Skios by Michael Frayn - 2012 Longlist

Skios, by Michael Frayn. Published 2013 by Picador.

So, what got my attention about Skios was two things. First, it was longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Second, its author wrote the very silly play "Noises Off."

Skios, by Michael Frayn. Published in the US 2013 by Picador. Longlisted in 2012.

So, what got my attention about Skios was two things. First, it was longlisted for the 2012 Man Booker Prize. Second, its author wrote the very silly play "Noises Off."

This is a very silly book.

The plot hangs on a thin premise that some readers won't be able to buy into. Stuffy academic Dr. Norman Wilfred is making his way to the private Greek island of Skios for an international jet-setter's weekend conference. His is to be the keynote address and his presence is a big draw for the wealthy donors to an NGO. He's an older guy, kind of set in his ways and whose charisma owes more to habit than to actual charm. Enter Oliver Fox, an English playboy. Oliver Fox and Wilfred Owen, through circumstances I won't go into, end up with their identities switched. And then the fun really begins.

Stuck in the middle is hapless Nikki Hook, in charge of organizing the weekend. She is a bundle of nerves and anxiety and nearly becomes unhinged as events take their course. Other characters have significant roles to play but basically the book comes down to waiting to see what's going to happen when the ruse is finally up.

All I can say is, if you can put your brain on hold and just go along for the ride, Skios is a fun book. It's definitely a beach book- it reads fast and it's got an undeniable air of frivolity. Some reviewers think it asks deep questions about the meaning of identity; I don't know about that. It's also a great book to read this winter if you live in New England- you'll be feeling that Greek sunshine coming right through the page.

Tony Messenger - 2012 Long List - Skios - Michael Frayn

Kingsley Amis was shortlisted three times for the Booker Prize (with “Ending Up” in 1974, “Jake’s Thing” in 1978 and finally winning the prize with “The Old Devils” in 1986), Frayn has been on the shortlist before with “Headlong” back in 1999. So a “masterful” exponent of farce is shortlisted more often than a new kid on the block? I suppose Frayn has further opportunity to make the list in future years.

“Skios” is farce, pure and simple farce. Mix in some scientific chaos theory mumbo jumbo but it reads very much like a stiff upper lip British comic farce from the 1970’s. This year we also had “The Yips” by Nicola Barker, a comic farce with intertwined characters set for the internet generation, and personally I found that novel had a lot more depth and pathos than Frayn’s latest offering.

Put simply we are on the Greek Island of Skios, and according to this novel the original home of Athena the Greek virgin Goddess of reason, intelligent activity, arts and literature. Of course she must be hidden as we have four intertwined (although they don’t know it) main characters Dr Norman Wilfred who has been hired by the gorgeous and ambitious Nikki to give the Annual Fred Toppler Foundation Lecture on “Innovation and Governance; the Promise of Scientometrics”, and Oliver Fox a playboy self-confidant womaniser who has arranged to meet a lady who he had previously met for a grand total of 5 minutes, Georgie, for a romantic rendezvous on the island of Skios.

Now things start to get a little complicated, Georgie is away on this interlude without telling her current partner Patrick, Oliver is using a villa, to meet Georgie, which is owned by friends of his ex-girlfriend (Annuka who has only recently thrown him out and whose luggage he is using). Georgie used to go to school with Nikki and she’s using their friendship as a cover for her “getaway”, Nikki is plotting to win control of the Foundation with her coup speaker and poor Dr Wilfred is just too busy on his mobile phone to realise someone has taken his luggage. Oliver pretends he is Norman, Norman ends up in a villa not the foundation, Georgie thinks Nikki is in Switzerland (“skiers” not “Skios”) and ends up in the same bed as Norman who she thinks is Oliver, Nikki thinks Oliver is Dr Norman Wilfred and is charmed, Oliver thinks he is Norman and on it goes.

She plainly wanted him to be Dr Wilfred, he could see. She would probably be disappointed later, of course, when he turned out not to have been Dr Wilfred after all. But later was later. The immediate priority was not to disappoint her now. In Any case, there was some truth in what he had said. He was not good at telling lies, and he never did. Not if he could manage without.

