Gods Without Men – Hari Kunzru

The great thing about young writers is that you can be all smug and unreasonably proud for reading their complete works, or at least all their fiction books (as it’s the case for me and Kunrzu). Let’s just ignore the fact that at the end of the day Kunzru has only written four novels so far.

To me, nothing will ever equal the impact and the depth of My Revolutions, but Gods Without Men was a lot more enjoyable than The Impressionist (I liked it pretty much as much as I liked Transmissions, with the sentimental sections in this case replaced by wacky but entertaining mystic ones). The book has been compared to works by David Mitchell and Kurt Vonnegut, but I actually saw quite a lot of Philip Roth (American Pastoral) and Don DeLillo (White Noise).

As usual, Kunzru writes beautifully, and succeeds in making the story of Jaz and Lisa gripping and touching (In particular when he describes their lives in the public eye). However, I have the feeling that some of the characters are slightly too stereotyped (in particular the nerdy Jaz and the British Nicky, who just uses a few British idioms too many to be fully credible). 

The mysteries of the afterlife don’t interest me. Kunzru’s recounting of them, however, does. 

Group Portrait with Lady - Heinrich Böll

One of those books that I literally couldn’t put down (well, if you ask my wife, that’s about any book, except for the remarkably bad ones that I am forced to read for my office’s book club – this month was the turn of The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul, the most offensively patronizing piece of poo poo I’ve ever read, seriously!).

Back on topic. The novel is clearly, yet again, about WWII and Nazifascism (amongst other things). Its approach (a literary mockumentary?) remains hilarious and alternative more than forty years after the book’s publication. In the novel Böll manages to write, always with a hint of irony, some of the most touching pages I’ve ever read (in particular the coffee scene and the singing by Boris, the Soviet POW and real love of Leni’s life) and simultaneously throw in some remarkably humorous comments (at a certain point the author’s research was delayed by his watching the Clay-Frazier fight…).

And the idea that the entire book revolves not just around a normal person, but around one who says so little about herself that it can be contained in one quick page in the middle of the book, is, in my humble opinion, an absolute stroke of genius. Well, that’s actually not just my humble opinion probably; Böll did receive the Nobel Prize after Group Portrait with Lady after all…

The Paper Men – William Golding

I thought that Golding had essentially only written The Lord of the Flies. Turns out I was wrong (and, as a matter of fact, I ended up enjoying The Paper Men a lot more than his supposed masterpiece).

At times the novel is almost an early and less polished version of Barney’s Version (apologies for the multiple “versions” there) – the same kind of rant given by a very interesting man clearly not in full control of his mind. Being old, rude, and blunt the narrator also doesn’t have an idyllic view of Italy, something that, needless to say, feels like a welcome departure from the delightful picture painted by so many writers since, well, since forever…

The figure of Rick Tucker is so very sad to me. I’m not quite sure whether my mental picture of him is even more miserable than the one most readers must have because of my own struggles with(in) the academic world. But, hey, at least I’m really glad that he ends the story the way he does…

One thing, though, remains ultimately unclear to me: why would anyone care that much about the biography of a writer? I mean, it’s not like writers are important figures in today’s world, or that a book like that is likely to sell. If I was as rich as Tucker’s “benefactor”, I would just buy the author and force him to tell me the story of his life rather than hiring someone else to do try to do that for me…

The Page Turner – David Leavitt

The random books one ends up reading when one (or one’s wife) picks up a large pile of novels primarily because they are free. My parents had been talking for years about While England Sleeps, so I figured I should give Leavitt a try.

It was an enjoyable and remarkably light read. The one issue, though, is that I really didn’t find much in the book that I could relate to: as an Italian expat with very little intention of ever going back to the country I didn’t really find anything too magic in the – rather standard – poetic and idyllic descriptions of Rome; as the stereotypical manly heterosexual man, I found little interest in the heady journey of sexual discovery of the main character; and as a spoiled only child who always got along rather well with his mother, I had very little interest in the relatively problematic relationship between the titular Page Turner and his mom.

