Author Archives: The Reading Bug

Miscellany

Comment: Reading at Eton

I’ve written about competitive reading lists a couple of years ago. That sport has been given a new tweak by the retiring headmaster of Eton, who in addition to a long list of books on subjects other than literature, has said that by the age of 16 he would expect on of his students to have read the following:

Gulliver’s Travels – Swift
David Copperfield – Dickens
The Age of Innocence – Wharton
Atonement – Amis
Never let me go – Ishiguro
The Bonfire of the Vanities – Wolfe
L’elegance du herrison
La sombra del viento
The Master and Margarita
O Crime de Padre Amaro
Boiled Wonderland and the end of the world

Tschick Wolfgang Herrndorf
Nest of Spiders Calvino
Father Amaro de Queiros
Wolf Totem Jiang Rong
Beirut 39 Shimon and Al-Shaykh

There are some striking features of this list – the emphasis on foreign literature compared to English; the neglect of women writers, the focus on the novel to the exclusion of all other forms of literature (Shakespeare, anyone?) and so on. But apart from all this fairly predictable nonsense, something slightly more insidious occurs to me – with some honorable exceptions there’s little here that is genuinely stretching. There are also some deliberately obscure texts – Wolf Totem for example is virtually impossible to find in bookshops (I have tried) and has no reviews on Amazon (compared for example to the 800+ for the Shadow of the Wind). I strongly suspect there is some deliberate obscurantism going on here.

 

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Miscellany

Comment: Categorising books

Some book bloggers award the books they review marks out of five or ten. Others use a star system. I’ve always resisted doing this – it seems a bit simplistic – but having racked up a hundred or so reviews I think I have developed a scoring system of my own. It goes a bit like this:

  • Brilliant. A classic. Will be read for many decades to come. I don’t think any of the books I have read this year fall into this category,but of course some of the “interesting but flawed” books might get promoted after a few years.
  • Interesting but flawed. Quite a few of the books I have read and reviewed this year fall into this category, including Will Self’s “The Book of Dave”, Richard Flanagan’s “The Narrow Road to the deep North” and David Mitchell’s “The 1000 Autumns of Jacob de Zoet”. These are all books that have something interesting to say, and try and look at the art of novel writing with a fresh perspective, but at the same time have weaknesses that are hard to overlook. Over time some of these weaknesses fade, and the reader comes to appreciate the strengths even more. This has happened to me (to a certain extent) with J K Rowling’s “The Casual Vacancy”, where a bit of perspective has allowed me to appreciate what she was trying to do, and forgive some of the crasser aspects of the novel.
  • A dropped ball. A bad book by a good author. For example “Children Act”, Ian McEwan; McEwan doesn’t stop being a great author by writing a disappointing book, but it’s still a disappointing book
  • Lionel Asbo. A book with no redeeming features whatsoever – “Lionel Asbo” is the only book in this category, but it deserves one of its own just to emphasise its awfulness
  • Why? Books that leave me puzzled as to why the author bothered writing them. Books usually go into this category shortly after I finish them, but often don’t stay there, as I slowly (or otherwise) make my mind up about them.
  • Dialling it in. A mediocre book by an author who has proven that he or she can write so much better, and where the unavoidable suspicion lingers that the author wasn’t trying that hard, or had other things on their mind, such as a possible TV/film adaptation – examples include “How to Build a Girl”, Caitlin Moran, “The Black-eyed Blonde” Benjamin Black.
  • A guilty pleasure. Books that I ought to be embarassed to enjoy, but which I nevertheless did. Terry Pratchett’s work used to be in this category, until I was joined by other adult readers.
  • Irritating. “Moab is my Washpot” annoyed me immensely.

More useful than stars or marks out of ten?

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Book review, History, Hugh Trevor Roper, Second World War, The Last Days of Adolf Hitler

The Last Days of Adolf Hitler by Hugh Trevor Roper

Probably the last thing the world needs is another book about the Nazis, but I bought this (second hand) at the same time as the Bullock biography, read it, and it seems daft not to review it for risk of repetition. It does overlap with the later chapters of the Bullock book to some extent, and indeed is cited in it, but is quite distinct in other respects.