We also have Greek corrupt leaders, Russian magnates with clueless girlfriends, sheiks with impossibly long names, money laundering, about 30 episodes with mobile phones, drunk and tired journalists, inept security guards, twin? brother taxi drivers  and more. As a multi award winning playwright you can see this novel being firmly put upon a stage with people quickly moving in and out, ribald laughter from the stalls and oohhss and ahhhsss as we feel embarrassed at each and every wrong turn. But does it work as a novel? [SPOLIER ALERT] The one redeeming feature for myself was the chapter just short of the ending where the numerous plausible endings are put down, the explanation of seemingly random events and the causation of other events – the butterfly in Brazil flapping it’s wings causing weather events does rate a mention!!!!

All up a quick read, an enjoyable read but something I’d rather watch on a stage (and on a night where I’ve switched off a bit). So farce features twice on this year’s long list, so we must be in dark times if we are reduced to improbable, coincidental and quite simply absurd behaviour to take us away from the reality.

Cross posted at my blog.

Tony Messenger - 2012 Long List - Communion Town - Sam Thompson

‘We’re always telling ourselves the story of ourselves, every waking moment, as if nothing matters more. Isn’t that a selfish way to live? Shouldn’t we try and get outside that?’

This novel is subtitled “A City in Ten Chapters” and we want to know the secret of this city, we spend 278 pages (in my edition) wandering around lost in this city, wondering about ourselves will we be gratified, will the novel answer all the questions it has raised, if only for my own gratification.

The city is a mystery when you notice it’s full of sunken side streets falling away from you beside river and canal, by yellow and pink brick terraces, in September for instance under castles of foliage, in deep light. Someone approaches and you’re sure you recognise him, you’ve met just once, and not long ago, but he vanishes away down one of those streets and you miss him. You feel you owe an apology. And it only gets deeper, the riddle of it, as years go by and the special creatures stay exactly the same, just as they were when Stephen went with them. The modulation of names and faces makes no difference at all.

The cover of my novel has a review snippet from Tash Aw “A strange remarkable work”, well I concur, this novel is strange, very strange. More like ten short stories all on the same theme of the city, with different voices, different tenses, different eras, first person, and third person, missing characters, choruses and probably more. We have tales that ring of Sam Spade, ones that are lifted straight from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (with a consulting detective and his sidekick – the sidekick narrating that chapter), others that are gothic and others that are drenched in heartache but also horror.

As you know I don’t like to put spoilers in my reviews but in this case I could probably point out the whole novel and it wouldn’t spoil it in any way as I must admit (it is my failing here) I just didn’t get it. Initially I thought it was being structured as a growing metropolis may be having an architectural theme, or slowly constructing a whole, later I thought it was all going to lead to a common theme as Colum McCann did brilliantly in “Let The Great World Spin”, even later still I thought it was probably a mixture of unconnected tales as would happen in a city, where your paths may never cross another individual. I still don’t know what this was, it is set in the past (maybe), the future (probably), the present (unlikely) and the disparate sections have minimal linking themes (maybe the “don’t go out at night” theme was common). We even have a “memory city” within the city:

And does our discipline not have a special affinity with the ancient practice of the memory house, for where does the detective live, if not in a memory city, a city that is less a physical place than a world of codes and symbols? Does she not, in her mind, walk the street at all times, in search of the meanings concealed there?

Yes this is a novel of codes and symbols, you could go back and reread it numerous times to search for the meanings concealed there, you could probably work out the literary references each chapter represents and then come to some conclusive whole. Personally I enjoyed a lot of the quotes, the language and the concept, pity is it didn’t reach the heights I thought were there, hate to say it but this is no David Mitchell, nor did it leave me with a sense of wanting more. 

Cross posted at my blog.

Marie C. Reviews The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce. Published 2012 by Random House.

So, after a spate of dark and heavy books, I was asking around on Twitter one night for some what-to-read-next suggestions. One of my Twitter friends mentioned a book she loved, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce, which had been longlisted for this year's Booker Prize and a galley of which happened to be nestled in my piles of books somewhere. I'd dipped into it earlier in the year and was interested enough to keep it around, but this recommendation was enough to get it out of the pile and into my hands.

I really loved it.

One day Harold Fry gets a letter in the mail from a nurse caring for his old friend Queenie Hennessey. Queenie and Harold had worked together at a brewery; Harold was an introverted salesman, a loner in a jocular, hyper masculine culture, and Queenie the lone woman. They share a secret, a secret of Harold's; a long time ago, she did him an unfathomable favor, and now, as she lay dying from cancer, Harold feels a need to see her, to thank her, to make sure she's okay, so, without really meaning to, he starts walking the many miles from his home to her bedside.

