Finding Purpose in Purgatory: The Waiting Room by Leah Kaminsky

Of all the strange cities I've visited around the world, few hold as special a place in my heart as Haifa. Mid-Eastophiles take note. Forget Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. Forget Istanbul or Beirut. Amman? Nope. To me, it's all about that little city on a hill in Israel's north.

For those not in the know, Haifa is home to the best falafel in the world (Falafel Orion, made with white bean rather than chick pea and about fifty times more delicious than anything you'll find anywhere else) as well as the nicest bunch of guys to get together to form a punk band, Useless ID. It's also the only place in Israel where the cultural melting pot actually works. Jews, Muslims and Christians live in the kind of harmony we all speak about wistfully when we bandy around the idea of "Peace in the Middle East". That's not to say it isn't a city of tensions and contradictions. It's still Israel, after all. It's still kind of messed up, albeit in a very complex way. It is this very complexity that makes Haifa the perfect place for Leah Kaminsky to explore some very difficult issues of history, politics and the sense of self in her wonderful debut novel, The Waiting Room.

The book opens with Dina picking through the rubble in the aftermath of a suicide bombing. Ok, so straight up we realise we're in for some heavy shit. The prologue is short and sharp and, when the main body of the novel kicks off earlier that same day, we know from the outset that time is quite literally ticking. If there is such a thing as the Melbourne Expat Every-Jew, Dina is it. Born and raised in Australia, she is drawn to the promised land by a combination of ideology and love. She hits the ground running, quickly building her reputation as a GP in a local clinic while doing her best as a wife and mother. Like most Melbourne Jews, she also carries some serious baggage. She comes from Holocaust stock and is haunted, in her case quite literally, by the ghost of her obnoxious, loud-mouthed, judgemental mother. It is an interesting device - the woman acts as greek chorus and presiding magistrate throughout - though it might have you questioning Dina's mental health at times.

The Waiting Room is very much about the the way we live in a state of perpetual suspension. We are all, it seems, waiting for something, anything. Whether it be the return of love, the birth of a child (Dina is pregnant), the results of a test or the tangible manifestation of fear, time marches on undeterred. The question, though, is how we go about it. Sometimes, we can do little but prolong the agony. In one of the most moving sections, Dina cannot bring herself to tell a young mother that her symptoms are not caused by another pregnancy but, rather, the advanced stages of ovarian cancer. Other times, the waiting breaks us. Dina watches in exasperation as one of her more painful patients - an hilarious caricature of the typical pushy Israeli - tries to force her way to the front of the queue and then explodes at an unfortunate young Arab tradesman who is there to do some fixits. The book is full of this sort of thing - pregnant pauses and unexpected denouements. It also posits an interesting take on why we wait: the act can be an end in itself. It can be restorative, reparative. As the old Arab cobbler tells Dina when she comes to pick up some shoes, "Repairs take time". So it is with Dina in the end. The bomb goes off - we always knew it would - but it is what will set her on the way to a more balanced, meaningful life.

That Kaminsky should have such a nuanced understanding of the intricacies of waiting comes as little surprise. The Waiting Room took her over ten years to complete. Thankfully, the book is all the better for it. Let's just hope we don't have to wait too long for her next one.

Booker Prize 2015: The Stricken Field

Have you ever wondered which books the various publishers hoped would be in line for Booker glory? I'm not sure when Bookworld went all Hollywood on us, but a quick browse through my local bookstore this afternoon revealed a stricken field of heavy hitters in the New Releases section, names that have shown up on Booker shortlists of yore but were conspicuously absent this year (in retrospect). The only real surprise for me when the long list was announced was Jonathan Franzen's new brick, Purity. No doubt someone at FSG saw a sure-fire home run for America's first Booker. Alas, poor Johnny turned out to be an also ran. Never fear, he was in good company. Books released in the past week or so that I assume were scheduled to coincide with Booker season include:

Salman Rushdie - Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights
Pat Barker - Noonday
Andrew Miller - The Crossing
Rupert Thomson - Katherine Carlyle
William Boyd - Sweet Caress: The Many Lives of Amory Clay
John Banville - The Blue Guitar
Sebastian Faulks - Where My Heart Used to Beat
Maragret Attwood - The Heart Goes Last
Jeanette Winterson - The Gap of Time

Interesting omissions, n'est-ce pas? Now I'm left to wonder who will be wearing what on the red carpet and whether Will Self can play the role of literary Joan Rivers for TMZ... I clearly have too much time on my hands.

