Alcott and Earhart

The Empress of Ice Cream (Anthony Capella)

2011-05-28T16:52:00.005+01:00

I'm not entirely sure why I enjoy Anthony Capella's writing so much. Is it the gastronomic erotica that he writes with such ease? Or is it the vulnerable characters he writes with such panache? The romances?

No, not the romances. He is not good at that.

And nut the vulnerable characters. I don't like reading about vulnerable characters. I like reading about people filled with unbelievable strength, charisma, sexiness and boldness. In short, I like my characters to be straight up Mills and Boon caricatures.

Joking!

(Sort of).

But I am pretty sure it is the gastronomic erotica that draws me to Capella's novels. Take The Food of Love for example. It is set in Rome and centres around a young, talented chef cooking entrails and offal for the love of his life in the hope that she will be aroused by eating such earthy, bloody foods and find herself also in love with him.

It works.

I have my doubts.

But The Empress of Ice Cream is the focus of this review. It is Capella's latest and tells the story of a young, penniless apprentice ice cream maker who rises to glorious heights in both the courts of France and England as he makes ice cream confections for the royalty.

I have always been a bit ambivalent about ice cream. I would rather devour a cheese plate for two than eat ice cream. But now I find myself drifting into the ice cream camp. Who wouldn't be seduced with the promise of strawberry ice cream garnished with peppermint cream and topped with a sprinkling of white pepper? Or the luxury of champagne and peach ice cream? Or the unbelievably heavenly taste of white chocolate and red currants?

The romantic story was negligible and the historical events are arguable, but the sheer deliciousness of this tale cannot be questioned. If you like fluffy grastronomic stories, you will read this story with the desire to lick every page in hopes that some of the creamy dreamy loveliness will actually emanate out of the words into your mouth.

Rating: 7/10.

Shades of Grey (Jasper Fforde)

2011-05-28T16:40:00.003+01:00

Oh, hilarity, thou art a wily mistress! I can remember you, remember your strength, your cleverness, your vivacity. But ask me to give examples of this and I have limited material to work with. Thus, I go searching for the source of the pleasure you gave me with my best friend Google and I find myself at best underwhelmed by what I read. This is the curse you lay on me, in payback for the pleasure I experience in your hands. You allow me to laugh out loud and open your covers with glee, but, when I try to revisit the funny parts without committing to reading the whole book again, there is no help, no mercy.

READ THE BOOK AGAIN FOOL you shout. OR MOVE ON.

Hilarity, I think, would be a shouter. Misery is a moaner. Anger is any volume spoken with clenched jaw. Sadness is a whisper or a shouter, depending on how attention-seeking it is feeling.

All this to say that I can't quite remember why Shades of Grey was so freaking hilarious, just, trust me, it was.

A half-assed post, I apologise. I am still getting back into this blogging thing. I will try harder on my next post, I promise. If not, you, our dearly beloved readers, can draw and quarter me and offer up my body as a sacrifice to the blogging Gods.

A Slightly Bashful Return

2011-05-28T16:22:00.006+01:00

The date is the 28th May, 2011. Almost a year after our last post. A terrible, terrible, display of laziness, I am sure you will agree. However, for the past year I have been living back in Australia, nearer to my dear sister, and the urge to connect over blogging was dampened slightly by our close physical proximity.

Now, alas, we are once again separated.

Where am I?

Not London again, at any rate. I am in Norway. For what reason? The best reason there is, LOVE of course.

Love, with all its glorious ups and downs (but mainly ups!) does lead one to some strange places. For example, I now find myself in a beautiful country, with scenery to shed buckets of tears over, people one can only hug impulsively upon first meeting cause they're just so darn cute and a household where it is quite acceptable to have caviar for breakfast (it comes in a tube!), but I don't yet speak the language properly. So my forays into job hunting have been limited severely by the fact that I sound like a drunken seal whenever I open my mouth.

Thus, I am reading again. This is a very happy thing for me. Between September when love arrived in Sydney and a month ago when I was still living in Sydney I read two books. IN SEVEN MONTHS. This is decidedly unlike me. But of course, when you have the choice between reading and love, it's easier than answering the question 'Coffee?'

Now, love is at work and I am rattling around a gorgeous big old house by myself. I have fallen back into reading with all the vim and vigour of my old days. Hopefully the sister will notice that I am blogging again and hold up her end. We may change our look soon. I know that Earhart has had some mild grumbles about the outdated look of the blog. So, fair warning, we may be UNRECOGNISABLE soon.

Battle Royale (Koushun Takami)

2010-08-27T05:52:00.006+01:00

And we're back!

Where have we been you might ask? Well I've been working, studying, and sometimes working and studying at the same time. Alcott has been flitting around Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Germany, Spain... basically she has had a much more exciting few months than me.

To ease myself back into this whole blogging thing (a post which

I may or may not have decided to write because there is laundry to be done) (and a room to be tidied). Anyway. I also thought I would share with you what I think is the most violent book I have ever read. What fun!

A little while ago I reviewed The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins - I'm sure you know it. Kids put in battle arena, given a few weapons, told to kill each other. Well I was raving about this book to a reader friend, who said "that sounds just like this Japanese novel I read, you should read Battle Royale". I promptly forgot this recommendation, read it a year later and proceeded to tell the same friend "You know, you'd really like this book Battle Royale".

Anyway, Battle Royale is indeed remarkably similar to The Hunger Games. Set in a dystopian future, where to keep the population in control, some kind of teenager-killing-teenager scenario is implemented. In Battle Royale it is called The Program, and each year a grade nine class is randomly selected to take part. Told they are going on an excursion, their bus is filled with sleeping gas and when the students awake, they have been fitted with metal collars. Metal collars that will explode for a variety of reasons. And then the men running the program pulls their teacher's head out of a sack he is carrying around. And a couple of students are shot before the game even starts. And then the students are each given a weapon (ranging from a machine gun to a banjo to a fork) and told to kill each other. And then they do.

And unlike in the Hunger Games, where teenagers kill teenagers in a very non-graphic way, Battle Royale doesn't hold back. I can't really bring myself to recount any of the violent scenes from the book, but to give you an idea of how affected I was, I couldn't read this book while I was eating as more often than not, something was going to make me feel ill.

My Battle Royale ramblings lead me to ask you this - what books have had induced a strong physical reaction in you? I'm not talking crying at the end of Goodnight Mister Tom (which I do), I am talking putting the book down before you're sick.

7/10

YA Ramblings / Tamora Pierce Makes a Long Awaited Appearance on the Blog

2010-05-23T13:04:00.007+01:00

In thinking about my reading of late, nothing REALLY stands out as being review worthy. I mean, I read the latest Jasper Fforde, Shades of Grey, which was amazing, brilliant, dyslit-y, witty, literary... but seriously, that is all I really need to say. Its Jasper Fforde. Go read it okay?

I have however, read a LOT of mediocre stuff. You want to know which YA sensation of the moment NOT to pick up, then I am your girl. For example, take Need by Carrie Jones. Touted as "better than Twilight" and the next big thing in paranormal teen romance. Aside from the fact that I've been told that about every single teen book published since Twilight began, it is just not true. Twilight is essentially a Mills and Boon for teenagers, but at least Meyer throws herself into the story completely. This latest one felt like it was just going through the motions. New girl in town, finds herself oddly drawn to the tall, dark, sexy guy who keeps showing up to save her in the nick of time, finds out she is being followed by a pixie, and that tall, dark, sexy man is actually (SPOILER) a werewolf. Token amount of surprise at revelation that supernatural stuff is all out there, scepticism quickly overcome for the sake of progressing the plot, some kind of supernatural (but also emotional!) conflict followed by triumph of good guys and movie perfect kiss. Yawn.

And you know what? I just know there are people out there who are saying "Well of course you yawn! Look at what you picked up! What were you expecting?!!!" I say the same thing to myself, but continue to wade through this rubbish for two reasons. Number one, it is my job. Making sure none of the YA readers out there get any books with "issues" their parents wouldn't want them reading about. (For those who don't speak book-seller, "issues" is code for sex, drinking, drugs, swearing, violence... in the rather conservative area in which my bookshop is situated, none of the parents want their innocent darlings reading anything controversial. Customer picks up a book "What content is in this book? My daughter is ten but has reading age of a sixteen year old, but I don't want anything inappropriate." You get the idea. It is farcical at times.) (That was the longest bracket ever). So that is one reason. (In case you are wondering, Need has a bit of kissing, but not much else).

Reason two is a bit closer to my heart. It involves an author who had a profound effect on me during my formative years. Tamora Pierce. Just thinking about her (millions) of books makes me smile. Between the ages of eleven and fourteen I pretty much read Tamora Pierce. Over and over. And over. You get the idea. I think I could probably recite my favourite passages. My constant re-reading of her books is due in quite a large part to her heroines. They were always described as head strong and stubborn, they were witty, smart, and you can bet they didn't let any man tell them what to do! Admittedly, they had it a bit tougher going against men since they were stuck back in the middle ages, and I was in the 21st Century. Whatever, I identified with these girls! These books made me (a bookish, indoorsy, nature disliking, pacifist with animal allergies) long to be a knight (wilderness survival and fighting skills a must). They were real, 3D characters who made you want to be their friend. Can you imagine anyone in their right mind wanting to be friends with Bella Swan? You would get to hear her complain a lot, and watch as she lives through what has got to be the most unhealthy relationship in the world. Sweetie, if he is pulling bits out of your car engine because he doesn't want you going to see a friend he doesn't like, maybe he is just a tad controlling.

I read mediocre YA book after mediocre YA book because of hope. (Hmm, that sounded less cheesy in my head). I am hoping that one day I will pick up a new book and I will have found a book that will become just as special to some twelve year old girl out there as Tamora Pierce was (IS, who am I kidding? I still get excited when a new one comes out. Write faster Tammy!) to me. And when I find it, I know the protagonist is not going to have the personality of a dish-cloth (I'm looking at you Bella!) and something tells me it probably won't involve vampires. Just a hunch.

The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud (Ben Sherwood)

2010-04-24T21:07:00.008+01:00

Ugh, this book was AMERICAN. Overly sentimental and unnecessarily violent. With the kind of detail which you know the author has included because they think it gives their work increased depth when really it only acts to make the book longer. Obviously, if you are Dickens, this is important, as you are being paid by the word. However, Dickens had something to say with every one of those words. The superfluous detail in this story was the only thing retaining the integrity of the physical concept of 'the book'. The plot and characters were rendered irrelevant through the extreme use of hyperbolic emotional prose which only ever serves to alienate rather than draw the reader in. Your response is to say "Oh for God's sake, pull yourself together" rather than feel any sort of empathy.

Oh! The family are home! I await their invitation to come down to eat with trepidatious excitement.

And... alas. No invitation has been shouted from below.

Well, I'm not going down to find something to eat. I'll be fine. I have a bottle of water.

If the above interlude confuses you, refer to the post below.

Sherwood's novel tells the story of Charlie St. Cloud, who, whilst driving his mother's car when he was just a kid, inadvertently crashes and his younger brother is killed. Fast forward a few years and now Charlie is a gravedigger. Who can talk to dead people. He meets a woman named Tess who is straight out of a Mills and Boon. A bad Mills and Boon. One of the ones where the woman is irascible and selfish. They... talk and grow fond of each other. From here the book continues to bore the reader until the final, glorious denouement where we get to hear what sort of dog he's going to have in his future life. (A beagle. Bad choice. They're hard to train Charlie.)

The dialogue is plodding at best and I skipped many of the conversations because it was either that or risk becoming so tense that my neck veins would have ruptured. Of course, this meant I was often slightly confused as to what was happening. No matter. Confusion is the lesser of two evils when the other is to be so consummately acquainted with every nuance of Sherwood's writing that there is no conceivable way to escape from the knowledge that you are reading something obscenely pedestrian.

Apparently they are making a film of this book with Zac Efron as Charlie. Which is just perfect. Blocks of concrete deserve wooden rods to realise their full potential.

Rating: 3/10.

Hello All

2010-04-24T20:49:00.002+01:00

Well, this is a bit sad. Posting on a Saturday night.

In my defence, I had a BBQ to go to. Hosted by an Australian and three girls from Mali who are all mad as cut snakes. That promised to be QUITE the evening. However, I forfeited these plans in favour of staying at home for a 'family dinner', as suggested by the people I live with as this is my last weekend with them. Of course, they went out this afternoon and didn't return, so I don't really know what I'm supposed to do with myself. What if they return with food and I'm eating? They'll be mad. What if I don't eat, they return having already dined out and I die of starvation in my sleep?

Oh, the conundrum.

I like my own company quite a bit (read: people annoy me after awhile) but tonight I wish someone was home. And not only to feed me. Whilst waiting for my boxes to be picked up today by the shipping company I watched a thriller set in Acton. Where people are raped and murdered. IN ACTON. Why? Why is it always my borough?

Additionally, I have just finished tonight's episode of Doctor Who which was TERRIFYING. I am scared to blink in case a Weeping Angel creeps up on me. Literally- scared to blink. I am alternating eyes at the moment. I already feel a bit motion-sick but that is infinitely preferable to having my neck snapped.

Thus, before the method of my untimely demise is revealed, I think I shall post a book review.

Wives and Daughters (Elizabeth Gaskell)

2010-04-19T22:08:00.005+01:00

I do not enjoy Gaskell. I find her quite, quite dull. I was going to add the disclaimer that this opinion has been formed from having read only two of her novels, but upon discovering that she only ever wrote six I feel that a blanket statement is suitable considering I have in fact read a third of her oeuvre.

We had to study North and South at high school. I remember that English class well. We had an entirely useless substitute teacher for most of the year. She set us 50 questions to answer on North and South. My friend and I, deciding that the task cut into far too much lying in the sun time, decided to submit the project as a joint effort. And neither of us finished our halves. The teacher laughed softly when we wove a fictitious tale of forgetfulness and camaraderie and we thought no more of it. It was only on the last day of term that she announced in high dudgeon that anyone who had not completed the assignment would receive an 'E' for the semester. Unlike in Harry Potter, this is not indicative of 'Exceeds Expectations'. An 'E' meant 'you go to a school where we do not award fail grades, but, be not comforted, we are not amused'.

So, obviously, I feel great discontent whenever I think about North and South. It was not sufficiently gripping to hold my attention and I have long written it off as a plodding tome that extols the idiocies of the upper class and the inadequacies of the lower class with no hint of hope for either.

But this post is not about North and South. Nay! It is about Wives and Daughters.

I shall be brief in my criticism because the book itself was brief. I borrowed it from the library and did not realise I had taken the "In Half the Time" version. Supposedly, these editions cut out unnecessary minor characters and plot lines which have no influence over the ending. Considering Gaskell died before finishing the book I feel that this approach is slightly cavalier. John Smith who was cut out in chapter three could well have been meant to turn up in the final chapter and save the day!

Not that the day needed saving. That would suggest that the book was in any way interesting. And it was not. It was duller than David Cameron's dishwater. It was also silly and insipid. I don't understand why Gaskell is so often compared to Austen. Even the emptiest of Austen's novels (Emma... vomit) could steamroller over Gaskell's works. I shudder to think what the novel is like if this is the interesting, important cut of the work. Cynthia was the only sympathetic and mildly intelligent character and she promised to marry Mr Preston if he'd loan her twenty pounds.

A classic best left on the shelf I feel. Behind a locked glass cabinet. With a warning sign- "Open at risk of death from supreme boredom".

Rating: 4/10.

Dance Dance Dance (Haruki Murakami)

2010-04-18T12:37:00.007+01:00

I don't think I've ever actually reviewed a Murakami book here before, although I may have mentioned in passing that I love love love him. So great is this love that I may or may not be in a Facebook group called "Haruki Murakami is (almost) God". (I am). The thing about Dance Dance Dance is, even if I had never read a word of Murakami in my life the quote on the front would have made me pick it up immediately- "If Raymond Chandler had lived long enough to see Blade Runner, he might have written something like Dance Dance Dance." Could you imagine a better endorsement?

I think the reason I've never put a Murakami review to paper (or screen as it were) is that he is so incredibly hard to describe.

The Wind Up Bird Chronicle- There's this man, and he lost his cat, and kind of lives in a fantasy land, and follows a lady in a pink suit around and then sits at the bottom of a well.

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World: There is a man who is on some kind of IT hit squad who goes underground to fight mysterious "things" and is given a unicorn skull. Half the story is set in a strange land where no-one can go outside the city walls and there are herds of unicorns running about.

Dance Dance Dance: Our hero feels he is being called to the Dolphin Hotel, a dodgy, run-down establishment he stayed at with a call-girl called Kiki some years previously. When he returns the dodgy hotel has been replaced by a high end luxury resort- L'Hotel Dauphin. He bonds with one of the girls on reception over a strange experience she had on one of the floors of the hotel. He meets a rather angry teenage girl whose mother has just abandoned her in the hotel. He goes back to Tokyo and reconnects with an old school mate who has become a super-star actor. You spend a large portion of the book vaguely confused about what is going on, which is actually a similar state of being to our narrator. He allows himself to be swept along by all the slightly mad people surrounding him - to interesting ends. A few dead bodies turn up along the way. There is a sheep-man who gives him strange messages. The whole book is an amazing experience.

I realise I've essentially not reviewed the book at all and really this should be an 'Author Love' segment because I love love love this author. He has got THE GOODS! (See tag below!)

Rating: 9/10

The Private Life of Books

2010-04-18T12:10:00.001+01:00

Looking down the list of my draft blog-posts which never saw the light of day I can see that most of them start with "am feeling so guilty about not having posted in weeks/months/centuries" and then I start writing about a book and then my internet cuts out and I get fed up. Admittedly I have dodgy internet that does cut out a lot- normally when I am trying to balance laptop and dinner on my lap on the couch whilst watching Peep Show. I wonder if that has anything to do with it? Anyway, since I spend a lot of time writing about my guilt, I've decided to absolve myself of any guilty feelings and just get down to it.

This article in the Guardian about the private lives of books made me think of my favourite second-hand-book-buying story. I warn you now, it is a bit pretentious, but when you're talking obscure dyslit gems found in the south of France, how could you be anything but?

Picture this- my first year of university, I meet french learning, guitar playing, dyslit reading Russian. (Le sigh). Said Russian turns up to class to tell me he found copy of 1985 on the weekend. I gently correct him, saying "I think you'll find it's 1984". He looks at me like I am an idiot and says "Uh, no. 1985. Anthony Burgess' critique of 1984 which consists of a theoretical essay followed by his own fictional account of the future". I blush. Then spend years futile-ly trying to track down a copy of 1985- I love Orwell, I love Burgess... but I didn't love the Russian any more thus borrowing his copy was out of the question.

Three years later, I was backpacking in Avignon, have run out of books to read and facing a six hour train trip the next day. I spent a little while googling until I found evidence of an English bookshop. I made a trek across town. I found a bookshop in the middle of nowhere. There I found found a copy of 1985... cue delirious excitement. I started reading and things became even more exciting. The previous owner of the book had some pretty strong views on some of the stuff Burgess wrote. Lots of underlining. Lots of '?!' in the middle of paragraphs. A couple of instances of 'ugh!'. My personal favourite, which made me burst out laughing during Burgess' musing on the state of socialism: a whole paragraph underlined and a single word "BALLS!" written in the margin. Fantastic. I do not know who Mr Millwood is (and that is my assuming the previous owner was a man) but I owe him a most exciting book find, and an entertaining read.

If you do ever come across a copy of the (obviously) out of print 1985, I highly recommend picking it up.

Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson)

2010-04-16T10:01:00.004+01:00

Oh I really don't know Jeanette. This was just a tad too over the top for me.

Hark? What's this you say? You LOVE magical realism Alcott. You adore it. How will you NOT be citing this novel as a sublime source of inspiration when you finally have an oeuvre to call your own?

I didn't read it in one swift gulp. Perhaps that is why I wasn't completely enamoured with this trip of a novel. It's hard to read something called Sexing the Cherry when you work with children. I had to hide it between the covers of a Where's Waldo. The unanimous verdict is that I SUCK at Where's Waldo.

This is a highly theatrical novel. The characters of Jordan and The Dog Woman are not quite sculpted enough to be real, which adds to the ethereal nature of their journey. I say ethereal, but that doesn't sound quite right. That word is so beautiful, filled with light and music. These characters are dark and putrid and flea-ridden and grotesque. They are without softness, which makes their struggle towards gentleness that much stranger. Essentially, this is the story of a mother and son moving towards a discovery of themselves, with some hilariously bizarre humour, disgusting anecdotes and a fairytale thrown in for good measure.

Something about this novel made me think of Russell Brand. I can imagine him on stage, flinging out lines of prose from the story; scurrying to and fro imitating The Dog Woman's misconception of fellatio, Jordan's quest for Fortunata, the twelve dancing princesses slowly but surely annihilating their husbands. Brand, for all his curmudgeonly ways, has a likeability and empathy about him which would bring joy to the words. As they are now, Winterson's story reads as though it has no sympathy for human frailty. I feel like the book is waiting to swallow me whole if I am not strong enough to read it. To be scared of the book you are reading is entirely unsettling.

Alternatively, the other setting where I can see the prose from this novel fitting admirably is a group of players, waltzing down a street on market day in a parade, loudly declaiming the lines, entirely naked. The words they shout draw the crowds and then, one by one, the players pick off the weaklings and eat them. The bones they throw to a pack of salivating Shar-Peis.

Unsettling.

I THOUGHT I had a friend back in Australia who told me with glee she got most of her sex education from this book. I profess myself worried, although I suspect that maybe she said The Passion, also by Winterson.

I bloody hope so.

Rating: 7/10.

Pulitzer 2010

2010-04-15T09:46:00.002+01:00

This year's Pulitzer has been announced. Let's hope it's better than last year's Oprah novel.

According to this article in the Guardian, this is the first novel from an independent publisher to have won the Pulitzer since A Confederacy of Dunces. The novel, Tinkers, just looks to be available on Amazon at the moment, although I'm betting now that that small publisher has been completely overwhelmed with orders from bookshops who, a month ago, would have refused to put the book on their shelves.

Cakes and Ale (W. Somerset Maugham)

2010-04-14T18:47:00.007+01:00

Satire does not make you smile. Satire makes you sneer knowingly. Or shake your head helplessly. Or flap your hands about nervously. But it does not make you giggle gleefully or find you with a stupid smirk on your face, tongue stuck between your teeth, lost in thought. Satire, in short, does not make you silly.

