Category Archives: 21st century literature

21st century literature, Booker Prizewinner

The Sense of an Ending – Julian Barnes, 2011

Read in a Vintage books edition 2012.

Plot outline – Part 1

The narrator of the novel, Tony Webster, looking back over 40 years to his youth, tells us about his group of friends at school in the 1960s. The tight knit group is joined by a slightly detached fourth member, Adrian. Adrian sees the world from a different perspective from the others, but is clearly very bright, and goes on to Cambridge. Tony goes to Bristol, another friend to Sussex, and the fourth goes into his father’s business (Barnes having fun there with the subtle gradations of university attainment and status.) Just before they leave school another boy commits suicide, ostensibly because he has got his girlfriend pregnant. This is a portent of things to come, a rather clunking clue in fact. There are along the way some irritating “if this were a novel” comments from the narrator, drawing our attention to the artificiality of the construct, just in case we weren’t aware that we are reading a book rather than watching real life unfold.

At university Tony has a relationship with a girl, Veronica, including an awkward weekend stay at her parents’ house. He later introduces her to his former school-friends; shortly afterwards they separate, and shortly after that she and Adrian get involved. Hearing from them about the relationship, Tony writes a spiteful letter cursing them. In the end it appears to have been a literal curse, because Adrian commits suicide. At the time we are told this was an existential act of someone unable to see the point of life, but it doesn’t take much to detect that it might be more complicated than that.

Part 2

Forty years flash past, and we are brought to the present. As this is a routine and predictable discursion on the fallibility of memory, we know that the way Tony remembers things is unlikely to be an accurate recollection of the past (even Tony knows and acknowledges this). It comes as no surprise therefore when these events are given a new focus. This is precipitated by the death of Veronica’s mother, who bequeaths Tony £500 “blood money” (Veronica’s description) and Adrian’s diary. We are left to guess how she came into possession of this document, but Veronica has requisitioned it and refuses to honour her mother’s will.

Tony pesters Veronica for the diary, which leads to several abrupt, uncomfortable meetings. She persistently tells T he “doesn’t get it” – there is clearly some dark secret from their youth that has yet to emerge. She takes him to meet a disabled person who we are led to believe is her child. Finally, in the last scenes from the novel it is suggested that the disabled person is Veronica’s brother, the product of a late pregnancy of her mother’s (am I the only one offended by the simple leap that equates late pregnancy with an undefined disability?) It is also suggested, but never made explicit, that the child’s father was Adrian, and that Tony’s spiteful letter had been the catalyst of this affair, which in turn had led to Adrian’s suicide and Veronica’s embitterment.

Although Barnes is trying hard to be modern here – having a flawed narrator retelling tales of their past through the perspective of the present, and then having to re-evaluate that initial view because of an unexpected catalyst – is in many ways very traditional.

Does it work as a novel? Well the Booker judges obviously though so, for what that is worth. But the book is not without its problems. First of these is Veronica. Her behaviour is irrational. Even if we fill in some of the gaps of the story in line with Barnes’ s hints and assume that Tony’s letter to Adrian was the catalyst for an affair with veronica’s mother, and subsequently Adrian’s suicide, this still asks us to accept that:

a)       Veronica believes that Tony’s letter was the sole reason for the affair and suicide, and that none of the principal actors bore virtually any responsibility for their behaviour. She maintains a relationship with Sarah, her mother, until her death in old age, despite the suggestion that she (Sarah) had stolen her boyfriend from her, borne him a child, and provoked his suicide.

b)       She would bottle up her anger and resentment for forty years without saying anything to Tony

c)       When finally her mother dies and the diary comes to light she is willing to show Tony the consequences of his actions, but not simply tell him. If he doesn’t “get it” telling him he doesn’t get it seems a pretty stupid waste of time.

None of this is in any way psychologically convincing. It just doesn’t ring true. Barnes tries to disguise this by showing us events solely from Tony’s point of view, which works for a while, but not after some reflection on the puzzles he sets us at the end of the novel.

