White is For Witching (Helen Oyeyemi)

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.

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.

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.)

The Alchemy of Murder (Carol McCleary)

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

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.

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 Host (Stephenie Meyer)

Wow Stephenie.

Vampires?

You're awesome at that.

But mind-snatchers who invade earth?

You SUCK at that.

Now, I'm not going to talk about Meyer's literary skills here. She can string a sentence together just fine and as for sexual tension, she's got that all tied up. (Tee hee.) But The Host was ABOMINABLE.

Basic premise: Wanderer is a sprite/soul/silvery ghost thing who is part of a species who go to lands that are screwed up in some way, take over their minds and make everyone happy and peaceful. Good in theory but kind of nixes freedom of thought etc. These sprites have come to Earth and before our planet they were on a planet covered in seaweed. (I'm guessing kelp has conflict issues that don't really come to light when we just see it floating past us in the water). However, the body that Wanderer is inserted into belongs to the strong-willed Melanie who refuses to give up her soul. Thus we have two minds in one body.

This is where it gets ridiculous.

Melanie is in love with a guy called Jared and she convinces Wanderer to go find him, hoping he is hiding in the desert and has not been brainwashed. Conveniently, he is and Wanderer plays along, as she is feeling slightly disillusioned with her parasitic race.

Cue unfortunate occurrence:

Wanderer falls in love with Jared.

Melanie is still in love with Jared.

Thus the origin of the marketing tag: "What may be the first love triangle involving only two bodies."

GROAN.

Apart from the ridiculously confusing plot (I over-simplified for you), my other beef is that this was Meyer's first adult book. The Twilight Series is kind of racy for teenagers and I was expecting Meyer to bump up the sex if she was intentionally writing for adults. What kept me going through this doorstop of a novel was the possibility of hot alien sex.

Didn't happen.

We don't even get resolution at the end; I closed the book feeling unsatisfied, unconvinced and depressed. NOT how I normally feel when I read Stephenie Meyer.

Rating: 4/10.

Author Love: Cormac McCarthy

'Tis tasteless, I fear, to follow on from the Still Waters post with a review of Martin Amis' Dead Babies. I'll look as though I'm falling into a reading rut. Hence, this homage to Cormac McCarthy.

Those who are well acquainted with McCarthy's work will be aware of the general mood his stories take: dark, twisted, violent, despairing, barren and ultimately apocalyptic basically sums him up. His most recent work (The Road) won the 2007 Pulitzer and was his most emotionally traumatic to date. His style seems to have evolved into more simplistic prose over the years, and to great effect. One could argue that no dialogue and descriptive text could be simpler than in The Road, yet only McCarthy would be able to turn these words into a passionate, desperate reaching of hands towards a hopeless, extinguishing light.

The Road has been made into a film with Viggo Mortensen as the father. I personally feel that Paul Bettany would have been an excellent choice. I know he could bring the darkness and desperate humanity needed to the role. Viggo is just plain moody. Also, I don't think I'd be able to worry about his survival or future. To me, he will always be able to fall back on the help of the elves. This ruins the suspense somewhat.

That is all hypothetical because I could barely read the novel; seeing it on the big screen may, in fact, shatter me to my deepest possible emotional depths. I can't even go into more detailed descriptions of The Road; it's too upsetting for me and FAR more destabilising for you to just pick it up and read it.

The book I've just read however, is Outer Dark. An earlier work of McCarthy's, it is much easier to read and not nearly as emotionally traumatising. It tells the story of a young woman (Rinthy) who gives birth to her brother Culla's child. He abandons the baby in the woods and lies about his death to Rinthy. The story then follows brother and sister in their desperate yet separate searches for redemption.

With allusions to the Bible, King Lear and Snow White this could have turned into a symbolic nightmare. Well, it's definitely still a nightmare, but in a TOTALLY good way, if you can stomach incest* and cannibalism. It's a dark parable, with no moral message at the end, just the destruction of hope and love.

I think it's a good introduction to McCarthy, with enough of the fable in it to not seem real (that way it's not as scary). Alternatively, you could start with No Country for Old Men, which is considered McCarthy 'light'.

Outer Dark/No Country for Old Men: 9/10.
The Road: 10/10.

*Incidentally, I CAN stomach incest. I think it's because I have no brothers. I can't comprehend the grossness of the situation.