So then why do I find myself acting so vapidly whenever I look at the cover of Cakes and Ale? Maugham's favourite of his own works, this novel takes a direct stab at the London literary scene, satirising the elevation of popular authors and the artistic appreciators who surround them. The narrator Willie Ashenden is Maugham's voice and conscience throughout, although how much their experiences overlap is anyone's guess. I suppose I could read the introduction and then hazard a more informed opinion in this area but I DON'T HAVE THE TIME! Also, introductions bore me. The unfortunate person who pens such a chapter is so often enamoured with their own brilliance and insight that they mistakenly assume they are the main event between the covers.

The novel is chock-a-block full of tasty literary mouthfuls I plan to immediately turn into sound-bites. Sigh. One of these days I really must stop being so referential and find out if I have an actual brain beneath all the stuff I have absorbed over the years. Probably not.

However, the real charm that I now associate with this novel is what happened to me whilst coming home on Sunday evening on the tube. I was reading Cakes and Ale, scribbling in the margins as I am wont to do. I could feel the person next to me staring. This often happens on the tube and most of the time it is someone creepy or it is some old professor who lectures me about writing on my books. So I steadfastly refused to look up. The next moment-

"Excuse me, do you have the time?"

I looked up and saw a guy whose smile was too big for his face, in a very charming kind of way. I was not in the mood, having spent several hours with a friend. I have a limit to how much time I can spend with people these days and my socialising quota for the day had been filled. Thus, I fixed him with a stern look.

"I don't wear a watch. I will get my phone out of my bag but please don't snatch it and run off because I'm too tired to chase you."

He assured me he would not and then seized the covers of my book.

"I love Maugham! Although, as a woman, don't you find him quite sexist?"

"I suppose. Can I have my book back?" See? I was still not in the mood.

"You're so friendly! You're definitely not from London."

At this point, with me glowering at him, I decided he was probably still wired from a big evening the night before. This was further affirmed with his next, loud declaration.

"You're not supposed to talk to strangers on the tube. Everyone in here is looking at us! Because we're enjoying each other's company but we're on the tube! We're breaking down social barriers here!"

I tried in vain to snatch my book back but he had opened it at a random page and began quoting out loud. The people opposite me looked horrified. Despite myself, I was beginning to enjoy the conversation. No sooner had I begun to talk about Faulkner then he started quoting Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (he got a bit muddled, but full marks for effort I suppose). His next musing was how films and books would be different if all wartime stories were totally populated by female characters. Very seriously he said "Now, I'm not saying you'd be giving each other manicures, but I'm having trouble coming up with a female equivalent for the male camaraderie that prevails in all those stories... OH! This is my stop! What's your name fair lady? I must find you on facebook and we can continue!"

At this point I decided I had nothing to lose and gave him my name. He gave me a cheeky salute and vaulted off the tube, pausing to stick his head back inside. "It was a pleasure. An absolute pleasure Miss." I then had to sit through three more stops with everyone in the carriage staring at me. It was quite, quite mortifying yet an altogether satisfying way to end the weekend.

So despite Maugham's fantastic wit and the highly sympathetic character of Rosie, this book will always make me think of that idiot on the tube and thus will always make me smile.

Rating: 7/10.

Some New Fresh Hell Awaits

2010-04-14T10:11:00.005+01:00

Well, I have two and a half weeks of work to go; a fact which I am having trouble processing. Was there a time in my life when I didn't feel homeless? (When I say 'homeless' I am obviously talking about a home for my heart and soul. I am certainly 'with house', so please don't worry. I don't need care packages delivered to a doorway on Oxford Circus).

Last night I wrote myself a list of things I need to get done before I leave Acton. The list was panic-inducing. I am not good with practical things like calling up the bank and asking to switch to electronic statements. But it is the forms that need to be filled that cause me real upset. I am dreadful with forms. I second-guess every question, trying to work out what they are REALLY asking me. I figure the person reading the form has a set list of 'correct answers' and if I don't put those down I will be rejected for international shipping/ waiver of quarantine fees/ entry visas. This kind of thinking propels you to a very unhealthy place very quickly. Is that REALLY my birthday? Is that how you spell my middle name? I KNOW I was born in Sydney... wasn't I? Yes, I definitely was. I'll just check in my passport.

On this hideous, torturous list is a line that should fill me with delight but it panics me almost as much as the line below it- 'sort through my paperwork'. The former says- 'finish all outstanding books and review them.'

ALL OUTSTANDING BOOKS.

I have two and a half weeks to go and about twelve books I haven't even cracked open. Let alone the ones I have read and not reviewed yet. Whilst school holidays are still on I have very limited time to read during the day, what with Monopoly, cricket and finger painting. But I am going for it anyway. Obama has faith in me. YES WE CAN.

So now I am winding up this redundant, time-wasting post to finish Maugham's Cakes and Ale. Then I will cook fajitas for lunch, finish writing a skit entitled "Spongebob and Patrick Kill Hannah Montana and Escape" (I chose neither the title nor the premise) and then hopefully bang out another review. During the reviewing process I will be wearing earplugs so that one of the kids can practice the recorder (I am forced to allow her to practice now that she is officially the worst in the class. But really, is there a more ungodly noise in the world?) Then I will make cupcakes and start on Sexing the Cherry.

SOB.

Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)

2010-04-13T22:13:00.008+01:00

No.

I reject this book.

I reject the short story form Ishiguro decided to use. I reject the admission of any of the characters to the Syd Barrett Memorial Room. And I most certainly reject the assumption Ishiguro made that just because he feels he is past his prime as a writer he can churn out any old thing and we won't profess ourselves disappointed.

I have waited a few days to post this, as I needed time for the book to simmer in my subconsciousness for awhile. I knew I was disappointed with the collection when I ventured to compare it to his other works. But, if I took this as a new author, someone I had no preconceived notions of, what would I think then?

I would think that it was as boring as watching a game of darts being played in a pub where the only thing on tap is lemonade. Slow-burning is one thing and then there's wrapping a potato in foil, sticking it on the ground in the English sun and waiting for it to cook. If this were the only book of Ishiguro's I had read I would never be tempted to pick up another of his books again.

The writing, inarguably, was beautiful. But there was no soul behind it. Ishiguro tried to tap into the depressing and selfish psyche of the struggling musical artist, but this exploration felt forced and insubstantial.

This is, I suppose, an obstacle that a writer must overcome when writing short stories. With a limited space to foster the reader's connection to both plot and characters every sentence needs to resonate with everything the author wants to say. The best short stories I have read seem to be bursting at their seams, DYING to say more and pummelling the bars of the cage that is the short story format. With these stories, Ishiguro almost seemed to have structured them in this way because he didn't have enough material to turn this into a novel.

I think Ishiguro is a highly intelligent, lyrical and lovely writer. Unfortunately, I kept getting distracted from reading Nocturnes because Tom and Jerry were gallivanting on the television. So I choose to just pretend I never read this book and wait with eager anticipation for his next.

Rating 6/10.

White is For Witching (Helen Oyeyemi)

2010-04-08T22:33:00.007+01:00

You know those people in life who are unlike everyone else? They make you catch your breathe and then keep catching it, drawing in short little breaths as you remember something they did or said. You can't breathe normally again until the memory has played out. Afterwards you are light-headed, which exacerbates the intense happiness or sadness that inevitably crashes over you. The sadness occurs far more often but it doesn't matter, because those brief waves of joy are far heavier on the scale than anything else.

We don't meet these people very often. There is not one for every person. In all likelihood, they have this effect on many people, so you are only one in a crowd, virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the swooning masses. On the occasions when you are alone you find it hard to speak, to create a fascination around yourself. You want to voice everything you've ever thought to them but are crippled with the suspicion that nothing you say could ever be interesting or unique enough.

This feeling of wonderment can also happen with books and music. For me it is the books. When I was younger and my mother asked me to do something she would always have to touch me when asking, or write it down for me to read. Sounds by themselves don't seem to stick properly in my brain. But I understand for other people that music is by far the greater emotional stimulant.

Today I held a book in my hands that made me hyperventilate. The story- a spooky concoction that includes a dash of The God of Small Things and a pinch of The Secret History, had ensnared me with the first line. I was shamefully derelict in my duties. Lunch was boiled milk and mushrooms which was received with much derision from a duo that had been promised 'Tagliatelle with a Delicate Creamy Mushroom Sauce'. I couldn't help it. Like the magical hold the house in Dover has over the Silver women, this book had the same numbing effect on me. Nothing else seemed as real in the room as the book I was holding in my hands. The book cast more shadows in the room than the sun and I felt the characters' hearts beating out from between the lines.

I fear this is all babbling pretension and not a proper review, but I have had a purely emotional response to this novel. Oyeyemi's style is unlike anything I have ever read. She plays with the words on the page to create illusions of safety before jolting the reader into uncertain and unearthly territory. Her complete control over the authenticity of the characters is so superb it is invisible. This is the first book I have read in awhile that effectively uses authorial interjection and even then Oyeyemi plays with this concept, taunting the reader with her omnipotence that she would have us believe is just hopeless devotion to a story that had already been told before she thought of it.

I feel as though I have met someone amazing, this book as a new character in my life. This is not a book to be forgotten. It is to be read again and again. Perhaps with sizeable gaps in between or I could end up fainting. Even now, sitting at my desk, I am being hit with images from the story that clamour to be relived, making me hold my breath as the scenes spell themselves out again and again. I feel extremely rattled sitting in my usual spot so I have rearranged the furniture to the position it is normally in for when I watch Lost. Back to the wall, eyes on the door, doona pulled up securely to cover everything except my face- waiting to be attacked.

Like those awe-inspiring people that one occasionally meets, I was overly reluctant to share White is for Witching with you. I feel like some of its power or magic may diminish the more popular it becomes. However, considering it is part of Waterstones's hideous 3 for 2 offer (which I regularly take advantage of, hating myself the entire time), I feel this is probably a redundant worry.

Rating: 10/10.

A Long, Long Time Ago & Essentially True (Brigid Pasulka)

2010-04-08T21:05:00.004+01:00

I've never had a burning desire to go to Poland. The only person I can remember talking about Poland during my childhood is Basil Fawlty. We might have skated over it briefly during history classes but due to the soporific powers of my teachers I really have no idea what was going on during those times. Cue Alan Bennett and his play The History Boys, where one of the teachers talks to the boys about Auschwitz and how bizarre it is that it is now a tourist destination.

"What has always concerned me is where do they eat their sandwiches? Drink their coke? Do they take pictures of each other there? Are they smiling? Do they hold hands? Nothing is appropriate."

Thus, shrouded in swathes of depressing history and with Bennett's stamp of disapproval, Poland has not been high on my To-See list. After reading this book, it may not have creeped much higher up that list, but my entire perspective on the country has changed.

Pasulka's novel is divided into two time frames- the first is a small village in Poland during the German invasion of WW2. The second is set two generations later in Krakow. Before I delve further into the story I'd like to take umbrage with the Guardian's review. The 'miraculous links' which Catherine Taylor describes as the ties between the first period and the second are that it is the same family, two generations on. ASTOUNDING. I was positively BOWLED OVER by the literary capoeira Pasulka had to perform to provide us with such a plausible connection.

Tsk. Rusbridger- hire me. I will read the books.

We are first introduced to Half-Village, which is the scene for the extremely slow-burning love affair between the local beauty Anielica and a young man named The Pigeon. Their love is interrupted by a series of increasingly dire obstacles as Germany invades Poland and then Poland is forced to become part of the Eastern Bloc under the Soviet Union. The horror and gargantuan size of these events is offset by Pasulka's characters, who maintain their idiosyncrasies along with their strength throughout.

Fifty years on, their granddaughter Baba Yaga is living in Krakow with her cousins. This is the part of the story where stirrings of recognition began to occur in my brain. What made me feel twisted and guilty inside was that they were all insults and bigoted generalisations that I have heard made about the Polish since I moved to England. (We don't talk about the Poles much in Australia.) Issues with prostitution, drinking and drugs, roped together with a die-hard pessimism are all touched upon. Baba Yaga, as a relatively low-key character, acts mostly as an observer rather than an instigator. Yet her situation is no better than most and you would think that she would be dying to escape the country. Yet she has a moment of triumph towards the end of the book that perfectly summed up for me the steely strength the spirit of this novel is built upon.

"You think you can have any Polish girl you want? You think you can take advantage of us because you have pounds and we have zlote? Learn history. We Poles have fought against the oppressor again and again. For centuries. And now that we have our freedom, we are not going to be turned into prostitutes by a bunch of pickle-faced skurwysyns..."

The book is fanciful but ultimately overly depressing. I still don't want to go to Krakow or visit Auschwitz or go to a small Polish village where they may ask me to slaughter a pig. But A Long, Long Time Ago & Essentially True has made me think of Poland as a country of strength and passion, rather than a 'broken' country as we would call it in England. A country where people stay because it is their home and they cannot imagine living anywhere else. A country that may not have always been loyal to itself at the highest levels but has had persistent and enduring patriots propping it up from the bottom for centuries.

As a people they share a camaraderie that automatically excludes those who do not have the residue of hundreds of years of Polish history running through their veins. Ultimately, it is not the story which makes this book so remarkable, nor the characters. It is that I felt I was holding something that was actually a bit of Poland in my hands. Reading this novel, I was being allowed a glimpse into a country that I can never fully understand.

And BONUS- I now have a new curse- 'Cholera'. It is perfect for everything. I have already used it three times today.

Rating: 8/10.

All the Nice Girls (Joan Bakewell)

2010-04-07T22:06:00.001+01:00

This book should serve as a cautionary tale for those journalists who attempt to write novels. Say it with me people- journalism is different to novel-writing.

Joan Bakewell has written All the Nice Girls, which is her debut novel. I would mention her age, but a recent article in the Guardian on Bakewell stated that she hated people talking about her age. And calling her the 'Thinking Man's Crumpet'. Fortunately, I am a tactful and gracious reviewer and will raise neither issue.

But, CHOLERA, this book was bad. Confession- I did not finish it. I had to go to Madrid and I had a limited amount of time to pack. With five minutes to go before I had to rush out the door I tried to decide which book to take. All the Nice Girls was the obvious choice, as I was half-way through it. Instead, the white rabbit gesticulating wildly to the time, I speed-read through the first chapters of my three other options and chose from one of them. I almost missed my bus to the airport and then failed to open the covers of this new book for the entire trip.

Anyway, you've been warned, I did not finish the book, but I am going to critique it anyway. The fundamental flaw of this novel was the detail that Bakewell CRAMMED in. There are well-researched novels and then there are novels which would have nothing left if the detail were taken out. Nothing at all, not a single word would remain, were I to extract all the ridiculous details that were included.

That is a bit of a lie. I admit, there was a story. The narrative seemed (remember, I haven't finished it) to be constructed from an extremely rickety triumvirate of plot lines- a ship in WW2 that a girl's school adopts; a mother who is unsure if she should give her daughter a kidney; and an illegitimate love child. Unlike the milking stool, the tripod and the surety of the number of events that are going to occur, this triumvirate is more akin in stability to the three-wheeled car from Mr. Bean. Prop it up with characters who are mostly flat and occasionally horrid and voilà, Britain has yet another uninspired wartime romance novel to stuff onto its shelves.

Bakewell, I have no doubt, is an extremely intelligent woman. That is why she is the Thinking Man's Crumpet. I assume that is why she treats the reader like an idiot. Every thought is reasserted, every joke explained, every emotion analysed with historically accurate pop psychology. Competent writing? Absolutely. As scintillating as a documentary on the migratory habits of octogenarians in the South of England? Just about.

I would just like to take this opportunity to get on my virtual soapbox, now that I have your attention, and extrapolate further on one part of the story that particularly upset me. I have always been confused by people who wanted to sell their organs to pay for things like their children's ballet lessons. What if that child needs a kidney later on and you can't give her one because you gave it up for sodding ronds de jambe? Then we have this woman, Millie, who doesn't want to give her daughter on dialysis her kidney. She feels resentment towards the doctor who assumes she will. I did not finish the story and I'm assuming she has some sort of change of heart but really. REALLY. How could anyone have a child in need and not give up an organ they will not miss? WE HAVE TWO!

To be fair, I will not give this book a rating, as I did not finish it. But you would be correct if you had suspicions that I did not enjoy this book in the slightest.

Easter Hiatus

2010-04-01T23:10:00.002+01:00

Once again, I am forced into the embarrassing situation of having to confess that I know not where my sister is. She has not posted here in weeks, nay, MONTHS. More worryingly, I sent her an overly amusing text message three days ago to which she has not replied. Either her right frontal lobe needs examining or she is occupied with greater hilarity elsewhere.

Luckily, I can at least vouch for my own whereabouts. At this very moment I am in London, but am flying to Madrid tomorrow morning for an extremely brief Easter break. This may seem an overly redundant post considering I go for long stretches without posting here, so four days with no books reviews should raise few alarm bells. However, I began writing a review of Joan Bakewell's All the Nice Girls and realised I couldn't do the review justice in the ten minutes I have before my cough medicine kicks in and I fall into a blissful slumber. Whereupon a great feeling of guilt washed over me for not posting and I decided to hammer out this little gem for you instead.

You are so very welcome.

The Echoing Grove (Rosamond Lehmann)

2010-03-30T19:21:00.007+01:00

I am going home soon, to my family, my friends, my bedroom, my books. I brought one book away with me two years ago when I left Australia. Which book did I deem most fitting to accompany me on my backpacking endeavours?

Since you ask- I brought On The Road, by Jack Kerouac. Oh yes, I can hear the universal groans even from Acton, one of the most acoustically imbalanced areas in London. This is due to the most unfortunate combination of the A40, the Heathrow flight path, three intersecting train lines and the neighbour's illegal parrot aviary.

I can still remember the reasoning behind bringing the Kerouac. My appearance, my expectations, dreams and aspirations all played a part in choosing to bring On The Road. It was a terrible, terrible decision. Yes, the book is brilliant. Hilarious and epic, it makes you want to clench your fists and run. THE FIRST TIME YOU READ IT. At last count I owned three different editions of this book. None of the subsequent readings were comparable to my first foray into Kerouac's world (not even the original scroll) so what the hell I was thinking I really don't know.

When you're travelling you want something that speaks to your soul, is comforting but not gushing, a book you recognise yourself in. It needs characters who are sympathetic but flawed, a plot that has momentum but doesn't gallop, a denouement that satisfies but doesn't pacify.

The novel I SHOULD have brought with me is The Echoing Grove, by Rosamond Lehmann. The story is about Rickie Masters, his marriage to Madeleine and his affair with her sister Dinah. The sisters reach an impasse when Rickie is killed unexpectedly and both must deal with the fallout of a situation both had already found hopeless.

In the interest of full disclosure, I saw the film before I read the book. The cast includes Paul Bettany, which is how I came across the story in the first place. Bettany makes me sympathise completely with Rickie and hope for his happiness- if I had read the book first I may have found Rickie hard to like. The film changes little of the script and plot so it is Bettany's brilliance which makes me see the frailty and beauty in Rickie when I later read the novel.

Lehmann's prose is often described as gentle, although I wouldn't agree with that. I'd say it's more akin to the old velvet glove/iron fist style of doing things. Writing like this reminds you of why male authors really shouldn't write from the female perspective in stories of great love. Madeleine and Dinah are entirely unique yet nothing they think or do would feel aberrant to my character were I to emulate them. The sinking feeling both of them experience with the knowledge that they cannot help but move into something that will cause them only heartbreak is devastating yet, as the reader, you agree that they have no choice.

This may seem to you a rather odd book to classify as 'comforting'. Well, this is my brand of comforting. I have always found more solace in the depressingly meaningful than the vacuously upbeat. Of course, I probably would have been most comforted and sustained on my travels if I had ignored Earhart's insistence that everybody would laugh at me and purchased the blanket with sleeves in duck-egg blue that I really wanted. I bowed to convention and coolness, but I still think about that blanket. I haven't been able to find one since.

Rating: 9/10.

Guess what?

2010-03-30T19:14:00.002+01:00

Stephenie Meyer is attempting to make even more money from the legions of twitarded fans who just can't get enough of her blood-sucking stories. A character she kills off in Eclipse is apparently getting her own novella. Completely justified, considering that Bree just leapt off the pages and into my heart with the three lines she was given in book three.

If you want to read exactly the same information I have just given you but on the more reliable Guardian website, click here. You'll also get some extraneous details you didn't need and a picture of Meyer's smiling, bigoted mug.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Rainer Maria Rilke)

2010-03-30T10:40:00.004+01:00

I am a creature of extremes. Some days, I will achieve nothing. Yes, I will rise. Eat. Continue to exist. Ensure none of the children left in my care catch on fire. But those little yellow slips listing activities to achieve will remain depressingly devoid of bright red ticks. Years ago I worked out the trick. If I do just ONE THING on one of those lists I will inevitably do everything I wanted to achieve that month in a single day. ONE THING is all it takes to get the ball rolling.

This morning, my friends, that ONE THING was deep-fried Cadbury's Caramel Eggs. Frozen caramel eggs, wrapped in doughnut batter, deep-fried. I could attempt to justify these mini odes to heart failure, but I fear any defence I cobbled together would essentially be semantically null. I had promised the kiddywinks an Easter treat and, having delivered what can only be described as the Best Easter Treat That Ever There Was, I immediately rolled onto the next thing on my list- my next review!

I apologise so very much for the lack of posting this year. A friend who reads the blog regularly confessed that he now diligently reads every book we post about. Considering the speed of his reading and the turtle-slowness of our reviewing he is filling in the gaps with In Search of Lost Time. Kudos to N in that this is probably the best way to read Proust. I read all seven volumes one after the other and by the end of it my amazement with the prose was rather over-shadowed by my great desire for Proust to have run out of paper and ink about ten thousand words earlier.

