A recent feature in The Independent got me thinking - why do we always fixate on literature's best opening lines? Yes, there is an incredible art to crafting the perfect hook. And a couple of obvious ones immediately jump to mind:
"All happy families are alike. Each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
"When Gregor Samsa woke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself transformed right there in his bed into some sort of monstrous insect." Franz Kafka, The Metamorphosis. (Obviously using the Bernofsky translation here).
Heck, I could rattle them off all day. I even know the beginnings to a bunch of books I've never read thanks, in part, to the constant deluge of articles about the best first lines in literature. The general agreement that seems to surround a certain few seem to suggest that they are self-perpetuating creatures much like The Most Photographed Barn In America from Delillo's White Noise. It's like a bloody mantra. For what it's worth, you might want to resist the intense gravity of consensus and branch out because there are some rather excellent openings that just don't get the recognition they deserve:
I'm Brodeck and I had nothing to do with it. Philippe Claudel, Brodeck's Report.
Looking back on it later it could only have happened because Budai had gone through the wrong door in the confusion at the transit lounge and, having mistaken an exit sign, found himself on a plane bound elsewhere without the airport staff having noticed the change. Ferenc Karinthy, Metropole
At the end of the twentieth century, the young Montano, who had just published his dangerous novel about the curious case of writers who gave up writing, got caught in the net of his own fiction and, despite his compulsive tendency towards writing, suffered a complete block, paralysis, a tragic inability to write. Enrique Vila-Matas, Montano's Malady.
Great. Now I've gone and got myself caught up in the very thing I'd come here to slag off. But it's so much fun!
I digress.
While the merits of a punchy opening are self-evident, spare a thought for the poor arse-end of a novel. Too often overlooked, a great last line can ensure the novel stays with the reader long after it is shelved/given to the Salvos/sold at your grandma's garage sale. You can blame Karl Marlantes for this latest obsession of mine. As I finally reached the end of his uneven but rather brilliant brick, Matterhorn, I was so blown away by the last line that I forgave all the book's imperfections. Spoiler alert: This will not spoil the book for you. Check it out:
"He knew that all of them were shadows: the chanters, the dead, the living. All shadows, moving across the landscape of mountains and valleys, changing the pattern of things as they moved but leaving nothing changed when they left. Only the shadows themselves could change."
Sublime. Those three sentences have haunted me for two weeks now. What then of other last lines? To me there is a clear frontrunner. Nothing has punched me in the gut quite so hard as Jospeh K.'s cry of existential resignation at the end of The Trial.
"“Like a dog!” he said, it was as if the shame of it should outlive him."
Among the classics, a few others stand out:
"For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of hate." Albert Camus, The Stranger.
"He never sleeps, the judge. He is dancing, dancing. He says that he will never die." Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian.
"The creatures outside looked from pig to man; and from man to pig; and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which." George Orwell, Animal Farm.
Not that I'm offering anything new here. You can readily find all those with a basic Google search for "best last lines". I want to start a new mantra. Reload the canon, so to speak. So here are a few of my favourite closers from off the beaten track:
"And now, as he turned and joined in on the kicking and screaming, and the paddywagon had begun to pull away from the cemetery-in-shambles which would be the final installment in a ten week media blitz, he knew for certain that nothing was finished, that John was not in a better place, and that an object in motion tends to stay in motion. A lord at rest tends to roll in his grave." Tristan Egolf, Lord of the Barnyard
"A new legend will arise of a great flood sent by God upon a sinful humanity. And there will be stories of drowned mythical lands said to have been the cradle of human culture; there will perhaps be legends about some country called England or France or Germany...'
'And then?'
'... I don't know how it goes on.'" Karel Capek, War With The Newts
"And the mouse took her own life." Jesse Ball, The Curfew.