The 19th Wife (David Ebershoff)

There are three Richards in my life.

One is my father.

The second I shall remain semi-coy about for privacy's sake.

AND THE LAST IS ONE HALF OF THE WORST MARRIED COUPLE POSING AS LITERARY CRITICS IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE.

If there is ever a book with a "Richard and Judy bestseller" sticker emblazoned proudly on the front cover, do not read this. Put it down and walk carefully away.

This is what I should have done with The 19th Wife. My fascination with polygamists is in the same vein as my fascination with the Amish. Sort of. I don't want to be a polygamist but I suspect I would like to try being Amish. For a very short while. Maybe I just really like the show Big Love and that's where my FLDS interest stems from. Regardless, I feel that if I were either I would be a far more interesting dinner party guest than the usual line-up of atheists, agnostics and humanists.

ONWARDS.

Thus I ignored Dick and Judy on the front cover and paid actual money for this novel by David Ebershoff. It switches back and forth between the story of Ann Eliza Young who was the 19th wife of Brigham Young (if you don't know who that is you're clearly lacking some serious grounding in FLDS history) and BeckyLyn Scott, a modern-day 19th wife who is on trial for murdering her husband.

I have two main issues with this novel. In the historical segments set in the 19th century we never get a clear narrative because the author is insistent on including excerpts from diaries, newspaper articles, the encyclopaedia... it goes on. I understand mixing up the format a bit, but these chapters feel like you're reading the bibliography the author used to research the novel. BORING.

In the modern segments, BeckyLyn's arrest and trial are narrated by her son, Jordan Scott, who was thrown out of the community when he was fourteen, a common fate as it means there are more wives for the old guys. He is now in his early twenties, gay and severely disillusioned with the religion in which he was raised. Jordan speaks with the most annoying 'modern' voice I can think of. It is so obscenely forced it is very hard to take him seriously.

All authors (including you, Geraldine Brooks) please take note. If you want to learn how to write in a 'modern' voice (I understand this is hard as a lot of you spend most of your time creating historical prose), read Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace. These short interviews/stories are insane in their brilliance, searingly honest yet totally original. It feels like you're meeting one Caulfield after the next, each more disarming than the last.

It's short, so you won't have to leave your typewriters for long.

If you have a bit of an interest in Utah polygamists you could, I suppose, give this book a gander. But there has to be a better novel about them out there and when I find it I will get back to you.

Rating: 5/10.

Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee)

Much as I would love to join the almost universal, prodigious admiration that surrounds J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace, I find my feet dragging somewhat.

This concerns me. Structurally, linguistically, the novel is beyond reproach. It tells the story of David Lurie, a professor of communications at a university in Cape Town. He is forced to resign when an affair with one of his (very) young students becomes public. He leaves Cape Town and finds refuge on his daughter's farm in Grahamstown. Set in a post-Apartheid South Africa, Coetzee uses this as a backdrop for Lurie's growing awareness of his own character as a terrible event befalls the family.

Here is where we start with the problems. We know he's really into women, that he's in his 40's yet still bedding 20 year olds. But when David starts to lust after a young teenager I lost all feelings of empathy for him. In fact, I felt I couldn't have any confidence in him anymore. Admittedly, he's a character in a book, not someone I'm walking down the aisle towards, but still. You know you have serious trust issues with a character when you wonder if he's hitting on Lucy.
Who is a lesbian.
Oh, and his daughter.

The characters lack definition, humanity. After tragedy strikes and they are attempting to deal with the aftermath, soft spots begin to show, hidden traumas appear not as easily dismissed. Yet nothing resonates, it still feels cold. The characters felt like they were all cemented in place, with no room for growth or change.

The idea of animals as the canvases on which a person's humanity becomes imprinted is continuous throughout the novel. I understood this, I got the connection. I certainly didn't need to be slapped around the head with the symbolism when David graphically imagines castrating himself. I did feel a swelling of emotion when Lurie describes how the men at the incinerator beat the bodies of dead dogs to break their bones so they fit properly in the furnace. Although, again, definitely something I could have lived without.