Today, however, is not about good old Marcel. Nor is it about deep-fried Cadbury's Caramel Eggs (thank you Peabody), contrary to what the first part of this post may indicate. It is about Malte, the overly morbid and depressing young narrator of the German poet Rilke's only novel The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

I am in the very bad habit of scribbling on books that I read. It's because I am an English major. Mostly it is incoherent scribbling, but I do like to underline little bite-sized lettered gems that tickle my fancy. If I were to do this in Notebooks, entire pages would be underlined. For Rilke, plot seems to be largely irrelevant, especially the establishment of any discernible linear structure to said plot. Instead, each paragraph tackles a new idea afresh, with characters only occasionally overlapping. An unknown man in a hospital waiting room is given as much importance as Malte's father, demonstrating the author's erratic fixation of topics as well as Malte's emotionally absent state.

As a result of this format, this became a novel I was able to pick up and put down, which is helpful when taking into consideration my line of work, the London transport system and my woefully short attention span. One particular topic Malte expounds on is the 'woman who is left behind', when her lover betrays her or is brutally slain in battle (obviously there are quite a few other ways in which she can be left behind but those two in particular spring to mind.) There is a bemused worshipping of women that occurs throughout the novel, Malte seems to understand women all too well, he is startlingly sensitive when talking about them, but his tentativeness seems to suggest he suspects women (as a whole) could turn on him at any time. This timidity probably stems from the fact his mother used to dress him up as a girl and refer to him as Sophie.

You can see why Rilke is known as a poet rather than an author- this is really a collection of lengthy prose poetry, without any rhythm or structure. So, poetry written by someone who couldn't actually be bothered to write poetry. Notebooks is perhaps the actual notes of Rilke, who, jotting down ideas for his poetry and subsequently realising just how many genius thoughts he had, saw the task of turning them into poetry too gargantuan. Having already achieved some fame as a poet, he decided to take a punt and see if the publisher would take his word for it that this was a novel, rather than his riverside scribblings.

Rating: 7/10.

The Song is You (Arthur Phillips)

2010-03-21T21:08:00.004Z

Two posts in one evening... I must be feeling better. As you will all know, I am battling another case of bronchitis. You will all know because I whinge about it on a relatively regular basis. I haven't been feeling up to staying up past eight o'clock and reviewing. This is proving problematic considering I am leaving London in six weeks time. Attempting to cram in quality time with friends I may not see for years and years is hard when you are slumped over the table, weakly waving away offers of an ambulance (friend J is particularly twitchy when it comes to medical matters) and coughing so much you can hear your lungs bouncing off your ribcage (true story!). However, I am now feeling much better, although I am reluctant to give up the marvellous and miraculous cough medicine I have been taking at night. It puts me in an extremely deep sleep about twenty minutes after dosage and I have been waking up this past week feeling well-rested, which I don't think I've felt since Christmas. But it's the dreams that have me coming back for more. Never have I had such vivid, interesting dreams, with the perfect balance of the surreal and the familiar. Not too much menace- enough to keep things interesting, but ultimately not too unsettling. The sort of dreams where you're being chased by a shark but then you find chocolate cake.

I have taken this marvellous medicine (Alcott's not George's) and thus do not exactly have an elegant sufficiency of time to finish this review before I drop off. Probably then, we can all agree that the paragraph I just wrote above was an ill-advised way to spend my limited time.

The Song is You is the sort of novel you want to love but you suspect, before you have even opened the covers, that it is going to be a grave disappointment. A man who uses music to define all the most important moments in his life. A romance with an Irish singer. Reviewers gasping to make their accolades more adoring than everyone else's.

To my happy, happy surprise, the novel was beautiful. A deeply romantic love story told with impeccable modern prose. The musical references throughout felt organic rather than affected or, (as I suspected they might be), a pathetic attempt by the author to prove how hardcore and bohemian he is. Phillips manages to make Julian's attachment to his iPod merely a part of the character rather than a grating plot hook. This is harder than it looks. In many ways it is the easy way out to write historical fiction, where there are thousands of sources to draw from when looking for guidance on the forms of expression that work most eloquently. Internet technology, modern slang and pop culture are infinitely harder to include in effortless prose.

The love story itself has two main elements that prevent it from falling into twee territory. The first is the slight seediness and underground feel to the romance. Julian is much older than Cait, the young singer he has fallen for. He stalks her, lets himself into her apartment, cooks her dinner without having been introduced and leaves an indentation of his head in her pillow so she won't feel so alone. I had chills for a lot of these scenes, but I was always most panicked when I thought the police were going to catch him. "They're going to arrest him and they won't realise he's doing everything out of love!" I thought, distressed. (Although, it must be noted, this is probably the excuse of every stalker out there.)

The other aspect of the romance which made it all the more engaging was the refusal of Phillips to indulge the expectations I have as a Generation Y Instant Gratification Brat. Julian and Cait embody the typical Girl Meets Boy Plus Obstacles scenario, except that the girl doesn't actually physically meet the boy until the end of the novel. This restraint on the part of the characters (because it is a decision they both contribute to) is INFURIATING for the reader but also strangely exciting and compelling. After all, wanting something and being denied it only makes you want it more.

If there are some loose ends not tied up as neatly as I would have liked, if there are some characters that I felt needed further development, that all seems rather irrelevant when you can read a book that actually delivers what it promised to do- tell a love story that is determined to be of this time, a love story that nevertheless reaffirms that romances like these are as old as the songs that are sung about them.

Rating: 8/10.

Some Prefer Nettles (Junichirō Tanizaki)

2010-03-21T19:31:00.004Z

There will be a shadow of discontent hovering over this review, I must warn you now. However, for the neat purposes of a chronological format I shall only be addressing the source of my discontent towards the end of the review. If you read Earhart and I mainly for our negativity rather than the disgustingly obsequious prose we regularly dedicate to those authors who are lucky enough to have nestled into our hearts, I would recommend skipping ahead a few paragraphs.

I am on a bit of a Japanese kick at the moment. A friend recently expressed interest in reading more about Japan, having discovered that I lived there for a short period. Being of a reasonably youthful age at the time (I probably couldn't say my r's properly at that point) I don't feel all that guilty about the fact I didn't spend my time reading everything I could lay my hands on from the Japanese Canon. Of course, now that I can, in fact, skip my way through Ring a Round a Rosy with only limited amounts of angst (any child's game referencing the Bubonic Plague will always leave me feeling slightly uneasy) I feel I am ready to take on Junichirō Tanizaki, considered by many to be Japan's greatest novelist of the 20th century.

Some Prefer Nettles was written in 1929, at a time in Tanizaki's life when he was experiencing deep disillusionment with the Western customs he had so eagerly embraced in his earlier career. The novel tells the story of a Tokyo gentleman (Kaname) who has long fallen out of love with his wife Misako. He feels no desire for her whatsoever and we are subjected to these rather depressing scenes where he lies awake at night listening to his wife sob herself to sleep. She has taken a lover and the two plan to divorce, but both are so unbelievably retarded by indecision and cowardice that neither will actually take the first step and initiate the proceedings.

The third player in this low-level melodrama is Misako's father, a traditionalist who holds great faith in the calming and restorative powers of returning to one's Japanese cultural roots. He himself has taken a very young lover (O-hisa) and spends his time lecturing her on how to play the samisen to greater effect, how to pour tea, how to massage his shoulders, how to BATHE PROPERLY (soap is a big no-no, for best results use a bran bag) etcetera. To her eternal credit, O-hisa does not end up murdering him in his sleep. I would have suffocated him with the bran bag.

What follows is not exactly what I was lead to expect, having read the blurb. Of course, one must be very careful when going by the blurb on a Japanese novel, especially one that has been translated by someone who is not the original author. Japanese novels are inherently very different to any Western novels I have read. Plot is a consequence of the natural momentum generated by well-written characters and trains of thought, rather than the driving motive of the author. Like writing a detailed blurb about a book of haiku, it is extremely hard to pinpoint exactly what this novel is about. Yes, a breakdown of a marriage. But also the beauty of a puppet theatre. The purity of white food set against polished lacquer. The poetry of cherry blossoms. The bitter poignancy of a child's premature wisdom.

Try getting any of those past a marketing department.

However, as beautiful and lilting as the prose was, I have not fallen in love with this novel. At 4 in the afternoon today I was at a swimming carnival, pretending to watch whilst actually finishing my novel. I arrived at the denouement and could not believe what I was seeing. The novel finishes mid-thought. Mid-paragraph. Admittedly, at least, it does not finish mid-sentence. I was enraged. So abrupt is the ending, not once did I think that it was actually meant to be like that. I decided I had purchased a faulty copy, missing at least two or three more pages. I came home and started trolling the internet.

I was wrong. The novel ends where it's supposed to end.

Now, there are ambiguous endings. There are sudden endings. But this is a whole different kettle of fish. Having no idea what I am supposed to take from the ending I have flicked through the book again, searching for clues. I have plotted out different ways it could have ended. I have reached a few conclusions, none of which can be substantiated because I have nothing in print to back me up! (And Tanizaki is long dead, so I can't plague him for answers. Typical).

Of course, this is perhaps how one is supposed to react upon reaching the conclusion of Some Prefer Nettles. It is possible that the novel sets the reader up for exactly this reason- to make them have a relatively subdued tantrum poolside and then to make up their own minds. A novel directly in opposition to the spoon-feeding genre.

I'm still nursing some residual anger over it, but I think I understand what Tanizaki was doing. Kazuo Ishiguro says that writing novels should be like writing songs, with no need to justify why something is written the way that it is. This is, of course, only a valid argument if the piece you are talking about is written well; if it is incredibly confusing and rubbish to boot then you can safely begrudge the author the hours you wasted on them. With Tanizaki, whether or not you feel the abrupt ending is justified, I can vouch for the fact that everything you read up until then is worth your time and effort.

I may actually post a link here to Ishiguro's interview during The Sydney Writer's Festival 2009- you can watch just highlights or the entire hour if you wish. (Or, if you're feeling rebellious, nothing at all). I found it extremely interesting and, as an aspiring writer, rather valuable in terms of insight. Ishiguro has often listed Tanizaki as one of his strongest Japanese influences, so this part of the review is not entirely out of left wing.

I have just realised this review is almost as long as the book itself. Clearly I am not Japanese and have much to learn in the art of minimalist prose.

Rating: 8/10.

Twenties Girl (Sophie Kinsella)

2010-03-16T21:07:00.004Z

Every so often you pick a book off a shelf, ignoring the glitz and sparkle of the front cover. You skate past the sad details of the effervescent heroine's life; you ignore the fact that the gushing review on the back comes from Cosmopolitan; you most certainly allow temporary insanity to take over as you grudgingly raise your eyebrows at the description of the love-interest and, miraculously, it is all worth it. The book turns out to be witty instead of that perfectly damning word 'funny', inspiring instead of merely big-hearted, diverting instead of ridiculous.

This happens very rarely with chick-lit. Normally this is a genre that is abominable at best. Sophie Kinsella has, in the past, proven herself a cut above the rest in the literary plains of pink mediocrity. Mainly because she is gorgeously funny, not because she talks about Things That Matter. There was a chickpea incident in The Undomestic Goddess... they were overcooked when she was trying to make hummus... ANYWAY. You probably had to be there.

So, battling yet ANOTHER chest infection (I don't want to leave London, yet I am so excited to be going back to Australia for at least a short while where my poor, weak, asthmatic lungs don't have to do battle with the elements every freaking minute of my existence) I decided the new Sophie Kinsella was perfect to get me through a day or two in bed.

It was not. It was SHITE. Ghosts. A mysterious necklace. A stupid heroine. A two-dimensional love-interest. Several cringe-worthy scenes involving said ghost, the Charleston and an eighty-five year old lipstick. Kinsella will be hearing from my lawyer soon because this novel pushed me over the brink from sick to manically depressed. (It's a fine line with me. I am not a good patient.)

In an embarrassing comparison, I also read Skulduggery Pleasant during my convalescence. I told Earhart I was most jealous about the fact she was able to meet Derek Landy last month, author of this overly excellent series for children. Of course, I realised I hadn't actually read any of this series and thus stole the first book off a nine year old I know.

I can now add 'skeleton detective' to my list of things that I Like Very Much. I am slightly concerned about Skulduggery's burgeoning friendship with a young teenage girl. Aside from the legal aspects, it is the possibility of future acts of necrophilia that REALLY worries me. However, Derek Landy is a professional. I am sure he will handle any such scenes with the appropriate tact and class.

Although a children's book, the dialogue, language and structure are streets ahead of Sophie Kinsella. The humour is sharper, the plot tighter and the characters more believable. Yes. Skulduggery Pleasant and Ghastly Bespoke are more realistic than Ed and Lara. POOR EFFORT Sophie.

Next up- Some Prefer Nettles by Junichiro Tanizaki.

Twenties Girl- 4/10.

Skulduggery Pleasant- 7/10.

A Song in The Daylight (Paullina Simons)

2010-03-10T21:41:00.004Z

This is what happens when you spend two years away from the book trade. Whilst in the past 16 months I have become an absolute virtuoso in the art of 'pretending to care during child-related activities', a masterchef from the school of 'Dinner in 10 Minutes or Less' and a champion in the competitive sport of 'Saving Your Tears for the Privacy of Your Loft', I have NO IDEA what books are out at the moment.

Thus, it was with a squeal of delight that I realised Paullina Simons had a new novel out. Generally speaking, Simons is a very misunderstood author. The publicity and marketing drongos who represent Paullina need to ACTUALLY READ one of her books. Look at these covers-

Disgusting.

VOMIT.

I would go straight for these books only if I had a 39 hour plane trip ahead of me and needed to mindlessly fill the hours. However, I would be disappointed. The reader who buys these covers is not prepared for what lies between them- emotionally destructive tragedies of the heart and mind. The epic struggle of the modern American writer who cannot help but mine her depressing Russian heritage. Extremely explicit sex scenes. (Not the sort of thing you want the person next to you catching a glimpse of. My ex-boyfriend once read one and expressed absolute horror and disgust at what he deemed to be highly inappropriate reading for me.)

I digress...

Marketing gripes aside, I was ridiculously excited to get A Song in the Daylight. Friday afternoon a few weeks ago I made a trip to Sainsbury's and bought the necessities: iced coffee, KitKats and apples. I cancelled my weekend plans. Friday evening, after my duties with the children were complete, I curled up in bed. I opened the covers, already shivering slightly. I took one last look through my skylight at the grey world, anticipating I would next view it from the highly charged emotional state of the post-Paullina meltdown I normally experience at the denouement of her novels.

48 hours later I scoffed one last scoff and slammed the covers shut.

It started off well enough. Larissa, the beautiful, discontent housewife, meets the young, dangerously sexy Kai. Should she leave with him, or stay behind to be with her husband and children? It could have been compelling, if Larissa was in any way likeable. However, instead of a heroine I could sympathise with, I got a heroine who disgusted me with every turn of the page. Selfish, weak, whiny, spiteful, vacuous and stupid. Who cares whether she goes or stays? I didn't become attached to her children or husband enough to worry about their fate. Kai, I felt, was too two-dimensional to warrant the drama he created. He ate sushi! He drove a motorcycle! SWOON. The only interesting characters in the novel were given extremely limited page space, making it hard to care about them either. Maggie and her kidney problem was a particularly unnecessary waste of ink.

Actually, that's not entirely fair. Che was a very interesting character, being a protester in the Philippines and all. Only problem is, that story line was completely incongruous to the rest of the plot.

Simons obviously realised the structure of the novel was a bit off, so she attempted to pull everything together in the last third. Then she realised that wasn't going to work, so she just decided to kill everyone. (Not everyone. That is hyperbolic.) Let's just say she decided to indulge in her tragic Russian side when all else failed.

Was it worth the weekend I set aside? Most definitely. Simons can still write melodrama better than anyone else out there, making it seem honest, necessary and even restrained. I get the feeling a lot of the time with Simons that her novels are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how much damage she could ACTUALLY do to my heart if she really tried.

If you're a Simons fan this is of course a must-read (although you probably knew about it last September). If you are new to the Simons wagon, I would suggest picking up The Girl in Times Square first. It is my favourite other than The Bronze Horseman, but I would not recommend starting with that. That is not for the faint-hearted. I lost days crying over that book.

I didn't lose any days crying over this book. But I lost a bit of my faith in Paullina. Which is very sad indeed.

Almost, but not quite, locked under the stairs...

2010-03-10T20:43:00.003Z

I ventured downstairs this evening to get a cup of coffee and came upon the people I live with, who were most surprised to see me. Much like Harry Potter, I spend my evenings "in my room, making no noise and pretending I don't exist." Thus, my occasional descent from the loft is the cause of much consternation. I have returned, disgruntled to my bedroom, thanking every denominational being ever to be suspected of existing (have I used that line before? C'est possible...) that I have less than eight weeks of work to go.

After that I shall be as a house elf is with clothes- FREE. UNLEASHED. EMANCIPATED. LIBERATED. WITHOUT SADNESS AND PAIN.

The last is perhaps stretching it slightly. I cannot blame all the greyness and blackness on Acton Town. But I am anticipating greater splashes of white and colour in May (that most joyous of months) when my contract is over.

Starting in May I will be playing the part of European cultural whore for two months, wherein I shall be utterly negligent when it comes to updating the blog. Obviously, this is already the case for both of us; 2010 did not exactly start off on a punctual note. Never fear, dearly devoted readers, we ARE committed, we are merely lazy.

However, I have an enormous backlog which I shall begin tackling tonight. I can never sleep after an unpleasant evening, I tend to go over the events that transpired below, completely certain that I did something wrong. Only when I am satisfied that I am blameless can I cease to be upset. However, I generally progress (or regress really) to anger, which is even less conducive to a restful night.

In answer to Earhart's question below, I have been embarrassed several times in meetings with authors. My Paullina Simons moment can be found here. I accidentally sat on William McIness' knee during his promotional tour for his autobiography. I asked John Boyne if he wanted to buy a copy of his own book. Stuck in a corner with Thomas Keneally, I bypassed the obvious "Schindler's Ark was AMAZING" and instead went for "Well, I really like your beard." I wrote to Alan Bennett and asked him out to lunch. (Which he declined. INORIGHT? Unbelievable.)

I think however, if I were lucky enough to meet someone like Ishiguro or Annie Proulx I wouldn't have an embarrassing moment. I would be too overwhelmed. Speech would be struck from my brain, both as a desire and an ability. To meet the tangible behind the ethereal is a frightening thing. Some authors are too great to meet. Thus, it seems I am doomed to a lifetime of falling over authors and attempting to sell them their own books; these, the authors who are comfortingly normal.

Patrick Ness

2010-03-09T10:55:00.006Z

So remember that ridiculously gushy not-even-a-proper-review I wrote of The Knife of Never Letting Go? Remember how I promised to review Book Two and then never did. Sorry about that - it was actually as gut-wrenchingly good as Book One and I am sure that when I read Book Three (VERY SOON if my rep does as promised and gets me the manuscript!) it will also keep me up until three in the morning.

Anyway, I met the author of this most amazing of series tonight. A bunch of the book-shop groupies and myself went along to hear him speak - the author of a YA series and there were perhaps two teenagers in the crowd. Booksellers, librarians, teachers and people from OTHER publishing houses were, however, in abundance. He spoke about writing, about where his books came from, about knife crime, terrorism and war and finished up with a few musings on joy. He read from Book Three (Oh lord, it is definitely going to be an astounding read) and then signed some copies.

In true me-meeting-authors-I-love fashion, I was suitably star struck. I like to think I conducted myself better than when I met Joanne Harris (when I said something along the lines of "This is what normal people feel when they meet a rock star!" Her response was something like 'okayyyyy... name please?') I told him I'd reviewed him on the blog. He wrote down the address (in case you actually took the scrap of paper home with you, Hi Patrick!) I spoke like a grown-up (ha! Fooled you!).

Anyway... aside from feeling the need to tell everyone I met him and he was lovely, the point of this post was actually to see if I am the only one out there who gets this star-struck with authors. Surely I am not. Surely there is someone else out there who has stammered out "Oh my god I love everything you have ever written" to an idol. Someone else who has blushed when they met a philosopher? (Hmm, maybe not. I think Stephen Law thinks I am a lunatic, but that is another story). I am sure if I met, say, Neil Gaiman or Margaret Atwood I wouldn't even be able to get out the most perfunctory of compliments like "Love your books". More likely I will blush bright red, stammer out my name and grin like a loon at the object of my reading affection.

So, tell me, anyone out there as nerdy as me?

Five Greatest Warriors (Matthew Reilly)

2010-02-19T10:11:00.006Z

Having given him a relatively derogatory shout-out in my last review I decided Reilly deserved his own post for his latest literary offering.

Yes, I paid money for another Matthew Reilly book. This is the third in a series about Jack West, intrepid international hero and saviour of the world from the dark star, or whatever the hell he's doing in this latest instalment. I don't remember these books being that bad. A guilty pleasure of course, but a PLEASURE nonetheless. I'm an armchair action junkie- I don't ever want to find myself having to negotiate my way through a death-defying act (that one time on a trapeze in Club Med Bintan nailed that particular coffin shut) but I'm happy to eat a hobnob and read about other people doing it. Up until recently I would have put Matthew Reilly in that category. I was even a little bit excited to get Five Greatest Warriors.

Either my memory is dreadful and Reilly has always been this bad, or he has taken a significant down slide in the last couple of years. I hope it is the latter. I don't like to think there was ever a time when my reading was so lacking in taste.

This book wasn't just bad, it was horrible. It was the result of an author who isn't even attempting to cater to an audience whose demographic is anything but imbecilic. Perry Crandall would find it basic and he has an IQ of 76. (He is NOT retarded. One's IQ needs to be less than 75 to fall into that category).

It takes an especial talent to write dialogue that is so awkward I am forced several times a chapter to bury my head in my pillow and groan. Reilly is able to take seemingly innocuous words and render them ridiculous to the reader. Unfortunately, there is a restraint and sensibility to his writing as well. Reilly obviously knows his writing skills are nothing to boast about so he doesn't attempt anything fancy, thus never entering 'so bad it's good' territory.

I am not yet so old that I feel comfortable putting a book down without finishing it. As Her (Fictional) Majesty says in Alan Bennett's brilliant The Uncommon Reader- 'one was brought up to finish what one started.' Whilst I have not the blue blood of royalty running through my veins, I generally share this sentiment with Lizzie. I once worked with a gentleman who was in his 60's who said "When you get to my age you realise you don't have time to finish all the books you're not enjoying." Shudder. Depressing but true. At 24 I feel I have all the time in the world and, as is the plight of the young, I must therefore finish all the books I start.

