Prizes

The English literary world continues its love affair with historical novels with the announcement that the winner of the Orange Prize is Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller.   The novel deals with a brief reference in Homer's Iliad to Patroclus, a princeling exiled to the court of Achilles' father, which Miller fleshes out into the love that grows between him and Achilles as they go off to war together.

More exciting is the short list for this year's Impac Award which contains some gems - as it always does.   In case you missed it, here it is:

1. Rocks in the Belly by Jon Bauer (British / Australian). Scribe Publications (First Novel)
2. The Matter with Morris by David Bergen (Canadian). Harper Collins, Canada
3. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan  (American) Alfred A. Knopf
4. The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna  (Born in Britain, raised in Sierra Leone) Bloomsbury Publishing
5. Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor  (British) Bloomsbury
6. Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes  (American) Atlantic Monthly Press (First novel)
7. Landed by Tim Pears  (British) William Heinemann
8. Limassol by Yishai Sarid  (Israeli) translated from Hebrew by Barbara Harshav Europa Editions
9. The Eternal Son by Cristovão Tezza, (Brazilian) translated from Portuguese by Alison Entrekin, Scribe Publications
10. Lean on Pete by Willy Vlautin (American) Faber & Faber 

 What a challenge for the judges!   Some of these authors are well established and classy writers such as Jennifer Egan, Jon McGregor, Tim Pears.   Others like Karl Marlantes and Bauer are first time novelists but with Matterhorn Marlantes has produced a momentous piece of writing.   We'll know the winner on 13 June!  

The Detour [Gerbrand Bakker]

This book will haunt you if you read it - and you should.   Bakker has the extraordinary gift of writing compellingly about empty spaces.   Much like his first book, The Twin [which won the International Impac Award], Bakker has written a page turner bereft of the usual signifiers - we don't even learn the correct name of the protagonist until the final pages - but which pulls us in with an intensity that few writers achieve.

The very first sentence warns us that things are different for our protagonist: early one morning she saw the badgers.   To see badgers is rare as they are nocturnal creatures.  Then the fourth chapter which is only five pages into the text starts one day her uncle had walked into the pond in what turns out to be a failed suicide attempt.   This sense of things being not right, of there being something hidden permeates the book producing that haunting quality that draws the reader in.

The protagonist is a Dutch academic running away from her life, heading for Ireland but ending up in Anglesey in a remote cottage in the shadow of Snowdon.   There, over a few months, she sets out to live a solitary life, creating a garden and spending some time on her current work on Emily Dickinson whose first name she borrows but whose work she treats with contempt.   We learn early on that she has left Holland and her husband following a scandal but there are intimations that there is some other heavy shadow hanging over her.   Slowly, she meets the local Doctor, Baker, Hairdresser and a local Farmer, all of whom define her in a certain way but with none of whom she establishes an amical relationship.   Then a young man, Bradwen, literally falls into her garden while mapping a new long-distance path for hill walkers.   He turns into the 'man who came to dinner' and prolongs his stay with Emily, helping her with heavy work, cooking and shopping.   But of course, this is Bakker and nothing is quite as it seems.  The geese that live beside her cottage are disappearing one by one.   And Emily becomes obsessed by what she identifies as the smell of the old lady, Mrs Evans, who died in the cottage.

Meanwhile back in Rotterdam, the Husband has struck up an odd relationship with a policeman who arrested him for setting fire to his wife's office after she fled. Together they have managed to track 'Emily' and they set out to find her which odyssey Bakker handles with a lovely quiet humour reminiscent of episodes in The Twin.

This is a very moving book which deserves to be read.   On the penultimate page, Bakker writes that Bradwen thinks sometimes a day's work is for nothing because it leads nowhere but he is on the wrong side of the mountain - is there a right side?  The translation is faultless in capturing both the essence and atmosphere of Bakker's writing.   Ironically, in one brief episode, 'Emily' spends a long time attempting to find the correct words to translate one of Emily Dickinson's poems, none of which are quite right.

