The Scandal of the Season

While on holidays over Christmas I was looking for a light, fun read. Something not too challenging. And I hoped that Sophie Gee's historical novel The Scandal of the Season would fulfil my requirements. I had heard about Gee's novel on an ABC TV special on the genre of romance- one of the series hosted by Jennifer Byrne. Sophie Gee appeared on the panel and came across as clever and interesting so I figured I should give her book a go.

My copy of The Scandal of the Season has a big gold sticker on the front proclaiming 'Women's Weekly Great Read' (for those of you overseas, Women's Weekly is a magazine aimed at middle aged housewives- recipes, celebrity interviews, that sort of thing). While I like to think of myself as egalitarian and certainly not a snob, I have to admit, I'm not that comfortable walking around with a big sticker on my book proclaiming that I have the same reading tastes as Women's Weekly readers. It doesn't sit well with my image of myself as an urban sophisticate :-)

Having revealed to you all that I'm a hopeless elitist, hopefully I can redeem myself somewhat by saying that none of this stopped me from actually reading The Scandal of the Season. The premise of the book is interesting. It is set in the eighteenth century and gives us a back story to Alexander Pope's famous poem, 'The Rape of the Lock'. I had studied the poem at university but that was a while ago and my memory of the poem is pretty sketchy, not that this mattered much, as Gee fills the reader in on the details.

The story involves the real life seduction of glamourous socialite Arabella Fermor by the dashing Lord Petre. The seduction is seen through the lens of Pope, who features as a main character in the novel, and his friends (cousins to Arabella) Martha and Teresa Blount. Gee has researched the period carefully and it is the historical details that I enjoyed most about the novel. She gives an interesting insight into the sexual lives of women at the time, and the enormous role that money and social status play in romance and marriage. Arabella and Lord Petre fall in love but cannot hope to marry as they are not social equals. Gee portrays the dangers facing young unmarried women who must preserve their virginity at all costs if they wish to marry well. Married women of aristocratic background seem to be able to indulge in affairs if they wish, an aspect of the society that I found fascinating. Men, as usual, seem to be able to get away with romantic indiscretions at any stage.

Another really interesting plot line involves a Jacobite plot to assassinate Queen Anne. Most of the major characters in the story, including Pope himself, are Catholics and therefore part of a persecuted minority (and possible suspects in any Jacobite plot). Many characters have memories of Catholics being burnt at the stake in the streets of London and there is a general fear that such violence will return. The novel starts with the murder of a Catholic priest and this theme continues throughout. I had known a little about the religious conflicts in England at the time, but Gee really brought this aspect of eighteenth century London to life for me.

Unfortunately, however, I didn't feel that The Scandal of the Season ultimately lived up to its potential, even as a light summer read. For a start, I think Gee has a problem writing realistic dialogue. The witty exchanges between characters just didn't really work a lot of the time. Also, a lot of the character exposition felt laboured. Gee describes the feelings of characters in enormous detail where I think she could have revealed this information more effectively through their actions. Finally, the plot, which is strong for most of the novel, just kind of peters out at the end. A stronger finish would have made me enjoy this book a lot more, although I guess that is the constraint of working with material based on actual historical events.

Gee's novel is a literate and well-researched book but with some major limitations. In the end, I found it interesting but have to disagree with the Women's Weekly 'Great Read' label. Not that I'm a snob or anything...

When You Are Engulfed in Flames

When I bought David Sedaris' collection of essays, When You are Engulfed in Flames, as a Christmas present for my husband, I hadn't read anything by Sedaris but the reviews of this book had been fantastic and somehow I knew it would be his kind of thing. Happily, I was right. My husband raced through it in a day or so and then I got my greedy mits on the book.

Sedaris seems to be pretty well known to Americans but less so here in Australia (or maybe I'm betraying my ignorance?). All I can say is that I wish I had discovered him for myself sooner. Sedaris writes an almost perfect personal essay. It's a genre that doesn't seem that common these days and more's the pity.

Many of these essays made me laugh out loud. Sedaris has a lovely self-deprecating sense of humour that allows him to share his personal humiliations with the reader in a way that only makes him more likeable. He is particualrly funny when writing about the gaps in understanding when he is in non-English speaking countries. For example, his struggles with the French language (Sedaris lives in France) reach a particularly funny peak when he describes how he answers all questions with 'd'accord' (meaning 'okay'). Using d'accord as a catch-all response to questions that he can't understand leads him into some very strange situations, one of which involves ending up in a doctor's waiting room full of well-dressed French people wearing only his underpants.

Sedaris is just as good at depicting other characters that he encounters. One of my favourites is his abrasive, outspoken New York neighbour, Helen, who has lived in her apartment for 50 years and reserves her right to say whatever she likes about anyone ("Stick it up your ass," she tells Sedaris, "I'm not your goddamn mother." When he points out a friend of his on Oprah).

Sedaris and his partner Hugh are listening one of Sedaris' first appearances on NPR when Helen knocks on their door:

"Listen," [Hugh] whispered. "David is on the radio."

"So what?" Helen said. "A lot of people are on the radio." Then she handed him an envelope and asked if we'd mail in her stool sample. "It's not the whole thing, just a smear," she told him.

His portrait of the foul-mouthed, angry, opinionated Helen could have been played for laughs at Helen's expense, however like in many of these essays, Sedaris ultimately reveals the humanity and vulnerability of his subject, as well as his affection for her.

It's this more serious side to the essays that makes them really outstanding. They are not just descriptions of funny incidences. Each essay comes back at the end to close with a thoughtful point, a kind of 'a ha!' moment that brings the whole essay together and makes us realise that we are not, for example, just reading an essay about a taxi driver who quizzes Sedaris on his sex life, but actually considering how easy it is to feel superior to others. Sedaris makes his writing seem utterly effortless and yet anyone who has tried to write this sort of thing knows how hard it is to achieve such an understated style. This is elegant, funny, intelligent writing, and, really, what more could you want?

