A week on and the dust has settled on this year's Booker Long List announcement. For the most part, it has been well received but, as always, there has been the odd grumble about what was (and wasn't) on the list. In usual Bookworm style, I'll just weigh in where I'm not wanted.
The Sour Grapes Of Wrath
So your favourite author missed out? Boo hoo. So did mine. Not that I expected J. M. Coetzee to really get a look in with his decent but nowhere-near-as-good-as-his-early-stuff The Childhood of Jesus. Sure, I still long for my favourite living author to pull the first Booker hat trick, but if there's one thing I hate more than missing out it's someone getting a gold watch award (you listening John Banville?). I suspect that is exactly what Margaret Attwood was pinning her hopes on for Maddaddam, the final instalment in her fascinating Oryx and Crake trilogy. I'd have loved to see a sci-fi novel take the gong but, future time machine acrobatics notwithstanding, it was never going to happen. At least she it won aeons ago for The Blind Assassin.
Lots more whinging abounds with the passing over of Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche, Roddy Doyle (following up The Commitments sans soundtrack), David Peace, and two very well-received novels in Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden and Kate Atkinson's Life After Life (will she ever be taken seriously by the establishment?). If you're gunning for any of these, don't fret. You can still rush down to your local bookie and place a few dollars/pounds/shekels on The Folio Prize. As Boyd Tonkin, observed in The Independent, the Folio judges have "a banquet of Booker absentees to consider."
Is The Testament Of Mary A Novel?
It is the question that pops up every few years: How long must a book be to qualify as a novel? When Ian McEwan won for Amsterdam, the curmudgeons in the audience choked on their cigars. The bloody thing came in at under two hundred pages. We all know, however, that it was the consolation Booker, given to assuage a country's collective guilt that the poor guy hadn't won it for the infinitely greater Enduring Love. Ergo, we all forgave him pretty quickly. Then the smug prick had the audacity to do it again with On Chesil Beach only this time he had upped the ante. That books was only one hundred and sixty six pages. Thankfully, we needn't have worried. Nobody is allowed two consolation Bookers, even if Atonement probably should have won five years beforehand. Then again, perhaps he shot himself in the foot with the atrocious Saturday, a book that sat between the other two works like a barbed wire enema.
The novella really came into its own when Julian Barnes pipped a shortlist of bargain bin wannabes with The Sense Of An Ending. At only one hundred and sixty pages, it had encyclopaedia buffs up in arms. I, on the other hand, loved it. Indeed, in a year of spectacular ordinariness (thanks Stella Rimington), it was the only book that could have won if the Booker wasn't about to be turned into a joke. It also must have given hope to Donal Ryan who is long listed this year for the equally brief The Spinning Heart. Not that anyone is on his back about it. The Booker virgin has been trumped by serial list-humper Colm Toibin, who's The Testament of Mary is only one hundred and twelve pages. In other words, you can read it on the toilet without anyone thinking you've fallen in. Personally, I don't see what the fuss is about. Mary is a fully realised, brilliantly executed piece of fiction, wider in scope and deeper of heart than at least a third of the other long listed works. I didn't close it and think, "Nice short story, Colm." Sure, it isn't Proust, but would you question the value of Camus's The Stranger (128 pages) or Orwell's Animal Farm (125 pages)? And how long is a piece of string exactly?
For That Matter is The Kills A Novel?
The novella controversy has been eclipsed by a much more modern concern: Can an exercise in multimedia reading constitute a novel? Richard House's The Kills is testing the boundaries of contemporary fiction (in the Booker sense). Not only is it really four books in one - its thousand-odd pages are made up of four separate novels - but it continuously guides the reader to online content that isn't in the physical book. The judging panel have said that they will only be looking at what's between the covers but that seems to be doing the work an injustice. Make up your mind team Booker. Either you accept multimedia and judge the book as a whole or you make some archaic decision to ban works that rely on online content (as opposed to online stuff that is essentially just promo). Perhaps The Kills is just the toe-in-the-water, setting some precedent for a not-too-distant future in which online content will be a common part of the literary landscape.
When Did The Commonwealth Reclaim America?
Ok, I get that America has stuffed a lot of things up lately, but do the poms really need to take it back? Apparently so, if this long list is anything to go by. Otherwise, it's pretty hard to explain the inclusion of Ruth Ozecki or Jhumpa Lahiri. Don't get me wrong. I really like both of them. But Ozecki is American born, to American and Japanese parents. She spends half her time in America. For six months a year, she hangs out in Canada. Is that enough to justify her annexation by the Prince George Alexander Louis fan club? At least Lahiri was born in London, the daughter of Indian immigrants. That's double Commonwealth cred points. However she moved Stateside when she was two and now identifies as an Indian American. Clearly the Yanks takes her for one of their own. She won The Pulitzer Prize. At what point, then, can we consider the umbilical cord well and truly cut? I kind of hope she wins just to be the only author ever to win both the Pulitzer and Booker. Then she can make a triumphant, albeit brief stopover in Australia just so she's eligible for The Miles Franklin. The possibilities are endless.
The Booker Long List: Cracey Cracey Nights
on Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Well, if you've been on book mars or hiding under some form of Royal Baby rock you might have missed the announcement of this year's Booker Prize long list today. It's a pretty even handed affair - eclectic, seemingly readable, a nice mix of populist and literary fiction. The judges have clearly paid heed to the criticisms levelled against their predecessors. No doubt the appearance of two new major prizes on the literary landscape has also been weighing on their minds.
Once again it's a case of big hitters (Lahiri, Ozecki, Aw, McCann) being pitted against some lesser known upstarts (Bulawayo, Harris, Ryan). I'm particularly excited about two of the titles that got a nod: Harvest by Jim Crace and The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. I haven't read the latter but this young New Zealander's last novel, The Rehearsal, was one of the best debuts that I have ever read. As for Crace, well, the guy really is my sentimental favourite. Leaving aside my love for his early work (Quarantine, Continent, Arcadia - which, of course are offset by the sheer awfulness of some of his more recent stuff) and his announcement earlier this year that he is retiring from writing, Harvest is a wonderful book that deserves the Booker more than many of the books that have actually won it over the past few years. Also, props for the inclusion of Colm Toibin's brilliant The Testament of Mary, which I feared the committee would snub given its brevity.