Booker Prize 2015: Best. Shortlist. Ever. (Well, not ever, but almost)

Fifteen minutes down and I'm ready to call it: This is the best Booker Prize shortlist in years. Smart, literary and accessible, it promises hours of satisfying reading for those of us who stubbornly push our way through every nominated word in every nominated sentence in every nominated book every fucking year. And, while I'm a pretty smug bastard, I'm not only saying it because I pretty much picked it.

If you haven't seen the announcement yet, the six novels vying for Booker glory are:

A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James
A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
Satin Island by Tom McCarthy
The Fishermen by Chigozie Obioma
The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota
A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

Leaving aside the Gold Watch nomination for Tyler, and Sahota's book that I know nothing about (but, judging by the other nominees is probably excellent), we have been gifted with four very worthy books, any of which will not bring shame or disappointment to the Booker name. It might even settle the great Booker/Folio shitfight.

As I said when the long list was announced, smart money would be on either Marlon James or Chigozie Obioma. I've only read the latter and I knew from the outset that it was bound to end up here. Meanwhile, I've heard nothing but the most frenzied of raves for James's story of Jamaica's most tumultuous period (which happened to include the attempted assassination of Bob Marley). Satin Island is brilliant - one of my favourite books this year - but it might be a bit intellectually offbeat for such a mainstream literary prize. And while I haven't read the Yanagihara yet, her last book, The People of the Trees, is one of the few truly revelatory novels of the past five years and, if the hype is to be believed, this is just as good.

I'm a little disappointed that Bill Clegg's long listed novel Did You Ever Have a Family didn't make it. I'm halfway through and it is a deeply moving novel about loss; a chain of voices reminiscent of the late great Andre Brink combined with Iain Pears and the mid-to-late 20th century American storytelling tradition of Wallace Stegner, William Faulkner and Richard Yates. The parochial Australasian in me is similarly disappointed that Anna Smaill didn't get through with her well-received novel, The Chimes but hey, we bagged it last year. And, for what it's worth, I'd have liked to see Marilynne Robinson's Lila there instead of Tyler's book. I'm never one for gold watches (I'm looking at you Ian McEwan).

The Booker Prize will be announced on October 15. I'm still calling it for Obioma. But we all know how that's likely to turn out.

What I'm Not Currently Reading: A Musing From The Cemetery of Forgotten Tomes

I log into Goodreads.

Three books ahead in the Reading Challenge? Check! Friends making friends with people far cooler than me? Check! Friends reading books that make me think less of them? Check!

My eyes drift to the right of the screen. I am overcome by dread. There... There...

A Blink of The Screen: Collected Short Fiction by Terry Pratchett.
Date Added: January 5 2013

Fever and Spear: Your Face Tomorrow Vol. 1 by Javier Marias
Date Added: June 25 2013

Welcome, my friends, to the cemetery of forgotten tomes. Here lie the remains of books I'd hoped to love, books I started with the intention of adding to my bloated tally, books I refuse to admit I've given up on. It is the dark corner of my obsessive affliction, that desperate need to finish every book I start no matter how much I despise it. Don't be fooled by its shiny gate, those neon words flashing in the night sky. It is an illusion. A delusion. "Currently Reading"? I don't think so. This place is a barren wasteland.

