The Door - Magda Szabó

 

I was really grasping at straws as most of my e-libraries didn't seem to have anything particularly appealing on offer. Then my daughter's Hungarian BFF came over for a playdate and that made me realize that, other than The Paul Street Boys, I had never never a single Hungarian book, so I chanced upon this novel. 

The start was a bit of a slog, with the focus on female companionship and bickering not being something I found engaging, but then I got into the novel ("getting into a novel" - what an awful turn of phrase...) and I was left in awe of what I think can be considered a small masterpiece. 

Szabó's book is one of small secrets that are justifiably oh-so-important to her characters. It is one of love between people who at first glance have very little in common. And crucially is one in which the reader (or at least, that was the case for me) finds him/herself justifying most of the narrator's decisions and actions, while eventually accepting also Emerenc's viewpoint and, at the end of the day, wishing s/he was more like the cantankerous cleaning lady who appears to singlehandedly hold a small community together. 

Agent Running in the Field - John le Carré

 

A book that I read in part in digital form, and in part as a hard copy at our local library while my younger daughter was busy reading (well, actually just leafing through, she's three!) dozens of Bluey, Spot and - much to my chagrin - Peppa Pig books. 

Le Carré is one of those authors who make me wonder whether one can be both a great writer and have near universal reach. Very few can, and I believe le Carré belongs in that list. 

Sure, the ending of the book feels rushed and underexplored, but we're talking about an author who, at the tender age of 88, was probably feeling the pressure of time more than others (and he might have a point, as he died soon after the publication of this book). 

Apparently Agent Running in the Field has been described by many as le Carré's Brexit novel, which is obviously reductive, but I did love his decision to air out his anger and frustration with that whole bonkers project: while the likes of Ali Smith and Ian McEwan are preaching to the choir when they criticize Brexit, I suspect le Carré's readership covers a much broader socio-political spectrum and so his move was a lot bolder and riskier (though again, at 88 he probably didn't have too much to lose). 

The Passenger - Cormac McCarthy

  

McCarthy is 4895 years old (actually 89) and it doesn't show from this book. Either he's still extremely sharp, or he has a heck of a ghost-writer...

The Passenger is a beautiful story that makes the American South fascinating (unlike, well, Faulkner, as per my previous post). Bobby Western is the kind of troubled anti-hero that should be played by McConaughey, just like in Mud. And its pages on nuclear research are rather interesting for a non-scientist (in particular as I had casually read this and Giordano's Tasmania back-to-back). 

Oddly enough, at the time of reading I had also just finished advising a student on an essay about Thalidomide, so seeing Western's sister being pursued by "Thalidomide Kid" was bizarelly alienating.

Cronache del Mal d'Amore - Elena Ferrante

  

At some point I had to read something by the mysterious Elena Ferrante, and I opted for her oginial trilogy. 

These are three books coated in mystery, lies and journeys of self-discovery. Books that made me feel the brackishness of the water that some of the characters swim into and that initially left me wondering what would happen to the characters after the novels ended. 

Unfortunately, though, they are also books that gave me long-lasting feelings but whose plots weren't memorable. I just had to look them up on Wikipedia again, and this is surely not a good sign.

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.

Judas - Amos Oz

  

A fitting end to the career - and life - of the greatest Israeli author (at least to my knowledge, and in my opinion). This was another book that I surprisingly found in our building's lobby, which was rather unexpected considering how few books by Israeli authors I've seen in stock in London bookshops over the years. 

Judas is a novel of secrets, mysteries, incomprehensions and unfulfilled hopes and desires. It oozes maturity and the wisdom of an old man permeates its pages, and I suspect that there is probably quite a bit of Oz in the reclusive Wald. 

A book that I decided to keep on my Billy bookshelf (despite being a rather large hardback), which is now starting to look decrepit itself and would probably deserve to be replaced.

Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin

 

Oh, the haunting beauty of James Baldwin's writing! In a year that saw the release of the wonderful If Beale Street Could Talk (which I unfortunately went to see with a friend who failed to appreciate it, probably due to its lack of car chases and superheroes) I thought it was fitting to finally read this book. 

In many ways, reminded me of Secrets and Lies transposed in a racially turbulent American East Coast. All the characters appear like good people at heart, but broken (to different extents) but the drama of daily life. The reader wishes them to have good lives, but knows that in most cases there are simply too many hurdles. It is heartbreaking, but it has love in it and, ultimately, hope. 

And, much like with Coates below, I am afraid that it still does not get read by the people who really should, like my friend with his car chases and superheroes.

The Infatuations – Javier Marías

A book that a very well-read colleague of mine gave me because she found it quite abominable and wanted to see if I thought it was just a matter of translation or not. Turns out, I thought it was quite abominable too.

This is now the third novel by Marías that I have read, and it’s by far the weakest of them. It begins like the other two (one of the central characters gets killed off in the first paragraph) and I have the feeling that the author put more effort into the first 20 lines than he did in the rest of the book.

The dialogues are just extremely long monologues, the supposedly deep reflections aren’t that deep, the decision to call the two main characters Javier and Maria is, well, a bit petty (something that one would expect from those writers that Marías spends his time dissing in this book), and even the idea of a random assisted suicide is something that Paul Auster has done so much better in In the Country of Last Things.

So yeah, glad I didn’t buy the book myself. 

A Heart so White – Javier Marías

For once a book that I bought at full price! Scary, I know – but Javier Marías was coming to give a lecture at the LSE and I really needed to give him something to sign (being the first in line for an autograph after the lecture, he actually even wrote a line about the book and its secrets on my copy – yay!).

Much like Tomorrow in the Battle Think on Me, A Heart so White is clearly written by a literally genius. And as it was also clear during the lecture, this is a genius who knows he is a genius, and makes no attempt to even pretend to hide it (which is actually fair enough, although Paul Preston – the greatest historian of modern Spain – did put up a really good fight with Marías when he disagreed with him from the podium).

Dare I say, I actually loved A Heart so White, despite the smugness of both his author and of a number of his characters, and although I hope that Marías doesn’t treat women in the same way as his characters do. And the secrets of the book, the twist of Juan’s father’s past, and for once even the philosophical reflections in the final chapter are respectively intriguing and, for once, surprising and deep (and I am saying “for once” because I am usually not surprised by big surprises, and tend to find pseudo-philosophical conclusions to be borderline unreadable). 

My Revolutions – Hari Kunzru

 

Hari Kunzru signed my copy of the book, dedicating it to “a great interpreter” (claim to fame, yay!) after I translated a fairly embarrassing speech by a local politician at the same literary festival where I worked for Hanif Kureishi (and Paul Auster – those were the times...).

This book is an absolute gem. It touches all the right notes and it’s perfectly researched (mostly in the archives of the university where I work). It paints a very accurate picture of some incredibly tumultuous times and their lingering effects on the people who experienced them, or at least it seems that way for a kid who – at the end of the day – hasn’t really protested against anything since 2003 (when Iraq was invaded I thought chaining myself to the entrance gate of my high-school would have done some good – it quite clearly didn’t make a change on a global scale, and neither it did on a local one as I didn’t succeed in seducing the girl I was trying to impress with my radicalism at the time).

(Way) more people should read this book. Sadly (way) more people won’t.