Recent reading

There has been lots of reading around these parts lately, and I'm pleased to say that I'm on a run of books that I've really enjoyed.

First up, Sylvie Matton's historical novel, Rembrandt's Whore. Matton focuses on the character of Hendrickje Stoffels, a woman who lived for many years as Rembrandt's partner although they never married. As you can imagine this was very controversial in conservative, 17th century Amsterdam. Matton does a fabulous job of recreating the time period and also getting inside the mind of Hendrickje, a country girl who sees the genius of Rembrandt and is prepared to flout the conventions of society to be with him. From the notes at the back, I believe the novel is very carefully researched and I certainly learnt a lot about the times in which it is set. Not only is the book historically interesting, but Matton also writes in a very interesting style, particularly in the way she plays with voice. Sometimes Rembrandt is addressed by the narrator directly as 'you', and then, in the same paragraph, he is described in the third person. This takes a little getting used to but actually works, and in some ways really helps to create the voice of the narrator.

The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga joins a growing list of Indian novels that I have loved. I was totally swept up in the story and barely put the book down as I read it. The narrator of the story, Balram, is very entertaining company, a fascinating character who is determined to escape his poverty stricken background at any cost. Despite the light tone, the book is actually very dark, and does not flinch at describing the terrible conditions in which the poor live in India. Balram's aim to achieve success at any cost draws an inevitable comparison with Macbeth, and I quite enjoyed looking for links between the two texts. There are definitely some interesting comparisons to be made between life in Shakespearean England and the cut throat dog-eat-dog world of modern day India.

Finally I finished Scott Westerfeld's novel Pretties just this morning. Pretties is the follow up to Uglies and is the second in his sci-fi trilogy for young adult readers. I loved Uglies, and Pretties lived up to the promise shown by the first book in the series. The novels are set in a future where all people undergo an operation at 16 to become 'beautiful'. This is ostensibly so that there is no competition based on looks, however there is a more sinister side to the operation as the heroine, Tally, and a group of friends discover. The novel looks at issues of beauty and appearances, friendship, loyalty and betrayal, and human nature. Young adults generally love these books in my experience, but I think they deserve a wide adult audience as well. I've written before about how much I love Scott Westerfeld and once again he hasn't disappointed. This is smart, pacy and though-provoking writing for any age group.

A long time between posts

Sigh. I don't want to spend an entire post on why I haven't been posting but I probably owe some sort of explanation for my pretty hopeless neglect of this blog. The last few months have been absolutely hectic at work. The flow on effect of that has been that I just haven't had the mental space for writing here. In fact I've barely had the mental space for actually reading. If you look at my 'recently read' list you'll see lots of the fairly easily digestible young adult fiction (Robert Muchamore's Cherub series, for example) that has been my diet for the last little while.

Anyway, I've just had almost two weeks holidays in which to get back my reading mojo, and while it took a while to come back, I've finally hit my stride and have been swept up in some quite fabulous books lately.

Christine Falls is written by Benjamin Black (aka Irish writer John Banville) and it's wonderful, page-turning, whiskey-soaked, rain-drenched crime fiction. Black takes us back to Dublin in the 1950s. His central character is pathologist Quirke, who has the pre-requisite damaged past and taste for booze that we expect in this genre. Quirke finds himself investigating his own family when he discovers his brother-in-law (a pediatrician in the same hospital where Quirke runs the morgue) changing the death certificate of a young woman named Christine Falls.

This being Dublin in the 50's, the Catholic church is a heavy, oppressive presence whose influence reaches all the way to the new world- part of the novel is set in Boston. There are dark hints of shadowy organisations behind the scenes who are not pleased that Quirke is nosing around in their business.

I loved this novel. The writing is beautiful and there is a degree of atmosphere and characterisation that is not always found in crime fiction. Quirke was so alive to me that I could almost feel the whiskey burn its way down his throat, feel the pain of the beating he receives part way through the book, feel the shortness of breath as this bear of a man limps about the streets of Dublin and Boston. Some fans of crime fiction might find the plotting not as inventive as in other crime novels. A little like the Australian crime writer Peter Temple, Black gets the characters right first, so that you almost forget that there is a crime to solve. And I'm really ok with that.