Some other observations:

·          The novel opens with a series of vivid images, almost all of which relate to water in one way or another, including steam, the Severn Bore, and bodily fluids being washed down a basin. What is the significance of this symbolism – is water being used to represent memory, or time? 

·          There are some strong connections between this novel and Amis’s On Chesil Beach – a relatively banal incident in the early but unliberated 1960’s looked back on in older age and seen in a different light.

·          The novel is to my mind about a third too long – the meetings between Veronica and Tony where she seethes with anger about his betrayal could easily be collapsed into a single, much more powerful meeting. This would have made it a long short story rather than a novella, and disqualified it for the Booker – is Barnes really that cynical?

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21st century literature, Anne Enright, Book review, Booker Prizewinner, The Gathering

The Gathering by Anne Enright, 2007

Read in the Vintage 2008 edition shown

The decision of the 2007 Booker prize judges to give this book the nod over On Chesil Beach must rank as one of the all-time puzzling decisions of a prize panel. Because this was lame. The novel’s central premise is very traditional – a family member has committed suicide, and the clan gathers to mourn their loss and review his life. This is shown us by Veronica Hegarty, the book’s narrator, sister of the suicide, Liam. We are told early on that Liam’s death can be traced back to an event in his childhood. The traditional dark secret revolves around her grandmother, Ada – I was irresistibly reminded of another Ada, great-aunt Ada Doom, who saw something nasty in the woodshed, and has never been the same since.

The reveal – that Liam was sexually assaulted by a friend of the grandmother. (he was staying with his grandmother as his mother went through yet another pregnancy) is underwhelming. The line between this assualt and his eventual suicide decades later is never drawn – in fact Liam is a very lightly sketched character, and we understand little about his life and why he took it. The disclosure of this incident from the past is not the turning point we are led to expect – it is not revealed to the wider family, and nothing comes from it.

Stylistically the prose is wooden and at times comically so. When the narrator has sex with her husband she describes lying there “quartered like a chicken”. The narrator says of the young undertaker “You could unpeel him and he would still be true” (75) which is not just a whacky metaphor but gibberish isn’t it? Whether this disjointed narrative is supposed to reflect the distressed psyche of the narrator is besides the point – it is still clumsyily written.
The central character is unsympathetic and the fact that her mother often is unable remember is unsurprising.
Novels where nothing happens, and the events just consist of unstructured memory – and the point that Veronica’s memory is flawed, and is constantly being reconstructed is laboured to death here – flowing back and forth across the events of the past – are getting tired. I am really crying out for a novel where something happens and the characters are believable and interesting. Not much to ask for is it?

P.S. As with The Accidental, negative reviews on Amazon outweigh the positive – and I genuinely don’t believe this is just Booker bashing.

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21st century literature, Ali Smith, The Accidental

The Accidental by Ali Smith

This novel is set in 2003 and follows the Smart family, on holiday in a rather tatty cottage in Norfolk. The (step)father, Michael, is a university professor and serial adulterer; the mother, Eve, is a (blocked) writer, imagining how the lives of people killed in the war would have ended had they lived; the son, Magnus, is in his late teens, and is suffering from crushing depression having been involved in cyber-bullying that led to the suicide of a girl at his school, and finally Astrid, is a bright but a little obsessive 12 year old.
The narrative is told alternately through their eyes, and as no concession is made to explaning context, the story emerges in fits and starts and not in chronological order. This structure is fresh and keeps the reader engaged – there is no way you could read this novel casually.
Into their broken world arrives a messiah-like character, Amber, who proceeds to kill or cure the family. Magnus is cured of his suicidal depression by heathly bouts of sex; Astrid is shown the world through a new, mainly paranoid, pair of eyes (the scene where Astrid and Amber take pictures of security cameras at Norwich station, freaking out the security staff, is genuinely funny); Michael and Eve are shown how unheathly and disfunctional their lives are less directly, but the result is still transformative. 
I though this was a clever, well written, funny book. But I was hugely disappointed in the ending. I know it is depressingly traditional of me to look for ends to be tied up, but I was left with nothing resolved, and not knowing who Amber was, why she picks on the Smart’s for her shock therapy, apart from the fact they needed it.
After writing the above I checked out the reader reviews on Amazon. This is probably the first novel I have ever seen where the one star reviews out-scored the five star. Usually if people hate a book they don’t bother to review it – or even finish it. But this seems to have been widely loathed. I can see why some of the stylistic techniques might have been irritating, and I understand that some of the characters, especally the philandering don, were not engaging. But the contrast with some of the other contemporary fiction I have been reading this week was stark.
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21st century literature, Booker Prizewinner

