Miss Wyoming

I couldn't resist another Douglas Coupland novel, which I picked up in the free book exchange in my local shopping precinct, at the same time as Waterland. Miss Wyoming, is about ex-Beauty Queen, second-rate actress, and former rock star wife, Susan Colgate.

  

Susan has had the kind of nightmarish upbringing embodied by the beauty pageant contestants of that most excellent film: "Little Miss Sunshine". Pushy moms, spraytanning, back combing and primping their little girls, making them look too old for their years, sacrificing their daughters to their own egos, and the beauty pageant meat market. Susan's mom, Marilyn, is a prize fighter of a mom, resorting to plastic surgery and blackmail to get her daughter on top of the winner's podium. "..it doesn't  matter if Miss Iowa cures cancer on stage, or if Miss Idaho gets stigmata, my daughter wins."

Similarly, John Johnson, as a producer of big budget movies, has had the same exposure to Tinseltown, and all its follies. "John's role was to walk into a room where nothing really existed except for a few money guys .....John would conjure up a spell for these Don Duncan's, Norm Numbnuts and Darrens-from-Citicorp. He had to cram his aura deep, deep, deep inside their guts, spin it around like a juicer's blade, then withdraw and watch the suits ejaculate dollars." (Coupland has the best darkly comic take on Fame's skewed reality, and is a genius with words.)

No wonder then, that two damaged individuals from the shallow end of life, are looking for something with deeper meaning. When John has a near-death experience of soap star, Susan Colgate persuading him to come out of a coma, and subsequently bumps into her at a restaurant, he feels like they are destined to be together. John decides that with Susan he "might actually raise something better out of himself than a hot pitch for a pointless film. Something moral and fine inside each of them might sprout and grow." The only problem is, that Susan has gone missing, but with the help of Ryan from the local film rental store, and his techie girlfriend Vanessa, John is determined to track her down.

It turns out that both of them have form, when it comes to disappearing and reinventing themselves. In a series of flashbacks, we are given clever glimpses into their tawdry past, interspersed with their current quest to find love and happiness. The plot may be as unbelievable as a Hollywood blockbuster, but it is thoroughly entertaining, and darkly comic. Although it may seem trailer-trashy, and as light as a bucket of popcorn in places, as with all the Coupland I've read, it really gets to the core of the human condition.  His characters mess up, and they mess up big time. Then almost heroically, they pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again, always hoping for something better.

Waterland

After leafy Surrey, we travel to the Fens, for something far more grittier, and full of silt: Graham Swift's Waterland. this novel is the winner of many prizes, but I'm not sure whether I will enjoy navigating it. However, I am curious to experience his story-telling, and as Swift himself says:"Nothing is worse than when curiosity stops."

Swift's narrator, Tom Crick, about to be forced into early retirement from his post as a History teacher, drop kicks the syllabus into touch, and instead, regales his class with his own local history. In particular, he enters a game of wits, and verbal sparring with the class anarchist, Price. At times it is hard to work out whether his pupils are actually before him, or whether they are a figment of his imagination.  Dreams, visions, superstition and madness are themes which run through the book, like eels running down a river to the sea. In fact, the whole epic sweep of the story is running through the Fens to the Wash.

Tom has been an educator since his youth, undertaking to teach his older brother Dick how to read and write, when their parents had given up on his schooling. Whilst Tom is clever and academic, Dick is a lumbering hulk, slow at learning, but good at practical, hard labour.

As the adult Tom unravels the story of his life, interspersed with snippets from revolutionary France, History becomes very much HIS story. The author is continually posing the question: "What exactly is history?", and blurring the edges between recorded events and reality. Everyone has their story, for Man is "a story-telling animal. Wherever he goes he wants to leave behind not a chaotic wake, not an empty space, but the comforting marker-buoys and trail-signs of stories."

Events in the past, have a tragic impact on the future, and mistakes of youth turn out to haunt the perpetrators for the rest of their lives, for "History is a thin garment, easily punctured by a knife blade called Now."

I reached the end of the story, when all the tales had been told, and felt that I had read a great novel, which had connected me to the landscape of the Fens, and the lives of the Fenlanders. It does what all great literature does: it makes the reader feel more alive, and to appreciate how incredibly fragile is our grip on life and sanity.

Notwithstanding

I have just finished Louis de Bernieres' collection of short stories, set in a fictional Surrey village called Notwithstanding. It is loosely based on his own memories of growing up in a similar place, and it captures beautifully the rhythms of rural life, but especially the eccentric, quintessentially English characters who inhabited such villages in the past.

Nowadays, Surrey villages are more likely to be filled with wealthy incomers, who commute to London, or by weekenders, who stay in town all week, and escape to their second homes at the weekend. Local families have been out priced, and have had to move away to work. Consequently, these stories hark back to a lost world, populated by retired Majors, Molers and the Hedging and Ditching man. He seems to pop up at the side of the road in every story, as villagers move from A to B, which is a lovely touch, linking all of the stories together. We catch glimpses of certain characters who have had their own stories written, making guest appearances in others, even if they just appear fleetingly in the distance, or at the side of the road. The reader feels like they are getting to know the layout of the village, and to recognise its inhabitants from the highest to the lowest, and from the younger to the older.

