The Idiot – Fyodor Dostoevsky

One of the “big” books that I wanted to read during my wife and daughter’s prolonged stay in Brazil. I succeeded, but at times it was honestly quite hard.

The Idiot started off as possibly my favourite Dostoevsky novel, mostly because Lev is such a wonderful character (or maybe I’m biased and he’s actually just a 19^th century Russian version of Forrest Gump?), but after Part I the book just goes on and on a bit too much, and I actually often struggled to keep track of who the characters were (Aglaya and Nastasia in particular merged into one at multiple points).

It’s undeniably my fault to a very large extent – I should have put a more serious effort in reading the book instead of going through most of it during lulls at work (shh…) – but, for want of a better term, after 200 pages I just started to find the book a bit boring. And after dismissing a Dostoevsky novel with a banal word like “boring”, I have officially lost every credibility as a reader/blogger/pseudo-intellectual/human being…

Seta – Alessandro Baricco

A book that my wife received from one of my relatives some ten years or so – probably given to her because back then her Italian wasn’t yet absolutely faultless like it is now and/or because she had liked Novecento.

And I actually kind of liked it, which came to me as a rather big surprise. Not so much because I don’t normally like Baricco, but mostly because I’m often not too fond of the people who cite him as one of their favourite authors (unless they are 16 or less, in that case all, or at least some, is forgotten). Yes, I am an awful snob. I honestly have to admit that spending an hour reading this story (defining it a novella would be too much) was quite enjoyable. Yet, I don’t have that much to say – yes, the book was nice enough, but has the literary weight of its silkworms. 

A Clergyman’s Daughter – George Orwell

Another step in my quest to read all of Orwell’s novels (not because I love him or because they’re many, but because I have, well, his “complete novels”).

Orwell himself seems to have disliked A Clergyman’s Daughter, written at a time of financial difficulties and little literary inspiration. Oddly enough, I didn’t dislike it – compared to the dullness of Keep the Aspidistra Flying this was a welcome journey of self-discovery, and I did enjoy the writing (except for the chapter set in Trafalgar Square, the only one the author apparently found worth something).

This is not to say that I particularly liked the book though – I kept on thinking how (literally) miserable the hop pickers were compared to the peach pickers of Grapes of Wrath, and attacks on Christianity (despite my remarkable distance from it!) normally bore me to death, as in this case.  

The Human Stain – Philip Roth

A book that I picked up for a small donation from 1LoveCommunity in Canary Wharf – absolutely lovely place and a really, really, really good book. I saw the cinematic version of The Human Stain when I was still a teenager trying to woo my high-school crush with my intellectual profile. I thought the movie was average at best, and so was the high-school crush at the time.

The novel is objectively a very easy sell with me: an odd kind of “campus novel”, written by one of the greatest American Jewish writers of the 20^th century, with a fair bit of racial problems, Vietnam, family violence and mysterious pasts. It also has a lot of sex. Actually, a bit too much of that and of related overconfidence (or overcompensation?).

The Human Stain is probably as good an “American” novel as American Pastoral. At times Dean Silk appears a bit too eloquent and articulate, but then again he probably wouldn’t have been able to live a life like his without exceptional intellectual dexterity. The one thing that bothers me, though, is that I couldn’t picture Faunia as anyone other than Nicole Kidman (the actress who portrayed her in the movie) and I really don’t think she should have had her face. 

The House on Mango Street – Sandra Cisneros

I originally had no idea how this random book made its way onto my bookshelves. Turns out it was an old book my wife bought during her college days in the US, then brought down with her to Bolivia, was boxed and shipped to Brazil after her family moved there, and finally found its way to London after she went down to South America on an extended visit. The book has been around, and it shows – it’s covered with foxing stains and its pages seem to hold together by pure coincidence.

I had never heard of it (my bad, as usual, as a self-critical white European male) and had no expectations. Given its size, I figured I could read it during one of my daughters’ rare naps and, for once, did it without reading “around it” on the web beforehand. Judging by its cover, synopsis and vignette structure, I assumed the book would be raw, unpolished and rough, and the read would feel scattered and intermittent. And it was. But the book was also intriguing, well-written and, in a way, eye-opening.

So I’m really glad I invested little more than hour reading this. I have read very little non-white North American literature and this book was a very welcome change – I wouldn’t go as far as saying that it’s one of my favourite books, but, despite its frequent violence, it felt like a nice bit of fresh air. Oddly enough, I also think that some of its stylistic shortcomings (I’m not quite sure vignettes can make for great literature, for instance) were simultaneously some of its most interesting tracts. 

L.A. Confidential – James Ellroy

OK. Let’s get back to work (well, odd turn of phrase considering that I have been neglecting the blog for the last month and a half because of, well, work…)

L.A. Confidential has been sitting on my bookshelf (probably the last of my books from Books for Free in Stratford) for ages. Thing is, having watched the movie I felt like there was no need to rush to read the book. But, as often happens, I was wrong – the two are wildly different, something that is quite evident as soon as one starts to realize how intricate the novel’s plot actually is (and even then, it keeps on getting more and more intricate as the book progresses).

Ellroy is as self-assured as writers can get (reading his interviews at times I have the feeling that his ego might have trumped even Gore Vidal’s) but he might have a point, as I think he’s a better crime writer than Chandler, Hammett, or pretty much anyone else in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. His characters are cocky, witty, degenerate, ruthless, and yet not implausible. On top of that, real-life characters add a decadently classy touch to this Ellroy book (or any other work of his, really). And in the novel, Jack Vicennes comes into his own so much more than in the movie.

I loved the movie, but the book was of an even higher calibre – surely one of the best I’ve read so far in 2017 (one day I should do a yearly top-10…). Because of this I am now reading Perfidia, which might have been a bad decision, but more on that later…