This book was originally commissioned as an investigation into (you guessed it) the last days of Adolf, specifically to address the rumours that he had escaped Berlin and was lurking somewhere in South America. The absence of a body, and the Russian refusal to clarify some of the confusion around his last days, fuelled this speculation. Trevor Roper puts this all neatly to bed, and while conspiracy theories linger to this day, unsurprisingly, they have never had the potency one might expect given Hitler’s status as the ultimate bogey-man.

To pad things out a little, the book opens with a summary of Hitler’s court, describing the principal characters and the bizarre wider cast of astrologers, masseurs, vegetarian chefs and the like. This is reasonably standard stuff, but where this book really takes off is in the almost minute by minute account of the last days of the Third Reich. I couldn’t avoid speculating how the British Government might have ended had things gone badly in 1941. Hitler’s choices once again seem hard to fathom. if he wanted to fight to the bitter end, why not leave Berlin, join some of the surviving German forces, which remained considerable, and fight on? Instead he holed up in a city destined to be taken by the Russians, and then killed himself rather than being captured.

As a reference work this is second to none. As a read it is well-written and relatively short. If you want to know about Hitler’s last days there are probably more up to date accounts available, as well as plenty of documentaries and the like, but nevertheless I am quite happy to have added this to my collection.

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21st century literature, Book review

Supplementary: A bit more about “A Spot of Bother”

The primary character in Mark Haddon’s “A Spot of Bother”, Douglas Hall, is 57. Much of the “humour” of the novel derives from his unhinged behaviour as he suffers from a nervous breakdown/depressive episode. I wrote yesterday about how this is in poor taste, as is the humour wrung from people’s shock horror reaction to a gay couple kissing. The novel is less than ten years old, but it had more of a 70’s sitcom feel to it in these passages. But what I wanted to write about in a bit more detail here is the portrayal of Douglas. Haddon tells us he is 57, but then writes him at least ten years older. He is retired, which of course is eminently possible at 57, but he has pretty much given up on life. He potters around, building a shed, watching videos and taking an interest in bird spotting. He finds the modern world confusing and challenging, and when he has sex with his wife it takes them both by surprise.

57 isn’t old.

Why does this matter? Because when the central character is unrealistic, hard to like but also hard to believe in, the whole book suffers. Without a convincing portrayal in this role the rest of the characters struggle. Some are better than others – the daughter Katie for example is well drawn, and the wife, Jean, with her badly kept secret affair was also believeable. But given the caricature that is Douglas and Jean’s son Jamie, I wasn’t convinced Haddon had ever met a gay man.

Of course, having written the above I then checked the Internet (does it age me that I still capitalise Internet?  Of course it does) expecting to find out that Haddon was gay, but it appears not. Interestingly I found some confirmation of my observations about reviewers – so for example the Sydney Morning Herald said “while the characterisation can’t be faulted, A Spot of Bother fails to fulfil its early promise. What initially shapes up as a disquietingly soft stab in the human heart turns obvious and formulaic. Haddon’s examination of the contours of love is forensic in its insight but a sentimental undertow proves too alluring to resist” and the Guardian said “it never tries to be much more than good jokes or funny situations….readers could be forgiven for wanting – and expecting – more.” Selectively quoting reviewers to support your position is cheating, and I rarely do it, but there was something about the half hearted quotes on the cover that led me to suspect my feelings were shared.

In his earlier career Haddon wrote exclusively for children. The migration from that to adult novels obviously isn’t easy, and some of the weaknesses of this novel could be seen as deriving from the habits of writing for children – the cheap laughs, the weakly drawn characters, the tendency towards slapstick. So perhaps rather than seeing this as a follow up novel to “A Curious Incident” it is better thought of as a transition novel from writing for kids to writing for adults?

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21st century literature, A Spot of Bother, Book review, Mark Haddon

A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

This was Haddon’s second novel, published in 2006 after his hugely successful “A Curious Incident”. I have reviewed his third novel, “The Red House” on this blog previously, and was optimistic that this would be equally readable. Largely it was – the very short chapters and frequent changes of narrative perspective meant the pages passed quickly, and I finished the near 500 pages in a couple of days. This would normally an indication that the novel was well written and enjoyable, but I finished this with a vague feeling that something wasn’t quite right. What could it be?