The author demonstrates impressive knowledge of country ways, including the precise tackle needed to catch a Pike, and how to lay out a new putting green. In addition, he seems to know a considerable amount about wind instruments and music.

Although initially the stories seem to have been published individually in a range of newspapers and journals, they gain considerable charm from appearing together in this collection. It is very hard to pick a favourite, as they are all equally appealing.

I love the variety of people and stories on offer here. Some are funny and gentle, whilst others are poignant. The effect of the whole is like taking a literary warm bath. It is a winsome book, which I was sorry to finish. Traditional, old-fashioned and charming, like the best of English villages.

Philomena

If the family secrets in the Dymond family had been well hidden, in the case of Philomena Lee, the skeleton in her cupboard had been locked away for fifty years. It was only one too many sherries at Christmas that had finally breached the dam of her long silence, and led her to share with her family, the dreadful events of her earlier life. As Dame Judy Dench, the actress who plays Philomena in the film explains so graciously in the foreword: "Philomena Lee was a naive teenager, whose only sin was to fall pregnant out of wedlock.  "Put away" in a convent by an Irish society dominated by the Roman Catholic Church, she gave birth to a beautiful baby boy."

She was later forced to give this child up for adoption, never to set eyes on him again. The book is the story of her desperate search to find the son she loved and lost, helped by the journalist, Martin Sixsmith, more used to researching Russian history, than the kind of human interest story presented by Philomena's life.

Sixsmith's research produced the shocking statistic that in 1952, the year of Anthony Lee's birth, there had been more than four thousand illegitimate babies in the Irish Republic, placed into the care of the church.  Many of these were disappearing overseas with no questions asked on Irish passports. A scandal was quickly covered up when the press found out that the childless American actress, Jane Russell, had bought an Irish child and taken him back to the States.  She was one of many Americans who turned to the church mother and baby homes in search of a child to adopt. The church, in turn, were more than happy to solicit "donations" of up to a thousand pounds for each adoption they processed, whilst the poor mothers were forced to work for three years unpaid, unless their families could pay a hundred pounds. Politicians and civil servants were afraid to question the actions of a powerful ally. There was nobody to defend the rights of the children or the mothers, who were often very young girls, abandoned by families who could not bear the shame and disgrace of a pregnant, unmarried daughter. This is precisely what befell Philomena.

Anthony's adoption into a family of boys, was almost accidental, since Doc and Marge Hess were looking for a girl to complete their family. Marge had settled on Mary, Anthony's closest friend, but when Marge was looking for a goodbye hug from the little girl, and didn't get it, it was the sweet-natured Anthony, who waved and kissed her goodbye. At that moment, Marge Hess resolved to adopt both children. Looking back over the course of Anthony's life, (renamed Michael by his new family), it is amazing to think that this twist of fate opened up opportunities to him in a foreign land, that would never have been available to him in his native Ireland.

Whilst the film follows her search for Anthony, after fifty years of secrecy, the book has more about Michael's search for his mother from the other side of the Atlantic, once he reached adulthood. It is based on interviews and diary entries from people who knew him. In an amazing twist, Sixsmith realises during this research that he actually met Michael in Washington when he was working for the BBC.

It is a very poignant account of a man, who never really came to terms with his past, and who despite his success, did not feel accepted, or worthy of being loved. Sadly, Michael's way of coping with this, was to push the self-destruct button, even though those who loved him, desperately tried to show him how much they valued him as a person.

There was unfortunately no happy reunion for Philomena and her lost boy, but discovering how her Anthony became Michael, and rose through the ranks to become one of the most powerful men in America; and to discover how much he loved others, and was loved by them was of great comfort to his mother. She thought about him every day of her life, and it transpires that once he was old enough to realise his origins, he had never ceased in his desire to find his birth mother.

The Wilding

Reeling from my last literary encounter with Eimear McBride's lacerating stream of consciousness novel, I am relieved to move into more conventional Summer reading territory with Maria McCann's The Wilding.

This novel was long-listed for The Orange Prize for Fiction, and is McCann's second novel. It is endorsed as a riveting read by no less than Lionel Shriver herself who states that:"McCann has in buckets whatever mysterious quality keeps a reader wide-eyed well after he'd planned to turn out the light."

The front cover looks like it might be a Cider with Rosie, bodice-ripper type of novel, but I was won over by The Times' reassurance that it is in fact:"An absorbing drama of revenge, inheritance and danger." This is the point at which tonight's dinner scheduled to be a rather adventurous pork with Persian spices, might itself be in danger of never materialising! Should I batch-fry the marinaded meat, or should I turn over the first page? Mmmmmm..................... I turned over the first page.

Indeed, it was a very enjoyable, easy-reading, page-turning novel, and went down as satisfyingly as the Persian pork did, once I had wrenched myself away from the story to make it.

The narrator, Jon Dymond, is a young, itinerant cider-maker from a well-respected family, whose world is turned upside down when his uncle dies.  He discovers dark secrets, which have been buried deep, but which threaten to drag him down when he attempts to bring them into the light.

The rhythms of the countryside seasons and customs in the post Civil War era are skilfully evoked, and the process of cider making is covered in great detail. McCann sets the scene well, tells a great story, and fills it with intrigue, danger, superstition and a twist. What more can one ask of a good Summer read?

This is the Pork with Persian spices, which eventually got made, and fed to the family, despite Maria McCann's attempts to distract me!