"With a quick gesture he tosses back his straight greying hair, dragging his feet a bit, as if each step raised clouds of ashes, although there are no ashes in sight." Harry Mulisch, The Assault
"When he turned to look up for the last time at Ephraim, all he saw was a six pointed star turning slowly against the black sky." Michel Tournier, The Erl King (Also published as The Ogre)
"It all works out just right, and it turns out that you can get shot in the stomach and live, if you do it just right, and it turns out that I'm okay, it just happens to be the most excruciating pain I have ever felt in my life, and it feels really good." Charles Yu, How To Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
That'll do me for now. Can't think of a punchy way to end this. (Insert best ever closing line to a blog post here)
Kafka's Metamorphosis: A Classic Transformed
on Tuesday, March 25, 2014
The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (Tr: Susan Bernofsky)
When it comes to the cult of Franz Kafka, I have always been a lonely island miles off the coast of the greater archipelago. Sure, I love the usual suspects - The Trial is my favourite novel of all time. In The Penal Settlement is one third of my holy trinity of short stories (Peretz's Bontshe The Silent and Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart make up the rest), though it sometimes vies for position with The Hunger Artist. But when it comes to the one story that everyone seems to fall over themselves to love, The Metamorphosis, I am, at best tepid. Conceptually it is a work of genius but I have always thought it a little stale in execution. It was with some hesitation, then, that I picked up Susan Bernofsky's new translation of this "classic" tale and, colour me off-grey indistinguishable insect colour, I am a convert. I probably need not proselytise too much; I get that I am the guy who is turning up late to the party. But holy mother of Joseph K., Bernofsky has breathed so much new life into it that it was like reading the book afresh (her choice not to name the insect is itself a great start). I am reminded of Breon Mitchell's astounding translation of The Trial which managed to inject Kafka's humour back into the text and restore its timeless tone. So too Bernofsky has made The Metamorphosis something that might well have been written last week by a funny yet tortured writer struggling to make sense of a world spun out of control. It's current and exciting, yet entirely faithful. No matter what you think of The Metamorphosis - and I'm guessing that most of you love it - I urge you to go out and read this latest translation. I dare say it will transform before your eyes!
5 Out Of 5 Crushed Carapaces
When it comes to the cult of Franz Kafka, I have always been a lonely island miles off the coast of the greater archipelago. Sure, I love the usual suspects - The Trial is my favourite novel of all time. In The Penal Settlement is one third of my holy trinity of short stories (Peretz's Bontshe The Silent and Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart make up the rest), though it sometimes vies for position with The Hunger Artist. But when it comes to the one story that everyone seems to fall over themselves to love, The Metamorphosis, I am, at best tepid. Conceptually it is a work of genius but I have always thought it a little stale in execution. It was with some hesitation, then, that I picked up Susan Bernofsky's new translation of this "classic" tale and, colour me off-grey indistinguishable insect colour, I am a convert. I probably need not proselytise too much; I get that I am the guy who is turning up late to the party. But holy mother of Joseph K., Bernofsky has breathed so much new life into it that it was like reading the book afresh (her choice not to name the insect is itself a great start). I am reminded of Breon Mitchell's astounding translation of The Trial which managed to inject Kafka's humour back into the text and restore its timeless tone. So too Bernofsky has made The Metamorphosis something that might well have been written last week by a funny yet tortured writer struggling to make sense of a world spun out of control. It's current and exciting, yet entirely faithful. No matter what you think of The Metamorphosis - and I'm guessing that most of you love it - I urge you to go out and read this latest translation. I dare say it will transform before your eyes!
5 Out Of 5 Crushed Carapaces
Our Man In Hanoi: A Brief Encounter With Graham Greene
on Wednesday, March 19, 2014
It's funny how fate sometimes lands you in the lap of literary history.
There I was, happily traipsing through the streets of Hanoi, taking happy snaps of my grandmother and me eating all sorts of unidentifiable creatures, when a friend commented on one of my Facebook pics that I was at the hotel in which Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American. That's right, no expense has been spared for this holiday extravaganza with 90-year-old gran; we're shacking up at the Hotel Metropole, the only building here that is older than she is. A few quick chats with the manager and I tee up a visit to the Greene suite (which, I find out, is still used as a regular room).
Fast forward a couple of hours. The concierge leads us through the narrow corridors, swipes his key card and presto... we're in the room. Well, not that room. Turns out there was a slight miscommunication. I am in W. Somerset Maugham's room, the place he worked on The Gentleman In The Parlour. I plonk myself down at his desk, feeling thoroughly British. See:
It's cool but it is not THE room. Rumours abound that Graham's place is the showpiece, left intact from his days writing what is arguably his most celebrated work. Heck, I can make believe, if only for this experience, that I actually like The Quiet American. There's even word that his typewriter is still on the desk. I am practically plutzing to see it. I ask the concierge who says that unfortunately he doesn't think it's available to see. I become a petulant child... "But... But... But the manager promised!" A few quick calls and he comes back. The room is ready for me to see. I feel like a total dick but one who is about to play with Graham Greene's typewriter.