So yeah, a good book to read on a Sunday afternoon while one is trying not to think of the state of his legs after running 18 miles (damn marathon training…), but that’s about it for me…

A Brief History of Seven Killings – Marlon James

A book that my boss lent to me to re-establish my faith in the Men Booker Prize after I was forced to read an absolutely pathetic novel – Anne Tyler’s A Spool of Blue Thread, which had been shortlisted for the prize last year – for my office’s book club.

I read the first 100 pages of this book with the same ease with which I had read the opening chapter of The Sound and the Fury (i.e. not a lot, being constantly lost in a prose that was simply too challenging for me), but after that rough start Jamaican Patois started to make sense, at least relatively.

Two characters stood out for me: the girl who runs away from Kingston (whose internal monologues felt like they had been written by Zadie Smith, despite the fact that the very end of her story is rather predictable) and the deceased politician who concludes most sections of the book (his description of the Singer’s illness and death is one of the most beautiful pieces of literature that I’ve read in a while). I didn’t find the book’s violence to be as Tarantino-esque as many reviewers presented it to be. Actually, I found the book violent, but not that violent.

Being nearly 700 pages, at times I felt that James could have got to the point more quickly, but then again he was probably doing it on purpose to offer a more vivid picture of the modus operandi (or vivendi?!?) of Jamaican gangs.

Most of all, the book is a wonderful display of how much impact one musician (the Singer is – surprise! – actually Bob Marley) has had on the life of his own country. It’s also kind of funny to see Marley always mentioned as “the Singer” while Peter Tosh and Jimmy Cliff are called by their names.

Also, because of this book I’ve spent the last 24 hours listening non-stop to the soundtrack of The Harder they Come. 

A Perfect Peace – Amos Oz

A random book I picked up without knowing a thing about it (although knowing fully well how much I like Oz’s writing). A really enjoyable read, despite the fact that it took me a couple of weeks to finish it over the holidays (I’ll blame family and friends’ visits – and the consequent lack of quality “me time” – for that).

I always tell my students to read something by Oz or Yehoshua (in the case of the latter I normally refer to his novels, not his borderline senile newspaper columns) to prepare for classes on the Arab-Israeli conflict – they never listen, but at least I try – and A Perfect Peace, with its comments on the Six Day War and more generally on Israeli politics, will clearly be no exception.

The novel is insightful and ironic, in particular in its first half (which the author wrote much earlier than the second part), the comments on life in the kibbutz are deep and informative, and a number of the characters are particularly interesting (the relatively minor ones often more so than the central triangle of Yonatan, Rimona and Azariah). The second half of the novel, however, has an underlying sentimentally that I struggled with…

Mrs Dalloway – Virgina Woolf

Yet another one of the books that I got from Books for Free in Stratford before its untimely closure last year. Having only read To the Lighthouse, I was determined to find something by Virginia Woolf that could be, erm, readable for me. I picked Mrs Dalloway not so much because I knew what it was about, but rather because I loved Cunningham’s The Hours so much (maybe not the most valid of premises, but hey, it did the trick).

Turns out that Mrs Dalloway was in fact readable (so much so that I even managed to read most of it during a train ride between London and Cambridge without feeling the need to shoot myself in the foot) and, rather surprisingly, it was also quite enjoyable. Clearly, I found the troubled life of Septimus Warren Smith to be much more interesting than Clarrisa’s own (despite the fact that her relation, or lack thereof, with Sally is so very beautifully sad).

Most of all, having been at the London School of Economics for almost ten years now, surrounded by the myth of Virginia Woolf, the Fabian Society, and the Bloomsbury Group, reading Mrs Dalloway has allowed me to have an eye-opening epiphany: most of them were probably horrible people who ultimately either hated (or at the very least disliked profoundly) each other and only pretended to be friends because it could come in handy. Yes, rather sad…

The Shipping News – E. Annie Proulx

Had I read this book when my mum suggested it to me a dozen years ago, I would have probably understood my classmates from Newfoundland a lot better… I always thought this was going to be a nice read but little more. Man was I wrong…

There are new layers to Quoyle’s personality and new hidden aspects of his family history in every chapter (and I do realize that this sounds like a trite comment given by a mediocre reader to an average book, but I swear it isn’t the case – at least for the latter part of the statement). The blatant disrespect for the English grammar of most of the novel’s characters (even the journalists) makes their dialogues realistic and, for want of a better term, absolutely sea-worthy (although the “yarrs” made me think of The Simpsons a bit too much…). And the anecdotes disseminated throughout the book are of the kind that can only be told in the wildest parts of Canada.