Amazonian Battle

The Times this weekend  (Amazon loses plot in battle with authors, Alexandra Frean, Sat August 16 2014), writes that Amazon, the online retailing giant may have misjudged the strength of feeling out there in its bid to underprice its competitors in the book market.

It has been engaged in a stand-off with Hachette, who have authors such as Donna Tartt and Stephen King in their stable, refusing to let customers pre-order many of their books online, and imposing artificial delivery delays. This apparently stems from a disagreement on how prices for e books should be set. Amazon has a similar dispute with Disney over the pricing of its DVDs.

Frean writes that if we were dealing in everyday commodities here, no-one would bat an eyelid. We are all used to the big supermarkets undercutting the smaller players. However, "Books are not regarded by their consumers as just any other commodity. They are things of beauty to be cherished."

So, we need to ask, what price convenience? One unnamed New York Literary agent told the newspaper:"As a business partner it's like dealing with the mob, but as a consumer, it's hard not to love Amazon."

Everyone loathes a bully, but we all love a bargain, especially when we can have it delivered to our front door.

A Girl is a Half-formed Thing

So, after Lionel Shriver's wonderful dissection of sibling relationships, let's continue with the whole brother-sister vibe with Eimear McBride's debut novel,  A Girl is a Half-formed Thing.

I jumped straight into the first chapter, carried along on a torrent of ingenious prose, tossed this way and that by the fierce current, arms flailing, tumbling over and over, trying to get my bearings. Every now and then catching a glimpse of the sky and the river bank, or an overhanging branch to grasp hold of and pull myself up.

This is the only way I can describe what it is like to be immersed in the wild rapids of Eimear McBride's writing, constantly looking for points of reference, then recognising where I am, only to be swept away again. This book is like nothing I've ever read before, and for her to conceive it and dare to write it this way is a virtuoso feat.

My first sense was one of panic, followed shortly by consternation: "Oh no, a novel with fractured syntax, surely not all the way through?" I feared I'd never be able to stick with her anguished stream of consciousness, but reader, I persisted; for it is compelling, and has far too many resonances with my own background, steeped in Irish Catholic guilt.

I can't say that it was an enjoyable experience, and if you are looking for a light holiday read, or are of a nervous, sensitive or depressive disposition, this isn't for you. The stripped down prose somehow enables her to say more than if she had put all the flesh on the literary bones, but I couldn't empathise with her girl at all, except in her childhood flashbacks of playing with her brother. Eventually, I was confused and disgusted by her inner dialogue, and her actions, feeling tainted by my acquaintance with her. Maybe this is the reaction McBride is looking for? It's a good job this girl and this novel are half-formed, because if the gaps were filled in, it would verge on pornographic voyeurism! I found myself worrying about the novelist's own mental state, like one worries about the well-being of actors who inhabit their characters' dark personalities on the stage every night. Just where did she get the inspiration for such a damaged soul?

I cannot recommend this book. I did not enjoy this book. However, I can recognise  and applaud her creative genius. McBride's prose has raw power, laying bare her characters' souls, eliciting the kind of connection I feel with truth and reality and being alive as when I read poetry. She is utterly fearless.

It is an amazing debut novel, full of literary chutzpah, expressing the best and the worst that the human spirit is capable of. I just found it too uncomfortable staring into the abyss, spectating as a poor, damaged, lost soul spirals into anguish and despair. By the end I had RSI from watching her press the self-destruct button once too often.

So, a novel novel, and one that has already garnered The Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction 2014, against some very stiff competition. It's not The Emperor's New Clothes. It is the real deal, but a deal that lost its appeal quite quickly for this particular reader.

Big Brother

Back to the amazing writing of Lionel Shriver, and her latest offering Big Brother. This will be only the second of her novels that I have read, and having enjoyed Kevin so much, I am expecting a lot of her talents.

Have you ever met a close relative at the airport after an absence of several years, and wondered if you would be able to recognise them? Thankfully, through the auspices of Facebook, this didn't happen to us when we met our niece recently, who had flown over from New Zealand to travel round Europe. Recognition was instant. Sadly for Pandora Halfdanarson, this wasn't her experience when she went to collect her big brother Edison from the airport at Cedar Rapids, who hasn't changed his Facebook profile picture in four years. He's the older brother she had always looked up to: a minor celeb on the New York jazz scene, slim, good-looking, talented, and oozing confidence. When all the passengers have passed through the baggage claim, she doesn't  recognise the grossly overweight man being pushed towards her in a wheelchair by two flight attendants. Whilst Edison's girth has changed considerably in the intervening years, underneath the folds of blubber, he appears to be the same person. So what can possibly have gone wrong in Edison's life to bring about such momentous physical change?

Down on his luck, and having slept on too many of his friends' couches, (and possibly broken them), Pandora is persuaded to invite him to Iowa for an extended visit before he takes off on a scheduled jazz tour of Europe. She is so shocked by this man-mountain, who had "never sounded fat over the phone!" that she is almost lost for words, and as Edison settles into life in the home she shares with her husband Fletcher, and two step-children Tanner and Cody, this strained silence is prolonged. Nobody is prepared to ask him how or why he got so big, or why a talented jazz pianist has no inclination to play the piano. He literally becomes the elephant in the room, who leaves a trail of havoc wherever he goes:  kitchen stove and work tops covered in mess from his food prep binges, and coffee cup rings on Fletcher's hand-made tables. Something's gotta give, and that something turns out to be the Boomerang, one of  Fletcher's earliest pieces of furniture, much beloved by the family, which cracks under Edison's immense bulk.

