Dance Dance Dance (Haruki Murakami)

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 When he returns the dodgy hotel has been replaced by a high end luxury resort- L'Hotel Dauphin.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

Sexing the Cherry (Jeanette Winterson)

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.

The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge (Rainer Maria Rilke)

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.

Fine Just The Way It Is (Annie Proulx)

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.

A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole)

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 Stranger (Max Frei)

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

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.

April Classic: The Master and Margarita

There are those readers out there who don't like to give the classics a go. (There are also those readers out there who don't like to read. Go here.)

I present to you a book (a classic no less) that EVERYONE should find enjoyable, accessible, hilarious and downright moving... Mikhail Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita.

This is hailed as one of the greatest Russian satires to have ever been written. It attacks, with increasingly dark humour, the Soviet Union and the lack of revolution and true, unfettered thought under a ferocious, authoritative state. One fine spring day, the devil arrives in Moscow, chatting up two prominent Russian thinkers of the time: the poet Berlioz and the journalist known as 'Homeless'. The novel then proceeds to switch back and forth between Jerusalem during the time of Jesus' trial and crucifixion and 1920s Russia, where widespread atheism is the accepted spiritual frame of mind to be in.

The devil's machinations send Homeless into a lunatic asylum where he meets the Master, an author who was driven by despair into the asylum when his manuscript for the alternate story of Pontius Pilate and Jesus Christ failed to get published. He has burned his manuscript and refuses to live in the real world, thus also turning his back on his mistress... Margarita. From this scene comes the most famous line in the book, uttered by the devil: "Manuscripts don't burn". This part of the story would appear to be autobiographical- Bulgakov began writing his first version of The Master and Margarita in 1928 and then burnt the original manuscript. He began writing it again a few years later with the help of his (I imagine long-suffering and incredibly patient) wife.

I don't know enough about Russian history to understand all the subtle nuances of satire and irony that Bulgakov employs (although Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky's excellent translation and notes help somewhat), but this doesn't matter, as Bulgakov writes with such simplicity yet force that the reader cannot help but be swept up into this tale.

The thing that surprised me most about this read was how funny it actually was, it seemed a bit indecent actually. Russian novels are supposed to be unrelenting in their depressing nature. You're supposed to feel as though you'll never be happy again after reading a russian classic. Thus, the devil mincing around in disguise, bickering over warm apricot soda and a cat who packs some serious heat are all welcome diversions. This is a visceral read, you'll feel enlivened, outraged... and seriously, seriously amused.

Rating: 10/10.

N.B. I HAVE read another of Bulgakov's works, thus justifying the Author Love tag. It was A Dog's Heart, wherein a stray dog takes on human form. He then proceeds to become head of cat control. Brilliant.

How We Are Hungry (Dave Eggers)

I don't often enjoy the concept of the short story in it's singular form. I recently read the short story written in 1973 by James Tiptree Jr.: The Women Men Don't See. Well-written, insightful and semi-plausible... until the aliens turn up. And I KNOW it's sci-fi and therefore I shouldn't be complaining, but in the form of a short story there is little scope already for development of plot and character; throwing aliens in at the end seems like a last ditch attempt to go out on a bang, with no regard for the fact that the rest of the story, whilst on a deserted island, is supernatural-free.

HOWEVER, the short story COLLECTION is another thing altogether. Reading an excellent collection of short stories (by the SAME AUTHOR, none of these awful compilations please) is much like listening to an album that has obviously been constructed with each song part of a larger story, everything flowing and melding perfectly.

This is what Dave Eggers offers us with his 2004 collection How We Are Hungry. Often the short story author will attempt to create synergy be setting all stories in the same town, or having the characters weave in and out of each story, or have an overly obvious theme like several people all dealing with the shock of an apocalypse-free reality after the year 2000. Eggers bypasses any such clumsy amalgamations and instead presents us with 15 stories which appear to share little at the outset. However, at least to me, reading the book it seemed obvious that Eggers had finished each story and moved with ease onto the next one... his thoughts flow with purpose throughout and I didn't feel in the least disjointed or unsatisfied, which is how I often feel when reading the short story.

Hope you all had a good Easter... I had a marvellous time away, made even more so by this exciting tidbit I picked up: WH Smith now apparently have a 'Misery Literature' section. I kid you not. I am SUPER excited to check it out and feel as though, considering our tastes run in that direction a lot of the time anyway, we should think about having a Mislit Feature. GLORIOUS!!

Rating: 8/10.

Dyslit: Oryx and Crake

So don't blame me for the huge gap between announcing cool new segment and it actually being posted. Alcott was all 'I'll start with Never Let Me Go' and then just didn't so I held off posting so as not to step on anyone's toes. And then I gave up waiting because I was rawther excited about this new segment. As Alcott mentioned, I love dyslit, and what better way to start the segment off than with the book that turned me into a dyslit girl- Oryx and Crake. Ahhhh.....Where can I begin?