But, dear readers, I could not finish this. Because, essentially, the distribution of this book has already squandered thousands of pages of paper and ink. Such waste. In the interest of moving towards a more prudent age, I cannot allow this book to also deplete my existing brain space.

Rating: 2/10.

The Pregnant Widow (Martin Amis)

2010-02-18T23:36:00.005Z

There are some voices that you’re grateful to hear, no matter the context or your mood. For me they are the voices that speak always in the imperative. The voices that demand my attention. Cormac McCarthy, Kazuo Ishiguro… and of course, Martin Amis.

The Pregnant Widow has received some less-than favourable reviews, with many harping on about the fact that the writing is no longer enough- at some point a certain amount of plot needs to be injected in order to keep the reader’s attention. I don’t really care about all that. Case in point: I have an extremely short attention span, yet I raced through the book. All I need is a certain amount of attitude and Amis provides that in abundance. Yes, the story is king. But Amis makes his prose the story and anyone who feels the need for more plot should pick up a Matthew Reilly.

The novel brought all my anxieties as a writer to the forefront, channelling, I suppose, the insecurities Keith Nearing expresses. I struggle to name distinctive female characters whose fame comes from their voice rather than their actions. Go into a bookshop and you trip over women who act in amazing ways- sacrificing this, loving that, schlepping here, toiling there- but how many female voices carry the distinguished air of the truly original? Where is the female Ignatius J. Reilly, Charles Highway or Vernon Little? I’m not taking Amis to task for not giving his female characters more distinctive voices. He is a male, and he should write as one. But it follows then, that, as a GIRL, I should write as one. Keith, Amis’ highly autobiographical twenty-year old self, is not to be confused with previous Keiths in Amis’ past. He is more evolved than Keith Talent (London Fields) and not as hideously revolting as Keith Whitehead (Dead Babies). He is brilliantly written; instantly likeable without doing anything of merit. No author could write so honestly about the opposite sex.

Why then do I persist in scribbling out narratives from the male perspective? It’s not as though I actually know what I’m talking about. However, whenever I attempt to write as a girl I end up absolutely detesting the character. Every thought I pen seems vacuous, pathetic, calculated to impress, hiding an empty, cavernous, pink nothing. It’s not self-loathing. I adore myself. I just don’t know how to tap into the real of it all like Amis can.

I hadn’t worked out until just recently why it is I think I enjoy Amis’ novels so much. The brutal wit and carefully constructed style allow his characters to remain rather emotionally removed from the reader. I find this quite comforting. It is not COLD, it is a device to heighten the satire. On a personal level, it is calming, steadying, to not be able to feel Keith’s tears fall from the pages. With his manipulation of language and barbarous, throw-away dialogue Amis is like a young man lighting up with matches instead plastic, adopting an air of old-school peculiarity cultivated to ensure distanced attention. As an overly emotional creature myself I quite enjoy those people in my life who seem to remain impervious to all that, in the same way I enjoy books that hold me at arm’s length. I am able to think better when I am not sobbing into a pile of soggy tissues, shrieking at Earhart “The Russians got him! I’ll never be happy again.”

The Pregnant Widow didn’t educe any such melodrama. I merely picked it up in my favourite bookshop and hugged it- smiling- to myself, knowing that whatever was contained within the pages was going to be important in someway. Not always the most pleasant of narrators and hardly ever in agreement with my own sentiments, Amis’ is nevertheless a voice I will always make room for.

Rating: 9/10.

The Dead Tossed Waves (Carrie Ryan)

2010-02-18T00:00:00.001Z

So, remember about eight months ago I read that zombie apocalypse book The Forest of Hands and Teeth which freaked me out, had a bleak, bleak ending and kept me up at night for fear there were zombies in my kitchen? Well I've just read the sequel. Seems I'm a sucker for punishment.

The Dead-Tossed Waves follows a girl named Gabry, daughter of Book One's protagonist Mary. She has grown up in relative safety in the town of Vista, shielded from the zombies by stone walls and ocean. These surroundings are far less disturbing than the isolated village ruled by scary nuns and surrounded by barbed wire that we were introduced to the first time around. At the beginning of the story, Gabry and a few of her friends jump Vista's stone walls on a thrill seeking expedition and are attacked by zombies. A bunch of her friends are locked up, the boy she likes is bitten, her mother runs off... not a great day for her. Lots of intrigue, mystery and killing...

All this sets up what is basically a mirror of Book One - Gabry retraces her mother's path through the Forest of Hands and Teeth from the ocean to the village that used to be run by the scary nuns. This time however, she is more scared of the various groups of humans chasing her than the zombies. I found this one a lot less disturbing than book one, but that could have a lot to do with the fact that I read it in the middle of the day in a brightly lit bookshop, as opposed to at 2 am, in a creaky house. That said, I did still jump a bit when a colleague came up from behind to say hello. The ending is slightly more hopeful than the first book- I am feeling much better about what I now know to be a trilogy after this second book. The story is rounding out more, loose ends which drove me crazy in the first book are semi-tied up, and I can only assume (or perhaps hope) that book three will conclude the story satisfactorily. I feel much more confident telling you to read the series now I see where it is going. I think...

Edit: Reposted 18.02.10 as original post had technical glitch and a big section of text vanished into the ethers. Hope review will make sense this time!

Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto)

2010-02-17T08:30:00.001Z

A short and perfectly formed book has inspired in me a short (and needless to say) perfectly formed review.

I often feel with translated works that I am missing out on some integral X-factor that made the original worthy of translation in the first place. I have no great faith in the literary talents of the translator. Say what you like about Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's translation of War and Peace- at the end of the day they didn't write the freaking thing.

However, with Kitchen I suspect the original is just as sparsely written as the version I have read. I mean, there's an economy of words- and then there's Yoshimoto. The anti-Rushdie if you will. The two short stories about mourning and reawakening after the death of a loved one throb with intensity and yearning, although most of the time the characters are talking about nothing more potent than noodles or kitchen utensils. Yoshimoto does not hide behind an impressive vocabulary or complicated metaphors. She expresses herself as if in conversation with the reader. I am so in awe of this. To make the stories so casual and carefree- whilst still maintaining a beautiful, lyrical rhythm- is a gift.

Rating: 9/10.

Legend of a Suicide (David Vann)

2010-02-17T00:43:00.007Z

Caveat- it is very late, I cannot sleep for the third night in a row and, as is always the case when I reach such a hypnagogic state, I am thinking too much for my own good. This is why stupid people have a much better time of it- doltishness the great unknown elixir for a happy life. If there were to be a study of the average intelligence of the insomniac I'm betting it would be higher than the average of the general populace. Although it would probably be staffed and researched by actual insomniacs, desperate to fill in the black hours any way they can. Of course, this would bring the credibility and impartiality of the study under scrutiny and all that work could end up being for naught.

OR, perhaps insomniacs are no more intelligent than the next person. It is possible that we, as a group, just HOPE that we are smarter than average, that our thoughts are so important as to warrant stolen extra hours awake. We want there to be a reason that the ranks of the soporified masses are not open to us- some noble, acumen-based reason.

I finished Legend of a Suicide a few days ago and have been mulling over what to write in my review. Vann's novel is about a man attempting to deal with the suicide of his father when he was a young lad. The author's own father committed suicide and whilst he states that this is definitely a work of fiction, the emotion expressed in the novel must have been mined from his own experiences. So, ultimately, this is an incredibly sad book. Sad in a true way. Not sad in a The Kite Runner way.

Sigh. Before I get disgruntled emails- of course, The Kite Runner was sad. But it was Hollywood sad. Brutal caste system, sexual molestation, racial discrimination, terrorism, rape, child trafficking... YE GODS. Got it. This book is sad with a capital S. Of course, these events do occur around the world, but combined in one novel the effect was so overwhelmingly hopeless that I felt quite removed from the story.

Oh dear, I digress. What I mean to say is that Vann's novel was simple and honest in its portrayal of Roy's struggles after his father kills himself; nothing appeared to be magnified for effect. I felt so hideously and selfishly grateful that I was not Roy, that I have a father whom I have relied on my entire life and will continue to do so for as long as he puts up with me. I have a father whose advice is invaluable to me, who does things for my benefit rather than his, whom I trust beyond all imagining. Roy had a drop-kick.

I didn't particularly like this book. It is written beautifully and Vann certainly surprised me in the way he twisted the plot around (a little obtuse, but I don't want to spoil it for those of you who may read it). But, apart from making me realise how much I love my dad, I just didn't enjoy reading it. Maybe I have had enough of these brutal tales of outdoor survival. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, The Outlander, Jack London's various works... I like roughing it as much as the next spoilt brat but I now know WAY too much about dolly fishing and weather-proofing. Another thing I am grateful to my father for- he never, in all my years growing up, ever suggested we go live in the Alaskan wilderness for a year, hunting and fishing to survive. Much kudos Daddy.

Rating: 7/10.

Like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick...

2010-02-10T12:02:00.002Z

Whilst I am finishing off my review of Martin Amis' The Pregnant Widow, I direct your attention to this article in the Guardian today on fictional drugs in literature.

Darragh McManus is a dweeb.

Anthropology and a Hundred Other Stories (Dan Rhodes)

2010-02-07T19:44:00.005Z

My day was highly enjoyable. I made my way to Chalk Farm and walked the five minutes to Primrose Hill under a sky that was depressingly overcast, even for England. I had a coffee at the patisserie there, which was, actually, quite disgusting. (You can see how good the rest of my day must have been if this is how it started).

I then made my way to Primrose Hill Books. This is the only bookshop to rival Hatchards in London I believe. And it is TINY. Ridiculously small. But the stock is chosen with a great deal of care and attention and it shows. There is not really any crap in there at all. And because of their lack of space, the staff are forced to pile all the books on top of each other. Unless you are committed to digging into piles, you'll miss most of the titles.

Genius.

Then I had lunch in the awesome Russian tea house there (the latkes are sublime) and a simply gorgeous elderly man leant across from the next table and struck up a conversation with me about Nick Hornby (I was finishing off Juliet,Naked). He turned out to be a very esoteric and surreal conversationalist so that was highly enjoyable. The dialogue swooped from Hornby to Pepys to apple crumble with alarming speed and before I knew it we had nudged our tables together and were sharing a pot of honey tea. I would feel chuffed that I had made a new friend, but it was so exhausting I don't know if I shall instigate any further correspondence.

One of the books I purchased was Dan Rhodes' Anthropology. It is a selection of 101 extremely short stories (each only about a paragraph long) and it is a very funny, (if bittersweet and slightly twisted) comment on love. In Rhodes' stories the women hold all the power and the poor, hapless man in each story is moved to great joy or despair depending on the seemingly vacuous whims of the fairer sex.

My two favourite stories are 'Sailing' and 'Words' and I will risk copyright infringement to share them with you here:

Sailing

My girlfriend cannot play the guitar. She strums slowly, erratically and woefully out of time. She sucks her lips in concentration, and sometimes stalls for as many as fifteen seconds between chord changes. When she stops playing, her eyes are bright with anticipation. 'OK. What was that?'
'I'm not sure. Was it "Moon River"?'
'No.' She looks disappointed. 'It was "We Are Sailing". You know, by Paul McCartney.' She starts another, and I know I won't be able to identify it, no matter how hard I try. This has been going on for seven perfect years. I hope she never learns.

Words

I fell in love the moment I saw her in her grandfather's kitchen, her dark curls crashing over her Portuguese shoulders. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she smiled.
'I'm really not that thirsty.'
'What? What you say?' Her English wasn't too good. Now I'm seventy-three and she's just turned seventy. 'Would you like to drink coffee?' she asked me today, smiling.
'I'm really not that thirsty.'
'What? What you say?' Neither of us has the gift of language acquisition. After fifty years of marriage we have never really spoken, but we love each other more than words can say.

Rating: 8/10.

Now For Something Completely Different...

2010-02-07T19:19:00.004Z

I have thought for awhile we need to streamline our categories. As in, browsers like yourselves should be able to scroll through our categories and be moved to click through, intrigued by the novels that hide within. I have doubts that many of you are interested in the category 'Meh' and I'm sure 'Underwhelming' inspires a similar anti-response. However, I do think that we should still have some sort of deadening category where we can lump together everything we don't really feel you should read (not good and not bad enough to be 'so bad it's good'... see Vampires: Twilight.) So I shall dedicate the next few minutes to working out how to amalgamate it all into one 'Don't click here' button.

I shall also presently put up another review. As you can see, once I get started, there's no stopping me.

I don't know whether Earhart shall continue to post here this year. She is RAWTHER busy and, in all honesty, I question her loyalty to the blog. She asked me the other day how 'attached' I was to the painting at the top of our page. 'Quite' was my frosty reply and she had the diplomacy to drop the subject. But I have my suspicions that her enthusiasm may be waning. We shall see. I have also attempted to draft in the other sister, now that she has finished all her exams and is a bona fide university student. She did not leap up and down in excitement at this amazing opportunity that was being presented to her, so, again, we shall see.

Watch this space.

Juliet, Naked (Nick Hornby)

2010-02-07T18:44:00.005Z

This is my first post of 2010 and I realise that, dated 7 February, that is not a very prompt start to the year. Nevertheless, it is true to form and, having resolved this year to concentrate solely on just being the most honest version of myself, that seems as good a place as any to start. You may be thinking that a resolution to be the 'most honest version of myself' is merely a license to become even more self-involved and indulgent. And you would be correct.

Now, on to Juliet, Naked. I have mixed feelings about Nick Hornby. High Fidelity made me slightly melancholy and gave me license to listen to music feeling moody and unappreciated; About A Boy renewed my faith in monotonous, happy endings; A Long Way Down allowed me a few chuckles about suicide (silver lining and all that). Whilst all enjoyable, none of these novels have moved me in any particularly earth-shattering way. Having finished one, I move on relatively quickly and I have never been inclined to pick it up for a second reading.

Juliet, Naked inspired the same insipid response in me. I fell a little in love with the character of Tucker, I felt a little of Annie's pain and the ending made me die a little bit inside.

Nothing I won't bounce back from.

I don't think any of these personal reactions are the fault of the author. I have prattled on in the past about authors who I had an adverse reaction to and as a result I have deemed them (in all my wisdom) to be mentally and creatively lacking. I don't think it's fair to lump Hornby in with these ill-deserving sponges who sop up the watery royalties from a reading public whose discernment has been eroded through years of crappy pop-cultural interference. Rather, he is someone who writes about 'real' relationships, focusing on the mildly interesting mid-life crises of men and women who have been vaguely unhappy and/or misunderstood by a myriad of secondary cast members Hornby never fully bothers to inflate to a three-dimensional scale. Actually, that latter point IS something I must take Hornby to task on. If you are going to mention Malcolm and Barnesy IN THE BLURB, (thus elevating their importance in the eyes of the reader) at least attempt to turn them into real characters. If you don't want to dedicate more than a couple of pages to each one, perhaps... you don't need to include them on the back cover.

Minor character development aside, Hornby DOES write very well. As in, he writes inoffensively. He has a good grasp of grammar, a reasonable vocabulary etc. Does he string a sentence together so that it sings? No. But that is irrelevant. He writes middle of the road fiction about middle of the road emotions perfectly adequately. It's just not quite desperate or dramatic enough to move me to any great excitement whenever I pick up one of his novels. For those of you out there who live on a more sensible plain, he is probably the breath of fresh air you need during your battle against the incessant troops of Disney soldiers pounding on the doors of your energy-efficient castle in the Land of Relentless Realists. However, if that is you, don't make contact. You don't sound overly interesting.

Rating: 7/10.

Bel-Ami (Guy de Maupassant)

2009-12-11T11:21:00.007Z

I shall start with a disclaimer: I am not approaching this review from a particularly objective point of view. As stated in an earlier post, I am in my happy place- Bath. Well, near Bath, but for the sake of anonymity I shall not name the tiny hamlet I am currently residing in. Furthermore, I am wrapped in the world's largest, baggiest jumper, drinking a mug of coffee and eyeing in the mirror the image of myself leaning against a walking stick carved like a swan. Needless to say, I am in a serene mood and disinclined to engage in much slating of literary ability at this moment.

That is all slightly redundant considering I am reviewing Bel-Ami, Guy de Maupassant's novel about a charismatic young veteran soldier who rises to the highest circles of the Parisian bourgeois with the help of several powerful mistresses. The classic has undoubtedly stood the test of time and creates a memorable, if totally unlikeable protagonist in Georges Duroy. I shall get to my main quibble with the text in a moment and instead concentrate on the positives for now.

Although 'a scoundrel' in very sense of the word, the reader cannot help cheering on the meteoric rise of Duroy. He uses the women in his life without a thought for their happiness or sense of self. He tosses one aside for another with little compunction. Duroy happily claims any credit for his successes, although most of the time they come about as a result of the labours of his wife or mistress at the time. However, when a character is so deliciously self-involved it is easy to see there is no malicious intent behind his actions. Duroy acts only for himself and the toe-stepping that occurs is merely a consequence of these actions rather than a driving motive.

Because I came away from the text with a slight feeling of derision for all the women Duroy uses I suspect the text was subliminally rather misogynistic. Considering the time in which it was written I am not surprised or even annoyed about this. Nor am I much riled by the depiction of Duroy's peasant parents. They are described in a scornful tone and their surroundings are much ridiculed which can only be attributed to Maupassant's ignorance due to his aristocratic upbringing.

No, my main issue is that the book is quite obviously poorly translated. There is no way the story of Georges Duroy would have lasted as an enduring classic if the original French version were written in the basic manner in which the English version stumbles along. After doing some research on Douglas Parmée I find that he is a well-respected translator of French literature. I, however, remain underwhelmed by his abilities. I finished the novel and enjoyed it on the strength of the plot and characters but felt I was perhaps only being shown the basics of what is a much richer story in the original language.

Still, absorbing and insightful, Bel-Ami is worth a read and, if you speak French, most probably a MUST READ.

Rating: 7/10.

Dyslit: In Conversation

2009-12-08T22:01:00.005Z

Jamie: Have you ever read ‘The Razor’s Edge’?

Anna: Maugham right?

Jamie: Yep.

Anna: No.

Jamie: You should read it.

Anna: Maybe. I don’t normally read book recommendations. It’s the ultimate act of superiority, putting yourself in cahoots with the author, both of you saying, I know what’s best.

Jamie: That’s not…

I think you’d like it, is all.

Anna: Why don’t you paraphrase it for me?

Jamie: I can’t remember the whole story. I read it years ago.

Anna: No, just the bit that you felt I might relate to.

Jamie: Larry… rejects society, materialism, everything, in search of some transcendent meaning to life.

Happiness, without the jewellery I guess.

I think the reader is meant to assume he finds happiness in the end. I don’t think he does, because he’s constantly onto the next thing, always looking ahead. Never in the present. I don’t think you could ever be happy, living like that.

Anna: Maybe it’s not his lifestyle, but the fact that Sophie’s dead. Perhaps he can’t be happy without her.

Jamie: What was the point of that? Cheap thrills?

Anna: Sorry. Don’t listen to me. I don’t know the first thing about literature. The only thing I know about it is most of the time, you should avoid reading it.

Jamie: Rubbish.

Anna: It doesn’t open you up, it shuts you in. You can’t think for yourself when you've got Proust, Maugham, Kerouac all in your head.

Jamie: So you’re saying you’d like to live an uninformed life.

Anna: Yes.

Jamie: With no regard as to how that would affect intolerance, religious persecution, the ability to learn from our historical mistakes…

Anna: Why not? Within reason of course. Acumen-tested.

Jamie: What? You have to be intelligent to be uninformed?

Anna: Yes.

Jamie: And in this veritable utopia, where are you?

Anna: Uninformed.

Jamie: Naturally.

(a pause)

Where am I?

Anna: Where do you want to be?

Jamie: Uninformed.

No, informed.

I don’t know.

Anna: Well, it’s irrelevant where you want to be. You wouldn’t have a choice. Imagine if people did.

Jamie: Culpability as a reason to oppose free will.

Anna: Something like that.

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski)

2009-12-08T21:34:00.000Z

Earhart gave me the push towards this novel and it is probably the best recommendation she has ever given me. We enjoy the same books, but the novels that we absolutely LOVE are always quite different. Of course, the reason I loved this so much is probably because Earhart hasn't actually read it. She just sold it to a bunch of unsuspecting customers when it came out last year.

When I first started reading Edgar I thought to myself "Wow, this is similar in feel to The Outlander." I felt most chuffed when I reached the end of the novel and found an interview with David Wroblewski and Gil Adamson who WROTE The Outlander. I am brilliant.

Edgar tells the story of a young boy who lives on a dog farm with his parents. I'm not sure dog farm is the right term, but it is so much more than a kennel. Edgar's parents raise a special breed of dog- Sawtelle dogs. These dogs are a mix of dogs that Edgar's paternal great grandfather "liked the look of". Whenever he saw a dog that was particularly intelligent and aware he would buy it and breed it into his line of dogs, creating this super race. Combined with a special training technique the family have honed over the years, Sawtelle dogs are highly valued around the country.

Edgar, who was born mute, has a very strong bond with the dogs, probably due to his inability to speak. This bond proves his saving grace when his uncle Claude arrives, fresh out of prison, to live with them. This family reunion ends in tragedy and Edgar is forced to flee into the surrounding forest, several of the dogs following at his heels. What follows is weeks in a relative wilderness as he comes to terms with what he must face back home.

The book is startlingly beautiful. Nothing seems quite real. The characters are slightly heightened; the forest is awesomely majestic and lonely; Edgar's relationship with the dogs seems unearthly, supernatural even. The book clutched at all of my senses, clawing me in to the drama. Wroblewski structured the novel in five acts, like a play, and you can see what this has done to the feel of the story. Slow reading builds to a frenzied turning of the pages as Edgar and Claude are propelled towards a terrible yet magnificent denouement.

The novel has been compared to Macbeth but I see bits of King Lear and even Romeo and Juliet in there as well. Suffice to say Wroblewski most probably found himself inspired by the Bard, a worthy foundation for any novel!

No matter what accolades I give The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, I don't think I can sum it up better than Stephen King's review: "I flat-out loved this book." I did too Stephen.

Rating: 9/10.

New Moon (Stephenie Meyer)

2009-12-08T20:21:00.008Z

I am already grinning to myself and have yet to write anything.

I just went to see New Moon, the second film of The Twilight Saga.

