Carnival by Rawi Hage

You just can't leave this book unread!   Rawi Hage has surpassed himself this time.   This is his third novel, the first being the memorable De Niro's Game which deservedly won the Impac literary award.   His second novel, Cockroach, somehow left me cold so I was a little nervous buying this one.   But it stunned me!   On the jacket front, the Toronto Life is quoted saying 'imagine Camus rewriting Taxi Driver' which is so apt in reflecting the shinning quality of his writing and imagery but Hage has a sense of humour that Camus would die for!

The narrator in the book is a taxi driver who was born into a circus, the son of a trapeze artist and an arab stuntman with flying carpets both of whom died leaving their son in the care of a 'bearded lady', a 'freak' in the circus.   When he is still an adolescent, the circus dies and he ends up in a nameless city in America which I assumed to be New Orleans, not least because of the title of the book, Carnival.   And the whole concept of circus and carnival provides the backdrop to his story as he sees life as a circus with a world peopled by clowns and masked people - some heavy metaphors here.   But though his tale may be allegorical, it is full of compassion and love for the outcasts and oddities of the world.

Our taxi driver is called Fly - 'flies' being the taxi drivers who tour the city picking up fares as opposed to the 'spiders' who sit and wait at ranks for calls from the dispatcher.   And so with Fly we meet an astonishing array of individuals from criminals to priests, all of whom have a story and earn his respect or anger regardless of their status.   His upbringing in the circus gives him an acceptance of the ugliness and seaminess of city life while at the same time seeing great beauty in small things.

For Fly is a philosopher with a passion for books.   His apartment  is filled with towers of books and one enters it through a tunnel of books which he arranges 'by character, the colour of their skies and the circumference of their authors' heads ... in accordance with my own empirical measurements to use the British norms of philosophy'.   So Rousseau is located near the window because 'there is nothing like the cure of fresh air for cases of bladder infection, paranoia and Cartesian thinking'.

And Fly, while being a supreme example of a pure Christian soul, has no time for organised religion linking all religious beliefs to the same delusional source - the original fear and disappointment of men.
He rails against the 'brooding types' who go to caves and mountains waiting for God's revelation through 'the smoke of a pack of cigarettes' while, at the same time, he recounts a conversation with God who reveals to him that 'those desert lots of Semitic Arabs, Syriacs, Aramaics, Nestorians, Nabateans and Jews got it all wrong ... that bunch of archaic literates'.  

One can't help having a suspicion that Hage had a lot on his mind and used Carnival as a vehicle to offload some passion.   In fact, it is hard to pass a page without coming across a sentence one wants to retain and quote later.   But if he does, it doesn't grate on one and the friends Fly has and who stay with him throughout the book are wonderfully described and embodied and have a reality rare in fiction.   There are also pieces of great beauty such as when a clown in festival chants: 'I shall chase the clouds and stop the rain and save your lives from this endless charade of puppets and strings!'

Carnival is published by Hamish Hamilton, paperback, £12.99

Seamus Heaney

We mourn the loss today of Seamus Heaney, one of our great Nobel Laureates and probably the greatest Irish poet since Yeats.   A poet of his time concerned with rural life, politics and culture, his readings were hugely popular though he was far from being a self promoter.    In a land of writers and poets, his star shone and will continue to shine brightly.

Cats

I have three cats [one a runner-in] who, being outdoor toughies, dog my every step when I garden - not, I believe because of any great love for me but rather in the vague hope that somehow a tin of food will suddenly materialise in my hand.   So it is with some interest that I see that John Bradshaw has written a book, Cat Sense, which has attracted my attention.

Now normally, a cat book would be low on my list of must-haves but this does seem to be different with a more intellectual rather than sentimental approach.   There is an excellent historical section which, according, to Tom Cox in the Observer, 'gives invaluable background to his analysis of their sociability both with fellow members of their species and us'.   He also points out that one shouldn't assume various cats can live happily together - that I've learnt by experience too.   As Tom says, this book will certainly help you understand where they've come from, what they want from you, and where they might be going, if we're not careful!

