The Night Watchman - Louise Erdrich

 

I read this book after hearing two close friends talk about Native American languages and their preservation (or lack thereof). It was truly significant to hear them talk about the communities they are part of and the challenges they face. So I decided I should read something by one of their great (mainstream) story-tellers. 

The Night Watchman was a beautiful read, mixing capitalized History with non-capitalized family histories. I honestly loved reading about these people and their attempts to stop their economic decline, physical disappearance, and the dispersal of people and traditions. 

Also, discovering the figure of Senator Watkins, someone simultaneously able to contribute to the end of the dark McCarthy era and to the demise of thousands of Native American people, was eerily fascinating (and scary). 

What remains after reading this book is the beauty of these people, the parallels between so many of their small problems and the small problems I am exposed to, the uniqueness of the governmental campaigns and policies they have been subject to for centuries, and the profound admiration I felt for so many of the characters, whether they were night watchmen, ghosts (spirits?) or amateur boxers. 

Life & Times of Michael K - J.M. Coetzee

Another book that I got from my neighbour's donation box. Though in this case I didn't confuse Coetzee with someone else, in the same vein as I had confused Bulgakov and Nabokov. 

I thoroughly enjoyed Life & Times of Michael K. I didn't find the description of Michael's thought process to be heavy-handed or patronizing; rather, I found them to be a great reflection of the depth of a man who is judged by other people because of his appearance and has come to internalize many of those judgements. 

Much like with Disgrace, I found Coetzee's description of divisions in South Africa to be more immediately believable in its rawness than Nadine Godimer's (then again, perhaps I should read more South African authors to actually have a better appreciation of their literary heritage eh...). 

Some of the more dream-like sequences reminded me of his Jesus trilogy, though perhaps given the setting I found them much easier to digest. 

Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison

 

What a book!

And to think that I picked it up almost by chance, because I loved its title and the cover picture. Just like with James Baldwin (the world's most banal comparison, sorry!) I was astonished by how current it felt despite its year of publication. 

The exoticization of black people by many well-intentioned whites who then get scared (or sceptical, or bored) is something that I see - and am most likely guilty of - on a daily basis, as is the slipping through the cracks of formal education of countless black students. And let's not get started on the hopelessness of certain excessively cerebral approaches to politics of some people whose problem is not so much their privilege (though that's an undeniable fact), but rather their complete isolation and inability to imagine a world in which their idea(l)s are not the most important thing for everyone. 

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

 

I almost feel guilty to say that I didn't particularly like this book, considering the kind of reaction that it generated worldwide. Interestingly, the few negative opinions that I found online came from Nigerian readers. 

While I obviously agree with the main premises (Igbo people telling the stories of the impact of the Biafran War on their communities, and the fact that the world should remember the suffering it caused), I think the book ultimately lacks depth, chiefly because of how stereotypical so many characters looked. 

We have the armchair academic revolutionary (who oddly enough never talks about other revolutions - in the 1960s! - or about his academic interests), the well-meaning but out place white man, the houseboy who gets educated and reaches new heights (despite some very serious lows), a couple of cartoonish depiction of Western journalists, etc. 

The worst is the absolute perfection of Olanna, which I found rather tedious. I really wish we heard more from her twin, who to me was by far the most interesting character of the story. 

On top of that, while the context of the story was quite clearly the 1960s, I felt that the interpersonal dynamics between the main characters were much more current (in particular considering the fact that I suspect Nigeria didn't quite experience the sexual revolution of the 1960s in the same way as the Western world). 

Portrait in Sepia - Isabel Allende

 

Damn, how Allende bores me. Then again, she's sold millions of copies worldwide, has plenty of admirers and, when the ebook offer is limited (and at Southwark we're really down to a handful of potentially readable titles for me), beggars can't be choosers. 

I guess the overarching positive is that, by setting this story in the 19th century, she couldn't remind the readers of the importance of Salvador Allende, the dark years of the Pinochet dictatorship etc. 

What she could do though, was cover her novel with the standard romantic patina, the usual empowered rich heroines who defy odds (real or imaginary) to carve their own path, and the habitual love triangles and tangles. 

It's probably quite telling that the part of this story that I enjoyed the most was actually the one set in San Francisco and the interplay between immigrants of various races there - her always identical takes on Chile and its idiosyncrasies just leave me profoundly unmoved.  

The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

I have read quite a bit of Toni Morrison recently and, as often happens when I read multiple books by one author over a short period of time, the returns were diminishing. 

The Bluest Eye probably ended up being my least favourite Toni Morrison novel, which is a shame as so many of the themes it covers are - quite clearly - absolutely topical. Yet, the fact that at no point in this book there is a glimmer of hope, and also the fact that the instances of (small amounts of) happiness - which I think are quite common in childhood, regardless of the level of deprivation - are few and far between made the reading hard for me. Add to that the fact that, because of the way in which the novel is framed, the reader ultimately knows what to expect from the very beginning, and you ultimately have a rather unsatisfying book, at least from my own point of view. 

