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

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.

This Side of Paradise (F.Scott Fitzgerald)

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.

Junky (William S. Burroughs)

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.)

Pete Doherty: My Prodigal Son (Jacqueline Doherty)

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.

Lord Lucan: My Story (William Coles)

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.

Dyslit: Never Let Me Go

I made a new friend the other night in Soho. We were having a chat about this and that and then she suggested (with a slightly manic glint in her eyes) that she grab us a 'bottle' to share.

"Of course." I said eagerly, because I'm that kind of girl.

My new best friend does not, as I expect, bring a bottle of wine back to the table. No no. It was a bottle of rum.

Not even good rum.

BUNDY.

"Ummm, I'm not sure I can drink half of that..." I hedged, but she waved off my protestations and began pouring.

A quarter of the way down the bottle she announced "I've only ever been in love once."

Half-way down the bottle she decided the table was wobbling, took her chicken fillet out of her bra and shoved it under one of the legs.

Three quarters of the way down the bottle I was having trouble concentrating when she said seriously, leaning in close like it was a state secret.

"I'm not at all sure Keira Knightley will be good in Never Let Me Go."

I don't remember much else from the night. My new friend quite happily continued on clubbing whilst I stumbled to my accomodation for the evening, forgetting for a moment I lived in London and giving the cab driver my address in Sydney.

As you can see... rough night. HOWEVER (and this post IS about books, I just needed a lead-up!) I am completely on board the concerned boat when it comes to the casting of Keira Knightley in the film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go. I can't remember the ensuing conversation we had about this but I am certain I agreed with her and empathised with her concerns.

For those of you who have not read Ishiguro's re-imagining of Britain in a time when human clones are created to act as organ donors for the rest of the population I seriously recommend it. This isn't "slap you in the face" dyslit of the kind Margaret Atwood normally produces. For the first part of the book the reader has no idea that the children's boarding school we are reading about is actually priming them for their lives as donors. Ishiguro has a masterful yet subtle touch to his writing that creates stories so imbued with emotional wallops I have to take breaks whilst reading them. Either that or I allow myself to get completely lost in the story and for days afterwards will feel shaky, disturbed and wary of people who smile too much in the street.

Never Let Me Go is narrated by Kathy, which is the part I thought would go to Knightley. However, my great friend IMDB actually informs me Knightley is playing Ruth, who is the annoying, controlling girl in the small group of friends. This makes more sense, as she has more personality than Kathy, who always seemed a bit distant even though it was she who was telling the story.

I just hope Knightley uglies up for the part a bit. Even when she's trudging around with Sienna Miller in wellies she always looks quite poised and elegant (ridiculously pursed lips aside) and all the girls in this story are just meant to be normal, plain, slightly eccentric schoolgirls. However, lately she's been putting in some solid acting efforts so you never know. I guess the best I can do is say this to Keira: "No pressure, but DON'T STUFF IT UP. This is a very, very important book. DO NOT LET THE READERS DOWN."

IMDB has also told me Knightley is set to play Zelda in a film adaptation of The Beautiful and the Damned. Ye gods, I don't know if I can stomach the stress of what butchery might occur.

Rating: 9/10.

Cocaine Nights (JG Ballard)

I find it excitingly creepy that neither Earhart nor I normally read crime, yet in the last few days we have both picked up crime novels... and both of them are about cocaine!! Unfortunately, my pick didn't feature a diamante garter... probably because most of the female characters appear to be without clothes for a large portion of the novel (Europeans... tsk). 

I was a bit disappointed with this read. Partly because everyone was calling it 'dazzlingly original' and I didn't think it was. The plot was incredibly crafted and the characters were well-constructed in terms of realism and depth... but the actual writing style didn't resonate I'm afraid. It was Greene with a shot of Hemingway (so... definitely GOOD, I'll give it that). Dazzlingly original is DBC Pierre. Show me that level of originality and I'll be impressed. 