As Harold's walk progresses, Joyce tells the story of Harold and his wife Maureen, a late-middle-aged couple whose marriage has basically disintegrated. Harold is a good man but emotionally stunted by abuse and abandonment by his own parents; Maureen had expectations for her life that were different from the way things turned out. Their relationship with their son David is at the heart of their troubles as a couple, and their story is explored gradually and quietly as Harold embarks on his pilgrimage.

Joyce alternates her narrative between Harold's walk and Maureen's own, private journey at home, as she reevaluates herself, her marriage, her husband and her son. The past and the present intermingle as Harold and Maureen make their way through terrain interior and exterior. Maureen starts off in denial of what's going on; she tells her neighbor that Harold is inside. Harold likewise has no idea what he's gotten himself into and finds himself beset by injury, hunger, loneliness and cold. He tells people what he's doing as he goes and soon finds himself to be a kind of celebrity, while Maureen actually starts to miss her husband and rethink their relationship.

I found the story, which is actually quite dark, to be moving but what I really admire about the book is how tightly it's structured. Everything is a metaphor for everything else; Harold's physical journey mirrors his psychic journey, his physical injuries and lack of preparation mirror his development from childhood to adulthood. The lack of affection and direction from his parents left him unprepared for adult relationships, for parenthood, for success at work. Now that part of his life is over and he has to figure out how to face his remaining years, what remains of his marriage and his understanding of his only child. And he's hanging it all on the success or failure of the visit with Queenie.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry has the potential to be a big success with lots of different kinds of readers. It's a natural fit for people who liked Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson, or Natasha Solomon's Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English but it's a good deal more melancholy than those books. A meditation on grief, on what it means to succeed or fail, and on what it means to grow up and love other people, it's a wonderful and wonderfully engrossing story of an all-too-human man and his struggle to accept himself and what life has dealt him.

Rating: BUY

FTC Disclosure: I received a review copy from the publisher.

Tony Messenger - 2012 Long List - The Yips - Nicola Barker

Initially I thought it a tad strange to have a definition of “Yips” at the start of this novel as it is a term that I have been familiar with for years. However, as there must be a number of people who haven’t come across the term before I’ll replicate the definition here:

Yips (y ps). Pl. n. Nervousness or tension that causes an athlete to fail to perform effectively, especially in missing short putts in golf. (The Free Dictionary)

Before I go into my usual précis of the novel I’d like to quote a section that appears quite late in this 548pg tome.

‘Yeah. Something nice and easily digestible – finger-food for the internet generation. Maybe a little toy hidden away inside somewhere…’

‘Like a Christmas cracker or a self-help Kinder Egg.’

‘Exactly!’ Jen enthusiastic.

‘And the basic philosophy?’

‘No philosophy. No guidance. No structure. No pay-off. No real consequences. Just stuff and then more stuff.’

‘Stuff?’ Gene double-checks that he’s heard her correctly.

‘Yeah, stuff. Like, here’s some stuff, here’s some other stuff, here’s some more stuff. Just stuff – more and more stuff, different kinds of stuff which is only the same stuff but in different colours and with different names; stuff stacked up on top of itself in these huge, messy piles…’

Now I don’t want to give away too much of the story here but once I came to this section of the novel I did think to myself, “This conversation is describing this book, it’s just stuff in different colours (but the same) all piled up on itself.

Basically we are in the mid 2000’s and have a has-been golfer, self-absorbed of course, who continues to believe he is still at the cutting edge of what the public wants. He is media savvy, broke and still expects to find his groove again one day. Whilst playing a small event in Luton he comes across a young barmaid who lives the new internet generation life, is full of bullshit and bravado, her part time boss (who has beaten cancer numerous times – it becomes more extreme as the novel progresses) who is married to a C of E clergy woman, who has unruly fringe problems. The golfer many years before hit a spectator with a stray ball and that caused court cases, premature deaths and more. The impacted family contains a psychotic mother who carries on in French, a lay about son (and his young child who seems to go about naked all the time), his sister who is an agoraphobic tattoo artist who specialises in merkins (pubic wigs) and her (now dead) father who taught her tattoo but who was also a collector of Nazi memorabilia. We also have a sex therapist and his pious Muslim wife, the Jamaican manager of the golfer (who has shipped all her children back home soon after birth), her sister who is an anti-environmentalist activist, entrepreneurs and more.

