The New Life - Tom Crewe

 

A novel I literally just stumbled upon by coincidence, as I was looking for something at least somewhat inspiring in the catalogue of my Italian e-library (and yes, I did read this in translation - shame on me, the things I do for convenience...). What attracted me of this book was its title, its cover (yes, I do judge books by their cover!) and the fact that the author and I came very close to studying together. 

It took me two weeks to read this book, but really only because life got in the way in a pretty major way and we moved to a new house (a whole 200 mt down the road, but the move felt transatlantic). 

I appreciated this book for a variety of reasons. Its didactic nature when tackling the theme - and the acts - of homosexuality (in a way that wasn't too dissimilar from some of the works of David Leavitt), its ability to re-visit, re-shape and re-create history (and here the most immediate comparison for me would be Pat Barker, most likely because I've just finished reading her), and the degree of honesty with which it discusses the double-standards that queer men and women had to deal with in the late 19th century, much like in the early 21st. 

That said, in a way that is typical of many first novels, I also felt that the author didn't quite know how to wrap up his book, and the last couple of chapters feel abruptly squeezed in at the very least. 

Blonde Roots - Bernardine Evaristo

 

In all honesty, I wouldn't have read this book had it not been for the fact that the Southwark libraries app grants access to many of Evaristo's books since she won the Booker Prize. 

On the plus side, it made me realize that the "good" but not "one in a generation" kind of authors very rarely invent something from scratch and that, in this case, Colson Whitehead must have borrowed quite a bit from Blonde Roots for his The Underground Railroad (or maybe it's an incredible coincidence that both main characters take an actual underground railroad to try to escape slavery?). 

On the down side, I never really found myself gripped by this book. 

One interesting thing though: despite the frequent reminders that the slaves are white and the slave-owners black, I struggled to picture them as such and my mental image of Doris often switched between that of a white and a black woman. Talk about the power of ingrained perceptions and experience...

The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene

Greene considered this to be one of his best works (at least according to Wikipedia – and who am I to question this claim?). However, in all honesty, I disagree: The Honorary Consul is enjoyable, but doesn’t have the suspense of The Quiet American or the hilarious turns of Our Man in Havana.

To me, Dr Plarr is simply too British to have spent his entire life in Latin America, and his constant remarks on “machismo” seem like those of an outsider rather than those of a self-critical local. Also, in a novel in which so many characters are fighting for their lives, I found it weird that not a single one of them was actually bad: Plarr and the desperadoes have their heart in the right place – although the latter have no methods – Fortnum is just a poor nobody, Colonel Perez is a good policemen who knows his people, and hell, even the British diplomats and politicians seem to be sensible. Only the General is probably bad, but he is only mentioned and doesn’t appear in the novel…

The book does pick up from the moment of the attempted creation of an Anglo-Argentine club, but to me it was too little too late.

And for someone who doesn’t really go to church, the lengthy discussions on God are just fairly painful and trite (and a reminder of high-school philosophy debates…)

Non So Niente di Te – Paola Mastrocola

This is a book that I found so bad I actually had to write to its author. After a couple of years I feel a bit sorry for her and the angry letter that she received, but I really don’t think she should have discussed something she didn’t know: the life of an Italian boy as a student in the university where I work (and where I studied) and later as a Ph.D. candidate at Stanford.

She talks about this genius, able to revolutionize the world of economics as we know it, and how he is only able to study because of the support he receives from the (unaware) parents of another friend. Sure, that might happen in the humanities, but if you are hailed as the next Paul Krugman by the time you are 22, I’m pretty sure Stanford (or another token world-class university) will find a way to keep you afloat for the length of your Ph.D.

In my letter I told the author of this work of offensive banality that it was the sort of lie that her generation can tell itself when it tries to justify and rationalize the fact that some of the brightest young intellects of the country have left for good (“sure, they’re gone, but luckily we were able to help them leaving in the first place” whereas many are leaving, without their help, from the awfulness that their generation has created). They talk about an Italian brain drain. I don’t consider myself a brain, I consider myself a hard-worker who wanted to leave the country and its people. I managed to get a fair bit of funding for my Ph.D., but, before that, I washed dishes and scrubbed pots 6 nights a week for 3 years to pay for my BA. And a book like this is just an insult to me and those like me (although it is bound to be a great read for most of my parents’ generation – luckily not for my mother and father).