How about this sentence, lifted from the back cover, which perfectly summarises the opening scene: 'A man, once called Jimmy, now calls himself Snowman and lives in a tree, wrapped in old bed sheets, eating mangoes'. Awesome. Jimmy lives in some kind of post-apocalyptic world, although the exact nature of the apocalypse is revealed tantalisingly slowly throughout the story. Really, in Oryx and Crake you get a double dyslit: you get Jimmy now as Snowman, in the wastelands of earth, and you get Jimmy as Jimmy, growing up in a strange, strange society. Genetic modification not only takes place, but it essentially rules society. Get a job working for OrganInc or HelthWyzer and you are set for life. (OrganInc - the guys that brought you the pigoon - kind of like a pig, but fatter to allow space for the 4 or 5 human kidneys they've got growing inside them). Hungry? Try a bucket of chickie-nubs - kind of like chicken nuggets, except the thing they came from looks nothing like a chicken as we know it.

The great thing about this dyslit is that none of the technology is really out-there fantastic. Instead, what has changed (and messed up society a lot) is genetic modification. This is the first book I ever read and thought 'That was a ten out of ten.' While opinions about Margaret Atwood can be polarising, I think everyone who want a fascinating book to start (or just develop) a dyslit obsession needs to read this one. And just to tantalize you a little bit more - I think Oryx and Crake has THE best ending of a book I have ever read.

10/10

The Good Mayor (Andrew Nicoll)

I am SO glad I liked The Good Mayor. Mainly because for the past month I've been selling it to customers like crazy, telling them it's cute/charming/magical/the kind of book you just hug to your chest and go 'awwww'. Then a co-worker pointed out that maybe, just maybe, I ought to read it. Crazy crazy idea, but I thought I'd give it a go.

And you know what? It IS cute. And charming. Lucky break there...

Tibo Krovic is the mayor of a small town in the Baltic called Dot, who is hopelessly, head over heels in love with his (unhappily) married secretary, Agathe. Everyday he listens for her high heels clicking across the office floor, and whenever it is raining he watches under the office door as Agathe taking off her galoshes and slips into her high heels. The problem is, Tibo just isn't able to work up the courage to confess his feelings...until one day Agathe drops her lunch in the fountain and Tibo takes a chance.

The relationship which develops between the two is lovely, starting with lunch everyday and gradually becoming more. What could have been just a normal love story is made really special by the way it is told. The story is narrated by Saint Walpurnia, the patron saint of Dot whose image is everywhere. (As the legend goes, Walpurnia thought it was so important that she remain chaste, she prayed to be deformed and was given a beard and warts all over her body.) There are a few magical elements to the story, which now I think of it, reminds me a tad of Joanne Harris. Cute is probably an apt word to describe parts of the story; Dot's neighboring towns are called 'Dash' and 'Umlaut' and the local river is called 'Ampersand'.

Punctuation as names?

Why not?

A car chase that takes place at walking pace?

But of course!

Each sentence is beautifully constructed (much more so than in this review which I realise rambles on a bit...), and you just fall in love with the book a bit (and like it says on the cover, it DOES make you want to go out and fall in love with someone).

Admittedly, the story gets a little too weird towards the end, and doesn't quite finish as strongly as it started, but it's well worth the read. And I swear I actually did read it this time.

8/10

*Interesting tidbit - apparently the author, Andrew Nicoll, didn't like the Australian cover (pictured above) as it made the book seem like it was only for the ladies, when he wrote it to be for both men and women. Do we think a book which is mostly about feelings (I'd say about 90%) is a man book? I don't want to make any stereotypical judgments here....

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.

The Ringmaster's Daughter (Jostein Gaarder)

Am going through a bit of a re-reading old favourites phase at the moment, am about 2/3 through Atlas Shrugged (which is pretty much consuming my life so apologies for the lack of reviews lately....) and just before that I read The Ringmaster's Daughter by Jostein Gaarder. I love this book. I have read it maybe 10 times, and each time I love it more. It doesn't have the meaning of life hidden in clever metaphors, or explain the mysteries of philosophy (and lets be honest...inserting 10 page long information dumps about various philosophical movements does not make for a page turning read..)

What this book does have is a fantastic plot. Well, a number of fantastic plots, since the protagonist, Petter, makes a living out of being a storyteller. Ever since he was a child, Petter has lived partly in a fantasy world, not always able to distinguish between his real life and his imagined life. Looking back over his childhood, Petter is unable to tell which memories are real and which are imagined (but he is pretty sure the time he was able to fly didn't actually happen). One of the main characters, the Metre Man (because he is exactly one metre high) only exists in Petter's mind (although he makes the mistake of occasionally pointing him out to his friends). So all in all, Petter seems, well, kind of crazy. But really likable at the same time.