Ahhh. Where to begin?

I feel I should start with saying that this film is probably 300% better than the first film. (Review here). The new director has obviously not insisted on an insipid blue wash and allows the actors some actual screen time to emote, rather than racing the camera around them psychotically.

However, the film still suffered from the same problem that the Harry Potter films (especially the early ones) had- they are virtually incomprehensible to someone who has not read the novels. I mean, you could understand what was going on. But you would be pardoned for being under the impression that the books are eratically plotted, totally vacuous and remarkably two-dimensional. Not the case (well, not ENTIRELY the case).

The Twilight books are not GOOD... but they are a phenomenon. These books are the pinnacle of guilty pleasure reading. Odd, dangerous, melodramatic and ultimately supremely fulfilling. The films pale in comparison.

Yet still, as I mentioned before, this film was a vast improvement on the first. I almost fell out of my seat when Taylor Lautner appeared on screen, thirty pounds heavier than in the first movie. That, in itself, made the 8 pounds and unimpressive popcorn worth it. Add to the mix the fact that Robert Pattinson was given about three lines and five minute of screen time to sulk and you'll see the movie was positively five star compared to Twilight.

There's been a lot of press about the books as outlets for Stephenie Meyer to publicise her Mormon beliefs and racist, Aryan views. There's probably a lot of truth to this. The portrayal of the Quileutes is definitely questionable and Edward as the supreme enforcer of familial values and chastity is quite unnerving when combined with the stalking, controlling behaviour and omniscience Meyer depicts as charming, loving behaviour.

None of which appears with any sort of prominence in either film. Bella is far more in control in the films and Edward highly ridiculous compared to his written persona. Bella can dismiss him with a withering "Just... shut up." Edward slumps against a wall, defeated. Pathetic. In addition, you can see that the producers seem to be keeping abreast of political correctness. Even if they are from Utah.

At least the books offer some escapist fun. This film is redeemable only as an homage to Jacob Black's amazing abs.

Traipsing back from the hinterlands...

2009-12-08T19:27:00.004Z

I feel I may have already used that Waugh reference on another post and if so, I apologise. Full marks and a box of reindeer shortbread to the person who finds the post. It does, however, fit rather well with what I want to write.

I have been remarkably remiss at updating recently. Earhart's excuse is that she is reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace (of Brief Interviews with Hideous Men fame) and is sinking slowly into that quicksand-filled quagmire of reading a book slowly out of dislike yet being unable to put it down because it is nonetheless strangely compelling. Thus, she may not surface for awhile. I have no such excuse, merely that once I stop blogging for a few days it turns into a mountain to surpass when I attempt to begin again.

Today was my last day of work for the year (thank every denominational being ever to be suspected of existing) and I now have three weeks to do naught. I am off to Bath tomorrow, which is my happy place. You know that clichéd therapy technique where they tell you to imagine your happy place with palm trees and Adonis under a waterfall etcetera? My happy place ACTUALLY exists and I go there ALL THE TIME. (Smug, self-satisfied smirk).

A week there and then off to Norway for the coldest Christmas of my life, although seeing friends makes that all worthwhile. Which is all an incredibly long-winded way of saying that I am going to post several entries tonight because I'm not sure when I shall next have the opportunity. I have quite a few things I've been meaning to blog about for awhile so hopefully I will get it all done.

First on the agenda- this article today from the Guardian. In a surprisingly upbeat tone for such a negative idea, Sam Jordison questioned what books would be on a list of the worst novels of the decade. Ian McEwan gets stabbed quite a bit both in the article and the comments. I agree with the criticisms of Saturday but what the hell was wrong with On Chesil Beach?

Vernon God Little gets much abuse in the comments to which I can only say CLEARLY the peanut gallery were posting on the website today. RIDICULOUS. That novel is a little slice of genius pie. An anomalous use of language does not make a book poorly written. What do you think Shakespeare was doing you philistines?

Belated Holiday Reading

2009-11-24T01:42:00.001Z

This post should be titled very very belated holiday reading since the holiday was over about a month ago... but anyway...

Plane journey began with The Brightest Star in the Sky by Marian Keyes. Possibly the perfect aeroplane book: it doesn't require much concentration, nice big print, can be understood even after twenty hours of being awake and confined to less than one metre square. Was a bit weird to be honest - Marian has gotten stranger with her past few books, although she does it well. Who would have thought I would grow to love a cross-dressing romantic lead? Alcott is still unconvinced in that department.

Moved onto a bit of Murakami loving - Sputnik Sweetheart, one of his more normal ones, followed by Underground, his non-fiction work on the Sarin attacks on the Japanese metro in 1995. Not your traditional holiday reading I grant you, fantastically interesting if a little heavy at times. It probably helps that I love everything that Murakami has ever had anything to do with...

The Summer Book by Tove Janson I have already reviewed whilst away. So just go here to save me repeating myself.

Three Men on the Bummell by Jerome K. Jerome - I don't think words can express how hilariously funny I find this book - I would end up just writing passage after passage verbatim until the whole book had been typed out. So just read it. Seriously. It is hilarious and witty.

And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer is the sixth in the Hitchhiker's Guide Trilogy, but NOT by Douglas Adams. Obvisously. 'Cause he's dead. And I just said it was by Eoin Colfer. Very enjoyable, a worthy end to the series - I think Colfer was a great choice for the job. My only problem now is where to shelve it... with the rest of the series or with my Colfers?

Finished up with the absolutely enchanting Cheri and La Fin de Cheri by Colette. I've previously read the Claudine series, but these were much more enjoyable. And MUCH better than the film, although as far as film adaptations of books go, not bad.

Not too shabby a selection as far as holiday reading goes.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

2009-11-16T21:52:00.003Z

I have bronchitis. Which sucks. I was already feeling unwell and then my social weekend seems to have been the final nail in the coffin. It feels like I have constricting metal bands around my chest which makes it hard to drag myself out of bed, let alone write book reviews. I have one of The Story of Edgar Sawtelle pending and I have just finished Bel-Ami and know exactly what I want to write, it may just take me awhile to write them.

You never know, the sister may grace us with a review, but otherwise it might be a bit slow around here for a couple of days. I have a very exciting visitor coming to London this weekend and I have to be in tiptop shape for him so I am trying to stay in bed and rest as much as possible-when I don't have to go out in the freezing cold for swimming lessons and football matches. Sympathy is unnecessary but welcome all the same (as the title of my post and subsequent concurrence with Shaw would suggest). Especially as no one in my house cares that I am sick as long as I keep the coughing down at night so as not to disturb them.

On that note, with violins plaintively playing a wavering tune in the background, I bid you good night. Oh, and check out this article here and join in the discussion for Books of the Decade if you're interested.

Dyslit: The Year of the Flood

2009-11-10T13:01:00.003Z

So yes yes yes- I've been gone about a million years. Apologies.

Aside from getting used to being back at work and not flitting around Wales clutching my first edition of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (yeah... that's right. FIRST EDITION), I have been slowly slowly savouring the new Margaret Atwood.

A few months ago I reviewed the amazing Oryx and Crake as part of our dyslit section. Cut to August this year and my discovery that Margaret has written a follow on of sorts - you can imagine my nerdy excitement. Same plague stricken earth with a wiped out population, this time with added religious cult!

The God's Gardeners are a spiritual following devoted to the melding of science and religion. They believe in the preservation of all animal life and have a complete aversion to any written records. Their leader, Adam One, is an enigmatic preacher... with something kind of shifty going on. Since I am only three quarters of the way through the book I'm not sure what exactly he is hiding but I am suspicious all the same. The story is told by two different women, Toby and Ren, both from the Gardeners. Toby survived the plague by locking herself in a day spa filled with edible 'organic treatments'. Ren, an exotic dancer, was in quarantine when the plague struck, having been bitten, luckily enough, by one of her over excited clients. At first the characters seem completely unconnected to the original cast of Oryx and Crake, then halfway through the appearance of a young man named Glen (later re-named Crake) almost made me fall off my chair in excitement. The way Margaret has connected this story to her earlier one, weaving tiny details into the background is nothing short of amazing. Even though I'm not finished yet, I don't think I am remiss in saying it is just as good as Oryx and Crake.

Oryx and Crake was the first Margaret Atwood book I read, and I remember thinking to myself over and over 'This is SO weird and amazing'. After almost reading her entire backlist, she still dazzles me with this new offering. And take a look at the author photo from the book jacket- how could you think this woman would produce anything short of brilliant madness?

The Year of the Flood: 10/10

Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey)

2009-11-09T13:53:00.009Z

Today is the 20 year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and mention of the wall always reminds me of a story my mother told me years ago. She was travelling through Europe and stopped at the border between West and East Berlin. The car was searched, as were her bags. Amongst her possessions was a copy of To Kill A Mockingbird. The guard held it up and scrutinised it, flipped through the pages. It was banned in the East, for obvious reasons. I don't know whether my mother knew this and packed it anyway with her typical "They can't tell me what books to carry around for God's Sake" attitude or whether she really had no idea the book was banned. I am inclined to go with the former. At any rate, the guard decided the book was harmless and let my mother enter. Once there she decided to leave the book at the place where she was staying, her little rebellion against the regime.

To Kill A Mockingbird is my favourite book in the world. I am aware I hardly hold the monopoly on this thought but I don't care. I'm happy to be merely one in a group of millions. I'm not going to bother you with a review either, as I'm sure those who have read it need no convincing of its greatness and those who haven't just need to know they have a treat in store for them. But I am going to review Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey, which came out this year.

During the summer of 1965 in a small town called Corrigan, Charlie Bucktin is pulled into a murder mystery involving Jasper Jones, the town scapegoat. The Vietnam War hangs over the town, anxiety making the heatwave even worse. Cricket, sweets, girls and books act as diversions but ultimately Corrigan's corrupt, racist core begins to seep through. The disappearance of the Shire President's daughter turns out to be just one in a number of dark secrets the town is hiding.

I'm hesitant to say this is an Australian version of To Kill A Mockingbird, although that is obviously what it is. Charlie's father is compared often to Atticus Finch, Charlie's friendship and conversations with his best friend Jeffrey draw on the conversations Scout and Jem had, Mad Jack Lionel is Corrigan's Boo Radley. Jasper Jones, the innocent blamed for the death of a young girl, is half-Aboriginal and whilst the racism he encounters is far more underhand than that exhibited in the deep South in To Kill A Mockingbird, it is ever present nonetheless. I'm hesitant though, to make these comparisons, because I want this book to be judged on its own merits. Silvey captures the essence of the small Australian town beautifully and the character of Charlie is wonderfully written: honest, intelligent, witty, with all the erratic whims and prejudices of the young.

However, the most erudite point I want to make about this novel is that it made me think about those monstrous and momentous events in history that so often seem to happen elsewhere and not to us in Australia. Great novels are written about these events, these times, and then, decades later, an Australian author will write their own version of it. I have come to the conclusion this is not a bad thing, it is a truly positive thing. We could so easily remove ourselves from the rest of the world, snug in our knowledge that we are far away from the dangerous world. We could fail to care that it is 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell, feeling, perhaps, that it had nothing to do with us. That is why it is glorious when we do care, when we do feel emotion, feel outrage on behalf of another culture, experience joy when something momentous occurs elsewhere. Just because we are geographically removed does not mean we have to be emotionally removed.

This is why I loved Jasper Jones. Not only did the characters resonate, the dialogue amuse, the plot intrigue, but Craig Silvey reached out to the American literary canon, referenced it and then made it a relevant piece of Australian fiction. It could have failed abysmally, but it didn't.

Rating: 9/10.

Fine Just The Way It Is (Annie Proulx)

2009-11-03T22:12:00.004Z

Annie Proulx makes horrendous people, places and events FINE JUST THE WAY THEY ARE. This is her process, her tool, her particular brand of magic, and I never would have spotted it if she hadn't named her last collection of short stories just that.

Admittedly, I have a warped view of what is horrendous. To me, bad coffee is insufferable. Having lunch with someone and not getting the good seat (against the wall) is intolerable. Living without my hair straightener is INCONCEIVABLE. So naturally, I find these stories of poor and broken people in Wyoming cruel beyond all mortal comprehension, because I'm high maintenance and disgustingly entitled in my outlook on life.

Yet still, I rooted for them. I was happy for them, devastated for them. These, the people described as ugly, poor, unlovable, selfish, racist, stupid... utterly pedestrian. Proulx does not bother to take the easy route and write stories about the innocent, the intelligent, the fair and good. Any person would prove to be interesting under scrutiny. Worthy of our time, our eyes, our $22.95. How then, do writers differentiate between those who are passed over and those who deserve their own worded spotlight?

They choose the beautiful, the well-structured, the desirable people to write about. And I'm not talking about the desirability a husband sees in a wife who has a saggy stomach and discontented attitude radiating from beneath a hairstyle long out of fashion and powdered at the roots. Or the girl with average looks and average brains being charmed by the boy whose speech is clogged with the unfortunate spittle that plagues the over-salivating.

Those are the people whose stories are harder to write and still generate empathy with the reader and thus they are so often the people without a strong literary presence. Which is stupid, because when a writer does bother to create a character who is hard to like and rough around the edges it normally becomes as artful as Don Quixote, the book an ode to imperfection, beautiful through the simple fact of its existence.

That's what Annie Proulx does and then she goes one step further. She neglects to include any action whatsoever in her stories. Each event is constructed as a past occurrence, mentioned in passing by one character or another. At any one time, nothing is really happening. Snippets of family mystery, suspense, skeletons are hinted at, but the writing quickly moves on, choosing to focus instead on a wife musing about her dinner plans. It takes a serious talent to keep us engaged through all this, yet we find ourselves also weighing up the beef and pork options. Because she's just that damn good.

I must apologise for the wordiness and general pretension of this review. I have been embroiled in a big fight with a large pile of torn newspaper and glue for two days trying to make an acceptable model of a dolphin for a Year 4 Art Show. Because I have about a teaspoon of artistic ability in my entire genetic makeup... this has been a trying, exhausting time. I felt the need to prove I could still string a sentence together, having failed spectacularly as a sculptor.

Rating: 9/10.

Le Prix Goncourt 2009

2009-11-02T21:34:00.003Z

Marie Ndiaye has won France's most prestigious literary prize for her novel Trois Femme Puissantes. Having just recently discovered a love for Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio (who won the Nobel Prize in 2008) I am now craving another slice of the French literary pie. I think I'll try and find a copy of this in English. Earhart can show off and read it in French.

The Heretic's Daughter (Kathleen Kent)

2009-11-02T15:15:00.009Z

I have this thing about the Salem Witch Trials. It's like my thing with the Amish. I'm don't want to BE Amish, I'm just overly and unnaturally fascinated with them. Salem- I don't wish I'd lived during the trials (with my hair and no straighteners available I'm sure I would have been scruffy enough to create suspicion) but I LOVE reading about it.

I bought this in Hatchards (LOVE this bookshop, want to get married and live and DIE in this bookshop) on Earhart's recommendation. Apparently she sold it to loads of customers last Christmas, not having actually read it herself. We both read it during Earhart's London visit and the sister, having read it first, insisted she would do the review. Well, I am ignoring that and doing the review myself because she has a lot on her plate at the moment and I have to work hard to come up with enough things to do to avoid filling out uni applications.

I know it sounds like Earhart and I did nothing but read whilst she was here on her three week visit, but we did talk to each other! We ate and drank a lot as well. And we spent a seriously enjoyable two hours in Wales sitting in armchairs, eating strawberry sours and quizzing each other from a Film Trivia Book we bought for 50p. Exciting stuff.

I digress... back to the book. Which was so unremarkable I have to go grab it off the shelf to remind myself of the title. Ah yes, The Heretic's Daughter. Meh, meh, meh. I have trouble feeling sympathy for a woman who is hung as a witch when she spends her time physically and emotionally abusing her children.

Sarah, the 'heretic's daughter' as it were, reminds me slightly of a Joanne Harris character. She is wilful and troubled and hard to like and the relationship with her mother Martha seemed overly reminiscent of the tempestuous relationship between Framboise and her mother in Five Quarters of the Orange. Although, not nearly as well-executed.

There is also some mysterious red book with the history of Sarah's father in it which is mentioned once and then all but forgotten. Sarah is allowed to read it when she comes of age, but she never tells us what is in it. A ridiculous and redundant side-plot.

The writing does the job (the job being the telling of an average plot and detailing of average characters) and that's it. If you're in the market for some mildly compelling and clichéd historical fiction, this is it.

Rating: 5/10.

A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)

2009-11-02T15:00:00.002Z

I arrive at beginning this review feeling conflicted. Not, it must be stressed, as to the quality of the novel, but rather at how one goes about reviewing a book so transcendentally... loud.

Mmm, that's right, LOUD is the word I have come up with to describe John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. I toyed with 'brilliant', contemplated 'glorious torrent of cynical social commentary', seriously considered 'rich in passion, laid on thickly with Toole's impressive voice, seasoned with insight and spiced with humour; the book is obese with ambition and serves up a literary dish fit for a king.'

However, I settled on 'loud'.

What other adjective should one use when talking about a book that shouts its revolted social commentary at such decibels? When our hero can be spotted from a satellite, not only because of his size but also because of the voluminous white hot dog vendor smock he wears, surely the best word for him is 'loud'? When the mention of Ignatius J. Reilly inspires giggles and nervous tension in the same breath; when each of the supporting cast beats me over the head with their incessant bleatings that serve to brand every one of them on my memory indelibly... that's BLOODY LOUD.

A Confederacy of Dunces is about nothing and because of that, it is about everything. You know those books that have a hook- making them easy to sell to the undiscerning buyer. "It's about a salmon fishing project in the Yemen. I know right? HAHAHAHAHAHA. That's $22.95." Alternatively: "It's not girly! I mean, I know the cover is hot pink, but it's a retelling of A Room with a View! Obviously you've read that, right? Would you call E.M Forster chick-lit? WOULD YOU? Exactly. That's $22.95".

If I tried to sell A Confederacy of Dunces, I would revert to one tactic and one tactic only: "New Orleans in the 1960s. An obese hot dog vendor with three University degrees and an inflated vocabulary. A crumbling pants factory whose employees are drunk/ancient or delusional. A seedy nightclub whose owner distributes pornography to orphans. TRUST ME."

The novel, in my opinion, is made even more compelling with the foreword written by Walker Percy. He explains that Toole's mother contacted him in 1976 with this manuscript. Her son had killed himself and left it behind and she was determined to get it published. Who was this young man who wrote such a masterpiece? I can't help feeling that many of Ignatius' thoughts on the human condition and the depravity of society are mirrors of what Toole himself may have been thinking, caught in a web of depression that would ultimately end his life. At times Ignatius exhibits an obstructed self-hatred; when denying a customer a hot dog he asks- "Are you unnatural enough to want a hot dog this early in the afternoon?" ignoring the fact he has just consumed three himself. (I know this is not an overly obvious example of self-hatred, there are others, but this was the only one I could find. It's a big book!) It saddens me to think of Toole, perhaps subsumed with self-hatred, churning out the pages of Dunces in an attempt to expurgate and externalise the self-scorn he contained within.

On a slightly removed yet still related note, it's great to meet a new friend who enjoys reading, even more so to discover said friend is not a moron and has seriously stellar taste in literature. I'm always a bit wary when people start recommending books to me. My default position is that I know more about books than most people and if you're recommending a book to me I've never read then it probably isn't any good and I've skipped it for a reason. This new friend, having talked up Toole's novel, has now been elevated to position of a Person Whose Recommendations I Can Trust. Which is always nice in these uncertain times.

Rating: 10/10.

The Return

2009-10-28T13:14:00.005Z

I am in the process of dragging myself back from the hinterlands of reality after having farewelled Earhart and escaped to Bath for a few days in hopes of ignoring the fact she has left me alone in this cesspit of sin and depression... London.

Another week and things are looking happier- I find London quite palatable again and feel I should catch you all up on my literary endeavours over the past few weeks. Most importantly- the books we snagged for next to nothing in Hay on Wye!

I found three first editions of Evelyn Waugh (not Brideshead unfortunately), a first edition of Thornton Wilder's The Ides of March (tucked in the front cover were newspaper reviews from 1948, the year it was published) and a first edition of A Girl of the Limberlost. I'm sure Earhart will wax lyrical on her purchases when she emerges from the pile of book reviews she has to do for other publications.

First and foremost I must post a review of A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, which I have been threatening to do for weeks.

Whilst I am editing that and overseeing a rather violent and clumsy ballet rehearsal which is going on in the living room you should allow your attention to be diverted here. If you have never discovered Asterix, his golden jubilee would seem the perfect opportunity.

Booker Prize 2009

2009-10-07T19:49:00.005+01:00

Hilary Mantel has won the Booker Prize for her novel Wolf Hall. Click here to read my earlier post on the Booker where I decided Mantel would definitely NOT win. It is an insightful post.

I will write no more on the subject because I am in bed, although it is the early hour of 7:51 pm. I am finishing up John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and I have not been this excited about a book since Vernon God Little. Stay tuned for a sickeningly positive review.

Guilt + The Summer Book

2009-10-07T15:55:00.006+01:00

So...I kind of thought since we were in Paris/I am in London that maybe posting would slow down. Ducked into an internet cafe to escape the downpour this afternoon, clicked on the blog and saw the seven million book reviews Alcott has done whilst I've been wandering around with my head in the French clouds. Oops. Feeling guilty now. So I bring you... The Summer Book.

Not heard of it? Shame on you. It is a classic in Sweden! Tove Jansson (who I love love love) is the author of the amazingly fantastic Moomintrolls series (both the books and the comic strip). If you haven't heard of the Moomintrolls, then shame on you AGAIN - basically they are small, round hippo-like creatures who have ridiculous adventures. The books are for children... the comics not so much.

The Summer Book, which is about real people (not Moomintrolls), is a book for grown-ups which enchanted me from the start. The book is made up of short encounters between Sophia and her Grandmother over various summertimes on the island where they live. One summer Grandmother carves animals out of bark and wood and leaves them in the magical forest. Another someone new moves onto the island (!) and Sophia and Grandmother break into the new house. Sounds odd, but it is truly magical.

Gently philosophical, almost in the same way as The Little Prince, this is a very calm book to read, and a real treasure.

