Rites of Passage by William Golding

Rites of Passage is written as though a journal by a young man, Edmund Talbot, embarking on a long journey by sea to take up a position as a civil servant in the southern hemisphere. The man writes to his Godfather, who has requested details about the journey, and who is clearly a major benefactor.

Our narrators tone is supercilious, and he has the annoying arrogance of youth - to such an extent that I wasn't sure for a while how old he was supposed to be. Talbot describes his fellow travellers, most of whom he clearly feels superior to, and his attempts to familiarise himself with the vessel of his lengthy journey. After a bout of seasickness at the start of the journey, Talbot prides himself on beginning to pick up some nautical terms. Desperate to meet the captain, as is befitting his station in life, Talbot seeks the captain out on deck, and is sent off with a flea in his ear and instructions to 'read the captains orders'. Talbot's faux pas is eclipsed by similar bumbling from a fellow passenger - the Reverend Colley.

Colley becomes the central subject in the drama on the sea, suffering from disdain and a general lack of faith from most of the crew and human cargo. These unwilling sheep are bolstered by the captain's loathing of the clergy, and what begins as a culture of dismissal become a breeding ground for bullying. Talbot, meanwhile, continues to assume superiority, and plots to have his wicked way with a woman who, he claims, makes a convincing show of piety. On getting his end away, and no longer desiring the prize, Talbot's attention is turned to scheming ways to bridle the lady in question with some other passenger. Talbot's attention is subsequently directed by Summers, one of the ships crew, to helping out Colley, who has taken to his bed after a night of drinking because he seems unable to bear the shame.

So it is that the final installments of the drama unfolds, with Colley unwilling to rise from his bed, Talbot offering comfort under duress, finding Colley's own journal and reading it in horror (it reads very much like Talbot's own journal) whilst Colley expires in this quarters. The captain, in a political move, decides to investigate the death and enlists Talbot's help. Talbot's momentary guilt about his own poor use of the parson is quickly explained away the following morning, and he destroys the journal and keeps secret the cause of Colley's shame that most of the crew know about, but few of the passengers.

As the first in a trilogy, this book guarantees that I won't read the other two. I found the tone unbearable, the class wars and the politics depressing, and with a collection of characters that are all, in some way, unpalatable, I confess that I did not get much pleasure from this read at all. The setting of the ship (close quarters, barely any privacy) and the claustrophobia of a long journey with many strangers are the highlights of the novel, but the dense prose and the English privileged classes vernacular were a significant turn-off.

Holiday by Stanley Middleton

Holiday is what it says on the tin. Our protagonist, in the midst of a messy relationship 'break', gets away from it all at an East coast resort. We meet fellow residents of the boarding house, relive parts of the failing relationship, and encounter the bossy parents of the wife, who are determined to patch things up between their la-la daughter and her absent husband.

I found the characters loathsome and boring, and had not a shred of sympathy with any situation.

The success of the novel is in its effortless capture of a gloomy seaside town, and its unimaginative holiday-makers, but the fantastically uninspiring setting was not enough to seize my enthusiasm.

The Conservationist by Nadine Gordimer

The Conservationist begins, in attention-grabbing fashion, with a dead body on a farm in South Africa. The farm workers, full of superstition, are worried about the presence of a body, and beg the farmer owner, Mehring, to do something about it.

Mehring, a wealthy white man, who has bought the farm (like many of his peers) to 'get back to nature' surprisingly has no trouble with the local law enforcement about the corpse on his land, but even so, it's arrival heralds he beginning of the end for Mehring and the lifestyle he half buys into at weekends.

The Conservationist is slow paced, focusing on Mehrings nostalgia and his increasing lack of control at the farm. Though it ends with a climax, it is a surprise that the numerous tensions between characters do not boil over. Though the internal situation at the farm is far from perfect, it assumes a kind of resigned peace, and so the stressing factors all impose themselves from outside. All in all, it seemed like something was eluding my comprehension, and though I enjoyed the read overall, the expectations induced by the opening were not met. But then, I think this is a novel about pulling the rug from under your feet, so I think it was successful if not brilliant.