The Wake by Paul Kingsnorth.
Date Added: July 29 2014

Oh, yeah, I remember that one. What a stroke of creative genius. I'm serious. Phonetically scripted middle English recounting the Norman invasion of 1066. Holy shit it took me ages to get the hang of reading it. I was invested. I spent a good while patting myself on the back once I could get through a page in under ten minutes. I'm surprised I didn't end up with tennis elbow. And then... Is Terry Pratchett still alive? In this universe he is. Thank you Goodreads - you have caused a ripple in the space/time continuum. Uncle Terry, hiding in a box, waiting for me to lift its lid.

Limonov by Emmanuel Carrere.
Date Added: November 9 2014

Don't suppose you read Class Trip? Probably the creepiest novella of all time. Made me want to read anything Carrere ever wrote. And God knows I've done my best but, I'm sad to say, nothing has come even remotely close. For the most part he has tended towards reportage. I don't like reportage. Still, Limonov looked promising. There was a bit of buzz. I jumped in, full of hope. Three chapters in... I'll get back to it sometime. Or not. Maybe I should try the Marias again. I also swore to myself that I'd read everything of his after I fell in love with The Infatuations (my book of the year back in 2013). But shouldn't I just knock off poor Terry first? Pardon the pun.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
Date Added: November 22 2014

Apparently I started (and finished) six books between the time I opened the Carrere and the Ferrante. What the hell is wrong with me? So far as I recall, I really enjoyed the first half of My Brilliant Friend. I'll definitely have to go back. Ok, so one out of five I am, quite genuinely, Currently Reading. It's just taking me a while.

The Librarian by Mikhail Elizarov.
Date Added: May 19 2015

A fitting title. You probably recall my love of Umberto Eco's concept of the Anti-Library: the books on your shelf that you have not read. Eco says it's just as important as your proper library. It says just as much about you. Here on the screen, in that little corner of my Goodreads page, is a glimpse of my Anti-Library. Ironically, at home, my real world Anti-Library consists of at least five books by Umberto Eco. But I digress.

Maybe it's time I culled. Of the six books I'm Currently Reading, I can confidently say that I ain't touching two of them again. If only I could bring myself to click that little "x" and have them disappear from my life forever.

Out damn spot...

But I can't.

I will go to my grave with these Marks of Cain continuing on in the electronic ether.

A View From The Bridge of Sighs: Jesse Ball's A Cure For Suicide

Life is a long, drawn out, torturous lesson that seems geared to teach us only one thing: it's all shit. How many times have have you wished it would end? How many times have you dreamed of starting over? If only I could have my time again... Well, perhaps you can.

A woman enters a house. On the bed is a man, waking from a deep sleep. She begins to talk to him as you might a wide-eyed kindergarten child. She is teaching him the basics: what it is to live, to communicate, to engage with the world. She is, we learn, The Examiner. He is the Claimant. He has a name, but it changes as we progress. They are in a village, "The Gentlest Village" we are told, one in an intricate system of similar villages - the "Process of Villages" - through which Examiner and Claimant will pass. Should it not work out they will begin again. That's how it is for them all. Yes, there are many others like these two. And so it goes.

In many ways, A Cure For Suicide is the pinnacle of Jesse Ball's career to date. His power has always resided in his ability to profoundly unsettle the reader, holding up a cracked mirror to our world. Or perhaps there is nothing wrong with the mirror other than it shows us an unpalatable truth. Either way, Ball has remained tethered to the familiar no matter how far afield he has wandered. Now, in A Cure For Suicide, he pulls up anchor on the ship of our reality and casts us adrift on the sea of dreams. It is a wonderful thing to behold, a reading experience quite unlike any other you will have. In time it becomes clear that this system of villages serves a crucial purpose: much like the brain wipe in Sunshine of A Spotless Mind, it gives the claimant a second chance at life. Erase everything, become a tabula rasa. Then be guided through a process of reinvention. You need not die to be reborn. Memory is merely construction and can itself be built from scratch. Two thirds into A Cure For Suicide and I was quite certain I was reading a classic.

