball. Perhaps a product of what seems to be a rather constipated English middle-class culture. He's a solicitor working for some complicated banking/energy deal with many partners - all of whom sound deeply suspect.

One lonely weekend, at a train station, witnessing an attempted robbery, he forms a perhaps unwise attachment to the almost victims, some young Russian women.

They say they are sisters.

Only they're not.

They are the cheese in the mousetrap.

He is the mouse.

The story's not that bad.

It was certainly more interesting than what I was looking at on the train.

But then the foreign always seems more interesting doesn't it?

Alex's Review - Far to Go

2011-10-08T19:03:00.000-04:00

It was with some misgiving that I began reading Far to Go.

Here are my shameful thoughts presented to you in all honesty..."Not another book about the Holocaust...How many do I have to read?" My Jiminy Cricket conscience tells me - "Never enough". After all, I only have to read the stories, don't I? And perhaps it might be a good idea to tell them to my children - even though they are well beyond bedtime stories. And this is not the stuff of bedtime stories.

Do you wonder, as I do, how memories/history will change once our slim connection with the past evaporates? As the generation before you dies and you are pushed to the front line? What orders should you give ? What philosophy should you bequeath to the next generation?

My children perceive me as ancient, of course. The way I perceived my mother as ancient. The 1940s to my young eyes were so funny and old-fashioned in terms of dress and hopelessly romantic love songs (think "We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when"). And yet they were only 30 years ago when I was a teenager. Now my kids are close to 20. It's hard to imagine that they must see the 1970s as funny and old fashioned. What must they think of WWII and the Nazi atrocities? It must seem very far away and hard to believe.

And so, yes. Reading Far to Go wasn't easy - and yes, to a degree, we all know how it will end. But I didn't know about the Kindertransport. So it is a story from a different angle. And the angle is further fractured and complicated by the author's own connection to the tragedy which she chooses to present at this point in time in a fictionalised form.

It is a story about making difficult decisions. About trying to read "history" as it happens. About deciding what to pack. About sacrifice.

It is ultimately a story about identity. And what is identity but a jumbled up mass of stories that people have told you about yourself or you have told you about yourself. What if someone questions your identity? What if your identity becomes dangerous to own? What if you thought you were something and then you are told years later that in fact you are something else? How does that change you? Which bit of you is real?

It is a good story. And one that leaves many questions. The best kind really.

Athena K's Review - Last Orders

2011-10-06T15:16:00.000-04:00

Last Orders is a solidly good book. I read somewhere that all good Booker books create their own language to draw you into their world. The unique language is what elevated Last Orders.

The story is a bit depressing (so you know I liked it). Jack has died, and his best friends and adopted son are tasked with the job of fulfilling his final wishes or "last orders." Bonus: this involves a road trip! On the way, the characters (and absent wife) reminisce about their time and experiences together - involving World War II, marriage, children, and a changing and modernizing world. Each character takes turns narrating short, succinct chapters with pithy reveals.

I have not read many books set in working class mid-century London, and this was a learning experience for me. Motors and cars represent the modern world (but Ray is still obsessed with horses). Vincey, Jack's adopted son abandons the family business for a new future in cars. But as with any future, this one isn't all its cracked up to be. Perhaps like the cars, the narration moves too quickly at times - I had to put the book down after some passages to think on the revelations that just occurred.

More interesting and accessible to me was the role and position of the women in this book who, although mostly absent, seem to drive the character and motive of each of the narrators. Ray, the prime narrator has the most interesting relationships with women. His daughter's struggle to find independence, his wife's failure to do the same, and his complicated relationship with Amy were my favorite parts by far. But each of the narrators struggles with the male/female relationship, especially as husband/wife and father/daughter.

The only reason this doesn't earn tippy-top reviews from me is that it took me a longer time than normal to sort the characters out at the beginning, and I think Graham Swift used up his good surprises in the middle of the book leaving me a bit disappointed at the end. But it was a worthy read and winner.

Laura's Review - The Good Apprentice

2011-09-29T19:28:00.000-04:00

Iris, you let me down on this one. Having read nine of your novels, I've come to expect three elements in perfect balance: strong characterizations, especially of hapless or arrogant male protagonists, moral dilemmas, and a certain "talkiness" in the prose. The Good Apprentice had all these elements, but they were out of balance and failed to deliver an enjoyable reading experience.

Murdoch's protagonist is Edward Baltram, a young man who played a prank that went horribly wrong and resulted in a friend's death (this is not a spoiler; it happens in the first few pages). Edward is fortunate not to be charged with a crime, but he is devastated and knows his life is permanently changed. His family throws a dinner party to help him "get over it," which is mostly a way for Murdoch to introduce a broad cast of characters. We meet his stepfather Harry, Harry's son Stuart, Edward's aunt Midge and uncle Tom, and Ursula, the family physician. Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the dinner party fails to lift Edward's spirits. He decides he'll escape to the country and reunite with his biological father Jesse, and Jesse's wife and adult daughters.

Flip ahead about 100 pages, and you'll find Edward settled in Jesse's house, surrounded by quirky relatives and still wandering around morose and confused. And you'll also find Stuart, a religious fanatic, in endless philosophical dialogue with Tom, and Midge thinking way too much about how to shorten a dress and insert a new panel of fabric.

Amazon calls this book, "Funny and compelling, ... at once a supremely sophisticated entertainment and an inquiry into the spiritual crises that afflict the modern world." Sorry, but I found it repetitive and boring. I'm sure Murdoch's symbolism and ideas become clearer by the end of the book, but I just didn't have the patience to struggle through more than 550 pages.

(DNF)

Cross-posted from my blog

Tony Messenger - 2011 Shortlist - The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes

2011-09-27T05:51:00.001-04:00

Here is a real live advertisement for the paper book,beautiful black bordered paper, neat size that is so easy to hold, almost diarylike in its feel and size. Sorry Kindle fans, this is one you really need tohave in the old fashioned book style. But is that showing my age?

We live in time – it holds us andmoulds us – but I’ve never felt I understood it very well.

Is this Julian Barnes’ year? This is his fourth Booker PrizeShortlisted novel. He lucked out to Anita Brookner’s “Hotel Du Lac’ in 1984with “Flaubert’s Parrot”, was shortlisted in 1998 with “England, England”(lost to Ian McEwan’s “Amsterdam”)and again didn’t win the gong in 2005 with “Arthur and George” when JohnBanville’s “The Sea’ took home the prize.

If you are like me, it is only every ten years or so thatyou come across a “masterpiece”, well I think 2011 is the year I came acrossanother. But can I recall the last bookthat moved me so much?

We live with such easyassumptions, don’t we? For instance, that memory equals events plus time. Butit’s all much odder than this. Who was it said that memory is what we thoughtwe’d forgotten? And it ought to be obvious to us that time doesn’t act as afixative, rather as a solvent. But it’s not convenient – it’s not useful – tobelieve this; it doesn’t help us to get on with our lives; so we ignore it.

There are numerous reviews out there which will give you ahigh level sketch of the plot of this novel, so there’s not much point inreplicating the précis here. Needless tosay at 150 pages and with not a single word wasted, this could be knocked overin a single sitting. I took much longer, re-reading passages, stopping anddwelling for sometime, allowing the whole concept of time and memory slowlysink in, rather than be rushed by.

I shall live as people in novelslive and have lived. Which ones I was not sure, only that passion and danger,ecstasy and despair (but then more ecstasy) would be in attendance. However…whosaid that thing about ‘the littleness of life that art exaggerates’?

A wonderful lament on time, memory and ageing and as I haveheard someone else recently say "Julian Barnes’ most accomplished novel to date".

When I got to the last page I immediately wanted to turnback to page 1 and start the journey all over again.

In my opinionated view this is an absolute moral to takehome the Prize. I used to believe this was a prize for literature but lookingat a few of the recent winners it has become a prize for “good books”. At longlast there is a novella that is worthy of the award. Please don’t take this asa criticism of the other shortlisted books, most are great reads, they’re justnot stand outs.

Disclaimer. I am in my late 40’s, male, went to a boys onlyschool – yes I share a lot in common with the Tony is this book? Add to thatthe fact that I have been a fan of Julian Barnes for years, and I’m going togive you a slightly biased view of this novel. Not all the judging panel fit mydemographic (if any!!) so I could well be disappointed with the announcement ofthe winner. Having said that, I’m going to leave you with a few of Barnes’previously shortlisted opening lines?

Six North Africans were playingboule beneath Flaubert’s statue. ‘Flaubert’s Parrot’

‘What was your first memory?’someone would ask. And she would reply, ‘I don’t remember.’ ‘England, England’

A child wants to see. It alwaysbegins like this, and it began like this then. A child wanted to see. ‘Arthur& George’

Ahhh!! What memories they bring back….or am I rememberingsomething that didn’t really happen?

Cross posted to my blog.

Athena K's Review - True History of the Kelly Gang

2011-09-24T19:28:00.000-04:00

I had the fortune to live in Australia for 6 months, where I first heard the story of Ned Kelly. While I was in Perth, the movie "Ned Kelly" was released (starring Heath Ledger) and a friend won tickets to the premier from a radio station. While new to me, my Australian friends had been raised on the story of Ned Kelly, who is often compared to Jesse James or some other romanticized American outlaw. However, I was never able to connect to the story of the man driven to a life of crime by poverty and injustice, who is only captured after a huge firefight and show of insane bravery - until now.

The voice Peter Carey gives to Ned Kelly as he narrates his life story is at first a bit hard to get into. Ned's grammar is rough, his sentences run-on and he never uses a comma. He does however used several mid 19th-century abbreviations: v. for very, cd. for could, and & instead of and. It took me 10 or 15 pages to begin to feel comfortable with his style. After that, the style is another reflection of the Australia of Ned Kelly's experience - rough, casual, sometimes even violent. Adjectivally brilliant.

Ned's first person narration changes only once. When he describes the first time he left home and became an outlaw, he describes the experiences as that of "the boy." Marking his moment of transition was very powerful to me - it demonstrated that in many ways his fate was forced upon him, and that his becoming an outlaw was something others did to him. The only other times the narration shifts is toward and at the end, when the final episodes of the story are relayed in newspaper articles. I thought this was effective, and in many ways necessary, but I think I would have been happier if the story had ended with Ned's words.