G. By John Berger

It's hard to know where to start with this one. Our protagonist, the eponymous 'G', is born in Italy, spends part of his early youth in Paris, is resident in England during his formative years, and then becomes something of a nomad. But it isn't just his place of residence that can't be fixed - his identity is slippery, and the plot is episodic to the extent that there seems to be little linking the stories of G's adventures , aside from his insatiable appetite for women and his increasing villainy.

The book contains a few line drawings, that 'illustrate' the impossibility of describing intimate relations between people - but the illustrations' crudity seem to make such acts ridiculous (it may be this is the intent!)

The most interests section of the novel, for me, concerns G's stay inDomodossola at the time of the first flight over the alps, but here Berger subverts the story of the historical flight: at the time of the landing, G takes advantage of everyone's attention being elsewhere to seduce a hotel maid. The section of the novel set in England, where G apparently wakens to his (inappropriate) desires, is particularly evocative, but ultimately appears to lead nowhere.

There is no denying the intellectual and subversive prowess of Berger, but I found this novel stretched my patience. If you intend to read it, I highly recommend a companion read - C. By Tom McCarthy (short listed in 2011). Though C similarly has a rather unsatisfying narrative, it sparkles as a critique of G.

Catching up - apologies in advance

Hello Complete Booker-ers

It has been quite some time since I last posted a review on here, and I appear to have amassed quite a collection of winners to write about, so I hope you'll forgive me an intense period of catching up.

Happy reading all!

The Elected Member by Bernice Rubens

The Elected Member centres on the Zweck family: a father lives above the shop he keeps with his son and one of his daughters. His son, Norman, is ailing from a drug addiction that brings on vivid hallucinations of silver fish. His daughter, Bella, is still wearing ankle socks despite being decades older than a school girl.

At the beginning of the novel, Bella and her father call out the doctor for the umpteenth time after Norman has another bad bout of hallucination. The doctor convinces them that, with Norman's repeated relapses, the only way to help him is to commit him to a home, where he can be rehabilitated.

Norman's 'incarceration' prompts a reflective mood in the family, and little by little, we learn about the family's history and the dark secrets that are the root cause of unhappiness for each of the Zwecks.

The book is easy to read, and though much is revealed, the pace of the story seems rather plodding - a pace that fits Norman's mentality. The reflective and nostalgic reminiscence is in contrast with the present day action, where both the care home and the family home are places of turmoil and chaos.

I found the Zwecks irritating in different ways, but really enjoyed Norman's fellow 'in-mates' with their varying psychoses and idiosyncracies. Though the subject matter has a dark heart, The Elected Member displays a lightness of touch that reveals it as a moving drama about the ultimately transitory nature of the family unit.

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch

An ageing man gives up his glamorous life in London as an eminent theatre director, moves into an odd house on the coast, and picks up his pen with the intention of 'finding' his 'form' and exploring what has been and will be his life. The man has a few strange episodes at the start of the book relating to peculiar visions and ghostly activity, but the story is quickly overtaken by a series of increasingly incredible events the centre on him finding his long lost childhood sweetheart.

The sea, the sea is too long by far. The novel's charm comes from the daily occupations of a man seemingly seeking something akin to solitude or peace - his daily encounters with the sea, his domestication of the rocks surrounding his house, the meticulous descriptions of his particular brand of culinary activity. In these details, the novel sings. The story, though, is curiously constructed - it starts like a ghost story, quickly shifts into a somewhat farcical drama and then becomes a meditation on spirituality. The house is at times phantasmic, though it never truly fulfils its potential as a force to be reckoned with. The central plot - the overlong 'history' section - is ridiculous, and brings out all that is unbearable in Charles, the protagonist. By chance, he meets again his childhood sweetheart, who left him some forty five years earlier. He decides that he has another chance to pursue her, that they may find happiness with one another again, and he hatches elaborate plots to determine ways to meet her, to ensnare her, to 'rescue' her. She, however, has no intention of being rescued, has no notion that things might be different, and at the apex of the silliness, when Charles has her held against her will in his house, there are a number of very tedious exchanges in which Charles fails to listen to anything she says, and in which she fails to say anything rational or convincing. This farce ruins what has the makings of a great novel: many of the peripheral characters are interesting and colourful; the setting is evocative, menacing and powerful; and the context of the protagonist seeking a retreat but ending up with something different has potential. The ending is a reward for the feat of endurance to get through the book, but its potency is all but destroyed by the preceeding nonsense.