This & That

I am sure you all read about the sad death of one of the giants of the American book scene, Elmore    Leonard.   Leonard published his first book in 1953, The Bounty Hunters, and went on to write 45 books though it was with Get Shorty that he amassed a huge following.   His books were full of humour - in a very black way - and his dialogue carried the narrative.   He painted his characters through their dialogue, a technique adopted by Roddy Doyle, and operated to strict rules.   He always used 'said' and never embroidered that simple verb and, according to himself, he eschewed those parts of a book that readers usually skip.  A unique writer.   Rest in peace, Elmore.

Here's one just out not to be missed:   Catherine O'Flynn has published her third novel, Mr Lynch's Holiday.   This one is based in a Spanish holiday village just before the 2008 crash and the expats who inhabit it, particularly Dermot who arrives there for his very first holiday abroad.   You may remember What Was Lost, Catherine's first novel which won multiple first novel awards in 2007, including the Costa, and was long listed for the Booker Prize.   I challenge anyone to make a novel about a shopping centre so absorbing so I can't wait to see what she does with a holiday village!

Transatlantic - and thinking on the Booker

Rather an odd longlist has been published for the Booker Prize and hard to judge considering two of the thirteen won't be published until September and one due out mid August, about now.   Three are from Irish authors including TransAtlantic by Colum McCann.   The weightiest - and one of the more interesting titles - is Richard House's The Kill but being effectively four books in one and with more than 1000 pages, not one to take to bed and fall asleep over.

Having been enthralled by Let The Great World Spin, I was anticipating great delights from TransAtlantic but let me say straight off, McCann disappoints.   The book is divided into two sections, the first being essentially nonfiction or rather his read of actual events and the second is pure fiction.   To marry fiction and nonfiction, something we are seeing more and more of, is hard to pull off and rarely succeeds well.   Perhaps it is the effort of delivering a true account of the nonfiction element that skewers the author's style complicated by the difficulty of marrying it with fiction.   Whatever the problem, this book lacks the stylish flow and lyricism of writing we got in Let The Great World Spin.   The connection of the fictional characters to the actual events is artificial and the whole is not really cohesive.

Set in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, McCann paints an ambitious panoply of events on both sides of the Atlantic - in fact he leaps forward and back across the Pond with a panache the envy of modern travellers.   He covers the Famine, the American Civil War, Daniel O'Connell, the Troubles, the Wall Street Crash and a nod towards two World Wars and the current banking crisis.   The first section gives us a take on the Alcock and Brown transAtlantic flight followed by a long piece on the visit to Ireland of an ex-slave Frederick Douglass on a speaking tour organised by his Irish publisher in 1845 to raise money in the British Isles for the abolition cause.   This then is followed by a piece on George Mitchell sent to Northern Ireland by President Carter in 1998 and who was instrumental in bring about the peace process in the Good Friday Agreement.

The second section comprises four chapters on four women, descendants of each other, and establishes their links - if somewhat tenuous - to these three events and the effects on them and their lives by being touched by what they have seen or heard.   The first woman is Lily who is working as a housemaid in the house visited by Douglass in Dublin and who decides to emigrate to the States at age seventeen in 1846 - why is not really clear.   This chapter is followed then by ones on Lily's daughter, granddaughter and great granddaughter who, predictably, is fighting with her bank to retain her home.  

The nonfiction section is at times interesting with snippets of information that McCann has done some indepth research to discover but is at times laboured and clunky.   It is only when he moves into the second section and the lives of his four women that the narrative flows in a way we expect from him.   Their connection to the events described however is a rather thin thread.   A holiday read, not a Booker winner.

Available in trade paperback at £12.99, published by Bloomsbury 

IMPAC short list

In case any of you missed the Impac book prize short list published yesterday, here are some thumbnail sketches of what's on offer this year!   Its an eclectic mix drawn widely with just one Irish author.   Some seem intriguing and very readable, others rather more obscure.   As I haven't read all of them, I decline to forecast a winner - yet!   Ten in all:

First, Kevin Barry with City of Bohane.   Set in the west of Ireland in 2053, this is a wild gangland story with, of course, a romance.   2053 is not as we might imagine it - for example it is singularly lacking in technology viz no internet or mobile phones and, oddly, the only means of travel appears to be on foot, train or tram.   Barry's writing is tight and authentic and the speech of his characters wonderfully apt - even if they sometimes sound like lost dubs.   Original and very much worth a read.

