Long Island - Colm Tóibín

 

Perhaps it was a mistake to read this without having read Brooklyn, but hey it is a standalone book after all. 

I read it to understand what makes Tóibín so popular and I can see that. The writing is extremely smooth, his ability to talk about reality in a small village is remarkable, and the stereotypical descriptions of how gossip spreads in a small place somehow don't really feel stereotypical. 

Yet, I'm afraid this was also a novel that attempted to appeal to a sentimental side of me that I have long repressed (and/or that I've never possessed) and as a result I didn't get out of this book as much as other people did. 

Embers - Sándor Márai

 

After reading The Door I felt that I should read another Hungarian book in the hope of striking gold again. 

What I struck, ultimately, wasn't gold, at least not for me. Yet, it was a pleasant read about friendship and love in front of a dying fire (and/or in front of a dying empire, despite the fact that by the book's publication Austria-Hungary had been dissolved for more than 20 years). 

It is one of those books whose plot I can't remember, but I do remember the sensations it evoked. Still, as far as authors covering (and celebrating) the decadence of a former glorious central European empire go, Joseph Roth wins, hands down. 

The Bee Sting - Paul Murray

 

Beware the Ides of March. 

But also, beware the "instant classic" (The Washington Post). 

This is a novel that I thought desperately tried to be a Great American Novel. Except it isn't great, and it isn't American (on the plus side, it's a novel). As I was reading it, I often had to remind myself that the book wasn't set in the American Midwest, but actually in Ireland. And when I thought the plot was getting almost incestuous, well, it got even more incestuous. 

On the plus side, it was a pretty quick and almost effortless read. At times it was even quite pleasant, but between that and considering this one of the best novels of the last few years there's a big difference!

Expo 58 - Jonathan Coe

Yet again a novel that was suggested to be by my mother, and one that I didn't find particularly exciting at the time (and, oddly, one that I thought was surprisingly non-comical despite being by Jonathan Coe).

I read it a few months ago, and I already remember very little of its plot (a main character who is torn between his routine British life and the excitement of the Brussels Expo, some relatively low-level spying over ill-thought-out projects, and a fairly predictable love triangle). 

What has stuck with me, though, is the general hopeful mood of the era, at least in Western Europe, and that is really something we could do with these days. 

 

The Narrow Road to the Deep North - Richard Flanagan

A book that one of my favourite students got for me (and damn, I like that so much more than a bottle of wine!) as he came to visit me on his way to Antarctica. 

I suspect the construction of the Burma Railway is something that most Australians are at least reasonably familiar with, but for an Italian it remains something shrouded in a bit of mystery and something I really didn't know much about beyond what The Bridge on the River Kwai left me with (and to think that I'm a historian!). 

Perhaps unusually, I feel that the parts of it that will stay with me the longest will not be the ones set in Burma, but rather the final chapters covering the lives of the survivors and the lasting impact of the war. I can’t quite figure out why (perhaps because war and its atrocities are way more often covered in works of fiction than the long-term personal implications of conflict?), but it’s quite similar to how I felt about watching The Best Years of Our Lives (which I was mind-blown by).

Yet, despite liking the book and having finished it months ago, it is still resting on my bedside table - proof of the fact that perhaps I should consider getting a bigger bookshelf, as I can't quite figure out what book to remove to make space for this one. 

Red Sorghum - Mo Yan

 

I had meant to read this book since discovering years ago a beautiful collection of short stories by Mo Yan. 

Red Sorghum ended up being very much in line with what I expected. My mother said she found it a Chinese version of Doctor Zhivago, but in all honesty I enjoyed this a fair deal more than Pasternak's book. 

A number of things were obviously "lost in translation" for me: the heroic tone of many tales, the frequent repetition of words, idioms and plot twists, and also the characters' sentimental dynamics. Yet, it brought to life a period of Chinese history that I had read about at length from a historical point of view in a way that I had not experienced before, and that to me is rather commendable. 