Thoughts on Reading in 2008

We're a good way into the first month of 2009 and finally I get around to writing my post on reading in 2008. Oh well, diligent posting does not seem to be the way for me...

2008 was a great year for reading at this delicious solitude. I read 39 books, which is ok for me, but I'd love to read more this year (and I really think I should be able to count Jonathon Strange and Mr Norrell as more than one book!). There was lots of contemporary fiction on the list and not many classics. As usual, then, I'll vow to read more classics this year. It's just that I get swept up in those shiny new books!

The discovery of the year for me was Michael Chabon. I read and loved The Yiddish Policemens Union and went on to read The Wonder Boys and Maps and Legends. The Wonder Boys is the book I now count as my favourite novel and I heartily recommend it. My newfound love of all things Chabon is strange because I read The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay a couple of years back and was not overly impressed. Was it a matter of the other books being better? Or had I changed? Ah, the eternal mysteries of reading!

My other great discovery of 2008 was Australian crime writer Peter Temple. I have given copies of his excellent novel The Broken Shore to so many people now, that I keep forgetting who has and hasn't received a copy from me. I went on to read another Temple crime novel, Black Tide, which I am yet to review in these pages but which was also outstanding. Temple is brilliant at evoking a sense of place and the rhythms of Australian speech. He also writes a bloody good story.

In brief, I also loved reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke, a great big crazy Dickensian fantasy of a novel, and I loved Graham Greene's The Quiet American for its contemporary resonances. My favourite young adult novel of the year was Scott Westerfeld's Peeps which is the vampire novel that should be selling more than Twilight. I'll take cool New York vampires and sassy, tough female characters over the vapid Bella and vacant Edward any day. Still, the 14 year old girls that I teach would beg to differ...

So overall 2008 was a another great year for reading. It looks like 2009 is also shaping up well if William Boyd's excellent novel Restless which I've just finished is anything to go by.

The Architecture of Happiness

This morning I finished reading Alain de Botton's thoroughly enjoyable book, The Architecture of Happiness. I've realised that I've become a big fan of De Botton's clear, thoughtful writing after loving The Art of Travel and now finding this book as good, if not better. He has a nice way of simplifying complex ideas and making clear the relationship between philosophy and ordinary, every day life.

The Architecture of Happiness is, obviously, about architecture. De Botton explores why we find certain buildings beautiful and why they might make our lives better. As in The Art of Travel, the text is accompanied by simple black and white photographs that look unassuming if you just flick through the book, but which compliment the text in clever and thoughtful ways as you read. De Botton covers a lot of material and I almost feel I could read this again just to soak up the ideas a little more thoroughly.

Some of the most interesting points in the book for me came towards the end. De Botton describes how the great architect Le Corbusier had what seems in hindsight to be an absolutely crazy plan to flatten parts of central Paris and replace the buildings with a vast parkland studded with enormous high-rise tower blocks of apartments. Rather than dismiss the idea, De Botton examines its rather idealistic motives and compares them to the reality of how people live and interact with urban landscapes. In doing so, he articulates some of the unease I feel with the city I live in- one which was planned in the early twentieth century with similar ideals about modern living in mind:

A city laid out on apparently rational grounds, where different specialised facilities (the houses, the shopping centre, the library) are separated from one another across a vast terrain connected by motorways, deprives its inhabitants of the pleasures of incidental discoveries and presupposes that we march from place to place with a sense of unflagging purpose. But whereas we may leave the house with the ostensible object of consulting a book in a library, we may nevertheless be delighted on the way by the sight of the fishmonger laying out his startled, bug-eyed catch on sheets of ice, by workmen hoisting patterned sofas into apartment blocks, by leaves opening their tender green palms to the spring sunshine, or by a girl with chestnut hair and glasses reading a book at the bus stop.

When I read this I instantly had a way of putting into words why, despite the fact that the city I live in has lots of open space and parkland, a high standard of housing, good roads with little or no traffic problems, and excellent facilities, I will never feel the same excitement and sense of possibility and even happiness here as I have in London or New York or even Sydney. While I'm not about to up sticks and move out of here right now, I feel a sense of relief in being able to explain why I don't really love the town I live in. For me, it is a great achievement of a book when it can clarify thoughts the reader already had but couldn't articulate.

De Botton gives voice to the idea that good architecture deeply affects us, that it can make us better, happier people. I've always felt quite sensitive to my surroundings and whether they make me feel comfortable or inspired and I don't think I'm at all alone in this. De Botton tries to break down this sensation and explain it in a rational way, and in doing so charges architects with the responsibility to use their skills to create a better world. De Botton explains, architecture is as much a kind of psychology- bad architecture being a failure to understand people and how they live. Beautiful places are, however,

"...the work of those rare architects with the humility to interrogate themselves adequately about their desires and the tenacity to translate their fleeting apprehensions of joy into logical plans- a combination that allows them to create environments that satisfy needs we never consciously knew we even had."

Falling Hopelessly Behind

My blog posts have become sadly infrequent (well, sadly for me at least, as I really enjoy posting here). This is for all the usual reasons of things both within and beyond my control. But now that reports are written and the long summer holiday is tantalizingly within reach, I'm determined to get back into it and once again crank up this delicious solitude.

I've got lots of Australian books to write about, including a couple of crime novels. I've also re-read and loved Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas after seeing a great documentary about Hunter S. Thompson. I'm hoping to write about The Architecture of Happiness, another Alain de Botton book that I'm finding fascinating, and as always, I'm enjoying a Margaret Atwood collection of stories, Good Bones.