Well, to start with, there’s that awful title, a cheesy pun (the principal character has a spot which he thinks is cancerous, and which triggers a series depressive episode) reminiscent of a Norman Wisdom film or episode of Some Mothers (“Betty, I’m having a spot of bother”). The author avoids putting much effort into giving the characters a back story, which is sketched in very faintly, simply by making occasional reference to “that time the dog got run over in Rhyl” or “the time we crashed the mini in Copenhagen” (made up examples, but you get the idea). I flicked through the book at random and picked out these examples (not made up this time) and realised that Haddon uses this technique a lot more than I thought:
“several years ago when he had fallen from a stepladder, broken his elbow on the rockery, and passed out, a sensation which he remembered as being not unpleasant (a view from the Tamar bridge in Plymouth had featured prominently for some reason)” (page 1
“He had not felt like this since John Zinewski’s Fireball had capsized several years ago and he had found himself trapped underwater with his ankle knotted in a loop of rope.” (2)
“Betty’s brother, the one who died in that horrible factory accident, had made a hat out of a napkin.” (52)
“”Got pulled over by police on the M5 once…wingwalking on a Volvo roofrack”” (66)
“Coming home from university… spilling that paint over the cat, losing her passport in Malta.” (233)
And so relentlessly on. All families have disaster stories, enhanced over time, which cumulatively build the family history. They are important. But a novelist needs surely to make more of them than this. At first I thought we would get round to visiting these incidents and finding in them the key to the principal characters various neuroses – there has to be a reason why a bit of eczema causes George to have a full-blown nervous breakdown – but it never happens. I don’t mind doing a bit of work to fill in gaps left by an author, but this was too much – the characters were cut-outs who behaved as they did for no apparent reason, take it or leave it.
There is an attempt at farce here, reminiscent of Tom Sharpe. People mix anti-depressants and alcohol with inevitable results, dog poo is trodden in, a toddler’s toy is tripped over, a gay couple kiss and outrage the religious aunt and uncle, and so on. The wedding, which is the drawn-out climax of the novel ends in a fight, sex, and tears, as we always knew it would.
Being charitable, I prefer to think of this novel as a dry run for the much more controlled “Red House”.
PS: like most contemporary novels the cover and back cover are covered in quotes from reviewers. You get the sense that my luke-warm response was shared – the Guardian described the book as “readable” and “brisk”, the Telegraph “entertaining” and the Sunday Times “crisp, light” (like a white wine?). Damned with faint praise.
 
 
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21st century literature, Book review, David Nicholls, Us

Book review: Us, by David Nicholls

David Nicholls’s previous two novels, “Starter for Ten” and “One Day” have both been made into moderately successful films, so I don’t think it is being overly cynical to conclude that the setting for this novel – a series of European capitals and art galleries – was at least in part influenced by the author’s anticipation of sealing another film deal. Once you open with that cynicism, it is hard to stop. But I think you should. OK, the chapters are all extremely short, designed I suspect for the attention deficient, but the principal character, Douglas, who is also our narrator, is not an endearing character. He is a bore, and a bit of a bully. He is inattentive towards his wife, and positively negligent of his 17 year old son. He knows he has traded up in marrying his artistic wife, and never overcomes that expectation that sooner or later she is going to realise it too.

And so it comes to pass, when shortly before their son leaves for university, and it is suggested, for good, his wife announces apropos of nothing, that she wants to leave him. In a desperate, if photogenic, attempt to save his marriage he takes her on the tour mentioned above, although for reasons hard to imagine he thinks it is a good idea to take their son as well. The tour goes badly from the off, and never recovers.

I thought I knew how this novel would end, long before it did, and I was wrong. Nicholls avoids the cliched happy ending, and quite possibly forfeits the film deal I cynically accused him of engineering earlier. (Although if it does translate to film then they will probably rewrite the ending.)

This is pretty undemanding stuff, not quite chick-lit (or whatever the male equivalent is) but not many steps up either. Nicholls writes quite slowly, so I won’t have to make the decision as to whether to bother with his next novel for a while yet, but if I had to make it today I’d look for something a bit more challenging.