The Heart Goes Last - Margaret Atwood

I guess when you publish with the speed of Margaret Atwood (though I wonder how much of that speed is cause by publishers' pressure to get as much out of her as possible while she's still alive!) every now and again you hit a small bump in the road. 

This is obviously not a bad book. I don't think Margaret Atwood would be capable of writing a bad book (famous last words?!?), but this is really just alright. For all the death and violence around, it's not enough to make the reader terrified of what kind of future awaits us. And the attempts at humour are simply not funny enough. 

The pretty sappy final couple of chapters are also something I could have done without. The "no harm done + happily ever after with a hint of faint surprise" really left me unconvinced. 

The Night Manager - John le Carré

Like with a little black dress, I guess you can never go wrong with a vintage le Carré. And to think of the snobbish look of our librarian when I donated my copy of The Russia House...

For me The Night Manager ranks a bit below Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy and Agent Running in the Field, but it remains a heck of a story. The troubled Pine is one of the most entertaining spies (well, is he a spy or a volunteer?!?) that I've ever come across, and seeing him struggle with his own conscience is absolutely gripping. 

Yet, it's Roper that steals the show. A villain who is always in plain sight and at the centre of the action, not a Palpatine-like figure in the hazy background, he undoubtedly elevates the novel. 

And one is left to marvel at how well some of  le Carré's books - including this - have aged. 

Terre Rare - Sandro Veronesi

I wonder if Veronesi thought that he would never be able to replicate the success of Caos Calmo, so he just decided to milk its main character for an unnecessary sequel. 

Mum liked this book. I respectfully disagree, at least partially. To me it's closer to the latest book by Ammaniti than it is to Caos Calmo. Same Rome, same need to throw in one of the supposed most beautiful women in Italy, same improbable (though often rather dull) encounters with minor characters. 

So, I'd class it as a harmless quick read, but would never say I liked it. 

Actually, one thing that I can truthfully and openly say that I did NOT like is the return (resurrection?) of the main character's sister-in-law, with unfinished business and unfulfilled love and career aspirations. I'd take the Roman chav that our protagonist dumps on the road any day of the week (maybe not as a life companion, but surely as a fictional character). 

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!).

Caffe' Amaro - Simonetta Agnello Hornby

  

Pathetic. Since Agnello Hornby is considered to be a major Italian author, I figured I had to read something by her at one point or another, but this book was, you guess it, pathetic. 

Set in an overtly romanticized Sicily, at a time when life was better because it was simpler (if you were rich, duh), this love triangle is predictable and vapid. It also reads as the author, and not her characters, is bitter because at the (real or supposed) exploitation of Southern Italy by the North (when her aristocratic family did the exploiting though, things were fine?). 

And, in spite of thanking Christoper Duggan for his historical advice, there are enough historical inaccuracies to rub the reader (or at the very least me!) the wrong way. This is not a 21st century Il Gattopardo. This is a waste of time.

Mother Night - Kurt Vonnegut

  

I have to be honest: I generally wouldn't pick a Vonnegut novel if I had a vast choice. I find his wackiness growing stale over the course of novels with a minimal (or at times a highly convoluted) plot. 

But the plot in Mother Night is actually clear and linear, and the wackiness grows gradually, like in so many books that I love from Jonathan Coe to Zadie Smith, or like in the best Coen brothers movies. And I read this book more or less at the same time as I read The Porcupine by Jonathan Barnes, so I was probably positively inclined towards a book about the Cold War and the legacy of the Second World War. 

In short: I really liked Mother Night, but in spite of that I still won't rush to read my next Vonnegut book.

Crossroads - Jonathan Franzen

  

Hmm...

I feel like I would have liked this book had it not been for the fact that it's all around a religious community. A nice grassroots lay organization with a similar structure and ethos, yes. A religious community, no. 

I'm probably just an awful human being, but hey. 

I would have probably had more time for Russ had he not been a priest, and would have probably found him less boring and petty. Also, had he not worked at a church called First Reformed, I wouldn't have pictured him as a 1970s Ethan Hawke

Machines Like Me - Ian McEwan

 

Old-school Ian McEwan beats 2019 Ian McEwan hands down. Next time he writes a sci-fi book, perhaps he could invent a time machine that reminds him of what a good storyteller he was (and most likely can still be). 