Firmin by Sam Savage

I am in love with a rat!   Not the two legged variety - which exist, believe me! - but a genuine real hairy  chinless wonder of a rat called Firmin in a delightful story by Sam Savage.   Firmin is a literary rat born in the basement of a bookshop in Scollay Square in Boston in the sixties on a bed made by his mother, Flo, from the chewed up pages of Finnegans Wake.   As Firmin describes it,'I was birthed, bedded and suckled on the defoliated carcass of the world's most unread masterpiece'.   Being the thirteenth and runt of the litter, Firmin starts to chew the pages of books to keep himself alive and shortly discovers that as he chews, he starts to read and so begins his literary career which reaches the point where he can read 400 page novels in an hour, Spinoza in a day.

As he makes headway with Russian and French novels and simple works of philosophy, so his love affair with humans grows and gradually he eschews the company of his peers and identifies with the Other.   He falls in love with Norman, the owner of the quirky bookshop, and is appalled when he catches a glimpse of himself in a mirror discovering that he is short, thick, hairy and chinless, no match for his adored Norman.   He nevertheless sets out to try and communicate with the Other by teaching himself sign language leading to an episode that is not only outrageously funny but full of pathos.   Though he ventures rarely outside the bookshop, he does find the local cinema, the Rialto which is mostly avoided by other rats because of the vermin, a voracious population of fleas and lice and also the stench of old people!   There he finds the unattainable goddess of his life, Ginger Rogers.

Through various misadventures, Firmin eventually becomes the pet of a failed sci-fi writer until the projected renovation of Scollay Square, involving the demolishing of the bookshop,  brings tragedy into his life.

This is a light, totally endearing novel and a measure of Sam Savage's skill that he can made a rat so lovable.  His descriptions of Firmin coping with his precocious intellect combined with physical weakness are masterful as are his insights into the characters who make up the regular customers to Norman's bookshop.  I guarantee you that reading this will make you hesitate - if only briefly - before putting down that rat bait again!

From the Guardian

Christopher Frayling [Saturday Guardian   05.05.12 Review], in discussing Bram Stoker, claims that 'it has .... become fashionable to reclaim Stoker as an Irish author - just as Francis Bacon has been reclaimed as an Irish painter and Wilde as an Irish playwright'.

It is news to me that one's birthplace is a question of 'fashion'!   Or does Frayling resent the literary success of the Irish?   Maybe he also considers Joyce and Beckett French?

Update

It was a sad day last week when I read that Antonio Tabucchi died on 25 March.   Tabucchi was the author of Pereira Maintains, a beautifully written captivating novel set in Lisbon in August 1938, which tells the story of a journalist who resolutely and with great cunning opposes Salazar's dictatorship.   You can see my review published 8 November last year.   This is an author you must not miss.

In case any of you missed it, the shortlist for the Orange Prize has been announced as follows:  Forgotten Waltz by Anne Enright, Half Blood Blues [Esi Edugyan], Painter of Silence [Georgina Harding], The Song of Achilles [Madeline Miller], Foreign Bodies [Cynthia Ozick] and State of Wonder [Ann Patchett].   So get reading!   The award ceremony will take place on 30th May.   I can certainly recommend Half Blood Blues which I reviewed on 10 December last and, also, Forgotten Waltz which I reviewed last June.


For anyone of a 'certain age', you might like to know that Cynthia Ozick is 80 years old [or young!] so there is an alternative to atrophy out there.  

The Art of Living by Chad Harbach

I did a live review of this book for LMFM last week so I thought I should blog my thoughts on it too!

