Leviathan - Paul Auster

 

With my most sincere apologies to 4 3 2 1 , I think this is the Paul Auster novel to end all Paul Auster novels. 

It is the first Auster's novel I had heard of (possibly the first that my parents read?), but, not being as ubiquitous in all second-hand bookshops as The New York Trilogy, also one that I hadn't touched until the Westminster library kindly gave me access to the e-book. 

Besides the traditional Auster trademarks (chance, mystery, fortuitous crossings of metaphorical paths) what particularly struck me of this novel is how relevant to today's world it still feels. Perhaps, after all, America and its identity (crisis) hasn't changed that much since the end of the Cold War...

Zero K - Don DeLillo

 

It might be that I've read way too many of DeLillo's books, or it might simply be that, having just had my second child, I am not quite ready for anything too deep, but Zero K didn't quite do it for me. 

I understand why plenty of critics found this to be a fine book, but I couldn't bring myself to love it. The scientific/futuristic dynamics are not particularly exciting for me (then again, he probably is miles ahead of everyone and foreseeing things like he did with Cosmopolis) and the bodies with severed cryogenically heads just remind me of Futurama...

Like all of DeLillo's books, I'm really glad I've read it. And, like most of his books since Underworld, it is a quick read (but not a light one by any means!).

The Tenth Man - Graham Greene



With the usual thanks to Surrey Docks farm for this solid 50p investment. I bought it thinking it was a joking take on The Third Man, and had it not been for the fact that it wasn't exactly expensive I wouldn't have bought it after reading about its troubled publication history (I mean, the author himself had forgotten about writing it in the first place!).



And I honestly wonder how Graham Greene could have ever forgotten about it. Not remembering bits and pieces, sure, but forgetting about the genius idea (or at least what I think is a genius idea!) of a man buying his way out of an execution and persuading someone else to take his place appears to me to be impossible.

The novel has such a wonderfully French feel, probably a reflection of Greene's unique ability to write books about pretty much any country and making it feel authentic. Much like the reader feels the dilemmas of the main character are authentic, despite the fact that he finds himself in a most unique position.

The Map and the Territory - Michel Houellebecq

The first book I've read since re-discovering LSE's Shaw Library, of which I'm probably the only user right now (between the fact that term has ended that the fact that, well, nobody really reads anyway).

Having never read any Houellebecq I knew that I had to give him a chance at some point. I was biased before the start, knowing that he's an arrogant reactionary ass, and with this book I discovered that he is all that, but also a genius.

It takes a boundless ego to put oneself as a larger-than-life secondary character whose aura can be perceived across the entire novel like Darth Vader's presence can be felt on the Death Star, and I think he had the time of his life describing the aftermath of his own murder, but the book is surprisingly deep in its reflections on the ageing process, in its handling of love, and crucially in its poignant descriptions of the art world (and the opening with Jeff Koons and Damien Hirst is just so incredibly good).

L'Angelo di Avrigue - Francesco Biamonti

Reasons why I really, really liked the book:

- It was given to me by one of the few friends who give me books as presents, and who I don't think has ever gone wrong (though at the moment my baby daughter appears very attracted by the cats in a copy of Maus that she gave me years ago, and I'm not quite sure that's a good thing)
- It is about the region where the Alps dive into the Mediterranean, the place of many of my summer holidays
- It is about the lost souls who lose their lives for one reason or another on those mountains - and this is a time when desperate migrants try to make their way from Italy to France on those very paths
- It's written in a style that's halfway between Fenoglio and Izzo
- It has one of Cezanne's landscapes on its cover, those were the first works of art that I truly came to love as a kid, and this would have been enough by itself

Breakfast of Champions – Kurt Vonnegut

One of my latest Fopp acquisitions (actually strictly speaking my mom bought it for me…). After loving all the other Vonnegut novels and stories that I had read, the most I can say in this case is that Breakfast of Champions, despite being one of his most famous works, is alright (which I think is also how he felt about the novel himself).

Nothing more, nothing less. Alright. The book is not really a novel and neither it’s a long short story, and I can’t somehow push myself to label it a novella (it just doesn’t feel right). So, because of its felt pen drawings and its clear autobiographical traits I’ll just call it a gift that Vonnegut gave himself for his 50^th birthday, or maybe a literary way out of (or further into?) a mid-life crisis…

1934 – Alberto Moravia

Well, after being left totally indifferent by Gli Indifferenti I had to read another book by one of Italy’s most famous writers. And after all I did love so many of the movies taken from his works (La Ciociara, Il Conformista and Ieri, Oggi, Domani).