The Inheritance of Loss – Kiran Desai

Read in a 2007 Penguin edition.
Kiran Desai’s novel is in many ways a very traditional exploration of modern India, but a dramatic contrast to White Tiger. The book is set in the 1980s in the shadows of the Himalayas, and follows the affairs of a small prosperous household – a retired judge, his cook, and his teenage granddaughter.
This is not a plot-driven book. From the time of the opening chapters to the novel’s conclusion only a small amount of time has passed, and there has been little incident. Most of the narrative is devoted to following the characters’ back stories – how the judge went to university in England, how his granddaughter’s parents died in Russia, and so on. Most of this is extraordinarily predictable – everything plays out just as we expect, with little happening and minor dramas being created out of minor events such as the loss of a dog. The more dramatic events of the time are shown but appear largely incidental. In any event the time structure of the narrative has already shown us that no-one central to the story will be affected.
Although the setting allows for some exploration of the politics of northern India, and in particular the struggle for independence of the Gurkhas, this largely feels like window dressing for the centre of the novel, the lives of the main characters and the cast of eccentrics that circles them. The book really only comes to life when it jumps across to follow the cook’s son struggling to make a life for himself in New York.  I wasn’t surprised to subsequently read that this is the author’s current home.
This has all been done before, and better, most obviously by Rushdie. The contrast with White Tiger though is interesting. Here the portrayal of India remains convincingly honest; the police are corrupt, there is crushing poverty, which robs people of their dignity, tourists are crass and insensitive – but at the same time the country has its beauty and the people have their charm, even when you have to struggle to find it. The book is well written, and the descriptive prose is very well done. For me this was not enough, and while this novel was head and shoulders above White Tiger, it nevertheless disappointed. Incidentally I found the title pompous and patronising – yes everyone has experienced loss of some kind of another, and it has had an affect on their situation and personality, and yes there is an obvious read across to India itself, but the same could be said of just about anyone and any country.
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21st century literature, Booker Prizewinner

The White Tiger – Aravind Adiga

The White Tiger won the 2008 Booker Prize.

This first novel is written in the form of a letter to the Premier of China as an introduction to modern India. The author is not a fan – of modern India, that is, not China. India is a rich source of material for contemporary novelists, (for example, the Inheritance of Loss) and seems to be favoured by Booker judges. The novel charts the life of the narrator as a chauffeur to a prosperous family, and portrays the country as sordid, brutal, and above all bitterly corrupt.

If written by a Western author this account could be easily have been seen as racist. The author’s closeness to the country he describes probably deflects that criticism. Nevertheless there are virtually no redeeming features of the country – the bravery of people who fought for India’s independence is mocked, the beauty of the countryside goes unmentioned, and no-one acts through anything other than cowardice or self interest. The Indian Tourist Board will not be recommending this book in a hurry! It is an indictment of the country India has become in the years since independence, and is horribly unbalanced compared to say Slumdog Millionaire, which shines a light on the underbelly of India but equally shows the beauty of the country and its people.

