Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

Not quite sure why I read Beloved before reading Song of Solomon. Well, not true. I read Beloved first because somebody left it in by building’s reception while I actually had to buy Song of Solomon…

I do realize that what I’m about to write is ground-breaking and has never been thought (let alone said) before, but Song of Solomon is an absolutely outstanding book. Sure, looking for material wealth and finding one’s true roots instead is the oldest literary topos, but this novel explores it so very well.

And, much like in all (very good) epic family stories, the anecdotes that are passed down from generation to generation are truly wonderful. And, much like in all (very good) epic family stories, wisdom is dispensed by old characters who have understood everything in life (here Pilate reminds me in part of Marquez’s Pilar Tenera and in part of Richler’s Ephraim Gursky).

And when Milkman thinks of his people and includes Jelly Roll, Bo Diddley, Fats and B.B. it’s very much like in Good Morning Babylon the two brothers tell some Hollywood types that they are the sons of the sons of the sons of Michelangelo and Leonardo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ISEw_yf8-o apologies, the audio is only in Italian). 

Oracle Night – Paul Auster

Another solid 30p buy from the Barbican Library’s overstock titles. On its cover it has a line from its Herald’s review saying “If you have never read Auster before … this is the place to start”. True that. The issue, however, is that if you have read plenty of Auster before, this is quite far from being a particularly original work.

Sure, it’s beautifully written like all of Auster’s novels, and it’s also gripping and nerve-wrecking as only his stories can be, but everything in it has already been seen: the Sisyphean task of reorganizing phone books reminds the reader of the wall of The Music of Chance, the inability of a writer to proceed with his work is, well, just like pretty much every other novel Auster has ever written, the importance of colours (like team Blue) echoes The New York Trilogy, and both the in-house aggression and Nick’s story within the story and his slow but inevitable death look very much like scenes and anecdotes taken from Smoke.

This remains a really good read, and, I agree, it would be a great introduction to Auster’s world, but it’s not exactly ground-breaking. To give credit where credit is due, however, the little side-stories that the author develops in his page-long footnotes are truly great. 

Caos Calmo – Sandro Veronesi

I found a hardback edition of this Italian best-seller in the foreign-language section of Waterstones for 1£ - a few more finds like these and my National Book Tokens will last me a lifetime...

This novel is beautifully banal. Obviously everyone has a different way of dealing with the death of a lover. Obviously children are extremely resourceful. Obviously all families, even the ones that look picture-perfect from the outside, are messed up in one way or another (well, except for mine!). Obviously corporate greed is evil. Obviously people have their secrets.

And yet, for all its banality (and the dullness of many of its cultural reference-points), this book is extremely well-written and remarkably enjoyable.

That said, I would have preferred if the main character hadn’t started thinking that his dead lover was sending him post-mortem messages through Thom Yorke’s voice...

The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee

A book I had never heard of and that I picked up among the remainders in the holy Waterstones on Torrington Place because a) it was cheap, b) I have plenty of money from the National Book Tokens to spend (thanks to a particularly thoughtful boss), c) I loved Disgrace by Coetzee, d) I loved Dostoevsky’s Demons.

The thing is, I liked the idea of the novel way more than I liked the novel itself. I found Coetzee’s usually wonderful prose too cumbersome here (of course, he has to give voice to Dostoevsky!), felt that all the characters (including Dostoevsky himself) were rather uninteresting, and just struggled with those 200-odd pages of divagations on life and death.

Clearly this book has made me want to read more Dostoevsky (which I probably will during the Easter holiday – I need to do it outside of term-time otherwise I won’t be able to focus sufficiently to understand his deep message, or even just the Russian names!), but to me it was just a novel with great premises and a (predictably) underwhelming development.

Gorky Park – Martin Cruz Smith

The greatest book ever written. Seriously.

Well, maybe not.

But without a doubt one of the most enthralling crime novels I’ve ever read. Sure, it does have its fair share of problems (for instance the fact that every time I saw the main character’s name “Arkady” I actually mistakenly read “Already” – and it does get annoying over the course of 560 pages! – or the fact that from the very beginning it is quite clear that the evil Pribluda isn’t going to kill our hero, and isn’t even going to be his main antagonist), but it remains pure entertainment.

It’s also really interesting reading it through Cold War lenses: the impeccably dressed FBI agents against their clumsy Soviet counterpart, Irina’s beauty ruined forever by KGB actions, but her marks can be masked with American make-up (something that reminded me of “James Bond's "Pussy" and Anglo-American Cold War Sexuality”, one of the most interesting academic articles I’ve ever read). 

But most of all, now I know a lot more about furs…

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me – Javier Marías

This time a book that my dad tried to get me to read for years (and I’ve only done it now because, rather surprisingly, its author is coming to speak at the LSE – not a school known for its love for literature! – next week).

The novel is beautifully written, and the starting idea (the unexpected death of an almost stranger in the arms of the narrator) is a majestic literary device. The constant references and quotes are intriguing if a tad bit too high-brow (I didn’t get any of them, except perhaps the tailing of Luisa – the sister of his dead lover – through the streets of Madrid as maybe a reference to Hitchcock’s Vertigo).

But (there is always a but) after a while the book gets slightly too repetitive. Yes, life is weird and goes in circles, but there is no need to repeat the same sentences a number of times (the first time you do that it’s interesting, after a while it just grows old). Most of all, because of these constant circular references, I just didn’t find the surprising finale that surprising, which was a bit of a shame and left me rather unmoved (speaking of cultural references, The Big Bang Theory’s treatment of Schrödinger's cat is definitely more interesting, and also undoubtedly funnier!).