Seven Terrors by Selvedin Avdic
It is a rare book that can engage meaningfully with genocide. Conflict often begets cliche or, worse, trivialisation. Selvedin Avdic's masterful debut, Seven Terrors, avoids such pitfalls with a unique blend of magical realism, gritty crime and something strangely comtemplative that recalls Beckett and Walser but is still very much his own. The conflict in question here is the collapse of the former Yugoslavia, particularly the central battleground of Bosnia. Avdic doesn't take us to the front, though. We witness the war through allusion and fleeting glimpse, as if in a fable. Spectres slip through cracks, haunted by the living memory of war. Marquez gets a serious nod here - particularly novels such as Autumn of The Patriarch and The General and His Labyrinth. Avdic's narrator is the prism through which we come to understand what has happened and how it has impacted on the people of his country. As the book opens, he has just dragged himself from almost a year's isolation following the death of his wife. He is roused, more than anything else, by the daughter of his old friend Aleksa. The girl is desperate. Her father has disappeared. The only clue - Aleksa's war diary, found in a library in Sweden. What follows is a descent into a harrowing underworld (both real and mythical) that will seem immediately familiar but wholly disorientating. All roads lead to Rome, or hell, or, in this case the Pegasus brothers - two heartless thugs who rule with iron fists. They hold answers that are genuinely horrific but which must be overcome for there to be any sense of closure. Seven Terrors is quite possibly the most important novel to come from the war in Bosnia thus far. I feel like I've been waiting fifteen years for its arrival.
4.5 Out of 5 Coal Mines
Ed The Happy Clown by Chester Brown
Those seduced by Brown's autobiographical works (I Never Liked You, Paying For It, some of The Little Man comics) might well be taken aback by this crazily surreal, confronting and, at times, offensive (in a good way) story of what might best be described as the Job of the clown world. Bad shit happens to Ed. Every time we meet him he is in a deeper state of degradation. But his decline is merely the springboard for one of the wildest brainfizzes I've had the pleasure of reading. I don't want to give away too much but, suffice to say, it involves the president's head being transported through a wormhole to a parallel dimension and winding up on the tip of our hapless hero's penis. The only way back - through the arse of the guy who shat him out. You do the math.
3.5 Out of 5 Blocked Toilets
The Farm by Tom Robb Smith
Whatever he writes in the future - hell, it could even be the next War & Peace or Great Expectations - Tom Robb Smith will, to literary minds at least, always be the dude at the centre of Stellagate. His novel, Child 44, came to represent everything that was going sour with the Booker Prize under the stewardship of Stella Rimmington. Sure, it was a passable thriller, but a contender for one of the literary world's most prestigious prizes? Oh no he di'n't! Needless to say, The Farm is no Tolstoy or Dickens. Unfortunately, it isn't even a Child 44. True to its genre, the book sucks you in with an excellent opening chapter. Daniel's parents, Tilde and Chris, have moved to the Swedish countryside to live out their twilight years farming the land. Daniel, for his part, has kept his distance, making the most of life in London. One day he receives a panicked call from Chris to say that Tilde has had a psychotic episode and disappeared. Soon afterwards, she too calls. She is in London, having escaped Sweden and the terrible conspiracy that threatens to have her put away. What's worse, Chris is a key player. Who to believe? For the most part, The Farm is the mother's recounting of what happened in the lead up to her escape. Social exclusion, bullying, land grabbing, child trafficking and, ultimately, murder. It is all terribly plausible until you recall Chris's initial warning. What if he is right? What if it is all in Tilde's head? Smith mines Daniel's torturous schism to full effect. He wants to believe his mother but that means accepting his father is a monster (or, at least, beholden to one). It all comes to a head when Chris arrives in London and then, well... I'm not going to spoil it. Apparently based on Smith's own experience, The Farm is a great premise gone awry. The device of story-telling through a journal (read in Daniel's presence) is tiresome and unrealistic. The denouement is sad, it is something we fear happening to our own parents, but by the time Smith gets there you are likely to have stopped caring. I suppose he ought to be commended for tackling the very sensitive issue of mental health. Alas, the book does very little to shed light or encourage empathy. Perhaps it just cut too close to home.
2 Out of 5 Dancing Queens
Shovel Ready by Adam Sternbergh
Here's a pleasant surprise. Adam Sternbergh, he of the high lit pedigree (GQ, The New York Times Magazine, New York), throws it all to the wind in this raucous mash-up of hardboiled noir and cyberpunk. Both elegy and satire of the city he clearly loves, Shovel Ready is the story of Spademan, a ruthless killer-for-hire who finds his soft side when hired by big time evangelist TK Harrow to find and kill his daughter. Sounds pretty straightforward noir, right? Sternbergh's real clincher is the city he imagines - it's New York, but not as we know. What we get instead is a wasteland metropolis brought down by a dirty bomb and a wave of terrorist attacks where the rich plug into a virtual world and the poor do their best to survive in what's left of the city. Skirting the fine line between the virtual and real worlds, it doesn't take long for Spademan to find the girl. Only problem - she's pregnant and even he won't stoop that low. The two form a bond and, as her story unfolds, Spademan realises he'd set out to kill the wrong Harrow. How the tables turn. Shovel Ready reads like a post apocalyptic computer game penned by James Ellroy. It's fast, gritty and funny. Heck, it even has end level boss fights. Just play it... I mean, read it.
3.5 Out of 5 Shallow Graves
A Pleasure And A Calling by Phil Hogan
If you've ever had any dealings whatsoever with a real estate agent, be it buying, selling, renting or line dancing, prepare to be creeped the hell out. Okay, so you probably won't bother reading this book once I'm done, but know that the idea - a real estate agent who keeps the keys of every house he has ever sold and has a nasty habit of letting himself in whenever he feels like it - is so poop-inducing that I'm considering going right now and changing the locks on my place (though Sam, if you're reading this, I think you're a nice guy and am assuming you don't still have my keys). Now the downside. A Pleasure And A Calling is a waste of a brilliant concept. It plods along at glacial pace, touching on every serial killer cliche, not to mention the one in which cops are dumbasses who can't solve their way out of a plastic bag. The fact that William Hemming's success at his creepy endeavours seems to owe a lot more to luck than design doesn't exactly add to the book's plausibility. Put it next to The Killer Inside Me - a book that is what, 60 years old? - and it just pales into insignificance. I'm still changing my locks, though.
2.5 Out of 5 Skeleton Keys
The Folio Prize: A New King or Pretender to the Throne?
on Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Well, after much hoopla it's finally here: the shortlist for the inaugural Folio Prize. You remember the Folio, right? The one that aims to find the best novel written in the English language for any given year. The one that respects no territorial boundary. The one that claims to bring the 'literary' back into literary prizes. The one that sent Team Booker scrambling to redefine itself to, um, find the best novel written in the English language, respect no territorial boundaries and bring the 'literary' back into literary prizes. Yep, Folio is beating Booker to the punch by a good eight months so it will be interesting to see whether we end up with duplication and redundancy or something quite exciting, shiny and new.