The narrating voice(s) are interesting and - at times at least - self-critical to a degree, which ultimately made me feel rather bad as a human being (not a good thing per se, but actually quite good in the grand scheme of things, obviously...). 

Recitatif - Toni Morrison

Is this just a short story, or does it count as a book if you consider Zadie Smith's intro? 

Either way, this is not something that left a permanent mark on me, probably because I didn't spend most of the book wondering which character was black and which was white, as Toni Morrison intended. And that's a huge limitation of mine, obviously, but very often - no matter what an author tells me to imagine! - characters in my head have extremely vague features (so much so, that at times for me Twyla is white, and other times Roberta is the white one, at times they are both white, and at times neither one of them is). 

Also, I most likely can't get into something that can be read over the span of an hour or two (short stories, novellas, etc.) as by the time I begin to find my stride is time to close the book. 

The Emperor's Babe - Bernardine Evaristo

Well, if you want to (re)write history, might as well go all the way. Seriously. 

I'm still not a major fan of Evaristo, but it is undeniable that she does breathe fresh air in contemporary literature. It's obviously not just the way in which she tackles race (in this case with a plot that is ultimately not so hard to believe as I initially envisaged), but also the panache and style (pulling off a verse novel is not exactly easy, I'd assume). 

So while she might not be my favourite contemporary British writer, I will most likely keep on reading her books as and when they become available at the Southwark library. 

The Indian Clerk - David Leavitt

A book by David Leavitt and my cousins' visit managed to accomplish the impossible: they made me miss Cambridge (though a Cambridge that I've never witnessed, with Bertrand Russell and Wittgenstein, fancy rooms in Trinity and semi-secret societies meeting to drink and discuss the meaning of life and the future of mankind). 

But the story of Ramanujan is obviously more than the tale of a genius and his life in Cambridge. It's the tale of his emigration, of his unfulfilled hopes and desires, of personal and institutional racism and, ultimately, of deep and profound unhappiness. 

It obviously also helps that, even after hundreds of pages of this fictionalized biography, his figure remains shrouded in mystery (actually, arguably this book adds to the mythical aura of the mathematician). 

 

Blonde Roots - Bernardine Evaristo

 

In all honesty, I wouldn't have read this book had it not been for the fact that the Southwark libraries app grants access to many of Evaristo's books since she won the Booker Prize. 

On the plus side, it made me realize that the "good" but not "one in a generation" kind of authors very rarely invent something from scratch and that, in this case, Colson Whitehead must have borrowed quite a bit from Blonde Roots for his The Underground Railroad (or maybe it's an incredible coincidence that both main characters take an actual underground railroad to try to escape slavery?). 

On the down side, I never really found myself gripped by this book. 

One interesting thing though: despite the frequent reminders that the slaves are white and the slave-owners black, I struggled to picture them as such and my mental image of Doris often switched between that of a white and a black woman. Talk about the power of ingrained perceptions and experience...

Native Son - Richard Wright

  

I do understand, or at least I think I do understand, that so many aspects of this book and of the characterization of Bigger Thomas are problematic. 

Baldwin considered the main character as stereotypical, and that's sadly an undisputable fact. He also wrote about him being unsympathetic. Again, I agree, but could he have been otherwise?

He also wrote about Bigger Thomas as being unrealistic. And here I disagree. I know nothing about the lives of a black youth in Chicago at the time, but I did not doubt the verisimilitude of Bigger's living conditions with his family, his uneasiness being transported into the reality of a wealthy white family, his dubiousness of their intentions, a crime committed out of panic, and the selfish fight to save his own life, arguably the only thing he was ever in possession of. And if someone like me still finds an account like this realistic, there's probably still a lot of work to do.

Girl, Woman, Other - Bernardine Evaristo

  

I'm definitely glad I've read this book. I most definitely enjoyed it. I also definitely didn't love it. 

I feel that there were many sections in which the theme of intersectionality was pushed in too academic a way. From that point of view, a number of other authors (academic and not strictly speaking so) would have been more appealing to me. 

On the other hand, when the characters are presented and interact in what feels - to me - like a more free-flowing way, then the book turns into the equivalent of a good (if not as humourous) Zadie Smith novel, and I'm definitely more captivated. 

Or at least I think so (a line that at the end of the day should precede every single post on this blog).

East of Acre Lane - Alex Wheatle

  

Oh what pleasure it is to read Alex Wheatle! Much like with Brixton Rock, I loved the novel already from its title (only difference being that I had liked East of Eden much better than Brighton Rock). 

And again, this is clearly a novel about a good kid in the middle of a (hopelessly?) tricky situation. And Brixton is loud, dangerous, interesting, buzzing and musical. It's also sad to hear Wheatle talk in recent interviews about what the place has (in part) become, though it's people like me that have contributed to its transformation. 

