The Infatuations – Javier Marías

A book that a very well-read colleague of mine gave me because she found it quite abominable and wanted to see if I thought it was just a matter of translation or not. Turns out, I thought it was quite abominable too.

This is now the third novel by Marías that I have read, and it’s by far the weakest of them. It begins like the other two (one of the central characters gets killed off in the first paragraph) and I have the feeling that the author put more effort into the first 20 lines than he did in the rest of the book.

The dialogues are just extremely long monologues, the supposedly deep reflections aren’t that deep, the decision to call the two main characters Javier and Maria is, well, a bit petty (something that one would expect from those writers that Marías spends his time dissing in this book), and even the idea of a random assisted suicide is something that Paul Auster has done so much better in In the Country of Last Things.

So yeah, glad I didn’t buy the book myself. 

The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett

Another book that I bought as second-hand despite the fact that I don’t think anyone had ever opened it (seriously, people these days can’t even read a short Hammett novel?!?).

While the years have led me to think that Raymond Chandler was maybe overrated (I still can’t get over the fact that Marlowe is a first-person narrator who finds all his one-liners extremely witty), I actually do think that Hammett was probably a really good writer (and dare I say it, the book version of The Maltese Falcon is probably better than its movie adaptation).

I’m not going to say that this is a masterpiece, because it’s probably not, but it does remain a very pleasant read after all these years – and Sam Spade is someone I’d like to get to know much more than Philip Marlowe (despite the fact that in my mind they both have Humphrey Bogart’s face, clearly!)

Cesare Pavese - La Bella Estate

A book that I stole from my high-school’s library. Needless to say, I am not proud of it (also because, as it turns out, I really didn’t enjoy the three novels it contains!), but with said high-school being on the Canadian West coast, I am afraid I am unlikely to have the chance to return it anytime soon.

Pavese is the most celebrated author from my area, but the consensus in my family is that he is no match for Fenoglio – primarily because the latter immersed himself in politics, the Resistance and the hard life of the locals, while the latter, well, ultimately did not (he flirted with the hard life of the locals, but really stirred clear of politics at a moment in time when this truly affected everyone, including pretty much all of his friends).

Of the three novels, Il Diavolo sulle Colline is the only one that I actually came to like, at least partially (possibly because it shows the mini culture-clash experience by provincial students moving to the big city), whereas Tre Donne Sole offers some interesting points about solitude and suicide (something which later on Pavese himself ended up committing), but little more, and La Bella Estate to me is just a short story about the small delusions of a young girl discovering the joys of her sexuality in a rather old-fashioned way. 

On Beauty – Zadie Smith

Well, at least to buy this book for 50p my mom had to go all the way to the Red House in Bexleyheath (disclaimer: she was going there to see the place, not to buy cheap second-hand books).

Much like with Franzen when he writes about things outside of Minnesota, I honestly think Zadie Smith loses her spark when she goes beyond (Northwest) London. On Beauty is undeniably well written (you don’t say…), but it’s simply not as witty as White Teeth or even NW (whose recent BBC adaptation I had to stop watching after 20 minutes as I found it excessively intense and humourless). Maybe it just doesn’t work as campus novel, or maybe I’ve had too much of the pettiness of some academics in real life, but to me so much of the book just reads like the script from an episode of Black-ish, a sit-com that I really don’t find particularly funny.

What probably disappointed me the most was the big faculty meeting towards the end of the book – I was expecting something as epic as the FutureMouse conference from White Teeth, but instead I actually got a bitchy, well, faculty meeting…

The Crossing – Cormac McCarthy

One of those authors whose books I have both loved (All the Pretty Horses, The Road) and thoroughly disliked (No Country for Old Men, Blood Meridian) – luckily The Crossing belongs to the first of the two categories. Also, and this is a huge plus, my daughter seemed to really enjoy the book – although I am not quite sure whether that was because of the blood, because I stammered so often as I tried to read it to her (damn punctuation, or lack thereof!) or because of the contrast of colours on the cover (the options are clearly given in order of increasing probability).

The Crossing is probably the most touching of the books by McCarthy that I have read, because it’s a wonderful story about defeated humble people and their attempts to, fundamentally, get what is legitimately theirs, overcome moments of sheer horror, and get by with a little help from their friends (or from complete strangers, as in the case of the truck-load of Mexican workers or the doctor). In addition, the two brothers somehow kept on reminding me of my two cousins (who do live in the countryside, but that’s pretty much where the similarities end objectively) and more than any other of his books, this novel made me think of my favourite (although not particularly celebrated) Italian spaghetti western, Quien Sabe?/A Bullet for the General.

So yes, one of the best reads of 2016 and possibly the book by McCarthy that I enjoyed the most. 

Treasure Island – Robert Louis Stevenson

One of the books I postponed reading for, well, about 19 years. The first 4 of those years were because I didn’t feel like reading anything anyway, the following 15 because why reading a book when you already know the story and you are afraid of getting Jethro Tull’s Mother Goose stuck in your head as you read it (“Four and twenty labourers were labouring, And digging up their gold, I don't believe they knew that I was Long John Silver”)?