For those who haven't seen it, the books in contention for (potential) glory are:
Red Doc by Anne Carson (Canada)
Schroder by Amity Gage (USA)
Last Friends by Jane Gardam (UK)
Benediction by Kent Haruf (USA)
The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (USA)
A Girl is a Half Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Ireland)
A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava (USA)
Tenth of December by George Saunders (USA)
A mildly interesting list to be sure (extra kudos for the inclusion of fresh faced risk takers McBride and De La Pava), but it does nothing to mollify the naysayers. Seems the American invasion really is here. And where are the books from the non-emancipated colonies? Nothing from India? South Africa? Australia? New Zealand? Surely there've been a few excellent English language novels from unexpected countries. Hmmmm. Is it possible that Folio have given a free kick to Team Booker to present a more even-handed shortlist when the time comes?
The literary War of the Roses kicks off on March 10. Grab your popcorn!
For those who haven't seen it, the books in contention for (potential) glory are:
Red Doc by Anne Carson (Canada)
Schroder by Amity Gage (USA)
Last Friends by Jane Gardam (UK)
Benediction by Kent Haruf (USA)
The Flame Throwers by Rachel Kushner (USA)
A Girl is a Half Formed Thing by Eimear McBride (Ireland)
A Naked Singularity by Sergio De La Pava (USA)
Tenth of December by George Saunders (USA)
A mildly interesting list to be sure (extra kudos for the inclusion of fresh faced risk takers McBride and De La Pava), but it does nothing to mollify the naysayers. Seems the American invasion really is here. And where are the books from the non-emancipated colonies? Nothing from India? South Africa? Australia? New Zealand? Surely there've been a few excellent English language novels from unexpected countries. Hmmmm. Is it possible that Folio have given a free kick to Team Booker to present a more even-handed shortlist when the time comes?
The literary War of the Roses kicks off on March 10. Grab your popcorn!
To Hell and Back: Falling Out Of Time by David Grossman
Is it a novel? A play? A prose poem? A greek tragedy? Well, yes. I think. All of them. A marvel? Yes, that too.
After his perfectly accessible masterpiece, To The End Of The Land, David Grossman returns to the same conceptual grounds with about as inaccessible a book as you can imagine (short of James Joyce). From its opening page Falling Out Of Time disorients the reader - a man stops eating in the middle of the dinner and announces he is going on a journey to find someone (it is unclear who at first) at the place it happened (again not sure what). As the man and his wife talk, we come to understand their loss - Grossman's own - of having a son fall in battle, of having military police turn up at the door heralding the terrible news. Theirs is a fragile tenderness, a love weighed down by absence. She understands his need, does not stop him. The man begins his walk, narrated by a Town Chronicler, directionless, only forward, in search of his dead son. Along the way he encounters others, townsfolk who have also lost their children, to accident, to suicide, to murder. Fragments of their stories creep in as they join him on the search to find where life and death meet. To the reader, at least, it seems they are simply walking in circles around their town, a slight spiral that takes them a little further out each time without ever really going anywhere. Eventually they hit a wall that just might be the gateway to the other world. Or the impossibility of crossing.
If this all seems a bit obtuse to you then you'd probably best steer clear of this book. Mine is the instructional manual version. The depth of Grossman's understanding of loss and grief is extraordinary. That much was clear in To The End Of The Land. Falling Out Of Time takes it one step further. Drawing heavily on the Orpheus mythos in both form and substance, it explores the human limits of love. How do you make sense of what remains in your heart when the person is no longer here? How can you relate to the dead when they can't relate to you? Grossman doesn't necessarily provide answers but he suggests modes of reason. And he self-consciously breaks your heart. The passage, about two thirds of the way through, where the various parents question their children's fate is one of the most painful I've ever read. And this:
But where are you, what are you?
Just tell me that, my son.
I ask simply:
Where are you?
No doubt many who loved To The End of The Land will be totally alienated by this book. It is their loss. For though you may not always fully understand what you are reading, you will never doubt that you are in the presence of true greatness.
5 Out Of 5 Greek Choruses
After his perfectly accessible masterpiece, To The End Of The Land, David Grossman returns to the same conceptual grounds with about as inaccessible a book as you can imagine (short of James Joyce). From its opening page Falling Out Of Time disorients the reader - a man stops eating in the middle of the dinner and announces he is going on a journey to find someone (it is unclear who at first) at the place it happened (again not sure what). As the man and his wife talk, we come to understand their loss - Grossman's own - of having a son fall in battle, of having military police turn up at the door heralding the terrible news. Theirs is a fragile tenderness, a love weighed down by absence. She understands his need, does not stop him. The man begins his walk, narrated by a Town Chronicler, directionless, only forward, in search of his dead son. Along the way he encounters others, townsfolk who have also lost their children, to accident, to suicide, to murder. Fragments of their stories creep in as they join him on the search to find where life and death meet. To the reader, at least, it seems they are simply walking in circles around their town, a slight spiral that takes them a little further out each time without ever really going anywhere. Eventually they hit a wall that just might be the gateway to the other world. Or the impossibility of crossing.
If this all seems a bit obtuse to you then you'd probably best steer clear of this book. Mine is the instructional manual version. The depth of Grossman's understanding of loss and grief is extraordinary. That much was clear in To The End Of The Land. Falling Out Of Time takes it one step further. Drawing heavily on the Orpheus mythos in both form and substance, it explores the human limits of love. How do you make sense of what remains in your heart when the person is no longer here? How can you relate to the dead when they can't relate to you? Grossman doesn't necessarily provide answers but he suggests modes of reason. And he self-consciously breaks your heart. The passage, about two thirds of the way through, where the various parents question their children's fate is one of the most painful I've ever read. And this:
But where are you, what are you?
Just tell me that, my son.
I ask simply:
Where are you?
No doubt many who loved To The End of The Land will be totally alienated by this book. It is their loss. For though you may not always fully understand what you are reading, you will never doubt that you are in the presence of true greatness.
5 Out Of 5 Greek Choruses
Trieste Conquers New York!
on Sunday, February 2, 2014
Far be it from me to gloat, but...
Twenty months after I first raved about Dasa Drndic's modern (yet timeless) classic Trieste, thirteen months after I named it my 2012 Book of the Year and six months after it was nominated for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Award, the book has finally been published in America and received a full page, glowing review in today's New York Times. Craig Seligman hails it as "a work of European high culture" with "coldly dignified" writing. Basically, he says everything I've been trying to say albeit in a much more eloquent fashion. Check out the entire review here. And if you haven't read the book yet - if my raves, the raves from Kirkus, the raves from The Independent and, now, the rave from The New York Times hasn't convinced you to read it - I despair for your reading soul.