I realise this review is super short, but fear not...I have just started Three Men on the Bummel (follow up to the hilarious Three Men in a Boat) and am laughing already. Stand by for review.

Paris and How To Be Topp

2009-10-06T21:55:00.008+01:00

Earhart and I had the most wonderful time in Paris, being cultural etc. I am not really allowed to speak French when I am with my sister. She rolls her eyes and looks pained whenever I open my mouth. Apparently all my phrases are seriously dated- I tend to say the equivalent of "That's so nifty!" instead of "Cool!" and I am more likely to ask how the time is feeling instead of the more useful (yet so predictable) "What is the time?"

The most ridiculous thing that happened to me over our French weekend occurred in a bistro on Sunday afternoon. Having excused myself to go to the bathroom I came back to the table and sat down, feeling a bit bemused.

"I haven't used a squat toilet since Japan." I said, giggling slightly. "It was a bit tricky."

One of the other girls we were with looked at me strangely. "It's just a normal toilet." she protested, confused.

We went up to investigate and... I now know what a french urinal looks like.

Which is why Shakespeare and Co is such a haven for me. Any bookshop is a joy to be in, but an English bookshop surrounded by a sea of mostly incomprehensible conversations is truly an oasis of calm. The bookshop opposite Notre Dame was our first stop when we arrived in Paris and we wandered around for a good long while, soaking in the ink and paper (pretentious but true). I considered purchasing many things (it seems I am ridiculously uneducated when it comes to Orwell- he didn't just write three books! Who knew?) Ultimately, however, I parted with only a small denomination of euros for a book I have heard much about but never read: How To Be Topp: A guide to Sukcess for tiny pupils, including all there is to kno about SPACE.

I had been told by a very reputable source in Bath that this book was brilliant and hilarious and thus I opened it with excitement. 45 minutes later (it is not long) I closed it, a fixed smile on my face. I had laughed out loud in several chapters and a chuckle was kept ever ready. However, I confess I was DETERMINED to find the book funny and charming and thus forced the laughter out of myself.

I do not blame the book nor the source. I feel that the book is much more relevant for a boy who went to private school about 40 years ago. I'm sure said boy (now a man) would be clutching his sides in stitches of laughter, gasping for a glass of water. Thus, I shall send this book to my father. I am certain he will find it most amusing. If not, I shall at least get some brownie points for sending him something. He will be touched that I purchased naught for myself in Shakespeare and Co but thought immediately of my darling pater and how much he would enjoy this book.

I only hope his assurance that he reads the blog every day is a fib.

Rating: 7-9/10, depending on reader demographic.

Restless (William Boyd)

2009-10-01T22:58:00.006+01:00

This was a very tolerable read. I know that sounds lukewarm but it's actually quite positive compared to the review I was composing in my head before I had even started William Boyd's Restless. This is because it came out at around the same time as Paul Auster's The Brooklyn Follies. I detested The Brooklyn Follies and because Boyd's novel had the unfortunate luck to come out in the same month they are now intrinsically linked in my mind.*

Nonetheless, I was moved to pick it up the other day from a box of books advertised for 50p in Clapham. I came away feeling most pleased with myself, having grabbed Helen Garner's The Spare Room, John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces and something else I have now forgotten the name of. The universe, it seems, was telling me to read Restless.

As I've already said, not a bad read at all. Instead of the cosmopolitan mid-life crisis I was expecting I was pleasantly to find that it was actually a WW2 espionage 'thriller'. I say 'thriller' because the action/adventure part was a bit geriatric. The most exciting thing that happens is a Mexican policeman gets stabbed in the eye with a pencil.

As a relatively anxious person I don't look normally head for the thriller section of a bookshop. If I'm going to be scared I want it to be supernatural so I know there's absolutely no chance whatsoever it could actually happen to me. So I'm not complaining that this didn't have me cowering in terror from the shadows in my loft. I'm just being pedantic and saying that Time Out's comment that it is "heart-stoppingly exciting" would indicate that the reviewer didn't actually read the book.

I particularly liked the way the novel was structured- in ambience as well as tense. The story switches between a young woman who is recruited by the British Secret Service at the beginning of WW2 and her daughter, decades later, whom she enlists to help settle old ghosts. Eva Delectorskaya as an old woman fearing her past demons adds a surreal menace to the text. As the reader I had trouble believing that anyone would actually go after a grandmother who spends all of her time gardening. It is her rising paranoia rather than any actual events which propel the drama along.

Boyd's main problem seems to be his inability to adopt the female mindset and write, realistically, from the point of view of women. Ruth (the daughter) is strong and independent but comes across as cold, which I don't feel is at all deliberate on Boyd's part. Eva as the young, beautiful spy is a mere caricature, sort of like a particularly intelligent Bond girl. Had Boyd managed to inflate these characters into a three-dimensional state the novel could have been quite a bit better. As it stands, it is merely a non-trashy historical fiction novel with some mildly exciting action halfway through.

Rating: 7/10.

* I THINK. I could be wrong and they came out at completely different times. Maybe their covers are the same colour.

The Spare Room (Helen Garner)

2009-09-30T12:34:00.009+01:00

I apologise for having promised this review for a few days now and not delivered. I am generally of the opinion that if you promise to do something enough times people will assume you have actually done it. Unfortunately, on a blog where the evidence of having posted a review is the physical manifestation of said review things get a bit trickier. Thus I have had to bite the bullet and write the bloody thing.

Why am I dragging my feet on this review?

Because I KNOW it's brilliant. Garner is a superb writer and her prose seems effortless, organic even. I imagine Helen wafting around her house, putting on the kettle, writing a few sentences, drifting into the garden and weeding for a bit, writing a few more sentences as she passes by her typewriter to make lunch, calling a friend and mindlessly jotting down ideas on a pad of paper next to the phone... almost as if it comes so naturally to her that she needn't interrupt her life to write.

The Spare Room is about a woman named Helen (an extremely subtle hint that this is not really fiction) who has a friend come to stay for three weeks whilst she undergoes cancer treatment at an alternative therapy place in Melbourne. Helen, pragmatic and sensible, is unable to understand why her friend Nicola will not accept the fact that she is dying and instead insists upon putting her body through brutal coffee enemas and vitamin C injections.

Hideous, gut-wrenching stuff and the novel is short, to pack that much more of a punch. Helen's frustration reads as a diary entry, inviting the reader to experience everything as vividly as if they too were in the room. I was going to call the reader the 'voyeur' and then I looked the word up to work out how to use it properly as a non-continuous verb and realised that the most common definition for 'voyeur' is someone who gets sexual pleasure from watching people having sex from a secret vantage point! Am I the only one who didn't know that?

This honesty and generosity relates to what Martin Amis said recently in Spain when talking about ageing writers: "... worst of all are the novelists who have fallen out of love with the reader.... You present yourself at your most alive; you want to give the reader the seat nearest the fire, the best wine and food." Garner is definitely still placing her readers in uncomfortably warm seats.

So then why, you ask, was I so reluctant to write this review?

Because I STILL didn't like the book. As a comment on the human condition it was insightful and moving. I'll admit that I did feel a connection to Helen- I too can get extremely frustrated with people who don't do things the right way (my way). But I put down the book knowing that I would never again feel the need to revisit it and that's my mark of a REALLY good book- how much I'm looking forward to picking it up again.

Rating: 8/10.

Bonnet Rippers

2009-09-30T12:16:00.002+01:00

I'll admit to not having read an Amish novel in awhile. In fact, looking at the Categories list, it appears I have only reviewed one Amish novel all year. In my defence, for all my self-professed enthusiasm and fascination for the Amish, in recent years there haven't been that many novels that aren't rubbish or insufferably religious.

However, it seems this is no longer the case! Having just read this article I am now adding several new Amish titles to my reading list.

This wasn't the only weird article on the Guardian Books website today. In a terrible piece of blasphemy Wayne Gooderham compared Holly Golightly to Jay Gatsby in drag (I'm offended for Jay rather than Holly). Things went from bad to worse when I saw features on both Sarah Palin and Jeffrey Archer. I closed down the site and made myself a bowl of chopped banana with a shot of coffee poured over it.

Breakfast heaven.

The Mistress (Martine McCutcheon)

2009-09-29T20:33:00.011+01:00

Oh god this was horrendous. Not in a good way. I didn't feel the guilty, glorious satisfaction I fully intend to feel when Bai Ling's autobiography Nipples is released. I don't know if she has a publishing deal yet but I can't wait to get my hands on a copy of what I feel is going to be a phantasmagorical masterpiece.

No, no, poor old Martine McCutcheon, on the other hand, has merely produced a truly awful piece of pedestrian drivel, catering to the lowest common denominator. It reads like it was written by a thirteen year old who takes remedial English. I don't blame the thirteen year old. She doesn't know any better. She's never read an entire book before! The fault, Your Honour, lies with the publisher, Pan Macmillan. Who, interestingly enough, decided to release the first chapter of The Mistress online... which can only serve to severely diminish sales. P-Mac? You need a new marketing team.

The heroine Mandy immediately proves herself to be an intelligent, insightful character. Through McCutcheon's masterful grasp of the English language we are introduced to Mandy as she is getting ready for a big night out to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. In the cab on the way to her party she waxes lyrical on London's appeal: "... it felt to Mandy like the most exhilarating city in the world, with the speed of New York, but the history of a Paris or a Rome."

Any Paris, any Rome. Just one of them.

Mandy soon feels a burning sensation on the side of her head when she gets to the party. I was excited, thinking that the candelabra at the Wolseley had set her shining dark mop on fire, but it turns out to be a guy, staring intently at her from across the room. Cue guy meets girl plus obstacles scenario... yadiyadiyada... he's married, with two beautiful boys, sob. I'm welling up. Wait! Mandy can't deal with this right now! Her birthday cake is coming out!

If you want to read the entire chapter, click here. If you want to pre-order The Mistress (the first in a series of three!!!) get in your car, drive to a Thames or a Nile and THROW YOURSELF IN.

Martine, dearest, you cannot write. If you need some cash, may I suggest getting a job as Gordon Brown's secretary? I'm sure he'd have you. He knows you're qualified.

Rating: 2/10.

Remember, 1/10 is saved for books that actually CAUSE HARM. Despite McCutcheon's best efforts, this is no Mein Kampf.

Why would you want to read when you've got the television set sitting right in front of you?

2009-09-29T09:17:00.001+01:00

Tim Minchin has been asked by the RSC to turn Matilda by Roald Dahl into a musical. Read full article here. Whenever I see him on shows like Buzzcocks I find Minchin incredibly annoying, but the fact that he actually looks like a Quentin Blake illustration is a massive point in his favour. It could be fabulous... or it could suck.

There seems to be a reinvigorated enthusiasm for Dahl at the moment, what with Fantastic Mr Fox coming out this year as a film. Earhart thinks this will be a novel butchering of epic proportions. I don't agree. Hello??? George Clooney!

Later today: Helen Garner's The Spare Room.

Small Wars (Sadie Jones)

2009-09-24T11:07:00.011+01:00

I am trying to create the perfect ambience to write this review, as I have been putting it off for a week and I think that perhaps it is my writing environment that is the problem. I am snuggled on the couch with coffee and a blanket- temper and temperature have been catered to. I have changed my wallpaper to an Antoni Tàpies painting to imbue me with inspiration and superimposed a picture of Daniel Craig on it to make it more interesting. Radiohead's Exit Music (For a Film) is playing to suppress my mood in hopes of directing my concentration to the task at hand.

Small Wars by Sadie Jones...

Is it well-written? Without a doubt. Jones has a deft, no-nonsense approach to her writing. She comes across as an incredibly creative and articulate author who has no patience for flowery prose. Her writing always seems to have been reined in to within an inch of its life, yet still, determinedly, beautiful sentences blossom on the page.

Is it compelling? Sort of. Like Ian McEwan, Jones has a knack for creating tension from the most inane of moments. Was she able to twist my stomach with anxiety and excitement like McEwan does? No. However, maybe she wasn't going for the clamorous, institutionalised menace that McEwan favours. Maybe Jones was AIMING for soft core tension.

Is is predictable? No... to her credit it is not. I picked the extramarital affair within the first couple of chapters and felt a rising scorn for this second offering from Jones. Compared to The Outcast I was preparing myself to be most disappointed with this follow up. Then, suddenly, OUT OF THE BLUE, the plot does an abrupt 180 and the reader is left scrambling to work out what just happened.

I think the main problem I have with the novel is tempo. It has a relatively slow and uneventful story line throughout and then a huge amount happens within about 15 pages. And then it ends. The denouement I also have a problem with. Is it ambiguous or is it lazy?

If pressed to tell you what the book is actually about I can't sum it up in a way that sounds interesting. Hal Treherne has been posted to Cyprus in 1956. His young wife Clara and their twin daughters join him. Mild tension ensues. This inane synopsis should not deter you. If pressed to produce a blurb of In Search of Lost Time I would probably come up with something similarly lacklustre.

That's not to say I think Jones is on par with Proust. But you get my drift.

All in all, a good, solid novel, lacking the raw intensity of The Outcast but perhaps, instead, demonstrating a more polished writing style. Whether or not this is a good thing... sigh. I don't know.

Rating: 8/10.

My Cold and the Nobel Prize

2009-09-24T10:53:00.005+01:00

Good morning dearly devoted readers. I have been convalescing after suffering dreadfully from a revolting cold which I fear may be a harbinger for winter miseries to come. Fortunately, the dreaded swine failed to claim me but I am still determined to spend the next week as close to my bed as possible. This is because Earhart will be arriving shortly and I refuse to be sick for her visit.

In light of my self-imposed laying up I am going to endeavour to catch up with all my book reviews. I hope to post several today, so stay tuned.

If anyone is interested, here is a link to a Guardian article on Amos Oz as the most likely candidate to win the Nobel Prize for Literature this year. Well, the person the bookies are supporting anyway. Remember, the Nobel Prize is awarded for a body of work, not for a single novel. Once nominated, a candidate remains nominated, therefore each year the winner is chosen from an ever increasing list.

This Side of Paradise (F.Scott Fitzgerald)

2009-09-13T20:51:00.002+01:00

Often after I have finished a book I take a few days to ruminate on the characters I have just given free passage into my subconscious. They all reside in a particular space in my brain- I call it the Syd Barrett Memorial Room. 'Tis a wonderful place; its only problem being it IS located right next to my memory room, and the adjoining door does not lock.

This has proven embarrassing over the years. I will be entertaining a group with an anecdote and be interrupted with- "That wasn't you, that was Huckleberry Finn, YOU EGOTISTICAL FREAK." Having been berated thusly I will shake my head vigorously, which looks to be a denial but is, in fact, me merely trying to get everyone back into their proper rooms.

As you can see, this adjoining door which does not lock has been problematic. In fact, 'adjoining door' is incorrect. It is more of a swinging half-door, like those you see in old-fashioned saloons. Sharon Stone often strides through it wearing chaps, dragging a be-chained Russell Crowe behind her. I must stress they belong in neither room, but have wandered over from the 'Career Aspirations' part of my brain.

I digress.

ANYWAY, in the SBMR all the characters I have ever met lounge about haphazardly. Those that are hazy around the edges are people who left little impression on me. Those with sheets draped over them were extremely memorable for terrible reasons and I have tried my best to forget about them (the more enterprising have cut holes in the sheets so as to retain a certain amount of vision and dexterity).

My favourites are those normally to be found at the bar. Vernon God Little is always hanging around the door to the Gents. Jo March and Olive Kitteridge do not get along AT ALL and tend to stand on opposite sides of the room. Aloysius normally takes refuge under a chair so as to avoid unwanted cuddles.

And everyone defers to Gatsby... including myself when I am able to get away from the incessant nothingness that is my life. He stands to the side of the room, drink in hand, never taking a sip. He is tall and commanding; a chilly heat permeates from his person. No one can take their eyes off him, but no one can talk to him.

Just recently, Amory Blaine from This Side of Paradise has been admitted into the SBMR. He shares a father with Gatsby, as well as a certain poise, smoking jacket, 'man about town' air. But he stumbles where Gatsby stands tall. He is drunk when Gatsby remains sober. He falls to pieces when his love is spurned. But worst of all, his courage is shown only through the supremely self-indulgent journey he takes and his final realisation: "'I know myself,' he cried, 'but that is all.'"

Great Amory. Compare yourself to Gatsby, who sacrifices his reputation and livelihood for the girl (who doesn't deserve him it must be added) and ultimately forfeits his life. You, Amory, have moped for 254 and a half pages and the only admirable thing you've done is taken the rap for your friend who was entertaining a lady in his hotel room.

Because some of their characteristics are similar I suspect Amory may have been a young, rough prototype for Fitzgerald's greatest character Jay Gatsby. Gatsby also had his flaws and weaknesses, but they merely served to strengthen his character's attractiveness rather than render him useless and pathetic. In fairness, this was Fitzgerald's first novel and he's done a bang-up job- it's intelligent, witty, memorable and passionate. But compared to the elegance and restrained desperation of The Great Gatsby it is clear Fitzgerald perfected his craft over the years.

Rating: 7/10.

Earhart 4 Harper Collins No More

2009-09-13T09:26:00.005+01:00

Harper Collins you are dead to me. Pushing back the publication of Russell Brand's My Booky Wook 2 by a whole YEAR...why do you do these things to the people who love you? I was all excited, ringing Alcott, jumping up and down like a kid who has eaten too many jelly beans. Then, the Harper rep. comes, brandishing the new releases for October... My Booky Wook 2? There, in the corner... with a big cross through it. You can imagine my devastation when I found out that I would have to wait for an entire extra year before I could delve into the witty revelations Brand has to offer about life in the fast lane.

I loved you once you know Harper, remember the Skulduggery Pleasant days? They were good. Or the days when Oliver Jeffers hardbacks weren't out of print? (Oh yeah, that's another thing I'm angry about!) Or when Paullina Simons covers didn't incite comparisons to Jodi Picoult? It seems you were destined to disappoint me...

Bring the hardcover Lost and Found back into print and perhaps I can consider reconciliation, but until then... this is good bye.

Earhart

Booker Shortlist 2009

2009-09-08T22:40:00.006+01:00

I have already waxed lyrical on this blog on how stressed shortlists make me... you can find that overly insightful post here. The Man Booker Shortlist has just been announced and without further ado, I present to you my immediate (although somewhat irrelevant and erroneous) thoughts on the list:

Let's see, let's see. Byatt for The Children's Book. Ffft. Definitely not as good as Possession. I haven't read it... but definitely not as good as Possession. Ohoh! Look who it is! My old friend Coetzee! Yeah whatever Coetzee. I'll pay for the book if you pay for my valium. Next... The Quickening Maze... not ringing a bell. Simon Mawer for The Glass Room. Never heard of it... Gah. Is that two already I haven't heard of? Hilary Mantel... Wolf Hall? What's that about? Wiki... why isn't wiki loading? Yadiyadiyada... political intrigue blah blah blah... HELLO!!! Henry VIII!!!! I think we're in business. Better pick up a copy. That won't win. Actually, I don't know. I'm so out of touch. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? I'm drifting and I don't have my finger on the book pulse anymore. I'M PATHETIC. A pale, shrivelled version of a once genius bibliophile. Reduced to nothing but a... OHOHO! What do we have here? Sarah Waters? Well, well, well Pulitzer. Booker is seeing your Oprah-esque novel and raising with LESBIAN ROMPS. Looks like the game of 'Whose Book Prize is Groovier' just got interesting.

Now bookshops around the world must endure the advent of customers racing in to buy those books that two months ago they waved away with a petulant frown, seriously enamoured with their imagined intelligence. "No, no. I want something HIGH BROW. Something like Christos Tsiolkas."

J.M. Coetzee for Summertime

A.S. Byatt for The Children's Book

Sarah Waters for The Little Stranger

Simon Mawer for The Glass Room
Adam Foulds for The Quickening Maze

Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall

Chaos Walking 1: The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

2009-09-07T08:14:00.006+01:00

So I've just re-read this book in preparation for reading and reviewing book two which has just come out; I now remember how completely brilliantly amazing it is and so I thought I should spread the love a little. This is another one of those young adult / adult crossovers, except that this is perhaps the only one wherein the crossover is really justified. Twilight - adults could really just read a Mills and Boon to have the same experience (albeit vampire free ). The Forest of Hands and Teeth - probably too adult, too scary, too zombie-y - I have yet to sell this book to an actual young adult. The Knife of Never Letting Go, on the other hand, should be read by... well... everyone. Part sci-fi, part dystopian future (you see what hooked me!), reading this book is an experience worth having.

The novel is set on a completely different planet (we've messed Earth up so much that it is verging on becoming uninhabitable), where the first human settlers arrived about 25 years before the book starts. Todd Hewitt (our hero) grew up in Prentisstown, surrounded by a constant barrage of other men's 'Noise' - that is a stream of conscious thought constantly broadcasted to everyone around, unstoppable, unblockable, and quite uncomfortable. There are no women in Prentisstown and when Todd finds a girl (!) surrounded by a patch of silence (unheard of in a town full of Noise) his world is shaken... BUT the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, Pastor.... (anyone in town with any kind of authority that may now be challenged by Todd's discovery) are unhappy. To put it mildly. To put it less mildly- they chase Todd out of Prentisstown with rifles and follow him halfway across the country determined to silence him.

I don't really want to give much away because this is the kind of book where the revelations about the history of the New World were so shocking, so unexpected and so well crafted into the story that I don't want to spoil it. Suffice to say, I love it.

I realise this review is written COMPLETELY like I am selling the book to someone, but I swear it's not copied and pasted from one of my newsletters. (If a review of book two shows up, I cannot make the same promise). I just feel like telling EVERYONE that this is a book you should read.

9/10

The White Queen (Philippa Gregory)

2009-09-06T19:43:00.008+01:00

The White Queen.

Not to be confused with The Other Queen.

Or The Queen's Fool.

Ye gods Philippa, at least PRETEND to try.

The name is only the pastel coating on one massive Paris almond of trouble. The Other Queen was quite bad. I didn't finish it, mainly because it jolted between three narratives and NOT ONE of those characters was mildly enigmatic. I'm sure they were interesting in real life, but Gregory, with this new magic of hers which has only surfaced in recent novels, managed to strip them of any remarkable characteristics or three-dimensional thoughts... a feat you must agree is impressive when one of the characters is Mary Queen of Scots.