Of course all of these characters are interwoven in some way (you’ll have to read it to find out how), but despite all their idiosyncrasies I started to believe they were all a little alike (just more stuff piled on top of other stuff). Besides the obvious correlation to our main golfing guy having the yips, each and every character has them in some way too.

Obviously a comic social commentary on the internet generation and the lack of social interaction we currently pursue, this novel does contain quite a few gems:

I love tattooing but I’m my dad’s apprentice. I love the skin – I’m obsessed by it – it’s so magical and strong yet so unbelievably sensitive – it’s the thing that holds all the feelings in – the thing that touches the world; the mask, the source, the base, the surface….

I haven’t read Nicola Barker’s shortlisted novel from 2007 “Darkmans”, so this one was a revelation for me. At 548 pages it is not a novel you knock over quickly, and it did leave me a little flat, although amusing in parts and revealing in others it just seemed to wander on a little too long – finger food for the internet generation.

Cross posted at my blog.

Karen's Review - Skios - 2012 Longlist

Cross posted at:. http://allthingsbooker.wordpress.com

About a quarter of the way through Skios I began to wonder whether the Booker prize judges  had enjoyed a few too many glasses of ouzo when they decided to include Michael Frayn's latest novel in the 2012 longlist. How else to account for their choice of a comic novel about a set of characters caught up in a world that spirals into chaos.

It's actually in the genre of a theatrical farce but instead of the revolving doors and beds that you get with the likes of a Feydeau farce, in Skios we have red leather suitcases that get muddled up and then keep reappearing but in the wrong places, girlfriends who get mistaken for cleaning ladies, and phone calls/text messages that keep going astray.

Skios is set on a Greek island where the great and the wealthy are gathered for the annual retreat of the Toppler Foundation, agog to hear this years guest lecturer Dr Norman Wilfred give his key note address on "Innovation and Governance: the Promise of Scientometrics". It's a lecture he has touted around the world and delivered many times. But arriving at Skios airport, he gets distracted at the baggage carousel, discovers his suitcase has been taken by someone else and instead of being taken by taxi to be feted in the Toppler foundation guest lodge, he finds himself in a villa surrounded by little more than goats. Meanwhile, his luggage and his identity is taken by Oliver Fox, another passenger on the same plane. Although significantly younger than Dr Wilfred, Oliver manages to charm all the Toppler guests into believing he really is the esteemed expert on Scientometrics. Meanwhile, up at the villa surrounded by goats, waits the girl he is supposed to be meeting for a romantic weekend.

It's the kind of story line that worked well for Frayn in the 1980s with Noises Off, his stage play about a theatrical group rehearsing and then performing a sex-comedy. He used the same approach in his screenplay for the  film Clockwork starring John Cleese as a hapless headmaster beset by a litany of accidents on his way to a headmasters' conference.

Farce is harder to execute successfully on the page, than on the stage or in film. In Skios, Frayn shows why he is a master of this genre (which presumably is why he ended on the long list). The action is frenetic with a narrative focus that constantly switches from one set of characters and locations to another until it reaches an explosive ending.

Masterful?  Yes in terms of handling a complicated plot line. Enjoyable? Marginally so - you could read this on a sun lounger with eyes half closed and enjoy the odd chuckle or too. But that's about it. The problem for me was that the characters seldom rose above the level of painting-by-numbers figures - the plot device too often turned on that well-worn device of miscommunication between foreigners who can't speak each others language. It's difficult to care about what happens to any of these people.

 Skios does have its moments of acutely observed behaviour and attitudes. The world of the academic lecture circuit is an easy target for comedy and ridicule  (think David Lodge's Small World).  Frayn's satire is evenly balanced between the academics and their audiences: Norman lectures to "the Something Centre. Or the Something Institute. The Something Something. The Something Something for the Something of Something." to audiences who "had already had lectures on "the Crisis in this and the Challenge of that. They had an Enigma of, a Whither? and a Why?, three Prospects for and two Reconsiderations of."

Such moments get lost however amidst the frantic rushing about that farce requires.  Equally, there seems to be a theme about identity in which Frayn asks us to consider how we really know who we are - if our name and everything we supposedly represent can so easily be taken by another person, then what is left? But again, the comedy takes over and this question is never really explored.

Overall, this is a book that is well short of Frayn at his best. The kind of novel that is instantly forgettable once finished.