Ok, fine... So I'm gloating.
Twenty months after I first raved about Dasa Drndic's modern (yet timeless) classic Trieste, thirteen months after I named it my 2012 Book of the Year and six months after it was nominated for the 2013 Independent Foreign Fiction Award, the book has finally been published in America and received a full page, glowing review in today's New York Times. Craig Seligman hails it as "a work of European high culture" with "coldly dignified" writing. Basically, he says everything I've been trying to say albeit in a much more eloquent fashion. Check out the entire review here. And if you haven't read the book yet - if my raves, the raves from Kirkus, the raves from The Independent and, now, the rave from The New York Times hasn't convinced you to read it - I despair for your reading soul.
Ok, fine... So I'm gloating.
Microviews Vol. 49: This Is Your Brain On Ice
on Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Never fear Bookworms. I haven't disappeared. No great disaster befell me - death by a million paper cuts, spontaneous eye explosion, blog burnout. I just took a month to sit back, relax and read. Lots. Twenty one books in January and counting. As you know, I'm off the crazy "Review Every Book I Read" wagon, so it's back to the good old random Microviews of yore. Enjoy!
Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow
Much has already been made of Andrew's Brain being Doctorow's "old man" book. Like Roth's Everyman and Exit Ghost or Delillo's... well... everything after Underworld, it ponders the great existential threat: mortality. The comparisons are, however, unfair. Sure, there's a degree of late life crisis about this book, but it has very little of the rueful belly button gazing that made the others a bit of a chore to read. That said, Andrew's Brain is a pretty strange affair. It opens with some sort of confessional or therapeutic conversation between Andrew (who speaks of himself in the third person) and a mysterious interlocutor. Is it a friend? A therapist? A cop? We learn straight up that his first marriage has failed, that his subsequent marriage - to a student, no less - has also ended (albeit in a less clear cut manner) and that he dumped the child of that second marriage on his first wife before running away. The full story is drawn out by the other speaker and it is one mostly marked by frustration, tragedy and heartbreak. Fate, for Andrew, is a bitch. Andrew's Brain reaches its emotional crescendo three quarters of the way through when we learn what happened to the second wife. Those few pages reminded me of Doctorow's power to profoundly move a reader. Then something weird happens. Something very, very weird. The novel takes such an unexpected left turn that it comes close to careening out of control. Enter Andrew's old college roommate, now the president of the United States, and his cabal of Yes Men. Doctorow doesn't even try to hide their identities: Chaingang and Rumbum. It borders on puerile. Andrew moves into the inner circle but seems to be more of a cog in some elaborate prank. Doctorow takes political aim and fires but, by that stage, I was so far removed from the novel that I couldn't even tell if he hit. Indeed, I was reminded greatly of Delillo's Falling Man - I was watching a brilliant writer grappling with the way the world has changed but not quite able to get the upper hand. I suppose it was all necessary to get to the final chapter which, I have to say, was perfectly pitched. It will answer a lot of your questions but one will undoubtedly remain: What on Earth was Doctorow doing for those forty-odd pages?
4 out of 5 Sparking Synapses
On Such A Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
Having been raised on a steady diet of JG Ballard dystopias I came to Chang-Rae Lee's latest with a great deal of excitement. Straight up, he is not the sort of novelist I'd ever have expected to attempt this kind of story. His lyricism and sensitivity gave me hope that he'd bring something new, something more, to it all. Could this be The Handmaid's Tale for a new generation? It started well enough - Fan escapes from B-Mor (a future Baltimore) in search of her boyfriend Reg, but not before destroying the tanks of fish that provide vital nutrition to the city. It is a brilliantly realised first chapter, one that firmly establishes the parameters of this strange post Apocalyptic America. The descriptions of Fan swimming through the schools of fish are beautiful - vintage Lee. I don't quite know, then, why the book lost me pretty much straight afterwards. Fan's trek through the "open counties", her search for a brother who has been elevated to the high Charter caste, the various grifters and desperadoes she meets... it all just left me cold. It was as if I was reading the treatment for a novel rather than the novel itself. I can see how Lee has given us a glimpse at the Ghost of America Future with its environmental carnage, socio-economic disparity (especially in terms of universal health care - hello Republican bozos) and governmental collapse. In that sense, this is a harrowing read. But as a novel, a narrative to draw me in and make me truly appreciate the dire state of the world he has created, it just didn't float my fish.
2.5 out of 5 Concrete Islands
A Meal In Winter by Hubert Mingarelli
In one of my all time favourite novels, Schopenhauer's Telescope, two men are locked in tense conversation as one digs his own grave at gunpoint. That is pretty much the entire book. There's an air of Nazi and partisan about them, though it is never clear what war they're fighting or which one is which. One will die, the other will walk away. It is incredibly difficult to know who you should actually feel for - did the good guy win? The author remains silent. Hubert Mingarelli's masterpiece in miniature, A Meal In Winter, has a very similar feel. Three Nazis stationed at some remote outpost are sent to hunt down Jews hiding in the forest. For them it is a reprieve - their willingness to brave the winter chill means that they will be excused from partaking in the daily executions. It doesn't take long for them to find a Jew but before they can bring him back the weather sets in and they are forced to take refuge in an abandoned hut. Cold and hungry, they search the building for a few food scraps and set about making soup, all the while discussing what should become of the Jew. The sudden appearance of a Polish farmer complicates matters - his presence is disruptive but he has alcohol which will warm them and add flavour to the broth. He is allowed to stay. After an interminable wait, the soup comes to the boil and the five men sit down to eat together; enemies breaking bread. Not a single word is exchanged but the dynamic has completely changed. The Jew is now human. Do they release him so that they will have one redemptive memory when the war is over? Or do they take him back to certain death at the outpost? Failure to return a Jew means being put back on firing squad duty. Returning him robs them of redemption but excuses them from ever pulling another trigger. For the three soldiers it is an agonising choice. A Meal In Winter is one of the most harrowing, morally complex works I have ever encountered. Read it. It will strengthen your soul.
5 out of 5 Empty Ladles
Property by Rutu Modan
A few years back, a friend of mine was studying at the Yiddish Institute in New York where she befriended a non-Jewish girl from Poland in her dorm. For as long as they stuck by the great Fawlty Towers mantra "Don't mention the war!", all went well. Then, in what I can only assume was an attempt to curry further favour, the Polish girl happened to mention that Poland is one of Israel's most strident supporters. My friend was puzzled. The conversation went something like this:
"Why?"