But first up I've got to get out there and catch up on my blog reading which has also been sorely neglected. I'm sure you've all been far more diligent than me, and I have to hear about your reading.

Watch this space for more posts soon...

The Two Elizabeths

I'm currently reading two very English books, from roughly the same era (well, mid-twentieth century-ish) and which are both written in a really delightful, quiet, precise and beautiful way. They are both also, co-incidentally, written by women called Elizabeth.

Elizabeth David's cook book French Provincial Cooking is justifiably famous. This is a cook book that is easy to read cover to cover. Even the lists of ingredients are poetic and evoke long, warm summer nights in Provence or other such picturesque French country experiences. I'm only just realising what a debt so many modern celebrity chefs owe Elizabeth David. Her writing sounds remarkably contemporary, despite the fact that this book was written in 1960. Her promotion of fresh, seasonal ingredients and simple, clean flavours would be right at home in any modern cookery writing.

My favourite bit in the book so far is when Elizabeth David writes about Provence:

Provence is a country to which I am always returning, next week, next year, any day now, as soon as I can get on to a train. Here in London it is an effort of will to believe in the existence of such a place at all. But now and again the vision of golden tiles on a round southern roof, or of some warm, stony, herb-scented hillside will rise out of my kitchen pots with the smell of a piece of orange peel scenting a beef stew.

It is really lovely writing, and whether I ever cook anything from it or not, it is worth reading.

The other Elizabeth I am reading is Elizabeth Taylor's A View of the Harbour in one of those lovely dark green Virago Modern Classics paperback editions. I have to admit to having been hopelessly ignorant about Elizabeth Taylor (the writer, not the actress of course) and had not heard of her until I picked up this novel. But so far I'm loving the precise observation and insight into character in this novel set in a quite English seaside town after WWII. Beneath the calm surface, tensions abound in the village, with the story centering around Beth, her husband Robert who is the local doctor, and their neighbour Tory, who is Beth's best-friend but who is also having an affair with Robert. I can't wait to see how it's all resolved but so far Taylor has avoided any sense of melodrama in a plot that could tend that way.

More on both books as I work my way through the provinces of France and the intrigues of English village life...

Carry Me Down

Carry Me Down by MJ Hyland is a disturbing and brilliant novel (a combination of adjectives that applies to some of my favourite pieces of literature). It totally divided my book group last week. There were some who hated it so much they could hardly even discuss the book- and these are lovely, educated readers- and then there were those of us who just fell totally in love with the beautiful writing and the bizarre world that Hyland creates (I like to think we were right!).

The book is set in Ireland in the 1970s and is told from the point of view of 12 year old John Egan. John would have to be one of the most unusual and fully realised characters in recent writing and his world is definitely a strange place for the reader to spend time in. John is physically mature beyond his years and is verging on a kind of madness (although the nature of this was hotly contested in my book group- some saw John as a dangerous sociopath, others, myself included, preferred to think of him as a troubled child who is reacting to the traumas he experiences). He is an only child who enjoys a disturbingly close relationship with his depressive mother and feels a kind of rivalry with his handsome, unemployed father. The family lives with John's grandmother on whom they depend financially, a situation that is fraught with tension.

John believes he is a human lie detector and uses his skill to interpret his interactions with those around him. And while he dreams of making it into the Guinness Book of Records with his unique skill, those around him expect him to grow up and fit into society's expectations. He is a boy whose physical body has outstripped his child's mind.

Hyland plays with the idea of madness and explores the way in which children can live in imaginative worlds that resemble the worlds constructed by the insane. She asks us to question the effect of a child's environment on their behaviour, particularly when the action moves to an extremely grim housing estate outside of Dublin. She also explores what we consider 'normal', ending the novel with a welcome hint of hope for John and his parents (or that is how I interpreted the ending, others in the book group felt it was a relentlessly depressing ending).

Carry Me Down is at times a very bleak book but I found that overall the beauty of the writing and the fascinating characters made this book un-put-downable. At times John is a funny, astute narrator who I genuinely liked, despite his confronting behaviour. It won't be a book for everyone, and it's not one to read if you want a light read, but it's definitely one of my favourite reads of this year.

Recent Reading

For someone who rarely reads much other than fiction, I seem to have found myself reading outside of my usual comfort zone lately. For starters, I read Where Underpants Come From by Joe Bennett for my book club. Bennett has written an account of his search for the source of the unbelievably cheap underpants he buys at his local department store in New Zealand. The book becomes a kind of investigation of the crazily successful Chinese manufacturing industry, and of the Chinese economy and culture more broadly. Where Underpants Come From is an engaging read and is sometimes quite funny but I found Bennett's innocent-abroad persona a bit grating after a while. He seems to feel that because he is an amateur that he doesn't really need to go beyond superficial insights or do much research. While it's interesting to read about his experiences in remote parts of China, I couldn't help but think that there must be more thoughtful books on Chinese culture available.

I've also finished Michael Chabon's books of essays called Maps and Legends. Those of you who follow this blog will know that I love Chabon's fiction and I was happy to find that I also enjoy his thoughts on other people's writing and the process of being a writer. Chabon has twin fixations, genre fiction and his Jewish heritage, and he brings together these elements in the fantastic final essay entitled Golems I Have Known, or Why My Elder Son's Middle Name is Napoleon. In the essay he uses the idea of the golem as a metaphor for creating fiction and he plays with the idea of truth and its relationship to fiction. Other essays cover such topics as Arthur Conan Doyle, the short story, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, Cormac McCarthy's The Road and various moments in the author's own creative life. I found myself agreeing with Chabon's championing of genre fiction and, as always, enjoying his writing style and humour. In one particular passage Chabon writes about the influence of science fiction on his own writing in a particularly lovely way:

I wanted to tell stories, the kind with set pieces and long descriptive passages, and "round" characters, and beginnings and middles and ends. And I wanted to instill- or rather I didn't want to lose- that quality, inherent in the best science fiction, that was sometimes called "the sense of wonder." If my subject matter couldn't do it- if I wasn't writing about people who sailed through neutron stars or harnessed suns together- then it was going to fall to my sentences themselves to open up the heads of my readers and decant into them enough crackling plasma to light up the eye sockets for a week.