Tony Messenger - 2012 Long List - The Teleportation Accident - Ned Beauman

Well I’m back from a couple of weeks annual holiday and time to update the blogs. The problem with taking this break was I finished this novel on my first day so the recollections could be a bit dimmed by the sun, reefs and rainforest.

Let me introduce you to Egon Loeser (you can follow him on twitter although you can’t find author Ned Beauman there), a set designer in 1930’s Berlin who is working on a play about the life of Adriano Lavicini, a fellow set designer from the Renaissance who presumably died when his teleportation machine destroyed the theatre on its debut. Egon is building a teleportation set, whereby people can travel across time and space and appear at any point of the stage almost seemlessly. But deep down Egon is struggling, he hasn’t has sex since he split up with his girlfriend a long time ago and a glamorous former student, Adele, has just returned to his life only to run off, for a one night stand, with an author who has stolen Egon’s hero and written an ill researched pulp story. A heartbroken Egon then proceeds to Paris to find Adele, unsuccessfully of course,come across a longevity plan where the transplanting of monkey glands might just work.  And then finally onto Los Angeles where he befriends a local writer (one of his heroes) and his charming wife Dolores Mutton as well the owner of a pulp fiction book store who introduces him to HP Lovecraft. Of course he becomes involved in time travel via a secret university study into a real teleportation device.

This novel is hilarious in parts, so much so I was laughing out loud on the train:

You could certainly write symphonies about Dolores Mutton. You could write at least a scherzo about her cleavage alone.

Dear Mother and Father. Good news: I am rich. I have cornered the market in foreskins.

As a result, no doubt, of some bureaucratic oversight, Sunset Boulevard had a beginning and a middle but no end. The cost was not far now, but Sunset Boulevard probably just rolled on down the beach and into the water and onwards to Shanghai.

I will stuff this book so far down your throat that your duodenum will autograph it in bile.

Ned Beauman’s novel is one weird piece of work. Besides the laughing out loud, the engagement with the writing styles and settings is engrossing. For over 240 pages I was totally extolling the virtues of this young writer, then the novel seemed to fall apart for 100 or so pages. The section covering the sci-fi style of Lovecraft was not my cup of tea. However I did enjoy the four leaps in time as the ending, which (for some reason or other) reminded me of David Mitchell’s “Cloud Atlas”.  This also had hints of David Foster Wallace, but not as detailed (no footnotes here). And the use of time (as part of a Teleportation Accident) was extremely clever – how can I person in the 1930’s discuss what it may be like in 2012 and be so uncannily accurate?

I can understand why this novel didn’t make this year’s shortlist, for me it was the flat section late in the novel, however I will be hunting down his debut “Boxer, Beetle” – as well as continuing to follow the fictional Egon Loeser on twitter. I will also be looking out for future work from Ned Beauman who, at only 27 years of age right now, will certainly become a well-known writer.

Next up will be my review of Will Self’s “Umbrella” – now that was a challenging read!!!

Cross posted at my blog.

Rachel's Review of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Man Booker Longlist 2012: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, by Rachel Joyce


My Review:
When Harold Fry gets a letter from an old friend who's dying of cancer, he decides in a leap of faith to take a pilgrimage across England to "save" her. Along the way, he meets many interesting characters and learns to listen to their troubles. He also has time to reminisce about his past...some happy memories, but mostly memories of things he should have done better. This is a bitter-sweet story with deep characters and a good message. The type of person who would love this book is sentimental, and loves reminiscent stories about past mistakes and new beginnings. 

Personally, I'm not that sort of person. Bitter-sweet stories tend to make my eyes tear up, and then I get angry at myself for being so infernally hormonal. :) Stories in which people reminisce about past mistakes also are a little depressing to me. I've always felt that we should learn from the past, but not waste energy with regrets. Everybody makes mistakes. If we regret them, do something about it. If we can't do something about it, accept it as a part of our pasts that makes us who we are today. Try not to make the mistake again. But maybe I just feel that way because I don't have anything worth regretting yet, I don't know. *shrug* 

This review has been reposted from my blog: Resistance is Futile.