In contrast, Kingsley Amis' short crime novel, The Crime of the Century, feels mannered and overly reliant on plot. This novel was actually written as a series of columns for The Sunday Times. The best thing about it was the interesting introduction by Amis where he discusses the process of writing in this genre. He felt it was really important to cut out any material unnecessary to the plot, and I can see his point, but in the end this reads like a clever exercise in dropping clues rather than something a reader could engage in emotionally.

The last novel I'll mention for now is Beryl Bainbridge's Every Man For Himself, a beautiful evocation of the four days aboard the Titanic before it famously sank. The story is told through the eyes of a young man, Morgan, a wealthy, well-connected boy trying to find his purpose in life. Morgan is, in fact, the nephew, by marriage, of the owner of the shipping company that owns the Titanic and has had a small part himself in designing the ship (well, some of the tap fittings in the suites) as part of his quest to 'find himself a career'. Morgan is an astute eye in this world of snobbery and vanity. He himself is saved from being completely part of that world by the fact that he lived in abject poverty until he was found and adopted by his uncle as a young child. Memories of that dark beginning to his life simmer just below the surface of Morgan's consciousness and explain his attachment to the dashing, charismatic character of Scurra, a character Morgan sees as a kind of father figure.

The central concept of the novel works really well- we know what is going to happen to the ship and therefore the petty concerns of the passengers and crew (is the library too big? Are the carpets the right colour?) take on an incredible poignancy. Bainbridge also writes beautifully and I really felt that I was part of the world that she created. She has some wonderful ways of describing characters; one man is described as never having thought something that hadn't already been thought by someone else (Bainbridge of course expresses it better than that, but at the moment I can't actually find the exact quote). I would have thought that the sinking of the Titanic would have been fairly well-trodden ground but this is a fresh perspective on the event. The last pages are, naturally, devastating.

So now I'm off to read my next book, Sylvie Matton's historical novel, Rembrandt's Whore, which, if nothing else, should lead to some mighty interesting traffic to this site...

Flicker

In a dark, chaotic and dusty second hand bookshop, where the shelves were so close together that I had to shuffle sideways to get between them and, when I did, it was almost impossible to read the spines of the books that were pressed up to my nose, on a day when the rain was icy and the wind strong enough to knock you over, I came across a book that I hadn't thought about in many years.

Theodore Roszak's novel Flicker was passed around the film society that I was part of during my undergraduate years at university. We were all film nuts and aspiring film makers and this book tapped into a those interests at the time. It also scared the bejesus out of me. When I came across it again, I had to buy it, if only to see how I would find it more than ten years later. Would the book that I found terrifying and disturbing at twenty years old have the same effect on me now?

The short answer is 'no', or maybe 'kind of, but not really'.

Flicker is the story of Jonathan Gates, film lover and academic, who is strangely attracted to the films of a forgotten B-grade director, Max Castle. Gates devotes his career to unearthing and studying Castle's films and finds that they contain some very strange subliminal techniques. Through his studies, Gates is also lead to the Orphans of the Storm, a shadowy religious organisation with a history reaching back to medieval Europe and the Cathars.

Well, it wouldn't be a good conspiracy if the Cathars didn't show up at some point.

If Flicker sounds kind of schlocky and cliched, well it is. But this is quality schlock. The writing is decent and there are lots of references to and discussions about classic films for film nerds to enjoy. The characters are also a cut above the usual airport fare. And I still got a bit creeped out by the horror elements. Roszak tries very hard to shock the reader. As a twenty year old he had me eating out of the palm of his hand. On this reading I was much more aware of being manipulated and much more amused by some of the sillier aspects of the plot, but at times I still had a chill down the spine.