Happily, I think he has achieved that rather ambitious aim.

I'm now half-way through Jonathan Franzen's The Discomfort Zone: A Personal History which is a collection of autobiographical essays, so far mostly about Franzen's rather fraught and anxious childhood and adolescence. There are some similarities to the Chabon book; both authors share a middle class, suburban upbringing and are roughly the same age, and both tend to write in a slightly self-mocking but ultimately confident style. However, where Chabon focuses on writing and books, both his own and those of others who have influenced him, Franzen's book is much more a straight down the line autobiography. So far I'm really enjoying The Discomfort Zone. Franzen has a way of capturing the painful awkwardness of adolescence that I could really relate to. He also captures the relationship between a child and their parents so accurately that it made me wince. These are the same things I remember liking about The Corrections and so I imagine fans of that book would enjoy this smaller, more intimate and personal piece of writing.

When I finish Franzen, I'm determined to get back into some fiction so top of the list is M.J. Hyland's Carry Me Down which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize last year (or the year before?). I have to admit though, I have enjoyed my little side trip into non-fiction and I might well find myself back here before long.

Moments in History

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne are two books for young readers that share their basis in tragic periods from history. I read both books recently and was struck by some of their similarities. Both books share a sense of dread and fear, and both raise the issue of how brutal events in history might be mediated for younger readers.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry was first published in 1976. It tells the story of the Logans, a black family who are struggling to survive in the Deep South of America during the depression. The story is told from the viewpoint of Cassie Logan, a young girl who is on the cusp of realising that she lives in a society that views her and her family as second class citizens. Cassie's proud family have worked hard to protect her and her siblings from the racism of the world around her, but as she begins to interact with a more adult world there is no way that she can remain in blissful ignorance. The Logan family have fought hard to buy their own piece of land, therefore maintaining more independence than a lot of other families who work as share-croppers in the area. Unfortunately their independence also makes the Logans a target for local whites who are angry that they are getting 'above their station'.

Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry owes a debt to Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird which was published the decade before Taylor's novel. They share a young female narrator and an episodic plot structure that mixes amusing anecdotes with a more serious plot line that slowly builds throughout the novel. Roll of Thunder however has something that Mockingbird doesn't have, and that is a real sense of danger and impending doom. The fact that this is a novel told from the perspective of a black family means that we as readers are central to the action. In To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout herself was never likely to be the victim of racism but Cassie Logan runs some very real risks when she stands up for herself. To my mind, Mockingbird is the better of the two novels but there is certainly a place for both in the canon of American literature.

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry tells a story that it is important for young people to hear. Taylor balances out the moments of despair and fear however by ensuring that there is still a sense of hope in the novel. For me, that sense of hope is really important when writing for young people, especially readers who might not be able to put such events into perspective on their own.

***Spoiler ahead***
It is this sense of hope that is almost totally absent from The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. John Boyne's novel is about the holocaust and tells the tale of a small boy, Bruno, whose family move to the mysterious 'Out-with' (Bruno's pronunciation) at the behest of the very important man known to Bruno as 'the Fury'. Bruno's father has been hired to run the camp that adult readers will recognise immediately as Auschwitz.

Ostensibly this is a novel for quite young readers- the protagonist is 9 years old and the story is simple and almost fairy-tale like. Of course, this is no fairy-tale and adult readers will know that things aren't going to end well for Bruno and Schmuel, the friend Bruno makes who lives behind the fence.

It's not that I think that children should be protected completely from awful moments in our history, however what I do object to is the way this book lures children in with a sweet and innocent tone, only to hit them with an absolutely devastating and, let's face it, unrealistic ending. While no-one with an understanding of history would expect things to go well for Schmuel, Boyne adds in a twist in which Bruno himself becomes a victim of the holocaust. Bruno's death, the book seems to suggest, is only fair given that his father is responsible for systematic genocide. This seems a particularly brutal way for the author to make his point.

If we are going to expose children to the horror of the holocaust, is it too much to ask that it at least be historically accurate? Even the central premise, Bruno's friendship with Schmuel is extremely unrealistic. There are lots of books about this period in history that present the material in a more honest and open way. Anne Frank's diary springs to mind as perhaps more suitable for young readers.

When I think back to myself at 9 years of age, I think The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas would have been unreasonably disturbing. I think we owe it to young children to be honest with them and while Boyne's intentions are noble I don't think his book serves a useful purpose in the way that it makes a really awful part of history even more disturbing for such a young audience.

Catching Up

There's been lots of reading and not much blogging happening around here lately so it seems time for a bit of a round up post.

I'm reading a couple of interesting books for school at the moment. I just finished Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor and am working my through John Boyne's The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. Both are young adult novels that deal with terrible, tragic times in history: segregation in the American South in the 1920's and Nazi Germany, respectively. The two books are very different in style but there are some striking similarities so I'm planning a proper post on these two together.

I'm also reading Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, which I'm ashamed to admit I've never read before. The play rollicks along but it seems to me the very obvious anti-semitism makes this a tricky one to stage today. In the front of my edition there's an interesting essay by the Australian actor John Bell on how he approached the challenges of playing Shylock without resorting to negative stereotypes. It really made me want to see a thoughtful production of the play.

I finally finished Carter Beats the Devil, Glen David Gold's gorgeously magical depiction of the world of, well, magic in San Francisco in the early part of the twentieth century. Watch this space for a proper review soon.