Alas, from great heights come terrible falls. Having become completely ensconced in this strange but oddly comforting world, I was shocked to see Jesse Ball do the one thing he's never felt the need to do before: explain what's going on. It was like being woken from troubling dreams only to find I wasn't some monstrous vermin and the world was just as I remembered it. For fifty pages we are treated to a reasonably good story of doomed love that, had it been a stand alone novella written by someone other than Jesse Ball, might have been a worthwhile read but in the context of the truly beautiful confusion that is The Process of Villages made for an annoying (and in the worst sense of the word, heartbreaking) distraction. I get it: rather than killing oneself one can undergo this cure for suicide. The clue was already in the title. No need to spell it out for me. Once done, the cloak of surrealism is returned, but it is now ratty and torn. The reader can see through its holes. There is a step towards redemption with a short play, The Onion Knife, which is vintage Jesse Ball and a fantastic piece of the novel's puzzle but I just couldn't shake the disappointment of what came before it. We end up back where we started: a village, albeit one of the Potemkin variety.

A Cure For Suicide is Jesse Ball's most difficult book, both in terms of concept and execution. Like all that have come before it, it demands rereading. I suggest on the second time round you skip those fifty pages. What remains, I dare say, is Jesse Ball's masterdream, the perfect novel that might have been.

Booker Prize 2015: A Likeable Longlist

Cue the confetti cannons. Silly season has begun.

The good folk at Team Booker have just announced this year's longlist and, I'm glad to say, it is quite the impressive collection. In case you haven't seen it, the books in the running for the Man Booker Prize 2015 are:

Bill Clegg (US) - Did You Ever Have a Family (Jonathan Cape)
Anne Enright (Ireland) - The Green Road (Jonathan Cape)
Marlon James (Jamaica) - A Brief History of Seven Killings (Oneworld Publications)
Laila Lalami (US) - The Moor's Account (Periscope, Garnet Publishing)
Tom McCarthy (UK) - Satin Island (Jonathan Cape)
Chigozie Obioma (Nigeria) - The Fishermen (ONE, Pushkin Press)
Andrew O’Hagan (UK) - The Illuminations (Faber & Faber)
Marilynne Robinson (US) - Lila (Virago)
Anuradha Roy (India) - Sleeping on Jupiter (MacLehose Press, Quercus)
Sunjeev Sahota (UK) - The Year of the Runaways (Picador)
Anna Smaill (New Zealand) - The Chimes (Sceptre)
Anne Tyler (US) - A Spool of Blue Thread (Chatto & Windus)
Hanya Yanagihara (US) - A Little Life (Picador)

As predicted, Obioma made it and you'd have to think is in with a good chance. Ditto Marlon James. Both books have been real favourites among reviewers and readers alike. I've only read the Obioma but the James has been sitting on my shelf for months and I'm keen to finally have reason to get stuck into it. I'm also pleased to see Tom McCarthy get another look-in. His consistent output of innovative yet accessible literature is worthy of continuing recognition and, while I don't really see him winning the prize, he most certainly deserves to make it to the final six. The one that I'm really excited about, though, is Hanya Yanagihara. Her first novel, The People Of The Trees was a magnificent, complex, revelatory work and there's some good buzz about this new one. I haven't had the guts to delve in yet - it's 800-odd pages - but I have a long haul flight in the near future and it will most certainly be my companion for those nine hours. Last time I read a long book in a single sitting it was Eleanor Catton's The Luminaries and we all know how that turned out.

The list is not without its duds. The Andrew O'Hagan was underwhelming - I just don't get the fuss the critics made about it. Sure, the guy deserves a Booker somewhere down the track but if he didn't win it for Be Near Me or Our Fathers he sure shouldn't be winning it for this. At least it was better than Maf The Dog, but so is my average shopping list. Also, though i have yet to read it, most people I know who have had a go at Anne Tyler's 'retirement novel' have thought it considerably beneath her. A win might be a gold watch for an amazing career, but it would do the prize no great credit.