However, knowing that Julianne Moore portrayed Wavey in the movie taken from the book (which I haven’t seen yet, and probably will not in all honesty) I had her incredible freckled face in my mind all the time, and I just couldn’t understand why Quoyle wouldn’t fall in love with her sooner…

The Honorary Consul – Graham Greene

Greene considered this to be one of his best works (at least according to Wikipedia – and who am I to question this claim?). However, in all honesty, I disagree: The Honorary Consul is enjoyable, but doesn’t have the suspense of The Quiet American or the hilarious turns of Our Man in Havana.

To me, Dr Plarr is simply too British to have spent his entire life in Latin America, and his constant remarks on “machismo” seem like those of an outsider rather than those of a self-critical local. Also, in a novel in which so many characters are fighting for their lives, I found it weird that not a single one of them was actually bad: Plarr and the desperadoes have their heart in the right place – although the latter have no methods – Fortnum is just a poor nobody, Colonel Perez is a good policemen who knows his people, and hell, even the British diplomats and politicians seem to be sensible. Only the General is probably bad, but he is only mentioned and doesn’t appear in the novel…

The book does pick up from the moment of the attempted creation of an Anglo-Argentine club, but to me it was too little too late.

And for someone who doesn’t really go to church, the lengthy discussions on God are just fairly painful and trite (and a reminder of high-school philosophy debates…)

Cat and Mouse - Günter Grass

It was rather surprising to read such a short – and fundamentally simple and linear – novella by Grass after powering through the hefty (yet absolutely wonderful) The Tin Drum. The links between the two are many: clearly the setting, but also the unreliability of the narrator (Pilenz is not as unruly as Oskar, yet his desire to justify himself makes the reader question whether or not he is telling the whole truth, or just his own) not to mention the fact that Oskar himself does make a couple of appearances in the book (something I could have done without, as I saw little need for such explicit tribute).

The intimacy of the novella is very touching, as well as the narrator’s decision to directly address Mahlke time and again. The innocence of the two main characters is lost in the 140 pages of the book, but, given the setting, no reader could – or should – make a moral judgement (even when Pilenz writes that he hopes not to have said anything that might have damaged his freemason teacher, or when Mahlke takes his dramatic decisions in the last few pages).

Throughout the book the reader knows perfectly well that things are going to take a turn for the worse, but the sadness of the last couple of pages is something that is absolutely lacerating for a book about teenagers growing up together. 

Cosmopolis – Don DeLillo

Yet another book from what is essentially an unending stock of novels that I either got for close to nothing from Fopp or actually for nothing at the good old Books for Free shop.

I loved DeLillo’s White Noise, had mixed feelings about Underworld, and saw Cosmopolis as a “DeLillo meets absurdist Paul Auster, meets Joyce, meets Minority Report” kind of pastiche. There is clearly nothing wrong with any of those four ingredients, but this mix just doesn’t work for me.

The novel, despite its shortness, ends up being crammed with ideas that are potentially interesting but surely overwhelming, and Eric’s frequent meetings with his wife are just too dreamlike for me (so much so that I was afraid they would turn into something like the bathroom scene in The Shining). There is also too much death around (including that of his bodyguard which is, honestly, absolutely gratuitous).

This is not to say that the novel is uninspiring – there are plenty of interesting points raised about our expectations from society and about human nature (why does Eric ultimately hope that the rap star he idolizes died in a gunfight and not of a common heart attack? Why does he confront Benno Levin when he tries to kill him instead of running away from him?) – but it’s just, well, a bit much (ado about nothing). 

American Psycho – Bret Easton Ellis

Firstly a sad note: the Books for Free space in Stratford, which gave me faith in mankind just a week ago, is now about to close down. Needless to say, my faith in mankind is vacillating (probably also because the rules for my application for British naturalization are changing, and that means that I have to again start the process essentially from zero).