Sadly, I think this novel tries to be too many things, and as a result, fails to find a focused 'form' - which throws an odd light Charles' explicit intention to allow the writing to find its own form.

Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively

Though this story is told from the point of view of a sickening and elderly woman, it's not what I expected. Far from being morose and sentimental, Moon Tiger packs a mighty punch. It's a celebration of uninhibited womanhood, of deviance, of razor-sharp wit and searing intellect, of sexual prowess and of boundless confidence.

Claudia Hampton is a dazzling character - admired and loathed in equal measure by all, known by very few: Claudia, on her death-bed begins to write the history of the world, commanding her extensive knowledge despite failing memory, and recalling, along the way, those things that 'made' her. The recollections paint a vibrant picture, but cast little judgement - Claudia is unbound by conventional morality: what she does, she does because she must, because she is compelled, because she believes in her self-knowledge. Still, the dying woman is aware enough to allow minor concessions, acknowledging the puzzlement that she provokes in others.

Moon Tiger is masterfully told - the narrative is engaging, the 'voice' is audacious and strong, and the odd touch of literary convention - used to great effect and with superb subtlety - combined to leave me breathless. For all the strength and force of the narrator, Lively manages, in the most economic way possible, to leave that crucial space for the reader that turns a good book into a great book.

The Sea by John Banville

Despite its relatively small size (just over two hundred pages, double spaced paragraphs) The Sea proved to be a bit of a challenge to plough through. Admittedly, I found the mesmeric prose soporific, but if I had cared more about the characters, the effect might have been different.

The Sea is a tale of a summer during youth and a bereavement, told by an aged man. Returning to the place of numerous childhood summer holidays, Max is seeking a ghost or two, invoking memories, both recent and distant, of two significant episodes of loss.

Oddly, for a novel with death and love lost at its core, it is surprisingly unmoving. Max is both sentimental and supremely cold, veering between accounts of heightened emotions and dispassionate, self deprecatory remarks that belittle his experience and the memory of those he professes to love and cleave to.

Banville clearly has a masterful way with words, but sparkling prose isn’t enough to win me over. Max’s story fails to provoke even conflicted feelings, despite his piteous situation and how this contrasts with his instinct for self-preservation.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I'm tempted to cut together the three and a half pages of acclaim in my copy of The God of Small Things, because it's hard to find the words to do justice to such a delicacy.

The God of Small Things is a story about an Indian family told from the third person perspective. At the centre of the narrative are Estha and Rahel - the two egg twins - who share an unusual bond and who observe the disintegration of their childhood one summer as they lose their best friend, their young English cousin and each other.

The God of Small Things transports the reader to a universal childhood of logic based on rhymes, perplexing adult behaviour, invention, mimicry, popularity anxiety and shifting obsessions with famous people, toys, and 'looks'. Repeated motifs thread the narrative together, and the playful language is both joyous and quietly affecting, provoking feelings that are almost melancholic.

At its heart, The God of Small Things asks a simple question - one that could easy pass the lips of a child: What makes you different from me? Roy proffers an inobtrusive interrogation of the Indian caste system, which is all the more powerful for its sincerity and lack of judgement. Having painted a picture of a two individuals that are irrevocably broken, the author asserts that not all stories have a happy ending. The sting in the tail, for me, is just how beautiful unhappiness can be.