My American edition of the novel praises it as a Great American Novel. I couldn't disagree more - this novel could not be more Australian (even though it opens with a quote from Faulkner). Peter Carey's descriptions of Ned Kelly's life experience, language, and even his metaphors are to me as Australian as Mark Twain or Steinbeck are American. For example, Ned's description of himself as a young boy, just before his first arrest:

I were a plump witchetty grub beneath the bark not knowing that the kookaburra exists unable to imagine that fierce beak or the punishment in that wild and angry eye

Ned speaks of an Australian spirit hardened by the knowledge of "unfairness" from an early age. The injustice inherent in the country's birth was so raw and real, and I finally understood what makes Ned Kelly a hero:

And here is the thing about them men they was Australians they knew full well the terror of the unyielding law the historic memory of UNFAIRNESS were in their blood and a man might be a bank clerk or an overseer he might never have been lagged for nothing but he still knew in his heart what it were to be forced to wear the white hood in prison he knew what it were like to be lashed for looking a warder in the eye and even a posh fellow like the Moth had breathed that air so the knowledge of unfairness were deep in his bone and marrow.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Shortlist - Half Blood Blues - Esi Edugyan

2011-09-22T03:32:00.000-04:00

“What is luck but something made to run out.”

Esi Edugyan is another Canadian to make the Booker Shortlist, along with Patrick deWitt, but that’s about where the commonality ends, as “Half Blood Blues” is no noir-western.

Our story starts in Paris in 1940 with our narrator and protagonist the American bass player Sid, his best friend from youth and drummer Chip and genius black German trumpeter Hieronymous Falk, sharing a flat in the German occupied city. They are sleeping it off after a night of recording and arguing about whether to go outside to get some milk. That trip outside, where Hiero is taken into custody by the Germans (even though he is German he has no identity papers), sets our story in motion.

Flash forward to 1992 Berlin where Chip and Sid are to attend a festival celebrating Heiro’s music. They are to attend a documentary screening:

Then there was some ruined old fool up there, his dour mug peering out at us. And then I saw with shock that the fool was me.

This novel moves seamlessly between past and current events, the guilt and fear of our narrator’s story becoming more palpable as we turn each page. Our knowledge of his journey, his self belief, jealousy, ignorance grows throughout. The relationship between the three main characters becomes clearer through the historical passages, and all the secrets are slowly revealed until we literally begin to feel Sid’s own fear and dread.

Primarily a story about guilt, friendships, regrets of events long passed, and the eternal existentialist questions, which is set during the Second World War. But added threads of Germany’s treatment of jazz musicians, blacks and other minority groups during that period, brings this story to life. Throw into the mix a jazz theme which comes through in the pitch and passion of the musical passages and wholly believable conversation pieces, using period slang and male sledging and you are transported into the period every time you pick the book up.

‘You brigin that leslie up again?’ Hiero was walking all brisk with them skinny legs of his. ‘You know, every time you drink the rot you go on bout that jack.’

‘She wasn’t no leslie, brother – she was a woman. Bona fide.’

This is a worthy inclusion on the short list and if you love jazz, historical novels and books that weave real life characters and situations into a fictional tale then I would highly recommend this. Although dealing with the horrors of the Second World War this is in a completely different voice and style to “Far to Go”, another novel from the long list. An in my opinion this is a lot more engrossing and readable, but with a different tension. This is Edugyan’s second novel and as I was so impressed by this work, at some stage I will hunt down her debut “The Second Life of Samuel Tyne”.

Personally I have this book as a contender for the main gong, along with “Jamrach’s Menagerie”. I now have Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending” to read to complete my shortlist reading.

Cost posted at my blog.

Laura's Review - The Little Stranger

2011-09-18T17:40:00.000-04:00

The Little Stranger is a good old-fashioned gothic mystery set in the 1940s, in an old and stately English house which is just as much a character as the Ayers family who inhabits it. We first "meet" Hundreds Hall through Robert Faraday, a local doctor whose mother worked in service at Hundreds when he was young. Some thirty years later, he is called out to care for one of the maids, who has fallen ill. There he also meets Mrs. Ayers and her adult children, Roderick and Caroline. The family has come on hard times since Mrs. Ayers became a widow. Roderick is struggling to cope with the estate he inherited. Money is scarce, and the family has been faced with difficult decisions to make ends meet.

Dr. Faraday offers to treat Roderick's war injury with an experimental procedure, free of charge. And thus he inserts himself into the life of Hundreds Hall, and gets all up in their business. He worries endlessly about Mrs. Ayers, and begins to fancy Caroline. At least that's what he tells us, because Robert is the story's narrator. He spends more and more time at Hundreds Hall. When Mrs. Ayers decides to give a party, the first in years, he finds himself on the guest list -- unusual due to their different social classes. Things begin to unravel at the party, when the family dog Gyp bites a young guest and leaves her severely disfigured. Progressively weirder things happen, with progressively greater impact on the emotional well-being of the Ayers family members. And Hundreds Hall falls into an even greater state of disrepair. It appears some sort of ghost is terrorizing the household, and it's very creepy indeed.

I was constantly torn while reading this book. My literary mind wanted to believe there was a ghost because after all, this is a gothic mystery/ghost story. My rational, analytical side dismissed that as nonsense and looked for a rational, analytical cause for all these mishaps. When I finished the book, I still wasn't sure. The ending is such that Waters might have given me the rational answer, which gave the story a chilling psychological thriller angle. Or she didn't, and there was just a lot of inexplicable weird and creepy stuff going on.If I could rewrite the ending, I know what I'd do. But I can't tell you; you'll have to read this book and form your own conclusions. I ended up docking my rating 1/2 star because it all left me rather frustrated.

Cross-posted from my blog

If a dog were to choose the 2011 Booker Prize Winner ...

2011-09-16T15:20:00.002-04:00

I wonder if the actual judging looks anything like this?

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - The Last Hundred Days - Patrick McGuinness

2011-09-15T07:03:00.000-04:00

This year is definitely one for first person narratives andwe also have a few "historical fiction" novels thrown in to boot."The Last Hundred Days" kicks off in 1989 with our 21 year oldnarrator burying his father and flying out to take a posting at a RomanianUniversity, a role achieved without a job interview! Bucharest during the lasthundred days of Ceausescu's reign, a city where everybody watches each other, aplace where cigarettes gets you through customs or favours at hospitals, wherethe old churches and culture are being destroyed to make way for faceless concretemonoliths. I must admit that I knew little of Ceausescu’s reign and the 80’speriod in Romania so for me this was a learning journey as well as a literaryone.

Besides our narrator, the main protagonist here is Leo, afellow “employee” of the University, a black marketeer, a drunk and passionateabout the “old” Bucharest, it’s culture, town planning, antiques and artefacts.We have dissidents, house arrests, dodgy members of cabinet, seductive mysterywomen, characters plotting their future in a “new world” and more. This is abook with numerous sub-plots throughout – and some do go missing for 100 pagesor so, suddenly to reappear as though the reader can quickly switch on to along lost thread.

Very early on I was reminded of Kafka, the claustrophobiaand the futility of inane actions, and lo and behold McGuinness brings him up. Thisis a fabulously well written book, with numerous passages that could be quoted,each chapter broken into small 1-2 pages sections and every one of them brings the story to life. However as the novel progressed I became more andmore frustrated by the flat linear style and the fact that, in real life,events don’t occur in a neat sequential order ignorant of other simultaneousevents.

Although fiction I did also feel as though I was reading anhistorical recollection, or diarised memories, of events and, again, this didfrustrate me a little, as well and the political justification and debate thatoccurs (although I should add it is not significantly biased to the left norright, but obviously very critical of Ceausescu’s rule).

It is hard to criticize a book that is so neatly and preciselywritten, however the soul, unique voice or passion of the narrator was lost onme. Probably not a short list contender, so I’m not disappointed that it didn’tmake the final six, but a book worth reading, even if you’re only reading it tounderstand the political environment in Romania in the last 1980’s. PersonallyI believe this is a lot better picture of the Eastern bloc, than Miller’s “Snowdrops”– and I do promise, one day I’ll let the rage of that book making the shortlist go!!!

Just started "Half Blood Blues" and will post my thoughts here soon after I'm finished. Review cross posted at my Booker Prize blog

Athena K's Review - Disgrace

2011-09-13T12:14:00.000-04:00

Forgive my back-to-back posting. I caught up on reading this weekend when I ran up against my library book due dates. Apparently I'm not allowed to renew when other people have placed a hold on the book!

While excellently written, and clearly qualifying for its Booker prize, J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace is not a book I will be revisiting anytime soon. Certainly worth reading - but only once.

Getting older really sucks. And it especially sucks for the main character of Disgrace, 52-year old white elitist David Lurie living in Cape Town, South Africa. An entirely unsympathetic man, Lurie experiences or causes almost every definition of the word Disgrace I can think of. Beginning with rejection by his regular prostitute, Lurie suffers career termination, inquisition, sexual scandal, physical abuse, imprisonment, the rape of his daughter, home invasion and theft, rejection by family, ridicule and ultimately winds up with a long term position assisting in the euthanasia and disposal of unwanted dogs. Pretty Heavy Stuff. And I'm sure that if I had the perspective of approaching old age and a better understanding of post-apartheid race relations in South Africa it would only add to amy understanding of the many ways in which disgrace is possible and experienced in this book.

It is no accident that an overwhelming amount of the disgrace in this novel arises from interracial interactions, with the whites suffering disgrace at the hands of non-whites. There is some poetic justice here, but I don't understand enough of the context to grasp more than that. South African readers... help?

His disgrace also stems frequently from a narrow view of women and gender relations. His sexual needs are placed above the needs and desires of others, and the words he uses to describe the women in his life - including his own daughter - reveal him to be fundamentally misogynistic. He reasons with Melanie that she "ought" to sleep with him: "Because a woman's beauty does not belong to her alone. It is part of the bounty she brings into the world. She has a duty to share it."

He is unrepentant and unapologetic even after he is adjudicated and dismissed for his actions, which makes him even more distasteful. The flames of passion he describes led to him being literally lit on fire. His only repentance seems to come through writing his opera about Byron and his Italian mistress - an opera with no artistry and for which there will never be an audience. And in the end he has fallen so far that he compares his workwith the dogs to that of a harijan - an Untouchable of the Indian caste society. And it is very hard to feel pity for him, or to feel that he has not invited this fate.