At the novel's denouement David is composing an opera, based on Lord Byron's life. Coetzee takes pains to draw the lines of parallel between Lord Byron, his Theresa and what has occured in David's own life, but this doesn't solve of the problem of where David, a communications professor, suddenly felt he had the gumption and talent to write an opera. This seems a ridiculous, overly-romantic end to what is a very bleak novel.

Boyd Tonkin of The Independent states that Disgrace is "...perhaps the best novel to carry off the Booker in a decade." I have feelings of self-doubt, anxiety. Clearly, I'm an ill-educated moron who doesn't understand the subtle nuances of Coetzee's writing. But then I remember The Remains of the Day, The English Patient and The God of Small Things.
Yeah, whatever, BOYD.

At just 220 pages in length, I doubt there are many novelists who could pack so much intensity and detail into what is a very short novel. I understand that I am speaking from the point of view of someone who has never lived in South Africa, never experienced Apartheid and its after-effects. I completely agree that Coetzee is a masterful creator of prose.

None of this means I had to like it.

Rating: 7/10.

February Classic: Brideshead Revisited (with mention of The Secret History)

I count this as one of my favourite books, even though I haven't read it in years. Thinking I better read it again as my featured classic this month I grabbed a copy the other day and prepared myself for a reawakening of my literary senses... a re-working of my laughing muscles... a renewed enthusiasm for Sebastian and Aloysius.

Except I had the strangest feeling I'd just read it... every page I was deja vu-ing like you wouldn't believe.

Then it hit me. I haven't read Brideshead Revisited in the last five years, but I HAVE read The Secret History by Donna Tartt recently.

Zing!

I can't believe I failed to make the connection sooner. The narrators, Charles in Brideshead and Richard in Secret History, are two of the most annoying, passive and boring characters ever to be written. Both are keen to enter worlds they are not quite interesting enough to prosper in, worlds which contain the eccentricity only found amongst those that spend a great deal of time together. Charles has just come up to Oxford to read History and Richard is at an exclusive East Coast college where he eventually reads Ancient Greek. For both narrators, their university education takes a second place to the emotional journeys they subsequently take.

However...

Sebastian Flyte, the young man who lures Charles into the world of Brideshead, is one of the most original, compelling and marvellously disturbing characters to have ever been written. Whilst mention must be made of his special relationship with Aloysius, (who is, in fact, a teddy bear), it is his exuberance and gradual decline into a permanent state of melancholy whilst still possessing the ability to charm all those in his path that makes him so enigmatic. (The fact that he's totally smoking hot doesn't hurt). His alcoholism eventually leads him to what we assume is the most ridiculous yet fitting end Waugh could conjure for him, but it is a pity as the reader is loathe to let him leave the story.

What makes Waugh so utterly brilliant is that I believe he sees the world as it is, but he can imagine the ridiculous, the surreal, the escapist world that his characters wish to capture and reside in. Thus we have these magical, romantic scenes that contain Waugh's personal mixture of morality, hilarity and the eagle-eyed take of one whose phenomenal social perception would have left him laughing behind pot plants at many a cocktail party.

There is nothing wrong with the way Donna Tartt writes, but Evelyn Waugh she ain't.

Brideshead Revisited: 9/10.

(The Secret History: 7/10)

Of Cheese and E. Bronte

First off let's get the preliminaries out of the way, this is an Emily Bronte-free zone. Or, to be more exact, this is a Heathcliff-free zone. Cathy we take issue with as well, but we hold a much larger chunter with Mr. H.

It is almost, almost the same issue I have with those ridiculous people out there in the virtual world who find Severus Snape compelling/sexy/misunderstood, (Les Francais, bien sur.) Except that Snape redeems himself somewhat, (ack, hope I'm not ruining some tortoise's Harry Potter experience here. Really though, slow and steady will only leave you disappointed), and Heathcliff NEVER DOES. He is the most hideous, selfish reprobate, without any of the gorgeous maverick connotations that often come with the latter term.

I think perhaps some of my hatred of Heathcliff (and Cathy) is an extension of my dislike of the layout of the novel. Wuthering Heights is no structural masterpiece. Cathy's early death means that the reader never actually gets a chance to emotionally invest in her relationship with Heathcliff. (And Emily, Heathcliff talking to her ghost and planning to exhume her do not count as relationship progression.)