Anyway, for those who can't be bothered hitting the website, the full Booker Dozen is:
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate)
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta)
Harvest by Jim Crace (Picador)
The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris (Sandstone Press)
The Kills by Richard House (Picador)
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)
Unexploded by Alison MacLeod ( Hamish Hamilton)
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)
Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson (Mantle)
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland)
The Testament of Mary Colm Tóibín (Viking)
Once again it's a case of big hitters (Lahiri, Ozecki, Aw, McCann) being pitted against some lesser known upstarts (Bulawayo, Harris, Ryan). I'm particularly excited about two of the titles that got a nod: Harvest by Jim Crace and The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton. I haven't read the latter but this young New Zealander's last novel, The Rehearsal, was one of the best debuts that I have ever read. As for Crace, well, the guy really is my sentimental favourite. Leaving aside my love for his early work (Quarantine, Continent, Arcadia - which, of course are offset by the sheer awfulness of some of his more recent stuff) and his announcement earlier this year that he is retiring from writing, Harvest is a wonderful book that deserves the Booker more than many of the books that have actually won it over the past few years. Also, props for the inclusion of Colm Toibin's brilliant The Testament of Mary, which I feared the committee would snub given its brevity.
Anyway, for those who can't be bothered hitting the website, the full Booker Dozen is:
Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate)
We Need New Names by NoViolet Bulawayo (Chatto & Windus)
The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton (Granta)
Harvest by Jim Crace (Picador)
The Marrying of Chani Kaufman by Eve Harris (Sandstone Press)
The Kills by Richard House (Picador)
The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri (Bloomsbury)
Unexploded by Alison MacLeod ( Hamish Hamilton)
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann (Bloomsbury)
Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson (Mantle)
A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki (Canongate)
The Spinning Heart by Donal Ryan (Doubleday Ireland)
The Testament of Mary Colm Tóibín (Viking)
Microviews Vol. 35: The Trans-Pacific Longhaul Edition
on Sunday, July 14, 2013
Well, I just made the trip from America back home to Oz. I don't sleep on planes, so here's the fruit of my sleepless schlepp.
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Round House shares much with Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird. A young kid (in this case, Joe Coutts) sets about investigating a heinous crime (the rape and attempted murder of his mother) in a deeply divided community (a Native American reservation). Like To Kill A Mockingbird, it is a coming-of-age novel with a heavy conscience. Like To Kill A Mockingbird it is a call to action against systemic injustice; Erdrich examines the jurisdictional impotence of Native law enforcement mechanisms and the patronising conditions under which they operate. Like To Kill A Mockingbird, it builds towards a violent, shocking end. And yet, for all its righteous anger, The Round House just doesn't have the impact (nor, I suspect, the longevity) of Lee's masterpiece.
3.5 Out Of 5 Boo Radleys
The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy
Simon Van Booy doesn't so much write novels as create beautiful wordscapes with disparate, yet related, narrative threads. The Illusion of Separateness is a cleverly woven tapestry of time and place that unfurls around the brief encounter between a downed British pilot and a lone German soldier during World War 2. With prose that borders on the poetic and a story that will warm and break your heart in equal measure, Van Booy has conjured an unusual yet mesmerising reading experience.
4 Out of 5 English Patients
I Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman
My first encounter with Chuck Klosterman was his novel The Visible Man. It kind of sucked and I was left scratching my head as to why the Hipstamatic Generation literally worshipped at his feet. Then I got into his non-fiction and, well, I got pretty close to cutting my hair like a Brooklynite and donning a pair of heavy set tortoiseshell-framed glasses. I Wear The Black Hat sees Klosterman veer away from his usual hunting grounds of popular/music culture to look at the concept of villainy, real and imagined, taking in everyone from Andrew Dice Clay to Kim Dotcom to Judas Iscariot. Although it isn't as consistently funny as some of his previous work, there are plenty of great one liners and each section guarantees at least a knowing smirk. The final three chapters buck the trend - Klosterman will have you choking on your over-priced tacos as he riffs on O.J. Simpson, Hitler and his own personal nemesis, Rick Helling. Had I not forced myself to remember the preceding nine chapters I would have given this a perfect score.
4 Out Of 5 Wacky Races
Eleven Days by Lea Carpenter
Another debut novelist throws her hat into the ring with a book about the war on terror. Don't get too excited, though. This is hardly a Yellow Birds or Pink Mist. The story of a mother awaiting news of her son who has gone missing on a critical mission (probably the one to kill Bin Laden), it flits back and forth in time to give a human face to those that fight and the families that anxiously wait back home. It's moderately engaging but feels more like a US Army PR exercise than serious literature.
3 Out Of 5 Navy Seals
Evil And The Mask by Fuminori Nakamura
Nakamura is all about the seedy side of Japanese life. His previous novel, The Thief, was slick, dark and thoroughly enjoyable. Evil And The Mask follows in the same vein but is considerably less successful. The initial premise is pretty cool: Fumihiro Kuki is bred to be a 'cancer' on the world, a destructive force that makes life worse for everyone he meets. It is a role given to one member of each generation in his family. Unfortunately for his father, Fumihiro is good at heart and resists his transformation into fully fledged monster. That said, his form of rebellion would probably make the old man proud: he kills those that threaten the ones he loves. There's lots of ruminating on the nature of evil, the role of individuals in shaping world catastrophes and the immutibility (or otherwise) of identity. On a theoretical level it is interesting, but as a novel it's all a bit far fetched and needlessly soapboxish.