Athena K's Review - The God of Small Things

2011-09-11T19:07:00.000-04:00

There are so many reasons to love this book. I finished two days ago and I am still thinking about it: the imagery, the characters, the narrative structure, the tragedy. I peeked and read some of the reviews of this book posted on GoodReads, and have to conclude that apparently I really like books that many find "too depressing." Calling The God of Small Things "too depressing" is like saying you hate King Lear (or insert your favorite Shakespearean tragedy) because it too is depressing.

Arundhati Roy begins her story at the end, and ends the story in the middle. I'm not sure I have read another book with quite the same narrative structure - her bold choice ended up being perfect. The last chapter of this book is the missing piece that elevates the novel, that makes two main characters become real at last, and ties together the themes of time (For The Time Being v. Later v. Not Ever), forbidden love (contrasted with the provocative interaction between twins Rahel and Estha), and tradition.

Of course, all that would not be possible without her incredible writing style. She sets the scene at the beginning so well that it begs to be read aloud:

It was raining when Rahel came back to Aymenem. Slanting silver ropes slammed into loose earth, plowing it up like gunfire. The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled over its ears like a low hat. The walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft, and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground. The wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives. In the undergrowth a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening stone. Hopeful yellow bullfrogs cruised the scummy pond for mates. A drenched mongoose flashed across the leaf-strewn driveway.

For me, there was a timelessness to this story. The themes were ancient, but the setting refreshing and new. It was a Great Story, as described in the chapter about the kathakali dancers - the kind that is familiar and though you know how it ends, you you listen as though you don't. That is what makes this such an excellent novel and well-deserving winner.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Shortlist - Jamrach's Menagerie - Carol Birch

2011-09-07T03:56:00.008-04:00

I did post a review of this book on my own blog a couple of days ago, before the short list was announced, but wanted to spend a few days reflecting on this novel before posting here.

I should start off by stating that this is a worthy inclusion to the short list as I was transported by this magnificent novel. Although this is Carol Birch’s 11^thnovel I must admit I have not come across her work before. If I was to write a recipe card for this book I would start with a dash of Dickens’ London, mix in a smidgin of “Life of Pi”, add a splash of Sarah Hall’s “Electric Michelangelo”, throw in a spice of Melville’s “Moby Dick”, a whiff of A.S. Byatt and a pinch of Peter Carey’s “Oscar and Lucinda” or “Parrot and Olivier in America”…but all of those aforementioned books would only be the spice as this is an original tale. As I read this novel a number of those books or styles were brought to mind, but just as quickly as they sprung into my thoughts they were lost and I was sucked back into this fantastic tale of journeys, friendships, survival and all so lyrically told.

The novel starts in the Dickens “street-urchin” style of London in the 1850’s, with our narrator Jaffy coming to life, as we’re told the tale of the day he was taken into the jaws of a tiger, and as this is written in the first person, we know he must survive. This event in itself sets off his remarkable chain of life events, he meets Jamrach a rare animal trader, works in his yard with the exotic beasts, we learn of his friendship with Tim and Tim’s twin sister Ishbel, his work puts him in contact with seafarer Dan Rymer and finally a decision is made to go to sea on a whaler, with Tim, in search of a dragon. “It was an eastern dragon we were after….not a real dragon”. On board he meets Skip, a young boy who has visions (or is he just insane?)

It is extremely hard to review this novel beyond this high level sketch of events or beyond the commencement of their journey without adding spoilers, which I do not want to do, nor would it do justice to the way Jaffy's story transpires. Great pages of whaling adventures with reality detail of the toil and horror not seen in the Melville style tales, visits to remote islands, weather events and more….

The last 100 pages or so of the novel are gripping and I can assure you that you will not want to put the book down, although I must admit I did feel it went a little flat for 50 or so pages prior to that, and the first person writing in itself does take away some of the tension. But these are minor criticisms of what is surely a contender for the main gong.

A quick flick through to find relevant quotes and I’ve noticed the change in language and style from early sections to latter as the scene, story, mood and events transpire. I’m glad I got one of the short list contenders correct as I did post on my blog that is was “certain to make the short list” and one that I will certainly revisit someday. I've started "The Last Hundred Days" (from the long list) and will finsh that up before I tackle the two I have yet to read from the short list. At this stage Jamrach's Menagerie is my contender for the award, however with Barnes and Edugyan to go I may change my mind.

2011 Booker Prize Shortlist Announced!

2011-09-06T08:04:00.003-04:00

The 2011 Book Prize shortlist was announced today. The six books vying for the prize are:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending
Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English
A.D. Miller Snowdrops

Stephen Kelman and A.D. Miller are both debut novelists. Julian Barnes has been shortlisted three times, while Carol Birch was longlisted in 2003. The winner will be announced on Tuesday, 18 October.

The Guardian calls this "A Booker shortlist long on surprises," particularly due to the omission of Alan Hollinghurst (The Stranger's Child).

What do you think of the shortlist? Any surprises?

Athena K's Review - The Blind Assassin

2011-09-04T12:08:00.000-04:00

I finished this book a few days ago, and have spent the time reflecting that it is in many ways a perfect novel. This is one of those books that gets better the more you think about it.

As many reviewers have noted, Margaret Atwood tells us the same story in three different ways (or four, depending on how you count them): (1) Newspaper clippings describing events, (2) Iris Chase Griffin's memoirs in her last years and (3) the story The Blind Assassin, in which an anonymous man tells a science fiction story to his lover. These narration are interwoven throughout the novel. All three of these types of narration have strengths and weaknesses, and while all three are describing the same era and events, the impression we get of the characters is vastly different. None of them tells a complete story. The reader is forced to guess and fill in the blanks throughout. Ironically, we discover that the news clippings, perhaps the most objectively "true" are in fact the least accurate versions of what occurred. In many ways, the fictional story The Blind Assassin is the most accurate telling of history.

Strikingly, the portrayal of Iris herself in these narrations varies the most. Her passivity makes her a remarkably un-interesting character - except that she isn't nearly as passive as we might believe. I'm not sure if we can ascribe her passivity to "the role of women at the time" - certainly Atwood has commentary on the subject, but Winnifred Griffin Prior is also a woman of the time and she is certainly not a passive participant in her life or in others'. Thankfully for the story, Iris is in fact complex, complicated, and dynamic - and a great narrator.

I've also been pondering the story The Blind Assassin and its significance to the novel as a whole. Is Iris the true Blind Assassin? Is she more like the sacrificial, tongueless girl in the story? What is the significance of the various endings to the story that are played with? I will have to re-read this with these questions in mind.

Of course, Atwood's brilliant style shines within this structure. I have been a fan of hers for years, but somehow did not get around to reading this one before. She picks apart the English language in digressions, implements turns of phrase with ease and cleverness, and sucks you in. And although she tells you the ending in the first 2 or 3 chapters, she still manages to surprise and shock. What more can you ask for?

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - The Testament of Jessie Lamb - Jane Rogers

2011-08-30T03:53:00.003-04:00

I’m onto my fifth novel from the 2011 long list and now have to ask myself the question “What constitutes a great novel?” Is it an engaging story? Is it lyrical writing? Or a tale that transports you, transforms you? Is it one that shakes you to the core? Or one that enlightens you, even a little? This does appear to be a great year for writing. Most of the books I’ve read covering at least one or two of the above questions.

Jane Rogers’ book opens with sixteen year old Jessie Lamb, chained up with bike locks around her ankles, penning a diary to reflect on how she got herself into this predicament. We then revert back to the events that lead to Jessie being locked in the room, with occasional flash forwards as she pens each day’s thoughts.

We quickly learn that the world is being rocked by the incurable MDS (Maternal Death Syndrome) whereby all pregnant women and their unborn babies die before full term. Obviously if this continues unresolved it would constitute the end of the human race. We have various action groups, feminist, youth, animal rights, religions all as players in this not too distant future apocalypse. Serous questions about our roles as “top-of-the-food-chain” beings are raised and debated. A mirror is being held up to our current society and the picture isn’t pretty.

I thought, there has to be something we can do, before everything fractures and shatters into pieces. I had an image of our windscreen when we were driving on the motorway one time. A stone flew up from the car in front and we heard it ping against the windscreen. It chipped the glass and from that chip a crack slowly spread along the middle of the screen towards the driver’s side. My Dad pulled onto the hard shoulder, to turn off at the next exit. The crack in the glass kept moving, slowly, as if it had a life of its own, snaking across the windscreen, As we reached the turn off it got to the other side and a new crack began, slanting upwards from that point. It was as if someone was doodling lines on the glass. Dad stopped at the slip road roundabout, and when he started again there was a little jerk with the gears, and the whole window suddenly shattered. Dad had to bash it out with the road atlas. And I though, that’s what’s happening to us. MDS was a crack and now it’s breaking the whole world into fragments.

However this doomsday approach is not the core theme, that theme belongs to the young girl’s coming of age, rebellion, wanting to find her identity and place in the world, questioning adult mores, coming to terms with her knowledge that she exists as an individual.

This is a tragic book with a message of the futility of hope in the opening chapters, dark, bleak and disturbing. A lament on what it is like to be a teenager but with a current political theme.

I’m sure there will be critics of the doomsday approach, just as we have climate change sceptics, but the uselessness of “buy no presents Christmas”, composting potato peels etc etc is not the core message here. A book worth reading, if only to remind you of the internal rebellion you had when a teenager.

So is this a “great novel”? To be honest I’m not sure, I am sure that it will probably date and seem “quaint” in 30 years time, but having said that none of the long list I’ve read so far are “great novels”. I’m now not at all envious of the judges having to pick a shortlist, let alone a winner. “The Sisters Brothers” and “Snowdrops” are out for mine, leaving me three more to add to the shortlist from the remaining seven I have to read….anybody got a shoe horn?

Cross posted at my Booker Prize blog

Alex's Review - The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

2011-08-27T22:55:00.000-04:00

I am a complete shocker and always judge a book by its cover. This book was kept aside for me as requested at our shiny new library (oh all-right eight months old now but I still think of it as shiny). The book was shiny too. I like to think that I'm the first to read it. The plastic is all new and clean, the pages most delightful to turn - also clean and quite sophisticated I thought - edged in black - haven't seen that before - nice touch - elegant.