A gold plaque announces room 228 as The Graham Greene Suite. There's a second plaque telling me it's also the room where Australian Governor General Quentin Bryce had her headquarters while in Hanoi, but I don't really care. I am a proud aussie and all but seriously this room is about one person and one person only. And maybe his typewriter. The door opens to... just another opulent Metropole suite. Yes, any remnant of Greene's stay has been swept aside to make way for the ugly intrusion of modern technology. Large flatscreen TV. Fancy iPod dock with garish speakers above the sacred desk. It's a travesty. I compose myself, let the disappointment wash away. Graham Greene may well and truly have left the building but HOLY CRAP I'm at the desk. I'll just pretend there's a typewriter. Clackety-clack.
I suspect the concierge thinks I'm insane. I ask him to take a photo of me with the great man. Now we're besties and everything. Say "existential Catholic angst".
There I was, happily traipsing through the streets of Hanoi, taking happy snaps of my grandmother and me eating all sorts of unidentifiable creatures, when a friend commented on one of my Facebook pics that I was at the hotel in which Graham Greene wrote The Quiet American. That's right, no expense has been spared for this holiday extravaganza with 90-year-old gran; we're shacking up at the Hotel Metropole, the only building here that is older than she is. A few quick chats with the manager and I tee up a visit to the Greene suite (which, I find out, is still used as a regular room).
Fast forward a couple of hours. The concierge leads us through the narrow corridors, swipes his key card and presto... we're in the room. Well, not that room. Turns out there was a slight miscommunication. I am in W. Somerset Maugham's room, the place he worked on The Gentleman In The Parlour. I plonk myself down at his desk, feeling thoroughly British. See:
It's cool but it is not THE room. Rumours abound that Graham's place is the showpiece, left intact from his days writing what is arguably his most celebrated work. Heck, I can make believe, if only for this experience, that I actually like The Quiet American. There's even word that his typewriter is still on the desk. I am practically plutzing to see it. I ask the concierge who says that unfortunately he doesn't think it's available to see. I become a petulant child... "But... But... But the manager promised!" A few quick calls and he comes back. The room is ready for me to see. I feel like a total dick but one who is about to play with Graham Greene's typewriter.
A gold plaque announces room 228 as The Graham Greene Suite. There's a second plaque telling me it's also the room where Australian Governor General Quentin Bryce had her headquarters while in Hanoi, but I don't really care. I am a proud aussie and all but seriously this room is about one person and one person only. And maybe his typewriter. The door opens to... just another opulent Metropole suite. Yes, any remnant of Greene's stay has been swept aside to make way for the ugly intrusion of modern technology. Large flatscreen TV. Fancy iPod dock with garish speakers above the sacred desk. It's a travesty. I compose myself, let the disappointment wash away. Graham Greene may well and truly have left the building but HOLY CRAP I'm at the desk. I'll just pretend there's a typewriter. Clackety-clack.
I suspect the concierge thinks I'm insane. I ask him to take a photo of me with the great man. Now we're besties and everything. Say "existential Catholic angst".
The Folio Prize: From The Jaws of Victory...
on Tuesday, March 11, 2014
Well, I should have seen this coming...
After months of overblown hoopla, they've finally announced the inaugural winner of the Folio Prize. You know, the one that was supposed to knock the Booker off its perch... It all got off to a promising start - a shortlist that, while not exactly groundbreaking, was sufficiently interesting to hint at something special. Breaths were baited. Then held. And then they go give it to the most overrated book of the past 18 months. Yes, the 2014 Folio Prize was awarded this morning to none other than George Saunders for Tenth of December. Cue mass exhalation. I'm not saying it's a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. It has a couple of amazing stories. And, while on the topic, it chalks up another major literary win for the short story; ain't no doubt they can play with the big boys now. But a more worthy recipient that Rachel Kushner, Sergio De La Pava, Anne Carson or Kent Haruf? Methinks not.
If there's a form of high culture hipsterism, this has got to be it. Yes, from the jaws of victory the Folio committee has snatched defeat. Which leaves Team Booker with one year's grace to get it right. Mark the 14th of October in your diaries right now. Potentially a far more important date than the Tenth of December.