3 Out Of 5 Face/Offs
The End Of The World In Breslau by Marek Krajewski
Weimar-era Germany isn't exactly the setting you'd expect for a successful detective fiction series, nor does a probable Nazi scream crime fiction anti-hero. Kudos to Krajewski then for out-noiring pretty much everyone else in the game with his Insepctor Mock series. This time round, Mock is pitted against a serial killer who is replicating centuries old murders in 1930s Breslau. The chase is good, ol' fashioned crime fiction fun but strip away the turbulent setting and thoroughly unlikeable detective (he's a drunk, wife-bashing, evidence-planting SOB), and what's left is relatively stock standard for the genre.
3.5 Out Of 5 Iron Crosses
Ergo by Jakov Lind
I have no idea what to make of this book. Oddball recluse Wascholder hides away in his house while trying to destroy his arch nemesis Wurz through a series of increasingly absurd schemes. Keeping him company are his obsessive adopted son and a bedridden lodger. Beyond that it's a deep swamp of cacophonous sludge; a La Brea tar pit with the petrified bodies of Beckett, Kafka, Dali and Jarry. That's not a compliment.
2.5 Out Of 5 Blackened Bananas
The Round House by Louise Erdrich
The Round House shares much with Harper Lee's classic To Kill A Mockingbird. A young kid (in this case, Joe Coutts) sets about investigating a heinous crime (the rape and attempted murder of his mother) in a deeply divided community (a Native American reservation). Like To Kill A Mockingbird, it is a coming-of-age novel with a heavy conscience. Like To Kill A Mockingbird it is a call to action against systemic injustice; Erdrich examines the jurisdictional impotence of Native law enforcement mechanisms and the patronising conditions under which they operate. Like To Kill A Mockingbird, it builds towards a violent, shocking end. And yet, for all its righteous anger, The Round House just doesn't have the impact (nor, I suspect, the longevity) of Lee's masterpiece.
3.5 Out Of 5 Boo Radleys
The Illusion of Separateness by Simon Van Booy
Simon Van Booy doesn't so much write novels as create beautiful wordscapes with disparate, yet related, narrative threads. The Illusion of Separateness is a cleverly woven tapestry of time and place that unfurls around the brief encounter between a downed British pilot and a lone German soldier during World War 2. With prose that borders on the poetic and a story that will warm and break your heart in equal measure, Van Booy has conjured an unusual yet mesmerising reading experience.
4 Out of 5 English Patients
I Wear The Black Hat by Chuck Klosterman
My first encounter with Chuck Klosterman was his novel The Visible Man. It kind of sucked and I was left scratching my head as to why the Hipstamatic Generation literally worshipped at his feet. Then I got into his non-fiction and, well, I got pretty close to cutting my hair like a Brooklynite and donning a pair of heavy set tortoiseshell-framed glasses. I Wear The Black Hat sees Klosterman veer away from his usual hunting grounds of popular/music culture to look at the concept of villainy, real and imagined, taking in everyone from Andrew Dice Clay to Kim Dotcom to Judas Iscariot. Although it isn't as consistently funny as some of his previous work, there are plenty of great one liners and each section guarantees at least a knowing smirk. The final three chapters buck the trend - Klosterman will have you choking on your over-priced tacos as he riffs on O.J. Simpson, Hitler and his own personal nemesis, Rick Helling. Had I not forced myself to remember the preceding nine chapters I would have given this a perfect score.
4 Out Of 5 Wacky Races
Eleven Days by Lea Carpenter
Another debut novelist throws her hat into the ring with a book about the war on terror. Don't get too excited, though. This is hardly a Yellow Birds or Pink Mist. The story of a mother awaiting news of her son who has gone missing on a critical mission (probably the one to kill Bin Laden), it flits back and forth in time to give a human face to those that fight and the families that anxiously wait back home. It's moderately engaging but feels more like a US Army PR exercise than serious literature.
3 Out Of 5 Navy Seals
Evil And The Mask by Fuminori Nakamura
Nakamura is all about the seedy side of Japanese life. His previous novel, The Thief, was slick, dark and thoroughly enjoyable. Evil And The Mask follows in the same vein but is considerably less successful. The initial premise is pretty cool: Fumihiro Kuki is bred to be a 'cancer' on the world, a destructive force that makes life worse for everyone he meets. It is a role given to one member of each generation in his family. Unfortunately for his father, Fumihiro is good at heart and resists his transformation into fully fledged monster. That said, his form of rebellion would probably make the old man proud: he kills those that threaten the ones he loves. There's lots of ruminating on the nature of evil, the role of individuals in shaping world catastrophes and the immutibility (or otherwise) of identity. On a theoretical level it is interesting, but as a novel it's all a bit far fetched and needlessly soapboxish.
3 Out Of 5 Face/Offs
The End Of The World In Breslau by Marek Krajewski
Weimar-era Germany isn't exactly the setting you'd expect for a successful detective fiction series, nor does a probable Nazi scream crime fiction anti-hero. Kudos to Krajewski then for out-noiring pretty much everyone else in the game with his Insepctor Mock series. This time round, Mock is pitted against a serial killer who is replicating centuries old murders in 1930s Breslau. The chase is good, ol' fashioned crime fiction fun but strip away the turbulent setting and thoroughly unlikeable detective (he's a drunk, wife-bashing, evidence-planting SOB), and what's left is relatively stock standard for the genre.
3.5 Out Of 5 Iron Crosses
Ergo by Jakov Lind
I have no idea what to make of this book. Oddball recluse Wascholder hides away in his house while trying to destroy his arch nemesis Wurz through a series of increasingly absurd schemes. Keeping him company are his obsessive adopted son and a bedridden lodger. Beyond that it's a deep swamp of cacophonous sludge; a La Brea tar pit with the petrified bodies of Beckett, Kafka, Dali and Jarry. That's not a compliment.