For the Aussies who were hoping for back to back Bookers... Peter Carey? That was our best chance? Come on. Amnesia was, if you'll excuse the pun, entirely forgettable. New Zealand didn't fare a great deal better with only one nomination but I was happy to see that it was for The Chimes, a book that I've had my eye on for a while by an author who, a mutual friend tells me, is a really talented, humble and lovely person.

So there you have it: the most promising list of seemingly deserving contenders we've seen in years. More thoughts to come but, until then, happy reading!

E. L. Doctorow: The Book of Gratitude

If ever I was pushed to name what I consider to be that most elusive of creatures, The Great American Novel (or at least the modern incarnation thereof), I might ponder a shortlist that includes The Plot Against America, To Kill A Mockingbird, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and The Road. It wouldn't take too long, though, before I shoved them all aside in favour E.L. Doctorow's stunning masterpiece, The Book of Daniel.

I know that many readers revere Doctorow for books like Ragtime, Billy Bathgate and The March but for me it is his 1971 reimagining of the Rosenberg executions that not only showed who Doctorow was as a writer, but also perfectly captured the soul of America. It is angry. It is sad. It is hopeful. It is a war within itself.

Doctorow was a fiercely political writer but, as opposed to many of his like-minded contemporaries, he was wonderfully subtle in the delivery of his message. He allowed the beauty of his words to woo the reader to his way of thinking. There was little political exposition or sloganeering. Just powerful, warm, heartfelt prose that helped to shape the reader's political and moral consciousness.

In his later works, Doctorow continued to pick at the scabs of American society though only once - in The March - did he return to the kind of historical fiction upon which his reputation was built. Religious tribalism (not to mention his personal spiritual struggle) got a decent skewering in the difficult City Of God. The story of the Collyer brothers gave Doctrow the perfect vehicle to interrogate the modern materialist obsession in Homer & Langley. And most recently, Doctorow struggled with ageing and the uncomfortable metamorphosis of his homeland in the uncharacteristically patchy Andrew's Brain.

E.L. Doctorow died this week. I didn't really know what to say about him - I'm no expert when it comes to his life or work. I just know that I am thankful for The Book of Daniel. It changed my life. And for that I felt I needed to say something.

How Much Is That Yurtle In The Window?: The Lost Dr. Seuss

Hush now your Harping
Enough with the Finches
Here's something to cheer up
The grumpiest Grinches!

Fine, I'll stop there.

But who could possibly resist the temptation to wax poetic when yesterday saw the publication of a second "lost" manuscript from another all-time favourite? What Pet Should I Get? marks the unexpected return of the man who shaped my childhood and gave flight to my imagination, Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. Now, far be it from me to question my formative years, but this is a book that would really have helped me with my life choices. I mean, had ol' Theo seen fit to publish this masterwork of prospective pet-owner existentialism, I would not have picked a cat that shnotted across the room on regular occasions. Nor would I have stood on the duckling I rescued (I did not like that, not one bit). I might have rethought the ferrets, the snakes, the frogs and the spiders. And I most definitely would not have begged my parents for yeps on my steps, a Nooth Grush for my toothbrush or a Jertain for my curtain.

Obvious parallels could be drawn with a certain other recent publication but I'm just going to leave the thought here for you to ponder while I celebrate a new, if somewhat belated addition to my childhood library.

I've read it and loved it
And am now left to wonder
How long will it take
For ol' Disney to plunder?

To Unjustly Roast a Mockingbird: Harper Lee's Go Set A Watchman

For the past fifty years Harper Lee has been the picture of polished literary perfection. One novel, a universally adored classic, and then complete silence. No other books. No forays into academia. No pontificating from the sidelines. Just perfect, dignified silence. She could very easily have gone to her grave with a reputation that far surpassed many of her peers. Sure, they might have written a library shelf's worth more novels but, at the end of the day, they didn't write To Kill A Mockingbird. When word leaked out last year that a manuscript to a second book - one written before Mockingbird but taking place after it - had been found, the literary world responded with equal parts palpable excitement and absolute dread. That the circumstances about this great 'discovery' were tarred with accusations of exploitation and dodgy dealings didn't exactly help quell the fears.

