The Miniaturist

Fiction has been on the back burner for me for quite a while now. I tend to be a binge reader, and recently I've been ploughing through non-fiction, especially getting to grips with the Puritans and blogging about my discoveries in a blog of the same name. It took a recent trip to Amsterdam to whet my appetite for the novel again. I had bought Jessie Burton's The Miniaturist some weeks before, but standing in front of the dolls' house at the Rijksmuseum, which inspired her to write the story, reawakened my interest in finishing it.

The real dolls' house on show at the Rijksmuseum

Shortly after returning to the UK after that weekend break, I did just that. Walking along the Herengracht canal and the Golden Bend where the heroine, Nella Oortman lived, was just the impetus I had needed. I marvelled at how skilfully the author evokes the life and times of the wealthy Dutch merchants at the centre of the story, with her attention to detail. Her research into seventeenth century Amsterdam fashion, food, furniture, trade, social customs, religious practises and the legal system, is very evident.

While Burton succeeded in transporting me back in time to this fascinating city, constructing a completely authentic setting, I didn't quite buy into her young heroine's self-assurance and command of the situation she quickly becomes embroiled in. Nella Oortman comes to Amsterdam at the tender age of eighteen as the new wife of one of its richest merchants Johannes Brandt. this girl from the country with no experience of city life, suddenly has to deal astutely with wily merchants twice her age, doing deals over sugar, writing very accomplished epistles to the miniaturist of the title, and taking command of a fast-moving situation, which threatens life, liberty and livelihood.

The other major strand that I found quite hard to swallow, was the whole premise of the miniaturist's spooky insight into the minutiae of the Brandts' household. Its members are always sneaking around the dark corridors of the merchant's house, eavesdropping at keyholes, but to imagine that the miniaturist has the same kind of access, or has in fact some kind of occult psychic powers that enable her to see straight through walls, seems preposterous....yet these were the theories that sprang to my mind when reading the plot. Even so, I happily suspended my disbelief, and enjoyed being drawn into the intrigue and the sinister voyeurism that I imagined was taking place.

Reaching the end of the novel, I felt that overall, it was an enjoyable, well-written book, especially heightened by my visit to Amsterdam and exposure to the artefacts at the Rijksmuseum. Plus, even if Nella's transformation into a self-assured, assertive merchant's wife in a man's world is slightly unbelievable, I do love a feisty, young heroine. Many fellow novelists have declared The Miniaturist to be an accomplished novel, which it definitely is. If you are looking for an atmospheric, suspenseful, historical story with great characters, you won't be disappointed.

A God in every Stone

This is a totally engrossing novel with a grand sweep of history, capable of transporting you to another time, place and culture, in a way that stone and marble relics of an ancient past in repositories like The British Museum simply cannot do. Not only do the stones come alive, but in the person of Vivian Rose Spencer, the young archaeologist at the novel's heart, we experience first love, betrayal and loss in heart-wrenching intensity.

After writing so consummately about Nagasaki in a previous novel Burnt Shadows, Kamila Shamsie felt challenged as a Pakistani to discover the fascinating history of the city of Peshawar. Once she had narrowed her brief to focus on the city museum, a story opened up for her linking an emissary of the Persian king Darius, the fate of the precious artefact he was bearing, and the efforts of various archaeologists to unearth it in the early twentieth century. All of this is brilliantly woven together with personal stories of heroism and bravery in the Great War, extracts from Herodotus about ancient kingdoms, the rise and fall of empires, chance meetings on trains, and a non-violent political protest in the city in the 1930s, which turned into a bloodbath. Loyalties are challenged, protagonists cross paths unaware of the significance of their meeting, and people and objects are lost and found.

This is her sixth novel, and the second one that I have read, and with both of them I've felt that I was reading something truly epic and accomplished. I have been left wanting more of her writing. Others have said that this reads like a classic. It would make a brilliant film too. As the Sunday Telegraph critic says:"Love, politics, history - it has it all."

The Rosie Effect

I had so enjoyed Graeme Simsion's debut novel, The Rosie Project, featuring his dysfunctional scientist Don Tillman, that I was wary of reading the sequel. The first had made me laugh out loud in several places, and I wondered how Simsion was going to be able to match its humour and originality. I need not have feared, for Don Tillman's second outing continues to be just as charming and engaging as his Rosie Project was.

Rosie and Don have now decamped to New York, followed by their friend and serial philanderer Gene, whose marriage is on the rocks. Both of them are working at Columbia University, but things soon become quite complicated, not only because Gene has moved into their apartment, but also because Rosie has unexpectedly fallen pregnant. Predictably, Don deals with this news by going into overdrive, reading scientific papers on pregnancy, devising schedules and diets, and unintentionally driving Rosie to distraction. Don's eccentricity, which occasionally leads to unexpected and alarming outcomes may have seemed attractive and exciting to Rosie when it was just the two of them, but now seems to be a possible barrier to their future as a family unit. As the pregnancy progresses, she fears that Don won't be able to relate to their baby, and wonders if she would be better off as a single mother.

Simsion manages to extract humour and concern for his protagonists' future, without becoming twee or predictable. I found myself really caring about the feelings of a man, who is not noted for being able to feel or express his own emotions. I also loved the cast of characters he gathers around Don for male bonding and mutual support, and how Don becomes a kind of champion for them all.

It's a less obviously funny novel than the first, but this is because there is more at stake than two individuals and their happiness. I think that because of the stakes, it's a deeper, more engaging read; plus there are still cocktails and lots of great foodie details to enjoy.

Total Control

I think I've just read my first American blockbuster thriller, and I very much enjoyed all six hundred and eleven pages of it. It was top quality hokum, entertaining and strangely old, with its talk of modems and floppy disks, and yet technologically challenging. David Baldacci definitely did his homework, as he goes into great detail about the inner workings of the Federal Reserve Board, Internet fraud, terror plots to down airliners, corporate takeovers and the FBI.

His highly attractive and intelligent heroine, is Sidney Archer, an attorney at Tyler, Stone, who finds herself caught up in the murderous intrigue of a billion pound takeover battle for CyberCom, between two rival firms: Triton Global and RTG. When her husband, Jason is implicated in a fraudulent deal to sell one firm's secrets to the other, and then is presumed dead on a sabotaged passenger plane, Sidney's life and the lives of her parents, and young daughter Amy, are in grave danger.

Sidney sets out to discover the secrets that Jason was hiding from her, and in the process to clear his name; but with the FBI following close behind in the shape of experienced agent, Lee Sawyer, she has to stay one step ahead, and find out who she can trust.

Baldacci ramps up the pace and tension, as Jason's enemies close in on the beleaguered Sidney, and the Feds try to keep a tail on her. It was hard not to see the novel as one of those intelligent legal thrillers, like John Grisham writes, with Lee Sawyer's character played by Gene Hackman. It would be a big name, big budget affair, with one of those deep, raspy voiceovers on the trailer: "Total Control. Once you have it, you'll kill to keep it!"

So yes, a bit Hollywood in places, from the intelligent and beautiful, gun-toting widow, to the seasoned Federal agent, who falls under her spell, and the cold-eyed assassin stalking dark corridors, dispatching people in gruesome ways. We get a big gun battle, and a cliff top show down, and it's a rip-roaring read, full of suspense and dirty dealing from start to finish.

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.