Second, Michel Houllebecq with The Map and the Territory.  Houllebecq won the Impac with his previous novel, Atomised, and this book has won the Prix Goncourt in France.   The story line is an examination of the relationship between art and the world it depicts and in a sort of mix of fact and fiction.   Houllebecq himself plays a major role as a 'fictional' character in the story as do many real critics and members of the cultural elite in France.   The narrative revolves around Jed Martin, an artist, who is going to ask Houllebecq to write the catalogue for an exhibition of his work.   This is considered a favourite for the prize but I didn't find this book as captivating or absorbing as Atomised.

Third, Andrew Miller's Pure.   This is perhaps the most surprising one on the list and I reviewed it on  30 January 2012.   Unlikely winner.

Fourth,  1Q84 by Haruki Murakami.   Clearly, from the title, this is Orwellian in concept.   It is set in 1984 - Q being a version of a Japanese 9.   While not reaching the heights of Norwegian Wood, this is a delightful read.   It is fundamentally a love story even if the protagonists take simply an age to find each other.   It opens with thirty-year old Aomame grid-locked in a cab on an elevated section of the Tokyo Expressway.  She leaves the cab and descends to the street where it is obvious nothing is quite right - this is 1984 territory and this is Murakami!   She has an abiding memory of holding hands as a young girl with a boy called Tengo and the story is then taken over in alternate chapters by Tengo and Aomame and how fate eventually reunites them.   A likely winner I think!



Fifth, The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka tells the story of a group of mail order brides who travel to San Francisco in the early 20th century and meet up with their 'husbands' who are not at all as they expected.   The story of their travails - working in America, their marriages, childbirths, language problems and so on are beautifully told with the quirk that none of them are named until the horror of WW2, Pearl Harbour and their subsequent incarceration ironically gives them a personal identification.   A story that has been told before but not with such poetry and style.

Sixth, The Tragedy of Arthur by Arthur Phillips.   Another book where the author takes a major fictional role.   In this novel, 'Arthur Phillips' is given an allegedly lost Shakespearian play by his conman father who is serving time for forgery.   The play is reproduced in the text and Phillips does not a bad job at recreating Shakespeare!   Apart from the question of the authenticity of the play itself, there is Phillips desire to impress his father and win his approval.   

Seventh is Swamplandia by Karen Russell.   This I haven't read and can only reproduce for you the publisher's blurb:   Thirteen-year-old Ava Bigtree has lived her entire life at Swamplandia!, her family’s island home and gator-wrestling theme park in the Florida Everglades. But when illness fells Ava’s mother, the park’s indomitable headliner, the family is plunged into chaos; her father withdraws, her sister falls in love with a spooky character known as the Dredgeman, and her brilliant big brother, Kiwi, defects to a rival park called The World of Darkness. As Ava sets out on a mission through the magical swamps to save them all, we are drawn into a lush and bravely imagined debut that takes us to the shimmering edge of reality.  Random House posting.

Eight:  From Iceland comes From the Mouth of the Whale by Sjon.   This is set in Iceland in 1635 allowing a mix of myths and science with the main character, Jonas, in exile on an island off the coast of Iceland for the crime of blasphemy.   Sjon deals with the cruelties of nature and man alike, at the time, together with the myths and touches of magic that controlled people's lives - in Europe generally, no less than Iceland.   He brings some fascinating details to the story of Jonas and captivating pictures of nature.

Nine is a poignant and charming story from Norway, The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am, by Kjersti A. Skomsvold, of which the publisher writes:  Mathea Martinsen has never been good at dealing with other people. After a lifetime, her only real accomplishment is her longevity: everyone she reads about in the obituaries has died younger than she is now. Afraid that her life will be over before anyone knows that she lived, Mathea digs out her old wedding dress, bakes some sweet cakes, and heads out into the world—to make her mark. She buries a time capsule out in the yard. (It gets dug up to make room for a flagpole.) She wears her late husband’s watch and hopes people will ask her for the time. (They never do.) Is it really possible for a woman to disappear so completely that the world won’t notice her passing? The Faster I Walk, the Smaller I Am is a macabre twist on the notion that life “must be lived to the fullest.”