Moving on to American Psycho: I was reading this book on the tube and feeling really rather ashamed (not embarrassed, ashamed). One thing is the glorification and  aestheticization of violence, but this is just gratuitous (and fairly disgusting). And when the author isn’t talking about chopped limbs and tortured people, he is talking about matching his Fratelli Rossetti shoes with Ermenegildo Zegna trousers – not exactly the most exciting topic of discussion for a guy who would love to spend his life in jeans and t-shirt. Bateman is meant to be Psycho’s Norman Bates's heir, but falls so very short (and also lacks any kind of self-criticism: how can a guy who despises homeless people so much love Phil Collins, the author of Another Day in Paradise?!?)…

Most of all, I am not quite sure if Ellis meant to highlight the protagonist’s mental self-destruction or if he just has no idea what he is talking about, but reading about the Beatles’ You Can’t Always Get What You Want is just too painful to describe. Because of The Big Chill I often say I’d like that song played at my funeral, but I’d like to think that, no matter how old and senile I will get, I will never think that Lennon and McCartney wrote the song. 

The Music of Chance – Paul Auster

Last Saturday I crossed the Thames and went to Stratford for my Life in the UK test (which I passed, by the way – meaning that there is now nothing stopping me from becoming a British citizen, hopefully). I had to walk through the Shopping Centre on my way and found this wonderful place (https://www.facebook.com/BooksforFreeStratford/) where they give away up to three free books for every visitor – no strings attached and no catches! In terms of maintaining my faith in mankind, this place ranks right up there with Parkrun. Visit it, pick up books, donate books, and prevent them from essentially going to landfill…

Moving on to the actual book, I have now read most of Auster’s works and, as far as absurdist novels go, this is one of my favourites (I liked it a lot more, for instance, than the stories of the New York Trilogy). It’s deeply disturbing and the reader knows from the start that everything is spiralling out of control but doesn’t know how it will all end (Will the wall close in on Nashe like it used to do on Roger Waters and David Gilmour after the first half of The Wall? Will Stone and Flower create a tiny little replica of Nashe and run his life for him through the “City of the World”? Will he get killed as he tries to escape?). Yet, there is always a sense of hope: maybe Nashe’s sister, his daughter, Pozzi, or maybe even Tiffany, the prostitute from Atlantic City, can help the guy survive in one way or another.

The one thing that annoyed me, though, is that I am sure I didn’t manage to pick up on tons of the novel’s insightful remarks and metaphors – the links to the myth of Sisyphus are clear, but there are surely millions more…

Us – David Nicholls

And with this I have now officially read all the books by David Nicholls. Hardly an accomplishment, considering he has written four and that reading them is so effortless. A bit too effortless to be honest…

Us is a great read when you are bored during a long journey between a Northern Italy warm enough to still swim in the Mediterranean in November and a windy and rainy South-East England, but little more than that. Just as One Day and The Understudy, Us is about the dynamics of a mismatched couple – something whose novelty wears off after a (short?) while. And, much like One Day, the book is saved from being excessively trite and banal by a plot twist in the end (in One Day this came with Emma’s bike-ride, in Us with an added piece of information on the life of the couple’s son). I also have the feeling that Nicholls just had a lot of travel notes that he felt like cramming in a book (although at times this are quite interesting – like comparing the glorious Champs-Élysées to the much-less glorious Oxford Street).

While Starter for Ten was at times hilarious, and The Understudy was ultimately quite funny, both Us and One Day appear more ambitious and seem to attempt to tackle deeper issues and problems. To me, however, they fail and end up being fairly entertaining, but not as much as their two predecessors. 

Harriett Said… – Beryl Bainbridge

Another book that my mother bought from Fopp for an offensively low price. Having read a couple of Bainbridge novels already, I was familiar with her love for stories of troubled girls and the differences between reality and their perceptions of it. However, I was fooled by the colorful cover of this edition and approached the novel believing it would have been short (which it was) and sweet (far from it).

Even without taking in consideration the incipit, it’s quite clear that the two main characters of Harriett Said… are trapped in a downward spiral. That said, I was expecting something milder (really bad, but somehow milder) to be at the bottom of that spiral – the actual turn of events over the last few pages caught me completely by surprise.

It’s absolutely remarkable that this novel can still shock and sicken the reader after 50 years. And by the time the reader stops justifying the two main characters saying that they are just two little girls playing around and discovering themselves, it’s too late.