This love triangle between two humans and a machine felt as emotionally void as a Tamagotchi's request for affection, which I do realize might have been the whole point, but for me it makes for very uninspiring reading. 

Then again, I was never going to be sold on a book like this, as I can't recollect a single novel with human-like androids/machines/robots that I actually, honestly and thoroughly enjoyed (Never Let Me Go was the one that I appreciated the most, but even there saying that I really liked it would be a bit of a stretch).

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning - Alan Sillitoe

  

I read this novel as I had obviously enjoyed Sillitoe's Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner, liking its raw prose and its subject matter. 

The problem here is, clearly, that I still liked Sillitoe's raw prose, but the subject matter felt far less stimulating. The athletic exploits of a troubled teenager are much more interesting to me than the love troubles of a working-class young man whose life revolves aroud evenings at the pub. The fact that my already poor relationship with pub culture is now at an all-time low most likely didn't help. 

Still, I was glad to find a reference to bastards grinding you down that predated Margaret Atwood by almost three decades.

Talking It Over - Julian Barnes

  

I don't have much to add to what I wrote about Love, etc. as, after all, they are ultimately one and the same. 

If anything, Talking It Over made me appreciate Love, etc. even more, as the sequel was so well-written that one could read just that as a stand-alone novel without missing out on any of the dynamics between the three main characters and one gets a really good idea of what had happened 10 years before anyway. 

Then again, I'm obviously very happy to have read Talking It Over too, for the obvious reasons, like the fact that Julian Barnes is an incredible writer whose wit always (or at the very least most of the times!) shines through his work.

Solar - Ian McEwan

  

I much prefer McEwan doing "science" (or thereabouts) like in this book than him doing sci-fi like in Machines Like Me, but that's not saying much. 

Solar wasn't a bad read, but I have the feeling it's already aged quite a bit over the span of a dozen years. The main driving force behind it shouldn't be the personal life of its main character (which is not as interesting as that of a number of his other characters), but rather its scientific approach, which in 2022/3 already feels quite dated. 

And the finale, with the chickens coming home to roost isn't really the most surprising.

Bel-Ami - Guy de Maupassant

  

Nope. Maybe I'm just inoculated against the decadence of late-19th century Paris, but I just didn't enjoy this novel (probably the fact that in my edition the front cover was actually the latest movie rendition of the story, and I found Robert Pattinson unconvincing in the role even in picture). 

The one positive, I guess, is that there are some very well-developed female characters, and they also have a fair bit of agency. Yet, the story of the scoundrel who climbs the social ladder by virtue of tricks and charm is as old as time, and I suspect that was already the case in the 1880s, so there is little to remark (or at least to positively remark) in terms of plot development.

Nothing Like the Sun - Anthony Burgess

  

I wouldn't have read this book had it not been for the fact that I'm now running out of titles from the Southwark electronic library that I'd consider reading...

Maybe I'm dumb, or maybe my English is not good enough yet, but man I struggled with this book. Granted, it is, unsurprisingly, like watching a Shakespeare play for me: I understand nothing for the first 15 minutes, then slowly things start to fall in place. The problem here is that reading for me is very much a start-stop thing, in particular these days, so I never really got in the flow of the supposed-16th century prose. 

On the plus side, I checked the Wikipedia entry for the book after I finished. Apparently I got all the main points, but that's hardly a sign of success, and that's not really the reason why one reads a book in the first place.

The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne

  

Being in Latin America at Christmas, surrounded by omnipresent religious references, I figured it was as good a chance as any to read The Scarlet Letter. 

As normally happens with 19th century novels, I was expecting to find it dated and hard to approach, but I was pleasantly surprised: the prose is light, the characters deep and the plot, ultimately, still highly relevant. 

Obviously, I felt that a number of passages showed too much sympathy for Dimmesdale and that it would have been so much better had this been written by a woman (you don't say!), but utimately the book was thought-provoking and current beyond my hopes and expectations.