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Book review, Caitlin Moran, How to Build a Girl

How to Build a Girl by Caitlin Moran

“How to Build a Girl” is, as the title suggests, a semi-autobiographical account of a girl’s teenage years of self discovery or invention. The close similarity of the title to Moran’s earlier, non-fictional book, “How to be a Woman” has led some readers to see this book as a sequel of sorts, which is entirely natural. But that expectation leads to disappointment, because “Girl” is in many ways simply a novelisation of “Woman”. It’s entertaining, undoubtedly, but ploughs the same narrow furrow that Moran has made her own. (by way of example, her column in yesterday’s Times (29/5/15) is on “the things people from a large family know that other people don’t”, such as how to make meals go further.)

In the introduction to “How to Build a Girl” Moran claims that the novel is fictional, however close the apparent parallels with her life may appear. This leaves the reader guessing – did this or that lurid incident in the novel really happen, or is it invention? Are these just a series of pub tales woven into a “kind-of” novel, half-truths with just the names changed? I think I can mostly spot where she moves into invention quite easily – the tone changes, becoming less sincere and believable. To be fair I don’t think I am the target audience for this novel – which is a pity, because I usually love Moran’s work. She is at her best when she writes about social issues – her articles on the bedroom tax for example are outstanding – and while there is some social commentary here (we get it, growing up on benefit in 1990’s Wolverhampton was grim) it usually takes second place to the shall we say “bawdier” content.

The narrator of “Girl” self consciously reinvents herself as “Dolly Wilde” and becomes a music critic for a popular music magazine, not a million miles away from the trajectory of Moran’s own early career. This is the so-called “girl building” which the novel purports to be about. This struck me as contrived – do we really all so self-consciously adopt a persona with costume, mannerisms and language to suit? Her brother Krissi by comparison is a well realised character who seems to know himself and has no need to develop an external shell, and makes the point that the narrator’s advice is not an instruction manual. Normally that would be blindingly obvious, but the parallels between this novel and Moran’s earlier work could easily lead people to miss the irony. Self invention is perhaps not the best way to build a girl, even if she gets there in the end. Incidentally, the fact that Caitlin, sorry Johanna, doesn’t notice that Krissi is gay (despite it being waved in her face), is one of the nicer, subtler touches in the novel.

In the acknowledgements at the end of this novel, Moran gives the usual thanks, and writes about how difficult the novel was to produce. This is surprising – it gives the appearance of being effortless, and not particularly substantial, but when she describes telling her agent “I can’t write this book..I’ve made a terrible error” ten times, I believe her. Making something new out of “another book full of wanking and shagging” (her emphasis) was swimming too close to the shore. She is a better writer than this, and just needs to find a new topic. Fiction sells, but is it where she is at her best?

 

P.S. Johanna’s career as a music critic is based upon her being horribly abusive towards all the bands she reviews, and late in the book she has an epiphany of sorts when she realises that this is not the writer she wants to be. Being critical of bands you like is dishonest and unworthy. It did make me wonder whether my reviews on this blog where at times unnecessarily critical, and whether I should focus more on the positive aspects of the books I read. So if nothing else it was a useful corrective to that tendency, even if I have not been as negative as Dolly Wilde.

 

 

 

 
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21st century literature, Book review, dystopian fiction, The Book of Dave, Will Self

The Book of Dave by Will Self

“The Book of Dave” has been on my “should get round to reading at some point” list for some time now, having read the blurb and been curious about where the author would take the idea. Having said that, the scenario of this novel is startlingly unoriginal. The world has suffered a catastrophe, and the small number of survivors have reverted to barbarism. They base their rituals on a surviving text, the Book of Dave, the demented ramblings of a London cabbie, who in the novel’s most contrived scene decides to have his ravings printed on  metals plates to ensure their survival. Of course he did. (“Red Dwarf” did this much better, the cat civilisation basing all their beliefs on Dave Lister’s half remembered daydreams.)
Self created a language for the survivors, Mokni, which is relatively easy to follow if you speak estuary English, and take the time to sound out the words. The lexicon at the back of this Penguin edition is also helpful, if you know it is there! I was going to write about how cleverly Self allows the reader to decode the specialist terms he uses – moto, opare, moped, etc – but I stumbled across these translations about 400 pages in, by which time I suspect many readers will have abandoned ship (or pedalo). Most of this new language derives from Dave’s experienced of driving a cab, so people are fares, the sun is a foglamp, full beam or otherwise, and so on.