At first I found it difficult to like the narrator who introduced us to himself and his "mates" as we would call them in Orstralia. The voice was, in a sense, self-deprecating, or at least acknowledging the awkwardness of adolescent youth - the need to belong and fit in, the desire to seem "cool", to be smart but not too smart, to be valued, to "score" - albeit in a 50s/60s awkward way with the threat of "pregnancy" ever-hovering.

The book is divided into two parts and I got a bit of a shock when I came to Part Two. For a second I thought I had a book of short stories and that was it; I wasn't going to find out what happened. Aha ! I was hooked. Be careful of what you wish for. It's not a book of short stories...you do, in a sense, get to find out what happened. Or do you? This little tome is pregnant with possibilities.

It's a bit difficult to say much more without giving away the plot but Barnes challenges us to examine our lives and our memory/opinions of ourselves and our conduct. I suspect this deceptively "small" tome is also a challenge to the British national character. And yes, I am talking about recent events though I'm not sure even Barnes could have envisaged or accounted for the latest batch of riots. But I reckon this book will go down a treat with bookclubs which need a good conversation starter.

I found it particularly fascinating as I am studying Recordkeeping and am mulling over a quote from one of the characters quoting Patrick Lagrange "History is that certainty produced at the point where the imperfections of memory meet the inadequacies of documentation."

Interestingly (and perhaps I am bone lazy when it comes to research - think Google) I cannot find a Patrick Lagrange...only a Joseph Louis Legrange who was a French mathematician (or was he really Italian?) At any rate...the plot just got thicker and I now ask myself...who is Patrick? Or did he never exist and Barnes is just testing us? ( )

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - Snowdrops - A.D. Miller

2011-08-26T07:23:00.003-04:00

Snowdrop. 1. An early-flowering bulbous plant, having a white pendent flower. 2. Moscow slang. A corpse that lies buried in the winter snows, emerging only in the thaw.

I had to put the quote – definition – at the start of this review as I’ve finally come across a shocker on the 2011 Booker Prize long list, that quote above is before the novel starts and is probably the only redeeming snippet of this whole dog’s breakfast.

Story goes something like this, a poor self-absorbed narcissist lawyer decides to write a story for his soon to be bride about the time he spent in Russia, where he met a girl and her sister, a dodgy oil merchant (or some such) called “The Cossack” and he gets conned. That’s about it.

I seriously don’t know where to start with this one….if I had an electronic version I would be able to count how many times the word “like” was used, but at a guess it would be close to 300 (and there are only 262 pages!). For example, like a ghost of Russia past, like flowers on a battlefield, like an extra in some paranoid Donald Sutherland film, so many it becomes a distraction – Mr Miller we do know what a simile is!!!. Next up in the ceaseless descriptions of Russian buildings, roads, monuments etc. now if I was an expat Muscovite I may appreciate it, I’m sorry to say that I’m not and I really don’t need a lesson in Russian town planning.

Then we have the characters….oops that’s a typo, they’re caricatures…..fat old locals spouting nonsense proverbs, Russian brides, strippers, gangsters and the endless taxi driver stories….I’m sure the rash generalisation of every single person who crops up in the book would offend just about every living Russian. All of this is coming from the pen of a self absorbed goose that could of in no way shape or form graduated in Law, and we’re meant to believe he’s penning a confession to his fiancée.

This is meant to have three (roughly) concurrent threads, the boy girl thing, the con-man gangster thing and a feeble subplot about the old man who lives downstairs (I’m not giving much away by revealing the title of this book comes from our narrator’s relationship with this guy), and it’s absurd to have such a miniscule sub-plot which really doesn’t impact on any other part of the story being the title of the novel.

I wish Mr Miller well with his change of career (he was the Moscow correspondent for “The Economist” before writing this his debut novel) and I’m sure a Booker Prize long list to his credit will give him a bit of a leg up. I’m also sure that some big blockbuster Hollywood company will pick up the option on this one as it has the good, the bad, the ugly, the love story, the sex scenes, the twist and the setting. Sorry to say it though, this is not literature and I’m surprised it made the long list.

I could go on but there would be no point. The bookmakers mark this one at 16/1 to take out the prize, you should add a couple of zeros to that price and you’d still be under pricing it. If this makes the short list I would be horrified, if it takes out the gong I personally pledge to hand deliver deliver a letter of complaint to all of the judging panel as they are surely as corrupt as the fake Russian gangster con-artists portrayed in this book.

Cross posted at my Booker Prize blog.

Athena K's review - Amsterdam

2011-08-25T13:10:00.000-04:00

Right away, I have to admit that this Amsterdam my first Ian McEwan novel - and it certainly won't be the last!

Clive and Vernon reconnect at the funeral of a former (mutual) flame, which starts a series of strange interactions, a mutual promise, a falling out, and finally, revenge. The plot line reminded me of Roald Dahl's short stories - a little bizarre, plenty dark, but also humorous. McEwan's style however brings this tidy little story to the next level. Absolutely clear prose, and fully formed characters - how have I not discovered Ian McEwan before?

Clive is a musician, a composer working on his opus - a symphony commissioned to celebrate the Millennium. He is a musical traditionalist who abhors modern dissonance. This also makes him a bit of a sell-out in the eyes of some music critics. Clive is also a tender and loyal friend. Clive is also a tremendous coward who blames his selfishness on his art. Vernon is in many ways Clive's perfect counterpoint. Vernon is the editor of a failing newspaper, whose proposal to save the paper involves publishing stories about conjoined twins who bite each other and various political scandal. He's very busy, often engaged in two conversations simultaneously, while Clive seeks solitude. Vernon is hardly cowardly, but neither is he loyal, warm or creative. He is in fact a bit of a bully.

These two personalities are developed in a short number of pages, and then continue to reverberate off of each other for the duration of the novel. McEwan writes beautiful but concise, tidy prose that so often seems to explain a characters motive or internal thoughts exactly right. And although the plot moves along as a fast pace the characters remained the driving force of the story, and I didn't find myself wondering at any point what McEwan was trying to say about this or that political topic - music, media or the ethics of what we here in Washington State "Death with Dignity." I just enjoyed the telling.

Laura's Review - The Black Prince

2011-08-24T21:36:00.000-04:00

Bradley Pearson is a marginally successful author well past his professional prime, who fancies himself much more talented and good-looking than he is. At the beginning of the novel Bradley is preparing to leave on holiday, sure that a change of scene will inspire him to write his greatest work. But barriers arise in rapid succession, as he learns of his ex-wife's arrival in London, his friend Arnold Baffin calls asking for help resolving a quarrel with his wife Rachel, and his sister Priscilla breaks down after trouble with her husband. Bradley immediately falls into "fix-it" mode, but every act has consequences. Watching Bradley is like watching a row of dominoes fall. And then Bradley becomes positively delusional, falling head over heels for a much younger woman and being just arrogant enough to think the relationship will work.

Iris Murdoch's characterizations are brilliant. Bradley is a bumbling fool but doesn't know it. Rachel and Priscilla are women of a certain age, each with her own set of neuroses. Rachel and Arnold's relationship is typical of many long marriages, but Bradley fails to understand how two people are angry or frustrated with one another without fracturing the strong bond between them. I also love Murdoch's ability to describe the ordinary in such extraordinary ways:

The division of one day from the next must be one of the most profound peculiarities on this planet. It is, on the whole, a merciful arrangement. We are not condemned to sustained flights of being, but are constantly refreshed by little holidays from ourselves. We are intermittent creatures, always falling to little ends and rising to little new beginnings. Our soon-tired consciousness is meted out in chapters, and that the world will look quite different tomorrow is, both for our comfort and our discomfort, usually true. How marvellously too night matches sleep, sweet image of it, so neatly apportioned to our need. (p. 232)

The Black Prince has a very interesting structure. Bradley's story is written in the first person, as if he is telling it to the book's editor, who wrote a "foreword" to this book. A second foreword, written by Bradley, provides the reader with his personal history. After Bradley's story is complete, four important characters offer postscripts. These not only supply a denouement, they also shed entirely new light on everything that was written before. It turns out Bradley is one of the most unreliable narrators I've ever experienced. The plot twists at the end sent me off in search of earlier passages, to re-read in a new light. I'm still puzzling through the intricacies of this book, which is why Iris Murdoch is one of my favorite authors.

Cross-posted from my blog

Marie C.'s review: THE BONE PEOPLE, by Keri Hulme

2011-08-24T07:17:00.002-04:00

The Bone People, by Keri Hulme. This edition published 1986 by Penguin.

Winner of the 1985 Booker Prize, The Bone People is a staggering literary novel. Keri Hulme's long and somewhat experimental novel focuses on an idiosyncratic family-by-choice in roughly modern-day rural New Zealand. Kerewin is an artist, solitary and self-sufficient; she lives in a tower and spends her days alone and working. One day, out fishing, she finds an enigmatic, silent little blond boy named Simon. They form a bond. She meets his father, Joe, a big man with a temper and a fondness for drink, which he shares with Kerewin. But Joe isn't exactly Simon's father, and his story, and the story of his history and his future with Joe make up the plot of this unusual novel.

Hulme's writing is dense and poetic, and her characters live in close contact with the natural world:

And here I am, balanced on the salt-stained rim, watching minute navyblue fringes, gill-fingers of tubeworms, fan the water...put the shadow of a finger near them, and they flick outasight. Eyes in your lungs...neat. The three-fin blenny swirls by.. tena koe, fish. A small bunch of scarlet and gold anemones furl and unfurl their arms, graceful petals, slow and lethal...tickle tickle, and they turn into unterestinglumps of brownish jelly...haven't made sea-anemone soup for a awhile, whaddabout it?...

The narrative structure is basically linear apart from the first chapter but Hulme changes the point of view often, gives her characters extended internal monologues and peppers their language with Maori words and phrases (both Kerewin and Joe have Maori background). It becomes obvious that Simon and Joe's relationship is not what it seems, and that Simon is being horribly abused. Hulme draws Joe's psychology so realistically that the reader can see how it happens, too. And Simon has troubles of his own, as we learn through his rare moments of internal monologue. Although iconically angelic in appearance, he is a troubled little boy whose troubles only continued when he met Joe and Joe's late wife. Now, ironically, Joe and Kerewin may be the best shot Simon has at a loving family.