Summertime by J M Coetzee

In around twenty-five minutes we'll know the 2009 Man Booker winner, so I thought it would be well to get my last shortlist review up before then, event though thus far I've posted in reading order.

Summertime is a novel that operates on many levels. At its most simple, it's an account of a specific period in a man's life, told from five different points of view. It gets more complicated as we make the connections between the 'fictional character' and the author; the author apparently refers to the book as an 'autre biography'. Perhaps at its deepest and most intellectual level it's a novel about writing, about creation and creativity, about truth and about the fiction that is inherently tied up with, an inextricable from, life.

As such, it's incredibly difficult to review, because my response to this book is, in many ways, inarticulable!

At its story level, it's somewhat unclear why this man has been written about - he's portrayed as socially inept, callous and aloof - but he is described as an award winning novelist in the latter half of the book. The story level points an accusatory and scrutinising finger at our collective obsession with probing the creator of a work of art as though they are an engine, as though we are trying to understand how such work can be created. Despite the novel being about the fictitious John, the five perspectives do not make a three dimensional picture and we actually learn more about the five characters that describe him. The 'reporters' are an interesting bunch - though each one seems to hold such a fixed opinion of themselves that they become caricatures.

Summertime is deftly put together and is exceptionally crafty - I felt, rather uncomfortably, as though I were being led by the nose through a set of responses or inferences. I 'tackled' the book in a structured way, making notes at the end of each report - and the book seemed designed to trip me up. I would make a notes in my own hand at the end of a section, and the comment, or its sentiment was then echoed, in print, in the proceeding section. The effect this had on me was one I can only imagine to be like discombobulating...

To summarise, it feels a little empty to review this book, because my response has either been mapped out and elicited in a very deliberate way, or else it doesn't matter. Still, in the spirit of bloody-mindedness, if you give yourself a clear head to read this book, you will be rewarded. For all the conflicted feelings I have about it, it certainly exercised the grey matter.

The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters

Fortunately, this is my first encounter with Sarah Waters, so I didn't have high expectations like many other people whose blogs I've read!

The Little Stranger is set in post-WWII Warwickshire, and focuses on Hundreds Hall, a formerly grand mansion house. Our protagonist is a Doctor with working class roots, whose mother once served at Hundreds Hall. By chance, the Doctor comes into contact with the three remaining Ayreses, resident at the Hall and trusted with its upkeep. The trio, mother with son and daughter, soon develop a relationship with the Doctor, albeit at the appropriate arms length for their respective 'stations'. The Doctor becomes very fond of the odd family, who seem barely able to maintain the Hall, and he becomes entangled in both the Hall and the family's life. Strange things start to occur, and the family's mettle is tested against the Hall.

I was absolutely terrified by The Little Stranger. The narrative is handled so delicately as to produce exquisite suspense, which left me walking a fine line between wanting to close the book to cast off the fear, and being compelled to keep reading. Waters is a masterful author, allowing the reader to be present at each odd report, each strange phenomenon, each inexplicable event. Our narrator, the Doctor, gives his account in first person and is almost bloody minded - both that the Hall is a wonderful place that ought to be saved and resurected to its former glory, and that the 'supernatural' is nothing more than individual neuroses. The Doctor's adamance in the face of compelling and inexplicable phenomena means that as the climax approaches and the Doctor starts to question himself, the reader has a palpable sense of internal conflict and the sickening sensation of being out of control.

It's a really interesting take on the 'ghost story' without exercising so much probity that it flattens the genre. Even though it's 499 pages long, the novel is engaging and compelling throughout, as it builds a fantastic sense of place and time.

What prevented this being a flawless novel was the weak romance, which wasn't difficult to understand, but was difficult to buy in to. I'm really looking forward to reading more Sarah Waters - suggestions welcome about where to start!

The Quickening Maze by Adam Foulds

In comparison with other Man Booker 2009 novels, this one is fairly lightweight in length, though it masks decidedly heavy content. The novel is centred around a private asylum for residents with mental health problems, and here we encounter the asylum's Doctor Matthew Allen, a number of residents (most notably poet John Clare), members of the Doctor's family and poet Alfred Tennyson, a newly arrived village resident.