1934 is undeniably interesting, but I still didn’t find it that great a read. While a good literary device, the trick that is played on Lucio makes me suffer (I always empathize too much in these cases!) and I also found it rather improbable. Not to mention the fact that the many scenes of a sexual nature to me read mostly like the unfulfilled desires of a 75-year old man.

I also could have done with fewer philosophical passages on the meaning of life and love and more on the nature of Fascism. Also, I find it interesting that Moravia considers the year 1934 to be the 7^th of the Fascist stronghold on power, since most historians would make this start either in 1922 with the March on Rome or in 1926 with the “Leggi Fascistissime”, but maybe he referred to the Grand Council of Fascism becoming the Italian constitutional body in 1928. Pedantic, I know, but probably this is as close to a deep academic point I made in the last two years…

Mr Sammler’s Planet – Saul Bellow

Saul Bellow is probably as underrated a Nobel Prize winner as any, and the fact that my second-hand bookshops very rarely have his books is undeniably a sad sign! But hey, luckily my parents had two copies of this novel (and Skoob near Russell Square had Humboldt’s Gift, which I will hopefully read soon).

Mr Sammler’s Planet is wonderful, witty and deep. It is also typically Jewish and New Yorker, which makes it an instant sell with me. For all the depth and likability of the protagonist, however, the two most interesting characters are the dying Elya (a perfect patient, and surely a very good doctor – if uninterested in his profession) and the stylish and mysterious pickpocket, whose bizarre decision to impress Sammler by showing him his member is for me one of the great creations of American literature. Speaking of great creations of American literature, though, it’s important to remember that nothing here matches Herzog’s graphomania…

And I could talk about Sammler’s experiences in WWII, but the book is ultimately about overcoming those (at least to me), so I won’t. Instead, I’ll say that this book mentions Ferdinand the Bull, without a doubt my favourite story between the ages of 3 and 6. 

The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

And with this I can say I have read all of the books that Eugenides has written so far (easy – they are three). This was a Christmas gift from a close friend, and it came in the weirdest edition ever – the size of a small notebook, not quite sure why Picador felt the need for that.

It was undeniably very interesting, and with a literary weight much more considerable than The Marriage Plot, but it doesn’t really come close to Middlesex. Seeing that it was divided in five chapters, I assumed each one of those was going to relate to the suicide of one of the five Lisbon daughters, but three hundred (very short, cause after all it is the size of a notebook) pages go by between the discovery of the first and second suicide.

The suburban setting makes the book an instant sell for me, the curious first-person-plural narrative works really well here, and the moment when the narrators find Bonnie’s body makes your heart drop (despite the fact that it was declared from the start that all five sisters would kill themselves). It is however a shame that, despite the mystery that surrounds the household, Lux’s character is very clearly delineated while the other sisters all blur into one. Also, the fact that the narrators are invited into the house by the last four remaining sisters before they kill themselves makes them look more selfish (and potentially meaner) than what I think they really were. 

Il Caso Bramard – Davide Longo

I hadn’t read anything by Davide Longo – one of the most celebrated writers from my region – since my teenage years, and actually didn’t even know he was translated into English until I found this book of his at an Amnesty International book sale. Needless to say I made it mine.

Longo writes extremely well (too well, according to my mom, in order to be appreciated by the general public) and in this case the translator does quite a good job of preserving his beautiful prose. The book itself is a very dark crime story set between Turin and the Piedmontese Alps (it reminded me of Furttero&Lucentini’s La Donna della Domenica, but considerably gorier). I’ve read some reviews that criticized the author’s bleakness, but this worked just fine with me.

However, after saying that “the translator does quite a good job of preserving his beautiful prose”, I must also point out that in one case he took a sentence absolutely out of context and made me wanted to cry a bit: Bramard’s dad belonged to the Decima Mas, probably the most bloodthirsty faction of the Fascist military corps, but the translator calls them partisans (auch!) and translated the name using the roman numeral “X” – making it the X Mas, which is accurate in Italian, but sounds just way too festive in English.