"Because if anything happened to Israel the Jews might come and take our homes."
"Well, they're not exactly your homes."
"Of course they are. The Jews abandoned them during the war."
"And where do you think they went? On holiday?"
Thus ended the friendship. Rutu Modan's wonderful graphic novel, The Property, is an exploration of the strange relationship between Jews and Poland, especially the paranoias that itch beneath the surface. Mica accompanies her grandmother Regina from Israel to Poland in what at first seems like a search for the apartment in which her family lived before the war. From the opening panels, Modan is in top form, skewering the hilarity of Israeli airports, affectionately stabbing at the... um... Israeli national attitude. It's funny but tender; Modan clearly comes from a place of love. Things take an unexpected turn when they reach their destination - Regina finds the apartment but there is much more to the trip than she has let on. Meanwhile Mica chums up with a non-Jewish Polish guy (in an Operation Ivy jacket no less) who starts as tour guide but soon becomes much more. And of course, there's the oddball, annoying Israeli following them all - it's not hard to tell that he has ulterior motives, though it takes a while to realise what precisely they are. The Property is a joy to read, beautifully rendered in shifting graphic styles, utterly compelling and, when the penny drops, absolutely heartwarming (if kind of tragic).
4.5 out of 5 Kosher Kielbasas
Leaving the Sea: Stories by Ben Marcus
Ben Marcus has a strange way of popping up randomly in my life. When my band was touring America, a young lady I befriended was raving about this debut short story collection by her lecturer at university (or professor at college, I've never understood the American academic nomenclature). It was called The Age of Wire and String and, she assured me, was at the absolute cutting edge of contemporary literature. Plus she thought her professor was cute. Fast forward a few years and I rate that same author's novel, The Flame Alphabet, as the tenth best book of the 2012 with a tongue in cheek rant against him for not fully realising what I thought was the book's incredible potential. A couple of days later, while I was enjoying a lovely holiday on the Aussie coast, a familiar name popped up in my Inbox. Ben Marcus. To put it mildly, he wasn't happy. Clearly the Australian idiom had gotten lost in translation. I agonised over it for a few hours before editing the review to lessen the perceived sting. I'm still not sure if, in an ideological sense, I did the right thing but I hadn't intended to insult him and felt that ought to be made clear. Bottom line is I think he's a bloody excellent writer. Even if he can't take a joke. Anyway, this is all a round about way of saying that, before I go any further, I will declare that I liked Leaving The Sea. I liked it a lot. It is an uncomfortable collection of stories, to be sure, but I mean that in a good way. Presented in six suites, each stranger than the one that came before, it cements Marcus's place as the modern master of the experimentally surreal. Leaving The Sea starts off with what I can only describe as a narrative honey trap - the writing is gorgeous, the stories quite straight forward. "I Can Say Many Nice Things" stands out, as a washed up writer stoops to taking a creative writing course on a cruise ship. Hell, Marcus seems to be saying, is other wannabe writers. It's funny and sad and, I'm guessing, cathartic. The first suite closes with the rather depressing "Rollywood" (which reminded me of the Ben Folds song Fred Jones Pt. 2), a perfect buffer for the profound shift in comfort that follows with the dual punch of brief interviews that make up the second suite. The shifts turn to tremors and then full on quakes as Marcus throws conventional storytelling to the wind in favour of dazzling experiments in style, substance and atmosphere. That's not to say there aren't many moments that will appeal to the narrative traditionalists amongst you. "Watching Mysteries With My Mother", where a man obsesses over his mother's imminent death, is deeply moving. The desperation of the dying narrator trying out last-chance, probably shonky, treatments in "The Dark Arts" is palpable. Even some of the experimental stuff is quite accessible - the prose is always beautiful, the readily familiar often identifiable within the fabulous. Like any short story collection there are lulls - after all, not every experiment can work - but as another step on Marcus's consistently interesting path, Leaving The Sea is well worth your attention.
4 out of 5 Apocalypse Drills
Andrew's Brain by E.L. Doctorow
Much has already been made of Andrew's Brain being Doctorow's "old man" book. Like Roth's Everyman and Exit Ghost or Delillo's... well... everything after Underworld, it ponders the great existential threat: mortality. The comparisons are, however, unfair. Sure, there's a degree of late life crisis about this book, but it has very little of the rueful belly button gazing that made the others a bit of a chore to read. That said, Andrew's Brain is a pretty strange affair. It opens with some sort of confessional or therapeutic conversation between Andrew (who speaks of himself in the third person) and a mysterious interlocutor. Is it a friend? A therapist? A cop? We learn straight up that his first marriage has failed, that his subsequent marriage - to a student, no less - has also ended (albeit in a less clear cut manner) and that he dumped the child of that second marriage on his first wife before running away. The full story is drawn out by the other speaker and it is one mostly marked by frustration, tragedy and heartbreak. Fate, for Andrew, is a bitch. Andrew's Brain reaches its emotional crescendo three quarters of the way through when we learn what happened to the second wife. Those few pages reminded me of Doctorow's power to profoundly move a reader. Then something weird happens. Something very, very weird. The novel takes such an unexpected left turn that it comes close to careening out of control. Enter Andrew's old college roommate, now the president of the United States, and his cabal of Yes Men. Doctorow doesn't even try to hide their identities: Chaingang and Rumbum. It borders on puerile. Andrew moves into the inner circle but seems to be more of a cog in some elaborate prank. Doctorow takes political aim and fires but, by that stage, I was so far removed from the novel that I couldn't even tell if he hit. Indeed, I was reminded greatly of Delillo's Falling Man - I was watching a brilliant writer grappling with the way the world has changed but not quite able to get the upper hand. I suppose it was all necessary to get to the final chapter which, I have to say, was perfectly pitched. It will answer a lot of your questions but one will undoubtedly remain: What on Earth was Doctorow doing for those forty-odd pages?
4 out of 5 Sparking Synapses
On Such A Full Sea by Chang-Rae Lee
Having been raised on a steady diet of JG Ballard dystopias I came to Chang-Rae Lee's latest with a great deal of excitement. Straight up, he is not the sort of novelist I'd ever have expected to attempt this kind of story. His lyricism and sensitivity gave me hope that he'd bring something new, something more, to it all. Could this be The Handmaid's Tale for a new generation? It started well enough - Fan escapes from B-Mor (a future Baltimore) in search of her boyfriend Reg, but not before destroying the tanks of fish that provide vital nutrition to the city. It is a brilliantly realised first chapter, one that firmly establishes the parameters of this strange post Apocalyptic America. The descriptions of Fan swimming through the schools of fish are beautiful - vintage Lee. I don't quite know, then, why the book lost me pretty much straight afterwards. Fan's trek through the "open counties", her search for a brother who has been elevated to the high Charter caste, the various grifters and desperadoes she meets... it all just left me cold. It was as if I was reading the treatment for a novel rather than the novel itself. I can see how Lee has given us a glimpse at the Ghost of America Future with its environmental carnage, socio-economic disparity (especially in terms of universal health care - hello Republican bozos) and governmental collapse. In that sense, this is a harrowing read. But as a novel, a narrative to draw me in and make me truly appreciate the dire state of the world he has created, it just didn't float my fish.
