The Fathers - John Niven

 

A book that I picked up by chance, and chiefly because I felt that it could provide some light entertainment and occasional insight. 

And that it did. With the obvious clash of cultures and classes that its cover promised, but done with a gracious touch that reminded me of John Lanchester. 

Nothing in the book is excessively surprising. Things seem to take a turn for the worse, then everything works out for pretty much everyone. Yet, there are enough moments - funny, dramatic (this book did nothing to placate my fear of children and grapes), insightful - to make it a compelling read. And Niven does a really good job of highlighting what I think is one of the most overlooked issues for "my" people: middle and upper-middle class people don't have children, or have them very late in life. 

Stoner - John Williams

 

A book that I read this Christmas during a solo trip to see my parents. And what a pleasant read it was!

Perhaps the beauty of campus novels is that (when they are good?) they age remarkably well. Or perhaps it's just that, having been on a campus for the last 20 years, I feel particularly drawn to these kind of stories. 

Stoner though has a significant added value: its main character is one of those figures who seem to be particularly dear to (some) students despite not having the infinite list of credentials of senior academics. And, go figure, I rather relate to that!

Though one thing I can't quite relate to is Stoner's (at times dreadful, at times simply improbable) family life, or his rivalries at work (perhaps I'm too unimportant at my university to even be on anyone's radar!). 

Money - Martin Amis

 

London Fields, I was fully behind. Witty, engaging, "reasonably excessive". 

Money, on the other hand, was for me a completely pointless exercise. Its vitriolic portrayal of the excesses of the 1980s didn't read particularly vitriolic; just boring. And its depictions of the dodgy minor characters that populate the book are as lazily caricatural as their own names. 

I found this book to be as devoid of meaning as Wall Street with Michael Douglas. The biggest difference is that Wall Street made me lose a couple of hours, Money is a book that I dragged along for a good couple of weeks...

The Centaur - John Updike

 

After years without doing it, I went to the Barbican library and picked up this book for 30p. I was very pleased to see that inflation hadn't caught up quite yet (though perhaps books used to sell for 20p back in the day?!?). 

Having only ever read Rabbit, Run I was very happy to read another book by Updike and The Centaur did prove to be a remarkably good pick-up. 

I most definitely don't know Greek mythology well enough to understand all the parallels (and find the novel excessively pretentious as a result), but I do know a hypocondriac father when I see one, remain a sucker for suburban American settings, and think that there is nothing better than a good campus novel. 

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. 

Demon Copperhead - Barbara Kingsolver

 

The second book by Kingsolver that I've read, and one that I picked partly because, you know, it won a Pulitzer and all, partly because a friend I generally recommend book to actually recommended it to me. 

At time I absolutely loved this book, at times I merely liked it, most likely because I often have limited love for adaptations/transpositions of previous novels and because this meant there was relatively little surprise through the novel (I haven't read David Copperfield, but I'm at least familiar with much of its plot). 

Still, no matter my relative familiarity with Uriah Heep (both the character and the rock band), damn U-Haul is a hell of a grotesque and disturbing figure!

Long Island - Colm Tóibín

 

Perhaps it was a mistake to read this without having read Brooklyn, but hey it is a standalone book after all. 

I read it to understand what makes Tóibín so popular and I can see that. The writing is extremely smooth, his ability to talk about reality in a small village is remarkable, and the stereotypical descriptions of how gossip spreads in a small place somehow don't really feel stereotypical. 

Yet, I'm afraid this was also a novel that attempted to appeal to a sentimental side of me that I have long repressed (and/or that I've never possessed) and as a result I didn't get out of this book as much as other people did. 

Deluge - Stephen Markley

Wowzer. 

One, at the very least, has to appreciate the audacity of Markley in even contemplating writing a book like this. I had to renew my library loan, as I couldn't quite finish it within the canonical two-week loan period. 

What makes this book different from so many other dystopian novels (and then again, is the best term really "dystopian"? the reality of the book feels like an increasingly possible near future) is that it doesn't start with the world being in a state of absolute chaos recognizable even by the most distracted readers; rather, it starts with our current world and our utter inability to understand how badly we are messing it up, and the descent into absolute disaster is gradually described by Markley. 

Of the various plots that run in parallel, some are obviously more compelling than others, and some are more original than others (and within them, there are some passages that are not particularly surprising, and others in which you see the author and humanity unleashing their creative and destructive potential at its finest - the Weathermen being a perfectly fitting example). 