Rachel's Review of Skios (2012)

Man Booker Longlist 2012: Skios, by Michael Frayn 

My Review

Dr. Norman Wilfred has flown to Skios to give a distinguished speech to a group of rich academics at the Toppler Foundation. Due to an unfortunate string of coincidences, he is whisked off to a villa while a con artist, Oliver Fox, takes his place at the Toppler gathering. At first blush, this may seem to be only a farcical comedy of errors. Fun is poked at the distinguished empty-headedness of academia, at silly assumptions people make when they don't have all the information (which, of course, they never do), and at the openness of people to accept whatever is said--as long as it is said by a charismatic person. However, I can see why this book was chosen for the Booker longlist--upon a more careful reading this book has a much deeper undercurrent. It asks questions about identity and about chance Eureka! moments. I found the ease with with Oliver Fox moved into Norman Wilfred's life almost believable because that IS how academia works sometimes. Sometimes, it IS more about how charming you are than about what's actually coming out of your mouth. Sometimes it IS more about your name and about who people think you are than about who you ACTUALLY are. I understand that this book isn't for everybody...but I'm a person who doesn't generally read farcical novels, and I enjoyed this one immensely.

This review is reposted from my blog: Resistance is Futile.

Tony Messenger - 2012 Long List - Philida - Andre Brink

I've just finished novel number two from the twelve on the long list and I must admit I haven’t read the 1976 shortlisted “An Instant in the Wind” or the 1978 shortlisted “Rumours of Rain” by the same author. So this was a new experience with a writer I hadn't come across before.

This is the fictionalised tale of a the very real Philida, a slave in South Africa in the 1830’s who we find travelling to the local town to lodge a formal complaint against the son of her boss, who had promised freedom in exchange for sexual favours. She has borne his children, been subjected to cruel punishments as a result and has finally decided that “no” is and answer she can pursue.

The early chapters are told in many narrative voices, although all are centred on the plight of Philida. The later part of the book becomes more her own narration with limited input from the other narrative voices. The early explanations of her plight are the ones that ring most true:

What Frans say. That thing he say that really make me know for the first time what he is and what I am. I am a slave. He is not. And that’s all. Nothing else matter, not ever. A slave. That is not because of the beatings or the work, it is not being hungry or cold when the snow lie white on the earth, or to feel myself dying in the heat of the summer sun when I cannot lie down in the shadow of the Baas’s longhouse, it isn’t the pain or the tiredness or having to lie down when Frans – Baas Frans – want to naai me. It isn’t any of this that make me a slave. No. Being a slave, like I was today in that white office in the Drostdy, with all the papers and the buzzing flies around me, mean always going back to the place they tell me to go back to. I am never the one to decide where to go and when to go. It’s always they, it’s always somebody else. NeverI.

There is one thing that I occasionally come across on the Booker Prize list and I really struggle with it, that’s is when we have a female writer attempting to be convincing as a male narrator and completely missing the mark. This novel is an opposite case in point, I believe Andre Brink has really struggled to accurately portray how a lead female character would think, behave and act. This could be considered a minor criticism, however at times I was distracted by the lack of authenticity.

It feel like those last times when Frans and I were together: when I move the way he move, not against him, but along with him. As if we find ourselves inside a big, slow steady wind, a wind that come and go like the sea. In and out. This way and that way. I am I and Frans is Frans, but together we’re no longer two, only one, like the sea, like the wind. Then I know once more what I am and who I am, even though he now throw me away like a mealie cob that he wipe his arse with. Into the Binneland. Into the deepest inside of everything. Into myself. Where I can only be what I am. A duck cannot lay chicken eggs. It is what it is, it lay what it must lay. And it is good like that. I no longer want anything to be except what it is.

The early sections of the novel where we see the tale through many character’s eyes, understand their motivations and fears and can get a holistic view are the parts that I enjoyed the most and had so much promise. However, then we suddenly go into a strange abyss. There is a chapter almost singularly dedicated to listing all the material goods on the farm that are being auctioned off, item by item listed for page after page. In the acknowledge section at the end of the novel, Andre Brink explains that the actual auction papers for the items on the farm where Philida worked he found quite interesting – he may have, I found it tedious. Other sections that had me completely dumbfounded was the sudden comparisons between Christian faith and Islam, large quotes from the bible and occasional quotes from the Koran. Why the religious fervour all of a sudden? It left me with a feeling of disorganised mess, with a whole lot of concepts that were going to be pursued but none to any satisfaction.

Personally I was very disappointed with what looked to be a promising novel, and am not that keen to pick up Brink’s previously shortlisted works (although I will). Unless the remainder of the long list is quite weak I can’t see this one making the final six.