2.5 out of 5 Concrete Islands
A Meal In Winter by Hubert Mingarelli
In one of my all time favourite novels, Schopenhauer's Telescope, two men are locked in tense conversation as one digs his own grave at gunpoint. That is pretty much the entire book. There's an air of Nazi and partisan about them, though it is never clear what war they're fighting or which one is which. One will die, the other will walk away. It is incredibly difficult to know who you should actually feel for - did the good guy win? The author remains silent. Hubert Mingarelli's masterpiece in miniature, A Meal In Winter, has a very similar feel. Three Nazis stationed at some remote outpost are sent to hunt down Jews hiding in the forest. For them it is a reprieve - their willingness to brave the winter chill means that they will be excused from partaking in the daily executions. It doesn't take long for them to find a Jew but before they can bring him back the weather sets in and they are forced to take refuge in an abandoned hut. Cold and hungry, they search the building for a few food scraps and set about making soup, all the while discussing what should become of the Jew. The sudden appearance of a Polish farmer complicates matters - his presence is disruptive but he has alcohol which will warm them and add flavour to the broth. He is allowed to stay. After an interminable wait, the soup comes to the boil and the five men sit down to eat together; enemies breaking bread. Not a single word is exchanged but the dynamic has completely changed. The Jew is now human. Do they release him so that they will have one redemptive memory when the war is over? Or do they take him back to certain death at the outpost? Failure to return a Jew means being put back on firing squad duty. Returning him robs them of redemption but excuses them from ever pulling another trigger. For the three soldiers it is an agonising choice. A Meal In Winter is one of the most harrowing, morally complex works I have ever encountered. Read it. It will strengthen your soul.
5 out of 5 Empty Ladles
Property by Rutu Modan
A few years back, a friend of mine was studying at the Yiddish Institute in New York where she befriended a non-Jewish girl from Poland in her dorm. For as long as they stuck by the great Fawlty Towers mantra "Don't mention the war!", all went well. Then, in what I can only assume was an attempt to curry further favour, the Polish girl happened to mention that Poland is one of Israel's most strident supporters. My friend was puzzled. The conversation went something like this:
"Why?"
"Because if anything happened to Israel the Jews might come and take our homes."
"Well, they're not exactly your homes."
"Of course they are. The Jews abandoned them during the war."
"And where do you think they went? On holiday?"
Thus ended the friendship. Rutu Modan's wonderful graphic novel, The Property, is an exploration of the strange relationship between Jews and Poland, especially the paranoias that itch beneath the surface. Mica accompanies her grandmother Regina from Israel to Poland in what at first seems like a search for the apartment in which her family lived before the war. From the opening panels, Modan is in top form, skewering the hilarity of Israeli airports, affectionately stabbing at the... um... Israeli national attitude. It's funny but tender; Modan clearly comes from a place of love. Things take an unexpected turn when they reach their destination - Regina finds the apartment but there is much more to the trip than she has let on. Meanwhile Mica chums up with a non-Jewish Polish guy (in an Operation Ivy jacket no less) who starts as tour guide but soon becomes much more. And of course, there's the oddball, annoying Israeli following them all - it's not hard to tell that he has ulterior motives, though it takes a while to realise what precisely they are. The Property is a joy to read, beautifully rendered in shifting graphic styles, utterly compelling and, when the penny drops, absolutely heartwarming (if kind of tragic).
4.5 out of 5 Kosher Kielbasas
Leaving the Sea: Stories by Ben Marcus
Ben Marcus has a strange way of popping up randomly in my life. When my band was touring America, a young lady I befriended was raving about this debut short story collection by her lecturer at university (or professor at college, I've never understood the American academic nomenclature). It was called The Age of Wire and String and, she assured me, was at the absolute cutting edge of contemporary literature. Plus she thought her professor was cute. Fast forward a few years and I rate that same author's novel, The Flame Alphabet, as the tenth best book of the 2012 with a tongue in cheek rant against him for not fully realising what I thought was the book's incredible potential. A couple of days later, while I was enjoying a lovely holiday on the Aussie coast, a familiar name popped up in my Inbox. Ben Marcus. To put it mildly, he wasn't happy. Clearly the Australian idiom had gotten lost in translation. I agonised over it for a few hours before editing the review to lessen the perceived sting. I'm still not sure if, in an ideological sense, I did the right thing but I hadn't intended to insult him and felt that ought to be made clear. Bottom line is I think he's a bloody excellent writer. Even if he can't take a joke. Anyway, this is all a round about way of saying that, before I go any further, I will declare that I liked Leaving The Sea. I liked it a lot. It is an uncomfortable collection of stories, to be sure, but I mean that in a good way. Presented in six suites, each stranger than the one that came before, it cements Marcus's place as the modern master of the experimentally surreal. Leaving The Sea starts off with what I can only describe as a narrative honey trap - the writing is gorgeous, the stories quite straight forward. "I Can Say Many Nice Things" stands out, as a washed up writer stoops to taking a creative writing course on a cruise ship. Hell, Marcus seems to be saying, is other wannabe writers. It's funny and sad and, I'm guessing, cathartic. The first suite closes with the rather depressing "Rollywood" (which reminded me of the Ben Folds song Fred Jones Pt. 2), a perfect buffer for the profound shift in comfort that follows with the dual punch of brief interviews that make up the second suite. The shifts turn to tremors and then full on quakes as Marcus throws conventional storytelling to the wind in favour of dazzling experiments in style, substance and atmosphere. That's not to say there aren't many moments that will appeal to the narrative traditionalists amongst you. "Watching Mysteries With My Mother", where a man obsesses over his mother's imminent death, is deeply moving. The desperation of the dying narrator trying out last-chance, probably shonky, treatments in "The Dark Arts" is palpable. Even some of the experimental stuff is quite accessible - the prose is always beautiful, the readily familiar often identifiable within the fabulous. Like any short story collection there are lulls - after all, not every experiment can work - but as another step on Marcus's consistently interesting path, Leaving The Sea is well worth your attention.