Now I'm getting stuck into Tim Winton's collection of inter-linked short stories The Turning for my book club and just loving it even though I'm only a few stories in. There is just something about the way Winton captures Australian speech patterns and rural Australian landscapes that I find irresistible.

Finally, I've bought some wonderful new books over the past week. I bought a very beautiful copy of Michael Chabon's collection of essays called Maps and Legends. Honestly the multi-layered cover is so gorgeous that I can hardly bear to open this one, but of course I will because of my newly found love of all things Chabon. I also got some great bargains at an academic remainders store in my city: a crime fiction novel by Australian author Peter Temple called Black Tide, Margaret Atwood's book on writing called Negotiating with the Dead and a great little collection of poetry called Out of Fashion which is edited by poet Carol Ann Duffy (all the poems are about fashion, dressing or undressing, and a range of contemporary poets have each submitted a poem of their own and one from 'another time' which all makes for a great range of interesting poems).

All this makes me think how lovely it is to have a really enticing pile of books in the house and almost makes up for the winter chill that has descended in full force this week.

The Quiet American

I have recently converted to being a Graham Greene fan as a result of his small but perfectly formed novel, The Quiet American. I had read some Graham Greene before (Our Man in Havana) and was not particularly drawn in by his writing, although I could see that technically it was good. The Quiet American, however, really blew me away.

The Quiet American is narrated by the main character Fowler, a middle-aged English reporter who is living in Vietnam in the 1950s. The events take place during the war against the French colonialists just prior to American involvement in the Vietnam War. The 'quiet American' of the title is young aid-worker Pyle who meets Fowler and promptly falls in love with Fowler's beautiful young Vietnamese girlfriend Phuong. Despite their conflict over Phuong, Fowler and Pyle are friends, of a sort. However as Fowler begins to discover more about Pyle's actual work in Vietnam, their friendship becomes untenable and events reach a dramatic climax.

Fowler makes much of his role as a reporter (as opposed to a commentator). He tries to remain detached from the war that he reports on, refusing to take sides. This proves difficult though, especially when Fowler is confronted by horrific violence and bloodshed. For the reader, there are constant questions of how true Fowler's claims of detachment are. How much does losing Phuong colour Fowler's attitude to Pyle? And, since the story is told in hindsight, how much does Fowler's later knowledge of Pyle effect his retelling of the story? By the novel's climactic end, Fowler is forced to takes sides and realises that efforts to remain neutral are futile. He has realised that even doing nothing is in itself an act of choosing sides.

Greene contrasts Fowler's cynicism and detachment from events with Pyle's naive belief that he can understand and change the situation in Vietnam. Pyle stands as a kind of American 'everyman' in the novel. He has wildly optimistic and confident views about America's role in Vietnam and fails to read the subtleties of the situation. Fowler sees Pyle as dangerous in his innocence, describing innocence as a kind of 'insanity'. Pyle is less innocent than he seems but also more dangerous. His simplistic idealism reflects the kind of attitudes that got the US bogged down in an unwinnable war. Pyle is America on a post-WWII high, determined that the rest of the world share the democratic freedoms that they have. This is not in itself such a terrible goal, but is certainly one that can (and did) have devastating consequences.

The Quiet American is so successful partly because it is so relevant to modern conflicts. It foreshadows America's involvement in Vietnam and the quagmire of the war in Iraq. In fact, it stands as a useful metaphor of any nation hoping to blindly march in and show another country how it should live.

Graham Greene doesn't do great female characters and Phuong is very thinly drawn. Perhaps she is meant to represent Vietnam- she is a victim of the manipulation of others but in the end she endures, quiet and unknowable but unchangeable in a way. This is a small criticism though because Greene's real focus is the central relationship in the novel, the friendship between Fowler and Pyle. I find it hard to bring to mind a novel that so accurately depicts a male friendship. Theirs is an incredibly complex relationship. At times it seems that Fowler barely even likes Pyle but the final lines of the book, in which Fowler wishes he could talk to Pyle about what has happened, are incredibly moving.

There is so much in this novel and it is told with such beautiful simplicity. There is something astonishing in a novel that evokes a time and place so strongly and yet is so relevant to contemporary world politics. The Quiet American is a classic, and deservedly so.

Wonder Boys

What is it that I loved so much about Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys? It's hard to capture now that I try to write my thoughts down. In fact, I think it's the books that I really love that I find the hardest to blog about perhaps because it's those books that are hardest to disect and analyse. Part of me wants to keep the experience of reading Wonder Boys whole and untouched. On the other hand, I want to rave about a book that I love and encourage others to read it in the hope that they have the same experience. So here goes...

One thing that I love about this book is that it is so totally different in subject matter to the two other Chabon books I've read. Compared to the noirish detective fiction of The Yiddish Policemen's Union or the epic adventure of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, it could have been written by someone else. And yet... there is a certain consistency of style and language that Chabon maintains despite his amazingly wide-ranging subject matter. He writes with such confidence, with long winding sentences that never trip over themselves and feel fresh and honest and clever and... ok, I'm getting too breathily enthusiastic now.

So what's Wonder Boys actually about? The narrator is Grady Tripp, a writer and academic who has written some very successful novels in the past but finds himself now stuck on an unfinishable novel called 'Wonder Boys'. Rather than writers' block, Grady has a kind of writers' diarrhoea and his draft has reached colossal proportions with no end in sight after seven years of writing. Grady is forced to confront his failure to complete the novel (and the possibility that maybe 'Wonder Boys' isn't really very good) when his debaucherous, lecherous, old friend and editor Terry Crabtree (played by Robert Downey Jr in the film version- what perfect casting!) arrives in town for a literary festival and to see when the book will be ready.

At the same time Grady finds himself tied up in the worries of his student James Leer, a troubled and talented young writer, and his mistress who just happens to be dean of the university and is also pregnant with Grady's child.