2.5 Out Of 5 Blackened Bananas
2013: The Mid-Year Report
on Monday, July 1, 2013
A lack of New Years Resolutions means I can keep this nice and short. I've kept to the one I did make - review every book I read. That means 80 reviews done and dusted (I've actually read 81 books, but one is embargoed until October so you'll just have to wait). Of those, three got the full treatment (J.M. Coetzee's The Childhood Of Jesus, Javier Marias's The Infatuations and Iain Banks's final novel, The Quarry) while the rest were reduced to nugget-sized Microviews. Hope you've enjoyed the drippings of sweat from my brow!
Books of The Year (So Far)
The first half of 2013 has provided us booknerds with a veritable carnival of delights. Javier Marias brought us what I consider to be the masterpiece in an already spectacular career with his philosophical murder mystery, The Infatuations. Following a decade of mediocrity, Jim Crace finally proved that he could still pen a killer novel with the historical drama, Harvest. Owen Sheers joined the ranks of Kevin Powers and Karl Marlantes with his remarkable prose poem of the war in Afghanistan, Pink Mist. David Foster Wallace reappeared in spectral form in his wife Karen Green's extraordinary free verse piece about loss and recovery, Bough Down. Colm Toibin gave voice to one of history's most misunderstood women in The Testament Of Mary. And Ken Kalfus had me smiling and scratching my head at his adventurous mathematical romp of human folly, Equilateral.
Discovery Of The Year
It would be remiss of me to neglect to mention my standout discovery of 2013, Goncalo M. Tavares. Although he has not published anything this year, all four books I read were marvellous in their own way and I can't wait until Dalkey Archive get off their lazy arses and translates some of his other stuff. You hear me Dalkey? Don't make me learn Portugeuse.
Books Of Previous Years
Tavares aside, I have read some great books not published in 2013. Carlos Fuentes's Vlad was a playful take on the Dracula myth. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick had my jaw resting firmly on the floor for its entire 530 pages. I was repulsed and compelled in equal parts by Pascal Garnier's masterful crime thriller The A26. Ditto David Vogel's lost classic, Viennese Romance. And, of course, my rereads of Dasa Drndic's Trieste and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle proved just as satisfying the second time around.
The Crystal Ball
Still lots to look forward to this year, with new releases expected from Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, Laszlo Kraznahorkai and William Vollman. I'm also keen to read Elizabeth Silver's The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, Andrew Sean Greer's The Impossible Lives of Greta Welles and Simon Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness. As far as I can tell, those three are short and sweet, which is more than I can say for some of the others I meantioned. Tartt's newy weighs in at almost 800 pages and you'll be needing wrist braces to support all 1100 pages of Coover . It's a strange year when the shortest of the lot comes from serial verbiage-faucet Vollman!
Books of The Year (So Far)
The first half of 2013 has provided us booknerds with a veritable carnival of delights. Javier Marias brought us what I consider to be the masterpiece in an already spectacular career with his philosophical murder mystery, The Infatuations. Following a decade of mediocrity, Jim Crace finally proved that he could still pen a killer novel with the historical drama, Harvest. Owen Sheers joined the ranks of Kevin Powers and Karl Marlantes with his remarkable prose poem of the war in Afghanistan, Pink Mist. David Foster Wallace reappeared in spectral form in his wife Karen Green's extraordinary free verse piece about loss and recovery, Bough Down. Colm Toibin gave voice to one of history's most misunderstood women in The Testament Of Mary. And Ken Kalfus had me smiling and scratching my head at his adventurous mathematical romp of human folly, Equilateral.
Discovery Of The Year
It would be remiss of me to neglect to mention my standout discovery of 2013, Goncalo M. Tavares. Although he has not published anything this year, all four books I read were marvellous in their own way and I can't wait until Dalkey Archive get off their lazy arses and translates some of his other stuff. You hear me Dalkey? Don't make me learn Portugeuse.
Books Of Previous Years
Tavares aside, I have read some great books not published in 2013. Carlos Fuentes's Vlad was a playful take on the Dracula myth. The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick had my jaw resting firmly on the floor for its entire 530 pages. I was repulsed and compelled in equal parts by Pascal Garnier's masterful crime thriller The A26. Ditto David Vogel's lost classic, Viennese Romance. And, of course, my rereads of Dasa Drndic's Trieste and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle proved just as satisfying the second time around.
The Crystal Ball
Still lots to look forward to this year, with new releases expected from Jonathan Lethem, Donna Tartt, Robert Coover, Thomas Pynchon, Laszlo Kraznahorkai and William Vollman. I'm also keen to read Elizabeth Silver's The Execution of Noa P. Singleton, Andrew Sean Greer's The Impossible Lives of Greta Welles and Simon Van Booy's The Illusion of Separateness. As far as I can tell, those three are short and sweet, which is more than I can say for some of the others I meantioned. Tartt's newy weighs in at almost 800 pages and you'll be needing wrist braces to support all 1100 pages of Coover . It's a strange year when the shortest of the lot comes from serial verbiage-faucet Vollman!
Microviews Vol. 34: The Tender Technique
on Sunday, June 30, 2013
The Devil's Workshop by Jachym Topol
A very strange book by the Czech Republic's contemporary master, The Devil's Workshop is both horror and farce, thoroughly enjoyable yet totally despicable. The narrator is mistakenly identified by a weird Belarussian cabal, as the man who 'saved' Terezin and made it a popular destination for Holocaust tourists. Hoping to build a monument of their own, they kidnap him and set him on the task of popularising The Devil's Workshop, the 'ultimate' house of horrors. A short, absurdist fairytale, Topol's book hilariously lampoons its subject while giving pause for serious thought about the boundaries of respectable commemoration.
4 Out Of 5 Mass Graves
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
From all the hooplah surrounding this book, I was expecting another Yellow Birds. The war-torn setting of Chechnya, seldom the setting for literary fiction. The poetic language. The heart-wrenching story of a little girl rescued by her neighbour and brought to live in a hospital under the care of a feisty female doctor. The moral dilemmas of complicity and survival. Alas, I got The Kite Runner. If Oprah still had her show, I'd expect to see this named book of the month and Anthony Marra jumping up and down on her couch. A lovely book, to be sure, but that's all.