After months of overblown hoopla, they've finally announced the inaugural winner of the Folio Prize. You know, the one that was supposed to knock the Booker off its perch... It all got off to a promising start - a shortlist that, while not exactly groundbreaking, was sufficiently interesting to hint at something special. Breaths were baited. Then held. And then they go give it to the most overrated book of the past 18 months. Yes, the 2014 Folio Prize was awarded this morning to none other than George Saunders for Tenth of December. Cue mass exhalation. I'm not saying it's a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. It has a couple of amazing stories. And, while on the topic, it chalks up another major literary win for the short story; ain't no doubt they can play with the big boys now. But a more worthy recipient that Rachel Kushner, Sergio De La Pava, Anne Carson or Kent Haruf? Methinks not.
If there's a form of high culture hipsterism, this has got to be it. Yes, from the jaws of victory the Folio committee has snatched defeat. Which leaves Team Booker with one year's grace to get it right. Mark the 14th of October in your diaries right now. Potentially a far more important date than the Tenth of December.
Reading On A Jet Plane (Vietnam Edition)
on Monday, March 10, 2014
I'm off to Vietnam next week, taking my 90 year old grandmother on what I hope will be an amazing holiday. She's super ace, adventure hungry and great fun to hang around with. Much crazy food experimentation shall ensue. And cultural immersion. And just awesomeness.
Vietnam is one of those places I've always wanted to go but never had the chance. In fact, now I think about it, I know almost nothing about the place other than its cuisine (probably my favourite) and... well... to borrow from Fawlty Towers, don't mention the war. Grandma's been (obvious joke redacted) so she's set. I, on the other hand, risk turning up and sounding like an American tourist (apologies to my American friends but, seriously, you are really annoying when you travel).
Fourteen hours. That's how long I have to fix the problem. Yep, I'm gonna learn as much as I possibly can on the plane from Melbourne. I suppose a more normal fellow would be hitting the Lonely Planet guide, studying it in great detail, planning every minute of the holiday. Screw that. I want novels. Excellent novels. That's how I'm gonna learn! Now, before you jump down my throat, yes I've read The Quiet American. Didn't love it (oh god, crucify me now!) but did read it. Alas, that pretty much completes my entire Vietnam reading experience to date. Flicking through the various lists on Goodreads and Amazon, I can't help but notice that almost every novel about the country focuses on one thing and one thing only. To that end, I've already stocked up on a few must reads: Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (which I've been wanting to read since it came out), Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien, Dispatches by Michael Herr (yes I realise it's not a novel) and The Last Supper by Charles McCarry.
That about gets me to Singapore. I still have another three and a half hours to get to Hanoi and I want some non-war books - preferably by Vietnamese writers. Which is where you come in. Hit me up with suggestions ASAP so Grandma doesn't spend the whole week rolling her eyes at my absolute ignorance.
Please, do it pho her! (sorry)
Vietnam is one of those places I've always wanted to go but never had the chance. In fact, now I think about it, I know almost nothing about the place other than its cuisine (probably my favourite) and... well... to borrow from Fawlty Towers, don't mention the war. Grandma's been (obvious joke redacted) so she's set. I, on the other hand, risk turning up and sounding like an American tourist (apologies to my American friends but, seriously, you are really annoying when you travel).
Fourteen hours. That's how long I have to fix the problem. Yep, I'm gonna learn as much as I possibly can on the plane from Melbourne. I suppose a more normal fellow would be hitting the Lonely Planet guide, studying it in great detail, planning every minute of the holiday. Screw that. I want novels. Excellent novels. That's how I'm gonna learn! Now, before you jump down my throat, yes I've read The Quiet American. Didn't love it (oh god, crucify me now!) but did read it. Alas, that pretty much completes my entire Vietnam reading experience to date. Flicking through the various lists on Goodreads and Amazon, I can't help but notice that almost every novel about the country focuses on one thing and one thing only. To that end, I've already stocked up on a few must reads: Matterhorn by Karl Marlantes (which I've been wanting to read since it came out), Going After Cacciato by Tim O'Brien, Dispatches by Michael Herr (yes I realise it's not a novel) and The Last Supper by Charles McCarry.
That about gets me to Singapore. I still have another three and a half hours to get to Hanoi and I want some non-war books - preferably by Vietnamese writers. Which is where you come in. Hit me up with suggestions ASAP so Grandma doesn't spend the whole week rolling her eyes at my absolute ignorance.
Please, do it pho her! (sorry)
Microviews Vol. 50: Hell Is Popular Fiction
on Thursday, February 27, 2014
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
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
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