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.