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

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

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

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

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

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

(Review also posted on Rose City Reader.)

Rose City Reader's Review: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel (2009 winner)

Wolf Hall is as rich in texture and detail as the sumptuous tapestries Henry VIII hung in his palaces. Hilary Mantel tells the historical story of Henry's early reign and break from the Catholic Church from the perspective of Thomas Cromwell, who rose from obscure beginnings to work for Cardinal Thomas Woolsey and then Henry himself.

The focus of the story is the political, religious, and Parliamentary maneuvers endeavored so that Henry could annul his marriage to Katherine, with whom he had a daughter, Mary, but no son. The machinations in themselves are interesting, involving diplomatic missions to France to get the support of the French king, court intrigues, assassinations, and imprisonment of political enemies.

What sets the book apart is Mantel's delving into the ideas behind the machinations. Henry's efforts to wrest power from Rome occurred during the religious upheaval of the Protestant reformation, but Henry himself was no Protestant. He belied Martin Luther and his followers to be heretics and opposed publishing the Bible in English. He didn't want to start a new Church; he just wanted to be head of the Catholic Church in England. But Protestant ideas were in the air, and Mantel weaves them into the story, presenting Cromwell as a Lutheran sympathizer and others within Henry's inner circle as ardent believers.

Another idea Mantel explores is the role of England's Parliament in the monarch's affairs. It was during the reign of Henry and the other Tudors that England's Parliament coalesced into its modern form. Henry used Parliament to ratify and thereby legitimize his decisions. Mantel looks at the political theory behind these events, offering an understanding of where they fit on the political continuum from total control by the Church to constitutional monarchy.

This blending of ideas and action make Wolf Hall fascinating. The addition of myriad details of daily life in the early 16th Century, the fact that so many characters shared first names, and Mantel's technique of overlapping conversation with the speakers' mental observations make the story hard to follow on occasion. But just as it is not necessary to trace a single thread in a tapestry to be dazzled by the overall creation, Wolf Hall is no less a masterpiece for getting a little tangled now and then.

NOTES

Wolf Hall won both the Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It was my Booker choice for the 2011 Battle of the Prizes, British Version. 

Rose City Reader's Review: G by John Berger (1972 winner)

John Berger won both the Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for G, his picaresque novel about the illegitimate son of an Italian merchant and an English intellectual. The plot follows the life and loves of the unidentified hero from his birth in the late 1800s through middle age.

So far so good. Then, like Berger, I have to switch to metaphor to describe the book: Imagine sitting at a table with a watchmaker as he demonstrates to you how to take apart and put back together a complicated watch. He explains each minute process in detail to make sure you understand every intricacy.

In theory, this should be interesting – seeing a master craftsman demonstrate his talents doing something you've always taken for granted (how a watch works) and making you think in a new way. But in reality, it is going to be tedious. The parts are tiny, it takes forever, and no matter how much he explains, you are never going to be able to track it all.

Now imagine that you have to sit there while this watchmaker takes apart and reassembles four or five different watches, explaining the process in the same excruciating detail.

Now, for watchmaker and watches, substitute John Berger describing G's sexual conquests – in excruciating detail, from seduction, through climax, to afterthoughts. Over and over.

Now – yes, it gets worse – add a third person at this table. Interspersed throughout the Don Juan episodes (sometimes interspersed in alternate paragraphs with no transitions and no punctuation to indicate dialog), this omniscient narrator drones on and on about the historic events that are the backdrop to G's adventures. There is a 19th century labor uprising in Italy, the early Socialist movement in England, the Boer War, the first airplane flight across the Alps, WWI trench warfare, and Italy's plotting to free Trieste from the Austrians. But G isn't actually involved with any of these events, so they never become more than a newsreel playing in the background. (Sorry to mix my metaphors – blame Berger.)

G has more plot than many an experimental novel. And, like reassembling a watch, it may involve genius. But I was more than happy to see it end.

NOTES

This was my "double-dipper" choice for the 2010 Battle of the Prizes, British Version.

The 2011 Battle runs from February 1, 2011 to January 31, 2012.  It overlaps with the Complete Booker Challenge. Sign up here.

Review: The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch (1978 winner)

The Sea, the Sea by Iris Murdoch is a novel about an aging theater icon who retires to the North Sea coast of England. It is a wonderful, fantastic story, about long-lasting attachments between people and the ideas that hold them together.

Murdoch is known as a philosophic writer and there is not a lot of action in this book. But she knows how to pace the story to keep it entertaining. She parses out what action there is, so just when it starts to seem too talky, something startling happens to capture the reader's attention.

Charles Arrowby was a famous playwright, actor, and director who, in retirement, seeks solitude in a funky, spooky old house perched on seaside cliffs. The story is told through his journal, which contains observations on his present as well as self-serving, only sometimes honest, reminiscences on his past.

