The World According to Garp - John Irving

 

What a book! 

The World According to Garp is a beautifully written (and at times laugh out loud funny) book about, well, the world: sex (consensual and not) and sexuality are the obvious themes, but in the epic family history there is so much space for love (often misplaced, misunderstood and misguided, but still love) and loss (the chapter after the car accident, where at the end the readers realize that their attention was fully devoted to the survivors without feeling the absence of one voice, contains some of the most hauntingly dramatic passages I've ever read). 

Despite the fact that my main literary advisor - yes, my mum... - told me to read pretty much every John Irving book straight away, I'll try to pace myself with him in the upcoming months as I don't want to overdo it and forget how much I loved this novel. 

Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth

  

And so what?

Philip Roth is one of my favourite authors, yet I had postponed reading Portony's Complaint for years. 

It didn't have the appeal of American Pastoral, or The Human Stain, or pretty much any other book by him. 

I start reading it with a "so what?" attitude, and it just didn't leave me. I didn't find it funny, I didn't find it shocking. I just found it so awfully boring (and, if anything, the complete and absorbing obsession with sex got to be a bit sad quite quickly).

Lanzarote - Michel Houellebecq

Ah, Houellebecq - sure, he's an arrogant ass who uses his real or supposed insecurities to spit venom on half of the world, but he writes so very well.

Lanzarote is the sort of book that you read during a single bus ride (or at least that's what I did, the one time I didn't run or cycle back from work this summer). Possibly because of its short size, it has way less nastiness than the other books by the same author that I've read so far. And for once, at least some of the groups that Houellebecq attacks are made up of people that I don't feel the desperate need to defend.

Add to that the fact that I believe Houellebecq picks the perfect location for this book, an almost lunar island that manages to attract hordes of tourists nonetheless, and you have a really good read for an hour or so. It won't take much longer than that, and it won't stay with you for much longer than that either, but it will allow you to overcome the boredom of being stuck on a bus in rush-hour traffic. 

Platform - Michel Houellebecq

After giving Houellebecq a chance and loving The Map and the Territory I stole my mom’s copy of Platform (a rather atypical 50p buy from the family-friendly local farm). And it was just a bit too much.

I don’t think I’m too much of straight do-gooder, and I’m often rather cynical, but after reading about the protagonist’s 400^th blowjob I just lost interest. The exploitation of the sexual potential of the Far East was intriguing, the terrorist attack brutal and the reaction to it interesting even if completely politically incorrect, but the constant references to sex were just plain boring after a while.

Then again, maybe I would have enjoyed it more as a horny teenager (though at the same time it makes me wonder how many men in their 50s have the sort of stamina of the protagonist – I surely won’t…).