3 Out Of 5 Splendid Suns
Learning To Pray In The Age of Technique by Goncalo M. Tavares
I finally bit the bullet and read the last Tavares available in English translation. A companion piece to Jerusalem and my personal favourite, Joseph Walser's Machine (Walser even makes an appearance here), Learning To Pray... is another fine but disturbing work from my discovery of 2013. Lenz Buchmann is the greatest surgeon in an unnamed, but oddly familiar city. He is also pure evil, the kind who refuses last wishes and revels in the suffering of his patients. Following the death of his brother, Buchmann give away medicine to pursue a career in politics. A Machiavellian scoundrel, he quickly rises through the ranks but, just as he is about to assume the second highest-job in the country, he is struck down by cancer. At last, Buchmann has lost control. It is a chilling portrait, though to Tavares's great credit I felt a certain sympathy for this throughly dislikable man. Now can Dalkey please publish Klaus Klump?.
4 Out Of 5 Roman Daggers
Equilateral by Ken Kalfus
Oh those wacky fellas of the 1800's! Convinced of life on Mars and the need to make contact, a group of astronomers, engineers and like-minded dreamers set about constructing a giant equilateral triangle, 300 miles long on each side, in the Egyptian desert to fill with petrol and set alight at the precise moment Mars comes closest to Earth on June 17, 1894. Employing thousands of locals, it is an engineering marvel of the grandest kind. It is also a madcap folly, colonisation and Empire expansion gone nuts. With Equilateral, Kalfus has pulled off a delightful intellectual romp of a novel, showing our silly species at its best and worst. I'm just dying to know if it was at all based in historical fact.
4 Out Of 5 Old Plastic Protractors
Bough Down by Karen Green
Not once is his name mentioned and yet his spirit dwells on every page, in every word. Green confronts her pain in stunning wordscapes of free form verse, building bite-sized temples to grief, longing, anger, frustration. Only the odd line deals with the realities - cutting him down from the roof, being questioned by police, propping herself up with drugs, coming to terms with his absence - each one coming like a suckerpunch to the solar plexus. "It's hard to remember tender things tenderly, " she says, but that is precisely what she does. An amazing little book, though perhaps to be expected from the wife of David Foster Wallace.
4.5 Out Of 5 Finite Jests
A very strange book by the Czech Republic's contemporary master, The Devil's Workshop is both horror and farce, thoroughly enjoyable yet totally despicable. The narrator is mistakenly identified by a weird Belarussian cabal, as the man who 'saved' Terezin and made it a popular destination for Holocaust tourists. Hoping to build a monument of their own, they kidnap him and set him on the task of popularising The Devil's Workshop, the 'ultimate' house of horrors. A short, absurdist fairytale, Topol's book hilariously lampoons its subject while giving pause for serious thought about the boundaries of respectable commemoration.
4 Out Of 5 Mass Graves
A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra
From all the hooplah surrounding this book, I was expecting another Yellow Birds. The war-torn setting of Chechnya, seldom the setting for literary fiction. The poetic language. The heart-wrenching story of a little girl rescued by her neighbour and brought to live in a hospital under the care of a feisty female doctor. The moral dilemmas of complicity and survival. Alas, I got The Kite Runner. If Oprah still had her show, I'd expect to see this named book of the month and Anthony Marra jumping up and down on her couch. A lovely book, to be sure, but that's all.
3 Out Of 5 Splendid Suns
Learning To Pray In The Age of Technique by Goncalo M. Tavares
I finally bit the bullet and read the last Tavares available in English translation. A companion piece to Jerusalem and my personal favourite, Joseph Walser's Machine (Walser even makes an appearance here), Learning To Pray... is another fine but disturbing work from my discovery of 2013. Lenz Buchmann is the greatest surgeon in an unnamed, but oddly familiar city. He is also pure evil, the kind who refuses last wishes and revels in the suffering of his patients. Following the death of his brother, Buchmann give away medicine to pursue a career in politics. A Machiavellian scoundrel, he quickly rises through the ranks but, just as he is about to assume the second highest-job in the country, he is struck down by cancer. At last, Buchmann has lost control. It is a chilling portrait, though to Tavares's great credit I felt a certain sympathy for this throughly dislikable man. Now can Dalkey please publish Klaus Klump?.
4 Out Of 5 Roman Daggers
Equilateral by Ken Kalfus
Oh those wacky fellas of the 1800's! Convinced of life on Mars and the need to make contact, a group of astronomers, engineers and like-minded dreamers set about constructing a giant equilateral triangle, 300 miles long on each side, in the Egyptian desert to fill with petrol and set alight at the precise moment Mars comes closest to Earth on June 17, 1894. Employing thousands of locals, it is an engineering marvel of the grandest kind. It is also a madcap folly, colonisation and Empire expansion gone nuts. With Equilateral, Kalfus has pulled off a delightful intellectual romp of a novel, showing our silly species at its best and worst. I'm just dying to know if it was at all based in historical fact.
4 Out Of 5 Old Plastic Protractors
Bough Down by Karen Green
Not once is his name mentioned and yet his spirit dwells on every page, in every word. Green confronts her pain in stunning wordscapes of free form verse, building bite-sized temples to grief, longing, anger, frustration. Only the odd line deals with the realities - cutting him down from the roof, being questioned by police, propping herself up with drugs, coming to terms with his absence - each one coming like a suckerpunch to the solar plexus. "It's hard to remember tender things tenderly, " she says, but that is precisely what she does. An amazing little book, though perhaps to be expected from the wife of David Foster Wallace.
