Sometimes I am totally at a loss as to why a particular book wins a major prize but never more so than the winner of the 2010 Costa First Novel Award, Witness the Night by Kishwar Desai. With so much worth reading out there, dare I give you a bit of advice about it - don't bother!
Desai clearly has a cause to champion and a worthy one too, namely, female infanticide and, increasingly, female foeticide, specifically in the Punjab. No one would argue about the horrors associated with these practices. However, if they are to be incorporated as the pivotal element of a piece of fiction, then the author needs a good narrative. That is sadly lacking. The book is badly written, badly edited and barely hangs together. Irritatingly it is littered with Hindi words which are unexplained by the author, nor is any glossary provided and, to tell you the truth, one can't be bothered to look them up.
Her protagonist, the narrator, is according to herself a hard-bitten forty five year old social worker, an Indian working in Britain but back in the Punjab for the purposes of this novel, a smoker and a copious drinker - which she tells us every few pages. Nevertheless, this 'hard-bitten' social worker [embarrassingly] goes weak at the knees falling into the 'mesmerising green eyes' of a character who is clearly the villain of the piece.
The scariest element of this whole book is provided in the blurb where we are told that Desai's debut novel 'introduces' the feisty protagonist - are they warning us there are more to come?
The final touch is that this horror story is published by an outfit called 'Beautiful Books'!!
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
The Joys of Variety
At the moment I am jumping from book to book interspersing some brilliant fiction with some equally brilliant non fiction. The indomitable Eric Hobsbawm has a new title out, How to Change the World, and, though Terry Eagleton says in his review of it in this week's London Review of Books [3 March] that 'Hobsbawm ... is not quite as omniscient as the Hegelian World-Spirit, for all his cosmopolitan range and encyclopedic knowledge', this is a book that we can all learn from. It is a collection of essays on Marxism, some of which have been published before but some only in Italian and Hobsbawm has brought them together in an accessible and exciting form. More later when I finish it!
Two works of fiction I read last week were Tinkers by Paul Harding and Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo, both of which enthralled me. Tinkers is Harding's first novel and, as with many new writers, it took him a long time to find a publisher but then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize last year. It is exquisitely written in controlled and spare style but, oh, so beautiful. There is not one word too many in this short novel - it is only 191 pages - but the pictures he conjures up are deep and lasting.
The narrative is told by George Washington Crosby who grew up in Maine but moved to Massachusetts when he was twenty one. Now he is at the end of his life and hallucinating in the last throes of his illness which gives the author the scope to dispense with the constraints of time as the narrative moves between George's story and that of his father, Howard, who spent his life travelling through the backwoods of the state selling dry goods from his wagon particularly in the more isolated regions in the hills and woods of Maine. George is a clock man, both repairing clocks and collecting them and the author gives us some fascinating information on the subject while using it as a source of juggling time and memory.
The book is a meditation not only on the sometimes harsh relationship of father and son but also the reflected hardship of nature in the cold winters of New England. But it is also a story of love of life with an acceptance of loss. Howard reflects at one point that 'everything is made to perish; the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so'. His description of his father going out of his life is both moving and startling: 'it seemed to me as if my father simply faded away. He became more and more difficult to see....He leaked out of the world gradually'. This man is a genuine wordsmith with a simple story to tell but in language few could equal.
Red April by Roncagliolo couldn't be a more different novel! It is a translation by Edith Grossman who has also translated Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. Roncagliolo was born in Peru and his novel is set in Lima in 2000 following the end of the war against the terrorist Shining Path. This war, however, permeates the entire novel but nobody wants to talk about it. The narrator says at one point, 'the memory of the war had been buried along with its dead .. the memory of the eighties was like the silent earth in cemeteries. The only thing everyone shares, the only thing no one talks about'.