Sorting out all those contradictions makes up the demanding work of parsing through this very accomplished and important novel. Hulme creates incredibly rich characters in all three of her leads, even mute Simon. And she sets up a heartbreaking situation out of her characters' complex psychology. She asks the reader some really hard questions about who it's possible to love, and under what circumstances. Hulme's style means sometimes it's a little hard to know what's going on; I would suggest taking advantage of a cheat sheet if you find yourself having a hard time keeping track of the plot, especially in the latter third of the novel. But I do strongly recommend The Bone People to anyone up for a read that will challenge both intellectually and emotionally.

You can see my review on my blog, Boston Bibliophile, here.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - Far To Go - Alison Pick

2011-08-24T04:05:00.003-04:00

I must admit I have an issue with attempting a review on “holocaust” fiction, if I’m critical then may be I’m taken as being flippant, if I’m overly excited am I then considered to be taking very serious subject matter too lightly? So I’m in a hard spot here.

The basic premise of Canadian writer, Alison Pick’s “Far to Go” is the Kindertransport rescue mission, that took place prior to the outbreak of World War II. This mission was where predominantly Jewish children from various European countries were removed from the imminent threats and placed in British foster homes. Many of the children never seeing their families again – of course as a reader your first thoughts naturally are, will that fate await young Pepik in our story? But don’t be fooled, this novel is a lot more complex than that simple story.

Structurally, each chapter contains a life reflection, or narrative, from a researcher into the kindertransport displaced children and the holocaust, a letter (from and to various characters or connected characters), some censored, all displaying the fate of the writer and a longer section which focuses on the tale of Marta, a nanny in the Bauer household.

The novel opens in late 1938 introducing the head of the household, Pavel Bauer, a successful business man who owns a factory in the Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, his wife Anneliese a socialite and their 6 year-old son Pepik who simply loves playing with his train sets. Marta, the hired help is a gentile, and although the Bauer’s are not practicing Jews the German occupation of their corner of the world will set them on various physical and mental journeys – questioning their heritage, their faith, each other and more.

It was odd, really, the way humans went about their days so boldly, ordering coffee, weighing out exactly two hundred grams of potatoes on the greengrocer’s scale, as though their lives were something that could be controlled, portioned out as desired. When really, all it took was one little upset to reveal….the imbalance of things.

As a reader using even basic knowledge of World War Two history, you can guess the fates of the core characters and you cannot help but be shocked by their ignorant decisions, their faith that all will return to normal and their blindness of their treatment (by their so-called friends and other anti-semitic characters). As Marta’s past is revealed it only partially explains her actions (or in-action) and your frustrations heighten yet further. All of the main characters are highly engaging, you wish against all logic that they could have a better outcome, and the plot, although based on historical fact, is revealing and highly believable. So plausible is the story and the threads coming together that on some occasions I had to check myself, “I’m reading fiction here”.

To be honest this is a very difficult novel to review, and for some strange reason I kept thinking of Simon Mawer’s “The Glass Room” (one of my favourites from the 2009 short list). Maybe it was the Czechoslovakian setting, maybe the encroaching holocaust, maybe the loss of control of their country and their homes, maybe even the novel’s structure, whatever it was the similarities must be existent as my memories of “The Glass Room” came flooding back, time and time again.

In short “Far To Go” is a haunting, lingering, well constructed and engaging tale, as the cover says “an extraordinary journey”. Along with “Pigeon English”, at this stage I think this is a worthy contender for the short list (although I still have 10 more books to get through and this view may change). Next up I’m tackling “Snowdrops” by A.D. Miller – purposely leaving Julian Barnes and Alan Hollinghurst until the end of the reading as their reputation alone probably ensures a spot on the shortlist.

Cross posted from my blog messybooker.blogspot.com

Athena K's review - Wolf Hall

2011-08-22T19:19:00.000-04:00

Well, I finally finished with Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. I had been saving this as sort of a reward for slogging through other Booker books that I wasn't as excited about in advance (e.g. Vernon God Little). But I am surprised--while I certainly appreciate aspects of this novel, it just wasn't a very fun or satisfying read for me. I guess this is what I get for setting expectations.

By far, the best part of Wolf Hall is Thomas Cromwell, the most modern man in England. I am a true fan of historical fiction, and I have read numerous novels set in Tudor England (plus the HBO series The Tudors is one of my guilty pleasures) so the "plot" and many of the issues of the day were not new for me. However, it was incredibly new to feel sympathy and appreciation for the often-villanized Thomas Cromwell. I call Mantel's Cromwell the "most modern man in England" because he is able to break the bonds of class, free himself from the Church, and profit from modern notions of banking, statesmanship and commerce while nearly all of the other characters struggle with their just-out-of-the-middle-ages mentalities. The London of his era is in many ways stuck in darkness:

And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city's uncounted populations of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with bulging eyes and ducks' bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or have the heads of goats or rams; creatures with knotted coils and leather wings, with hairy ears and cloven feet, horned and roaring, feathered and scaled, some laughing, some singing, some pulling back their lips to show their teeth; lions and friars, donkeys and geese, devils with children crammed into their maws, all chewed up except for their helpless padding feet; limestone or leaden, metaled or marbled, shrieking and sniggering above the populace, hooting and gurning and dry-heaving from buttresses, walls and roofs.

Yet Cromwell's attitudes are contrasted with the London of his era. He has traveled extensively in Europe and been exposed to the Italian and Flemish Renaissance cultures. He is fascinated with a "machine" that would assist the user in memorizing all of the written works in the entire world. He teaches his daughter Greek and teases her about being the Mayor of London one day. And yet he is a caring, sensitive-souled person, who navigates beautifully between the fickle moods and treacherous hearts of the residents of King Henry VIII's court. I could read about this Thomas Cromwell all day.

But I'm not sure that I could read Hilary Mantel's unique style for much longer. My complaint is something many reviewers have noticed - the indefinite use of pronouns. Although Cromwell is clearly the main character, and the narration includes his thoughts that are not spoken aloud, Cromwell is almost exclusively referred to as "he" - even when there are any number of men in a scene or referenced in prior sentences that are also "he." Accordingly, I frequently found myself having to flip back a page (or several pages) to identify the speaker. While some have suggested this is Mantel "making us work" for her book, I found it to be very tedious and it distracted me from the characters and story. For me, it just seemed like incorrect grammar. Coupled with her sometimes distracting alteration between using quotation marks for dialogue and then not (without any discernable rhyme or reason), I found the experience of reading about this wonderful character to be lacking.

She does write many passages of perfect scene-setting description, and she has an ability to draw me back just as I am feeling like giving it a rest. The first chapter is one of the most engrossing I have read of any Booker book so far. But I am torn about whether I will read her sequel.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - The Sisters Brothers - Patrick deWitt

2011-08-19T21:28:00.003-04:00

So far I’ve been fortunate enough to pick up two highly readable, engrossing novels from the 2011 long list. Hence the quick reviews being posted as I’m finishing them at a rapid rate. Surely I’ll come across a struggle sooner or later!!!

Well I’ll be darned – I believe we have our very first Booker Prize Long Listed Western. Dang, I could be wrong (as I haven’t read EVERY book on the Booker long/shortlists). In all honesty, a few pages in and I wondered why this had actually made the list of a Commonwealth Prize as it feels more in the style of a Pulitzer listed novel. Patrick deWitt hails from British Columbia (although now living in Oregon) so a Canadian entry for the prize.

If you can imagine Joel and Ethan Coen making a film from a script by Quentin Tarantino of a Western based on Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” then you’d have part of the picture here. I’m only using film references as the book actually has “Intermissions”.

Eli Sisters is our narrator, with the tale commencing with him and his brother Charlie being engaged by the Commodore to kill Hermann Kermit Warm – a man “foolish enough to steal from the Commodore”. Here the travels commence both physically, and not on a horse with no name, and mentally as the brother’s search out the rogue prospector. A journey into Eli’s self discovery as much as it’s a journey across the Western plains to the Californian gold fields.

With short sharp chapters, a plethora of strange but believable characters (witches, lame horses, searchers of fortunes, Indians, maidens and of course cowboys), remembrances of more innocent times, high violence, noir images and black humour this is a highly enjoyable novel. Although I did read a review in “The Guardian” which slammed its “flat narrative style”. As Eli becomes more attached to his horse Tub (the only horse he’s ever owned with a name – “we did not believe in naming horses”) and as each conversation between the brothers flows we learn more and more about their characters and their past:

“You are always harking back in arguments, but another time is another time and thus irrelevant. Providence brought you that black horse. And what will become of the man who shuns Providence?”

“Providence has no place in this discussion. An Indian ate too much and died, that was the source of my good fortune. The point of my argument is that you were only keen on Tub’s departure when it suited you financially.”

“So I am a drunkard and a miser?”

Throw in a ferry called the Old Ulysses, a one eyed horse, un-named travellers (for example, weeping and mute, or barefoot carrying chickens), much merriment and continual drinking (or recovering from such) and I’m sure you could draw parallels to innumerable characters in literature.

I must admit the novel did fall a little flat between the middle sections as the ceaseless drinking, bickering, fighting, womanising etc. continued. But given the writing style it was quite easy to persist.

What will become of the man who shuns Providence? No spoiler alerts here – you’ll have to read it yourself.

I’d fully understand if lovers of fine high-brow literature (whatever that is) found this a tad base, graphically violent and unworthy of celebration, but on the other side of the coin, could it be time for us to start to embrace pulp noir fiction as part of the Booker canon?

I must admit I found this a highly enjoyable read, but to be honest it’s extremely unlikely that it will win the Booker gong and I would fully understand if it didn’t even make the short list. Something to read on a plane trip, just don’t laugh out loud, or squirm in your seat, too much!

Skippy Dies, by Paul Murray - Julia's review

2011-08-16T22:55:00.003-04:00

The title says it all...

Well, not really, but you've got to love an author who puts the main event right there on the cover. Paul Murray just wants to be clear, right up front, that this is what's going to happen. It won't be the end of the story, but it will be a very important factor, and we might as well just get it out there on the table right from the outset.

