Great Expectations – Charles Dickens

I figured that, since I’ve become British (ha! It had to happen at some point…) I might as well read some Dickens. I always imagined that I would end up starting with Oliver Twist or David Copperfield, but Great Expectations was my consolation prize from my most fruitless trip to the Amnesty International Blackheath book sale ever, and so my decision was made.

Bizarrely, it took me almost a month to read this book, but I’ll blame the 55 essays that I had to mark in that period for that (and after 7 years of teaching, they have a tendency to all mush into one gigantic essay whose overarching argument is that “yes, Germany did cause WWI, but also the other countries had their responsibilities”…).

As far as feuilletons go, this book made me rather happy (and made me want to be just like Joe – who, like my mom always says about my grandfather and his fellow peasants, looked absolutely natural and beautiful in his everyday work-clothes, and much less so in his Sunday best). As far as feuilletons go, the plot wasn’t always dreadfully banal (that said, the ease with which the characters’ lives intertwine over the years is obviously rather impressive, or perhaps perplexing). And, as far as feuilletons go, it was surprisingly funny.

The Black Album – Hanif Kureishi

Yet another book from the farm. Yet another 50p I’m glad to have invested. Yet another read by Hanif Kureishi that is extremely enjoyable (so much so that it led me and my mom to debate on the author’s status as one of the 20th century great British all-around intellectuals). Yet another novel that ultimately left me only half satisfied though.

The Black Album has many fascinating characters, yet, at the same time, feels immature like the protagonist. With the exception of the main character, all the others in the book appear to me to be too monolithic and simply too representative of leftist intellectualism, Muslim dogmatism or junkie desperation (delete as appropriate).

That being said, to me The Black Album is in so many ways a precursor to White Teeth, and that’s no mean feat, as the delirious interactions between characters and races, the chaotic burning of Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses (which somehow made me think of the launch of FutureMouse), and clearly the peripheral London setting kept on reminding me of Zadie Smith’s masterwork.

My Name is Asher Lev – Chaim Potok

For all the love that I normally give to the farm, Halycon Books in Greenwich, with its current 1£ sale on all its books, might be my new favourite place in the world (and one that I discovered absolutely by chance after a disappointing trip to the Amnesty International book sale in Blackheath). Having had only a few minutes in the shop, I grabbed one of the first books that caught my eye, and man was I pleased.

My Name Is Asher Lev might be the best book I’ve read in 2017. It’s got everything, and a bit more. It’s Jewish (not “just” Philip Roth or Mordechai Richler Jewish – Chaim Potok was a rabbi!), it’s set in New York but with extensive sections in Paris, it’s about art but also about artists, about the perilous balance of an unstable family, and Asher Lev’s life is surrounded by wonderful secondary characters (for me Reb Yudel Krinsky is right up there with Melquiades, and that says a lot).

There is absolutely nothing I would ever dare to criticize about My Name Is Asher Lev – although sadly that means that I am really in no rush to read any other Potok books (and in particular not The Gift of Asher Lev) for fear of spoiling its memory.