Not a shrinking violet by any means.

However, in The White Queen Gregory has taken the gormless narrative to a new level of inanity. Her protagonist, the Lady Elizabeth Gray, tells of Edward the Usurper's rise to the throne, the death of her husband and her family's swinging loyalty all within the first page. She meets the king on the third page. She pleads her case, she makes him endure a mild bout of playing hard to get and VOILA they are married. The coronation is grand. Her family's new found power is cemented with several strategic weddings. Uproar! The man who put Edward on the throne is planning to put his brother on the throne instead!

This was a very VERY fascinating period in history. The warring houses of Lancaster and York were both deluded as to their own importance and grabbed what they could accordingly. So it is a splendid, nay, GLORIOUS feat on Gregory's part to have rendered these events monotonous and inconsequential. The above events I just described to you have all occurred within about the first three chapters of the novel. This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is where I stopped reading.

For one, it is exhausting to read at that kind of pace, especially when the quality of the writing is akin to something Mr Squiggle would churn out if he had to give a history lesson. Secondly, I have no love or hatred for any of the characters. None are captivating, all are stick figures in terms of development. (Admittedly, this is probably where Mr Squiggle could actually be of use.)

At the pace the novel is going I assume this (not small) book will cover about three hundred years of English history. Whilst useful for cramming for an exam on this period (admittedly, an exam at the University of Inferiority, where my major would be 'History Taught Succinctly and Melodramatically') I have no other use for this novel.

Oh and the cover is embarrassing. I feel self-conscious on the tube.

WHAT HAPPENED GREGORY?

You used to be FAB!

The Other Boleyn Girl? That was brilliant!

The Virgin's Lover? Intelligent bodice-ripping at its very best!

Do you know what I think, dearly devoted readers? I think Philippa has stopped writing. This and the last novel (The Other Queen) are terrible. The only reason they were published is because they have her name attached to them. THUS I strongly suspect Philippa is using her millions to holiday in Barbados and has left her ideas for plot lines and characters lying around her house. Great Aunt Millicent (who is house-sitting) has found these notes and decided to do Philippa a favour and bang out a couple of novels. Unfortunately, Great Aunt Millicent is not very worldly and her only foray into reading has been historical Mills and Boons.

In light of this, I suppose we have to cut her some slack. Milly, these are not that dreadful, all things considered.

If, however, my hypothesising is incorrect and Philippa is just churning out this junk herself... I profess myself disappointed.

Rating: 2/10.

I've just remembered I reviewed an earlier work of Gregory's (that I was less than enamoured with) here. Nevertheless, her current work is more substandard than anything I could have imagined.

And we've changed the font to accomodate Internet Explorer/ Safari/ Firefox and Google Chrome. You're welcome.

Junky (William S. Burroughs)

2009-09-05T11:17:00.001+01:00

I actually started writing this review about a week ago whilst on Skype with Alcott, got one sentence in and promptly forgot about it. If my posts are a little sporadic for the next couple of weeks it is because I am currently writing reviews for FOUR publications (if you count this one) and seeing as this is the only one for which I get no money... it may be put on the back burner. This is not to say that I don't love writing reviews here; this is the one place I can write a review and completely slate a book should I so desire. Not so with my other forays into reviewing. Anyway, rejoycement over negative review ability aside here is a book which I LOVED. It is also a book which confirmed my belief that I don't really want to be a heroin addict, and also made me yearn (just a little) to have lived in the Beat Generation. I am talking of course about Junky by William S. Burroughs.

Although published as fiction, it is pretty well accepted that this is an autobiographical (or at least semi-autobiographical) account of Burroughs' own addiction. The main character is called William, last name Lee - the maiden name of Burroughs' mother and a majority of the incidents in the book were, surprisingly enough, incidents in Burroughs' own life. The book starts with Burroughs' first shot of morphine, details his many attempts at 'quitting for good' and lets you in on all kinds of secrets which you probably would know nothing about if you (like myself) have never taken heroin cut with milk sugar (bought from a shady Mexican lady) and cooked it up in a spoon over a Bunsen burner.

Through a series of really interesting musings about junk as a way of life, not just as a trip, you get to see inside Burroughs' head. And what a messed up place it is. We are talking about the man who shot (and killed) his wife when he convinced her to put a shot glass on her head so he could re-enact the William Tell shoots apple off son's head incident. Except with a gun. And he missed the glass and got his wife instead. (The same wife who is pictured on the cool first edition cover which I got thanks to the wonder of the internet - the very pulpy novel cover depicts an actual scene in the book.)

Anyway...I am running out of steam already with this review that never really got off the ground (although it got further off the ground than Alcott's first attempt at a Blackberry Wine review) - But this book is an amazingly written account of a narcotics addiction that spanned Burroughs' entire lifetime... it is fascinating... just go read it. Okay?

(ALSO - I am the proud new owner of a MacBook - have discovered blog looks kind of weird and small in Safari - sorry about that to all you Mac owners who have known this for a while and wondered why we insisted on using such tiny font - not our choice I am afraid.)

Blackberry Wine Take 2 (Joanne Harris)

2009-08-30T18:18:00.010+01:00

AHHH... I simply cannot muster up the required enthusiasm to review Blackberry Wine properly. Lack of enthusiasm? I hear our devoted readers ask. Pas de problème!

But it is a problem. Last time I panned one of Harris' books I was subject to a vitriolic tirade of derision from Earhart. Harris is one of her favourite authors and the outcome of this argument was that Earhart was right and in the future I will resist dipping my toes in the pool of negative reviews unless I know what I'm talking about.

So now I am sitting here, in my tartan pyjamas, drinking a cup of tea. I bought these pyjamas when I moved over here because I thought they were very English. These, combined with my tea, have been conducive in creating the zen that surrounds me at this very moment. I cannot muster up the energy to be disparaging about Blackberry Wine, knowing it could cause more sisterly tension.

THUS, I will be succinct in my criticisms:
The characters could have all benefited from further development.
Harris has since developed more subtlety in her work but this novel and The Evil Seed demonstrate Harris' earlier tendency to take her imagery and bash the reader over the head with it.
Jay, the protagonist, drinks wine made out of potatoes. I know, I know vodka can be made out of potatoes... but, no, I'm sorry. Wine? Ew.
I do have to commend Harris on her ability to make seemingly innocuous people or events very menacing. She always leaves me feeling slightly unsettled. Do I adore her novels... not particularly. But better to leave me feeling uneasy and jumping at shadows when I walk past the graveyard on my way home than totally unmoved. Apathy is not what I look for in a novel.

Rating: 6/10.

Coming up...

Orlando by Virginia Woolf.
If I Never by Gary William Murning
This Side of Paradise by F.Scott Fitzgerald

Blackberry Wine (Joanne Harris)

2009-08-27T21:18:00.002+01:00

I have just arrived home from the monthly meeting of my writer's group. We get together once a month (hence the monthly) and talk about our writing in a generally insufferable and overly self-indulgent manner. Much red wine is consumed (although the lad I shall refer to as 'H' for confidentiality reasons prefers Guinness... out of a CAN no less) and seedless green grapes are passed around. Now, I may be odd, but I don't see the point of EATING grapes when you can drink the smooshed grapes in your glass and enjoy the resulting effects. So I tend to just stick with the wine and ignore the grapes and spelt crackers (the Ken Follett aspirant is in charge of catering). This may be why I always have trouble finding the tube station at the end of the evening.

I think my other downfall is in consuming several glasses before I go to these seminars. I stress, this is necessary, not merely an indulgence. I simply cannot muster up the enthusiasm for anybody else's work unless I have already been drinking. Then I am the very picture of benevolent attention, nodding, smiling and looking horrified at the appropriate points. If I have not had these few drinks (sigh... generally a bottle) before I go I cannot take my eyes off my watch, waiting for the minutes to tick by so I can talk about my own work. And considering I don't even wear a watch this is particularly rude.

So in light of all that I am going to slightly postpone my review of Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris. It took me three tries to log in to Blogger and that, in my opinion, means I shouldn't blog this evening.

Please applaude my efforts in this post, I have triple checked everything to make sure there are no spelling mistakes, grammatical errors or confusions of tenses, even though the better part of three bottles of a RAWTHER nice Shiraz now lap pleasantly in my stomach.

The Stranger (Max Frei)

2009-08-26T12:21:00.002+01:00

I too am alive!! A quick run down of what has happened to me in the last couple of months:

-some arson

-some surgery

-a general AND a local anaesthetic

-a new job

-AND The Stranger by Max Frei. Really, this book is the main reason for the lack of posting on my behalf. A bit of arson I can handle no problem (I wasn't the arsonist, I was the arsonee); a five hundred page book that never seems to go anywhere...not as easy to get through. And then in preparation for this review, I just looked at the Max Frei entry on Wikipedia and discovered that it is the first of TEN books. That is a lot of not going anywhere.

What first grabbed me about this book was the quote on the cover: "If Harry Potter smoked cigarettes and took a certain matter-of-fact pleasure in administering tough justice he might like Max Frei". In my mind, Max Frei was a combination of Harry Potter, Philip Marlowe and someone from a Neil Gaiman book. Not so. More like a thirty year old insomniac who didn't have any kind of a life until he was transported to a land he first encountered in his dreams and told he had magic powers and made into the 2IC of the secret magical police. The crimes he has to solve are weird, and he seems to develop any magical power which the situation demands. In fact, in this new land ('Echo') it seems Sir Max can do no wrong. Yawn.

I seriously think I have been reading this book for about a month. It is enjoyable enough while I am actually reading it, but when I am not reading it, I have absolutely no motivation to pick it up again. In between sections of this I have read 5 Harry Potter books, a couple of upcoming YA novels (including the new Scott Westerfeld... excitement central), Jane Eyre (again) and The Secret Garden. Page turner this ain't. In fact, I still haven't finished it..I've invested 400 pages worth of time into it, I have to finish it at some point... just don't expect it any time soon.

6/10

Author Love: Sadie Jones

2009-08-26T11:26:00.005+01:00

This is just a quick post to point you in the direction of this Guardian article on Sadie Jones' new novel Small Wars. I have a special place in my heart for The Outcast, her first novel which was released early 2008. It was the first novel I managed to read through in its entirety without falling asleep following an unfortunate glandular fever episode. I know the covers look a little mass-markety but Jones is a splendid writer who deals with relatively disturbing issues. Below is a review I wrote for the bookshop... short and sweet and not in the slightest verbose... I must have still been sick.

"My initial apprehension before reading this novel came from the comparisons it has had to Ian McEwan and Kazuo Ishiguro. I need not have worried, Jones has given us a beautiful yet sparingly written novel about a young boy's childhood after the death of his mother. The subsequent traumatic events are dealt with tastefully and honestly and the characters are incredibly constructed. Corseted to a distant father and immature stepmother, Lewis becomes increasingly alienated from the small Surrey neighbourhood in which they live and seeks stimulation and redemption in seedy London nightclubs. Jones has created a wonderful tale, polishing what is essentially a very basic plot line until it resonates off the pages and can be considered worthy of the comparisons which have been made."

A review of Small Wars will follow shortly.

Then We Came to the End (Joshua Ferris)

2009-08-25T23:23:00.006+01:00

This book is EVERYWHERE. You can't walk into a second-hand bookshop without the offensive neon yellow of the cover jumping out at you. When I first saw Then We Came to the End on Charing Cross Road my reaction was to shy away immediately. The font on the spine looks like a Christopher Brookmyre novel and heavens to Betsy that man hurts my brain. Upon discovering that this was NOT in fact a Brookmyre novel my curiosity was piqued and I picked it up. It then took me a long time to open the covers and have a read. I was worried. One book in that many swap shops is a warning. People do not want this book in the house. It's like when I had to read The Gathering by Isobelle Carmody for English class. The book disturbed me so much I felt compelled to give it away after the exam. Creepy, doomsday teenage fiction set in an ABATTOIR... I did not want it on my bookshelf, giving me goosebumps every time I caught sight of it.

I therefore assumed Ferris' novel to be similar. People do not routinely sell junky, mediocre fiction they purchased for a beach holiday. Those inane titles tend to sit on bookshelves for years, hidden behind The Kite Runner and A Fine Balance, saved for those times when an appendix has ruptured or heart has broken. People sell books that have inherently upset them in some way.

However, I don't know who would be upset by this book. Granted, I haven't finished it. Probably because it was so unbelievably boring that to finish it would have been a feat equal in perseverance to an amputee stumping their way up Everest. From what I have read, I can tell you this. It is about people who work for a publishing company. It details the minutiae of their working lives. I believe it to be narrated from a group perspective, thus giving a lovely, communist vibe to the whole thing. At one point a little girl is abducted and they all spend an afternoon making posters to advertise her disappearance.

That's where I stopped. If you would like to know if she turns up, I suggest you go to ANY second-hand bookshop in the English-speaking world and pick up a copy. It will probably be my copy.

Actually, you will probably be upset by it if you bought the novel based on the endorsement from The New York Times- "One of the ten best books of the year." Ohhh... a bad, bad year for literature then.

The writing is actually very, very good. Ferris has an unusual style to his sentence structure and he has a firm grasp on the tense which is unusual in these long-winded, philosophy of the mundane novels. I think this could have been brilliant if it had the slightest bit of passion, but the whole thing comes across as a bit soulless.

Which may in fact, be the point- highlighting the pedestrian nature of our working experiences. In which case, well done Ferris. You have achieved your goal and subsequently, have written a novel no one can read.

Rating: 4/10.

Pete Doherty: My Prodigal Son (Jacqueline Doherty)

2009-08-24T18:37:00.006+01:00

We're alive!!

My only excuse for not having posted in such an abysmally long time is that I was feeling remarkably uninspired by reading, writing and life in general for the past month or so. 'What is the point?' I asked myself daily, hands shaking from the 6 espressos I was consuming in order to stay awake in case my inane and pedestrian existence suddenly managed to become interesting again.

However, I have been to Italy and back and have achieved a seriously awesome tan. It seems that is all it took to get me excited about getting out of bed in the morning again.

As for Earhart, I have no idea why she stopped blogging. I think we both needed a break and can now resume author/novel ripping with renewed vigour (with the occasional positive review because we do like the free books that have been coming in... thank you publishers!)

My comeback review is on Pete Doherty: My Prodigal Son, by his mother Jacqueline Doherty. When I saw this in my fave Oxfam bookshop (Notting Hill... recommended, but don't get into conversation with the owner. Unless you have A DECADE to spare) I grabbed it immediately. I'm a sucker for musical biographies at the best of times, but the chance to read about the early life of a drug-addled musician whom I adore from the probably biased, blinkered and no-doubt naive perspective of his mother was not something I was willing to give up.

It did not disappoint.

Jacqui seems a little deliberately obtuse and sheltered about the whole thing. She is always happy that Pete has no track marks on his arms and is ultimately dismayed when chasing is explained to her. She also takes an old stuffed toy of Pete's to a gig in hopes it will cheer him up. However, the book is bearable because she has a mischievous sense of humour (the kind reserved for the very young, the very old and the terminally positive), telling Pete not to drop the soap the first time he is sent to jail being one such moment. She and Pete's grandmother also seem to have attended numerous gigs of Pete's, which makes her awesome in my book. Imagine Jacqui and Nanny Doherty, standing there in a Babyshambles gig whilst Pete siphons blood out of his arm and squirts it on the audience (ALLEGEDLY). I'm not sure my Grandma would enjoy that sort of evening.

The writing style is passable for someone who is not a writer by nature. She does that cute older person thing where they put slang or terminology alien to them in inverted commas and she goes off on tangents (frequently religious) far too often but other than that the overall style is tolerable. What I was really disappointed in was the scanty amount of information about Pete that was in there. I want to read about childhood experiences that could have spawned the lyrics for 'Don't Look Back Into the Sun', not how one Christmas Pete came to the table not at all appropriately dressed and was asked to go change his clothing.

Yawn.

I give this a tentative thumbs up if you want to read about how the Doherty family are affected by the 'Peter Problem' as they call it, but if you want to read something superb, raw and shatteringly perspicacious, read Pete's The Books of Albion, which is a collection of his letters, diary entries, song lyrics and general scribblings. Much of it is somewhat illegible and most of it is esoteric in the extreme, but upon completion you will understand what it is like to delve partly into the mind of an utter genius.

Rating: 5/10.

Apologies

2009-07-09T22:55:00.002+01:00

General and varied apologies to Earhart and our dedicated followers. I will resume regular posting next Monday, for now I am madly attempting to finalise other work and reading and blogging have fallen by the wayside.

The Texicans (Nina Vida)

2009-07-06T03:50:00.001+01:00

Before I start off properly I think I should give you a definition of 'Texican'. My reason for doing this is that I was a bit prejudiced against this book before I read it. I assumed there was no such word and the author was being a tad pretentious/illiterate (depending on whether or not it was deliberate). Then I looked it up and... oops. Sorry for calling you pretentious Nina; a Texican is either someone who lived in Texas when it was the Republic of Texas, OR it's someone who is Texan of Mexican descent. Either fit within the confines of the novel...thank you urban dictionary.

So misconceptions about the novel out of the way, it was in fact a good read. Historical fiction, set in Texas in 1800s, a period about which I know very little outside what Little House on the Prairie taught me. Which isn't actually set in Texas but they do travel in a wagon 'west' and with my limited geographical knowledge of America that'll do!

Set over the course of a decade, this is one of those family saga stories, mainly focusing on Joseph Kimmel, a Jewish school teacher from Missouri (I think) who travels across Texas after the death of his brother. Despite being quite snarky and extremely solitary, he manages to pick up a wife, a runaway slave, a Mexican witch, an amputee and his family along his journey. He builds a ranch, gets attacked by Comanches, goes up against some very corrupt Texas rangers and generally achieves WAY too much for one character in one book.

I could have done without a few of the more graphic scenes, like when the Comanche chief is eaten alive by a warring tribe. Or when Joseph accidentally eats human meat - my dislike of those scenes is obviously due to my being a bit squeamish. And maybe I missed the point of the book (but I really don't think so) but I believe the ending needed to be altered slightly, i.e. I think it should be changed to the ending I was expecting. Considering I put up with doom and gloom and cannibalism and gratuitous violence I reckon I deserve a happy ending.

6/10.

The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

2009-06-24T03:50:00.001+01:00

Coming to you live on Alcott and Earhart, the inaugural and probably the last 'Book-you-probably-didn't-miss-but-I-did-miss-until-just-now' post. I feel like I am just about the last person in the world (or at least in my bookshop) to read The Shadow of the Wind. After months of hearing from a colleague that it is one of her favourites/is so good/is a real cracker, after having droves of customers come in and ask for 'that book with the big book graveyard and it's Spanish I think' I finally read it. Never have I had more comments from customers when they saw what I was reading - every second person who came in expressed either joy that I was reading it or shock that I work in a book shop and was only just reading The Shadow of the Wind.

So I finally did it. The verdict? Very good.

1940s Barcelona, a boy is taken to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books where he must choose one book which he must treasure for life. He chooses The Shadow of the Wind by the mysterious Julian Carax, and becomes obsessed with unraveling the mystery of the author. In a nutshell.

Out of a nutshell - this book has got just about everything you could ask for - historical stuff, mystery, romance, musings on the wonder of literature, a psychopathic corrupt policeman, even comedy! I think that's the one that surprised me the most - there is a great character named Fermin, a once homeless man who befriends our protagonist Daniel, who doles out a few fabulous one-liners. And the thing is - this is a book that is not any one genre really, so if someone doesn't want romance, just don't tell them about it... it's not an overpowering plot element, so if they don't think it's a romance they probably won't care about the romance. (Going into bookseller mode a bit there).

So now you can either go read it, OR comment and tell me that you can't believe I've only just read it, being a bookseller and all...

8/10

Fantasy with a Capital F

2009-06-23T22:26:00.006+01:00

The David Gemmell Legend Prize has just been awarded to Andrzej Sapkowski for his fantasy novel Blood of the Elves. Apparently it's about a mutant assassin which sounds quite promising, but I haven't quite decided if I'll rush out and buy this yet. I tend to try and steer clear of fantasy for one very good reason. I read quite a lot of Tamora Pierce in my younger days. She wrote books about girls who became knights and went around defending their magical kingdom whilst falling in love with loads of guys. They were awesome, but I read them at a time in my teenage years when I was already feeling discontented with the lot I had been allocated. After reading these books I went into a depressed state where I was CERTAIN I was meant to have been born in middle ages. Preferably with magical powers.

And THIS is the problem with fantasy. These novels are so phantasmagorical that you shut the covers of the book feeling that life outside of the pages is quite grey and drab. Why get dressed up for an occasion if a prince in a leather jerkin and blousey shirt isn't going to burst into the room and sweep you up in his arms? Why worry about the terrible crime statistics in Nottingham when, in all likelihood, none of the gangs have ork members? Why go to the gym and train hard when you won't have to strip down to your loincloth and compete in a duel at any point?

I learnt a lot about Tolkien and C.S. Lewis when I did a subject for my English major called "The World of Fantasy". This was probably one of the most stressful classes I took at university. First of all, my wardrobe was ALL WRONG (I wasn't dressed in robes). Secondly, having read Lord of the Rings was NOT ENOUGH to hold your own in the tutorials. If you couldn't recite all of Legolas' songs by heart there was really no point in coming to class. The other students were HARD CORE man.

Again, all this is the fault of a genre which is constructed to put beautiful, heightened and unrealistic worlds JUST within our reach, IF we keep reading fantasy. People who read fantasy tend to stick with what they're comfortable with. You don't get many people coming into the bookshop saying they normally read fantasy, but today they'd quite like a copy of We Need to Talk About Kevin.

Have been thinking about it whilst writing this post and I think I do need to read Sapkowski's novel. I can't, in good faith, pass up a mutant assassin. If you want to read the whole article about the David Gemmell Legend Prize, click here to go to the Guardian article.

When We Were Orphans (Kazuo Ishiguro)

2009-06-22T20:03:00.007+01:00

Deepest and most profound apologies for the lack of posting last week. I had a ridiculous week that included attending a roller derby where I felt lucky to have left with all limbs accounted for and a concussion-free head, only to get a blinding headache when I lost my contacts in the ocean the next day and couldn't see for the rest of the afternoon. And I don't know what Earhart has been up to, apart from being deliriously excited that Michael Schumacher was announced as The Stig, only to have her buzz killed when I sent her this link.