Cocaine Nights is about a journalist (Charles Prentice) who flies to a wealthy Spanish resort town when his brother is convicted of the murder of five people. Frank Prentice runs a local club and is well-known throughout the town... so well-known that absolutely nobody believes he committed the murders- the police included. However, a guilty plea is pretty hard to ignore, so everyone seems pretty set on just letting Frank take the rap. Charles, firmly believing in his brother's innocence, sets about uncovering the many secrets of the resort.

In all honesty, this had a gripping plot line and a classy, elegant feel to it (ummm.. despite the gratuitous sex, drug use and violence) for crime. Ballard is obviously gifted and I applaud the fact he got me to finish a novel in this genre. But I had high expectations for a mind-blowing read and these didn't eventuate.

Perhaps it is because I was prejudiced against the book from one of the earliest chapters... when one of the characters chucks his remaining tapas at a bunch of homeless cats for them to eat. I cannot explain the outrage I felt when I read that alley cats were eating (fictional) tapas and I was not. (I may have been hungry at the time of reading that part). 

Rating: 8/10. 

Cocaine Blues (Kerry Greenwood)

Well..this was just one big bowl of meh. Despite being perfect on paper (1920s... sassy detective with a gun in her diamante garter) - it didn't come through. Which is a bit sad since this is the first in a series of a million titles which have been coming out since the 80s, and I was thinking it was maybe a new series I could occasionally dip into when feeling like a bit of intrigue.

Phryne Fisher is an English socialite who moves to Melbourne to try her hand at being an amateur detective. She has barely stepped off the boat when she gets caught up in a cocaine smuggling ring, a back street abortion clinic...and the arms of a Russian dancer called Sacha. We get intrigue, scandal, witty banter...but not much of a story.

I think Kerry Greenwood needs to be told that having a witty detective does not a mystery plot make. If a little more effort was put into making the plot slightly interesting, and a little less in thinking up snappy one liners which Phryne can dole out at will, I think I would have enjoyed this book more. It is never a good sign for a mystery if halfway through an attempt on Phryne's life I picked up a reading copy of some crappy teen fiction and was instantly more interested in that. Maybe it was the weird brainless mood I was in, but when you're being beaten by the latest in a long line of faerie/vampire/general supernatural romances aimed at preteens, you know something ain't right.

6/10 (Five of those points are for Phryne's cool wardrobe. Only one for the mediocre plot).

Hashish, Wine, Opium (Charles Baudelaire and Theophile Gautier)

Do we not all think that Theophile is quite an amusing name? And what a difference the end of a name does make:

Theodore: cute, teddy-bear like person, could be English, definitely wears a waistcoat.

Theophile: drives a white van, drinks vodka from a syringe, sweats a lot.

HIGHLY intellectual musings aside, I quite enjoyed this little homage to narcotics and alcohol written in the early 19th century. Baudelaire and Gautier both wrote extensively on their experiences with hash and opium in particular and both were members of the Club of Assassins. Detailed sketchily in the book (everything is a bit sketchy, most of it was written while they were stoned or drunk), the Club of Assassins was a little group of men who used to meet on Ile St Louis in Paris and get stoned together. They then used to go home and write or paint about the effects they had experienced.

I picked this up for the title and who wouldn't? I am well-versed in the effects of wine, but opium has never been offered up at any of the parties I've gone to (actually most of the time the most potent thing offered up is a vodka watermelon, and that's on a REALLY wild night) and I giggled to think of 19th century philosophers in knickerbockers smoking joints, thus I felt this was a necessary purchase.

The book was informative as well as amusing... I learnt that these dudes used to cook the hash with butter, pistachio nuts, almonds and honey to form a kind of jam "similar to apricot conserve". YUM. Sounds delish, I could even do without the hallucinogen to be honest. It's like... baklava jam! GENIUS.

I also learnt that the word 'assassin' is actually derived from the Arabic 'hasishin', which means to be under the influence of drugs. Assassins in Persia were fed drugs before they killed. Interesting non?

Last lesson I learnt from this book- If you work with children (sigh, as I do), do not leave this lying around your place of work. The only thing worse to leave around is Dead Babies.