What follows is a few days of complete chaos as Grady, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, stumbles from one disaster to the next. There's a dead dog to dispose of, a shoot out, a stolen car, a wife who has left him, a Passover dinner, Marilyn Monroe memorabilia, booze, cigarettes, dope, and all the while the sneaking suspicion that Terry will uncover the truth about the unfinished manuscript in Grady's study.

Despite the chaotic messiness of the plot, Chabon never lets his material get away from him. This book is never self-indulgent and its free-wheeling plot is actually cleverly constructed to build the picture of a character who has lost control of his life. Chabon writes very well about writing in Wonder Boys, capturing the way we can lose perspective on our own work. Through the character of student James Leer he explores the constructedness of writing- James lives through old movies and uses them to construct much of his writing and, it is revealed, his life.

There is such a wonderful use of humour in this book as Grady's adventures descend into the ridiculous, but there is also a wonderful humanity. Chabon never loses sight of his characters, and while they might land themselves in cartoonish scenarios, they themselves never become cartoons.

This is a really hard book for me to describe mostly because I just loved it so much, and I'm not sure I've done it justice here. The most I can say really is go out and read it yourself if you haven't done so already.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union

Okay, I'll admit it. I'm in love with Michael Chabon. How did I not see this before when I read The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and thought it was only 'pretty good'? Clearly I was in denial because after reading The Yiddish Policemen's Union for my book club and then quickly following it with Wonder Boys, I can't believe I wasn't raving about Chabon years ago.

The Yiddish Policemen's Union is Chabon's take on genre fiction, in this case the hard-boiled detective novel. All the usual factors are there: the troubled maverick detective, a body in the first chapter, crosses and double crosses and a plot that moves along at a cracking pace. Chabon works his magic to make something new out of this familiar terrain. The main way he does this is by setting his novel in a re-imagined world, one in which a homeland for Jews is established after World War II in Sitka, Alaska. Tension is created by the imminent 'reversion' in which the homeland will be returned to the US and the 'frozen chosen' of Sitka will be out on their ear.

The novel begins with the murder of a young, chess-playing heroin addict in a cheap dive of a hotel which also happens to be where detective Meyer Landsman is currently residing. Landsman becomes obsessed with solving the crime, despite the more pressing concerns of his own mess of a life, and it leads him into the dark and secretive world of the Verbover sect, a group of devout and corrupt Jews with their own plans for survival after they are kicked out of Sitka.

The plot is fast and clever but it is Chabon's use of language that really sucked me in. He channels Raymond Chandler and his ilk but then gives it a twist of his own. This is smart, funny writing that still has real emotional pull. Here's a taste from early in the book, introducing the main character:

According to doctors, therapists, and his ex-wife, Landsman drinks to medicate himself, tuning the tubes and crystals of his moods with a crude hammer of hundred-proof plum brandy. But the truth is that Meyer Landsman has only two moods: working and dead... He has the memory of convict, the balls of a fireman, and the eyesight of a housebreaker. When there is crime to fight, Landsman tears around Sitka like a man with his pant leg caught on a rocket. It's like there's a film score playing behind him, heavy on the castanets. The problem comes in the hours when he isn't working, when his thoughts start blowing out the open window of his brain like pages from a blotter. Sometimes it takes a heavy paperweight to pin them down.

Chabon also litters the text with his own brand of Yiddish slang that gives the alternative world that he has created a feeling of authenticity. It is this attention to detail that makes Sitka really come to life.

There is a certain strange freedom with writing within an established genre. Rather than it being formulaic, I think a good writer uses the shared understanding between reader and writer to leap-frog straight into more interesting territory. In genre fiction there is less time spent on establishing just what the book is and more time getting on with the really interesting stuff. Or that's what Chabon manages anyway. Sure, there are plenty of badly written crime novels, but there's lots of really turgid 'literary fiction' and the whole snobbishness around genre fiction is really undeserved, especially when you read a crime novel as good as this.

In my next post: why Michael Chabon's Wonder Boys is my new favourite book. Yes, folks, it's definitely love...

Coming out of hibernation

The days are short and fresh. The nights, long and cold. It's mid-winter and that means report writing, head-colds and that feeling that this month will never end. But finally on the last day of June, I've found time for a catch up post. Rather than go through each book in its own proper review, I think I'll just sum up my recent reading.

I bought The Greatest Man in Cedar Hole by Stephanie Doyon for no other reason than that it had a great cover. I should have known that wouldn't work out so well. It's not that I didn't like this book but it rather felt like time in my life that could have been better spent (on a really good book, say). Doyon peoples her novel about a small and miserable backwoods town in the US with a cast of unlikeable characters. It's not just me, she spends time telling the reader that Cedar Hole is full of losers, which frankly does not make for an exciting reading experience. I don't have to love the characters in a novel but I have to be interested in them. Doyon is a capable writer and there are some interesting moments in the novel. I just don't think this book knows what it wants to be. While Doyon seems to be aiming for a comic novel, some of the quite dark and serious subject matter breaks the mood and left me feeling unsatisfied.

On the hand, I absolutely loved The Yiddish Policemen's Union by Michael Chabon. I really can't sum this up and do it any justice so I'll break my word and leave this one for a longer review. Just trust me that it's fantastic.