A part of me is disappointed that I didn't leave my memory of Flicker alone. I could have walked around for the rest of my life remembering it as an amazingly brilliant book. But my curiosity got the better of me, and for that I have had the interesting experience of going back and being able to judge the taste of myself as a much less experienced reader. The years of reading in between my first and second reading of Flicker have stood me in good stead. In the intervening years I've definitely become a more discerning and critical reader. Thankfully though, I do still occasionally get swept up in a novel these days in just the same uncritical way I did as a twenty year old reading Flicker for the first time.

Pain and Sorrow

Just coincidentally, two of my recent reads have centred on young women who find themselves in terrible situations. Although they are very different books, Kate Holden's In My Skin and Sylvia Plath's classic novel, The Bell Jar, share the ability to evoke the powerful emotions and crises in identity experienced by many young women.

Not many young women go through the experiences that Australian writer Kate Holden describes in her memoir, In My Skin, but it is her ability to describe those experiences in a way that explains them to the rest of us that is the real strength of this book. Holden spent most of her twenties in Melbourne hopelessly addicted to heroin, an addiction which eventually led to a period as a sex worker. It is not giving anything away to say that Holden has now conquered her addiction (and written this very successful memoir about it), but the desperate times and experiences depicted in this memoir are pretty harrowing stuff.

I have to admit that I found it absolutely fascinating to read about Holden's journey from middle-class, well-brought-up, arts graduate to junkie prostitute. I think I was so affected by this book because Holden's life seemed so familiar, so similar to mine, up until the point where everything began to spin out of control. In my mind, heroin addiction and prostitution are a million miles from my own personal experiences but Holden brings it right home, made me think that this might have happened to me or to my friends, that it is not something that just happens to people who are already 'messed up'.

The danger in this kind of memoir is that it could become voyeuristic, especially in its depiction of prostitution. Holden avoids this through her skillful writing, which is informative rather than titillating, and concentrates on the emotions of her experiences. Her honesty is refreshing- she openly admits that there were parts of prostitution and drug taking that she enjoyed- but she does not glamourise the life. The big question is what she will write next, having pretty thoroughly explored her autobiographical material in this book.

It is a reasonable assumption that Sylvia Plath's novel The Bell Jar also covers mostly autobiographical terrain. The novel depicts the mental breakdown of its central character, Esther Greenwood, a young women working as an intern at a fashion magazine in Manhatten. Much like In My Skin I was struck by how honestly and realistically Plath describes the harrowing events of her novel. And yet this is not a depressing book. Esther could be any of us, she has moments of joy as well as great overwhelming sadness. There is even some humour in the book, particularly in the early chapters, something I found surprising and endearing.

Plath is one of my favourite writers, not so much for the dark topics that she covers and that make her so beloved of a certain type of moody teenager, but for the clarity and power of her words. Each sentence seems balanced and poised, the language straightforward and matter of fact, poetic in its simplicity. Take this passage from early on in The Bell Jar:

The mirror over my bureau seemed slightly warped and much too silver. The face in it looked like the reflection in a ball of dentist's mercury. I thought of crawling in between the bed-sheets and trying to sleep, but that appealed to me about as much as stuffing a dirty, scrawled-over letter into a fresh, clean envelope. I decided to take a hot bath.

Both of these books remove the 'otherness' associated with those in society who go through great trauma. Mental illness and drug addiction obviously effect all sorts of people, and books like these are invaluable for reminding us of this fact. That they are beautifully and skilfully written makes them even more successful.

More of the Bayou

Hot on the heels of In the Electric Mists with Confederate Dead, I whipped through another book in James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux series on the weekend. Sunset Limited was similarly gripping and atmospheric, a perfect lazy long weekend read. We even (finally) had some rain here which was quite appropriate given the almost constant rain in Burke's New Iberia, Louisiana.

Sunset Limited is a more complicated story than In the Electric Mists... and I think it suffers a little for it. There are lots of characters, some of whom only last a chapter or two, and I will somewhat shamefacedly admit I had to flick back now and then to remind myself who was who. Characters are often introduced only to be killed (usually very violently- a warning to more faint hearted readers) pages later. All the plot threads are unravelled by the end but I think the story could have been told with greater clarity.