Continue reading →

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A Study in Tyranny, Alan Bullock, Biography, Book review, Bullock, History, Hitler, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, Second World War

Hitler, A Study in Tyranny, by Alan Bullock

This is probably the definitive Hitler biography, against which all others are judged. It was originally published in 1952, seven short years after the end of the Second World War, and despite some subsequent updating; it inevitably shows its age. Since 1952 we have learnt a lot more about the history of the Third Reich, and indeed Hitler’s personal history – for example in this edition the fate of Martin Bormann is unknown, the number of deaths in the Holocaust is given at 4.2 million, and the whereabouts of Hitler’s remains was undetermined. So was this worth perserving with through 800 odd pages, when there are more up to date biographies available?

The point is of course moot, because I did (persevere, that is) but the question goes to the merits or otherwise of this text, despite its limitations. I learnt some (a few) things I did not know about the history of the Third Reich, but was left noticing some significant gaps – things I knew about the period which were not included, for no obvious good reason. Let’s start with the former. Of the 5 million Russians taken prisoner of war by the Germans, over 2 million died in captivity, from hunger and cold, often as a deliberate policy by the Germans. (More detail on this on page 696 of the book). That slaughter is never mentioned in programmes about the Second World War in my experience. The relationship with Mussolini was not something I knew much about, nor the very different relationship with Franco, alive and in power when this book came out of course.

But equally there are those omissions. The Holocaust is covered, of course, but in a very detached way. Tracing the origins of Hitler’s anti-Semitism, and the way it took hold across Germany, deserved more focus than is given here. Equally, I know that Hitler began experimenting with euthanasia of the sick and disabled long before the outbreak of war – this was nothing to do with lebensraum, or indeed anti-Semitism, but about racial purity, which Bullock never really focusses on. The slaughter of trade unionists, gays, Jehovah’s Witnesses, gypsies, and so on, also doesn’t get mentioned, let alone explored. Hitler’s control of Germany once elected Chancellor is worthy of closer examination. His recognition that power rested in institutions and organisations through the country which needs to be smashed, closed down, or assimilated was surely the key to his success in turning a minority Cabinet – his first Cabinet in January 1933 had only 3 Nazi members, including himself – into one in which national plebiscites showed hysterical levels of support over 99%.

There are some eternal questions about Hitler which challenge any biographer or historian of the period. Why did Germany elect such a man? Why did no-one properly understand the risk he faced and do something about it? How did he turn a tiny party of workers (the German Workers Party, which became the National Socialist Party in the early 1920’s) into a continent-dominating machine, able to command devastating levels of support? It can’t just be about charisma and luck, surely? How could the extermination camp guards kiss their children goodnight? Why was his personal life such a blank canvas, and was he religious in any way? We get a little closer to the answers here, by following the story from rural Austria to the Chancellery and beyond, but many of the mysteries and myths remain. I suspect much of the “traditional” features of the Hitler story can be traced to this book. There are things everyone is taught about Hitler, and other things that are simply ignored. I suppose what I am saying is that there was a familiarity about this book. Each phase of Hitler’s life came on schedule, with few surprises or revelations. Is this book the source of the orthodox account of Hitler’s life? I suspect so.