Ah, and one of the Fascist thugs has got my surname, which stings a bit…

Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

One of the many books that I have picked up from the local (very urban) farm. Yet another solid 50p investment!

Being ultimately ignorant, I always assumed that Ishiguro just wrote novels like The Remains of the Day. As most literate people will be able to confirm, however, that’s not the case. Throughout the book I felt as if Hailsham was actually Homerton College in Cambridge – something that probably says a lot about my memories of the place!

I honestly can’t say that I loved the novel – I really enjoyed the parts about the relations between the clones (this felt mostly like a very dark and fundamentally humour-less campus novel), but when Ishiguro turns too science-fictionesque he starts to lose me (and my interest) a little bit. Never Let Me Go is a very well-written dystopian novel, but so are countless others (not McCarthy’s The Road – that’s a work of art!) 

Immortality - Milan Kundera

Very slowly, and not particularly steadily, but I will try to catch-up on missed entries. A couple of months ago a colleague of mine dumped a few unwanted books on my desk – in there I found some greats reads (Peter Carey’s Bliss, for instance), and some not-so-great ones, like this one (although admittedly, it probably didn’t help that I had to read it intermittently during a time of sleepless nights and when my in-laws were around).

As I was reading Immortality I actually started wondering whether Kundera used a ghost-writer for The Unbearable Lightness of Being or whether he simply took himself too seriously after writing that book. Sure, Immortality does have some nice ideas (the first appearance of Agnes, the tyre-slashing, and the first few pages about Goethe – before these start to become rather boring), but I really could have done without hundreds of pages of pseudo-philosophical quibbles. 

And if you want pseudo-philosophical quibbles, the trajectory of the physical copy of the book I read actually represents the circle of life: someone probably once loved it, then my colleague picked it up, and dropped it on my desk after reading it, and after I finished it myself I brought it to the book exchange shelf of an urban farm next to my flat, where I am afraid it will sit for a rather long time (if not for ever). 

The Almost Moon – Alice Sebold

A book that my mum bought for 1£ at the Red House in Bexleyheath, I’m so very proud of her…

Like most critics, I found the novel’s opening sentence to be nothing short of awesome. Unlike a number of critics, however, I did think the novel was really good. As far as I could see, the portrayal of Helen, the main character (and parricide), was criticized for being morally and intellectually incoherent – but that’s what I thought was great, as I suppose the mind of a daughter who has just killed her mother must be at least slightly shaken.

I also found the characterization of the love-hate relationship between daughter and mother to be rather believable (and, I assume, accurate), and, in all honesty, I sort of justified Helen (does that make me an awful person or a psychopath? I hope not, and I actually think I’m rather sane, much like Helen’s former husband thinks of her).

Most of all, the novel raises all sorts of questions about the need in our society to work so terribly hard to keep the elderly alive – I wish we could just let them go (although if we think they need a push, admittedly this can be done in a better way!). 

Song of Solomon – Toni Morrison

Not quite sure why I read Beloved before reading Song of Solomon. Well, not true. I read Beloved first because somebody left it in by building’s reception while I actually had to buy Song of Solomon…

I do realize that what I’m about to write is ground-breaking and has never been thought (let alone said) before, but Song of Solomon is an absolutely outstanding book. Sure, looking for material wealth and finding one’s true roots instead is the oldest literary topos, but this novel explores it so very well.

And, much like in all (very good) epic family stories, the anecdotes that are passed down from generation to generation are truly wonderful. And, much like in all (very good) epic family stories, wisdom is dispensed by old characters who have understood everything in life (here Pilate reminds me in part of Marquez’s Pilar Tenera and in part of Richler’s Ephraim Gursky).

And when Milkman thinks of his people and includes Jelly Roll, Bo Diddley, Fats and B.B. it’s very much like in Good Morning Babylon the two brothers tell some Hollywood types that they are the sons of the sons of the sons of Michelangelo and Leonardo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ISEw_yf8-o apologies, the audio is only in Italian). 

The Master of Petersburg – J.M. Coetzee

A book I had never heard of and that I picked up among the remainders in the holy Waterstones on Torrington Place because a) it was cheap, b) I have plenty of money from the National Book Tokens to spend (thanks to a particularly thoughtful boss), c) I loved Disgrace by Coetzee, d) I loved Dostoevsky’s Demons.