By this stage, cracks also begin to appear in the strained relationships between spouses, and between brothers-in-law, and the veneer of patient endurance and restraint as the interloper's visit drags on, lifts completely, until Fletcher lets rip at his unwelcome house guest with a diatribe that could strip the French polish off a coffee table at twenty paces. This kind of exchange, where characters externalise exactly what they think of each other is where Shriver excels. She nails the internal   monologue of her narrator Pandora, and every other voice of every other character in the book. She is pitch perfect. It is, at one and the same time, horrifically real and excoriating, yet deeply, darkly funny.

Obviously, if no-one intervenes and tries to prevent Edison from gorging himself to death, he will probably explode like Mr. Creosote! Fletcher doesn't think his brother-in-law has the self-discipline to get his weight down. "Put you alone in a room with a plate of French fries, and the spuds win every time. The will is a muscle. Yours is flabby as the rest of you, bro."

As Pandora takes up the gauntlet of fighting for her brother's life, we wonder just how much she is prepared to sacrifice to save him from himself, whether she can help him find a reason for living, other than his own deluded ego, and just how much the ties of blood can bind.

Cocktails

One of the great extras with Graeme Simsion's The Rosie Project is the list of cocktails in the back based on characters in the novel (all served with a twist!)

The one below is more conventional, but a little different to Don's version, which came out of The Bartender's Companion: -

"Dr. Miranda Ball raised her hand."Same again, please."
I called to Rosie, loudly, as the bar area was now very noisy. "Miranda Ball. Alabama Slammer. One part each sloe gin, whisky, Galliano, triple sec, orange juice, orange slice and a cherry."
"We're out of triple sec," yelled Rosie.
"Substitute Cointreau. Reduce the quantity by twenty per cent."

By the end of the evening at the golf club, Don, Rosie and the boss of the operation had made and served one hundred and forty-three cocktails!

The Rosie Project

Bill Gates was right about this book. He read it overnight, and I took just over a day to complete it, in stark contrast to my previous struggle with the magic realism of Mr. Fox. It is a fabulous read that is hard to put down, with a thoroughly engaging protagonist.

Everyone is going to love Graeme Simsion's Don Tillman,  a Professor of Genetics, pushing forty, who has everything scheduled and spreadsheeted in his life, but who is still in want of a wife. Don knows he is different, (his behaviour is typical of someone with Asperger's Syndrome), and that it is always going to be difficult for someone like him to find a life-partner, so he decides to initiate "The Wife Project". He devises a questionnaire to sift out time-wasters, and find his ideal woman, helped by his closest friend and colleague Gene, and Gene's long-suffering wife Claudia.

Things take a comic turn when Rosie fills in his questionnaire, and eliminates herself immediately from the running by virtue of being both a smoker AND a vegetarian. This is when the real fun begins! Although Don knows that Rosie doesn't fit the bill, nevertheless he just can't stop seeing her, ostensibly to help her in the search for her real father.

There are several laugh-out-loud moments in this novel, and some simply brilliant one-liners from Don, who is unable to pick up on the social cues that most of us process straightforwardly. Although he may be socially inept and gaffe-prone, being ASD has given him amazing gifts of organisation, focus and memory, which he is able to use to his advantage. His star turn as a cocktail waiter was one of the most hilarious episodes in the book. As he expertly took orders and served up Alabama Slammers, Rob Roys and Martinis, (whilst surreptiously swabbing empties for DNA), I wanted to punch the air and celebrate the triumph of a nerdy Geneticist over the smug, successful, professional customers he was serving.

Love is, of course, not an exact science, with precise ingredients like a cocktail, and the joy of this novel is watching Don's rigid schedule bend to accommodate another person, without him really realising why. He deserves to find love, but can a man who can recognise a DNA match, find the love of his life through a questionnaire, or will life be a little more inventive and romantic?

Summer reads

How many of those Summer novels that we look forward to reading on the beach, do we actually read all the way through to the end? Somebody with too much time on their hands has researched this very question and discovered that not many of us persevere to the last page.


http://www.channel4.com/news/books-summer-reads-how-much-actually-hawking-index


Let's hope my Summer is not full of "non-reads!"

Mr. Fox

So, I'm back to Magic Realism, it would appear, with Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox.

"It's ridiculous to be so sensitive about the content of fiction. It's not real. I mean, come on. It's all just a lot of games." says the fictional author, St. John Fox to his fictional heroine, Mary Foxe. She takes umbrage at her creator's villainy in constantly doing away with his female leads, and accuses him of being a serial killer.

Unfortunately, I AM sensitive about the content of fiction, and so while I know it's a lot of games, and am aware that Oyeyemi is playing them, (in what one reviewer has described as an almost "trippy" way), I just prefer my fiction to be more straightforward story-telling.

I do not deny that she is a very talented author, able to create tension and suspense, and to handle her protagonists with wit and humour, but I was left dissatisfied and bewildered by this novel.

I'm going back to meat and two veg, I think, and leaving the literary Sushi alone!