That said, the story was pacy and compelling. It centers around an unsolved murder from Dave's past in which a labour organiser, Jack Flynn, was crucified and left for dead on the side of a local barn. Jack Flynn's two adult children, Cisco and Megan, return to the town at the beginning of the novel and this forces the town to address some old demons from their community's history.

Burke touches on some interesting ideas in Sunset Limited. His characters are forced to acknowledge a violent history in their town that many would rather forget. There is also an interesting dissection of the class system in New Iberia as we see the relationship between rich plantation owners and the poorer working class whites and blacks in town. Dave Robicheaux challenges the local philosophy that only the poor ever really pay for their crimes. There is also the obvious Christian imagery of the crucifixion which is linked in to the idea of the town's need for redemption. Burke doesn't hit the reader in the face with these bigger concepts- they could be ignored if plot is all you're after- but they give a greater depth to what could be a fairly ordinary crime story

I really enjoyed this novel but in some ways I feel it is less than the sum of its parts. I thought a more unifying thread was needed to bring everything together successfully. As expected, Burke creates his world of New Iberia in gorgeous rich detail, but maybe at times he needed to hold back a little and not give the reader so much of everything when it comes to plot.

Breaking the Silence

There has been a rather long silence here at this delicious solitude lately. Partly this has been because my work has changed this year, and with extra responsibilities there, there has seemed to be little time to write here.

Also, I've had a sort of writer's block when it comes to my blog. Somehow when I'm on the internet I seem to be more easily distracted by other bright and shiny sites and have neglected my own. Embarrassingly enough, Facebook has been sucking up my time, as has my recent obsession with cooking blogs. I'm not quite sure where that came from but perhaps in times of stress and tiredness it is quite nice to read the sort of blogs that don't make me feel just a little guilty about not writing posts for my own blog.

Finally my reading has been a little lacklustre lately. The last two books that I read for my book club were fairly uninspiring and before that I spent a lot of time reading The Crimson Petal and the White by Michel Faber, which I enjoyed to an extent but which didn't really deliver in the long run (for me at least, I know lots of other people loved it).

Thankfully though I now have two weeks holidays and have read some great books that actually make me feel like blogging again.

Many of you will no doubt be familiar with the crime fiction of James Lee Burke. I had heard all sorts of good things about his Dave Robicheaux mysteries but hadn't gotten around to actually reading one until this week and I really loved it. In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead is steeped in atmosphere. Burke is particularly good at evoking the smells of the landscape, which might sound strange, but is absolutely appropriate when describing a place as humid and lush as the Louisiana Bayou where the novel is set. Although this novel falls somewhere in the middle of what is now a long series of novels, it worked really well as a stand-alone book. A back story was hinted at but I didn't feel that I needed to read all the others in the series to understand what was going on here.

In many ways the novel covers typical crime fiction territory. Robicheaux is a troubled detective with a chequered past and a gruff demeanour. The plot concerns the serial murders of young prostitutes, possibly connected with mob activity. So far, fairly standard. However it is Burke's descriptive writing that really brings the setting into vivid life. I really felt like I was right there in New Iberia, Louisiana. I could feel the dripping humidity and the smell the rotting vegetation. There is also an intriguing sub-plot involving the appearance of the confederate soldier ghosts that give the novel its title, which in lesser hands might have been a bit silly but actually works here. I'm curious to see what the film version of this novel will be like- it's due for release this year some time.

The other book I've read, and loved, recently is David Sedaris' Me Talk Pretty One Day. I recently raved about When You Are Engulfed in Flames in this blog, and I loved Me Talk Pretty One Day for all the same reasons. Sedaris is clever, funny and touching in these personal essays. The thread that runs through the book is one about language and speech, as the title suggests. One of the most touching essays is the one in which a speech therapist is assigned to David at school in order to 'correct' his speech, a process that amounts to little less than formalised humiliation. This links nicely with one of the funniest essays which describes Sedaris' language lessons in France in which the class is routinely humiliated by their sadistic French teacher. The attempts of the class to describe, in broken French, the meaning of Easter is laugh out loud funny ("It is a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus" etc).