The story opens with the discovery of a body described in a detailed and precise report by Felix Chacaltana Saldivar, Associate District Prosecutor and those adjectives aptly describe Chacaltana who is exact and precise in all his dealings. A solitary man who preserves his dead mother's room in his house, talking to her as if she is alive, he deals with the subsequent horror that visits the city in a farcically controlled fashion. The syntax and precise details of his reports resonate more with him than the events themselves. The murders that take place are juxtaposed to the elaborate processions and rites that accompany the celebration of Holy Week. It quickly becomes apparent that this is a most delicious satire of civil strife and the emotion that arises only heightens the author's sardonic approach to his narrative. Behind the satire, though, is a certain sadness at a society that has been deeply damaged by terrorism. Fear still underlies all of even the ordinary.
This is a book that bears thinking about when one has read it. Nothing is quite as it first seems. I would recommend you read it!
Two works of fiction I read last week were Tinkers by Paul Harding and Red April by Santiago Roncagliolo, both of which enthralled me. Tinkers is Harding's first novel and, as with many new writers, it took him a long time to find a publisher but then went on to win the Pulitzer Prize last year. It is exquisitely written in controlled and spare style but, oh, so beautiful. There is not one word too many in this short novel - it is only 191 pages - but the pictures he conjures up are deep and lasting.
The narrative is told by George Washington Crosby who grew up in Maine but moved to Massachusetts when he was twenty one. Now he is at the end of his life and hallucinating in the last throes of his illness which gives the author the scope to dispense with the constraints of time as the narrative moves between George's story and that of his father, Howard, who spent his life travelling through the backwoods of the state selling dry goods from his wagon particularly in the more isolated regions in the hills and woods of Maine. George is a clock man, both repairing clocks and collecting them and the author gives us some fascinating information on the subject while using it as a source of juggling time and memory.
The book is a meditation not only on the sometimes harsh relationship of father and son but also the reflected hardship of nature in the cold winters of New England. But it is also a story of love of life with an acceptance of loss. Howard reflects at one point that 'everything is made to perish; the wonder of anything at all is that it has not already done so'. His description of his father going out of his life is both moving and startling: 'it seemed to me as if my father simply faded away. He became more and more difficult to see....He leaked out of the world gradually'. This man is a genuine wordsmith with a simple story to tell but in language few could equal.
Red April by Roncagliolo couldn't be a more different novel! It is a translation by Edith Grossman who has also translated Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera. Roncagliolo was born in Peru and his novel is set in Lima in 2000 following the end of the war against the terrorist Shining Path. This war, however, permeates the entire novel but nobody wants to talk about it. The narrator says at one point, 'the memory of the war had been buried along with its dead .. the memory of the eighties was like the silent earth in cemeteries. The only thing everyone shares, the only thing no one talks about'.
The story opens with the discovery of a body described in a detailed and precise report by Felix Chacaltana Saldivar, Associate District Prosecutor and those adjectives aptly describe Chacaltana who is exact and precise in all his dealings. A solitary man who preserves his dead mother's room in his house, talking to her as if she is alive, he deals with the subsequent horror that visits the city in a farcically controlled fashion. The syntax and precise details of his reports resonate more with him than the events themselves. The murders that take place are juxtaposed to the elaborate processions and rites that accompany the celebration of Holy Week. It quickly becomes apparent that this is a most delicious satire of civil strife and the emotion that arises only heightens the author's sardonic approach to his narrative. Behind the satire, though, is a certain sadness at a society that has been deeply damaged by terrorism. Fear still underlies all of even the ordinary.
This is a book that bears thinking about when one has read it. Nothing is quite as it first seems. I would recommend you read it!
Thursday, February 24, 2011
James Joyce
Congratulations to Navan Library for hosting a book club on Joyce. Under the guidance of Conor Farnan the group are currently working their way through Ulysses aiming to complete the study by 16 June.
Conor is currently doing his Ph.D. on Paul Durkan and may also be remembered from his student days in St Pats when he contributed to their literary magazine, Criterion 2003, with a poem - an irishisation or modernisation of Howl [if I remember correctly]!
