Tutta la Vita che Resta - Roberta Recchia

 

One of the Italian books that I just have to read every now and again. Melodramatic to the ninth degree - with somehow managed crisis after somehow managed crisis and the very occasional brief interlude of something resembling calm. 

Yet, this is not the utterly unbearable A Little Life. I actually got to feel something for the characters, and in all this drama I didn't think that the author was simply riding on the readers' emotions (and their manipulation), but was actually telling a genuinely compelling story and touching on a variety of themes with skills. 

Obviously, a number of plot twists were rather predictable - ranging from the family eventually finding a way to patch things up, to the solution of the initial crime, to the disappearance of central yet ultimately expendable characters. Still, this remain a book that I enjoyed way more than what I had expected.  

Man's Search for Meaning - Viktor Frankl

  

One of the closest things to a history book that I've read over the last couple of years. Yes, I'm truly an excellent historian...

This book was given to me as a thank-you gift by a student I worked with as he was writing his dissertation (I wouldn't say supervised because I'm not allowed to do that, but man did I read some drafts!). Apparently, it was one of his go-to gifts to friends, and I can understand why. 

Given the subject-matter, this is obviously a very compelling read, though it's clearly written by someone with a sizeabale ego. Then again, if one survives the Holocaust I think s/he is entitled to have whatever kind of ego. 

I've also read plenty of reviews criticizing the author's idea that his attitude contributed to his survival. Yes, I highly doubt that attitude had much to do with survival in a concentration camp and think that many other factors - including pure chance! - had a more significant impact. Then again, if one survives the Holocaust I think s/he is entitled to believe whatever they want as a way to explain coming out of it alive.

Every Man for Himself - Beryl Bainbridge

  

This was a book I got in my last Fopp run, a couple of years ago at this point. Prices had gone up a wee bit (it was then 2 books for £7), but most of all I think by then I had read all the books that had been remaindered in the UK. Perhaps I should go back and check if the stock has changed much in recent times. 

I am yet to read a Bainbridge novel that I didn't like; though I've probably written that before. This felt like a slightly longer read than most, and the setting (the sitting Titanic) definitely felt different from most of her other novels. 

After reading it I mentioned it to someone who loves all things Titanic and proceeded to sneer at novels on the topic as the real story is itself so fascinating. Needless to say, I disagree. Not so much in post-modern terms (what's a real story?), but mostly because this is a good book, full stop.

The Wall - John Lanchester

 

Over the last three years I haven't become illiterate and I haven't lost the ability to connect to the internet. I just didn't update this blog, but I'll now try to make amends. Now that most of my reading is done on my iPad, and now that my iPad stays in the office on Monday and Tuesday nights I'll hopefully be able to find some time to play catch-up with the novels that I read through multiple lockdowns and the birth of my second daughter...

Over the last three years I've discovered the joys of library ebook loans. Southwark gives me some, Westminster gives me more, and, incredible as it may sound, my small Italian hometown gives me the best service of all three.

Over the last three years I've read almost all the novels from the Southwark Library that I found somewhat interesting. The Wall was something that I wouldn't have picked by its synopsis, but I decided to read it because all the John Lanchester books I had read I had found to be somewhere between "easy and cute" and "brilliant".

Over the last three years I've read a number of dystopian novels, like this one, and remained ambivalent to most of them (though this one has the advantage of making me ask myself "would I survive in a similar situation, and if so how?).

Over the last three years, dystopian novels haven't changed that much in tone. But that's probably true of dystopian novels over the last century. And in the real world the climate threat hasn't changed that much either probably, but now it feels much more real, and this novel makes it scarily so.

The Mars Room - Rachel Kushner

Another of the Booker-longlisted IKEA books, and one for which I really wouldn’t have gone for had it not been for the fact that Don DeLillo was listed in the book’s acknowledgement. According to Oddschecker, it is now the second least likely book to win the award. In spite of that, it’s my own favourite for the year.

The Mars Room is a prison book that manages not to be bad, mean and aggressive. Yet, I believe it does give the reader an actual idea of the daily life in a woman’s prison. It is also about gender (and very much non-binary) and the challenges that women experience when facing unwanted male attention.

Yet again, for interesting that the above things are, what resonated the most with me is the hopelessness of a mother who doesn’t want to accept the reality of having lost her child.