On that note, I wish you all an enjoyable Easter break and am heading off now to curl up with a cup of tea, some chocolate and another James Lee Burke mystery.

King Dork

King Dork by Frank Portman is one of the most fun reads I've had in ages. It's ostensibly written for young adults but, like with the best fiction in any sub-genre, its appeal is much broader than that. I think the quote from someone called John Green on the cover of my edition says it best: "If you're in a band or wish you were, if you loved or hated The Catcher in the Rye, if you like girls or are one... King Dork will rock your world." I'll leave it up to you to decide which of these categories I belong to, but suffice to say, my world was rocked.

King Dork is the story of Tom Henderson, a teenager who is hopelessly uncool, struggles to make friends or meet girls (although he thinks about this a lot), and spends most of his time with his only friend Sam Hellerman, thinking up band names, roles and album titles of their not yet actually formed band (e.g. The Sadly Mistaken, GUITAR: Moe Vittles, BASS AND LANDSCAPING: Sam 'Noxious' Fumes, FIRST ALBUM: Kill the Boy Wonder. There's a lot more where that came from- see the 'Bandography' at the back of the book).

A lot of the humour and enjoyment in the novel comes from Tom's wry observations of those around him. He is an outsider with excellent insight. Some of the funniest moments for me were his comments about his try-hard hippy step-father, also called Tom:

Our official legal relationship is pretty recent, though he's been around for quite a while. I don't know why they decided to get married all of a sudden. They went away for the weekend to see Neil Young in Big Sur and somehow came back married. They still refer to each other as partners, though, rather than husband-wife. 'Have you met my partner, Carol?' Like they're lawyers who work at the same law firm, or cops who share a squad car. Or cowboys in the Wild West. 'Howdy, pardner.'

Later in the novel Tom goes even further into articulating the difference between the 60's generation and those who came after them (although I did have to think that most teenagers today would have parents who grew up in the 80's rather than the 60's). He combines this with a critique of the Catcher in the Rye, the book most of his high school English teachers are obsessed with (forgive the long-ish quote, I think it's worth it to get a flavour of the book):

Look, it's not even that bad a book. I admit it. I can feel sorry for myself while pretending to be Holden Caulfield. I can. And I can see why the powers that be have decided to adopt it as their semi-offical alterna-Bible. Things were really bad in the sixties. You were always getting kicked out of your prep school, or getting into fights at your prep school, or getting marooned on deserted islands on the way to your fancy English boarding school. And when you finally got off the island, your 'old man' was always on your 'case', and Vietnam just drove you crazy, plus you were constantly high on drugs and out of touch with reality and it was sometimes a little more difficult than it should have been to get everyone to admit how much better you were than everybody else. It was rough. I get it. I really get it. Up with Holden. I'd have probably been the same way.
In the end, though, the attempt to save the world by forcing people to read Catcher in the Rye and dressing casually and supporting public television and putting bumper stickers on Volvos and eating only weird expensive food and separating your cans and bottles and doing tai chi and going to the farmers' market and pronouncing Spanish words with a cartoon-character accent and calling actresses actors and making up your own religion and so forth- well, the world refused to be saved that way. Big surprise.

Tom also has some cutting things to say about education, particularly in his description of AP classes (which I believe are advanced classes in American schools). At Tom's school the AP classes spend their time making collages and doing role plays while the plebs in the regular classes (including the narrator) do endless vocabulary lists in English. Needless to say, everyone is reading Catcher in the Rye. As a high school English teacher (who loves Catcher in the Rye by the way) this was pretty close to the bone for me, and had me rolling on the floor with laughter.

King Dork has a pacy plot which somewhere part-way through turns into a crime mystery, a funny, coming-of-age, crime mystery, romance mash up that just works. The ending slightly stretches believability but somehow Portman pulls it off. This is definitely not a book a book for younger teenagers (sex and drug references aplenty) but would suit savvy readers in the upper years of high school. And, as I mentioned, there is lots here for adults to enjoy as well.