When he grows up, instead of becoming an author himself, Petter sells story outlines to writers suffering from a creative block. Happy to reside in obscurity, Petter becomes very rich by selling ideas. In reading Petter's life story, we are lucky to also read many of his imagined stories which he passes on to others. The way the various stories are woven together make this book truly amazing, and really enjoyable to read.

9/10.

Mr Darcy: Most Eligible... Ninja?

Okay. I couldn't let this pass without saying something.
Pride and Prejudice is now out of copyright.
Is the thought that just passed through your mind 'Great! Now I can use her original text, and adding elements of my own, create Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a surefire masterpiece'?
Cause that was definitely my first thought.

Unfortunately Seth Grahame-Smith beat me to it, since his book is due for release in April this year. Apparently 'Austen fans are in for a shock, with heroine Elizabeth Bennet and her four sisters becoming zombie slayers taught how to fight like Japanese ninjas by Mr Darcy'.

Huh.

Maybe that's why one ought to steer clear of the attics at Purvis Lodge - they are a popular haunt for the undead.

February Book You May Have Missed: I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes

Let me tell you a little bit about the Zing family. Fancy Zing is married to Radcliffe (not a Zing) and writes lists (types of leaves, sounds, irritating things about her husband). Marbie Zing (full name: Marbleweed) lives with Vernon and his sister Listen, and is contemplating an affair with an aeronautical engineer. Maude makes amazing (truly amazing: life changing) pies; and Cassie can run as fast as a bus (no, really).

Oh, and every Friday night they meet in the garden shed to have Zing Family Secret Meetings.

I'll admit, before I even knew any of this I was won over by the title: I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes. Yummy. Combine that title with the surname 'Zing' and I'm yours. The world of IHABMOBP is one where it snows in Sydney, flying beach umbrellas are a real danger, and spell books containing useful things like 'Spell to make someone take a taxi' are available to 12 year old girls.

By this point you are either really excited about the book (which is what I am hoping) or you are looking sceptically at the computer screen thinking 'what is she on?' in which case I was never going to win you over. If you're in the former group read on... and then go read one of the most original books I have read in a long time. Not just the plot, but the way the story is structured: the interweaving of about 10 million different plot lines (one of them is set in 1810!) and the way tiny bits of the Zing Family Secret are revealed slowly, slowly throughout the book make it a fantastic un-put-downable read.

Jaclyn Moriarty is well known in Australia as a writer of YA fiction, and this was her first foray into the world of adult fiction, (you know...for grown up people. Not porn. Although there is a Zing who writes erotic fiction...) and it would be a great pity if your lives weren't enriched by reading the marvelousness that is I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes. Which, incidentally, shortens to the coolest initialism ever.

8/10

The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Muriel Barbery)

I should start by saying that this book was not at all what I expected. Although really, all I knew before I picked this up was that it was written from the perspective of a concierge in a Parisian apartment building and it was a bestseller in France. 'Fabulous,' I thought, 'a nice light holiday read, romp in Paris etc etc etc'. What I didn't know was that the concierge in The Elegance of the Hedgehog is very into art, Russian literature, science and philosophy. Whole chapters are devoted to the phenomenology of the spirit, which are very interesting, but not quite the light reading I had hoped for.

From the outside, Renee appears to be a 'typical' daytime TV watching, uncultured concierge, an image which she strives to maintain for reasons which have a lot to do with not alarming the bourgeois residents of her building. It is not until a new resident moves into the building and discovers that Renee's cat is named Leo in homage to her favourite Russian author that the truth slowly comes out.

The book alternates between Renee's story, and the Journal of the Movement of the World of Paloma Josse, a twelve year old girl who plans to kill herself and burn down her parents' apartment on the eve of her thirteenth birthday. Melodramatic much? Paloma's family are bourgeois to the point of being caricatures, and she can think of nothing worse then the future which she sees before her.

The book took a little while to get into, possibly because I'd finally be getting into the Renee story line, only to be interrupted by Paloma musing on the fact that the 'cat is a modern totem'.

Thanks.

I did enjoy reading it, and would have more had the characters not both been so ridiculously resigned about the world. ('How French!' A customer said to me when I made this comment....more like 'How annoying!') If Paloma was in fact as brilliant as she claimed (many many times), why didn't she set her (brilliant) mind on changing the path set out for her? Possibly I am missing the point here. But what does it say that here I am, a few weeks after finishing the book and one of the only things that has stuck in my mind is how annoying one of the characters was? I understood what Renee had to say, I was interested in her views on literature and art, I just wasn't enthralled. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed reading The Elegance of the Hedgehog..I am just a little undecided. And I think writing this review has made me even more so.

7/10...?