And, finally, tenth is from Holland, Caesarion by Tommy Wieringa of which the publisher writes: 

In the port of Alexandria, a very long time ago, Julius Caesar impregnated and then abandoned Cleopatra. The child of their union – groomed for greatness by his devoted mother but destined for tragedy – was called Caesarion. Little Caesar.

History repeats itself, first as tragedy then as farce. In our time, another boy, Ludwig, is born in Alexandria and again the father flees the scene of the birth. The boy and his mother are soon obliged to move on. She, Marthe, is stormy, impetuous and vain. She will not rest until she finds their ideal home – which needs to be both dramatic and cheap. And so Ludwig and his mother end up on a clifftop in Suffolk in a house being eaten from the inside by woodworm and eroded from the outside by the waves attacking its foundations. In the hours mother and son spend together preening in front of the dressing-table mirror, a melodramatic intensity is born. But this stormy novel does not develop as you might then predict. Instead it opens out into a page-turning exploration of the power of the absent parent versus the power of the too-present parent. And it moves between Cartagena in the Caribbean and Viennese crypts, the rugby pitch and the chemotherapy ward, LA and London, the Mediterranean and the Pacific, as Ludwig’s gifts as a pianist open the world up.

Caesarion is a novel that asks how anyone can ever know for sure how to be the right parent for their child, and how any child can know how to let themselves be parented. It is a beautiful, strong and brave novel. It confirms Tommy Wieringa as a storyteller of great range and real distinction.

(From Publisher)

 

Happy reading!

Prizes and Infinity

Forgive my long silence - my hands have been incapacitated and I am only now - slowly - returning to my laptop though I have never stopped reading of course.

I was so excited last Saturday to read in the Guardian Review about a new prize for fiction being launched by Goldsmiths College which will go to a book that celebrates the spirit of invention and 'characterises the genre at its most surprising'.   Finally, a reprieve for the English literary novel!  Think Tom McCarthy, Will Self, Julian Barnes and so on.   There are four judges and my delight was increased by seeing Gabriel Josipovici numbered amongst them.   Some time ago, I drew readers attention to Whatever Happened to Modernism in which he lamented the state of English literature;  a judge of this calibre can only bode well and, to quote Blake Morrison, 'will encourage more risk-taking among novelists, editors and agents alike'.

Coincidentally, I had just finished reading Infinity The Story of a Moment by Josipovici, published 2012.   The juxtaposition of two concepts in the title was enough to draw me and feel I was in for a treat.   The book takes the form of an interview of one, Massimo, who was man servant/chauffeur to a wealthy and eccentric Sicilian nobleman and avant-garde composer, Pavone, who is now dead.   Massimo talks about Pavone's life and particularly his extraordinary opinions and theories of the workings of the world and especially music and art.   About the latter, he opines that he sees a decline in standards:  'I do not say according to the highest standards, he said, but according to the highest standards that still prevail' - pure Josipovici!   Josipovici said in an interview that 'he [Pavone] is based on the wonderful reclusive Italian composer, Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988), whose pronouncements about everything from rhythm in music to beautiful women and the future of civilisation are a curious mixture of profundity and bullshit.   In fact it was this mixture I found so appealing and tried to mimic'. 

Together with the comedy of Pavone's outrageous opinions, there is the pathos and charm of the relationship that Massimo had with his employer and, at times, in the interview, he stops talking as if trying to understand and make sense of the account he is giving.   There was no doubt a close bond between the two though Massimo is frequently at a loss in trying to articulate Pavone's thoughts and conversations.   He does give us some clue to the title when he talks about Pavone's account of a visit to Nepal and Tibet where Pavone felt that the music there had taken 'many lifetimes, many generations to produce ... that each sound is a world, an infinite world ... yet which is over in no time at all'.

Maybe Josipovic will bring Pavone's opinion that 'many artists haved been ruined by half-baked ideas about what will make them modern' to his judgement of the new prize!

Infinity The Story of a Moment, Gabriel Josipovici, Carcanet paperback, 2012, £12.95