4.5 Out Of 5 Finite Jests
Microviews Vol. 33: The Sandman Versus The Succubus
on Sunday, June 23, 2013
TransAtlantic by Colum McCann
So here's a fantastic idea. Write the Great Post 9/11 American Novel, work out what made it so good and then try to recreate it it with another story using exactly the same tricks. At first I was excited; TransAtlantic opens pretty well with Alcock and Brown's flight from Newfoundland to West Ireland in 1919. Jump back eighty years and we get Frederick Douglas, the free American slave, visiting Ireland to spread the word of democracy. Now jump forward another one hundred and fifty years to a tense retelling of the diplomatic acrobatics that would ultimately bring about the Good Friday Agreement. The book continues to jump around time and space, slowly revealing the common thread: the unsung role of women in each of these great moments. By the time I realised what it was really about, I had stopped caring.
2.5 Out Of 5 Stumbling Trapeze Artists
Viennese Romance by David Vogel
Not since Hermann Ungar's perverted, claustrophobic masterpiece The Maimed, have I been so throughly enthralled by something so ghastly. Indeed, this long lost novel by David Vogel shares much with Ungar's book - a young man takes lodgings with a family and soon becomes entangled in a lust triangle with both mother and daughter. It is creepy and unsettling, with fairly graphic descriptions of illicit underage sex and all sorts of other dirty underworld dealings, but don't let any of that put you off. Viennese Romance is like watching the most spectacular train wreck. You simply cannot look away.
4 Out Of 5 Salacious Speakeasies
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
Who doesn't enjoy a bitter crone ranting against the world? And while 42 might be a little young to qualify as a crone, Nora Eldridge is most certainly a bitter, bitter woman. Her youthful aspirations to artistic greatness have long ago given way to an ordinary life as a primary school teacher. But the arrival of an exotic new student, Reza, in her third grade class offers Nora the chance of redemption. The boy is quiet and fragile, his parents boho archetypes. A chance accident sees Nora insinuate herself in their lives, eventually renting a studio with Reza's mum, Sirena, an artist on the cusp of big things. Friendship develops into obsession and, ultimately betrayal (though Messud deftly forces the reader to reconsider the user/used dynamic), all recounted in Nora's thoroughly pitiful drone.
3.5 Out Of 5 Nancy Ganzes
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman fans will no doubt lap up this not-quite-for-kids but not-quite-for-adults fable, ignoring the fact that it follows a pretty standard formula. Think every book ever where a child protagonist must fight the evil monster (in human babysitter form) and you'll have a pretty good idea what's going on here. Apparently, this was a labour of love inspired by Gaiman's newish wife, the creative succubus, Amanda Palmer. What can I say? Rilke he ain't.
2.5 Out Of 5 Pockets Full of Kryptonite
Pink Mist by Owen Sheers
Tales of modern war, it seems, are best left in the hands of poets. Last year it was Kevin Powers, who strayed from his usual medium to gift us with the amazing novel Yellow Birds. This year it is Owen Sheers, whose devastatingly brilliant prose poem does for the war in Afghanistan what Powers did for Iraq. Very few books drive home the reality of war like this - the fear, the anger, the stupidity and, ultimately, the regret. The language is stunning, the imagery shimmering with brutal clarity. Absolutely unmissable.
4.5 Out Of 5 Angry Amputees
So here's a fantastic idea. Write the Great Post 9/11 American Novel, work out what made it so good and then try to recreate it it with another story using exactly the same tricks. At first I was excited; TransAtlantic opens pretty well with Alcock and Brown's flight from Newfoundland to West Ireland in 1919. Jump back eighty years and we get Frederick Douglas, the free American slave, visiting Ireland to spread the word of democracy. Now jump forward another one hundred and fifty years to a tense retelling of the diplomatic acrobatics that would ultimately bring about the Good Friday Agreement. The book continues to jump around time and space, slowly revealing the common thread: the unsung role of women in each of these great moments. By the time I realised what it was really about, I had stopped caring.
2.5 Out Of 5 Stumbling Trapeze Artists
Viennese Romance by David Vogel
Not since Hermann Ungar's perverted, claustrophobic masterpiece The Maimed, have I been so throughly enthralled by something so ghastly. Indeed, this long lost novel by David Vogel shares much with Ungar's book - a young man takes lodgings with a family and soon becomes entangled in a lust triangle with both mother and daughter. It is creepy and unsettling, with fairly graphic descriptions of illicit underage sex and all sorts of other dirty underworld dealings, but don't let any of that put you off. Viennese Romance is like watching the most spectacular train wreck. You simply cannot look away.
4 Out Of 5 Salacious Speakeasies
The Woman Upstairs by Claire Messud
Who doesn't enjoy a bitter crone ranting against the world? And while 42 might be a little young to qualify as a crone, Nora Eldridge is most certainly a bitter, bitter woman. Her youthful aspirations to artistic greatness have long ago given way to an ordinary life as a primary school teacher. But the arrival of an exotic new student, Reza, in her third grade class offers Nora the chance of redemption. The boy is quiet and fragile, his parents boho archetypes. A chance accident sees Nora insinuate herself in their lives, eventually renting a studio with Reza's mum, Sirena, an artist on the cusp of big things. Friendship develops into obsession and, ultimately betrayal (though Messud deftly forces the reader to reconsider the user/used dynamic), all recounted in Nora's thoroughly pitiful drone.
3.5 Out Of 5 Nancy Ganzes
The Ocean At The End Of The Lane by Neil Gaiman
Gaiman fans will no doubt lap up this not-quite-for-kids but not-quite-for-adults fable, ignoring the fact that it follows a pretty standard formula. Think every book ever where a child protagonist must fight the evil monster (in human babysitter form) and you'll have a pretty good idea what's going on here. Apparently, this was a labour of love inspired by Gaiman's newish wife, the creative succubus, Amanda Palmer. What can I say? Rilke he ain't.
2.5 Out Of 5 Pockets Full of Kryptonite
Pink Mist by Owen Sheers
Tales of modern war, it seems, are best left in the hands of poets. Last year it was Kevin Powers, who strayed from his usual medium to gift us with the amazing novel Yellow Birds. This year it is Owen Sheers, whose devastatingly brilliant prose poem does for the war in Afghanistan what Powers did for Iraq. Very few books drive home the reality of war like this - the fear, the anger, the stupidity and, ultimately, the regret. The language is stunning, the imagery shimmering with brutal clarity. Absolutely unmissable.