4 out of 5 Apocalypse Drills
Celsius 451: Fireproof Reading
on Friday, January 17, 2014
Greetings from all nine rings of hell. Yes, after mocking us with a moderately warm December peppered with thunderstorms and the odd cold snap, Melbourne has decided to give us a chance to surf the solar flares. For four days now we have sweltered in this inferno. Forty plus degrees every day. Overnight lows of thirty. Well played, Satan. Well played. The city has all but shut down. Australian Open tennis players are melting on contact with the court. Swimmers are being boiled alive on our beaches. A power pole just exploded in the street (I heard it on a news flash). And, sadly, bush fires are raging out of control on the city's outskirts.
I, of course, am having none of it. Apart from one sojourn outside (to court where, I should add, the only suit that should be required in this heat is a birthday suit) I've locked myself away in a small, air-conditioned room with Louie, a jug of iced water and a big pile of books. Two and a half weeks into the year and I'm onto book thirteen. It's been a great start. After being floored by the brilliance of Jesse Ball's Silence Once Begun, I've managed a run of not-quite-as-good but still wonderful reads. Graphic fiction has featured prominently with Property by Rutu Mordan, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Essex County by Jeff Lamire and Wilson by Daniel Clowes. They've proved a fantastic escape from the heat - complex stories and ideas presented in a lively way that does not numb your eyes with repetitive black print. I also thoroughly enjoyed the action-lit (not my usual thing) of Almost Dead by Assaf Gavron and God's Dog by Diego Marani as well as the brain thumping complexity of Josef Winkler's House-That-Jack-Built-In-Hell, When The Time Comes.
Come to think of it, I can't remember another year that started this well. Nor can I remember a year so heavily front loaded with hits. I've just begun Chang Rae Lee's On Such A Full Sea which, thus far, is a totally unexpected, highly compelling, JG Ballard-esque joy to read. I'm anxiously anticipating the arrival of the new E.L. Doctorow, Andrew's Brain as well as Leaving The Sea, Ben Marcus's latest collection of short stories. I loved Homer and Langley and was a big fan of The Flame Alphabet, even if Marcus didn't quite see the humour in my rave (apparently my Australian way didn't translate well to the American idiom). I expect big things from their follow ups.
With novels expected from other heavy hitters in the first half of 2014, this is shaping up to be another amazing read for book lovers. Now, if only I can think of a special B4BW reading project (preferably less onerous than "Review Every Book I Read) I'll be all set to keep this silly little blog enjoyable for you. I'd happily take suggestions!
I, of course, am having none of it. Apart from one sojourn outside (to court where, I should add, the only suit that should be required in this heat is a birthday suit) I've locked myself away in a small, air-conditioned room with Louie, a jug of iced water and a big pile of books. Two and a half weeks into the year and I'm onto book thirteen. It's been a great start. After being floored by the brilliance of Jesse Ball's Silence Once Begun, I've managed a run of not-quite-as-good but still wonderful reads. Graphic fiction has featured prominently with Property by Rutu Mordan, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, Essex County by Jeff Lamire and Wilson by Daniel Clowes. They've proved a fantastic escape from the heat - complex stories and ideas presented in a lively way that does not numb your eyes with repetitive black print. I also thoroughly enjoyed the action-lit (not my usual thing) of Almost Dead by Assaf Gavron and God's Dog by Diego Marani as well as the brain thumping complexity of Josef Winkler's House-That-Jack-Built-In-Hell, When The Time Comes.
Come to think of it, I can't remember another year that started this well. Nor can I remember a year so heavily front loaded with hits. I've just begun Chang Rae Lee's On Such A Full Sea which, thus far, is a totally unexpected, highly compelling, JG Ballard-esque joy to read. I'm anxiously anticipating the arrival of the new E.L. Doctorow, Andrew's Brain as well as Leaving The Sea, Ben Marcus's latest collection of short stories. I loved Homer and Langley and was a big fan of The Flame Alphabet, even if Marcus didn't quite see the humour in my rave (apparently my Australian way didn't translate well to the American idiom). I expect big things from their follow ups.
With novels expected from other heavy hitters in the first half of 2014, this is shaping up to be another amazing read for book lovers. Now, if only I can think of a special B4BW reading project (preferably less onerous than "Review Every Book I Read) I'll be all set to keep this silly little blog enjoyable for you. I'd happily take suggestions!
Sublime Sounds: Silence Once Begun by Jesse Ball
on Sunday, January 5, 2014
Here's a strange thought. Is it possible that I read the best book of 2014 on the very first day of the year?
It took all my self control not to crack it open the moment the package arrived on my doorstep. There were still four days left in 2013. To read this book, like every fibre in my body was telling me to do, would have upset the space/time continuum. A 2014 book read and reviewed in 2013? If it turned out to be as good as I expected, I would be forced to let it fight The Infatuations to the literary death for top position. Would that even have been fair given that a book from the future must have all the disintegration laser Martian technologies you'd expect if, like me, you spent your childhood locked in your room with comic books and computer games and trashy sci-fi novels? Most importantly, could I possibly deny myself the great joy of yammering on about it for the next eleven and three quarter months?
Well, never fear. I resisted. There will be much yammering.
As I watched the countdown on TV, my fingers anxiously skittered across the cover of Jesse Ball's highly anticipated new novel, Silence Once Begun. The follow up to my favourite book of 2011, The Curfew, it is his first novel to be published in hardcover, the first to be published by Pantheon (part of the Knopf publishing family) and, most likely, the first to get the kind of widespread exposure he has long deserved. Put simply, there is a lot riding on this book. The moment the first firework exploded, I began reading.
Allegedly based (albeit very loosely) on true events, Silence Once Begun is the story of Oda Sotatsu, an unassuming man who confesses to a series of disappearances in 1970s Japan. The crimes themselves are intriguing, but what makes Oda's story so unique is his complete silence from the time he is arrested until his execution. Other than a few very minor exchanges with the various other players, he simply does not speak. Even more disturbing, it is quite clear that he did not commit the crimes - only a written confession, handed in prior to his arrest, links him to the disappearances. There is no other evidence.
Ball (or a fictional simulacrum thereof) unfurls Oda's story through a series of interviews with all the others involved in the case: his parents, his brother, his sister, the court reporter, a prison guard and, finally, the two most significant and troubling characters, a mysterious woman called Jito Joo and the very shady mastermind of it all, Sato Kakuzo. Each share their own impression of Oda and his involvement in the crime. Some are crushed by the weight of shame, some vigorously defend him, some accept his guilt but warm to him and the dignity he displays throughout the process. Despite their differences, there is one thing that links them all: a strong belief that nobody else's version can be trusted. Silence Once Begun is not a tale told by an unreliable narrator, it is one told by a whole slew of them.