Cross posted at my blog.

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Wendy's Review

He understood that in walking to atone for the mistakes he had made, it was also his journey to accept the strangeness of others. As a passerby, he was in a place where everything, not only the land, was open. People would feel free to talk, and he was free to listen. To carry a little of them as he went. - from the ARE of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry -

Harold Fry is an aging, unassuming man who lives in an English village with his wife Maureen. His days slip by with little variation. Then, one day over toast, the mail arrives with a letter from a woman Harold has not heard from in twenty years. Queenie Hennessy is writing to tell Harold she is dying in a Hospice far away in the town of Berwick upon Tweed. Harold pens a response, and walks to the end of his driveway to mail the letter. But something strange happens. Instead of posting his letter, Harold keeps walking and walking and walking. And thus begins his pilgrimage – a mission to walk nearly 600 miles to Queenie in the belief that as long as he walks, she will live. 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is a deeply moving story of loss, regret and ultimately forgiveness and redemption. Harold’s walk unleashes memories he has buried for years, and uncovers the cracks in his marriage to Maureen, a woman who has retreated behind a wall of anger and accusation as a way to protect her own fragile emotions.

The novel takes the reader on a journey not only forward to Berwick upon Tweed, but backwards into Harold and Maureen’s past where lives filled with joy, sorrow, misunderstanding, and loneliness are revealed.

As Harold walks, he encounters many people who support and encourage him. His journey is as much about touching the lives of others as it is about understanding himself – in fact, the connection to other ordinary people provides Harold with a deeper sense of his own regrets and a better understanding of the human heart.

The world was made up of people putting one foot in front of the other; and a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had been doing so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also unique; and that this was the dilemma of being human. - from the ARE of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry -

Rachel Joyce’s narrative moves between Harold and Maureen and gradually begins to connect the dots in the lives of these ordinary yet extraordinary people. This is not a fast-paced plot, but it is compelling drama which propels the reader through its pages to an emotional conclusion. I found my throat constricting and tears welling in my eyes in the last pages of this beautifully written novel. Joyce captures the fragility of the human spirit and the complexity of marriage and love in the face of loss. She reminds us of the need for connection to others to enrich and bring meaning to our own lives. 

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry is simply outstanding literature. I am glad I took Harold’s journey with him. It is not a straight path from Harold’s tiny village to the northern shore of England – it weaves and hesitates, it falters and slows, it is a struggle…but ultimately Harold’s pilgrimage delivers the reader to a satisfying conclusion. Harold and Maureen, and certainly Queenie, will keep the reader company long after the final page of their story has been turned.

This novel which was recently long listed for the prestigious 2012 Booker Prize, is highly recommended.


 

FTC Disclosure: I received this book as part of TLC Book Tours for review on my blog.

2012 Long List - Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Harold Fry is one of those men whose life has never amounted to much. He's no more likely to suddenly start to walk from one end of England to the other, than he is to tell his boss at the brewery what he really thinks of his obnoxious behaviour to female staff.

And yet that's exactly what he does. Opening a letter at breakfast one morning six months into his retirement, he learns that a former colleague is at dying from cancer at a hospice in Berwick on Tweed.  He writes the blandest of responses and heads to the post box to catch the collection, except when he gets there he finds he can't post it because the words he has written are insufficient for what he really feels. He walks to the next box and the next and before he realises, he has been out for hours and is hungry. At a petrol station, an encounter with the assistant gives him the idea that he can do more for his friend than write - he can walk to see her. And by walking, he will keep her alive.

Dressed in deck shoes, shirt, tie, and waterproof jacket but without compass or map and only a vague idea of where Berwick is, he begins to walk the 600 miles or so from his home in Devon.

Humour shines through the opening chapters of this book through the incongruity of who Harold is and his touching belief in what he can accomplish. While the humour never disappears, it's shot through with poignant moments as Harold recollects episodes from his life.  He remembers everything that 'might have been' and how its all gone wrong. His wife Maureen, has changed from a long dark haired girl with whom he shared jokes, into a sharp-tongued harridan - now.  After 47 years of marriage, they live as strangers in a home where the air  is thick with recriminations.  Harold and his son David are also strangers - Maureen is the only one who talks to him.

Harold's inward journey is painful but yet it leaves him transformed.

