Category: british authors

#36 – #39 – Summer Chicklit & #40 Gone

There’s something I’ve discovered about my iPad — it’s incredibly easy for me to buy books with one click. Books I had long ago stopped buying because they were (and I don’t want to use this word) disposable — not that they’re throwaways but that they satisfy the need I sometimes have for the reading equivalent of a girlie movie. When I was pinching my Gail Vaz-Oxlade-inspired pennies, I couldn’t justify buying a book that would only take me an hour to read. I needed to buy books that were an investment, that would keep me occupied for longer than the time it would take to watch a film.

Well, my iPad has changed all that — I can spend less than $15.00 (which is less than the cost of a movie now) and in some cases, less than $10.00 (and let’s not get into a moral discussion of what’s wrong with ebook pricing because I work in publishing, I KNOW), for books that I can read like my mother used to read Harlequin romances, quickly, painlessly and with some tears (because I get so emotionally involved). I don’t always have to be reading literature but it does have a very special place in my book snob heart so forgive me if I’m a bit harsh on these books. Take this all with a grain of salt.

#36 – Fly Away Home
I still remember reading Good in Bed one afternoon when I was home sick from work. I bawled from start to finish. Weiner has a way with writing female characters that just gets to the heart of the hurt that we all seem to carry around. I haven’t read a novel of hers for a while and so I downloaded one thinking it’d be good to read up north last week at the cottage. The situation that starts off the novel feels “ripped from the headlines” Law & Order-esque. The wife of a prominent politician discovers via CNN or something equally horrible (her best friend calls to comfort her re: the news that had just broken) that her husband of x-number of years cheated on her with a not-quite intern. Sylvie Serfer Woodruff has two grown daughters: Diana, an overachieving doctor, and Lizzie, a recovering addict. When each woman hears the news of their father’s affair, they react differently but in each case it becomes a catalyst for change. It’s a very chicklit scenario — the overtly dramatic “event” that spurns women into some sort of evolution as if regular life just isn’t enough to make anyone become introspective, but whatever, the emotional journey each takes throughout the novel is rewarding and I can’t front — I bawled like a baby towards the end. BAWLED. IN FRONT OF COMPANY. AT THE COTTAGE. So it’s a breezy, solid, emotionally rewarding read even if it feels overwhelmingly cliched in many, MANY places.

#37 – An Ideal Wife
I didn’t read this on my iPad, a friend sent me a copy, and Gemma Townley used to be one of my favourite chicklit writers — I always felt she was one step above so many of her counterparts. Her characters felt fresh, their lives just that little bit more interesting, but I’m no longer in my 20s or even early 30s and I’m less charmed by her books as I once was. An Ideal Wife follows Jessica Wild, a protagonist from two earlier books, and she’s never been my favourite. The hijinks that happen in the book feel contrived and I could tell what was going to happen almost from the beginning pages. In a sense, I think it’s the curse of a successful mid-list chicklit writer, the sales are good so the publisher puts you on a book-a-year treadmill and so you start churning out titles to suit the schedule and not the work. I’ll still recommend Townley over writers like Giffin and the like, simply because I’ve met her in person and she was AWESOME, but the last three books, in fact, the whole Jessica Wild series, has kind of disappointed me.

#38, #39 – The Sookie Stackhouse series (Dead Until Dark & Living Dead in Dallas)
Oh sweet Sundays I’m obsessed with a capital “O” with True Blood these days. It’s smart, sexy, fun, silly, fascinating, and now almost complete with fairies (as per Sookie’s reveal). Contrary to Salon, I don’t think fairies are lame and neither would about a half-dozen YA writers I know. But I digress. I’m dying for spoilers — even those trapped in cliched, irritating, truly terrible writing. Wait, did I just start to review the books? I know you have to give over to the nature of them, to the silly, candy-like essence of these books but I can’t help but feel my intelligence slipping away each time Sookie curls her hair or has someone comment on her perfect breasts. I’ve imbued the literary characters with a little of the spirited nature of the television show and that makes the writing a tad more palatable but I can’t help but wonder if Charlaine Harris doesn’t spend hours laughing her way to the bank over her royalty statements. What a fast one she’s pulled on all of us — there’s so little in the way of actual writing here vs. pure narration for the sake of narration that I’m not surprised it only takes me a little over three subway rides to get through one book (my commute is anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes depending on the TTC). And it’s not that I’m NOT addictively flipping pages — it’s that I AM. I’m not reading. I’m scanning. I’m dying to know what happens just so I can know what happens and not at all because I’m enjoying the writing. I roll my eyes more times than I can count but I respect Harris for her success and I’ll probably read all eight of the books that I downloaded last week.