In the months leading up to the release this week of Go Set A Watchman both sentiments have reached fever pitch. Holy crap have I been giddy with glee over the prospect of reading more from this Grand Goddess of the Written Word. At the same time, holy crap have I been petrified that the conniving lawyer Tonya Carter (go on, sue me), has taken advantage of Alice Lee's death and is not only riding roughshod but also taking a massive dump on Harper's legacy for the sake of a quick buck. To a certain extent I side with the naysayers - this book really ought not have been published. It was a draft manuscript that was rejected by an editor who saw promise in the flashbacks and encouraged Harper Lee to go back and try again, this time focusing on Scout as a little kid. And it's not like Lee or her editor were unaware of a second book following the phenomenal success of Mockingbird. Even if it took a little digging, they could have found it and worked it to the standard of publication if they'd really wanted to. Yes, all indications are that we'd have been better off never seeing Go Set A Watchman. Which brings me to the great difficulty in reviewing it. Is it possible to read and evaluate the novel without the attendant hoopla surrounding it? Can it be read as a companion piece without having to be a comparative one? Or is it destined to be the Grease 2 of literature, if Grease 2 had been made before Travolta squeezed into those impossibly tight leathers?

I'll say this at the outset: Go Set A Watchman is a strange reading experience. So much of it is instantly familiar - Maycomb, Atticus, Scout, many of the other characters as well as the themes - and yet there is something slightly amiss. It is like the contours have softened; we are seeing the devolution of a world into an earlier, sketched form. It is difficult to push the discomfort aside. Perhaps more unsettling is the fact that at the beginning it reads like a rather typical rural pastoral. Jean Louise (aka Scout) returns home from New York to visit her ailing father and instantly falls into some kind of playful romance with his assistant, Henry Clinton. Clinton (surprise, surprise) is not the kind of fellow Jean Louise's aunt wants for the girl - he is, as she says, from "trash". It's all very airs and graces. Atticus, too, weighs in and battle lines are drawn for what seems to be a final showdown between father and daughter. The budding romance takes up the greater part of the first half of the book and, while charming, it lacks the tension and moral power of the masterpiece it later spawned. That is until Jean Louise happens upon a town meeting involving both her father and her lover during which a hellfire segregationist spews the vile small-minded claptrap of the old guard. It's classic "they's takin' our jobs and our women" rubbish but it seems to strike a chord with those in attendance. Jean Louise, her mind opened by big city life, is horrified. Suddenly, the battle lines have shifted. There is an entirely different war in the offing.

Much has been made of Atticus the Klansman in discussions of this book. It seems so incongruent with the man we all revered - the champion of civil rights, the warrior for justice. Yet to simply say the Atticus of Go Set A Watchman and the Atticus of To Kill A Mockingbird are completely different creatures would be oversimplifying it. Remember that he is still a product of his time. And, in his explanation, he puts forward a progressive argument, albeit within certain old world constraints. To me he is more the complex character for this schism. What is important to realise is that he thinks he is being egalitarian. We need only think of some of the ridiculous things we've heard our parents or grandparents say while thinking they were showing compassion on critical issues - LGBTI springs to mind - to get where Atticus is coming from. That said, this was clearly Lee's first draft of Atticus as a fully fleshed-out character. Above all else, he is used here to represent one end of the spectrum to allow Jean Louise to represent the other. The latter is, without any doubt, Lee's own. Her voice, too, is Lee's, including the occasional embarrassing stumble into well-intentioned bigotry. In their protracted debate on race towards the end, you can see Lee putting down on paper the ideas that would not crystalise until Atticus was standing in a courtroom in another book. The argument itself is stilted and didactic: Atticus posits one position then Scout counters. Each sortie reads like an essay in miniature. It's hard to reconcile either character with who they once supposedly were.

To my mind, these concerns are rather minor. It is, after all, a draft. Where the book really falls down, though, is in its lack of a central dramatic anchor. At one point, Atticus's former maid's grandson accidentally runs over and kills an old man. He is arrested and, we are told, will be put on trial for manslaughter. Atticus takes the case. With the great courtroom drama of Mockingbird in the back of our head (and a few references to that particular case in Watchman) we are all poised for a showdown par excellence. Alas, it is quickly skipped over and we are back to the great ideological battle between father and daughter. Sigh.

It's not hard to see where Lee's editor was coming from all those years ago. I don't know how long it took her to return with To Kill A Mockingbird, but it is clear that somewhere in the process she struck gold in terms of narrative drive, moral complexity, a workable plot device and, most importantly, some real character development. She also invented one of my favourite characters during that time: Boo Radley. But this is where it all started. This is the clay from which man was formed. Had I not ever read To Kill A Mockingbird I think I would still have liked Go Set A Watchman. Contrary to what a lot of people are saying, it does stand alone as a novel, albeit one that would have benefited from the collaborative editing process that this has been denied. In no way, however, does it harm Harper Lee's legacy. If anything, it gives a bit more light and shade to an otherwise amorphous picture. It shows that she too is human, that she started somewhere and that, just like everyone else, she had to stumble to succeed. Yes, the publication of Go Set A Watchman might be a crass exploitative money grab. I've now bought it in digital form, Australian hardcover and American hardcover to boot. But I'm glad I did. Because now I've met Harper Lee, apprentice novelist. And, between you and me, I have a sneaking suspicion that whatever she writes after this is going to be a classic.

Microviews Vol. 55: Clash of Classics

The Mersault Investigation by Kamel Daoud
You don't know Harun, but you probably know his brother Musa. Well, maybe not by name but, if you love modern literature, you've definitely met him. Remember? On a beach? In Algiers? With five bullets in his chest? Surely this is sounding familiar. In what has to be one of the most audacious experiments I've encountered in recent times, Kamel Daoud has sought to reclaim the unnamed Arab murdered by Mersault in Albert Camus's classic L'Etranger (I'm not going to offer a translation - they all fail) and, in giving him a name and life story, not only engage directly with the original novel but also explore issues of identity, colonialism and the ownership of narrative. At first it reads as eulogy - Harun laments a brother invented simply to be destroyed, a mere prop in some great masterwork. He revisits many of Camus's lines, analysing them, spitting them back in the author's (and reader's) face. He is as impassioned as Mersault is dispassionate. Then, just as you feel the 'game' might get stale, Daoud shifts gears and reveals Harun's big secret. He too has killed someone - a Frenchman - during the 1962 unrest in Algiers. It is an act of defiance but also an act of revenge. It might also be an act of cold blooded murder. Yes, the loyal brother is caught up in an existential crisis of his own. He just might be Mersault's mirror. It took considerable guts for Daoud to engage so directly with one of literature's sacred cows. That the result should turn out so wonderfully satisfying, that it should be so much more than a mere companion piece to a classic, is both a relief and a thrill.
4.5 Out Of 5 Dead Mothers