Once again, the Great American Novel is upon us, hot on the heels of Freedom, and with similar great expectations.   Its reception in the States has been amazing with all the critics rushing to acclaim it while on this side of the Atlantic, it has even been reviewed in advance of sales!   So, undaunted by its 500+ pages, I bought it and read it.   Followers of my blog will know that I have  lamented the increasing trend for block busters that seem - with few exceptions - to encourage lazy writing and even lazier editing.   And The Art of Living is not an exceptional block buster and would benefit from some blue pencilling.  And this surprised me as Chad Harbach has been working on this for ten years while being co-editor and co-founder with Keith Gessen of a very high brow and literary journal N+1.

 However, that being said, the appeal of this book is obvious.   This is an old fashioned story of family, friendship and love, a book of becoming and, being a 'sports' book, it has of course a critical moment, a 'Disney' moment in a crucial match that will alter lives.   Harbach writes fluently producing edgy dialogue and likeable characters with whom one can easily identify.   Though the backdrop of the book is baseball, ignorance of the game is no handicap to understanding the story.   I was reminded somewhat of Joseph O'Neill's Netherland, but Harbach eschews the thought and depth of characterization of O'Neill's writing.

The story itself involves five characters:   Henry Skrimshander, a country boy with an enormous talent for catching and throwing balls, is spotted by Mike Schwartz, a baseball player for the University of Westish, a fictional liberal arts college on the shores of Lake Michigan, and given a scholarship.   At the University, he rooms with Owen, a sophisticated, stylish gay student also a member of the baseball team, and he quickly makes his mark bringing the University baseball team to unheard of victories.   The College President, Affenlight, takes an interest in sports while his daughter, Pella, comes back to Westish following the failure of her marriage to an older man and promptly falls in love with Mike.  So far so good.   Halfway through the book, the story reaches a critical moment and I wondered where it would go from there but Harbach goes on effortlessly drawing us with him.

As I say,  this is a book of becoming - all the characters seem to be searching and changing their lives and interacting in a way that reflects the game they are all centred on.   In many ways, Harbach is reminiscent of Franzen and Freedom, and the search for the American dream.   It is a fairytale.  

Orange Prize 2012

In case any of you have missed the long list for the Orange Prize, here it is!   It includes three Irish authors - Aifric Campbell who has been listed for her current novel On The Floor, which centres around a female trader in the City of London; Emma Donoghue for The Sealed Letter, a historical novel about a divorce in London in the 1860s, and Anne Enright who has been listed for The Forgotten Waltz.

Karin Alternberg, Island of Wings (Quercus, Swedish)
Aifric Campbell, On the Floor (Serpent's Tail, Irish)
Leah Hager Cohen, The Grief of Others (The Clerkenwell Press, American)
Emma Donoghue, The Sealed Letter (Picador, Irish)
Esi Edugyan, Half Blood Blues (Serpent's Tail, Canadian)
Anne Enright, The Forgotten Waltz (Jonathan Cape, Irish)
Roopa Farooki, The Flying Man (Headline, Review British)
Jaimy Gordon, Lord of Misrule (Quercus, American)
Georgina Harding, Painter of Silence (Bloomsbury, British)
Jane Harris, Gillespie & I (Bloomsbury, British)
Francesca Kay, The Translation of the Bones (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, British)
A.L. Kennedy, The Blue Book (Jonathan Cape, British)
Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus (Harvill Secker, American)
Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles (Bloomsbury, American)
Cynthia Ozick, Foreign Bodies (Atlantic Books, American)
Ann Pratchett, State of Wonder (Bloomsbury, American)
Ali Smith, There but for the (Hamish Hamilton, British)
Anna Stothard, The Pink Hotel (Alma Books, British)
Stella Tillyard, Tides of War (Chatto & Windus, British)
Amy Waldman, The Submission (William Heinemann, American)

The shortlist is out on 17 April and the winner will be revealed on 30 May.   The heavy hitters would be Anne Enright, Esi Edugyan, A.L. Kennedy, Cynthia |Ozick and Ali Smith.  I reviewed Anne Enright's book last Jjne and Edugyan's in October!