While Charles seeks to put the theater life behind him, his life is theater. When former lovers, friends old and new, and even his Buddhist cousin turn up at his isolated retreat, Charles can’t help but manipulate and bully them into being a part of his one-man show. He treats the people in his life like he treated the audiences he mused on in this passage:

The theatre is an attack on mankind carried on by magic: to victimize an audience every night, to make them laugh and cry and suffer and miss their trains. Of course actors regard audiences as enemies, to be deceived, drugged, incarcerated, stupefied.

In the end, things do not work out as Charles planned, which only shows that Murdoch was much wiser than her narrator.

This is a wonderful, engrossing book, well deserving of its Booker prize.

(This review is also posted on Rose City Reader.)

Review: Life and Times of Michael K

I just cross-posted my review of Life and Times of Michael K by Nobel laureate J.M. Coetzee on Rose City Reader and Read the Nobels:



Despite the credentials, I did not like this book and I do not see the point of it. Near the end, the main character, Michael K, questions whether the moral of the story is that there is time for everything. But if that is the moral of this story, then it was not clear at all. Michael K has nothing but time, but he does not do anything. He seems incapable of doing anything. He cannot cope with living in any kind of society; nor does he succeed in living on his own in the wilderness.

Read literally, the book is horribly depressing, because Michael seems to be mentally ill or mentally deficient (because he cannot provide for himself and he has no will to survive), but no one is able to help him. Read symbolically, I just do not get it. If Michael is supposed to represent some greater meaning, as the doctor/narrator suggests in the second part of the book, what is that meaning? The book does not answer that question and I am at a loss to understand how Michael's numbing, endless suffering has meaning.

Rose City Reader's Comments on Offshore and The God of Small Things

I recently read two Booker Prize winners, Offshore (1979) and The God of Small Things (1997), when taking a break from slogging through Henry James’s, The Ambassadors.

In one of those oddly common instances of literary serendipidy, Offshore and TGST were similar in several respects — both were by women, about women, and involved atypical, insular communities. Offshore is about a group of misfits living in converted barges on the Thames river in London. TGST is about a Syrian Christian family in a small town in India.

Also, both were excellent entertainment, although in different ways. Offshore was a little gem that offered a glimpse into this secret world on the river before ending without tying up loose ends. TGST addresses bigger issues, has a more complicated plot, and uses wonderful, Nabokov-like word play. Both have stuck with me.

Rose City Reader's notes re: Offshore and The God of Small Things

I hate to interupt Trevor's impressive collection of reviews! Especially just for a couple of light observations.

I've been on a Booker roll lately. I recently read two Booker Prize winners, Offshore (1979) and The God of Small Things (1997), when taking a break from slogging through Henry James’s, The Ambassadors.

In one of those oddly common instances of literary serendipidy, Offshore and TGST were similar in several respects — both were by women, about women, and involved atypical, insular communities. Offshore is about a group of misfits living in converted barges on the Thames river in London. TGST is about a Syrian Christian family in a small town in India.

Also, both were excellent entertainment, although in different ways. Offshore was a little gem that offered a glimpse into this secret world on the river before ending without tying up loose ends. TGST addresses bigger issues, has a more complicated plot, and uses wonderful, Nabokov-like word play. Both have stuck with me.

As I explain on my Rose City Reader blog, I am a "compulsive list reader" -- if it won a prize or made it to a "Must Read" list, I'll want to read it. Of the many lists of prize winners and recommended books I have going, I’ve been working for the past several years on reading the winners of the Booker.

So I was very happy to find this project. I’ll be posting about my progress here as well as on Rose City Reader.

According to Lists of Bests, I am 43% finished with this list. Here is the list with those I have still to read in blue:

1969: Percy Howard Newby, Something to Answer For
1970: Bernice Rubens, The Elected Member
1971: V.S. Naipaul, In a Free State
1972: John Berger, G
1973: James Gordon Farrell, The Siege of Krishnapur
1974: Nadine Gordimer, The Conservationist, and
Stanley Middleton, Holiday
1975: Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, Heat and Dust
1976: David Storey, Saville
1977: Paul Scott, Staying On
1978: Iris Murdoch, The Sea, the Sea
1979: Penelope Fitzgerald, Offshore
1980: William Golding, Rites of Passage
1981: Salman Rushdie, Midnight's Children
1982: Thomas Keneally, Schindler's List
1983: J. M. Coetzee, The Life and Times of Michael K
1984: Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac
1985: Keri Hulme, The Bone People
1986: Kingsley Amis, The Old Devils
1987: Penelope Lively, Moon Tiger
1988: Peter Carey, Oscar and Lucinda
1989: Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day
1990: A.S. Byatt, Possession
1991: Ben Okri, The Famished Road
1992: Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient, and
Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger
1993: Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha
1994: James Kelman, How Late it Was, How Late
1995: Pat Barker, The Ghost Road
1996: Graham Swift, Last Orders
1997: Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things
1998: Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
1999: J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace
2000: Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin
2001: Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang
2002: Yann Martel, Life of Pi
2003: DBC Pierre, Vernon God Little
2004: Alan Hollinghurst, The Line of Beauty
2005: John Banville, The Sea
2006: Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
2007: Anne Enright, The Gathering