The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx

Had I read this book when my mum suggested it to me a dozen years ago, I would have probably understood my classmates from Newfoundland a lot better… I always thought this was going to be a nice read but little more. Man was I wrong…

There are new layers to Quoyle’s personality and new hidden aspects of his family history in every chapter (and I do realize that this sounds like a trite comment given by a mediocre reader to an average book, but I swear it isn’t the case – at least for the latter part of the statement). The blatant disrespect for the English grammar of most of the novel’s characters (even the journalists) makes their dialogues realistic and, for want of a better term, absolutely sea-worthy (although the “yarrs” made me think of The Simpsons a bit too much…). And the anecdotes disseminated throughout the book are of the kind that can only be told in the wildest parts of Canada.

However, knowing that Julianne Moore portrayed Wavey in the movie taken from the book (which I haven’t seen yet, and probably will not in all honesty) I had her incredible freckled face in my mind all the time, and I just couldn’t understand why Quoyle wouldn’t fall in love with her sooner…

The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene

Greene considered this to be one of his best works (at least according to Wikipedia – and who am I to question this claim?). However, in all honesty, I disagree: The Honorary Consul is enjoyable, but doesn’t have the suspense of The Quiet American or the hilarious turns of Our Man in Havana.

To me, Dr Plarr is simply too British to have spent his entire life in Latin America, and his constant remarks on “machismo” seem like those of an outsider rather than those of a self-critical local. Also, in a novel in which so many characters are fighting for their lives, I found it weird that not a single one of them was actually bad: Plarr and the desperadoes have their heart in the right place – although the latter have no methods – Fortnum is just a poor nobody, Colonel Perez is a good policemen who knows his people, and hell, even the British diplomats and politicians seem to be sensible. Only the General is probably bad, but he is only mentioned and doesn’t appear in the novel…

The book does pick up from the moment of the attempted creation of an Anglo-Argentine club, but to me it was too little too late.

And for someone who doesn’t really go to church, the lengthy discussions on God are just fairly painful and trite (and a reminder of high-school philosophy debates…)

Cat and Mouse - Günter Grass

It was rather surprising to read such a short – and fundamentally simple and linear – novella by Grass after powering through the hefty (yet absolutely wonderful) The Tin Drum. The links between the two are many: clearly the setting, but also the unreliability of the narrator (Pilenz is not as unruly as Oskar, yet his desire to justify himself makes the reader question whether or not he is telling the whole truth, or just his own) not to mention the fact that Oskar himself does make a couple of appearances in the book (something I could have done without, as I saw little need for such explicit tribute).

The intimacy of the novella is very touching, as well as the narrator’s decision to directly address Mahlke time and again. The innocence of the two main characters is lost in the 140 pages of the book, but, given the setting, no reader could – or should – make a moral judgement (even when Pilenz writes that he hopes not to have said anything that might have damaged his freemason teacher, or when Mahlke takes his dramatic decisions in the last few pages).

Throughout the book the reader knows perfectly well that things are going to take a turn for the worse, but the sadness of the last couple of pages is something that is absolutely lacerating for a book about teenagers growing up together. 

Cosmopolis – Don DeLillo

Yet another book from what is essentially an unending stock of novels that I either got for close to nothing from Fopp or actually for nothing at the good old Books for Free shop.

I loved DeLillo’s White Noise, had mixed feelings about Underworld, and saw Cosmopolis as a “DeLillo meets absurdist Paul Auster, meets Joyce, meets Minority Report” kind of pastiche. There is clearly nothing wrong with any of those four ingredients, but this mix just doesn’t work for me.

The novel, despite its shortness, ends up being crammed with ideas that are potentially interesting but surely overwhelming, and Eric’s frequent meetings with his wife are just too dreamlike for me (so much so that I was afraid they would turn into something like the bathroom scene in The Shining). There is also too much death around (including that of his bodyguard which is, honestly, absolutely gratuitous).

This is not to say that the novel is uninspiring – there are plenty of interesting points raised about our expectations from society and about human nature (why does Eric ultimately hope that the rap star he idolizes died in a gunfight and not of a common heart attack? Why does he confront Benno Levin when he tries to kill him instead of running away from him?) – but it’s just, well, a bit much (ado about nothing).