Ball adds some editorial commentary between the interviews, but for the most part it is just their voices building up to a deafening wall of white noise. The effect is quite spectacular. When it reaches a crescendo, Ball pulls back and gives the stage to the soft, romantic voice of Jito Joo. Now in her late 50s she offers a version steeped in nostalgic poetry, a tragic love story. That is if she is to be believed. The moment Joo signs off, Sato Kakuzo steps in to declare her totally untrustworthy and complicit in the plot. His is the last version, and by far the most disturbing. It is not a chronology but a manifesto; Sato's great plan to shake the complacent Japanese society to its core by subverting its most sacred cultural mores. Think Machiavelli meets the Leopold and Loeb. The very identity of the country will be his victim. Oda is merely the patsy. When Sato does the great unveil, you can't help but be furious at the way the machinery of a developed society can be made to run on its own steam in the completely wrong direction. As Sato says, "The judges are doing what I am telling them to do, simply because I understand better than they do this one thing: the absurd lengths to which human beings go to prove themselves reasonable".
Ball dedicates the book to two of my favourite Japanese authors, Kobo Abe and Shusaku Endo. It's not hard to see their influence. Silence Once Begun is daring in both form and substance. It says a lot about the selective way in which we construct truths, how we don't actually need the central event or player for us to settle on an accepted or acceptable narrative. Japanese society is the perfect prism for Ball's argument, but it would be wrong not to see ourselves in some of the refracted rays.
With Silence Once Begun Jesse Ball has shattered the wall of sound in spectacular fashion. It is a towering achievement and, to my mind, the benchmark for all fiction this year.
5 Out of 5 Lynched Larynxes
It took all my self control not to crack it open the moment the package arrived on my doorstep. There were still four days left in 2013. To read this book, like every fibre in my body was telling me to do, would have upset the space/time continuum. A 2014 book read and reviewed in 2013? If it turned out to be as good as I expected, I would be forced to let it fight The Infatuations to the literary death for top position. Would that even have been fair given that a book from the future must have all the disintegration laser Martian technologies you'd expect if, like me, you spent your childhood locked in your room with comic books and computer games and trashy sci-fi novels? Most importantly, could I possibly deny myself the great joy of yammering on about it for the next eleven and three quarter months?
Well, never fear. I resisted. There will be much yammering.
As I watched the countdown on TV, my fingers anxiously skittered across the cover of Jesse Ball's highly anticipated new novel, Silence Once Begun. The follow up to my favourite book of 2011, The Curfew, it is his first novel to be published in hardcover, the first to be published by Pantheon (part of the Knopf publishing family) and, most likely, the first to get the kind of widespread exposure he has long deserved. Put simply, there is a lot riding on this book. The moment the first firework exploded, I began reading.
Allegedly based (albeit very loosely) on true events, Silence Once Begun is the story of Oda Sotatsu, an unassuming man who confesses to a series of disappearances in 1970s Japan. The crimes themselves are intriguing, but what makes Oda's story so unique is his complete silence from the time he is arrested until his execution. Other than a few very minor exchanges with the various other players, he simply does not speak. Even more disturbing, it is quite clear that he did not commit the crimes - only a written confession, handed in prior to his arrest, links him to the disappearances. There is no other evidence.
Ball (or a fictional simulacrum thereof) unfurls Oda's story through a series of interviews with all the others involved in the case: his parents, his brother, his sister, the court reporter, a prison guard and, finally, the two most significant and troubling characters, a mysterious woman called Jito Joo and the very shady mastermind of it all, Sato Kakuzo. Each share their own impression of Oda and his involvement in the crime. Some are crushed by the weight of shame, some vigorously defend him, some accept his guilt but warm to him and the dignity he displays throughout the process. Despite their differences, there is one thing that links them all: a strong belief that nobody else's version can be trusted. Silence Once Begun is not a tale told by an unreliable narrator, it is one told by a whole slew of them.
Ball adds some editorial commentary between the interviews, but for the most part it is just their voices building up to a deafening wall of white noise. The effect is quite spectacular. When it reaches a crescendo, Ball pulls back and gives the stage to the soft, romantic voice of Jito Joo. Now in her late 50s she offers a version steeped in nostalgic poetry, a tragic love story. That is if she is to be believed. The moment Joo signs off, Sato Kakuzo steps in to declare her totally untrustworthy and complicit in the plot. His is the last version, and by far the most disturbing. It is not a chronology but a manifesto; Sato's great plan to shake the complacent Japanese society to its core by subverting its most sacred cultural mores. Think Machiavelli meets the Leopold and Loeb. The very identity of the country will be his victim. Oda is merely the patsy. When Sato does the great unveil, you can't help but be furious at the way the machinery of a developed society can be made to run on its own steam in the completely wrong direction. As Sato says, "The judges are doing what I am telling them to do, simply because I understand better than they do this one thing: the absurd lengths to which human beings go to prove themselves reasonable".
Ball dedicates the book to two of my favourite Japanese authors, Kobo Abe and Shusaku Endo. It's not hard to see their influence. Silence Once Begun is daring in both form and substance. It says a lot about the selective way in which we construct truths, how we don't actually need the central event or player for us to settle on an accepted or acceptable narrative. Japanese society is the perfect prism for Ball's argument, but it would be wrong not to see ourselves in some of the refracted rays.
With Silence Once Begun Jesse Ball has shattered the wall of sound in spectacular fashion. It is a towering achievement and, to my mind, the benchmark for all fiction this year.
5 Out of 5 Lynched Larynxes
2014: Reading Once Begun
on Friday, January 3, 2014
The new year has kicked off with a bang! Three days in, four books read, including the quite extraordinary newie by Jesse Ball, Silence Once Begun. I'll be writing a full review in the coming days once I've had a bit more time to digest it but, suffice to say it did not disappoint even with the weight of my ridiculously high hopes resting on its shoulders.
I also took the downtime to revise and update my Best Books of All Time list. The Top Ten has shifted around and now consists of:
1. The Trial – Franz Kafka (1925)
2. The Brothers Ashkenazi – I.J. Singer (1936)
3. I Am The Cheese – Robert Cormier (1977)
4. The Tenant – Roland Topor (1964)
5. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow (1971)
6. Trieste – Dasa Drndic (2012)
7. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon (2000)
8. A Dry White Season – Andre Brink (1979)
9. Waiting For The Barabarians – J.M. Coetzee (1980)
10. The Assault – Harry Mulisch (1982)
If you want the full list, free feel to get in touch at baitforbookworms@gmail.com and I'll be happy to send it to you. I don't want to clog up an entire page here with a seemingly endless litany of titles. Anyway, hope you're getting some good reading in over the break. Jesse Ball and I will be back very soon.