The plot is very simple. The narrator murders his boss, and runs away with his money, showing a small amount of compassion by taking his nephew with him, despite knowing that the rest of his family is almost certain to be slaughtered in retaliation. Using the stolen money he bribes his way into a position of influence, and gloats over those he has left behind. We are told this fairly on in the book, so I am not including any spoilers. Years later he records his crimes in letters to the Chinese Premier, a plot device that makes little sense incidentally. The central character is deeply unpleasant; as well as being an unrepentant murderer, he is also bigoted towards gays, black people, and women. of course I am not suggesting the author shares these views, but they are presented without adequate challenge. Just because bad views are expressed by a bad person doesn’t make them any more palatable.

By coincidence I am also reading “Crime and Punishment” at the moment, and although the comparison is probably unfair, Dostoyevsky does something Adiga does not (or cannot), which is given us an insight into the mind of a killer. While the portrait of Raskolnikov shows us the internal struggles a killer goes through, in White Tiger the killing is shown as a simple commercial transaction, with little or no horror, nor psychological consequences – extraordinarily I have even seen one reviewer describe the murder as “brave”. Killing someone in cold blood and leaving your family and friends to live or die with the consequences isn’t brave. It’s not even as if the main character was living an impoverished life on the streets – he was doing fairly well as a chauffeur. I appreciate the author isn’t saying “Life in India is so bad murder becomes acceptable” – what he is surely is presenting us with is a world where morality has disappeared, so much so that a murderer sees little wrong with their crime, because they see similar acts of immorality being rewarded all around them. This is “Crime” with no “Punishment”.

All in all a strange Booker choice, subverting many of our expectations about what novels about modern India should be, but with very few redeeming features.

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21st century literature, Arthur and George, Book review, Julian Barnes

Arthur and George by Julian Barnes

Arthur and George
 
This blog was never intended as a long list of books I have enjoyed. It is a record of my impressions of the books I read in 2012, good bad and indifferent. This is the first occasion I have written on this blog about a novel I haven’t really enjoyed, and I don’t want to spend too much time taking it apart – that isn’t something I am interested in doing. If I didn’t enjoy it – and the reviews on Amazon make it clear I am in a small minority – make a brief note and move on.



Having said that, and having made it to the end of Julian Barnes’s fictionalisation of a minor event in the life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, I am still left asking – why? What was the point of that?

The story keeps reasonably faithfully to the known historical events, and is clearly the product of very careful if ultimately pointless research. Over 500 relentless pages we are taken through the parallel lives of Arthur Conan Doyle and George Eldjali, a victim of an injustice which led ultimately to the formation of the Court of Appeal, Criminal Division. Their lives do not intersect until more than halfway through the novel, by which time ACD is an established and famous novelist, and GE has been convicted, served his time, and released. Eldajli is a unsympathetic, cold character, who develops little in the course of his life. He is the classic little man who features in much Edwardian literature – see for example Well’s Kipps, or Mr Polly, or Grossmiths’ Diary of a Nobody. Novelists were beginning to explore and celebrate the ordinary, but 100 or more years on the interest remaining in such figure, even one with some drama in his life, is minimal. ACD is equally a well known figure about whom Barnes has little to add.

Describing how ACD became a spiritualist is one source of potential interest, but the key events in this journey – the series of personal tragedies he experienced at the end of the Great War – are passed over in a couple of paragraphs right at the end of the novel. The crime ACD investigates during the second half of the novel is mundane, and the explanation offered is routine and obvious.
This novel was shortlisted for the Booker, and Barnes has subsequently won that award, so I am obviously missing something.


Like most of us with the reading bug I have more than one book on the go at any one time, and while I was reading this I was also coincidentally reading The Lost World, which is by Conan Doyle. This was not planned, just a question of what came to hand at the time. The Lost World is a far more interesting read, almost a romp, albeit a period piece that comes across as both absurd and racist to a 21st century reader. Written in the early years of the 20th century, the Lost World establishes many of the features of the genre which have long become clichés. Dinosaurs and apemen roam an isolated jungle plateau explored by intrepid English journalists, adventurers and scientists. All problems can be solved by a biff to the natives jaw or a blast of the old elephant rifle at an oncoming stegosaurus. The handling of ideas about evolution is interesting, but apart from this there is little here that would trouble a pre-teen.

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