Rating: 7/10.

And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks (William S. Burroughs & Jack Kerouac)

To the Kerouac/Burroughs/Beat fans out there - you have got to read this book. And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks, written in 1945, is Kerouac before On The Road, Burroughs before Naked Lunch. It is so cool.

Burroughs and Kerouac write as 'Will Dennison' and 'Mike Ryko' respectively, telling the story of the Kammerer/Carr murder. (David Kammerer - obsessed with Lucien Carr, Lucien Carr - kills David Kammerer. Kerouac and Burroughs know about it and don't tell police). This murder has been described as 'the murder which gave birth to the Beats', and in Hippos you get to read about it (in a fictionalised-ish form) from Burroughs and Kerouac themselves. You can't tell me you're not excited by that prospect.

This is another one of those read-for-atmosphere-rather-than-plot books, specifically a constantly drunk, 1940s New York atmosphere. You don't read this book as the mystery it is sold as... in fact if you picked it up expecting a mystery you would be seriously disappointed - the killing of Ramsay Allen (Kammerer) happens in one of the last chapters, followed not by any kind of sleuthing, but a confession from Phillip Tourain (Carr) and a couple of dark dark chapters of aimless drinking.

The book remained unpublished until November last year, as Lucien Carr requested it not be released until after he died. Because of this you experience Kerouac/Burroughs' writing in reverse, you get tantalizing glimpses of the writers which they became.

Added tidbit - the book was supposedly named after a line heard in a radio broadcast about a fire in a zoo (although some say circus) and sparked a lively conversation between my housemates and I about Worse Ways To Die Than By Boiling (for example being eaten alive by ants).

8/10

Dead Babies (Martin Amis)

Quentin and Celia Villers are hosting a weekend party at their country home: Appleseed Rectory. As well as the bright young things gadding down from town, a group of Americans are expected and they have ensured there are enough drugs and alcohol to fuel the debauched few days.

The term 'dead babies' refers to those periods of ennui that the characters experience when they are without chemical stimulation and are forced to face reality. Fortunately for us, these periods are few and far between. The weekend takes a turn for the dramatic when, after a day of topless sunbathing and philosophical discussion, one of the guests overdoses. The situation is worsened with the plying of the young man with more narcotics in an attempt to revive him. This coupled with the anonymous, threatening letters everybody has been receiving all weekend from 'Johnny' darken the mood somewhat, although provide good acceleration towards the bloody, brutal and chilling end.

Compared to Money or London Fields it may not seem as intelligent or visceral a comment on society. But it's freaking hilarious and Amis' style is racier, more exciting than in his later work. The characterisation is particularly sublime although it is Keith Whitehead who is the most entertaining and richly described. I am not going to bother paraphrasing Amis' brilliant words; here is Keith's introduction for you to read for yourself:

"Whitehead is an almost preposterously unattractive young man- practically, for instance, a dwarf. Whenever people want to say something nice about his appearance they usually come up with 'You've got quite nice colouring', a reference to his dark eyebrows and thinning yellow hair. That granted, nothing remained to be praised about his unappetising person, the sparse straw mat atop a squashed and petulant mask of acne... The more clothes you took off him, the more traumatic the spectacle became... As he entered the Wimbledon municipal swimming pool two teenage girls spontaneously vomited into the shallow end."

The book was made into a film a few years ago. I will pass no judgement on the film but merely quote Paul Bettany who starred as Quentin: "It's an amazing novel... it's a less amazing film."

The poor PR team probably already had the job from hell promoting a film called Dead Babies and after that they would have curled up in the foetal position and sobbed.

This is not a book for people who are easily offended or who entertain politically correct notions. It's a bit of a liability, being so laugh-out-loud funny yet having the title Dead Babies. You will get some strange looks on the tube, but for a select few of you who can stomach the disgusting and hilarious cruelty of this novel, it will be worth it. Martin Amis is polarising... he is the Vegemite of authors.

Rating: 8/10.