The Rosie Project

At the end of the academic year in the school where I work, it has become the custom to exchange Summer reads with colleagues. I was lucky enough to be given The Rosie Project which Bill Gates enthused about on Twitter recently:

"The Rosie Project: A Novel, by Graeme Simsion. Melinda picked up this novel earlier this year, and she loved it so much that she kept stopping to read passages to me. I started it myself at 11 p.m. one Saturday and stayed up with it until 3 the next morning. Anyone who occasionally gets overly logical will identify with the hero, a genetics professor with Asperger’s Syndrome who goes looking for a wife. (Melinda thought I would appreciate the parts where he’s a little too obsessed with optimizing his schedule. She was right.) It’s a funny and profound book about being comfortable with who you are and what you’re good at. I’m sending copies to several friends and hope to re-read it later this year. It is one of the most enjoyable novels I’ve read in a long time."

With such a glowing testimonial, I think I need to lay aside all my other books, find a shady hammock and read it! 

Of course this just means that I'm in the same position as those Commonwealth Games cyclists who dropped a lap in the Scratch race, in that I will never be able to get back on track with clearing my backlog of unread novels!  

Baileys Women's Fiction Shortlist

After writing about Caitlin Moran's thoughts on being a judge for the Baileys Women's Fiction Prize 2014, I thought I should include the short-listed novels.

The winner, announced on June 4th was Eimear McBride for "A Girl is a Half-formed Thing." She had previously spent a decade trying to get her debut novel published. Bet those who rejected her are kicking themselves now!

So far, I've only read one of these: Burial Rites, by Hannah Kent, which was a brilliant debut novel.

SHORTLIST 2014

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie - Americanah

Hannah Kent - Burial Rites

Jhumpa Lahiri - The Lowland

Audrey Magee - The Undertaking

Eimear McBride - A Girl Is A Half-Formed Thing

Donna Tartt - The Goldfinch

2014 Shortlist

    

    

59 books in 5 months!

I just had to share the very fine musings of the excellent Caitlin Moran, writing in the Times Magazine the other week about the process of reading.

She was rather exercised by having agreed to become a judge on the Baileys Prize, realising that this would entail reading 59 books in 5 months, whilst still holding onto the day job (Columnist of the Year at The Times), AND being a wife and mother. After three months, she felt physically sick with literature, having gorged herself on this smorgasbord of novels. She was reminded of what she always knew as a young reader, and I shall quote it in full, because its just such a brilliant description of what reading is:

"Because what judging a literary prize did was remind me of what I knew when I was 11, and was wiser, and forgot as I got older and stupider: that reading is not a passive act. That it's amusing that "bookworms" are thought of as weak, bespectacled and pale - withdrawn from the world, easy to beat in a fight.

For a reader is not a simple consumer - as you are listening to a record or watching a movie.  A reader is something far more noble, dangerous and exhilarating - a co-artist.

Your mind is the projection screen every writer steals; it is the firing of your neurones that makes every book come alive. You are the electricity that turns it on. A book cannot live until the touch of your hand on the first page brings it alive.  A writer is essentially typing blank pages - shouting out spells in the dark - until the words are read by you, and the magic explodes into your head, and no one else's.

Consider me, now. If I type "dragon" - casually, just six letters, no effort for me - suddenly, a dragon appears in your mind. You have to make it. Your brain fires up - perhaps your heartbeat will speed a little, depending on if you have had previous unhappy experiences with dragons.  Perhaps you will have given her golden claws - or maybe you have a fondness for tight, black shiny scales instead. But however closely I have described her, she will still be your dragon - in your head, a result of your million tiny acts of birth.  And no one else will ever see her.

And so to read is, in truth, to be in the constant act of creation. That old lady on the bus with her Orwell; the businessman on the Tube with Patricia Cornwell; the teenager roaring through Capote - they are not engaged in idle pleasure. Their heads are on fire.  Their hearts are flooding.  With a book, you are the landscape, the sets, the snow, the hero, the kiss - you are the mathematical calculations that plot the trajectory of the blazing, crashing Zeppelin. You - pale, punchable reader - are terraforming whole worlds in your head. These books are as much a part of you as your guts and your bone. And when your guts fail and your bones break, Narnia or Jamaica Inn or Gormenghast will still be there; as pin-sharp and bright as the day you first imagined them - hiding under the bedclothes, sitting on the bus. Exhausted, on a rainy day, weeping over the death of someone you never met, and who was nothing more than words until transfused with your time and your love, and the imagination you constantly dismiss as " just being a bit of a bookworm."

So this is what I remembered, as I judged a literary prize, this Summer. Being a reader.  The unseen, life-changing duet you sing with anyone who's ever written a book."

See, I told you it was good!

Trespass

I have just spent a deliciously indulgent afternoon finishing off Rose Tremain's fantastic novel: "Trespass". So engrossed was I by her skilfully woven narrative, that an afternoon set aside for housework, was seriously eaten into! I vacuumed the lounge, read a chapter; pegged out the washing, read another, and so on, until by the time I should have been prepping the dinner, I had read feverishly to the last page, not caring whether the family went hungry. That's the sign of a good book!

Initially, my heart sank when I thought I was going to have to read through the characters' personal histories of sordid sexual encounters, which is something I prefer not to have thrust in my face, either when reading a novel, or watching a film on T.V. However, these do not dominate the narrative, and they do allow us to understand what drives the protagonists to behave how they do.