I also took the downtime to revise and update my Best Books of All Time list. The Top Ten has shifted around and now consists of:
1. The Trial – Franz Kafka (1925)
2. The Brothers Ashkenazi – I.J. Singer (1936)
3. I Am The Cheese – Robert Cormier (1977)
4. The Tenant – Roland Topor (1964)
5. The Book of Daniel – E.L. Doctorow (1971)
6. Trieste – Dasa Drndic (2012)
7. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay – Michael Chabon (2000)
8. A Dry White Season – Andre Brink (1979)
9. Waiting For The Barabarians – J.M. Coetzee (1980)
10. The Assault – Harry Mulisch (1982)
If you want the full list, free feel to get in touch at baitforbookworms@gmail.com and I'll be happy to send it to you. I don't want to clog up an entire page here with a seemingly endless litany of titles. Anyway, hope you're getting some good reading in over the break. Jesse Ball and I will be back very soon.
2013: And The Winner Is...
on Tuesday, December 31, 2013
If only I had been born a hundred years ago. Maybe two hundred. Sure, I'd probably have died at birth, seen my family wiped out by plague, contracted some disease we haven't even heard of today or been trampled by an elephant while performing my daring trapeze act in an Eastern European travelling circus BUT I also might have had the incredible fortune of being there when some of the great classics were first published. Assuming I was lucky enough to get an education and wasn't just sweeping chimneys or shovelling runny shit from ditches, you probably would have found me waiting in line for the latest Dostoevsky, Hugo, Austin, Dickens or Poe. Then I'd hand-press pamphlets with my opinions and run around the streets trying to get people to read them. That's how bloggers rolled back then. Alas, it just wasn't to be. Or was it?
2013 brought me the closest I think I will ever come to experiencing first hand the release of a book that is destined to be read as a classic well after I'm around to rave about it. It was a book so profoundly moving, so perfectly constructed, so enthralling, that I was in awe from the first line. At its most basic, The Infatuations by Javier Marias is a murder mystery. A woman obsesses over a couple she sees in a diner. She doesn't speak with them but feels she has some deep connection. One day she opens the paper to learn that the man has been killed. Marias uses this relatively simple premise to crack open the world as we know it. What he has to say about human nature, about the way in which society functions, about life and literature is something you'd expect to read from one of the greats of classical literature. With The Infatuations, I think he just might have joined them.
And so, Bookworms, this brings us to the end of another year. Wishing you and yours a great 2014 with many happy hours spent glued to any number of fantastic books.
2013 brought me the closest I think I will ever come to experiencing first hand the release of a book that is destined to be read as a classic well after I'm around to rave about it. It was a book so profoundly moving, so perfectly constructed, so enthralling, that I was in awe from the first line. At its most basic, The Infatuations by Javier Marias is a murder mystery. A woman obsesses over a couple she sees in a diner. She doesn't speak with them but feels she has some deep connection. One day she opens the paper to learn that the man has been killed. Marias uses this relatively simple premise to crack open the world as we know it. What he has to say about human nature, about the way in which society functions, about life and literature is something you'd expect to read from one of the greats of classical literature. With The Infatuations, I think he just might have joined them.
And so, Bookworms, this brings us to the end of another year. Wishing you and yours a great 2014 with many happy hours spent glued to any number of fantastic books.
Microviews Vol. 48: In By A Frenchman's Whisker
Back in January I promised to review every book that I read this year. I thought I'd finished when I closed Rivers, a great book on which to end the challenge. Unfortunately, I couldn't resist. Two more days... surely there was time to read one more. And so I bring you this final blip on the radar, a lonely island, a single white flag flapping in the wind. What can I say? A promise is a promise.
An Officer And A Spy by Robert Harris
Along with Terry Pratchett, Robert Harris has long been one of my guilty pleasures. Fatherland still stands as my favourite thriller of all time as well as the best "What If?" novel I know. Engima was also a really cool take on a very exciting moment in military history. The Roman novels aren't exactly my thing, but as works of historical fiction they tower above most others. Bottom line - this guy knows how to write his way into history. Who better, then, to write the 'definitive' fictionalisation of the Dreyfus affair? There's something of The Titanic in this sort of venture. We all know how it ends. We know many of the characters. We know many of the details. And, of course, we all know Zola's classic full page indictment on the French military and judicial systems, J'Accuse. Harris comes at the story from the perspective of one of its middle tier players, Colonel Georges Picquart. Instrumental, albeit unwittingly, in the initial frame up of Alfred Dreyfus, his subsequent promotion to head of the military intelligence unit allows him to revisit the case and discover to his horror not only that Dreyfus was innocent but that the real villain had escaped any sort of justice. All of this is nothing new, but Harris creates such an incredible atmosphere of anti-semitism, conspiracy, arse-covering and downright arrogance amongst the upper echelons of the French military that the book left me seething with incredulity that they could ever have gotten away with it. Picquart was the perfect choice to tell the tale. He was, ultimately, on the side of truth and justice but he was also part of the machine that allowed it to happen. For him to be caught up and crushed in its cogs when he tries to expose the truth demonstrates the very fickle nature of power. An Officer And A Spy is a wonderful book and while it may not exactly be high literature it is a heady lesson in the feeble nature of powerful people caught in their own traps.
4 Out Of 5 Broken Sabres
An Officer And A Spy by Robert Harris
Along with Terry Pratchett, Robert Harris has long been one of my guilty pleasures. Fatherland still stands as my favourite thriller of all time as well as the best "What If?" novel I know. Engima was also a really cool take on a very exciting moment in military history. The Roman novels aren't exactly my thing, but as works of historical fiction they tower above most others. Bottom line - this guy knows how to write his way into history. Who better, then, to write the 'definitive' fictionalisation of the Dreyfus affair? There's something of The Titanic in this sort of venture. We all know how it ends. We know many of the characters. We know many of the details. And, of course, we all know Zola's classic full page indictment on the French military and judicial systems, J'Accuse. Harris comes at the story from the perspective of one of its middle tier players, Colonel Georges Picquart. Instrumental, albeit unwittingly, in the initial frame up of Alfred Dreyfus, his subsequent promotion to head of the military intelligence unit allows him to revisit the case and discover to his horror not only that Dreyfus was innocent but that the real villain had escaped any sort of justice. All of this is nothing new, but Harris creates such an incredible atmosphere of anti-semitism, conspiracy, arse-covering and downright arrogance amongst the upper echelons of the French military that the book left me seething with incredulity that they could ever have gotten away with it. Picquart was the perfect choice to tell the tale. He was, ultimately, on the side of truth and justice but he was also part of the machine that allowed it to happen. For him to be caught up and crushed in its cogs when he tries to expose the truth demonstrates the very fickle nature of power. An Officer And A Spy is a wonderful book and while it may not exactly be high literature it is a heady lesson in the feeble nature of powerful people caught in their own traps.
4 Out Of 5 Broken Sabres
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