The Cockroach - Ian McEwan

  

McEwan has it in for Brexit even more than I do by the looks of it. He might not be originally "from the continent", but he does appear to be perplexed and saddened by his country's botched seppuku attempt. And to think that it was written in 2019, which now to me looks like a wonderfully heady period of friendship and stability. 

This is a light read if there ever was one. It's even funny - at times - when it's not trying too hard. I agree with the bottom line (Brexit is nuts, and why would anyone want it), but for a therapeutic laugh I'd always pick a column by Marina Hyde on top of a novella.

The Childhood of Jesus and the Schooldays of Jesus - J.M. Coetzee

Two hardcover books from the stock clearance section of the Barbican library bought for a grand total of 50p. That would be a good buy for any author, let alone someone of the calibre of Coetzee.

Both books follow the same story, and while I find certain aspects profoundly fascinating (and eerily current) I was ultimately bothered by the magic undertones of the two novels, particularly the second.

The idea of two migrants who reach the shore of an unknown country, unable to tell (or remember) anything of their previous escape, tied together despite not being father and son is an extremely compelling one. And yet the abstract discussions about letters, numbers and, ultimately, dance, are a bit too much for me to bear. In particular towards the end, where I so wouldn't have wanted to see Simon start to dance.

All the characters are full of mysteries and miseries (not just Simon and David, but everyone else too). I just wish someone was a bit plainer and a bit easier to understand...

Il Caso Malaussène – Daniel Pennac

Well, it’s a French book but I’m using the Italian title (that’s the language I read it in, and there is no English translation yet as far as I know). My mother found this on the book exchange shelves of Turin airport, which are very well designed and very rarely used (then again, on them we found this, The Body of Jonah Boyd, and some other interesting books over time).

I honestly thought I had outgrown Pennac, and that the magic of the Fairy Gunmother and The Scapegoat could not be sustained (hence why I haven’t read a number of its following books), but this one deserves quite a lot of credit. Malaussene’s life in the 21^st century still makes sense (well, as much sense as the life of a former professional scapegoat might make!) because Pennac’s prose still works.

Crucially, the book tackles a number of issues that relate closely to my experience with students and millennials, and Malaussene's thoughts on gap years and summers spent “saving” small developing countries before coming back to our protected European homes echo mine to a remarkable degree.

The Dwarves of Death – Jonathan Coe

The joys of walking into Fopp and finding that it has changed its stock of books quite considerably! This was a Christmas gift to myself (one of the very few I have ever felt entitled to) alongside Brighton Rock and Coe’s The Accidental Woman.

According to Jonathan Coe’s website this is his weakest novel, and according to a number of people on goodreads, the plot twists in the book are just implausible and the focus on music excessive. I disagree with all those accounts. Sure, The Dwarves of Death doesn’t even come remotely close to What a Carve Up! or The Rotters’ Club, but it was a great read on the plane (not to mention the fact that I am currently reading The Accidental Woman and I am finding that to be quite a bit weaker than this book). Also, sure, the plot twists are implausible, but so are the ones of Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels (to which the absurdity of the novel made me think more than once) and this is not a problem for me. Lastly, obviously there is a lot of focus on music, but this is not overpowering and it feels great to read of the inability of the protagonist’s drummer to keep a beat, much like me.

But surely I am biased, as the book is set in the same area of London where I live, although man it has changed over the last 30 years!

The Music of Chance – Paul Auster

Last Saturday I crossed the Thames and went to Stratford for my Life in the UK test (which I passed, by the way – meaning that there is now nothing stopping me from becoming a British citizen, hopefully). I had to walk through the Shopping Centre on my way and found this wonderful place (https://www.facebook.com/BooksforFreeStratford/) where they give away up to three free books for every visitor – no strings attached and no catches! In terms of maintaining my faith in mankind, this place ranks right up there with Parkrun. Visit it, pick up books, donate books, and prevent them from essentially going to landfill…

Moving on to the actual book, I have now read most of Auster’s works and, as far as absurdist novels go, this is one of my favourites (I liked it a lot more, for instance, than the stories of the New York Trilogy). It’s deeply disturbing and the reader knows from the start that everything is spiralling out of control but doesn’t know how it will all end (Will the wall close in on Nashe like it used to do on Roger Waters and David Gilmour after the first half of The Wall? Will Stone and Flower create a tiny little replica of Nashe and run his life for him through the “City of the World”? Will he get killed as he tries to escape?). Yet, there is always a sense of hope: maybe Nashe’s sister, his daughter, Pozzi, or maybe even Tiffany, the prostitute from Atlantic City, can help the guy survive in one way or another.

The one thing that annoyed me, though, is that I am sure I didn’t manage to pick up on tons of the novel’s insightful remarks and metaphors – the links to the myth of Sisyphus are clear, but there are surely millions more…

Mr Vertigo – Paul Auster

When I met Paul Auster at the literary festival where I was working, I only asked him to autograph one book – after all I was there in some sort of official capacity as an interpreter, and I didn’t want to run the risk of upsetting him by being your standard hysterical fan (but do writers actually have hysterical fans?!?). The book I asked him to autograph was a Turkish copy of Mr Vertigo, a wedding present for a friend of mine who was divorced within a year. Moral of the story: I should have just got an autograph for myself.

But I digress. Mr Vertigo is, together with Sunset Park, my favourite novel by Paul Auster. Master Yeuhdi is right up there in terms of mentoring figures with Melquiades, Ephraim Gursky. The rest of Master Yeuhdi’s family is also a great inspiration, both for Walt and for the reader, with the highly educated Aesop and the loving Mother Sioux.

The book’s back cover simply presented it as a story of a levitating kid, but it’s so much more than that: there is the already mentioned mentorship, but also friendship, race and racism, and the circle of life that closes itself wonderfully with the old Mrs Whiterspoon.

The Fairy Gunmother – Daniel Pennac

I normally don’t like comic novels, or absurd ones. This one is a little different. This one is French.

I think writers can live off of one great idea, in Pennac’s case his great idea is inventing a profession – the professional scapegoat – that is so clearly essential in today’s society that I am actually quite surprised it hasn’t become popular in the real world.

The Fairy Gunmother is about Paris, its multi-ethnic identity (identities?), its ageing autochthon population, and the absurdity of every-day life. The deaths are funny, although, probably, they shouldn’t be. The police investigations are inconclusive, or lead to the wrong conclusion, as they should be.

Not quite a masterpiece, this book remains an excellent read for a lazy afternoon at home.