THUS, I have had little time to read, let alone post about reading. I am making a triumphant return with this review of an earlier work of Ishiguro's- When We Were Orphans. I LOVE Ishiguro. His stories appear to exist separately from the physical book, Ishiguro merely acting as a narrator of sorts. You can imagine him seated around a campfire with a bunch of friends, marshmallows dripping heavenly globules of sweetness onto the coals as he relates these brilliant tales... tales that are patently honest and true, made more interesting with the poetic spin Ishiguro puts on them.

I think 'natural' is the best way to describe Ishiguro's writing. Considering his prose borders on magical realism a lot of the time 'real' doesn't seem to be the right term, although if anybody could make magic believable it's Ishiguro. He is able to find a place for everything he writes about in the reader's mind and heart, even if the concept is completely alien to them.

That being said, When We Were Orphans is a bit meh. It's crime fiction which is not really my cup of whiskey and the story is constructed in a way that leaves the reader a bit apathetic to the outcome of the story. The novel is about Christopher Banks, a young man who was born in Shanghai but brought up and educated in England after his parents go missing when he is very young. Christopher grows up to become a famous detective, Sherlock Holmesing it around England solving crimes, all the while planning to go to Shanghai and find out where his parents have got to. What he subsequently discovers in Shanghai is quite depressing and involves corruption, death and forced prostitution... not the happy ending we were all hoping for.

The novel is written wonderfully but the story left me a bit cold. For truly heart-wrenching stuff, I'd pick up The Remains of the Day, one of my favourite books EVER.

Rating: 7/10.

Dyslit: We and 1984

2009-06-16T03:42:00.002+01:00

So according to this article in the Guardian, George Orwell took his 1984 plot from an earlier Dyslit novel, We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. The article compares the main characters, plot development and ending of the two novels, does some nifty detective work to prove that Orwell read We just before writing 1984 and comes to the conclusion that he got his plot from it. I could have saved them the trouble of going through that whole process by saying "Well yeah...Orwell did get his plot from We. In fact after reading it he said he was taking it as the model for his next novel." (I tried to be extra tricky and get the reference for Orwell's quote from another dyslit gem 1985 wherein Anthony Burgess discusses Orwell, Huxley and Zamyatin but I couldn't find it in my skim re-reading so you'll have to make do with wiki.)

I agree with the conclusion to which the article comes - that it doesn't matter if 1984 was inspired by an earlier book - as a work of literature it is amazing, and some might argue more accessible than We. The cultural impact of Orwell's works is undeniable, and perhaps without We we wouldn't have the most significant of those - 1984. There. Wasn't that a nice diplomatic way of sorting things out?

For a little added interest: Anthem by Ayn Rand and We are so similar in themes, descriptions, and dystopian societies of the future that my mind boggles that no comparison between the two was raised in the article. Both deal with societies where the collective is of the utmost importance. In both books there is no "I" only "we". In both books individuality is erased and people are numbered not named. A strikingly obvious difference is that Anthem is one of the only dyslit books I have ever read with a 'happy ending'.

Go read 1984, We, Anthem, and chuck in Brave New World for good measure (another book said to have borrowed from We) and see what you think.

Lady Chatterley's Lover (D.H. Lawrence)

2009-06-15T13:35:00.004+01:00

I challenge anyone to not pick up Lady Chatterley's Lover after learning that Penguin Books were prosecuted in 1960 under the Obscene Publications Act for releasing the book. I am glad to see that novels can no longer be banned under the Act (ridiculous) and am quite eager to read other titles that were previously hauled into court by the braying conservatives. Inside Linda Lovelace and Lord Horror have been added to my list!

I was going to start off this post with a brief rehash of Sons and Lovers and then swoop saucily into a review of Lady Chatterley's Lover. Sardonic eyebrow cocked, I would note wittily that Lawrence's earlier title had hinted at his grasp of the relationship between sexuality and creativity but further life experiences (and partners) must have educated him further, as the latter novel clearly demonstrates. Then, with a sigh, I realised I had not read Sons and Lovers (I saw the TV series) and could not say this with any authority. Perhaps more importantly, I also realised I cannot cock my eyebrow, sardonically or otherwise and thus I decided to angle the review in a different direction.

This book shocked me several times. I can understand why critics claimed it was just a series of lewd sexual encounters held together by a shaky plot line. I DO NOT HAVE A PROBLEM WITH THIS. If the plot line were any more complicated or emotionally involving the book wouldn't achieve one of its main purposes: to put promiscuity on a pedestal. The shocks came not from this but rather from the swearing and sexual descriptions which seemed far too graphic for lovers in the early 20th century. Surely they were only indulging in this sort of carry-on in uncomfortable silences with yards of starched muslin petticoats hampering their every move?

Lady Constance Chatterley needs a lover because her husband has come home from the war paralysed from the waist down. He doesn't much mind if she takes a lover, as he would quite like a son to look after the small copse on their property that has been there for hundreds of years. He worries what will happen to the trees if they do not have an heir. He is, to be honest, not the most exciting of characters. Connie takes a few lovers but the lover of the title is Mellors, the new gamekeeper on their property.

I had a bit of trouble feeling attracted to Mellors. He has a ginger moustache. He seems to have the same expression on his face for most of the book and that is an amalgam of terrified and watchful. He is not very strong and he wheezes when he pushes Connie's husband around in a bathchair.

Well, I can hear you saying, as long as Connie's happy, that's all that matters. That would be all well and good, apart from the fact that I shudder every time I remember the moustache.

What follows is a torrid love affair and some of the most insightful prose I have ever read. Lawrence is a master of dialogue... never straying into the trap of using it for plot momentum. His descriptive text is evocative but sparse, focusing on the thoughts the landscape generates rather than the landscape itself. The characters themselves are not overly glamorous or worldly which adds a charm to the novel it might otherwise have lacked.

In conclusion, a thoroughly satisfying read. Even if you don't want to read it, I recommend picking up a copy purely for the cover. Has there ever been a more hilarious Penguin Classics jacket?

Rating: 8/10.

Jack London: Various Works

2009-06-11T13:23:00.006+01:00

Perusing the lamentably slim pickings in the classics section of my local library the other day I came to several conclusions:

1. Library staff who classify Salman Rushdie as a classics author are morons.

2. Libraries who do not possess ONE SINGLE COPY of The Portrait of Dorian Gray are naught but an ode to the socially bureaucratic inefficiencies that this country is riddled with.

3. I ought to read some Jack London.

And thus to a triumphant fanfare I introduce my latest review... Batard and The Call of the Wild. The book had several more stories in it, including White Fang, but at the end of The Call of the Wild I felt that I had delved sufficiently into the mind of London and thus closed the book.

There is little doubt in my mind that London is a talented writer. Batard in particular is a masterpiece of literary wrangling... 18 pages have seldom yielded so potent or powerful a story. London's writing is akin to that of McCarthy and Steinbeck, whose stories of rough and terrible lives are spotlighted by brief moments of humane feeling that could come from any point on the infinite spectrum of human emotion.

NOTE: I said HUMAN emotion. HUMAN. This is where I think London falls down, attributing dogs with the ability to think as people. Batard, the angry and bitter dog of the first story, plots the death of his master for years before finally exacting revenge for the cruel and barbaric existence he has been subjected to. Buck in The Call of the Wild is similarly intuitive and emotional, his journey from privileged pet to wild wolf penned brilliantly by London, apart from the fact that Buck, AS A DOG, does not have the mental acumen that London bequeaths him with.

However, for all this I could suspend disbelief if I had found myself enjoying the stories anyway. But I did not. I reject violence on all levels and I don't even like reading about two fully grown men having a fight. But when said violence is turned against children (see here) or animals, my stomach turns. Page after page London describes dogs being beaten by humans, dogs tearing each other apart, dogs being shot/hung/starved/dragged in the snow. ARGH. Trying to flick ahead to skip the violence ultimately meant reaching the back cover and not having read a thing.

Thus, I could forgive London endowing canines with impressive minds but cannot get on board with the whole incessant physical abuse thing. Have moved onto Lady Chatterley's Lover and this is proving far more enjoyable.

Rating: 3/10.

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

2009-06-10T17:00:00.004+01:00

It has happened again, only this time you get to catch me right in the midst of a midnight freak out. Remember about a month ago, I read that zombie book and couldn't sleep for fear there were zombies in my shoe closet? Well this time it's much more sane, not zombies but... crazed teenage reality TV contestants on a murderous rampage. And seeing as I am MUCH too wired to sleep, I thought I would kill time by letting you know what I thought of it:

Awesome. Awesome. AWESOME.

I was really ready to shun The Hunger Games as it was the first on the Stephenie Meyer endorsement train, but as far as adrenaline packed teen reads go - this is a winner. the novel is set in a *dystopian* future (you know how I love those!), in a country divided into 12 districts which is ruled by a powerful government called the Capitol. Just to remind everyone who is boss (and to quash any rebellious thoughts... there was a big problem with the no-longer-in-existence district 13) every year the Hunger Games are held. Each district must send a boy and a girl aged between 12 and 18 to the games which are held in a big open arena. They are given two days of training then they go in and fight to the death.

Oh god.

Narrator girl spends a lot of time hiding in trees and creeping around so I was convinced there would be a baddie around every corner. (Baddies were the contestants who wanted to be in the games because they have insane blood lust). There were many moments when I thought my heart was going to beat out of its chest, which would be an especially bad thing seeing as one contestants in last year's games had a fondness for eating the hearts of the other kids he'd killed. (Though cannibalism is generally frowned upon.)

Anyhoo... I realise this is a weird review - blame it on the fact that it's nearly three in the morning and I am only just calming down. Go read this book, if you scare easily, maybe read it during daylight hours. Also, it's the first in a trilogy and to anyone out there who HAS read it... how jealous of me are you right now if I say I have a a proof copy of the second book? Quite jealous I'd say.

8/10.

Reading List for Potential BNP Voters

2009-06-08T23:24:00.005+01:00

For those of you who have already voted BNP or are a member of the party, I wash my hands of you. I feel the only course of action would be to kidnap you, strap you down in a chair, force your eyes open with needles (a la Anthony Burgess) and inflict anti-racist and anti-fascist propaganda on you. Considering this breaks several laws and might get me in a spot of hot water in my adopted country, I am going to ignore you instead.

This reading list that I am beginning to compile is for those of you who may be THINKING about voting for the British National Party. The party that you have to be white to join. The party who are against immigration. The party who hold birthday parties for Hitler (allegedly).

This is not a good party to vote for. I felt sickened today when I heard that the BNP had won two seats in the European parliament. This does send a message to Labour though: "Yo... BLP! You're doing such a terrible job people are voting for the fascists instead. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Repeat. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. Fix it. Now."

Anyway, those of you thinking about voting BNP, I think you need to read some novels. Some good novels. I'm not talking about the bestsellers in Tesco. I am talking about thoughtful, intelligent and political novels that will get you thinking about humanity and life and how we should look out for ALL others who share our world. Novels that will encourage you to stand united against fascism, racism and the blinkers and muzzles that the corrupted in power attempt to subdue us with.

I'm going to start you off nice and easy. Two books which will tug a little at your heart strings and work a little on your brain. Nothing too taxing, I promise.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee).

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Mark Twain).

Read them and tune in next week for some more suggestions. In the meantime, don't be seduced by Nick Griffin.

Lord Lucan: My Story (William Coles)

2009-06-08T22:44:00.008+01:00

This review is going to need a bit of a preface for those of you (Australians, Americans, under-40's etc.) who have no idea who Lord Lucan was/is:

He meant to kill his wife but whacked the nanny instead. He fled (probably the country) and is still one of Britain's most wanted men. This all took place one fateful night in 1974 and since that night no one really knows what happened to good ol' Lord Lucan, although he has been 'spotted' in many different countries over the years.

This book confused me at first, as it is presented as a diary of Lucan's that has only recently turned up. William Coles is the author of these diaries but acts as editor, the better, he informed me, to let the British public suspend disbelief and accept the novel as a reasonable course of events to have befallen Lucan.

One mistake Coles makes is in his introduction, where he states that Lucan was "by no means a writer." This of course meant that I entered the story with the immediate assumption that the writing was going to be terrible, somewhat clouding any objective stance I might have originally taken. Coles also states in the introduction that 'Lucan' "...frequently switches tenses, flip-flopping from present to past..." Considering Coles is WRITING FOR LUCAN I would have thought he could have emitted this part of the introduction and just... written the diaries in the correct tense.

As previously mentioned in this blog, I find the world of Eton, the English class system and the general 'what-ho' aspect of England fascinating yet simultaneously frightfully abhorrent. Thus, I find it hard to sympathise with Lucan when he begins to complain about how the whole world has turned against him... BECAUSE HE MURDERED SOMEONE. There he is, swigging Bolinger on his sinking private boat, bemoaning the sorry state of affairs he finds himself in. Here I think Coles does well in creating (or envisioning as it were) a man who could, quite conceivably, murder the nanny.

HOWEVER, truly the most awful thing about the story (which, in all likelihood is akin to what actually happened) is the way Lucan's old Eton pals all rally around him and help him to hide from the police and then smuggle him out of the country. They go on and on about loyalty and the binding ties of friendship, all perfectly summed up in this one quote when a friend is talking about the possibility of turning Lucan in: "It goes against every last instinct of human loyalties and to hell with the law or the common norms of civic behaviour."

COMMON NORMS OF CIVIC BEHAVIOUR, I am assuming, would be to, politely yet firmly, tell a friend he is not welcome to hide in your basement because he killed someone.

Yes indeed, to hell with these common norms.

Whilst I find the way the story has been presented needlessly confusing, I did quite enjoy this in a way. I think. Enjoyed is probably not the right word. ENGROSSED perhaps, marvelling at the pig-headed nature of the upper classes. And, it must be added... I do feel slightly anxious now, working in London as a nanny. I SERIOUSLY hope I'm not exterminated in some future domestic brawl. That would be truly horrific.

Although, considering the current apathy I am experiencing as the mindless nature of my job begins to grate in it's seventh month... there is the possibility that a death threat might liven things up a little bit.

Rating: 5/10.

If you want to find out more about Lord Lucan, go here. Some overly hilarious person with WAY too much time on their hands has compiled an entire website about him, complete with a live forum to post sightings of Lucan. Exciting.

Orange Prize 2009

2009-06-03T22:26:00.005+01:00

Marilynne Robinson has just been announced the winner of this year's Orange Prize for fiction, for her novel Home. We may get a review up of it shortly.

We may not.

Gilead, Robinson's Pulitzer winning novel, bored me to tears. Apparently, in Home, she is revisiting the same characters, thus effectively neutering any lingering desire I may have felt to read what sounds, essentially, like an Oprah novel.

According to the Guardian, in between these two novels she wrote a 'polemical book about the British nuclear industry." Now, THAT I want to read.

The Slap (Christos Tsiolkas)

2009-06-03T12:21:00.012+01:00

Absolutely wonderful news about good ol' Christos winning the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for The Slap. Even more exciting that it has now been optioned for television. I'm absolutely delirious for Tsiolkas, on an artistically-fulfilling front as well as a monetary one.

It's just seems such a damn shame the book was so reprehensibly awful.

The Slap is set in Melbourne and follows a group of middle class suburbanites as they deal with the fallout after one of them slaps a child who is not his own at a barbecue. What follows is a crude storyline (in content and style), where the generally sensationalised characters are cobbled together in all their selfish and seedy glory to form a stilted plot. I almost wrote a 'plot that limps along', but this indicates a certain underdog aspect of the characters or story, thus rendering this initial thought of mine incorrect. Rather than limping, the novel careers along hopelessly like a drunken, blind neanderthal on an obstacle course.

Other thoughts: I do not like book covers where there is a child crying on the cover (who has, I assume, just been physically hurt); I do not like sexual descriptions where I feel the need to wipe MY EYES out with disinfectant after having read them; and parvenus who adopt a manner of superiority through the employment of too much glitter and Lycra are probably the most annoying people on the planet.

This novel marks the expiration of my tolerance for these novels of modern fiction hailed as glorious when they are, at best, the least awful of a bad bunch and at worst, better never to have been written in the first place. This does not, of course, cover all modern fiction. That is a ridiculous notion. But I am feeling disillusioned and thus am exaggerating accordingly. It worries me sometimes, that humankind has penned every original thought and must now rehash other people's brilliance (and idiocy) for all eternity.

Honestly, it keeps me awake at night.

Thus I made a monumentous decision last night (I have not cleared this with Earhart but anticipate it will not cause her much grief. Also, I am aware monumentous is not actually a word, but I believe it should be). I want to scrap the Monthly Classic, as I would rather turn to these for my main reading material now. It DEPRESSES me, going into the library, standing in front of the classics section and allowing myself a single, miserable title. Think of the riches I shall feel endowed with, now being able to stand there and pile my arms high with Bulgakov, Camus and the like.

I shall, of course, then pop over to the romantic lit section and grab a couple of pastel coloured delicacies. I like to think of them as the literary equivalent of the macaroon.

Oh, and I am still to post on Lord Lucan (William Coles' latest) and must delve at some point into Kate Grenville's The Lieutenant.

Basically, I will still be posting on a wide range of genres, but will allow myself (ourselves) more than one measly classic a month.

Rating: 3/10.

The Alchemy of Murder (Carol McCleary)

2009-06-01T03:40:00.009+01:00

Just two months after The Paris Enigma was released (historical mystery, Paris, World's Fair, 1889) The Alchemy of Murder has arrived on shelves, giving readers more historical mystery, more Paris, more Worlds Fair, more 1889. Francophile and dedicated book reviewer that I am, obviously I had to read this second offering and see how the two compare.

Well.

The Paris Enigma - more 'literary' in a ladies book club sense of the word - you can read it and talk about the philosophy of crime according to De Santis, and pretend you actually read philosophy.

The Alchemy of Murder - more readable in the 'this is actually an enjoyable book to read sense of the word' - you can read it and you actually get a plot to follow along with.

Nellie Bly was a real person back in the 1880's - the first female reporter in America who famously went under cover in a mental asylum to expose the horrific treatment of the inmates. In The Alchemy of Murder, it is during Nellie's stay in Blackwell's Asylum that she discovers a madman who is killing the prostitutes of New York. He escapes the asylum during a fire, but Nellie follows him to London, and then onto Paris where he wreaks havoc during the worlds fair.

You get a real flavour for Paris in the 1880s here - we have anarchists, prostitutes, Louis Pasteur, Oscar Wilde, Jules Verne...the list goes on. Civil unrest! Murder Plots! Slashings! I'm getting hyped up just typing this!

My only problem with this book is the slight weirdness of using real historical characters and playing with them for the sake of your plot. I can't imagine Louis Pasteur ever imagined he would turn up in a historical murder mystery 100 years down the track. Plus, there is this whole weird romance which develops between Nellie and Jules Verne. Jules Verne as a romantic lead is a little much for me to swallow quite frankly.

However weird romance aside, this book is one to delve into if you are after a good historical mystery, with an interesting plot, interesting anarchists, and a 1880s feminist heroine with a vendetta against a murdering psychopathic maniac.

7/10

Alcott and Earhart

The Empress of Ice Cream (Anthony Capella)

Shades of Grey (Jasper Fforde)

A Slightly Bashful Return

Battle Royale (Koushun Takami)

YA Ramblings / Tamora Pierce Makes a Long Awaited Appearance on the Blog

The Death and Life of Charlie St. Cloud (Ben Sherwood)

Hello All

Wives and Daughters (Elizabeth Gaskell)

Dance Dance Dance (Haruki Murakami)

The Private Life of Books

Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson)

Pulitzer 2010

Cakes and Ale (W. Somerset Maugham)

Some New Fresh Hell Awaits

Nocturnes (Kazuo Ishiguro)

White is For Witching (Helen Oyeyemi)

A Long, Long Time Ago & Essentially True (Brigid Pasulka)

All the Nice Girls (Joan Bakewell)

Easter Hiatus

The Echoing Grove (Rosamond Lehmann)

Guess what?

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Rainer Maria Rilke)

The Song is You (Arthur Phillips)

Some Prefer Nettles (Junichirō Tanizaki)

Twenties Girl (Sophie Kinsella)

A Song in The Daylight (Paullina Simons)

Almost, but not quite, locked under the stairs...

Patrick Ness

Five Greatest Warriors (Matthew Reilly)

The Pregnant Widow (Martin Amis)

The Dead Tossed Waves (Carrie Ryan)

Kitchen (Banana Yoshimoto)

Legend of a Suicide (David Vann)

Like having your brains smashed out by a slice of lemon wrapped round a large gold brick...

Anthropology and a Hundred Other Stories (Dan Rhodes)

Now For Something Completely Different...

Juliet, Naked (Nick Hornby)

Bel-Ami (Guy de Maupassant)

Dyslit: In Conversation

The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (David Wroblewski)

New Moon (Stephenie Meyer)

Traipsing back from the hinterlands...

Belated Holiday Reading

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

Dyslit: The Year of the Flood

Jasper Jones (Craig Silvey)

Fine Just The Way It Is (Annie Proulx)

Le Prix Goncourt 2009

The Heretic's Daughter (Kathleen Kent)

A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)

The Return

Booker Prize 2009

Guilt + The Summer Book

Paris and How To Be Topp

Restless (William Boyd)

The Spare Room (Helen Garner)

Bonnet Rippers

The Mistress (Martine McCutcheon)

Why would you want to read when you've got the television set sitting right in front of you?

Small Wars (Sadie Jones)

My Cold and the Nobel Prize

This Side of Paradise (F.Scott Fitzgerald)

*Earhart 4 Harper Collins* No More

Booker Shortlist 2009

Chaos Walking 1: The Knife of Never Letting Go (Patrick Ness)

The White Queen (Philippa Gregory)

Junky (William S. Burroughs)

Blackberry Wine Take 2 (Joanne Harris)

Blackberry Wine (Joanne Harris)

The Stranger (Max Frei)

Author Love: Sadie Jones

Then We Came to the End (Joshua Ferris)

Pete Doherty: My Prodigal Son (Jacqueline Doherty)

Apologies

The Texicans (Nina Vida)

The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon)

Fantasy with a Capital F

When We Were Orphans (Kazuo Ishiguro)

Dyslit: We and 1984

Earhart 4 Harper Collins No More