Of course, we then come to Bronte's complete inability to think of names for her characters. Seriously, she came up with 'Heathcliff' and then had a complete and utter mental block and had to use the same names of the original characters in part 1 for all the other characters in part 2. I know the importance of lineage and family in the story, but when I can't work out if one of the Lintons is courting his sister or his cousin or his niece it's VERY disconcerting.

Hailed as one of the best love stories of the period and in fact IN THE WHOLE HISTORY OF LITERATURE if you listen to certain misguided fools, I put forward another argument. This is melodramatic drivel. Twilight and Romeo and Juliet at least attempt to toe the line of decency, although they do overstep it on occasion. The line is not even VISIBLE to Wuthering Heights.

If you're going to do cheese, do it well. Make a minimum of one of the characters in the relationship likeable, relatable or at least believable. Make the sexual tension appealing rather than abhorrent. I do not want to read about greasy-haired leers from the corner or fever-soaked hallucinations that lead to death rather than a romp in the bedroom.

The best part of this novel is at the beginning, with two very choice quotes from Mr Lockwood's narration.. the first being when "Mr. Heathcliff and his man climbed the cellar steps with vexatious phlegm"... hah. The second is when he asks Mrs Heathcliff if her favourite animals are what he assumes to be a pile of sleeping cats on a cushion. "Unluckily, it was a heap of dead rabbits."

Seriously, stop there. That's all you need to read. The rest is just AWFUL.

Rating: 4/10

The Outlander (Gil Adamson)

Below is a review I wrote for The Outlander awhile ago. You could read it and be inspired to grab Adamson's novel, but you probably just need this: Yeah, the heroine's hard to like, the descriptive prose is a bit overdone and Anthony Hopkins would fit into a number of roles when and if this is made into a film; but this book is special and quite possibly brilliant, so get over the other things.

There.

If you need more convincing, the tosh is below.

"Reading The Outlander was like reading the spawn of Cormac McCarthy and Charles Frazier, the perfect blending of a harsh, North American landscape and a cast of flawed, strange and seemingly miraculous characters.

It is 1903 and Mary Boulton is on the run through Alberta, Canada. She is fleeing her brothers-in-law, red-headed twins intent on exacting revenge for the murder of their younger brother. The twins are rarely referred to by name and Mary is more often than not just 'the widow', creating a mysterious aura that surrounds these three characters and permeates throughout the novel. On her journey Mary meets many whose kidness overwhelms and frightens her, but it is William Moreland who reawakens any humanity the widow may have left in her after the death of her family and the harsh existence she has carved out for herself since.

The momentum which Adamson creates to propel us through Mary's story is constant. The reader must make a concerted effort to slow down and savour the breathtaking and unique voice in which Adamson writes. Mary is an eccentric heroine, a pipe-smoking, halllucinating young woman who, although victimised by her demonised brothers-in-law, may ultimately be outside the boundaries of atonement for what she has done.

Exploring themes of isolation and redemption amongst a stark landscape that Adamson describes with refreshingly new eyes, The Outlander is a hard and unforgiving thriller wrought with the delicate and complicated prose of a master storyteller. This is a book that other books have failed to be in the past and authors will strive to emulate in the future."

Rating: 9/10

Five Quarters of the Orange (Joanne Harris)

Hmmm... I really don't know where to go with this review. In one corner we have evocative writing, memorable characters and a relatively solid plotline. In the other corner we have an elusive pike (yes, the fish), a hatred of clocks never explained or justified, migraine-inducing oranges, a heroine with the face of a toad (by her own admission) and a mother who makes the SS seem the lesser of two evils.

Not that these make the novel bad per se, but it's all a bit much. I put the book down and breathed a sigh of relief that I had finished and could move on. Except I can't move on because that pike keeps popping up in my mind and unsettling me.
Sure, I like being creeped out.
Gollum?
Genius.
Voldemort?
Fabulous.
Vampires?
Obviously.
But a freaking huge, ancient, evil, intelligent pike that can grant wishes and curse people?
NO THANK YOU.
Yadiyadiyada... we still have Harris' trademark magical realism, the interweaving of recipes with the story, that description of children as 'dark and sly' that she seems to favour (I believe blondes have been known to have the occasional immoral moment); but... no. Tolerable, but NO.

N.B. Earhart loves everything Harris has ever written and vehemently disagrees with this review.
Pick a side.

Rating: 6/10.