Tremain writes with authority about antiques, garden design and the landscape, architecture and industrial heritage of the Cevennes in France, where the majority of the plot unfolds.The story is essentially about the disintegration of two families over two generations, with their associated psychological baggage. The first is an English family: Anthony Verey, a well-known antiques dealer from Pimlico, and his older sister, Veronica, who lives in the Cevennes with her lover, Kitty. The second is French: brother and sister, Aramon and Audrun Lunel; the former an alcoholic, living in the ancestral home, whilst the latter lives in a modest bungalow down the road. It is when Aramon decides he wants to sell up, and Anthony that he needs to retire to France, that the two families' paths meet.

It is a deftly crafted novel of longing for lost innocence, and yearning for happiness. About wanting to be secure and loved, and to have a special place of one's own, which the world cannot threaten or remove. V's lover, Kitty, exasperated by the intrusion of Anthony into their love-nest bemoans: "Doesn't every love need to create for itself its own protected space? And if so, why don't lovers understand better the damage trespass can do?"

Sadly, even if we realise our grand designs for building a home, our past can often catch up with us, and the reader feels the weight of the Lunels' blighted history closing in on them. Audrun and her friend Marianne, try to explain this to Marianne's daughter: " When lives are blighted young, Jeannette, sometimes you just don't quite recover, and that's a true tragedy."

The joy of this book is discovering just how far someone will go to get and hold onto that "protected space". I will not say who that someone is, but even when you guess their identity, it is a delicious pleasure watching them execute their plans. Everyone knows it's the quiet ones that need to be watched.

About a Boy

This week I've ripped through Nick Hornby's fantastic novel: About a Boy. I've already seen the film several times, so coming across certain situations and dialogue, it's impossible not to see Hugh Grant and Nicholas Hoult in the main roles.

There is a wonderful symmetry about this book. The adult, Will, lives his life like an overgrown teenager, whilst the boy, Marcus, is old beyond his years, and does not relate at all to youth culture.  As their lives collide on what eventually becomes known as "The Dead Duck Day", they both learn a lot about life, and learn to appreciate each other.

Will cannot quite comprehend how his comfortable, insular and rather blank life, could have changed so radically with the mere intervention of a socially inept young boy, and his depressive, hippy mother.  At one stage he laments: "He'd had his whole life set up so that nobody's problem was his problem, and now everybody's problem was his problem, and he had no solutions for any of them."

There's a wonderful supporting cast of wacky characters, especially in Marcus' own family, and Nick Hornby seems to have a knack for sounding completely authentic, whether he's spouting maternal wisdom, or voicing a teenage girl's alienation at school. Likewise, the period detail, especially the music references, are spot on.

It is a superbly entertaining read, very funny and sharply observant. I couldn't describe it better than Arminta Wallace in The Irish Times, who writes:"About a Boy is really about the awful, hilarious, embarrassing place where children and adults meet, and Hornby has captured it with delightful precision."

Do watch the film if you have never seen it. It differs very slightly from the book, but is a faithful representation, and in my opinion, it's Hugh Grant's finest hour!

Nicholas Hoult - no longer a boy

The terrifying art of writing.

Hannah Kent, first-time author of "Burial Rites" describes the process of writing as an often terrifying ordeal, and says: "Perhaps the only fiction worth reading - the writing that ensnares you wholly, that lays siege to your heart - is that which is born of love and terror, slick with the blood of its creator."

Burial Rites

Burial Rites is Hannah Kent's first novel, and I am astounded that a young, Australian woman could write with such command of Icelandic culture, folklore and history, as to make the reader feel totally immersed in the nineteenth century setting. Not only that, but with an economy of phrase she shows mastery over her characterisation of the condemned woman in her story: Agnes Magnusdottir, and the family who are forced to give her board and lodging on a remote farmstead, while she awaits her execution.

Kent had become intrigued by the real-life story of Agnes, whilst living in Iceland as a seventeen year old exchange student.  It was an obsession that stuck with her, so that later, when undertaking a PhD at Flinders University, she decided to make Agnes the subject of her research.  She had never undertaken any biographical research, or attempted to write a novel. No wonder she credits so many Icelandic librarians and archivists in her acknowledgements.

Agnes is one of three condemned to die for the murder of two men, Natan Ketilsson and Petur Jonsson at another farmstead in the North. Her fellow accused are being held with different families, and being ministered to by different priests. Agnes has requested a particular priest as her confessor, the young assistant,Toti, who visits her regularly at the farm. Her spiritual wellbeing is his foremost concern, as he seeks to prepare her to face death. In the close confines of the "badstofa", (the communal Icelandic living/sleeping room, see picture below), we learn about Agnes' life, intertwined with the lives of the local farming families and their servants. The isolation and loneliness of living in a remote location, the claustrophobia of a long, dark Winter in a small community, and the close scrutiny afforded to an outsider, which the author experienced as an exchange student, all resonate here. 

As the novel builds inexorably to its climax, she describes the bleak, unforgiving landscape in lyrical prose of stunning intensity, whilst Agnes' tortured internal monologue is laid bare. It is insightful, beautiful and heart-rending. In Hannah Kent's own words, the novel is a "dark love letter to Iceland." I recommend that Eyjafjallajokull permitting, you should read this astonishing debut novel, and book your flight!