This book is much longer than I realized, being printed on extremely thin paper, and set in very small print. My copy is 660 pages. In this respect it is physically and thematically similar: the story doesn't seem as though it is going to touch on quite so many truths, from quite so many different angles.

To wit: Seabrook is a traditional Irish Catholic boys' school, running full frontal into the 21st century. There is a varied cast of characters: a disappointed futures-trader-turned-history teacher, a boy genius, an altruistic priest, a beautiful girl, a thug, an ambitious administrator, a swimming coach, and many others, all, it seems, with secrets. And of course there's Skippy, who has at least two gigantic secrets.

The story takes place over the course of an academic year. People fall in love, people cheat, restrain themselves, plan clandestine scientific explorations, sneak into the neighboring girls' school, deal and take drugs - the usual school stuff. There is complicated science, and crass pornography, and 19th century poetry. And somehow it all ties in, connects, reflects endlessly.

The most amazing thing about this book is how deeply the reader falls into the lives of the characters. There is a metaphorical hall of mirrors at Seabrook, with each succeeding generation experiencing the same epiphanies, and false starts. They're coming at life from from different angles, but somehow it's all the same. They're trapped in that hall, inevitably bumping into their distorted reflections, and mistaking them for reality. The themes of impotence, regret and futility are wound around one another, always present but never obvious. Most of the inhabitants of Seabrook are adolecents, and they have that terrible and misguided sense that what is happening at any one moment is the truth.

Did I mention that this book is also really funny? It is. And despite the fact that it took me way longer than I had imagined to get to the last page, I was kind of heartbroken at having to finish. The word I keep thinking of is engaging; the characters are just barely eccentric, the dialogue is always spot-on and hilarious, the many little subplots and interstices and wild imaginings hold your attention just perfectly.One of my very favorite books of the year, thus far.

You can hear all about Paul Murray's life, writing and literary tastes in the Powell's interview.

Jess Walter reviews Paul Murray. What's (slightly) better than reading a great book? Reading another's author's take on it.

Athena K's Review - The Line of Beauty

2011-08-16T12:11:00.001-04:00

I noticed that this site doesn't yet have a complete review of this one. For the patient reader, The Line of Beauty is a richly rewarding story. One does not devour The Line of Beauty - it is to be slowly savored. This was an adjustment for me. I'm used to knowing I like a book because I can't put it down, the plot is so engrossing that, for a while, I forget my entire life. This book provided a different sort of pleasure, and at the end see why this is a Booker book.

Aptly named Nick Guest is a visitor who never seems to manage to leave his stay in the home of a rich schoolmate with powerful connections. Set in 1980's London against the political backdrop of the Thatcher era, I was a bit lost on the deeper meaning of some of the context (what's the difference between a Conservative and a Tory? What did Margaret Thatcher actually do? I was 1 year old when this novel opens). The novel is divided into three sections spanning 4.5 years. The first section centers on Nick's poignant first love affair - as a gay man. Nick's innocence, his sense of the entire world before him, and his tenderness of first love and and first physical experience are so real I found it captivating. However, it is fair to say that very little actually happens in this first third, and I have read review after review suggesting that many people put the book down for good at the end of this section, disappointed with the novel. Read on.

In the second section, a much more experienced Nick exposes an underside of the power and money high of the 80's - cocaine, anonymous partners, and greed and frivolous expense. It is not until the third section that all of the characters Hollinghurst has painstakingly crafted reach their apex in glory or defeat. And only through getting to know these characters in the slow, drawn-out way this novel has can the end be felt so emotionally.

Nick's uniting theme throughout his experience as a guest in the family is an abiding interest in beauty - beautiful things and beautiful people. Experiencing beauty with someone else is how Nick prefers to communicate his deepest feelings. And while the digressions on the actual line of beauty seemed contrived to me, the theme of obsession with temporal beauty in the context of the AIDS epidemic was appropriate and insightful.

Tony Messenger - 2011 Long List - Pigeon English - Stephen Kelman

2011-08-16T05:36:00.004-04:00

In 1993 we had Roddy Doyle winning the Booker with “Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha”, as told through the eyes of a 10 year old, and in 2003 we had D.B.C. Pierre’s “Vernon God Little” told by the 15 year old Vernon, last year Emma Donoghue brought us Jack a 5 year old who has spent his whole life in one room. This year we have Harri an 11 year old Ghanaian, recently arrived in Britain and living in a Council high rise. According to “The Independent” this debut novel “was the subject of a 12-publisher, six-figure bidding war.”

Whereas Roddy Doyle dealt with deteriorating home relationships and Irish struggles and Vernon told his story of being wrongly accused of a Texan shooting and Jack spoke of his wonder for all things bigger than his room, “Pigeon English” draws the innocence of youth together with the harsh reality of gang violence, alienation in a new country whilst wanting to be accepted, single parenting not by choice but by necessity and the simple joys of being young:

The best bit is running in the rain. If you point your face up to the sky at the same time as running, it nearly feels like you’re flying. You can close your eyes or you can keep them open, it’s up to you. I like both. You can open your mouth if you want. The rain just tastes like water from the tap except it’s quite warm. Sometimes it tastes like metal.

At the start of the novel he witnesses the stabbing death of one of his school acquaintances and teams up with one of his school friends to solve the crime, with toy binoculars:

I won a binoculars with my raffle ticket. Asweh, it was a dope-fine piece of luck. They’re army colour. They actually work even if they’re just plastic. I looked at the whole world though them.

Sellotape:

Sellotape can do lots of different detective jobs. You can catch fingerprints in it or hairs. You can use it to make traps. You can stick your notes Down so they don’t blow away. You can even catch the criminals themselves if you have enough, like if you made it into a spiderweb. Only it would take all the Sellotape in the world to hold a fully grown person.

And a raft of cunning all gleaned from one of his friends who watches all the CSI tv shows.

The standard Booker themes of growing up in an alien world, class struggle, innocence and a deteriorating “Empire” are all to the fore here delivered in a powerful 11 year old voice. Unlike Doyle and Pierre’s earlier winners, even though delivered by a youthful voice, it stands apart by depicting the futility of gang violence whilst touching on a raft of current political and local issues. A timely release given Britain’s recent gang issues and that alone could be enough to sway the judge’s minds. A warning for those who weren’t fans of “Vernon God Little” you may also find this infuriating.

As this is the first of the 2011 longlist I have read, it is hard to judge its claims on the prize itself, but personally I believe it is a certainty to make the shortlist and as I make my way through the remaining 12 novels it will become clearer as to its worthiness of the major gong. Thoroughly enjoyable and a book that lingers with you, what more could you want?

Laura's Review - Remembering Babylon

2011-08-13T19:07:00.001-04:00

Set in mid-19th century colonial Australia, Remembering Babylon explores issues of race and class through a young man named Gemmy Fairley. Gemmy turns up in a Queensland village, seemingly out of nowhere. He is white, but "appears" black and speaks the language of native people. He is most comfortable communicating with the three children who first discovered him, members of the McIvor family. Through various means of communication, Gemmy shares his background as a ragamuffin boy tossed from a ship, who lived with aboriginal people for 16 years. The McIvor family take him in, providing for his basic needs and giving him work to do around their property. Gemmy baffles the community:

He had started out white. No question. When he fell in with the blacks -- at thirteen, was it? -- he had been like any other child, one of their own for instance. (That was hard to swallow.) But had he remained white?

They looked at their children, even the smallest of them chattering away, entirely at home in their tongue, then heard the mere half-dozen words of English this fellow could cough up, and even those so mismanaged and distorted you could barely guess what he was on about, and you had to put to yourself the harder question. Could you lose it? Not just language, but it. It.

For the fact was, when you looked at him sometimes he was not white. His skin might be but not his features. The whole cast of his face gave him the look of one of Them. How was that, then? (p.40)

But Remembering Babylon isn't so much Gemmy's story as everyone else's. Janet, Meg, and Lachlan are forever changed after finding Gemmy. Several settlers actively work to oust Gemmy, showing their true selves and straining Jock and Ellen McIvor's relations with them. And just beyond the hubbub lives Mrs. Hutchence, an eccentric woman who offers love and kindness to everyone she meets. Malouf introduced every type of character imaginable: angry, bigoted settlers, a young schoolmaster, a preacher nearing the end of his career, etc. Most were not as well-developed as the McIvor family, and after a while I found the frequent new faces a distraction. The ending was also strange, jumping ahead in time while leaving a number of loose ends back in the 19th century. Still, this was a worthwhile read, an interesting study of human nature, set in a historic period I enjoy reading about.

Cross-posted from my blog

Tony Messenger – 1970 Shortlist – John Brown’s Body – A.L. Barker

2011-08-09T07:50:00.002-04:00

My copy of this novel is a re-issue by “Virago Modern Classics” stating it was shortlisted for the 1969 Booker Prize (when in fact it was the 1970 Prize) and stating it was first published in 1965 – maybe they allowed 4 year old novels to appear on their shortlists back then, however my understanding of the prize is that for the first two years it was for novels published in the previous year.

Search for “John Brown’s Body” in Google and you’ll find a stack of references to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic”, well I’m sorry to say this novel has nothing to do with “glory, glory, hallelujah”, although in kind John Brown’s body could well lie a-mouldering in the grave whilst his soul goes marching on…..

A strange novel and one I really struggled with. The main character is Ralph Shilling:

He was tall and solid and she saw at once he would be remembered. He had a packed face with uncompromisingly functional features, a big nose with a spade-shaped end and a wide mouth with strong red lips. Only his chin looked as if it might let him down, it folded too suddenly into his hard collar.

Marise and Tomelty live downstairs from Ralph and Tomelty remarks that he is the “dead ringer” for John Brown an insurance salesman acquitted of a dual murder of his sister lovers a number of years earlier.

Despite Marise’s concerns she and Ralph start up a friendship, he becomes obsessed with her, questions his own marriage, I could go on…..

There are a number of half sketched characters in this novel, for example Marise’s uncle is introduced, disappears, reappears with threats, and disappears again for good. Ralph’s boss, Pecry is career focused and fearless, has a moment of vulnerability when talking with Ralph and doesn’t really appear in any major form again. Marise’s teddy bear, Barbra, and Ralph’s cat, Put Put, get more treatment from Barker than half the humans in the novel and this infuriated me no end.