The book is lyrical, and, parts of it at least, resemble extended poems. There's a surreal quality to the passages about John Clare, as he battles with delusions, a craving for the outdoors and a crisis of identity. It's a book that easily transports the reader into various states of mind, especially those that typify the condition we would normally associate with poets and those of pubescent girls.

Though there is a narrative thread of sorts, there's a sense that the novel doesn't set out to tell a story - the action is fragmented and obscure - it rather seems to give an impression of certain characters, allowing the reader to inhabit them for a little while. Allen's story seems to vie with Clare's as the driver for the book, and for me, it was the actions of Allen that were the most interesting.

The book could easily have been bogged down by the historical weight of the characters, but it successfully side-steps that trap to offer something else. The novel is certainly creative; a lyrical derivation from fact, but there just wasn't enough to it for it to grip me.

The Wilderness by Samantha Harvey

Jake is a widower and a retired architect living in Lincolnshire. He has Alzheimers, so we can't actually be sure that he's a widower, or otherwise bereaved. In The Wilderness, we encounter Jake as an impermanent glue that holds fragments of story together, and we encounter his family and loved ones through these fragments.

The Wilderness gives an impression of Alzheimers as a no-man's land: a place where there is a forever sliding scale between fiction and fact, a scale that pitches dramatically from this side to that; a place where black holes appear from nowhere, swallowing details - swallowing people and inventing others, throwing holes into the middle of stories, and shifting the order of things; it's a place where chronolgy and relations become fluid and changeable.

The Wilderness was mesmorising and frustrating in equal measure. Jake reports significants events and relates people through a series of 'reminiscences', though the same people and events keep appearing in different guises. The characters, that give the impression of being well rounded, become flattened and two dimensional in their portrayal as recurring motifs. The notion of boiling something down to its essence is played with very successfully, and Jake lays out his life as in a family album - select images, with fragments of story attached - something that we all know changes with perspective and age.

To avoid sentimentalising the disease is a remarkable achievement, and the result is a stunningly visual but cold book. It does ask a really interesting question about our emotional response to Alzheimers, and that is how can one grieve for something they don't know they have lost? Though I don't think The Wilderness is a classic, I do find the effect or recurring motifs haunting - and I can't forget Jake's daughter saying about the cherries: 'Jape, I want to pick them, Jape'.

Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel

Wolf Hall's protagonist is Thomas Cromwell: blacksmith's son, cloth merchant, adviser to Cardinal Wolsley and eventually King Henry's yes man. Set over the course of a few years (with a taster backstory) as Henry tries to divorce Catherine of Aragon and separate from Rome's primacy, we follow Cromwell as he becomes the formidable player at court.

Each section of the book drives towards a significant moment in the story, expertly building the narrative to its culmination, and displaying exquisite plotting that maintains pace and action throughout the 650 pages.

Though Cromwell is a man of few words, who becomes slightly more verbose as his staff increases, the author builds up a rich sense of a man with integrity, plain sense, confidence and elusive motivations. We follow Cromwell as he works his influence behind the scenes to achieve the King's desire, learning something of his character in his exchanges both in a domestic setting with his family, and in court with numerous dignitaries. Yet for all the detail offered about his life and his actions, the man remains a mystery - an unknowable force that defies understanding, that no-one is sure of. It's this unsurety, this fear of the unknown, that seems to be Cromwell's greatest power.

Wolf Hall in engrossing for the picture it paints about the intricacies of Henry's split from Rome, and the agency Cromwell exerts upon cracking the problem of fulfilling the monarch's apparently conflicting desires. It's an extraordinarily well-written novel, including both compelling characters and a fascinating historical perspective. I would unreservedly recommend it. This is quite an accolade from an historical fiction virgin! It deserves its place on the shortlist, and narrowly misses out on being my favourite of the shortlisted books.

Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

The protagonist in Brooklyn is a young Irish woman called Eilis, who leaves Ireland to go to America for work. The reader follows Eilis as she takes her first uncertain steps into her newly established life and begins to embrace independence. Eilis' settled lifestyle is shattered on the death of a family member, and Eilis learn much about herself in her return to Ireland.

Brooklyn is a beautiful novel, masterfully written and both subtle and emotionally complex. Though Eilis is measured, thoughtful and a meticulous observer, she's also vulnerable, unsure and homesick and her emotional state is written so suggestively and implicitly as to allow the reader ample room to inhabit and explore the character.

Brooklyn offers the reader all the complexity of the notion of coming of age and fulfilling expectations, whilst providing a gentle narrative that drives the story. The masterstroke is dealt in Eilis suddenly becoming bereaved just as she is beginning to come to terms with America as home. Eilis' reaction to her bereavement is subtle, neither overplayed nor overstated and yet clearly shaking the very foundations of her life. Her devastation is played out through uncharacteristic behaviour and a seeming powerlessness after such a willful accommodation of a new home and the building of a new life.

A highly emotive and incredibly touching novel that is easy to get inside, though wrapped up in such a way that it's hard to stay inside. Wonderful.

Heliopolis by James Scudamore

Heliopolis is a very readable story about Ludo, a man in his late twenties, who was rescued from a 'favela' (slum or shanty town) when he was a baby. Ludo's escape was facilitated by a rich family who hire his mother as a live-in cook on their weekend home, an out-of-town farm. Ludo grows up on the farm adoring his mother's culinary skills and being able to taste the sublest of emotions through her food (in this way it was reminiscent of Midnight's Children). Ludo's best friend is Melissa, the daughter of the family, with whom he develops a dependency and an illicit affair. Ludo moves to the city with the family as he reaches adolescence in order to improve his education, and there he meets the weekday 'Ludo' and Melissa's future husband.

Ludo revisits key moments of his past as a way of illuminating his present, a life consisting of average performance at a job he hates, an unhealthy relationship with Melissa, who uses him as a bed fellow when it suits her, and the consistent consumption of copious amounts of alcohol and other toxic substances. A marketing campaign for a budget supermarket aimed at the favelas brings Ludo's disappointment with himself to a head as he tastes the life he narrowly escaped and discovers the identity of his hitherto unknown father.

Heliopolis is an engaging and swift read. Though I never fully sympathised with Ludo, I understood his reaction to the cage he built around himself as a result of the many favours bestowed upon him by his benefactors. Heliopolis contains interesting details that enrich the city that Ludo inhabits, with its colourful favelas and almost total segregation between the rich and the poor (indeed, the rich largely get around by helicopter, evading the need to set foot in the city, jumping from one helipad to the next). The helplessness and resignation exuded from Ludo until the end of the novel, and the pallor of the present compared with the colour of the past prevent this being a great novel, but it's certainly worth the few hours it takes to read.

Me, Cheeta by James Lever

What Lever achieves with this novel is a total buy-in to the concept of a famous Hollywood chimpanzee writing an autobiography, and this is also the point of endearment in a story that shows a character who is shallow, erascible, sarcastic, egotistical and deluded. There's a surprisingly sentimental passage towards the end of the book that totally took me by surprise, which was a wonderful example of Cheeta's humanity and his ability to love.

The 'golden era' of Hollywood is not something I'm familiar with, so many of the slanderous jokes about Hollywood's leading ladies and men (containing a humourous play on the notion of Alphas throughout the book) simply passed me by. I'm not really into satire, and as the founding premise of this book, it was never going to be one of my favourites.

In summary (because there's not much else I can say about it) the parody of the autobiography is pulled of with such bravado and conviction that it gets a thumbs up, but the satirical view of the 'halcyon days' of Hollywood is rather thin and wearing, and gets an almost inevitable thumbs down.

The Children's Book by A S Byatt

The Children's Book begins in the late 1890's and spans the decades until WWI has begun. The book ranges between a multitude of characters, mainly contained within three distinct families. As such, it's difficult to get a handle on who the protagonist is, and who the story belongs to.