The thing is, I liked the idea of the novel way more than I liked the novel itself. I found Coetzee’s usually wonderful prose too cumbersome here (of course, he has to give voice to Dostoevsky!), felt that all the characters (including Dostoevsky himself) were rather uninteresting, and just struggled with those 200-odd pages of divagations on life and death.

Clearly this book has made me want to read more Dostoevsky (which I probably will during the Easter holiday – I need to do it outside of term-time otherwise I won’t be able to focus sufficiently to understand his deep message, or even just the Russian names!), but to me it was just a novel with great premises and a (predictably) underwhelming development.

Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me – Javier Marías

This time a book that my dad tried to get me to read for years (and I’ve only done it now because, rather surprisingly, its author is coming to speak at the LSE – not a school known for its love for literature! – next week).

The novel is beautifully written, and the starting idea (the unexpected death of an almost stranger in the arms of the narrator) is a majestic literary device. The constant references and quotes are intriguing if a tad bit too high-brow (I didn’t get any of them, except perhaps the tailing of Luisa – the sister of his dead lover – through the streets of Madrid as maybe a reference to Hitchcock’s Vertigo).

But (there is always a but) after a while the book gets slightly too repetitive. Yes, life is weird and goes in circles, but there is no need to repeat the same sentences a number of times (the first time you do that it’s interesting, after a while it just grows old). Most of all, because of these constant circular references, I just didn’t find the surprising finale that surprising, which was a bit of a shame and left me rather unmoved (speaking of cultural references, The Big Bang Theory’s treatment of Schrödinger's cat is definitely more interesting, and also undoubtedly funnier!). 

White Noise – Don DeLillo

As many have probably guessed by now, my favourite literary theme in my late teens and early 20s was anti-Fascism, that on my late 20s (probably owing to a process of – relative – de-politicization) has been American suburban life, and White Noise might be the greatest book on the topic that I’ve read so far.

I don’t know why, but reading about the miseries of the American middle-class somehow makes me happy (hysterically happy at times – maybe it’s some kind of disorder...). In addition to that, Jack, the main character, is a fairly successful historian lacking the most basic skill needed in his trade: he can’t speak the language of the country his research is focused upon (I picked my Ph.D. topic also because it was the one time in my life in an English-speaking country in which I could have used my language skills, and I found Jack’s issue absolutely hilarious).

White Noise is just an excellent work from start to finish, constantly exploring new issues with a clinic and cynical eye: first we have a clear picture of the daily lives of the characters and their idiosyncrasies, then we move on to a wonderful discussion on life and its instability (turns out we all have to die, whether we have been exposed to an “airborne toxic event” or not – something really rather banal but that is expressed so wonderfully in the novel) to finish with great pages on our steadfast faith in medications of all kinds and the actual value of revenge. Just priceless.

One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel García Márquez

I read this book when I was 16, on a school trip in which I was trying to get my mind off of the girl who was destroying my heart (or maybe I was doing it to prove to her how much of an intellectual I was – either way, it didn’t work).

To this day, there are still so many passages that I quote time and again: the discovery of ice, Remedios ascending to heaven, Mauricio Babilonia’s butterflies, the seventeen Aurelianos, everything around Melquiades, José Arcadio’s chestnut tree, and countless others.

And still this isn’t a book that I would like to re-read. I’m not sure if it’s just me or magical realism is generally out-grown by the time one turns 25. It’s one of my favourite books, yet I’m afraid that revisiting it might destroy my memories of it.

Amsterdam – Ian McEwan

I often wonder whether McEwan is the greatest writer of his generation. Books like Atonement and Child in Time make me think he could be (although I generally end up concluding that he isn’t), but others like Amsterdam make me wonder whether he might have enjoyed more success than he deserved.

The book is, like all others by McEwan, about rich people, charming rich people (at least, they are not always awesome charming rich people). In this book, the author seems to have a preference for one of his two main characters: the musician, whose brilliant symphony is (or might be?) destroyed by his former old-time friend (who, on the other hand, is criticized for the absolute lack of morality of some of his actions). The final showdown between the two is farcical and makes me question the literary value of the novel.

Sure, this is a quick read and written beautifully like all of McEwan’s books – but the annoying protagonists make the awful Tory minister appear likeable and defendable. And I don’t like that.