Towards the end of the novel I did think that Ralph may well have obsessed about the murderer John Brown that much that he would take on that character (or could well even actually be that character) and kill his own wife and sister-in-law. I’m sorry to say I misread the potential ending; it just petered out with horrors befalling the teddy bear instead.

There are a number of passages I had to re-read and re-read again to try and make sense of them, the conversation passages appear so forced and contrived you can’t tell which character is actually speaking the words. With misspelt names throughout this whole she-bang could be a play on words – if so I didn’t get it.

There was one particular black spot on the mirror the size of a sixpence. She stood so as to get it in the middle of her forehead.

Two sixpence to the shilling? Maybe there is subtext there?

Some credit is due, I did finish the book, even though it was a struggle, and that is a lot more than I can say for a few Booker nominees over the years.

“Virago Modern Classics”? I’d like to know who on earth in that publishing house decided that this is a modern classic? And why did they think a re-issue would sell copies?

In the quote above “he would be remembered”, well I’m sorry to say it, he won’t be in this household.

I’ve also added three reviews of shortlisted novels from 1969 to my blog at http://messybooker.blogspot.com/

Athena K's Review - Vernon God Little

2011-08-08T15:52:00.000-04:00

Well, apparently I'm fitting myself right into a stereotype. Lots of reviews I browsed have noted that Americans tend to dislike Vernon God Little - and I really didn't enjoy this book very much or understand why it merits a Booker Prize.

The story is told by a 15-year old narrator, who is a survivor after a school shooting and was the shooter's best and only friend. Vernon is suspected by the townspeople of having had something to do with the shooting. And because the shooter turned the gun on himself, they are looking for someone still living to blame. Vernon makes several terrible choices that only demonstrate to the police and to the news media covering the story that he is guilty. I suppose this was perceived as a relevant and gritty topic, after Columbine in 1999 was followed by other similar news events. I was a high-school student during the peak of that era. But this story failed to resonate with me.

I think the author, DBC Pierre (a pseudonym) was attempting to write satire about big issues in American - particularly Texan - culture: the media's all powerful and corrupting influence; gun control and violence; fast food, obesity and the diet obsession; the myth of the classless society; the American judicial system and the death penalty; and, perhaps, Christianity. I get that he discusses these issues, and paints a not-flattering picture, but that's not really what I dislike about this book. I just didn't think this novel says anything new or interesting about these issues - it didn't make me see any of this in a new, or different way, and his insights are muddled and trite. It just seemed to me like an excuse to stereotype and then laugh at a perception of American culture that is only partially true.

Perhaps the only parts of the story that I was able to appreciate were small moments when the narrator behaves in a way that really brought to life the mixed-up fifteen-year-old kid he was meant to be. He has major conflicted feelings about his mother, and the guilt she applies like twisting a knife in his back. His instinct to bottle his feelings and failure to communicate with the outside world in any meaningful way - even when those feelings and communications could save him a world of trouble - rang true for me. And apparently for others, as several people apparently really enjoyed this book (it's been helpful to read those reviews as well).

Athena K's Review - The Sea

2011-08-03T12:12:00.000-04:00

I really thought I would enjoy The Sea. I have a high tolerance for descriptive character driven novels where almost no action occurs. I really enjoyed The Gathering - see! I like depressing Irish writing about death and memory. And Banville has such a way with words! I found myself looking up a new word on my iPhone dictionary app (which is free, and yes, I am a nerd) on every other page - I can't remember the last time my vocabulary was challenged so much. And Banville always always chooses exactly the right word, which results in a vivid description of a thing or a place. This book is full of tiny moments of great loveliness, and arresting descriptions of very ordinary things.

Then why didn't I love it? The beautiful words and images just washed over me, leaving almost no impression at all. I think the key issue for me was Banville totally failed to make me feel emotionally invested. The main character is a boring man - he even admits it himself!

... the congeries of affects, inclinations, received ideas, class tics, that my birth and upbringing had bestowed on me in place of a personality. In place of, yes. I never had a personality, not in the way that others have, or think they have. I was always a distinct no-one...

And I have to say the "big reveal" at the end, was a yawn. The fact that it involved a character who was almost never described or discussed made it feel like a bad mystery novel - how were we supposed to know that person was whodunnit when the author never talked about them!

At least for me, beautiful prose alone ultimately falls flat. I need some more personality.

The Long Song - Wendy's Review

2011-08-03T11:24:00.002-04:00

Kitty turned to face her master.

‘Come along, Caroline. Hurry. We need to get out of the sun.’

‘Can I take her?’ she asked.

Kitty tried to seize air enough to breathe.

‘Yes, if she’ll amuse you. She would be taken soon enough anyway. It will encourage her to have another. They are dreadful mothers, these negroes.’

‘She’ll be my companion here,’ Caroline said. ‘I could train her for the house, or to be my lady’s maid.’ – from The Long Song, page 41 -

July is born in the early part of the nineteenth century on a Jamaican sugar plantation. Her mother is a black slave, her father the white overseer who is her mother’s rapist. One hot day when July is still just a young child, she is noticed by Caroline Mortimer, the sister of the plantation’s owner who has arrived from England. On a whim, Caroline decides to take July to be her companion, stealing her from July’s mother without a second thought and renaming her Marguerite. The Long Song is July’s story, narrated retrospectively by an adult July many years later. It is not an easy story, spanning decades and taking the reader through the tumultuous years of the Baptist War and the controversial end to slavery in Jamaica. But, it is July’s voice which drives the narrative. Funny, cynical, highly observant and intelligent, July weighs in on racism, violence, and the struggle for freedom at a time when blacks were viewed as property to rich, white landowners.

Only with a white man, can there be guarantee that the colour of your pickney will be raised. For a mulatto who breeds with a white man will bring forth a quadroon; and the quadroon that enjoys white relations will give to this world a mustee; the mustee will beget a mustiphino; and the mustiphino…oh, the mustiphino’s child with a white man for a papa will find each day greets them no longer with a frown, but welcomes them with a smile, as they at last stride within this world as a cherished white person. – from The Long Song, page 203 -

The Long Song is a brilliant novel narrated by an unforgettable character. July is, perhaps, one of the most memorable female voices I have read in a long, long time. Bittersweet, funny, often devastating…this is a novel which drew me in immediately and held me in its grip to the final page. Andrea Levy writes with an honesty and insight into the human condition that takes one’s breath away.

The Long Song was shortlisted for the 2010 Booker Prize, longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize for Fiction, a finalist for the 2011 Commonwealth Writers Prize, and named as a 2010 New York Times Most Notable book. It is, in my opinion, worthy of all these accolades. Beautiful prose, enduring characters, and the evocation of place that vibrates off the page, all combine to create a remarkable novel of historical significance.

Readers who love literary fiction and historical fiction will want to put The Long Song on their must read list.

Highly recommended.

Quality of Writing:
Plot:
Characters:

Overall Rating:

2011 Booker Prize Longlist

2011-08-03T08:40:00.000-04:00

My apologies for being woefully late in posting this. I was on holiday at the time ...

The 2011 Book Prize longlist was announced on July 26. The nominees are:

Julian Barnes The Sense of an Ending
Sebastian Barry On Canaan's Side
Carol Birch Jamrach's Menagerie
Patrick deWitt The Sisters Brothers
Esi Edugyan Half Blood Blues
Yvvette Edwards A Cupboard Full of Coats
Alan Hollinghurst The Stranger's Child
Stephen Kelman Pigeon English
Patrick McGuinness The Last Hundred Days
A.D. Miller Snowdrops
Alison Pick Far to Go
Jane Rogers The Testament of Jessie Lamb
D.J. Taylor Derby Day

The list includes one former prize winner, two previously shortlisted authors, one longlisted author, four first time novelists, three Canadian writers, and three publishers new to the prize. Whew! The shortlist will be announced on September 6 and the winner on October 18.

There's been considerable coverage in the press and on the blogs. Here are two links I found useful:

The New Yorker's Booker Review Roundup
A US Reader's Guide by book blogger nomadreader, identifying those books currently available in the US, and publication dates for others.

Have you read any of these books? Tell us what you thought! And if you've written a review, please cross-post it here, or comment on this post with a link.

Introduction - Tony Messenger

2011-07-31T22:32:00.005-04:00

Hello everyone! I stumbled across this magnificent site whilst searching for old out-of-print Booker Nominees. You may call this an obsession, you may call it insane, however for the last 20 odd years I have been buying the Booker Prize shortlisted novels and have read them in order to be outraged or concur with the judge’s decisions. Some years I have been mad enough to extend my reading to the long list....

Over that time I have managed to back fill my collection of Booker nominees and have randomly read older ones. Recently I decided that I would commence with the 1969 shortlist and read my way forward. Each September that will be put on hold whilst I churn through the current shortlist.

I’ve probably read between 80 to 120 or so of the 242 shortlisted books (I haven’t included the “missing Booker” from 1970 that they retrospectively awarded in 2010).

A great site to share thoughts and I thank Laura for making me welcome.

I've started my own blog at messybooker.blogspot.com posting an intro and a listing of the books I'm still missing from my collection (the photo there is part of my collection).

Athena K's Review - The White Tiger

2011-07-27T15:35:00.000-04:00

This weekend I finished The White Tiger. I found this to be an engaging and interesting read, but it took me a little bit of contemplation to decide whether this novel seemed worthy of a Man Booker Prize. However, I found myself recommending the book to others before completely sorting out my feelings about it, so that strongly indicates that I enjoyed it.

The most compelling aspect of this story, about an Indian boy (Balram) who grows up in poverty and claws his way out, is the contemplation of what it means to be free versus what it means to be trapped. Balram discusses freedom frequently in this novel, and believes himself to be a free person after making the life-altering decision to murder his employer. This is a story of the many ways a person can be trapped or free, and what sacrifices and humiliations a person can endure to move from caged to free.

Adiga, through Balram, describes dilemma of the caged/free dichotomy most clearly though use of the metaphor of the "Rooster Coop" - a pile of cages in which chickens and roosters are packed waiting for slaughter:

"On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of a recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they're next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop."