Starting with the Wellwoods, a successful female novelist and financier/political journalist who between them have a considerable number of children, we enter the family home in Kent and quickly become acquainted with extended family and numerous friends. The story loosely follows a generation of children as they grow up and become young adults... and interspersed with the flighty narrative of the children coming of age are chapters or sections that form a potted history of the era.

As a work of historical fiction (and I'm not sure that's what it is), the novel is not without merit, though the tone is somewhat peculiar - very cold and distant, as though recording fact. As a work of imaginative fiction, the form is strange and seemed to me to be very convoluted. It's not clear what is gained from following so many stories in such (patchy) detail - I'm not sure what they bring to each other. A thought has just struck me about the similarities in intention between the actual novel and the reported feat of Olive Wellwood. Olive creates a 'book' for each of her children (and there are many) - the books contain stories that have an internal logic and premise, but that don't necessarily link together aside from the fact that they are all fantastical. Perhaps The Children's Book's format reflects what it would be like to try and read the (imagined) children's books in the order they were written?

Though I liked some of the characters, none of them featured strongly enough in the book to grip me. The only element that elicited curiosity on my part was the relationship between Tom Wellwood and Olive Wellwood (mother and son) - there's a suggestion that Olive kills Tom, and that the book she has continued to write for him is at the root of why or how. The mystery remains at the book's close, by when the author has unceremoniously killed off many of the male characters, and especially those that featured as 'bit parts'. A comment on the indiscrimination of war, perhaps?

Given the novel's scope and scale, it can certainly be described as ambitious, and certain parts of the book were enjoyable and compelling if not engrossing. The fact that it left me feeling as though I had missed something important (and had wasted a lot of time) is not in its favour.

Sadly, the book failed to be enough of any one thing for me to recommend it, though the writer can definitely 'paint a picture'. A more robust relationship with an editor required, perhaps?

The Glass Room by Simon Mawer

The Glass Room, a new but unusual domestic building, is the centrepiece of the novel by Mawer. Commissioned by newly-weds Victor and Liesel and designed by anti-ornamentalist Rainer von Abt, the house is to be a 'modern living space' in the Mesto hills, on land received as a wedding gift. The house becomes the focus of cultural life in the town, and acts as one of the family as it grows besides the Landauers' first child.

Against a backdrop of political unrest in Europe, the Landauer family live out their modern principles as the family increases in number and grows. Part and parcel of this life is a collection of intelligent and cultured friends, of whom Hana, Liesel's most intimate friend, forms the core. Political inflammation has its toll on the family, who try to pre-empt and evade incarceration, with varying degress of timeliness and success.

The novel, though painted onto a horrific canvas, offers a refreshing perspective on living through such times: the couple act pre-emptively and cautiously, and at times desperately, to ensure their safety and to evade entanglement. Whilst the situation does not leave the family unmarked, the story focuses on survival, with the political landscape acting as driver.

In essence, the novel is about relationships. Victor loves and cares for his family steadily whilst pursuing an illicit affair that takes hold of him in the most brutal way. By chance, his homelife and his secret life become one and his determination to preserve and protect both the family he has created and the family he has discovered has devasting consequences. Liesel is devoted to Victor, and though crushed to learn of his affair, becomes complicit in its continuation. On departing Mesto, Liesel comes to realise how deeply she feels for Hana, whom she has left behind - and whom she fears is lost forever. Their relationship is cast as delicate and long-matured; the longing hana and Liesel feel for each other spans decades and thousands of miles. The Glass Room courts its commissioners and various subsequent occupiers - both friendly and agressive - whilst maintaining its elusive and attractive qualities.

I found this novel stirring and evocative of both longing and intimacy. The narrative is neat, but that isn't to its detriment. It's beautifully written, such that when the sunset hits the Onyx wall, I could actually see the fire ablaze in the stone. I'd be delighted if this book won the Man Booker 2009.