Just one other point: there is a slight tendency in this book, subtle but noticeable, to praise Hitler just a little too much. Positive comments are almost always followed up with condemnation, but his “achievements” are given more than sufficient attention. For example, on page 724 (yes I did get that far) Bullock writes very positively about Hitler’s prescience about the Cold War: “No-one, looking back at German anti-Bolshevik propaganda from the era of the Cold War, can fail to be struck by the aptness of much of the argument”. I accept that a biography that simply portrayed Hitler as a monster would be over-simplifying things, but the tone here is, at times, just a little too positive for my liking. Here’s another example: Bullock writes at length and at several points about Hitler’s ability to “read the mind” of his audiences (for example, page 722, “Hitler’s gifts as an orator had always depended on his flair for sensing what was in the minds of his audience.” Now presumably this is metaphorical rather than literal, but what is the metaphor for? How was Hitler able to tune into what his audience wanted, and give it to them? You could probably work this out through some close textual analysis, whereby he tries out themes and then either drops them or develops them depending on the audience’s response, but that is not attempted here. Instead Hitler is just credited with a supernatural ability to read collective minds. I’m not saying Bullock was a supporter of Hitler in any shape or form, simply that attitudes towards him (Adolf, not Alan) have hardened in later generations.
I really ought to read a modern Hitler biography for contrast, and probably will in time, but for now I need something lighter!
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19th Century literature, Book review, Bronte, Bronte Sisters, Charlotte Bronte, http://schemas.google.com/blogger/2008/kind#post, The Professor

The Professor by Charlotte Bronte (2)

Written in 1846, although not published during her lifetime, The Professor is a largely autobiographical account of Charlotte’s two years teaching in Belgium. Her attempt to narrate the story through a male character is at best a mixed success. There is, as with Villette, a degree of wish fulfillment, as the romance is successfully concluded with marriage, a child, and a comfortable country cottage. Reader, I married him. If this was all The Professor had to offer then its obscurity would be understandable, however well drawn the romance is. However, there are other elements that draw the attention.

One of the minor characters is Mr Hunsden (if he is given a first name, I missed it), an acquaintance and latterly friend of Mr Crimsworth, the eponymous professor. Despite being relatively prosperous, Hunsden is undoubtedly a radical. He describes England in terms which would surely have been shocking to Victorian England in its Imperious pomp

“A little, corrupt, venal, lord-and-king-cursed nation, full of mucky pride… and helpless pauperism; rotten with abuses, worm-eaten with prejudices. ….Come to England and see ….examine the footprints of our august aristocracy; see how they walk in blood, crushing hearts as they go. Just put your head in at English cottage doors; get a glimpse of famine crouched torpid in black hearthstones, of Disease lying bare on beds without coverlets, of Infamy wantoning viciously with Ignorance, though indeed Luxury is her favourite paramour, and princely halls are dearer to her than thatched hovels”. 175
This is purple but very effective prose which Dickens and other observers of Victorian England’s darker side would hesitate to use. The speech is dismissed by Frances Henri, the Swiss teacher and fiance of the Professor to whom it is addressed, and the theme is largely dropped.
In contrast the novel also has a vigorous anti-Catholic element. Frances is the spokesperson for this point of view:
“I know nothing of the arcana of the Roman Catholic religion, and I am not a bigot in matters of theology, but I suspect the root of all this precocious impurity, so obvious, so general in Popish countries, is to be found in the discipline, if not the docutrines, of the Church of Rome. …These girls belonged to what are called the respectable ranks of society. They had all been carefully brought up, yet was the mass of the mentally depraved.” (page 71)
“ I long to live once more among Protestants. They are more honest than Catholics. A Romish school is a building with porous walls, a hollow floor, a false ceiling. Every room in this house Monsieur has eye holes and ear holes, and what the house is the inhabitants are – very treacherous.” (page 106/7)
It is easy to forget in liberal, 21st century Britain how virulent anti-Catholicism was in this country for centuries – only 60 years earlier London had been torn apart by the Gordon riots (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Riots) – Frances’s anti-Catholicism can presumably be read as a simple reflection of Charlotte’s own feelings.
Finally, there is room in the novel for Charlotte’s defence of her occupation as a novelist. She clearly felt the prejudice against women writers deeply, as she puts these words in the mouths of another female character:
“It appears to me that ambition, literary ambition especially, is not a feeling to be cherished in the mind of a woman. Would not Mlle Henri be much safer and happier if taught to believe that in the quiet discharge of scial duties consists her real vocation, than if stimulated to aspire after applause and publicity? She may never marry, scanty as are her resources, obscure as are her connections, uncertain as is her health (for I think her consumptive).” (page 111) How many times must she have heard these sentiments, or suspected them. The final parenthesis – “for I think her consumptive” is sadly chilling.
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