A Thousand Splendid Suns

Every book I've read so far has been written by white middle-class men, with the exception of Rachel Joyce, and Lionel Shriver (is she pretending to be a man, or is that her real name?) and Siobhan Horner's co-authorship of For Better, For Worse. So, time to redress the balance with Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. 

I really enjoyed his first novel The Kite Runner, and
this, according to the blurb on the back is better. The Times writes "If he cut his teeth writing about his countrymen, it is the plight of Afghanistan's women that has brought him to realise his full powers as a novelist."
Accordingly, the book is dedicated to the women of Afghanistan.

If Richard and Judy and their viewers, plus Isabel Allende and Mariella Frostrup are anything to go by, it was one of the great reads of 2007. All I know so far, is that, unlike my last read, which had no chapter breaks at all, Khaled has been very kind to me, and written in nice, short chapters!     

Short chapters means fast reading for me, and I finished this wonderful novel in two sessions over a night and a day. Here is yet another man who writes women amazingly, and what strong women. Nothing really prepared me for the harsh reality of life for a woman under the rule of warlords and the Taliban, and the restrictive controls of extreme Islamist teachings, enforced by a male-dominated society. 

The dynamic of the plot revolves around the two main female characters, Mariam and Laila, almost a generation apart, who have suffered at the hands of such men. Through their shared suffering, they forge a gradual admiration and friendship for each other that develops into a mother/daughter relationship, and acts as a buffer against the outrageous violence and injustice that is meted out to them. 

In the Postscript he writes that "For me, writing has always been the selfish, self-serving act of telling myself a story." What makes this book magnificent, is that it tells just such a powerful, emotive story, populated by unforgettable characters. Mariam, the illegitimate daughter of a wealthy business man, stands like a giant, quietly dignified in the face of domestic tyranny and humiliation. Laila later describes her surrogate mother as being " like a rock in a riverbed, enduring without complaint, her grace not sullied but shaped by the turbulence that washes over her." 

It is an incredibly powerful book, which I really enjoyed, even though it left my emotions totally shredded!                                         

Seek my face

I wonder how everyone else chooses the next book they are going to read. Confronted with the remnant of reading material here, I decided that much as I had enjoyed Kevin, I didn't feel able to plunge straight into something dark and psychological, but still wanted something meaty. I looked at the covers and was attracted by a novel with shelves on the front full of arty materials. Since I am trying to clear my shelves I felt this may be an appropriate choice. Then I saw John Updike's name, and realised that I had never read anything by him, and that I really ought to have done! 

Starting into the book, I began to wonder if the reason I had never read any Updike before was because he is far too clever for me! As the elderly artist Hope is interviewed by a young twenty-something journalist, Kathryn, she reminisces about her life amongst a group of post-war, bohemian artists in New York: contemporaries of the likes of Picasso, Mondrian and Dali. This part of the novel is peppered with intellectual artistic theories about Expressionism and Abstract art, and multiple references to philosophers such as Nietzsche, Jung and Freud. I found it hard to follow, a mite pompous and rather dry and boring. Time Out may describe it as "Engrossing, intellectually thrilling", but throw me a line John, I'm drowning here, and don't possess the processing power of many of your more literate reviewers!

I purposed to bear with, and a turn of phrase here and there began to show me that this guy could write something that would engage me. The Times says that his novel "Burns it's images into the reader's mind", and here I offer you an example of Updike's beautiful prose, describing the joy of one's favourite tea mugs of all things:"Momentarily alone, Hope empties the mugs-her own, nearly empty; Kathryn's nearly full- in the sink. Then she swishes hot faucet water around in them and puts them mouth-down on the drainer to dry. The pets she and Jerry had have all died, but even these mugs, with their painted parrots and red-and-green stripes, have that quality pets do, of sharing your innermost domestic existence, so that you come gratefully home to them from a venture into human society. They give you back yourself after others have dirtied and addled it." I was beginning to get sucked into Hope's evocation of the past, to feel what her life must have been like living in a virtual artists' colony on Long Island. 

Further passages of purple prose ensued - descriptions of the Long Island landscapes, of physical human beauty, of glass panes in an old window, accomplished with light, deft touches in painterly fashion. The interview, taking place over the course of a day became like a private view into Hope's life and soul. Three relationships, three children and a life full of stories. We often look at old people and don't realise the life they have lived and what they have lost - that once they were idealistic risk-takers, grabbing life by the neck and shaking it. After reading this book, I don't think I will look at an older person so dismissively again. 

In parts Updike's novel sounds like a twentieth century art treatise, but what remains for me is the celebration of the human spirit and the appreciation of art in its many forms. That a man could write two women, one pushing eighty and one pushing thirty so convincingly is testament to the mastery of his own art.

