Matthew's Review - The Stranger's Child

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

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.

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

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.

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

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 his latest novel didn’t figure in the final six this time around. One explanation could be that similar themes of loss and ageing, memory etc is the feature of Julian Barnes’ “The Sense of an Ending” but surely there is room for books which cover similar themes (quite differently) on the short list? It could also explain why “Half Blood Blues” is on this list over “Far to Go” both being Second World War tales or “Jamrach’s Menagerie” over “Derby Day” (which I’ve started) with their Victorian themes and styles. Even “Snowdrops” getting a short list gong over “The Last Hundred Days” and their Eastern Bloc themes.

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

We start off with our writer, Lilly Bere, completing a diary after the death of her grandson and each “chapter” is “First (etc.) Day without Bill” as she flashes back 70/80 years and recounts her life in a mainly linear fashion right up until the present day.

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

This is a heart wrenching novel, where each revelation or meeting, reveals the diarist’s pain and a wonderful lament on loss and the insignificance of a single life. Perfectly pitched and paced with flashes to the present to break up the memories, it is very plausible that this could be a 90 year old person’s diary.

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

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

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

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

I personally don’t like to be too critical of first time novelists as it would be a thankless task to germinate an idea all the way through 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 mother was brutally murdered in their East London home. 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 to revisit events leading up to that terrible night.

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

A novel that is craftily put together but one that infuriated me no end. The main character Jinx, tells the story and a more selfish, passionately self-absorbed character I don’t think I’ve ever met. I spent page after page boiling at her, and wondering how such a character could become 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 in her world?

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

Unfortunately this novel also has a number of inexplicable holes:

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

2)      Why does Edwards put a great passage about running and the cathartic properties of such early on in the novel but not revisit it later?

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

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

5)      What changed in Jinx’s character that much to break down her marriage as she was surely this way when she met her husband?

6)      What is it with the coats in the title? What do they represent and why such scant references?

7)      Why such a pitiful formulaic ending?

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

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

Cross posted at my blog.

Alex's Review - On Canaan's Side

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

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

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.

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

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

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

Very early on I was reminded of Kafka, the claustrophobia and the futility of inane actions, and lo and behold McGuinness brings him up. This is 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 and more 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 simultaneous events.

Although fiction I did also feel as though I was reading an historical recollection, or diarised memories, of events and, again, this did frustrate me a little, as well and the political justification and debate that occurs (although I should add it is not significantly biased to the left nor right, but obviously very critical of Ceausescu’s  rule).

It is hard to criticize a book that is so neatly and precisely written, however the soul, unique voice or passion of the narrator was lost on me. Probably not a short list contender, so I’m not disappointed that it didn’t make the final six, but a book worth reading, even if you’re only reading it to understand the political environment in Romania in the last 1980’s. Personally I 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 short list 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

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

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

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

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

2011 Booker Prize Longlist

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

The 2011 Booker 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.