The Cemetery of Forgotten Books

Here is a candidate for the Cemetery of Forgotten Books in "The Shadow of the Wind." It was built in 1592 in a vast complex of buildings at El Escorial.

The Library of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, near Madrid

The Shadow of the Wind

"Hidden in the heart of the old city of Barcelona is the "Cemetery of Forgotten Books", a labyrinthine library of obscure and forgotten titles," reads the blurb on the back of Carlos Ruiz Zafon's novel:"The Shadow of the Wind." As life imitates art, I also have gone to my shelves of forgotten books, and chosen the same title as the protagonist Daniel. However, since the various reviews on the inside cover describe this novel as ingenious, entertaining, compulsive and downright unforgettable, it is ironic that it has ended up gathering dust in my library!

Daniel's whole existence is saturated with books.  He and his father live above the family's second-hand bookshop, "an enchanted bazaar" in old Barcelona, handed down from his grandfather, and destined to be his own one day. "I was raised among books, making invisible friends in pages that seemed cast from dust and whose smell I carry on my hands to this day." Being an only child, like Daniel, and with older parents, I could recognise these childhood friends immediately.  The smell of dusty or pristine pages, and the feel of a physical book in one's hands is something that an e-reader simply cannot replicate. (Music-lovers would say likewise the joy of pouring over the artwork and sleeve of a classic vinyl album versus an iPad/MP3 experience.)

Early one morning, when a ten year old Daniel wakes up screaming, because he can no longer remember his dead mother's face, his father decides that it is time to introduce him to the mysterious Cemetery of Forgotten Books. It presents as a type of bibliophile's Gringotts: a secretive, magical basilica of books graced by "impossible geometry," and staffed by hardcore members of the secondhand booksellers' guild. Whenever a library disappears or a bookshop closes down, these guardians ensure that the books are not consigned to oblivion. In fact, it strikes me that the ladies in my local book exchange are providing a similar service to our town, in making sure that somebody's unwanted books, never end up in landfill, but have a new life being shared around other readers. The only difference is, that it is housed in a tatty, former Superdrug store, with ramshackle shelving in a dingy shopping centre, surrounded by Pound Shops and empty units. Zafron's version is more picturesque, tucked away just off the Ramblas, with ancient fixtures and fittings, frescoes, marble staircases, and a whiff of the sanctuary about it.

His father informs him that " According to tradition, the first time someone visits this place, he must choose a book, (I got three at the book exchange!), whichever he wants, and adopt it, making sure that it will never disappear, that it will always stay alive." Daniel chooses "The Shadow of the Wind" by Julian Carax, or quite possibly the book chooses him, as the ring chose Bilbo. He himself feels certain that the book had been waiting there for him for years, since before he was born. Once he has this book in his possession, his life becomes inexorably bound up in the mystery of Carax's identity and fate, with the suspense building layer upon layer, in a dance of shadows.

I was enchanted by Zafon's evocation of Barcelona in the aftermath of the Civil War, struggling with the legacy of those tumultuous days. We see its glorious architecture, and its seedy back-street quarters, and feel the fear and mistrust of its ordinary citizens towards those in power, particularly the corrupt and evil Police Chief, Fumero, and his henchmen.

However, there is humour in abundance too, and I especially loved the rather florid character of Daniel's bookshop colleague, Fermin Romero de Torres, a noble rogue, who definitely has the funniest and best lines in the book.

It is hard to pigeon-hole this novel, which has been described variously as " thriller, historical fiction, occasional farce, existential mystery and passionate love story." It definitely has aspects of all of these! As the mystery man Julian Carax observes:"Books are mirrors: you only see in them what you already have inside you."

Mayhem

A while back, I was given a hardback copy of Sarah Pinborough's "Mayhem": a novel about grisly murders in Jack the Ripper's London. A colleague had been invited to the book launch, because she was a friend of the novelist, and because I was dog sitting for her, on her return she gave me a lovely signed copy of the book.

Gruesome murders are not my usual penchant, although I have to say, I did rather enjoy "Tom-All-Alone's" last year, which has some macabre detective work, and sinister undertones, in similar vein to "Mayhem". What this book has in addition, is a large helping of the supernatural, since the supernatural and fantasy are Pinborough's preferred genres.

Her protagonist, a Police surgeon, by the name of Thomas Bond, becomes obsessed with finding the murderer who is stalking the back streets of Whitechapel, making Jack the Ripper look positively mundane.  He is haunted by the dreadful murder scenes he has witnessed, and the supernatural evil he has sensed. Sleep eludes him, and he wanders through the seedy opium dens of London, looking for the release that drugs can give him, topping this up with frequent doses of Laudanum.

Whilst I found the narrator's voice in the first half of the book a little confusing, nevertheless, she had me hooked by the halfway point, building the tension at quite a pace. She scatters a few red herrings as she weaves the Police enquiry with the unorthodox detective work of Dr. Bond, the seedy underbelly of the metropolis, and a smattering of Eastern European folklore.

I started to suspect several of the main characters as possible murderers, which is a sign of a good crime writer, and to worry about the welfare of the more vulnerable ones. With her hero telling the story in what is essentially a drug-induced haze, it begs the question: "What is reality?" Throw the supernatural into the mix, and the borders become even more blurred.

