Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry

 

One of those books that I read because I felt I had to. 

Also, one of those books that with hindsight I don't know if I really had to read. 

Dysfunctional couples, self-destructive machos, impotent lovers and rivers of alcohol in exotic settings. Hemingway also had them all. And Hemingway also had me when I was a teenager. I'm now much older, and feel like I have no time for this (despite the fact that, speaking of time, a lot of mine went into reading Under the Volcano). 

I Titoli di Coda di una Vita Insieme - Diego De Silva

 

A book that I only got because I was out of ideas, it was on the landing page of my library's e-library, the title was catchy (it roughly translates as "the closing credits of a life together") and the picture on the cover was nice. 

All very valid reasons when picking an unchallenging read, and unchallenging it was. Too unchallenging actually. 

Noah Baumbach couldn't make separations fully interesting in A Marriage Story, and so it's rather unsurprising that a minor Italian author didn't manage either. Yet, I really could have done without the male protagonist's return to his only summer home with all its sappy poetry. And I do realize this is a male author, but damn this separation feels oh so very one-sided, and it really looks as if De Silva went out of his way to make the reader side with the husband. 

Here I Am - Jonathan Safran Foer

  

To be honest, had it not been for the fact that this was one of the last few novels by authors that I consider readable that were available at the Southwark e-library, I probably wouldn't have read it. But it was there, and very little else was, so I took it out. 

This is not a work of art, not even close. Yet, it's suitably Jewish, humorous, self-deprecating, deep and reflective of our complex web of social relations that it ends up being pleasant company for a few days. Now, if only I could have managed not to constantly think of the Coen brothers' A Serious Man as I read it...

Barney’s Version – Mordechai Richler

This book is the single greatest source of great North American Jewish anecdotes I’ve ever come across. While I liked Solomon Gursky Was Here better because of its epic family history, Barney’s Version is probably the better book.

Barney is, for want of a better word an incredibly charming son of a bitch, like probably the same Richler was. Readers (and women) are bound to love him and simultaneously wish they could head-butt him, mostly because you can’t let someone like Miriam (in particular if you picture her as Rosamund Pike, the best thing of the ok movie taken from the book) walk away.

We’ve all wanted to kill our best friends at some point in our lives (well, surely I have), but being accused of actually having done so and having to write some unreliable memoirs in order to clean one’s name is pretty heavy stuff...