Balram and other impoverished low-caste Indians are stuck in the coop not because of a physical cage, but through bonds of family, duty, and dignity. In order to break out of his cage, he must sacrifice these bonds - through violating his sense of duty to his employer, sacrificing the health and lives of his entire extended family (who serve as a hostage against his loyalty to his employer), and his own sense of fairness and dignity in murdering his employer who has never directly harmed him and has, for the most part, treated him with more care and respect than any other person he knows. Balram's choices do not sit easily with me (and they seem very difficult for him), but I struggle to condemn him. This moral ambiguity, the impossibility of justice in Balram's India is what has stuck with me from this novel.

Athena K's Review - The Gathering

2011-07-21T01:20:00.000-04:00

Veronica Hegarty has lost her mind and her life is a train wreck. Her favorite brother Liam has been found dead, a suicide, at the age of 40. Her marriage has been on the rocks, her relationships with her numerous family members range from uncomfortable to estranged, and her memory is fading or invented. I loved this novel.

Veronica, the eighth of 12 children born to an Irish family in the mid-twentieth century, narrates her grief in a vivid, visceral and graphic way. For a woman with so many relationships, she has almost no intimacy, except once, long ago, with her brother who is now dead. She is overwhelmed by this loss:

"And what amazes me as I hit the motorway is not the fact that everyone loses someone, but that everyone loves someone. It seems like such a massive waste of energy - and we all do it, all the people beetling along between the white lines, merging, converging, overtaking. We each love someone even though they will die."

But Veronica has a secret about Liam - at least she is pretty sure she does. Memory is such a strange beast though, she finds that if she tries hard enough she can conjure a memory about almost anything - even if she knows it couldn't have happened, or if she knows it happened to her sister and not herself. But what she knows - that Liam was "interfered with" as a boy of 9 - she has never told anyone in the family. This play with memory, and the "something immoral about the mind's eye" that Anne Enyeart explores through Veronica's narration is what captivated me so thoroughly. Because the narration skips across time, and because Veronica blends fiction, memory, and the here-and-now so seamlessly, the facts surprise us even as we anticipate their telling.

It's not a comfortable book. (I could have written this entire review on the various and creative symbolic meanings of penises in the novel, for example). Enright doesn't shy from some of the hardest subjects I can think of: suicide, child molestation, infidelity, alcoholism. But Veronica becomes such a real and sympathetic character that I had a hard time putting the book down.

Alex's Review - The Next Big Thing aka Making Things Better - Anita Brookner

2011-07-18T19:52:00.001-04:00

Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
Eugene Delacroix
Saint Sulpice Church Paris - France
licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial ShareAlike 3.0 License
http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=48070

Isn't this rather beautiful? This painting features in Making Things Better aka The Next Big Thing by Anita Brookner.

It was long-listed for the Booker Prize in 2002.

I was a bit excited about reading it as this is the first Anita Brookner I've read that features a male in the lead role, so to speak.

Julius Herz is retired and reflecting on his life to date. It could be argued that he is in his dotage. He is ailing physically and mourning the lack of someone to look after him in his old age.

Julius did marry once - to a cheerful, practical sort of woman - Josie - but cramped living conditions, which included his demanding and morose parents, spelled the death-knell for any hope of proper intimacy.

Brookner's novels may be slim but they're never an easy read. She seems to delight in tackling the difficult subjects like old age and loneliness that other writers might choose to give a wide berth.

Not our Ms Brookner. She plunges in where angels fear to tread and paints a sobering picture of something that most of us will face - decline and decay - and possibly regret. As my father regularly intones in lines attributed to Bette Davis I think - "Old age isn't for sissies."

Like many of Brookner's characters, Julius was an obedient offspring. Not necessarily the favoured son by any stretch of the imagination...but the one that tidied up and tried to make things better. When his brother Freddy, a promising concert violinist starts to lose the plot, Julius is the only one who visits him in the Sanitorium and witnesses his decline.

Late in life, Julius is given a chance at freedom. His parents having passed on, a distant acquaintance, who helped the family re-settle in London from war-torn Europe, bequeaths a significant proportion of his estate to Julius which frees him from the necessity to work or worry about a roof over his head.

But is it too late? "He was not trained for freedom, that was the problem, had not been brought up for it." Poor Julius feels so overcome with the challenge of freedom he suffers "a feeling of unreality, so enveloping as to constitute a genuine malaise." A quite amusing dialogue ensues during an appointment with his doctor where Julius earnestly asks if he could be suffering a similar experience to Freud's on the Acropolis. The Doctor ignores the question of existentialism and pursues a comfortable line of enquiry - blood pressure.

Friends and acquaintances suggest that what Julius needs is a holiday. In his obliging manner, he attempts to re-visit the joys of his youth, when he sampled the delights of brief getaways in Paris with obliging young women. It doesn't take long to get to Paris from Waterloo...but the people have changed and of course Julius has too. He feels his age and decides to return home earlier than planned. Before he leaves, he pops into Saint Sulpice to check out Delacroix's painting. I'll leave you to read the book and find out the epiphany or new reading that Julius takes away with him from the viewing.

I always feel a wee bit more edu-muckated after I've read Brookner. I learn new words - this book brought me meretricious, which I always forget means "befitting a harlot - or showily attractive" - a most useful word - must use it more often. Then of course there is fiacre - which you might think is something to do with a fiasco - but no, it is a French four-wheeled cab - never enough cabs I say. Finally inanition.- emptiness esp of nourishment i.e. how I felt earlier this week after a particularly nasty tummy bug.

In conclusion I have to say that on the whole I found The Next Big Thing a bit of struggle - rather like Jacob wrestling with the Angel. There is a very telling line early on when Julius forms a friendship with a younger man - a co-beneficiary of the estate bequeathed to them. They dine together on a regular basis "Herz had little experience of dealing with younger people but understood instinctively that one kept out of their lives as much as possible but was curious and indulgent towards them....It was a matter of discretion not to talk about oneself. To do so would be to shock Simmonds with the prospect of what awaited him."

I guess I'm not shocked. More gloomily depressed. One doesn't want to shoot the messenger of course, but it has to be said that Brookner fair puts you off old age, so she does.

Athena K's review - The Inheritance of Loss

2011-07-17T23:13:00.000-04:00

Through this novel, Kiran Desai transported me to a part of the world I had never spent any time thinking about - Northeastern India in the foothills of the Himalayas. Her words evoked a fantastic sense of place and landscape that I really enjoyed. And through the narrative structure of storytelling and memories she creates compelling and deeply flawed but fascinating characters. This was a great novel.

The opening and closing sequences, describing the view from the central house overlooking the Himalayan Mountains, acted as a beautiful metaphor for many of the book's themes:

"All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths. Briefly visible above the vapor, Kanchenjunga was a far peak whittled out if ice, gathering the last of the light, a plume of snow blown high by the storms at the summit."

For a person living in Seattle, the image of an almost corporeal mist hiding and revealing a stunning mountain resonates immediately. And on those days when the Mountain (in my case, Mount Rainier) is exposed and lit by the evening light, there is nothing more beautiful, humbling, and inspiring.

In this novel, Mount Kanchenjunga's appearance is a symbol for the discovery of deep and permanent truths, including love, family, and community. We follow four main characters: Sai, an orphaned teenage girl on the verge of womanhood and independence; her grandfather the Judge, who has for most of his life rejected his Indianness in favor of Englishness; their cook, man who feels deep loyalty to the Judge and Sai, but is constrained by class and poverty, and his son Biju, an illegal immigrant in New York City striving to obtain his piece of the American dream. The novel is set against the backdrop of a sometimes violent uprising by Nepali-Indians demanding a separate and independent state. Sai falls in love with a young man who chooses the movement over their love, and betrays her - a decision that torments him as he struggles with his conflicting feelings.

But for me the most interesting characters were those who attempted to reject their Indianness. In their own ways both the Judge and Biju attempt to slough off their Indian culture and heritage in favor of Western ideals and dreams. For the Judge, who studies in England and is appointed by the British before Independence, the India he sees is dirty, ignorant, classless. He ultimately rejects Indianness to the greatest extent possible - from food and customs to his own wife and daughter. Biju on the other hand rejects his Indianness only through perceived need. He chases a dream of wealth and easy life that eludes him in New York. Their decisions leave both the Judge and Biju miserable and cut off from family and community. Only in the end, when all that both have worked for and accumulated has been lost, stolen, or decayed, does Mount Kanchenjunga reveal itself at the reunion of Biju and his father:

"The five peaks of Kanchenjunga turned golden with the kind of luminous light that made you feel, if briefly, that truth was apparent. All you needed to do was to reach out and pluck it."

1992 - The English Patient

2011-07-16T23:50:00.001-04:00

It’s a different experience, reading a novel after seeing the film first. As I lost myself in the pages of The English Patient I could see the thin, taut faces of the characters as they were in the film, and I could see how perfectly the adaptation and casting had captured the brittleness of the world they inhabited. My own mother is the only other one I know ever to so perfectly explain the sense of living for the fragile moment during the Second World War. Perhaps that was because she too had a sense of perspective about human life that came from a love of wild, desolate places, indifferent and unforgiving…

The English Patient won the Governor General’s Award in Canada and shared the Booker Prize with Barry Unsworth’s Sacred Hunger in 1992. It’s an enchantment, one that made it very difficult for me to tear myself away from it. So you can imagine my astonishment when I saw some consumer reviews that claimed to have hated the book, dismissing it as pretentious or frustrating. I didn’t read much of this criticism (too depressing! too inane!) but I got the impression that these readers disliked having to ‘put together pieces of a jigsaw’.

Well, there are readers who like things to be straightforward (as if life is like that) and there are those who enjoy a carefully constructed artifice that gradually reveals the complexity of characters and events. In this tale of four people damaged by the loss of innocence that inevitably accompanies war, Ondaatje has woven fragments of their past lives into their uncertain present as they themselves reveal it (as, in life, we do). It is a beautiful story which creates a romantic setting out of a ruined Italian villa booby-trapped by the mines of the retreating German army, and juxtaposes it with the pre-war heroic age of discovery in the harsh deserts of Egypt and Libya.

To read the rest of my review, please visit my ANZ LitLovers blog.
I read and blogged this Booker Prize winner on July 17th 2011.
Cross-posted at GoodReads.
Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers