Category: Non-Fiction

Reading round-up: early January

2nd January 2014 / / 1 Comment

Happy New Year! To kick off my blogging in 2014, I have a new Reading Log page for the year; and here’s a round-up of some of the books I’ve read lately…

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Taste of Apple SeedsKatharina Hagena, The Taste of Apple Seeds (2008)
Translated from the German by Jamie Bulloch (2013)

When her grandmother dies, Iris inherits the old house. She returns to the village of her childhood to sort through everything; but finds that stepping back into her old world is not as easy as trying on her aunt’s dresses – and that there are family secrets to be uncovered. There’s a nice sense of place about Hagena’s novel, and some poignant reflections on loss (Iris’s grandmother had dementia before she died; her forgetting stands in contrast to Iris’s remembering and learning). Characters and memories circle around Iris in an intriguing dance, which ends with the prospect of further hope and sadness to come.

Matthew Hart, Gold (2013)

Journalist Hart brings together history, economics, and reportage in this account of gold’s changing role in the world economy. It’s a fascinating story to someone like me who doesn’t know about the subject; the way Hart tells it, it’s almost as though the idea of gold has become more important than the substance itself. I’m impressed with the range of Hart’s book, and with how deftly he ties all the threads together.

Ash Cameron, Confessions of an Undercover Cop (2013)

Another book in the Friday Project’s series of professional memoirs, this is a collection of tales from the author’s twenty-year police career, in both London and northern England, and in various sections of the force. Typically for this series, Cameron’s stories are a mixture of the humorous and dark, but always make for fascinating reading.

Equilateral

Ken Kalfus, Equilateral (2013)

In the last decade of the 19th century, British astronomer Sanford Thayer leads a grand engineering project: the construction of a giant equilateral triangle that will be seen from Mars -a signal to the great civilisation believed to reside there.  As Kalfus chronicles the scheme’s trials and tribulations, the ironies are plain to see – not just that of the great faith in the Martians’ existence and superiority (a faith which looks rather more misplaced to us), but also that Thayer remains enamoured of the Martians while having no regard for his Arab workers. The cool tone of the writing makes Equilateral a novel to savour.

Robert W. Greene, The Sting Man (1981)

This book is about Mel Weinberg, a hustler who was recruited by the FBI in the 1970s to work on Abscam, a sting operation that investigated public corruption (and which inspired the film American Hustle). I found the earlier parts of the book, covering Weinberg’s pre-Abscam career, to be the most interesting; Greene portrays Weinberg as an intriguingly ambivalent character: charismatic to an extent, repellent in other ways. Either way, though, Weinberg’s audacity is quite something to read about.

Nicholas Griffin, Ping-Pong Diplomacy (2014)

This is an account of: the development of table tennis as a sport, and the political dimension that was seemingly present from the start as the rules were codified. Griffin (a journalist and novelist) focuses particularly on ping-pong’s role in the thawing of relations between China and the USA during the 1970s, when table tennis players could move between the two countries in ways that diplomats could not. I knew barely anything about this part of history, and found Griffin’s book illuminating.

My favourite books of 2013

19th December 2013 / / 16 Comments

I love end-of-year list time, because it’s a chance to reflect on the best moments. I read over 150 books this year, which I’m sure must be a record for me, and is certainly unusually high. There were plenty of highlights amongst all those books, but I have managed to sift them down to twelve, my usual number for these lists.

You can see my previous best-of-year lists here: 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009. I’ve kept changing the format over the years (ranked or unranked; books from all years, or just the year in question); I’ve settled on including books from all years of publication (as long as I read them for the first time this year); but I think it’s more fun to rank them, so I’m also going to do that. And, taking a leaf from Scott Pack’s book, I’m going to list them in reverse order.

So, here (with links to my reviews) are my Top 12 Books of 2013:

70 acrylic

12. Viola Di Grado, 70% Acrylic 30% Wool (2011)
Translated from the Italian by Michael Reynolds (2012)

Of all the books I read in 2013, this may be the one that most thoroughly depicts the real world as a strange and treacherous landscape. This is a novel about the power of language to shape perception, as it depicts a young woman gradually discovering a new way to look at life (and, just possibly, finding love) when she meets a boy who teaches her Chinese.

11. Andrew Kaufman, Born Weird (2013)

This is the third Andrew Kaufman book that I’ve read, and he just gets better and better. Born Weird tells of five siblings who were given ‘blessings’ at birth by their grandmother, which she now plans to undo on her death-bed. Kaufman has a wonderfully light touch with the fantastic: there’s just enough whimsy to illuminate the family story, and there’s real bite when the novel gets serious.

10. Project Itoh, Harmony (2008)
Translated from the Japanese by Alexander O. Smith (2010)

A searching exploration of self-determination and authoritarianism in a future where remaining healthy is seen as the ultimate public good. One of the most intellectually engaging books I read all year.

9. Colm Tóibín, The Testament of Mary (2012)

Chalk this one up as the book I liked that I wasn’t expecting to. A short but powerful character study of a mother becoming distanced from her son as he is swept away by social change and the great tide of story. This would have been my second choice for the Man Booker Prize. (My first choice? That’s further down/up the list.)

twelve tribes8. Ayana Mathis, The Twelve Tribes of Hattie (2012)

A wonderfully fluid composite portrait of an African-American family making their way in the North across the twentieth century. Just recalling the range and vividness of this novel makes me want to read the book again.

7. Sam Thompson, Communion Town (2012)

Ten story-chapters that make the same fictional city seem like ten different places. Communion Town depicts the city as an environment crammed with stories, each vying for the chance to be told. It’s invigorating stuff to read.

6. Mohsin Hamid, How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia (2013)

With one of the strongest voices I’ve encountered all year, this is a nuanced account of a man’s pragmatic rise from childhood poverty to business success – with a keen sense that there are costs to be borne along the way. The second-person narration, which could so easily have been a gimmick, works beautifully.

all the birds

5. Evie Wyld, All the Birds, Singing (2013)

It has been really exciting over the last five years to see fine writers of my age-group emerge and establish names for themselves. Evie Wyld is one such writer; her debut was on my list of favourite books in 2009, and now here’s her second novel. Wyld remains a superb writer of place, in her depiction both of the English island where sheep farmer Jake Whyte now lives, and of the Australia that Jake fled. I also love how elegantly balanced this novel is, between the volatile past and the present stability that’s now under threat.

4. Alina Bronsky, The Hottest Dishes of the Tartar Cuisine (2010)
Translated from the German by Tim Mohr (2011)

Here’s the most memorable character of the year for me: the gloriously ghastly Rosa, who will do anything for her family if it suits her, and will do anything to them if it suits her better. This book is a joy – blackly hilarious, with a bittersweet sting.

3. Shaun Usher (ed.), Letters of Note (2013)

My non-fiction pick of the year. This is a lavish collection of facsimile letters, which is both beautiful to look at, and a window on very personal aspects of history.

2. Jess Richards, Cooking with Bones (2013)

Jess Richards’ work was my discovery of the year: Cooking with Bones is a magical novel that defies easy summary; but it includes a girl who doesn’t know who she wants to be, when all she can do is reflect back the desires of others; supernatural recipes; and one of the most richly textured fictional worlds I’ve come across in a long time. More fool me for not reading Richards’ debut, Snake Ropes, last year; but at least I have the wonderful promise of that book to come.

luminaries1. Eleanor Catton, The Luminaries (2013)

Once in a while, a book will come along that changes you as a reader, affects you so deeply that the experience becomes part of who you are. Eleanor Catton’s The Rehearsal was like that for me, which is why it topped my list of books read in 2009. With The Luminaries, it has all happened again. Several months after reading it, I am in awe at the novel’s range and richness; yet I feel that I’ve still glimpsed only a fraction of what Catton has achieved in the book. I was overjoyed at her Man Booker win, and can only hope that it will bring Catton’s work to the attention of as many people as possible. My wish for all readers is that they find books which mean as much to them as a work like The Luminaries means to me.

Now, what about you? What are your favourite books of the year? Also, if you’ve read any on my list, let me know what you thought.

Reading round-up: books for Christmas presents

9th December 2013 / / 0 Comments

This isn’t meant to be a guide to Christmas gift ideas as such (for that, let me direct you to Kim’s excellent series of posts over on Reading Matters). It’s more that I’ve read a few books lately which, it struck me, would make good Christmas presents; so I thought I’d put them together into a blog post, and add in some other titles that I reviewed earlier in the year.

Non-Fiction

Letters of Note, ed. Shaun Usher

This huge, lavishly illustrated collection of letters (based on the website of the same name) is an ideal gift for anyone interested in the personal side of history, or who likes letters and books as objects. Read more about it in my original review.

Wordsmiths & Warriors by David and Hilary Crystal

This is an illustrated travelogue of significant places in the history of the English language in Britain. I haven’t seen the finished book, as I read a proof version when I reviewed it; but I’ve no doubt that it will look beautiful.

Fred's WarFred’s War by Andrew Davidson

Andrew Davidson’s grandfather Fred was a medical officer of the 1st battalion Cameronians during World War One. Although photography was banned on the front line, Fred and several other officers had cameras with them, and took photographs of their lives at war. Davidson uses these images to tell the story of the 1st Cameronians during the year that Fred was a serving officer. It’s a vivid and intimate account; there’s a real sense of the war gradually coalescing around the men as they march through France. Though Davidson refers to the photographs, he doesn’t caption them, which adds to the sense of this being an unfolding story for the men involved. Fred’s War gives a personal portrait of the conflict which is not quite like anything I’ve come across before.

Girl from Station X

The Girl from Station X by Elisa Segrave

Here’s another book based around personal wartime accounts, this time the diaries of Elisa Segrave’s mother Anne, who was stationed at Bletchley Park during World War Two. Again, it’s a fascinating glimpse into history, seeing Anne move from her privileged girlhood world into her wartime career; but this is Elisa’s story as much as Anne’s. Segrave describes how Anne’s diaries revealed to her a side of her mother that she had never known, and enabled her perhaps to understand Anne as she had not previously been able to. This double story is what particularly intrigues about The Girl from Station X.

Fiction

The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton

Yes, I know: any excuse to enthuse about The Luminaries. But it is just the sort of big hardback novel that would make a great Christmas gift, especially for readers who may have been undecided about trying it out for themselves (it may take them well into the new year to read it, too).

If not The Luminaries, then Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch or Sergio de la Pava’s A Naked Singularity may also fit the bill (I have heard great things about both, but haven’t read them, so I can’t give a personal recommendation).

Crystal MirrorThe Crystal Mirror by Tim Malnick and Katie Green

From three long books to a much shorter one. This is a crowd-funded collection of “timeless tales for children and grown-ups alike”, written by Tim Malnick and illustrated by Katie Green. The five stories are all about characters changing their outlook on life to find a way forward, from the painter imprisoned in a bare tower room, to a bat fascinated by daylight. Malnick’s prose has the rhythms of a classic fairytale, and Green’s illustrations are gorgeous. I may not be quite the intended audience for The Crystal Mirror, but I found the book absolutely charming.

Non-Fiction about Fiction

Novel Cure

The Novel Cure by Ella Berthoud and Susan Elderkin

Subtitled “An A-Z of Literary Remedies”, this book has suggestions for reading to help alleviate a variety of ailments. Some are quite tongue-in-cheek (David Vann’s Caribou Island as a cure for enthusiasm with DIY; Christie Malry’s Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson to treat fear of doing your tax return); others more serious (Wuthering Heights to cure a desire to seek vengeance; Mrs Dalloway to tackle that Monday morning feeling). But the entries are always written with wit (I especially love the entries which spoof the style of the book being recommended; my favourite is the one for House of Leaves) and enthusiasm. After reading The Novel Cure, or even just dipping into it, you’ll almost certainly have some new books that you want to try. Now, what’s the cure for an exponentially increasing to-read pile..?

“There is a great difference between a letter to a friend and history written for all to read”

31st October 2013 / / 4 Comments

Simon Garfield, To the Letter (2013)
Shaun Usher, Letters of Note (2013)
Kressmann Taylor, Address Unknown (1938)

A few weeks ago I read Tom Standage’s Writing on the Wall, which argues quite convincingly that there are analogues of social media (that is, ways of sharing information through personal networks) going back 2,000 years in history. From that point of view, there’s more continuity between how we communicate now, and how we used to, than one might suppose. But I’ve had cause to think about these issues again after reading a couple of new books from Canongate which are all about the history of letters. I’ve been wondering whether there is something unique about letters that might potentially be lost.

totheletterSimon Garfield has written a number of acclaimed non-fiction books (including 2010’s Just My Type, a history of typography, which I have been meaning to read for ages). His new book, To the Letter, is subtitled ‘A journey through a vanishing world’; so we know that this isn’t going to be just a factual account but – well, a love letter to letters. ‘Letters have the power to grant us a larger life,’ says Garfield (p. 19), telling of how he became intrigued by the story of a magician named Val Walker, after discovering a set of Walker’s correspondence for sale at an auction. There are similar glimpses of different lives and stories throughout To the Letter, as Garfield weaves together the history of postal delivery, the contents of letter-writing manuals, and notable correspondents from throughout the centuries, all into a fascinating tapestry.

If, like me, you have ever enjoyed writing or receiving letters (or both!), there will be plenty to delight you in Garfield’s book. But also, there will almost certainly be something to cause a feeling of regret and disappointment; for me it was learning that the Postman Pat theme has been changed  so he brings ‘parcels to your door,’ rather than letters. (Now I look into this further, it seems that the change came about because the new series is about Pat running a parcel delivery service, which alters my view a little, though I suppose it’s still illustrative of a general trend.) The thing is, though, that I’m really just being nostalgic for the trappings of the physical letter here; if I want to get to the heart of what letters really represent, I think I need to go deeper than that.

Tom Standage’s first example of historical social media in Writing on the Wall is Cicero staying in contact with Rome by copying and sharing letters, some of which were intended to be public documents. Garfield also has a chapter on the Romans, but he make a distinction between the public (in a sense performative) correspondence of a Cicero, and the letters of someone like Pliny the Younger, which were generally more private.  The sense of letters as a private and personal space comes through time and again in To the Letter, perhaps never more so than in the wartime correspondence which intersperses the book. Chris Barker (an RAF communications officer stationed in the south Mediterranean) began writing home to his friend Bessie Moore (who translated Morse code messages for the Foreign Office) in 1943; as time went on, their friendship turned to love – and the expression of that love as we see it in their letters is deeply affecting. I was as captivated by the tale unfolding in their correspondence as I could have been by any fictional story.

Perhaps this is what the personal letter fundamentally represents: a space for an extended, reflective engagement between two individuals. This is something that can also be accomplished by email, of course; but I do think that the act of physically writing a letter encourages it more. Either way, Simon Garfield’s book leaves me appreciating letters anew, and thinking that perhaps I should write more of my own.

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lettersofnote

The quotation heading this post is from Pliny (as mentioned by Garfield); I think it’s correct, but I was also struck on reading To the Letter (especially the Barker-Moore correspondence) at how letters can turn history inside-out, can give a view that one might not see otherwise. That feeling was brought to mind again when I read Letters of Note, a book based on Shaun Usher’s website of the same name. This book was published in association with the crowdfunding site Unbound; so that’s an online service used to facilitate a printed book derived from a website that celebrates paper correspondence – phew! Letters of Note reproduces the text of 125 letters, often alongside images of the actual documents. It’s a big, beautiful object.

It is also wonderful to read. There are the amusing entries, such as the young Queen Elizabeth II sending President Eisenhower her recipe for drop scones; or an eight-year-old boy’s letter to Richard Nixon (who was recovering from pneumonia at the time) urging him to ‘be a good boy and eat your vegetables like I had too!!’. There are letters which, as I said earlier, open up history in a way that only personal documents can: Francis Crick’s letter to his young son describing the newly-discovered DNA molecule; or a Japanese lady’s farewell to her samurai husband, whom she was sure would fall in battle. There’s the poignant and the inspiring, the romantic and the furious. I could go on, but Letters of Note is something you really have to experience for yourself. It’s difficult to imagine a better demonstration of the power and value of written correspondence.

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addressunknownNow seems a good time to talk about what I’d imagine to be one of the most powerful epistolatory stories in the English language. Kathrine Kressmann Taylor’s Address Unknown was first published in Story magazine in 1938; I read it this year in a stand-alone volume published by Souvenir Press. It takes the form of a correspondence between Max Eisenstein, a Jewish American gallery owner; and his old friend and business partner Martin Schulse, who has recently returned to Germany as the tale begins, in 1932. At first, Schulse is hopeful for the future of his country under Hitler, but also expresses his reservations to Eisenstein. Schulse’s attitude soon hardens, though, and he orders Eisenstein to stop writing. The American attempts to appeal to his old friend’s better nature, but Schulse will have none of it – until events take a tragic turn, and the letters become weapons.

I think it’s the epistolatory form that really makes this story; Taylor brings together the personal and performative  aspects of letter-writing, using both to cutting effect. We see the changing nature of the two men’s relationship, and sense the deep personal connection that Eisenstein wishes were still there (and that letters can forge and capture so well). But I’m also struck by how much the letters in Address Unknown don’t show – how they filter out certain aspects of their thoughts. I’m thinking especially of the ending, where the letters advance implacably (you’ll have to read the book to see what I mean), and we have to infer what must be in their writer’s mind. Letters may be able to forge a connection between two people, but Taylor’s story shows how they might also sever one irrevocably.

Reading round-up: late October

28th October 2013 / / 2 Comments

Here are some notes on what I’ve been reading lately…

Bernardine Evaristo, Mr Loverman (2013)

Hearing Bernardine Evaristo read from this novel was one of my highlights from this year’s Penguin General Bloggers’ Evening, so naturally I was interested to read Mr Loverman. Our narrator is the charming Barrington Walker: 74 years of age, not quite as happily married to Carmel as he once was, and sixty years into a secret relationship with his old friend Maurice. Now is the time for Barry decide what he really wants in life; his story on its own would be fine, but Evaristo broadens out her portrait to show other characters’ analogous difficulties. The occasional chapters told from Carmel’s viewpoint (in a prose-poetry style that’s a little less immediate than Barry’s narration, and so distances us slightly from her, just as she is from him) show how her delight at marrying Barry back in 1960s Antigua has paled in the decades since. The Walkers’ daughters are also finding that their lives may not necessarily have turned out as they or their parents imagined, adding another layer to a satisfying read.

Ian Sales, The Eye With Which the Universe Beholds Itself (2013)

Ian Sales continues his Apollo Quartet of novellas set in futures where the history of space exploration went differently; as with Adrift on the Sea of Rains, the second volume proves an interesting character study. We join Bradley Elliott at two points in his career: in 1979, when he was about to become the first (and only) human to set foot on Mars; and twenty years later, as he goes on a mission to a far more distant world. What’s so striking about this novella is the air of resignation and melancholy that Sales creates: Elliott may be the only person capable of undertaking his 1999 mission, but there is also the strong sense that this is the only thing that Elliott can do with his life.

Maryam Sachs, The Passenger (2013)
Translated by Gael Schmidt-Cléach

In this intriguing short novel, a German woman arrives in Paris for her son’s birthday. She’s taken the journey from Charles de Gaulle many times; but this one becomes very different when the woman strikes up a conversation with her taxi driver, a Romanian who once lived in Japan. The pair’s conversation ranges far and wide, taking in their personal histories, their thoughts on art and moving between cultures. But this journey is not just a geographic one, as the woman starts to realise she is something of a passenger in her own life, and that it may now be time for her to take the wheel.

Tom Cheshire, The Explorer Gene (2013)

Technology journalist Tom Cheshire tells the story of Auguste, Jacques and Bertrand Piccard: three generations of the same family who became respectively the first person to enter the stratosphere; the person who travelled deeper into the ocean than anyone else ever has; and the first to circle the globe non-stop in a balloon. The Piccards’ story is extraordinary, and Cheshire brings it vividly to life, from the opening scene of Auguste struggling to deal with the leaking cabin of his experimental balloon, right through to Bertrand’s current plans for a solar-powered aircraft.

Jorn Lier Horst, Closed for Winter (2011)
Translated from the Norwegian by Anne Bruce, 2013

A dead body is found in the summer cottage of a television presenter, sparking a new investigation for Chief Inspector William Wisting. Retreating from her relationship, Wisting’s daughter Line, an investigative journalist, settles into the family cottage to write a novel – and finds another body on the nearby beach. These two threads spiral together into a tense narrative, with an added undercurrent examining social change and the forces that may drive people to commit crime.

Reading round-up: early June

8th June 2013 / / 2 Comments

More snapshots of some of the books I’ve read lately:

Patrick Ness, The Crane Wife (2013). Fortysomething George Duncan removes an arrow from the wing of a crane which has mysteriously appeared in his garden… then falls in love with a woman named Kumiko who visits his print shop the next day. But what follows is not so simple as “Kumiko is the crane” – she becomes the missing piece in more than one character’s life, and highlights how others do the same. The Crane Wife is a neat exploration of love and communication; I especially like the subtle ways that Ness alters the style and tone of his dialogue, depending on which characters are in conversation.

Kristina Carlson, Mr Darwin’s Gardener (2009; translated from the Finnish by Emily Jeremiah and Fleur Jeremiah, 2013). The latest Peirene Press title centres on Thomas Davies, non-religious gardener to Charles Darwin, who wonders what is left to live for after his wife has died. Carlson’s prose swoops in and out of the minds of various inhabitants of Downe village, examining their faith and slowly revealing their own personal doubts. The lines between faith as a belief and a way of life blur, as do notions of living for this world or the next, in a complex portrait.

Meike Ziervogel, Magda (2013). And here is the first novel by the founder of Peirene Press. It’s a composite of story-chapters, in various voices and styles, about Magda Goebbels, her mother Auguste, and eldest daughter Helga. Ziervogel ddepicts Magda as a girl given the fear of God at convent school; a woman who sees in Hitler what she had been searching for; and a mother preparing to kill her children. She also traces the psychological changes in her characters over the generations, in an interesting piece of work.

Rupert Christiansen, I Know You’re Going to Be Happy (2013). The son of two journalists, Christiansen is himself a newspaper opera and dance critic. In this memoir, he attempts to unpick the story of his parents’ divorce (his father left when Christiansen was a young child; the last time that the author never saw him was at the age of five). Christiansen is frank that this is an act exploration for him as much as one of recollection; but he creates vivid vignettes, whatever he turns to (I particularly appreciated his depiction of the ambivalence of growing up in suburban London). Christiansen’s story is compelling, and his prose a joy to read.

Books in brief: late February

27th February 2013 / / 0 Comments

Susannah Cahalan, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness (2012). Cahalan is a New York Post journalist who contracted a rare form of encephalitis which induced a period of mental illness. This book is her account of that time, reconstructed largely from secondary sources (Cahalan having been left with few memories of her illness). It’s an interesting story, ranging from the development of Cahalan’s symptoms, through her eventual diagnosis, to her trying to understand the illness as she recovers.

Anouk Markovits, I Am Forbidden  (2012). A novel chronicling fifty years in the lives of a Jewish family, beginning in a Hasidic community in Transylvania, and moving through Paris and England, and ending in New York. I appreciate its careful portrait of the pressures faced by its characters when their wishes clash with law and tradition; but I did find the book hard to engage with at times, and its latter stages felt overly compressed.

Bianca Zander, The Girl Below (2012). Suki returns to London after living in New Zealand for ten years, and finds herself out of place in even the most familiar surroundings. The job of minding an old friend’s teenage son gives Suki a chance to find her bearings once again – but she keeps having visions of her childhood, and an incident in an old air-raid shelter in the garden. That adds an intriguing and unexpected extra dimension to the story of Suki’s finding her place.

Hugh Aldersey-Wlliams, Anatomies (2013). I loved the idea of this book: a tour of the human body, taking in art and culture as well as science. It packs a lot in, from historical attempts to depict the body, to the physicality of dancing, to Shakespeare’s anatomical idioms. There is a lot of interesting material, but ultimately I think the book is that bit too diffuse: some chapters wander a little too far away from their named subject; some sections I just wish were longer. As a whole, Anatomies is okay, but it could do with more focus.

 

Books in brief: early January

7th January 2013 / / 3 Comments

It’s a blogging anniversary – four years ago today, I published the first post here on Follow the Thread (a review of the movie Once). A further 728 posts have followed it, and there are more to come. Here’s one now – let me round-up some of the books I’ve been reading in the last few weeks…

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Tan Twan Eng, The Garden of Evening Mists (2012). A judge retires to her old house in the central highlands of Malaysia, recalling the old Japanese gardener she knew there in her adolescence – the Japanese Emperor’s one-time gardener, no less. This is a very still, quiet book: its language can be overly ornate, but does create that atmosphere also well. Eng also paints a complex picture of morality and history.

Ali Smith, Artful (2012). Four lectures on aspects of art, delivered by Smith at the University of Oxford in early 2012. Essayistic reflections on art are folded into the ongoing story of a woman haunted by her dead lover (who may or may not have returned). This is thought-provoking stuff, and I suspect it would be excellent read aloud by the author. Perhaps not the ideal book for me to choose as my introduction to Smith’s work, though.

James Renner, The Man from Primrose Lane (2012). David Neff, a successful writer still sorely missing his dead wife, investigates the mysterious murder of a recluse – and finds his reality growing more and more unstable. There’s considerable charm in the raggedness of Renner’s debut novel; and, especially in the middle, the slippage between perceptions and realities is quite exhilarating. On the flipside, the book sidelines its female characters, and it collides two genres in such a way that they tend to undermine rather than reinforce each other.


Pierre Szalowski, Fish Change Direction in Cold Weather (2007; tr. Alison Anderson 2012). Montreal, January 1998: a boy’s parents split up, he calls to the sky for help – and a severe ice storm descends. New relationships are forged as the community is brought closer together. Szalowski’s prose is light and breezy, perhaps a little too much so –the novel aims for a deep emotional connection which I never quite felt.

Kobo Abe, The Face of Another (1964; tr. E, Dale Saunders 1966). A scientist disfigured in an accident determines to create the perfect mask; when he succeeds, he finds himself thinking of the mask as a separate entity. I found this an interesting book – in terms of both its philosophical reflections on what faces mean to us, and its characterisation of the protagonist, with his increasing lack of self-awareness – but it was also dry, and my enthusiasm for writing about it further waned as the pages turned.

Patrick Neate (ed.), Too Much Too Young (2012). The second annual anthology from Neate’s “literary club night”, Book Slam. Twelve stories from writers including David Nicholls, Marina Lewycka, and Nikesh Shukla, each taking its title from a song. It’s a diverse set of stories, with the passing of time as the most common theme. My pick of the volume is Chris Cleave’s ‘We’ll Meet Again’, in which a man shows his grandmother (who has dementia) how to use the internet, leading to poignant contrasts of past and future.

Book notes: a debut novel and an artist’s memoirs

8th November 2012 / / 2 Comments

Wayne Macauley, The Cook (2011)

Zac is a young offender whose rehabilitation is to be sent to a rural cookery school run by a famous chef.

Here Zac finds his calling when he discovers the world of fine food. While others on the scheme fall by the wayside, Zac diligently pursues his craft, studying classical French cookery books; breeding his own lambs for his dishes. After leaving the school he is given a job as the private chef to a wealthy Melbourne family. Zac sees this as good practice for his dream of opening a high-end restaurant – but not everyone in the household is happy with the ethics of employing him.

The Cook is an interesting examination of class issues – Zac’s job might be seen as archaic servitude (he has to call his employers ‘Mistress’ and ‘Master’) but he thinks he can better himself with it. Wayne Macauley doesn’t give simple answers, but his debut novel is also a brilliant example of voice and viewpoint. You hear Zac’s comma-free gabble in your head and become so absorbed in his perspective that you start to lose sight of what’s happening around him. That is, until the ending, when the full implications of this partial viewpoint are revealed. The Cook has one of the most shocking and surprising endings I have read in quite some time. It puts the cap on a fine novel, and helps mark out Macauley as a writer worth following.

(This review also appears at We Love This Book.)

Antonia Gialerakis (ed.), An Unquiet Spirit (2012)

An Unquiet Spirit collects together the autobiographical writings of Antonia Gialerakis’s mother Hilary, an artist. I hadn’t heard of Hilary Gialerakis before reading this book, but her story as revealed in these memoirs is a compelling one.

Hilary Carter was born in Dorset in 1924; the first part of her writings, headed ‘Memories’, runs from then through to 1959. Hilary’s telling of her life begins in piecemeal fashion, a new event in almost every paragraph. Though the book soon becomes less episodic, we never lose the sense that these are recollections – there are gaps in Hilary’s memory, and there’s a certain impressionistic quality to the way she depicts the world.

As she tells it, Hilary’s life falls into a number of broad patterns: a peripatetic existence, moving between England and Switzerland (in childhood) or South Africa (in adulthood). A series of turbulent relationships with men who tend to remain on the fringes of Hilary’s life. Bouts of illness, periods spent in mental hospitals, visits to doctors and psychiatrists – but no firm diagnosis. Running throughout is a sense of restlessness (mirrored by the tone of the writing), and of art as Hilary’s anchor and refuge.

In the 1950s, Hilary meets Andre Gialerakis, the man with whom she’ll start a family. By 1974 (the time of the second, much shorter, ‘Diary’ part), she has given birth to Antonia, and the family have settled in Durban. In this section, Hilary expresses more concern over the effect of her behaviour and personality on those closest to her, and seems ever more determined to deal with her problems. By the end of her diary, it feels as though she’s taken firm steps towards doing that. It’s an optimistic end to a powerful life story.

Scarlett Thomas, Monkeys with Typewriters (2012)

23rd September 2012 / / 7 Comments

The infinite monkey theorem says that, given enough time, a monkey with a typewriter will almost certainly produce the complete works of Shakespeare just from tapping the keys at random. As Scarlett Thomas points out in the introduction to this creative writing book, though, writers don’t work that way – they write with purpose (though of course that’s not the be-all and end-all of a finished work), and don’t have unlimited time. This is one of the recurring themes of Monkeys with Typewriters: that writing is more than a technical exercise, even if you can see some of its workings.

It’s fair to say that I wouldn’t have chosen to read this book had the publisher not sent me a copy on spec, because I’ve no ambitions to write fiction. But Thomas has such a distinctive style of writing fiction that I was intrigued to see what she had to say. It turns out that Monkeys with Typewriters is interesting for readers as well as aspiring writers. Thomas is less concerned with telling her readers ‘how to write’ as encouraging to think more deeply about how what they read and write works.

The first half of the book is devoted to ‘Theory’, and especially to examining the mechanics of plots. Thomas goes from Plato, through Aristotle and Nietzsche, to Northrop Frye and Christopher Booker, examining (and sometimes criticising) the different ways plots have been analysed and classified. There’s plenty of food for thought here, even for a non-writer – I like Thomas’s distinction between story (the chronological events that happen) and plot (how those events are arranged by the writer), which I hadn’t thought of in the way before. It’s also fascinating to see the connections Thomas makes, such as when she highlights the similar basic narrative arcs of Toy Story, Sophocles’ Oedipus the King, and an episode of Supernanny. Underneath it all is an enthusiasm for writers to find and do their own thing; after presenting her idea of ‘the eight basic plots’, Thomas invites her readers to devise their own taxonomy.

After ‘Theory’ comes ‘Practice’. Some of the material in this section (such as the chapters on having ideas and the practicalities of writing) is inevitably going to be of more specialised interest – but, even then, it’s not unengaging. The rest will surely get any reader thinking anew about characterisation, narration, and how sentences work. Thomas is an excellent guide through her examples, drawing on classic and contemporary texts alike (from Anna Karenina and Middlemarch to The God of Small Things and number9dream). For her, it’s not about one size fitting all, but about whatever works in context. And this section might well cause you to add one or two books to your to-read list; it only took Thomas to quote one short sentence (‘The lawn was white with doctors’) to convince me I ought to read The Bell Jar.

Whether you want to write or not, Monkeys with Typewriters is the kind of book that renews your enthusiasm for reading in general, a book that believes – and encourages its readers to believe – that great fiction matters. Thomas ends her book with a checklist of key questions for writers. The last one is: ‘If the only copy of my novel was stranded on the top of a mountain, would I go up to rescue it?’ Perhaps the key message of Monkeys with Typewriters is that the only fiction worth writing – and reading – is the sort for which you would head up that mountain. And I’d say a book which argues that is one worth reading.

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