 “The abundance of new life was enough to make him giddy....... England opened beneath his feet, and the feeling of freedom, of pushing into the unknown, was so exhilarating he had to smile. He was in the world by himself and nothing could get in the way or ask him to mow the lawn.”

The plot is quite a simple one and is narrated simply. There are no long descriptive passages or extensive meditations on the meaning of life. But it's never twee because Rachel Joyce cleverly counter balances the poignant moments and the humourous ones to deliver a delightfully quirky book. It's a story very much about the renewal of hope and reflection of how easily we lose our way and how much courage it can take to find it again.

This is Rachel Joyce's first novel although she has enjoyed a successful career first as an actress and then as a playwright for radio. Getting long listed for the Booker Prize is quite an achievement for a first novel although I don't think she'll get the prize. Nevertheless I would rate it as one of the most enjoyable books I've read this year .

Review was originally posted at my blogsite Booker Talk 

Tony Messenger - 2012 Long List - The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry - Rachel Joyce

After four months of non Booker Prize fiction I have returned. The packages have started arriving in the post and finally I've started the Long List for 2012 and this year there was neither rhyme nor reason as to the order I would read them. The first one I picked up off the pile sitting on the shelf just happened to be this one, as we know I'm in for a 12 novel pilgrimage so it seems a good enough place to start.

Harold Fry is retired, an assuming man who never reached great heights in his schooling  or career, a man who is sitting at the breakfast table ignoring his toast and wondering if he could mow the lawn again today (he’d done it the day before), when a mysterious letter arrives. A long lost work colleague has written from her death bed from Berwick-upon-Tweed, 627 miles away. Harold writes a polite reply and heads off to catch the morning return post. That’s when his pilgrimage begins.

A novel that reaches into the unassuming mind of Harold, his motivations, his fears, his regrets, his ordinariness and his life of being an under achiever. Could a retired man with no mobile phone, sailing shoes, minimal money and no training possibly walk the length of Britain to save a dying woman? Will it help him to understand the slippage in his love for his wife? His relationship with his only son?

So how was it that a truth that could make her smile once, and rest her head on his shoulder, would years later become the source of such resentment and fury? ‘You never held him!’ she had howled when things reached their worst. ‘All his childhood you never even touched him!’ It hadn’t been strictly true and he had said something along those lines; although she was right in essence. He had been too afraid to hold his own son. But how was it that once she had understood, and then years later she didn’t?

Although the story is peppered with interesting characters, motivators for Harold’s journey, and there are chapters speaking from his wife’s viewpoint, as well as her cries for help to the widower next door, it is the pilgrimage of Harold into his own past, confronting his demons, the places where he should have gone, his failing marriage, his darkest memories where the story rings most true. A “Heart of Darkness” trip by a retired brewery worker into his own self-loathing. Not a spiritual journey of Harold finding faith from a strictly religious sense (although we do have snow globes and other memorabilia of cathedrals) but a physical and spiritual journey of an ordinary man in 21^st century Britain.

This is Rachel Joyce’s first novel (after a distinguished career writing numerous BBC4 radio plays) and a fine debut it is, a thoroughly enjoyable, although emotionally draining, work which is a worthy inclusion on any Booker Prize Long List. Hard to judge where it sits against the other 11 novels which I’m yet to tackle though. Next up “Philida” by Andre Brink. 

Cross posted at my blog.

2012 Booker Prize Longlist Announced!

The 2012 Booker Prize longlist was announced on July 25.  Below are the dozen nominees:

• The Yips by Nicola Barke 
• The Teleportation Accident by Ned Beauma 
• Philida by André Brin 
• The Garden of Evening Mists by Tan Twan Eng 
• Skios by Michael Frayn 
• The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce 
• Swimming Home by Deborah Levy 
• Bring up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel 
• The Lighthouse by Alison Moore 
• Umbrella by Will Self 
• Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil 
• Communion Town by Sam Thompson

The Guardian was quick to publish a link to their announcement on Twitter, 10 minutes before the Man Booker Prize press release!  The press release provides more information on this list, including these fun facts:

The 2012 longlist includes four debut novels, three small independent publishers and one previous winner. Of the 12 writers, seven are men and five women; nine are British, one Indian, one South African and one Malaysian. The eldest on the list is Andre Brink at 77 and the youngest is Ned Beauman at 27.

The shortlist will be announced on 11 September, which gives you 48 days to read all twelve nominees.  Is anyone going to attempt that feat?