It would have been an almost perfect book had it not been for the almost Hollywoodesque ending. I understand the author needed to sell a few more copies, but the final chapter felt a bit too hopeful and optimistic after all the drama of the previous 1000+ pages. 

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. 

Bambino - Marco Balzano

After reading Resto Qui I ultimately decided that my perplexities about its plot (and the decision to cover an excessively long time span) were trumped by the fact that I had enjoyed reading something about a (hi)story I knew nothing about. 

So, with the same spirit, I approached Bambino, because the Italian North-East and its recent past remain big mysteries to me. 

I appreciated the fact that the narrator/main character of the novel is deeply unlikeable, and his lack of politics but deep-seated hunger for power, authority, influence, violence and money are ultimately a pretty good reflection of why so many Italians were (are?!?) attracted by the Fascist regime. 

While not a great book, this for me was most definitely a good book. The biggest shame, like with Sunset Boulevard, is that I find it annoying to have a narrator telling his story after his own death is hinted at (or openly depicted) since the very beginning. 

La Gioia di Ieri - Elena Stancanelli

 

The kind of typical book that I read because I like its cover and trust its publisher. 

But one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and publishers do need to sell books to a wider audience than me and people like me, I'm afraid. 

I was hoping for something bubbly and at times slightly unorthodox. Instead what I got was the story of an owner's love for her dog (in case, please refer to my comments to Heart of a Dog for my view on the previous dog-related book I had read) and ultimately her descent into spinsterhood (despite her possible lack of self-awareness). All in all, a bit of a waste of time, though at least not a particularly troubling one...

Heart of a Dog - Mikhail Bulgakov

 

A neighbour left a whole bunch of novels by some of my favourite authors in a box on a doorstep. When I saw it I was running back home. I stopped. I dove into the box. And I came out with this, with a bunch of books by Coetzee, some by Eugenides, some 19th century classics, and had a good backpack full of books (needless to say, that last 1 km back home was a tad bit slower than the previous ones...). 

Only thing: in my oxygen-deprived state my mind swapped Bulgakov and Nabokov (I can't be the first one, though that's no excuse). I had found The Master and Margarita to be ponderous and self-indulgent, but having got this book anyway I decided to read it (also because, in all honesty, it's very short...). 

Turns out, I don't particularly like dogs, I don't particularly like Bulgakov, and I don't particularly like mad doctors playing god with brain transplants. I also don't particularly like allegoric depictions of the Soviet Union characterized by a sense of humour that was probably dated already in the 1920s. 

So, guess what, I didn't particularly like this book...

Cose Che Non Si Raccontano - Antonella Lattanzi

This is a book that I decided to read when I became line manager for 11 (reasonably) young women (and 1 man - who would have thought, the academic third space is ever so slightly female dominated...) and figured out I might as well read up on some of the challenges they might be facing. 

And wow, this was a tough read. I didn't even pay much attention to how well-written (or not) the book was, as its treatment of the author's medical and psychological issues was the only thing I could really focus on. 

A few chapters in, I quickly stopped mentally telling the author to be more resilient and/or get to the point, and actually came to appreciate her own openness and most of all the intellectual honesty with which she described her own physical and mental processes. 

I still don't quite know whether I "liked" the book or not, though I'd like to believe that it made me better at managing challenging conversations. 

Unsheltered - Barbara Kingsolver

Yet another author that I read because of my mother's recommendation (though admittedly she did win the Pulitzer, so I don't think my mom can be credited with discovering Barbara Kinsgolver!). 

Despite the fact that some of the more romanticized passages about the house and the locations of the novel bored me a bit, this was a truly pleasant read. 

Surprisingly, even the 19th century part of the plot kept me entertained, and brought to life the scientific debate of the time in a much more persuasive way than many other works of fiction. The optimism in the face of uncertainty that transpires through much of the contemporary part of the plot was at times a bit overdone for me, but hey, I acknowledge that the author might need to sell some books (and that she might feel optimistic about life in general...). 

Ferrovie del Messico - Gian Marco Griffi

 

Meh. 

Acclaimed by the hipsters-who-know as one of the greatest Italian books in recent memory, this picaresque novel made famous by word-of-mouth left me initially untouched, and ultimately bored. 

Initially untouched because the few humorous moments are separated by long pages of forced irony and self-congratulatory prose. 

Yes, you've done your research. Yes, you can write pretty well. But do you need to remind the reader (directly or indirectly) at every page?

And ultimately bored because this book just goes on and on for hundreds of pages (8+, to be precise) and that was so completely unnecessary...

Most likely the novel on Italian Fascism that had the smallest impact on me. Disappointing to say the least...