Well done Conor! You are well appreciated.
Conor is currently doing his Ph.D. on Paul Durkan and may also be remembered from his student days in St Pats when he contributed to their literary magazine, Criterion 2003, with a poem - an irishisation or modernisation of Howl [if I remember correctly]!
Well done Conor! You are well appreciated.
Monday, February 14, 2011
Difficult to read?
I mentioned before Josipovici and his book, What Ever Happened to Modernism, in which he expresses his profound disappointment at the resistance to or lack of awareness of European modernism right across the board in England. He quotes Beckett who is talking here about art though it may well be applied to our current bestseller lists: '...there is nothing to express, nothing with which to express, nothing from which to express, no power to express, no desires to express, together with the obligation to express'.
Many of the books published today may be witty, sensationalist, written with panache but they will never challenge, say, Borges. Read him and he reaches right to your core. I did and realised that there is so much more to a 'good book' than the realist-type narrative so popular now. Josipovici says that the latter give a 'sense of security, of comfort even' and draw 'us for a while out of our confusions ... into a world that makes some sort of sense'. They are, in effect, easy reads.
All of which brings me to an article by Nicole Krauss in yesterday's Observer in which she says that she is surprised her fiction is labelled 'difficult'. [Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer and is author of The History of Love and Great House]. Her reasoning is simpler than Josipovici. She believes that in the west, we are moving towards the end of effort. 'We have arrived at this place where we just thoughtlessly plunge towards whatever the thing is that will allow us to make less of an effort. We're programmed to do the easier thing'.
Can I suggest we ignore the 'bestseller lists' and discover the exhileration, joy and wonder in the books of the European and Latin American authors? Discover literature!
Many of the books published today may be witty, sensationalist, written with panache but they will never challenge, say, Borges. Read him and he reaches right to your core. I did and realised that there is so much more to a 'good book' than the realist-type narrative so popular now. Josipovici says that the latter give a 'sense of security, of comfort even' and draw 'us for a while out of our confusions ... into a world that makes some sort of sense'. They are, in effect, easy reads.
All of which brings me to an article by Nicole Krauss in yesterday's Observer in which she says that she is surprised her fiction is labelled 'difficult'. [Krauss is married to Jonathan Safran Foer and is author of The History of Love and Great House]. Her reasoning is simpler than Josipovici. She believes that in the west, we are moving towards the end of effort. 'We have arrived at this place where we just thoughtlessly plunge towards whatever the thing is that will allow us to make less of an effort. We're programmed to do the easier thing'.
Can I suggest we ignore the 'bestseller lists' and discover the exhileration, joy and wonder in the books of the European and Latin American authors? Discover literature!
Saturday, February 12, 2011
The Also-Ran
Lots of talk in the papers about the late Beryl Bainbridge who was nominated five times for the Booker Prize but never won to the chagrin of her many devoted readers. Her never-failing sense of humour on each occasion would now be tickled by the decision of the Booker judges to create a Man Booker Best of Beryl! They are asking the public to vote on which of her five nominated novels they think most worthy of the prize. They are: The Dressmaker, The Bottle Factory Outing, An Awfully Big Adventure, Every Man for Himself, Master Georgie.
Vote online at themanbookerprize.com and the winner will be announced in April.
Vote online at themanbookerprize.com and the winner will be announced in April.
