Summertime - J.M. Coetzee

  

I was in need of a wonderful Coetzee book after the disappointment of the two "Jesus" books, and I got exactly what I needed thanks to the (limited) offer of the Southwark e-library. 

I don't think there is anything wrong with a bit of self-celebration, in particular for an author as famously reclusive as Coetzee, and the idea of telling a fictionalized story of his own life through the eyes of people he interacted with is just great. 

What's a bit more (well, more than a bit) on the bizarre/morbid side of things is that in the novel John Coetzee is supposed to have died, and that's the reason why the story of his life is being put together with the help of other people and extracts from his writings. But hey, possibly a bit creepy to be writing while thinking about yourself as dead, but it seems to have worked for him!

Fury - Salman Rushdie

  

Another one of those books that I don't remember well (just a few weeks after having read it) and that have left me more with a vague feeling than with any specific recollections. This can't be a good sign, either for the book or for my growing forgetfulness...

Out of the few images that I can recall are the terrifying picture of a father looking at his wife and child sleeping with a knife in his hand, the creation of a doll called Little Brain (that I kept on mis-reading as Little Britain, probably another not-so-good sign), and a series of more and more problematic intercontinental phone calls. 

I actually don't even remember whether the main character ends up returning home or not, which again can't be a good thing. And I've by now decided that it's a problem with the book, and not with my memory.

The Porcupine - Julian Barnes

  

More enjoyable than Flaubert's Parrot, less enjoyable than most other books by Julian Barnes; for me, at the very least. 

This is another book with which there's nothing wrong: it's well-written, it's interesting (if not excessively original) and it's an easy (though perhaps verging too closely towards the effortless) read. 

But there are plenty of other books dealing with the Soviet bloc and its systems, often written by authors who were on the other side of the Iron Courtain for long parts of the Cold War, a I generally like them better (except for Kundera's novels, but I've already professed my dislike for him).

The Singularities - John Banville

  

I've only read a couple of Banville's books, and I think that to make the most of this novel one ought to be much more familiar with the author's body of work (with apologies to Alex Clark of The Guardian who claims that neophytes will enjoy the book just as much). 

I did catch the allusions to Shroud, and those pages made my interest peak, but besides that I struggled with a book where beautiful prose is omnipresent but action is ultimately lacking (particularly surprising considering the criminal past of the first character to enter the novel). 

And I was also left wondering if having a novel ending without answering (m)any of its open-handed questions is a deliberate choice or a sign of an author not at his absolute best (though, to be fair, Banville has set the bar quite high for himself!).

Three Floors Up - Eshkol Nevo

  

Three Floors Up was the first book by Eshkol Nevo that I read. Without my mum's insistence, I wouldn't have given him a second chance because I didn't particularly enjoy this novel. 

At a superficial read, I considered it the equivalent of a sub-par Yehoshua book. At a deeper read, with its links to Freudian psychoanalysis, I found it pretentious and excessively symbolic and allegorical. 

Of the three floors, the only one I'd honestly try to peek into would be the first, with the over-protective father determined to find out the truth about what happened to his sister despite the risk of ruining everyone's lives; the second floor left me uninterested, and the third one actually kind of annoyed me with the judge appearing as a self-styled deus ex machina of the Israeli street protests.

Almarina - Valeria Parrella

  

Yet another book that I picked out of the long list of recent Premio Strega finalists. There is absolutely nothing wrong with it: it's quite well-written, it's current, it touches upon obviously important themes. And it's not engaging. 

I perhaps thought so little of this book because its main character is struggling with her unfulfilled hopes in a way that I find quite trivial, or because her decision to help Almarina get on her feet feels like the superficial action of the most stereotypical do-gooder (in her defense, Parrella does talk about it with more than a hint of criticism). 

At the end of the day, though, this book also highights a huge limitation that I have as a reader: I have to like a novel's main characters if I am to like the novel itself.

Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes

  

Had this been a book about a figure that I find more interesting, my opinion of it would most likely be different. My lack of fascination for Maupassant is ultimately mirrored by my lack of fascination for Flaubert, and this no doubt affected my judgement. 

While it's obviously written with the usual inventiveness typical of Barnes, Flaubert's Parrot didn't leave a lasting impression on me. Though, I have to admit that, reading again its synopsis now, I found his invectives against literary critics (and academic literary critics above all) to be pretty much spot on. 

Possibly my least-favourite Barnes novel, but still most likely better than 94% of the things that get published.

Il Coraggio del Pettirosso - Maurizio Maggiani

  

A book that I had tried to read as a teenager but that I had originally failed to get into. I had another go this summer, and I really enjoyed about half of it, the other half was too allegorical for me. 

The half that I loved was the main character's story in the present time, in a melting pot of anarcho-misfits, with an illegal journey to retrace his Italian roots and a meeting with the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, the (literal) deep dives in the port of Alexandria, and the erratic research into his past and his identity agains the backdrop of the Six-Day War. 

The half that I didn't like was the dreamlike section drawing parallels with medieval love and persecution, community and ideals. I'm just not built for stuff like that I'm afraid...

The Autograph Man - Zadie Smith

  

This is not White Teeth. This is not even NW. It's a pretty average and innocuous novel, but its distinct lack of ambition made me like it more than On Beauty, and way, way more than Swing Time. 

At times I went so far as to find it endearing as it actually shed a light on a very unique community (like Whitehead's John Henry Days), and I actually do find kind of touching the quests for former celebrities - major or minor - that you see here, or in Auster's The Book of Illusions and also in the movie Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool, which I was one of the seven people in the country to see in the cinema...