These Are The Names by Tommy Wieringa
A ragged group of travellers trudges across an unforgiving wilderness. They are the hungry, the tired, the poor, thrown together by circumstance, forced to flee their homeland in search of safe harbour while a war rages on behind them. Only the the thinnest thread holds them together - they are untrusting and afraid, their tempers set to flare. Meanwhile, in the town of Michailopol, somewhere in an unnamed country, Police Commissioner Beg is on a journey of his own. His sense of identity, formerly secure in a warm shroud of familiarity, has been torn asunder. He is, or so it seems, Jewish in a town where only one other Jew remains, a cantankerous rabbi who has just buried the other Jew whom he despised. Beg wants answers to his past, his culture, the life that has been hidden from him. As he begins to immerse himself in the texts and traditions of his newfound faith, word gets out that a group of emaciated strangers has entered the town. And one of them is carrying a severed head. So unfolds Tommy Wieringa's powerful novel, a multi-layered detective story where the mystery is, in essence, how we seek to define ourselves and our sense of belonging. It is a prescient work in these troubled times, where entire populations are displaced and seek refuge. That the group have been the victims of unscrupulous people smugglers comes as little surprise, but that hardly lessens the rage you will feel as a reader towards those who profit from desperation. In some ways I was reminded of Jim Crace's masterful book, The Harvest, in its portrayal of a quiet community coming undone by its fear of 'the other'. Wieringa takes it a step further, not seeking to wrap the issues up in historical analogy. These Are The Names is a thoroughly contemporary book despite its non-situation in an easily identified time and place. In what it has to say about identity, sacrifice, the ethics of escape and our collective moral responsibility for those who seek refuge in our lands it is also a thoroughly urgent and welcome one.
4 Out Of 5 Dusty Trails

The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera has never shied away from the playfully absurd. There are moments in many of his novels where the reader will sit back with a wry smile, shake their head and appreciate the rope Kundera has thrown them in what is otherwise an ocean of deep philosophising. The Festival of Insignificance, Kundera's slim new offering, reverses the pattern. Moments of philosophy dot an otherwise humorous story of friends learning to find meaning in the general meaninglessness of everyday life. A chance meeting between D'Ardelo and Ramon sparks a descent into the ridiculous (and sublime) - for no particular reason the former claims to have been diagnosed with incurable cancer. He's throwing a cocktail party, you know, just to say goodbye to everyone. Which means he'll have to actually throw the party... and keep up the cancer charade. It's funny and silly in a very macabre European sense; the 'diagnosis' causes D'Ardelo and his friends to take stock leading to the realisation that life is (you guessed it) a festival of insignificance. Only when you enjoy the nothingness of it all can you cast away the monotony and dread. Wise words from a very wise old man but, in a career that has spanned six decades and countless philosophical eureka moments, it will not go down as an important book in the Kundera canon. Read it for the beauty of the writing and the knowledge that we may not hear from Kundera again. Then go read Immortality.
3.5 Out Of 5 False Teeth

A Brief History of Portable Literature by Enrique Vila-Matas
In some parallel universe there is a kingdom of literary wonders, in which an unrecognisable monarch plants his or her sizeable bum on the throne while being entertained by the greatest court jester of all time. I doubt anyone could name the monarch (indeed, I suspect that, depending on your angle, you might see a different one to me) but I think we can all agree on the identity of the jester: Enrique Vila-Matas. Since stumbling across his hilarious carnival of a novel, Montano's Malady, in which a slew of my favourite authors pop their heads up to clash philosophical swords, I've hungrily devoured any scraps the man has seen fit to throw we lesser beings of the English speaking world. They've all been great fun but, apart from the brilliant riff on Melville's Bartelby the Scrivener, nothing has quite lived up to my first taste. That is, until now. If I could have sat down with Vila-Matas and asked him to write a book especially for me, it probably would have turned out something like A Brief History of Portable Literature. Secret societies, obscure authors, Prague... yep. This is my book. A Brief History... tells of the (appropriately) short existence of The Shandies, a group of writers and artists committed to distilling literature to its smallest possible form while living out fantastical, disgustingly decadent, lives. Walser, Gombrowicz, Duchamp, Cendras, Man Ray and Aleister Crowley all play their part. Meyrink and Kafka get a nod once they hit Prague. The meetings become ever more farcical - for a while they convene on a requisitioned submarine - and the various characters put their very individual stamp on proceedings. A Brief History of Portable Literature is a juggling act by a jester who skirts the fine line between high culture and flat out lunacy. That the book itself is an example of distilled narrative just adds to the joke.
4 Out of 5 Bonzai Books