The shelves incidentally are the ones in Jackson Pollock's studio.

And now for something completely different!

So, having got my holiday fling with canals and the life afloat out of the way, I am now back on track with my next offering, Lionel Shriver's We need to talk about Kevin.

I got through the first hundred pages with my mind not really tuned in to the narrative voice, and then, almost imperceptibly, I began to understand where Eva, the wife of the story is coming from. From this point on I found myself reading for pleasure, and not just for notching up another title on the bedpost and the blog.

I picked this novel up in the local charity shop simply because I had been intrigued by the film of the same name, starring Tilda Swinton, but which I had never managed to see when it was in the cinema. I was also intrigued to read something by a woman called Lionel.

I think that if possible, it's always best to read the book before you see the film. Then you can avoid having someone else's vision projected into your mind. I can understand why some actors don't like to watch previous film versions of screenplays that they are working on, because it makes it very difficult for them to come up with new angles on the characters they are playing. However, watching a film after you have enjoyed the book, may be a let down, as The Time Traveller'sWife was for me, but more usually it is a pleasure. Therefore, I fully intend to borrow a copy of the Kevin DVD once I have finished, and see if my understanding of the novel tallies with that of the director. Tilda Swinton is a great actress, so I hope not to be disappointed.

As for my observations on the book, I have to admit that Lionel Shriver kept me on my toes. It is a very cleverly written book, and demanded my whole attention. I found it impossible to read and follow if there were any distractions in the room, whereas I can usually read with conversations going on around me, or television in the background. Consequently, it has taken me longer, as I have had to find quiet time and space to read. It has been well worth the effort though.

The Kevin in question is Eva and Franklins' teenage son, who has massacred seven of his fellow pupils, a teacher and a canteen worker in the gym at his school a few days before his sixteenth birthday. As she undertakes to visit Kevin in prison, Eva writes a series of revealing letters to her estranged husband looking for clues as to why he may have committed such a heinous crime. Were they to blame as parents? Was it nature, or was it nurture? It is a brutal dissection of a marriage, where like Isaac and Rebekah, they have taken sides and are championing their favourites.

Lionel Shriver is masterful in her psychological analysis of the main players, and fills her novel with darkly comic humour. I don't know how she sustains this brilliance, in the same way that I cannot comprehend how Kevin manages to manipulate his parents from earliest childhood whilst maintaining his own disaffected, amoral personality. Left me wanting to be able to write like Lionel!

For better, for worse.......

One of my most enjoyable reads of the Summer has been a husband and wife joint effort:For Better, For Worse by Damian and Siobhan Horner. It chronicles their journey through France to the Med on their restored boat "Friendship", and switches constantly between his thoughts in bold typeface, and hers in normal typeface.

Most folks pushing forty and having a bit of a mid-life crisis, would probably buy a Harley, or go yak-packing in Patagonia for a month; but these two, he a burnt-out advertising exec, and she, a former travel writer and busy mum of two under threes, up sticks from the Big Smoke, decamp to a wooden boat and live in cramped conditions as they travel the French canal system.

Life in London has become pretty meaningless, and Damian in particular wants to know if there's still a good guy underneath his cutthroat advertising executive exterior.  His wife has settled into the humdrum routine of caring for very young children and misses not having a career or time for herself.  

On the journey they both get more than they bargained for as they rediscover the joys of family life, meet some amazing new friends, and learn how to savour the small things in life. It's a lovely read, and the stream of thought device alternating between husband and wife is amusing and insightful. I read it really quickly, and now want to go and live in Arles and be a writer!

This is the last of my three holiday read library books, and tomorrow I shall endeavour to return them without borrowing any more that might distract me from the task of reading only those tomes from the bag and the box that have come off my own shelves!

Too narrow to swing a cat

Another one of my illicit library reads that didn't come out of the bag. I started Steve Haywood's Too narrow to swing a cat while on the narrowboat, and finished it when I got home.

Although not written with the same verve and wit as Terry Darlington's books, it is nevertheless an entertaining and humourous read. My enjoyment was heightened as I had been through some of the very places he was writing about, and in some of the same pubs!

He really conveyed the personality of his cat Kit, and although I am not a cat person, like Steve's wife Em, I ended up toying with the idea of owning a Maine Coon cat. I even googled the breed website!

Read this book if you want to understand the history and the nature of life on the canals, and especially if you are one of those hire-boaters like me that plague the life out of the regulars on the cut!

The Unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

Why did it take me so long to read The Unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry? I got through it in stops and starts, interrupted by the barge holiday, but on my return I found I couldn't put it down. Harold got so far along his incredible journey that it seemed to gather a momentum of its own.

 

This is a fantastic novel dissecting the marriage of Harold and Maureen, and how we move around each other in our domestic arrangements, being very British, yet never saying what needs to be said. It is about those grand themes of love and loss, but is never heavy-handed, and unveils where the relationship started to break down in a gradual, gentle fashion, even though we may hazard a guess at the reasons for this.

It takes the form of an unlikely road trip, and has echoes for me of The Hundred year old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared, and Forrest Gump  especially in the way that other hapless cases latch onto Harold's mission, searching for meaning in their own lives. Harold himself is an archetypal anti-hero, full of regret and pathos, and along the way, he meets other individuals who have sometimes been damaged by life themselves. He also experiences the kindness of strangers. 

He travels almost the length of England in an attempt to save an old friend's life, but in the process, he saves his own. Meanwhile, his wife Maureen, left behind in her pristine home behind the net curtains, undergoes her own voyage of discovery and redemption. 

Although it deals with heavy themes, this is nevertheless a book full of gentle humour and wry observations, told with a deftness of touch. It could be unrelentingly tragic, and yet it is an uplifting and enriching read, which I thoroughly recommend.

A Confession.....

I must fess up and tell you, that the Narrowdog book wasn't out of the box or the bag that I am supposed to be reading my way through this Summer. It was borrowed from my local library after I was persuaded in there by a friend two days before casting off on my canal adventure. I was actually looking for information books about the canal journey we were making, and kind of stumbled across it, (plus two other books in the same vein). Oops!

As an apology for straying from my remit, I offer a short toast extract from The Gum Thief.  Prepare to be buttered up.....


Toast 2:A High Seas Tale

11 Nov. 1893
Though the Vessel shakes with incessant nauseating rolls & pitches, my faith in a Promised Land free of grills and devices that scorch our tender farinaceous flesh shakes not. The ship's Captain, one Cornelius Jif-a hideous, unschooled poltroon of questionable agenda-has almost entirely reduced our daily ration of both cinnamon & sugar, this over and above last week's complete withdrawal of butter.  Some of the fainter slices on board have swapped logic with salt water and have gone delirious from the cursed sogginess that is the perpetual enemy of we who travel on the Good Ship Slice, registered in Liverpool but flying the Canadian Dominion's flag (though only, one might add, when nearing crafts touting flags of nations hostile to America's open-loaf policy.......)

I hope the above buttering has whetted your appetite for more of this loaf. Personally, I think that Douglas Coupland is the best thing since sliced bread:)

Bag of books.

A box and a hessian bag of novels

Narrowboat reads

I've just come back from a week's holiday on a narrowboat, pootling along at 4 mph on the Shropshire Union Canal. Between working the locks there has been ample opportunity to sit up front with a good book.

I really enjoyed Douglas Coupland's The Gum Thief, set in a Staples megastore. It's an entertaining, easy read, as Coupland writes in short chapters, and moves the action along fast. The novel takes the form of a dialogue between two colleagues: Roger, a jaded, middle-aged divorcee, and Bethany, a twenty-something Goth. What makes this different, is that the "dialogue" happens through mock diary entries which Roger writes in Bethany's diary, pretending to be her. Two colleagues who would probably never mix socially begin to share each other's secrets and tragedies, and Roger's novel in progress: "Glove Pond."  Through this secret correspondence a friendship is forged and other family members become embroiled until the reader feels totally involved in their personal histories.

It is an extremely funny, quirky and touching book, dealing with the big themes in life such as death, grief, ageing and relationships. I would read it for the crazy toast interludes alone!

Midweek I turned to a barging book, Terry Darlington's Narrowdog to Wigan Pier. What's not to like about Terry? You get a road trip (on a canal), Terry's offbeat humour, and poetic soul searching to boot. It's a travelogue with a cast of worthy characters and places, stuffed full of literary references. I love his writing. He has a unique voice, and I have enjoyed all three of his Narrowdog books. This is perhaps my favourite, as it is the most autobiographical, weaving details of his life into the travel narrative. Plus, I was reading it whilst travelling on a narrowboat through some of the places in the book, experiencing some of the things he mentions. Oh, and I forgot the Whippets, Jim and Jess, and having met lots of pairs of dogs on various barges over the past week, I can testify to the fondness of  the barging fraternity for their canine companions. (Btw we saw 2 of the following: Westies, Bassett Hounds, Collies, Cairns, Red Setters, Huskies - all of them lovely, lovely dogs).

Two lovely Westies on the Shroppie