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Museum of Innocence
Museum of Innocence by Orham Pamuk was published in paperback in 2009 and I have to confess I initially dodged it as not only was I going to be facing into 700 plus pages but the blurb indicated that I would be reading a classic love story - boy meets girl, crisis and loss, boy regains girl - which did not appeal. But then I reconsidered if only because as a Nobel Laureate of particular distinction, Pamuk could never bore and indeed this book is no conventional social comedy but as Pamuk says 'nor simply a story of lovers, but of the entire realm, that is, of Istanbul
The narrative concerns a thirty year old Istanbulli, Kemal, a member of a socially elite, bourgeois set, who is about to become engaged, and on a visit to a boutique to buy his fiancee, Sibil, a gift, encounters a distant cousin, Fusun, working there and is immediately overcome and completely enthralled by her. He begins a relationship despite his existing commitment to Sibil and the forthcoming big social event of his Engagement Party. The Party is the pivotal chapter in the book and it is subsequent to this that Kemal's obsession with Fusun begins.
This obsession is to drive Kemal for years and in the course of it he loses the shape of his life, discards his friends and social set and begins a collection of memorabilia of his love to put in a museum he wants to create, amassing anything of Fusun's - from panties to cigarette butts. In the course of this, Pamuk gives us a wonderful minor dissertation on the role and purpose of museums and the art of collecting.
For a period, Kemal is separated from Fusun during which time she marries an aspiring film director and returns to live with her parents. Kemal visits them almost nightly and, indeed, remarks that 'according to my notes, during the 409 weeks that my story will now describe, I went there for supper 1,593 times' - all under the guise of maintaining family connections as she was his cousin.
During the period of separation, Kemal wanders through Istanbul
Even more fascinating he describes the lives and mores of the inhabitants. Kemal's people are not religious adhering to their love of Ataturk and his secular reforms but at the same time maintaining certain beliefs and traditions. The issue of virginity at the time in 1975 is a particularly thorny one. The question of sex is complicated. Sibil - and, indeed, Fusun - give themselves to Kemal but in the belief and trust that he will honour their commitment with marriage. Otherwise, a girl is considered 'spoiled goods'. Pamuk gives us a whole chapter on the issue which bears ressemblance to Ireland
Despite this and because maybe of the influence of the cinema and television - both of which are extremely popular despite the television having only one channel - the wealthy elite aspire to Western fashions, behaviour and values. Girls who wear head scarfs for religious reasons are looked down on. Kemal also remarks that he has never seen two people kissing except on the screen!
Politics is largely eschewed despite the fact that the novel begins in 1975 some four years after the Coup and their lives are controlled by curfews and other restrictions. There are street battles frequently taking place between nationalists and communists but these are largely ignored though Kemal does refer to two friends who took politics seriously and ended up tortured in gaol for their effrontery.
This is a riveting novel and I became obsessed with Kemal's obsession persisting with little effort to the end of 728 pages where he tells us 'let everyone know, I lived a very happy life'! Pamuk writes with assurance and style. He doesn’t write with passion though he is passionate about Istanbul Istanbul , most of whom work for family concerns, he gives both himself and Kemal the latitude to wander Istanbul
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Blind Side of the Heart
Apologies everyone for a long silence - I have been checking out the book scene in the States! To my astonishment [and chagrin given the quietness of our bookshops here], the bookshops in New England, at least, are hopping and, particularly, the independents. One store I visited reminded me of Christmas Eve in the old days here when there was barely room to move!
On the plane over, I read The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck, translated by Anthea Bell. This is one of the titles on this year's Impac Award Longlist. Published originally in Germany in 2007, it was the winner of the Deutscher Buchpreis and was published in English in 2009.
The narrative covers the first half of the last century, opening in 1945 in Stettin railway station, crowded with Germans fleeing west and where Helene, the protagonist of the book, abandons her eight year old son. The author then takes us back through Helene's life in an effort to justify this inexplicable action.
Helene and her older sister, Martha, grow up in a small town in Saxony, their father an invalid from the lst WW and their mother, a Jew, quite mad. They escape from this unenviable background to live with their aunt, a prominent socialite in Weimar Berlin. There are shades of Christopher Isherwood here in content, if not in style. Martha falls easily into the decadence and dissipation of partytime Berlin becoming a victim of drugs and dubious sexual behaviour while Helene strives to equip herself with some kind of education and career. She becomes engaged to an upright and kind young man, Carl, but [and bit of a spoiler here I'm afraid], following his death, she becomes entangled with and married to a rather nasty, sadistic Nazi - are there any other kinds? The narrative then follows the events of the late thirties and the war years as they affect Helene culminating in the scene in Stettin railway station and its aftermath.