4.5 Out Of 5 Angry Amputees
Dead Men Do Tell Tales: The Quarry by Iain Banks
on Thursday, June 20, 2013
Grief is a pretty crappy basis for a book review. Iain Banks's untimely death earlier this month was sad - especially for those of us who worshipped his early work - but we must be careful not to lionise his final novel without bothering to properly read it. Try tell that to other reviewers, who have called The Quarry a return to form, classic Banks catching his second wind or any number of similar platitudes. Put simply, it isn't. Thankfully, it also is not the sort of abomination that saw him demoted from my DEAR list three books ago. So while you had better not approach it expecting The Bridge, Complicity or The Wasp Factory, you can also safely pick it up without catching syphilis from another The Steep Approach To Garbadale.
By now you all would have heard the plot - Kit, an Aspergers teen (apparently Banks wasn't hip to the new DSM-5), lives in a house with his cancer stricken dad when a bunch of the latter's old friends come for one last weekend hoorah. They talk, they reminisce, they fight, they search for the home made porno they made as uni students. When he's not playing computer games, Kit tries to figure out who his mum is. Then, of course, there is the quarry itself, ever-expanding, soon to consume the land on which Kit's house stands. Hello thinly-veiled metaphor.
It is a strange beast, this book, almost a crucible of Banks's earlier works. It's got the slightly off-kilter narrator (although Kit is extremely reliable given he cannot lie whereas Frank in The Wasp Factory was the polar opposite - even he didn't know the truth). It takes place in a typically Banksian environment; hostile, menacing, yet strangely familiar. There's a science fiction thread, weak though it is, with occasional narrative forays into HeroSpace, a World of Warcraft-like online game. Heck, one of the climactic scenes even takes place on a friggin' bridge. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of what I didn't like about late era Iain Banks. That guy liked to grab a bunch of mostly annoying characters, all of whom had long ago fled their home towns, and plonk them right back where they started. There's always a 'big' reason, in this case Guy's cancer. There's always a lot of waxing lyrical, a settling of scores, a lot of boring chatter. The Quarry is no different. Guy's friends can talk. A lot. Of shit. Banks pretends there's a plot to be found - the porno, the mum, the quarry - but even the most generous reader would struggle to credit them with any substance.
The novel's real saving grace is Guy himself, a truly wonderful Banksian creation. The bloke is bitter, cantankerous and full of hilariously jaded opinions on just about everything. It is the luxury of the dying, I suppose. Obviously, many people will read Guy's opinions as those of Banks himself. The two have (had) a lot in common. Yet, according to the author's wife, Banks had finished the novel well before being told of his diagnosis. If that's true, it certainly is a strange coincidence. Either way, Guy gives Banks a fantastic platform to air a whole bunch of home truths about our shitty world.
Going purely on recent form (The Steep Approach To Garbadale, Transition, Stonemouth... well, pretty much everything post-Complicity), The Quarry ought to have sucked wasp factories. It doesn't. That said, it is nowhere near the calibre of his early works. Neither whimper, nor bang, Iain Banks has gone out with a moderate pop. At least I'll always have The Bridge.
3 Out Of 5 Crow Roads
By now you all would have heard the plot - Kit, an Aspergers teen (apparently Banks wasn't hip to the new DSM-5), lives in a house with his cancer stricken dad when a bunch of the latter's old friends come for one last weekend hoorah. They talk, they reminisce, they fight, they search for the home made porno they made as uni students. When he's not playing computer games, Kit tries to figure out who his mum is. Then, of course, there is the quarry itself, ever-expanding, soon to consume the land on which Kit's house stands. Hello thinly-veiled metaphor.
It is a strange beast, this book, almost a crucible of Banks's earlier works. It's got the slightly off-kilter narrator (although Kit is extremely reliable given he cannot lie whereas Frank in The Wasp Factory was the polar opposite - even he didn't know the truth). It takes place in a typically Banksian environment; hostile, menacing, yet strangely familiar. There's a science fiction thread, weak though it is, with occasional narrative forays into HeroSpace, a World of Warcraft-like online game. Heck, one of the climactic scenes even takes place on a friggin' bridge. Unfortunately, it also has a lot of what I didn't like about late era Iain Banks. That guy liked to grab a bunch of mostly annoying characters, all of whom had long ago fled their home towns, and plonk them right back where they started. There's always a 'big' reason, in this case Guy's cancer. There's always a lot of waxing lyrical, a settling of scores, a lot of boring chatter. The Quarry is no different. Guy's friends can talk. A lot. Of shit. Banks pretends there's a plot to be found - the porno, the mum, the quarry - but even the most generous reader would struggle to credit them with any substance.
The novel's real saving grace is Guy himself, a truly wonderful Banksian creation. The bloke is bitter, cantankerous and full of hilariously jaded opinions on just about everything. It is the luxury of the dying, I suppose. Obviously, many people will read Guy's opinions as those of Banks himself. The two have (had) a lot in common. Yet, according to the author's wife, Banks had finished the novel well before being told of his diagnosis. If that's true, it certainly is a strange coincidence. Either way, Guy gives Banks a fantastic platform to air a whole bunch of home truths about our shitty world.
Going purely on recent form (The Steep Approach To Garbadale, Transition, Stonemouth... well, pretty much everything post-Complicity), The Quarry ought to have sucked wasp factories. It doesn't. That said, it is nowhere near the calibre of his early works. Neither whimper, nor bang, Iain Banks has gone out with a moderate pop. At least I'll always have The Bridge.