Well, turns out that you should read this book despite the fact that you already know how it will end because it’s possibly the greatest novel ever written. It combines the sense of adventure of The Lost World or 20.000 Leagues under the Sea with a plot that is ever so slightly less improbable, and Stevenson’s prose is unparalleled – meaning that for me the book ranks up there with Around the World in 80 Days.

As far as bad guys that are actually (maybe possibly) not so-bad (and may have fallen on hard times so might deserve our understanding) Long John Silver is second to none, despite the fact that the narrator is a bit of a know-it-all.

I am not that familiar with contemporary fiction for young-adults, but I really don’t think there is anything that could come even remotely close to this. 

About a Boy - Nick Hornby

Not even 50p. This was actually 30p from the Barbican Library overstock shelves. Now, I do realize that, much like David Nicholls a decade later, Nick Hornby isn’t exactly great literature, but it’s very well written and funny, and its cultural pop references are still better than those of plenty of bestsellers. So go ahead, and look down on me for enjoying a read like this every once in a while.

For once I actually had a book that I could pick-up on a short train journey (not that I use trains often – I just happened to do a bit of parkrun tourism when I was reading About a Boy), while waiting in line at the post office and, erm, on the toilet.

And it was great.

Having watched the movie, most of the gags and jokes were unsurprising (that said, I did still giggle aloud a few times – the dead duck remains priceless) but the ending was much more meaningful than I expected (not that seeing Hugh Grant accompany Marcus’s version of Killing Me Softly isn’t meaningful). And reading about my old neighbourhood always makes me feel all warm inside.

So yeah – Great literature? Not even remotely. Great read? Absolutely. 

Hamlet's Dresser - Bob Smith

An extremely random book – a memoir rather than a novel really – that my parents bought for my wife ages ago (maybe when she moved to London and started to accompany me to see the Royal Shakespeare Company, first at the Novello Theatre, than at the fairly awful New London Theatre, and then finally at the Barbican?).

To me the book is fundamentally divided in three intertwined plots/narrative lines – the narrator’s troubled family past and his complex relationship with his sister and her mental illness, his personal experiences as a dresser/stagehand, and lastly his Shakespeare classes for elderly people in New York City.

The first narrative line is soft and touching, and Smith is actually remarkably good at portraying the situation for what it actually is/was (or at least, that’s the impression the reader gets) without any need to sweeten it, or to portray himself as better or worse than how he genuinely appears to be.

The second narrative line is intriguing – reading about Katherine Hepburn, Jessica Tandy, and all the other great actors who crossed the stage in Stratford CT is like watching a very good documentary with random comments and anecdotes by people who happen to have crossed paths with some of the greats of the 20^th century.

The last narrative line is clearly the one that touches me the least, probably because I am one of those awful people who tend not to find too much poetry in the elderly and the remarkably problematic challenges they have to face on a daily basis – to me those are just painful and very possibly insurmountable. 

The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides

Despite having loved Middlesex I resisted the urge to buy this book when I found it selling for 2.50£ at Fopp. And well I did, since it appeared (untouched obviously, because why would people open a book?) on the shelves of the loyal local farm for 2£ less*…

The Marriage Plot is in so many ways one of the best campus novels ever: the confused characters, their witty exchanges (possibly a bit too witty at times? I definitely wasn’t that smart and quick back in the day), their frequent crises, their complex relationships with their families – it’s all there. Then the characters leave college (a Brown that at times is sneered upon by Eugenides himself, although not as much as Lisa Simpson does), and sadly their lives become just a lot less interesting. They seemed smart beyond their years in college, and when they enter the real world they appear not only completely unprepared, which would be fine and understandable, but also surprisingly dull and ordinary if compared to their younger selves.

Or probably I have seen a few too many students with mental breakdowns to be really shocked by the way in which the second half of the book develops.

*Considering I am one of the last few avid readers left in the world, I am quite aware of the fact that if everyone did what I do publishing houses would close even more quickly. But what can I do? I do love a bargain. And also, there are enough books that I still want to read to already last me a lifetime anyway…

On Chesil Beach and In Between the Sheets – Ian McEwan

This time I’m tackling two books at a time, and I can do that because a) I have already talked about McEwan more than enough, and b) put together, the two books barely get over 300 pages. As usual, I got the first of the two from the local farm, and the second was from a wonderful Amnesty International book-sale in Blackheath.

In short: reading the two books quite simply confirmed what I already knew/felt/thought about McEwan. His early stuff (in this case In Between the Sheets) remains dark, incestuous, pornographic and overall – when he doesn’t completely lose the plot (in all senses) – those short stories are frantically interesting and well-written. Most of the books he published recently (in this case On Chesil Beach) read like the author’s celebration of his own talent as a writer: sure, McEwan’s prose remains great, but his plots just bore me these days (and I do realize that the big surprise in the end is meant to make the reader reconsider everything he initially thought about the couple’s troubled wedding night – but is it really that much of a surprise?!?).

So yeah, only a couple more books and then I’ll stop reading McEwan. Well, only a couple more books and I’ll have read everything he actually wrote.