Essentially, the narrative deals with questions of identity, emotional deprivation and generational conflict. Helene is uncomfortable with the loose morality of Berlin especially the bisexuality into which she is drawn. Later she deals with her husband by absenting herself mentally. She yields herself to the point of losing her first name and in her apparent subservience to her Nazi husband, the author attempts to portray Hitler's Germany in microcosm.
Carl reads Spinoza to her, quoting, 'Happiness is not the reward of virtue, virtue is its own reward. We are not glad of it because we rein in our lusts: but because we are glad of it we can rein them in'. Much as the author might like, it is hard to identify these sentiments with either Weimar Berlin or Nazi Germany - but maybe that is her very point.
This book is not a challenging read and the author avoids reiterating scenes well known of the rise of Hitler in the thirties by concentrating entirely on Helene and her progress, physically and mentally as a political innocent, quite disinterested in her country's doings except insofar as they concern her personal life and its disintegration. How successful Franck is at doing this, one can only judge by one's reaction to the epilogue. At times, she seems to labour too hard to make her point but it does represent a useful addition to the growing body of literature by German authors about Germany in those divisive years.
On the plane over, I read The Blind Side of the Heart by Julia Franck, translated by Anthea Bell. This is one of the titles on this year's Impac Award Longlist. Published originally in Germany in 2007, it was the winner of the Deutscher Buchpreis and was published in English in 2009.
The narrative covers the first half of the last century, opening in 1945 in Stettin railway station, crowded with Germans fleeing west and where Helene, the protagonist of the book, abandons her eight year old son. The author then takes us back through Helene's life in an effort to justify this inexplicable action.
Helene and her older sister, Martha, grow up in a small town in Saxony, their father an invalid from the lst WW and their mother, a Jew, quite mad. They escape from this unenviable background to live with their aunt, a prominent socialite in Weimar Berlin. There are shades of Christopher Isherwood here in content, if not in style. Martha falls easily into the decadence and dissipation of partytime Berlin becoming a victim of drugs and dubious sexual behaviour while Helene strives to equip herself with some kind of education and career. She becomes engaged to an upright and kind young man, Carl, but [and bit of a spoiler here I'm afraid], following his death, she becomes entangled with and married to a rather nasty, sadistic Nazi - are there any other kinds? The narrative then follows the events of the late thirties and the war years as they affect Helene culminating in the scene in Stettin railway station and its aftermath.
Essentially, the narrative deals with questions of identity, emotional deprivation and generational conflict. Helene is uncomfortable with the loose morality of Berlin especially the bisexuality into which she is drawn. Later she deals with her husband by absenting herself mentally. She yields herself to the point of losing her first name and in her apparent subservience to her Nazi husband, the author attempts to portray Hitler's Germany in microcosm.
Carl reads Spinoza to her, quoting, 'Happiness is not the reward of virtue, virtue is its own reward. We are not glad of it because we rein in our lusts: but because we are glad of it we can rein them in'. Much as the author might like, it is hard to identify these sentiments with either Weimar Berlin or Nazi Germany - but maybe that is her very point.
This book is not a challenging read and the author avoids reiterating scenes well known of the rise of Hitler in the thirties by concentrating entirely on Helene and her progress, physically and mentally as a political innocent, quite disinterested in her country's doings except insofar as they concern her personal life and its disintegration. How successful Franck is at doing this, one can only judge by one's reaction to the epilogue. At times, she seems to labour too hard to make her point but it does represent a useful addition to the growing body of literature by German authors about Germany in those divisive years.
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