I can think of movies that capture contemporary South London in the way in which Wheatle's books capture that of the 1980s (Attack the Block being the most obvious example), I just hope that with time we'll also find authors - and not just filmmakers - capable of doing the same for 21st century Brixton.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

  

A book that I had clearly meant to read for a long, long time. Until one day I found a copy of it in our building's lobby...

It's a hauntingly beautiful, heartfelt and heartbreaking childhood tale that sadly still rings true in the context of 2023. A book that one can't put down and that can be finished in one intense sitting. 

Yet, after reading it I didn't feel the need to read the following six books in the series. I'd like to think that it's because I was intimidated by the size of the seven tomes put together and not becuase I'm a bad person who has no time for books that deal with racism, poverty and struggle, but I can't be sure.

Absalom, Absalom - William Faulkner

  

At a time in which I only had a few books left on my bedside table, I picked this one up. After all, Faulkner did win a Nobel prize and I couldn't just dismiss it on the basis of having struggled with The Sound and the Fury. 

Well, I struggled just as much with Absalom, Absalom!. Though I remember its plot vaguely more (most likely just because I've read it more recently) I found again the charm of the American South to be lost on me and, even more, the prose to be often completely inaccessible. 

In the end, I've decided that Faulkner is an author that makes me feel silly as, no matter how fluent and articulate I think I am, his brand of English remains largely impenetrable for me.

Nothing Like the Sun - Anthony Burgess

  

I wouldn't have read this book had it not been for the fact that I'm now running out of titles from the Southwark electronic library that I'd consider reading...

Maybe I'm dumb, or maybe my English is not good enough yet, but man I struggled with this book. Granted, it is, unsurprisingly, like watching a Shakespeare play for me: I understand nothing for the first 15 minutes, then slowly things start to fall in place. The problem here is that reading for me is very much a start-stop thing, in particular these days, so I never really got in the flow of the supposed-16th century prose. 

On the plus side, I checked the Wikipedia entry for the book after I finished. Apparently I got all the main points, but that's hardly a sign of success, and that's not really the reason why one reads a book in the first place.

A Long Way from Home - Peter Carey

Possibly the best book I've read this year (then again, I probably have a handful of books I can say the same for if I go through the list). I've read reviews saying that Carey was back to the level of Oscar and Lucinda, but I liked this book so much more. 

What I liked about it is its soft and subtle approach to issues of race and repression in Australia. He surely gets plenty of things wrong, but he appears to me one of those white men who at least make an effort, and obviously that's something that resonates with me. 

And, despite not being into any sort of motorsport, I have to say the idea of a car race across an almost uncharted Australia is absolutely fascinating. On top of that, the switch of focus from Irene to Willie works surprisingly well, as the reader grows truly fond of both of them.

Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin

 

Oh, the haunting beauty of James Baldwin's writing! In a year that saw the release of the wonderful If Beale Street Could Talk (which I unfortunately went to see with a friend who failed to appreciate it, probably due to its lack of car chases and superheroes) I thought it was fitting to finally read this book. 

In many ways, reminded me of Secrets and Lies transposed in a racially turbulent American East Coast. All the characters appear like good people at heart, but broken (to different extents) but the drama of daily life. The reader wishes them to have good lives, but knows that in most cases there are simply too many hurdles. It is heartbreaking, but it has love in it and, ultimately, hope. 

And, much like with Coates below, I am afraid that it still does not get read by the people who really should, like my friend with his car chases and superheroes.

Between the World and Me - Ta-Nehisi Coates

 

A book that was given to me by two good friends before they moved all the way to Australia. A book I had unsurprisingly never heard of (which happens with plenty of works of fiction, but with the very vast majority of the works of non-fiction). 

This was a painful read, and not a cathartic one. It makes the reader think deeply about the plague that is discrimination (racial or of any kind), and also about the role of parents as educators. Yet, for all the reflections that this book causes, I don't think it will result in me taking any drastic action to change my behaviour or, worse, others'. And that is a big problem. Much like the fact that the audiences who would benefit the most from reading this book and entering the discussion are probably not going to read it.

Henderson the Rain King - Saul Bellow

Behold, a book by Saul Bellow that I didn't fully and thoroughly adore! And my last acquisition from the £1 Halcyon Books store in Greenwich before its closure.

What I liked were Henderson's back-story, his sheer size, and a number of his inner thoughts and dialogues with himself. Then again, all of these things - except the size! - are the things I normally love in Bellow's books.

What I was far from being comfortable with was him going to Africa and playing (an arguably well-intentioned) god. When he does get things epically wrong and blows up the village's cistern, I wasn't happy that he was being put in his place. I could only think about the lives destroyed by his act and about the (very) rich white man who would then move to the next village (with all the guilt in the world, obviously, but also with his millions).

Had I read this book when it was first published I would have probably reacted differently. But it would have been quite hard, because, well, that was 28 years before I was born...