Finally, I quickly devoured Stephanie Meyer's young adult vampire novel Twilight over the weekend. This novel has been huge amongst girls in the age group that I teach. I would have loved it as a 13 year old but unfortunately it seemed a bit thin to this jaded adult. The novel is about Bella Swan, a teenager who moves to a small town in Washington where she meets and falls for the mysterious and devastatingly handsome Edward Cullen. Surprise, surprise, Edward's not like other boys. It takes about five minutes to work out he's a vampire and about another five to get sick of the total power imbalance between Edward, the dangerous vampire with super strength, and the frail, accident-prone and completely trusting heroine, Bella. Give me Buffy the Vampire Slayer any day. At least it was obvious in that show why a centuries old vampire might find the teenage girl interesting as anything other than food (and satisfying to know she could beat him if it came to a fight). Still there is plenty of seething sexual tension (very inoffensively portrayed) to explain the huge appeal this book has to its audience. Try Peeps by Scott Westerfeld if you want an example of how this sort of thing really ought to be done.

Hearts and Minds

One thing I enjoy about fiction is the ability it has to show you a part of the world that you know little about. Sometimes a novel can make you feel like a true insider in a way that few other mediums can, by making you feel you inhabit a place and time completely. Hearts and Minds by Rosy Thornton was one such novel for me. In this novel, Thorton reveals some of the workings of the cloistered and arcane world of life in a Cambridge University college, a world seems quite strange to the outsider.

The fictional St Radegund's College is a women's college that has, for the first time ever, appointed a male head of the house. The new 'mistress' is James Rycarte a former tv journalist and foreign correspondent. Rycarte's position as an outsider is a useful device for explaining the complex world of the college to the reader. Through the course of the novel Rycarte comes to understand the peculiarities of the college, with its balance between different academic factions and a fiery student council, and the many obscure traditions and protocols of the centuries old college.

The other central character in the novel is Martha Pearce, dedicated Senior Tutor at St Radegund's, mother to a worringly aimless daughter, wife to a hopelessly self-centred husband and ultimate peace-maker and diplomat in the quagmire of inter-personal relations between staff at the college. Martha and James find a connection at once and together they negotiate various crises, including a student rent strike and the ethical dilemma of accepting a wealthy Italian parent's enormous financial donation.

For me, Martha was the most convincing character in the novel. There was something about her constant feeling that she can never do enough for her family or in her demanding job that seemed to ring true. Her efforts to hold together her marriage to her lay-about poet husband were frustrating but all too believable, as was the difficulty she has watching her daughter fall ever further into depression.

Hearts and Minds is fairly light reading. It isn't trying to be anything terribly deep and meaningful, the cover even hints that the book might be aimed at the (cringe) 'chick lit' market. Fortunately Thornton avoids the major pitfalls of that genre and does not sink into sentimentality. There is the suggestion of a romance that is very nicely resolved at the novel's end. The plot is restrained, maybe at times a little too restrained. I don't think it would have hurt to inject a little more drama into the story, but it's a small quibble with what is essentially an enjoyable read.

This novel was kindly provided to this delicious solitude by the author.

Victoriana

Hot on the heels of having read Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, I recently found myself reading yet another modern take on the Victorian novel. Sarah Waters' novel Fingersmith is a rip-roaring yarn set in 19th century England. Waters draws on the tradition of social realism, combining it with a good dose of the Gothic, to create a page-turner of a novel. The plot flies along, taking the reader on what is a pretty entertaining ride. This is a Victorian novel seen through a contemporary lens. Characters swear and have sex, something that doesn't happen much in Dickens.

Waters writes skillfully and entertainingly but at times this book stretched the bounds of believability for me. Somehow everything works out a little too neatly and the coincidences and connections are forced at times. I found the experience of reading Fingersmith very much like reading Waters' more recent novel Nightwatch. Both were great fun but neither really stayed me. Waters' writing seem to promise something that it doesn't quite deliver. Fingersmith plays around the edges of some really interesting ideas, such as the role of women and women's sexuality in Victorian England, but it never quite soars for me. I'm interested enough in Waters' writing though to want to read her novels in the future, just to see if they ever really fly.

A bit of this, a bit of that

The new school term started on Monday and, as usual, that means not much time for reading or blog-writing in this part of the world. However the beautiful autumn weather (we even had dusting of snow on the surrounding hills the other day!) bodes well for cosy indoor activities ahead.

I've been slowly making my way through Tristram Shandy, a book that I am finding quite easy to read in fits and starts because that is how it is written. It is funny and playful, but at the same time I think Sterne creates some wonderful characters. Uncle Toby is my favourite so far, with his unwavering obsession with the battle that left him, well, not quite all man.

I also squeezed in a quick read for my book group which met last week- Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson. This is a short novel, translated from the Norwegian, about a man, Trond, reflecting on some of the formative experiences of his youth. It is written in a very distinctive style. There are long, almost dream-like sentences, describing the idyllic Norwegian countryside of Trond's youth, and the countryside that he has now returned to as an ageing man. Petterson describes the simple physical tasks of rural life with great beauty. I could almost feel I was there.

As with all literature in translation, I sometimes wondered how much of the word choice was down to the translation process. Sometimes there is a slight awkwardness to the words and the phrasing, but it suits the character of Trond and I like to think it would be there in the original too.

Out Stealing Horses has a fairly pedestrian, coming-of-age plot, that falls into cliche at times. I won't give away too much here but when Trond's father's secrets are revealed I thought it was all a bit too predictable. In some ways the plot doesn't live up to Petterson's skillful descriptions and thoughtful insights into character. Still, this is an enjoyable read and a reminder that they do write novels that aren't crime fiction in Scandinavia.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke was just such a pleasure to read. It's not often that a book is enjoyable in so many ways. From the thick creamy paper of the cover, with its gorgeous font, to the quaint charcoal illustrations, the book itself is a sensory experience. And that's nothing compared to how fun it is to actually read this novel.

Susanna Clarke creates a world in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell that is utterly believable. The novel takes place in a version of 19th century England which is much like the one we know, except that this England has a history of magic dating back to a golden age in the middle ages. The tradition of 'English magic' has fallen into decline and it is the aim of magicians Gilbert Norrell and Jonathan Strange to restore its proper place in English life.