Not my usual territory then, but an enjoyable thriller with plenty of atmosphere. Just avoid dark corners and shadows, check the wardrobe, and look under the bed before you decide not to turn out the light!

Dog-sitting (for cheese!)

Exchange is no robbery!

With great excitement, and a smug sense of achievement, I took five of the books I have read since the Summer to our local book exchange and out of the house. However, the smugness soon wore off when I emerged with three different titles, unable to leave the premises without my quota of three.

I was looking for another Lionel Shriver, but couldn't find one.  Instead I settled for Nick Hornby's "About a Boy", Douglas Coupland's "Miss Wyoming", and Graham Swift's "Waterland".

Well, I will just have to be content with having shifted two novels out of the house, and not into landfill. Must try harder next time!

The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

I'm back in Afghanistan again, after my last visit with Khaled Hosseini's A Thousand Splendid Suns. A country where life is so complicated, difficult and downright dangerous at times, surely cannot fail to produce compelling subject matter.

   
The tag-line on the front cover is "One little cafe. Five extraordinary women..." which is exactly what the story is about. The main characters and their entourage make occasional forays into Kabul's shopping districts, or rural Afghanistan, but usually the action comes to them in the coffee shop. As with Hosseini's book, the plight of Afghanistan's women is a central theme, but we are also given a glimpse into the traditional Afghan male mindset.

The Taliban are a shadowy presence in the background, but most of the plot lines concern either ex-pats working for the armed forces, journalists and civilians working for NGOs, or Afghans themselves and their traditional family values. These, of course, are completely alien to the West's liberal values, and Deborah Rodriguez does a good job of making the reader acutely aware of the vast cultural divide.

My impression was that this novel was accomplished "Chick-Lit", and a kind of "Hosseini-Lite". Whilst I can see men enjoying the latter's novels as much as women, I feel that male readers would find the sensibilities in Rodriguez' novel too cloying and female. I tried to work out what exactly makes Hosseini's writing rise above hers, and all I can say is that Deborah Rodriguez has written a really entertaining book, "as if Maeve Binchy had written The Kite Runner." (Kirkus Reviews) Khaled Hosseini's writing, on the other hand, touches the reader in a much deeper way. There is something noble and visceral about his writing that goes straight to the soul.

If you want a really entertaining, romantic holiday read, with a colourful cast of characters, you can't go wrong with this book.  It also has some great Book Group discussion ideas at the back, including Afghan recipes to share.

I think her own story would be just as good a read.  She set up a beauty school in a war zone, ran a coffee shop in Kabul, married an Afghan Muslim man, later discovering that she was his second wife, and eventually had to flee Kabul with her young son, when their lives were threatened.

She leaves the reader with an appreciation of Afghan culture and tradition, and a respect for its people.  If there is nobility to be found in this book, then it is in the Afghan people themselves, who endure so much.  Not the drug lords or the Taliban Commanders, but the little people in their daily struggle to survive, and to have as normal a life as possible under the circumstances they find themselves in.

Midnight's Children

Did you know that Salman Rushdie was toying with the idea of calling his novel " Children of Midnight"? However, as a seasoned Ad man, he eventually came down on the side of the title with the best ring to it, and the rest is history.

A history book is partly what Midnight's Children is, although like no other history book you will have ever read. It is strange that so many of the people that I have spoken to about this book, have also remarked that they too have never read it, but don't really know why that should be. I picked it up with trepidation, but by page forty-four was completely seduced by the narrator's voice, and enjoying the caustic humour, and its particular Indian flavour.

Rushdie's narrator, one Saleem Sinai, born on August 15th 1947 on the stroke of midnight, at the precise instant of India's arrival at independence, declares at the outset that he has been "mysteriously handcuffed to history." He then proceeds to intertwine the history of his own family, starting with his maternal grandfather in Kashmir in 1915 with the birth pangs and subsequent tribulations of the new nations of India and Pakistan.
By day,  Saleem works in a pickle factory. By night he is driven to committing to paper the story of his life; paper that has taken on the unmistakeable whiff of chutney! The two are closely linked, both being a means of preserving: "Memory as well as fruit is being preserved from the corruption of clocks."

Nehru writes to the newborn: "We shall be watching over your life with the closest attention;it will be, in a sense, the mirror of our own." I too tried valiantly to watch over his life, but literally lost the plot.  By the time I was half-way through, I had ceased caring, although I skim read the last quarter, which upset me greatly. I really don't like to admit defeat, but Midnight's Children was too much for me. It was a completely over-stuffed naan bread of a book, intent on showcasing the author's genius, at the expense of this reader's patience! I didn't feel that I had the background knowledge of Indian and Pakistani culture,folklore, history and religion to get a true grasp on the subject matter.

Yes, it's a brilliant tour de force, and bitingly funny and inventive, but maybe Magic Realism is just not for me. I felt quite down about being beaten into submission by a book, but was somewhat heartened to discover, during a conversation with friends on a train last week, that two of them had also thrown in the towel on a previous outing with Rushdie's novel. They were now regretting the decision of their book group to choose Midnight's Children as their next subject for discussion. They have a month to read it, and boy are they going to need it!

I may have found the novel indigestible, but I still like chutney.