Auto da Fé - Elias Canetti

Rarely has a book with such an impressive opening chapter revealed itself to be so challenging to read (though moving to our new flat didn't make the process any simpler I must admit!). And I don't mean a pleasant challenge, I just mean long, repetitive, and to be honest quite dated (in particular with the few traces of humour).

I was surprised to see the book in the Shaw Library, less surprised when I saw that it hadn't been checked out since since the 1970s (no kidding) as I'm not quite sure how many people in the UK even know of Canetti's existence.

The main character's interactions with his young neighbour at the start had me really excited, and up until his marriage proposal I was finding the book quite exciting. After that, however, it just kept on going on and on in a story that could have been told just as effectively (actually, probably more effectively) in 200 pages less. I understand the allegoric madness and book burning in the conclusion, but even that was rather obvious and predictable.

The Accidental Woman – Jonathan Coe

And this is the last of the books that I bought myself for Christmas.

Hmpf. It was alright as a read, but that’s pretty much about it. The humour in it wasn’t lacking, it was just not particularly Jonathan Coesque. And most of all, one thing is having an intrusive narrator – but this one was just a tad bit excessive.

Apparently Jonathan Coe wrote this novel while studying for his Masters – it’s nice to see that not all British authors are already great writers since their student years and that Zadie Smith remains very much a unique case!

Gods Without Men – Hari Kunzru

The great thing about young writers is that you can be all smug and unreasonably proud for reading their complete works, or at least all their fiction books (as it’s the case for me and Kunrzu). Let’s just ignore the fact that at the end of the day Kunzru has only written four novels so far.

To me, nothing will ever equal the impact and the depth of My Revolutions, but Gods Without Men was a lot more enjoyable than The Impressionist (I liked it pretty much as much as I liked Transmissions, with the sentimental sections in this case replaced by wacky but entertaining mystic ones). The book has been compared to works by David Mitchell and Kurt Vonnegut, but I actually saw quite a lot of Philip Roth (American Pastoral) and Don DeLillo (White Noise).

As usual, Kunzru writes beautifully, and succeeds in making the story of Jaz and Lisa gripping and touching (In particular when he describes their lives in the public eye). However, I have the feeling that some of the characters are slightly too stereotyped (in particular the nerdy Jaz and the British Nicky, who just uses a few British idioms too many to be fully credible). 

The mysteries of the afterlife don’t interest me. Kunzru’s recounting of them, however, does.