Primarily, Clarke is concerned with the characters in her novel. She doesn't get carried away with the whizz-bang fireworks aspects of fantasy and magic (well, maybe she does a little towards the end, but by then the reader is so convinced by the characters and wrapped up in the plot that they would follow her almost anywhere). The novel centres around the two magicians of the title. Norrell is a bookish, scholarly type who is secretive and suspicious about the motives of others. His aim is to hoard away knowledge about magic so that it won't fall into the 'wrong' hands. Unfortunately he is also ambitious, and in trying to win himself a position of authority with the government he uses a dangerous form of magic to bring a woman back to life, leading to all manner of strife.

Jonathan Strange on the other hand is gregarious and likeable, but with a tendency to take risks and to be attracted to the darker side of magic. He seeks out Norrell as a tutor and, although he finds Norrell infuriating at times, the two compliment each other and form a strong bond. It is only when they are separated by Strange's posting at Wellington's side during his war with the French (magic proving very helpful in battle) that cracks begin to show in their relationship.

This is the kind of fantasy novel that Charles Dickens might have written had it ever occurred to him to write fantasy. While this is unapologetically a fantasy novel, the genre that it has most in common with is the 19th century novel. Clarke draws on the 19th century both for setting and style. The humour and naming of characters struck me as very Dickensian, and there is a touch of Austen to the depiction of social relationships and manners. Surprisingly this pairing of genres really works to create something which, to my mind at least, is quite new and refreshing, although I'll admit to not being a big reader of fantasy so maybe this has been done many times before!

At almost 800 pages Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell is a long novel, but it is to Clarke's credit that it never feels long. I was totally swept up in the world that she creates and can't imagine how this novel could be shorter. In fact, I wished it could have gone on longer! I can't recommend this novel highly enough and will definitely be reading more of Clarke's work in the future.

Starting Tristram Shandy

I have finally begun reading The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (to give it its full, very 18th century title) by Laurence Sterne. It's slow reading so far, but still lots of fun. I find myself constantly looking up the footnotes at the back of the book. I so much prefer it when the footnotes are on the same page- it's still distracting but at least you don't have to be leafing back and forwards all the time. I suppose I could just skip the notes but my curiosity gets the better of me each time and I worry that I'm missing something crucial.

I seem to have digressed into discussing the footnotes when I wanted to write about how funny this book is. It's probably the influence of Tristram Shandy that has me losing my thread; the story is full of constant digressions with only the slightest nod to a narrative structure. The novel is, however, very funny and often very, very rude. I love that about 15 pages in the narrator finally finishes his dedication and then offers it up for sale:

If therefore there is any one Duke, Marquis, Earl, Viscount or Baron, in these his Majesty's dominions, who stands in need of a tight, genteel dedication, and whom the above will suit, (for bye the bye, unless it suits in some degree I will not part with it)- it is much at his service for fifty guineas;- which I am positive is twenty guineas less than it ought to be afforded for, by any man of genius.

Hopefully I can keep up the momentum with this book, it requires quite a lot of concentration, at least for my poor brain, but will be worth it in the end I know.

I've also just finished Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and am trying to put together a post that in some way captures the wonderful-ness of it.

On Chesil Beach

Warning: Spoiler ahead.

She watched him, willing him to go slower, for she was guiltily afraid of him, and was desperate for more time to herself. Whatever conversation they were about to have, she dreaded it. As she understood it, there were no words to name what had happened, there existed no shared language in which two sane adults could describe such events to each other.

This section occurs about two thirds of the way through Ian McEwan's novella On Chesil Beach and it really gets to the heart of what the book is about. Edward and Florence are on their wedding night. It's 1962, before the sexual revolution, and things do not go well. Both are crippled by nerves and fears about sex and it is their lack of a shared language to speak about such things that creates a disastrous situation.

On Chesil Beach is a painful reading experience, not because it is badly written at all, but because of the awful awkwardness, fear and shame that both characters feel on their wedding night. On top of their inability to discuss their fears about sex, McEwan also includes a class conflict: Florence is from a batter educated and wealthier family than Edward. This class issue is emphasised during the intense emotion of their first (unsuccessful) attempt to have sex and to my mind, it is partly Edward's feelings of inferiority that mean he cannot understand what Florence is really feeling.

McEwan centres the entire novel around one short evening but this never feels limiting or claustrophobic. This is because he uses the wedding night as a springboard from which to explore the two main characters' backgrounds and childhoods. There is a dark hinting at some sort of sexual abuse in Florence's childhood that helped me to believe in what seemed at first an unreasonable fear of any sexual contact with Edward, who she clearly loves desperately. Edward it seems is determined to do what he feels he is supposed to do, what society expects of him, and thus cannot consider any suggestion of other ways that he and Florence might organise their married life.

It is no surprise then that things don't end well for the couple, although part of me was happy that they were able to go off and explore beyond the confines of what seemed a rather limiting relationship. McEwan describes the rest of Edward's life but I wanted to know more about Florence and whether she ever did have a satisfying sexual relationship, although I suspect she doesn't. Some readers have criticised the lack of historical accuracy in the novel and it does seem lax of McEwan to not get at least the simplest facts correct such as when albums were released and so on, but for me this was not a barrier to enjoying the story. In the end I felt as though he might have exaggerated circumstances somewhat. To my mind, the shame of a failed marriage and divorce would have been a pretty compelling reason for characters as conservative as Edward and Florence to stay together, but on the other hand I can see that they had reached a point of no return.

On Chesil Beach is a reminder of the terrible price of ignorance. I finished this book feeling so thankful that I have grown up in a world that values openness and education about sex so that hopefully none of my peers experience anything like what McEwan's characters go through. Thankfully we now do have that shared language that Florence and Edward so desperately needed.