The Lonely Londoners - Sam Selvon

Actually I take it back - over the last month or so I've read mostly books by black authors, not just a few. And The Lonely Londoners, much like Brixton Rock, deserves to be right up there.

In all honesty, I'm not quite sure why I had never even heard of Selvon, as this book is truly magnificent. Again, it's probably an easy sell for me as I love Brixton (or at least used to, when I was a pseudo-basketball player and I went there three times a week to train) and there is plenty of it, but to me the scenes with the greatest literary significance are the ones at Waterloo station, where the hopes and dreams of the recently landed clash with the acquired wisdom and shiftiness of the "old hands".

And, much like Brixton Rock, this book opened my eyes to an entirely different use of the English language and of writing dialogue.

In the Country of Last Things – Paul Auster

I don’t even know how I got this book. A fairly typical Auster novel. And the issue with fairly typical Auster novels is that, well, they are a bit too typical. And when they’re not works of art (to me Sunset Park still tops the list, together with the slightly more atypical Mr Vertigo) they’re just more of the same. And when you have read a lot of them, well, you get the idea.

The entire book/letter reads like an extended introspective anecdote from one of Auster’s bigger novels, and while there is nothing wrong with that in itself, it just doesn’t excite me anymore.

Ah, and I think that McCarthy does American dystopia so much better (although the preparations for the final uncertain trip remind me of the tension of the final scene of The Birds). 

La Tregua – Primo Levi

 

I’ve stolen this book from my granddad’s bookshelf. It was a gift for him by my mom some 20 years ago. His memory is really rather wobbly now, I don’t think he’ll realize it’s gone (or, sadly, that he’s ever read it).

I’ve read it because my mother – rightfully, as is sometimes the case! – scolded me for saying that often Levi’s writing is (understandably, obviously) quite humourless. I stand by what I said in relation to books about the holocaust. But La Tregua is more than that. It’s about the long journey home, about the light at the end of the tunnel, about the desire to live. Also, La Tregua was written in the early 1960s, 15 years after Se Questo E’ un Uomo, and I’m sure that this played an important role in the way in which Levi recalled his turbulent days in 1945 and 1946.

Levi’s self-mocking when describing his lack of street smarts is endearing, the plethora of secondary characters with very often stereotypical national quirks is extremely funny (at times actually hilarious), and the never-ending road back to Turin is of such an epic and heroic kind that I am sure McCarthy would love to have written La Tregua. And, clearly, the anecdotes that Levi magisterially recalls in La Tregua are of the kind which can only be lived and told by the chosen people.

Se Questo E’ un Uomo – Primo Levi

Without a doubt Primo Levi’s most famous book. Given the topic (the author’s experience in the Nazi concentration camps) it’s really hard to write anything about it, and even more to offer any sort of vague critique. We were strongly encouraged to read the book in high-school (by the time I had already read it), but I think we should have all been forced to do so.

From a sociological and anthropological point of view, the book offers a unique insight into human relations in the direst of situations. Yet, at the same time, the book ultimately doesn’t cast a moral judgement on the persecutors, something that I found extremely surprising.

I first read it when I was 13 or 14, and I remember being really shocked when I realized that often in concentration camps the ones more likely to die soon were the strongest men, capable of doing the hardest jobs and incapable of doing them without using their full strength. The frequent references to the Divine Comedy made me want to read some of its key “Canti” already then, when I was surely too young to understand them.

I don’t think that someone who has survived to tell this tale then decided to kill himself more than 40 years later. But maybe I’m just naive...

Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

During my first year at university I only read a couple of books. Shame on me, but I had other priorities: trying to prove to the kids in my class that, despite my funny accent, I was as smart as them, washing dishes as I already mentioned, and playing basketball for my university team. Of Mice and Men was one of the few books I read that year, it was lent to me by my Singaporean roommate and I read it while travelling for an international friendly match in Barcelona.

How I suffered. Despite the brevity of the novel, I was quite shattered by the end of it. Over the final few pages I was so desperate for George to find a solution like he always seemed to do. And in the end he does find a solution, even in that dramatic situation. To me that’s one of the greatest displays of love in 20^th century literature. I just still wish he had found another solution, another way to run away and finally have “their little place”.

A dislikeable teammate of mine saw me finishing the novel on the flight back to London. He told me he hated Steinbeck because he had to read Grapes of Wrath in high school. I hadn’t read it at the time, but as soon as I did his comment became another reason to have fairly bad opinion of the guy.