3 Out Of 5 Crow Roads
Holy Horizons! Doctorow's Back (But Don't Hold Your Breath)
on Monday, June 10, 2013
Well, this might be looking forward a little too much, but I just got word that there will be a new E.L. Doctorow book, Andrew's Brain, coming out in January 2014. Looks weird and fascinating. Pretty great way to kick off the year. Could it be that we will have two amazing literary years in a row? Tell me there's also another Cormac McCarthy and my year will be complete six months before it's even started. Oh the joy!
Vale Banks and Banks 2.0
A great loss today to my personal literary universe with the death of two great authors in one, Iain Banks and Iain M. Banks. Although his literary incarnation kind of died five books ago, sci-fi Banks was still alive and kicking, adding another worthwhile volume to the Culture series last year with The Hydrogen Sonata. Think what you will of him, but I will always credit The Bridge as the single most important book of my young adult life, teaching me that 'literary fiction' need not be limited, that emotion can defy logic, so long as imagination is given free reign on the page. Now I await The Quarry, due for release next month and hope against hope that it isn't crap.
Self-Sourcing Literary Pudding
on Thursday, May 30, 2013
Some time down the track we will be able to pinpoint the very moment artistic enterprise fundamentally changed. I'm willing to suggest it was when Amanda Palmer managed to raise 400 bazillion dollars on Kickstarter to fund her spectacularly mediocre new album. Having listened to it, I'm guessing she spent about seventy bucks recording and the rest building an underground torture kingdom for her and hubby Neil Gaiman to frolic in with their manufactured gold robot minions. Not gold plated. Or gold leaf. Solid effing gold!
Whatever the future common consensus, there is no doubt that crowd sourcing has become a viable model for cutting out the old world gatekeepers and giving people what they want. It doesn't matter how shitty your band/film/interpretive dance project is; if people are dumb enough to want it they can now pay to make it a reality. That's not to say there hasn't already been some great crowd funded art. There's just been much, much more crap.
The idea has yet to properly take root in book land, though I imagine it is only a matter of time. And while my natural inclination is to mock it in advance - I can already see all the Stephenie Meyer/E.L. James/J.K. Rowling wannabes pitching tacky clones to the gullible masses and retiring to the Bahamas on the proceeds - I can't help but feel a small tinge of excitement. Writer, comedian and hardcore Yiddishist Michael Wex recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund the translation and publication of a lost classic, Joseph Opatoshu's In Poylishe Velde. That is a good thing. Whereas such works would never have been brought to the English speaking world and, let's face it, would have been consigned to the dustbins of history, people like Wex will be able to breathe new life into them, making our cultural environment far richer.
Crowd sourcing might just be publishing's white knight. For years we've heard about the shrinking advances, the decline in royalties, authors forced to survived on mulched paper and sour milk to survive. Moreover, many good books struggle to find a publisher willing to take a risk in these dire times. With sites like Kickstarter and Pozible, I dare say it will not be impossible for authors to raise more than they might otherwise have received as an advance in the off chance they could even convince a publisher to take the book in the first place. Crowd sourcing might also force more equitable contracts between authors and publishers, lest those that already have a name jump ship and just put their hands out to fans to fund their next project. I don't know. My head is in a bit of a spin at the prospect. It scares me to think that the industry will be overrun by Justin Biebers (or James Pattersons or Dan Browns) but Wex's project gives me hope that technology might yet be used for good. It certainly gives self-publishing the potential for a much more credible future in that it allows for those who choose (or are forced to choose) that path to finally afford editors and designers and layout people so their books won't be so darn shit. The again, a part of me longs for the old days of literary gatekeepers; those who are discerning enough to sift through the dross and present me with the cream of the crop. If a balance can't be struck, what will be left with? More American Idol rip offs? More bloody cooking shows? Another album from Amanda Palmer and Her Solid Gold Robot Orchestra?
Spare me...
Whatever the future common consensus, there is no doubt that crowd sourcing has become a viable model for cutting out the old world gatekeepers and giving people what they want. It doesn't matter how shitty your band/film/interpretive dance project is; if people are dumb enough to want it they can now pay to make it a reality. That's not to say there hasn't already been some great crowd funded art. There's just been much, much more crap.
The idea has yet to properly take root in book land, though I imagine it is only a matter of time. And while my natural inclination is to mock it in advance - I can already see all the Stephenie Meyer/E.L. James/J.K. Rowling wannabes pitching tacky clones to the gullible masses and retiring to the Bahamas on the proceeds - I can't help but feel a small tinge of excitement. Writer, comedian and hardcore Yiddishist Michael Wex recently launched an Indiegogo campaign to fund the translation and publication of a lost classic, Joseph Opatoshu's In Poylishe Velde. That is a good thing. Whereas such works would never have been brought to the English speaking world and, let's face it, would have been consigned to the dustbins of history, people like Wex will be able to breathe new life into them, making our cultural environment far richer.
Crowd sourcing might just be publishing's white knight. For years we've heard about the shrinking advances, the decline in royalties, authors forced to survived on mulched paper and sour milk to survive. Moreover, many good books struggle to find a publisher willing to take a risk in these dire times. With sites like Kickstarter and Pozible, I dare say it will not be impossible for authors to raise more than they might otherwise have received as an advance in the off chance they could even convince a publisher to take the book in the first place. Crowd sourcing might also force more equitable contracts between authors and publishers, lest those that already have a name jump ship and just put their hands out to fans to fund their next project. I don't know. My head is in a bit of a spin at the prospect. It scares me to think that the industry will be overrun by Justin Biebers (or James Pattersons or Dan Browns) but Wex's project gives me hope that technology might yet be used for good. It certainly gives self-publishing the potential for a much more credible future in that it allows for those who choose (or are forced to choose) that path to finally afford editors and designers and layout people so their books won't be so darn shit. The again, a part of me longs for the old days of literary gatekeepers; those who are discerning enough to sift through the dross and present me with the cream of the crop. If a balance can't be struck, what will be left with? More American Idol rip offs? More bloody cooking shows? Another album from Amanda Palmer and Her Solid Gold Robot Orchestra?
Spare me...
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