#40 – Gone
Anyway, I felt a little sick to my stomach after reading so much chicklit in a row that this weekend I took Mo Hayder’s EXCELLENT new novel, Gone (published in Canada this January), away with me to the cottage and then proceeded to stay up very, very late to finish it. It’s a Jack Caffrey novel and it picks up relatively soon after Skin ended. There’s a new case in town — a man’s carjacking comes with a twist: he’s only taking cars with children in them, and the deeper Jack Caffrey gets into the case, the more goes wrong. Mo Hayder’s novels are suspenseful, terrifying, impeccably written and researched and this series just gets better with each novel. I know January is a long time to wait but if you’re at all interested in top-notch thrillers, why not give Ritual or Skin a try before then?

#20 – Wolf Hall

As a part of the “The Orange Prize is Definitely the New Black” challenge that we started over at the work blog, I finished reading Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Wolf Hall, last weekend. And then couldn’t put it down. For days. On end. Now, that’s saying something for a giant hulking 650-page tome about Thomas Cromwell, of all people. Mantel’s certainly not the first, nor the last, to dramatize the Tudor period in literature. The lives and wives of Henry VIII have been immortalized, studied, fictionalized and melo-dramatized for our modern age — movies, TV series, novels abound about Katherine, Anne, Jane, etc., to the point of overkill. I reached my Henry VIII peak after seeing about three episodes of the current series The Tudors on the Ceeb a couple of years ago, and it all felt wrong, wrong, wrong. First off, and I know it’s me being far too literal, but as attractive as Jonathan Rhys Meyers might be, he’s just not Henry VIII material — and neither, for that matter, is Eric Bana — not in looks, countenance or bearing. I mean, can’t Hollywood even get the hair colour right?

Annnywaaay, like most history, pop culture weeds out the most salacious aspects and runs with them, and it’s not like the Tudors were lacking in dramatic moments that would work well in terms of adaptations, but it all started to feel a bit tired. I mean really tired. Like The Other Boleyn Girl might just be one of the worst films I’ve ever seen kind of tired. So when Mantel’s novel won the Booker, I kind of thought to myself, “Really, another novelization of the Tudors? Really?”

How wrong I was.

While this is a novel very much about the Tudors, it’s from the perspective of an outsider. Someone who came from nothing to make something of himself, who used his very sharp mind to control people and situations to his benefit, and not necessarily with the ulterior motives that tend to drive most characters in historical fiction (sex, greed, lust). But what I really, really enjoyed is that this novel didn’t focus entirely on the melodrama, it’s actually devoid almost completely of it, and instead turns its focus to relationships of all kinds and how life functioned for these characters at this epic moment in time. It’s not about the romance between Henry and Anne and what it means for love and betrayal; it’s about how the romance between Henry and Anne changed everything — and the man who not only made most of these changes possible, but who also participated in creating the whole background of the time period, was Thomas Cromwell.

The novel starts off with a young Thomas getting the stuffing knocked out of him by his brute of a father Walter. Soon, he takes off into the great big world to make a name for himself, and when the story picks up again, he’s done just that — found himself a position working for / serving Cardinal Wolsey, and when that turns sour, for the king himself. Politics, or political machinations rather, take centre stage in this novel. It’s about maneuvering situations more than anything, about how to be a man, and how to teach his children to be good in life, but it’s also about power — finding it, taking it, destroying it — and all the ways it contributes to the ups and downs of the Tudor court.

It’s hard to describe the novel as anything other than engrossing. I found myself totally sucked in and read the first 300 pages in just over a day — sometimes the narrative’s a bit muddled (Mantel uses a lot of pronouns and the “he’s” get all mixed up sometimes. I just decided that if I was remotely confused that the “he” in question was Cromwell and that seemed to work for me) and the book’s unquestionably dense — but I couldn’t put it down. When I gave my copy away mid-read to a friend (I had another at work; we’d save on mail that way), and decided to finish the McEwan novel that I’d started, I found myself longing to know what was going to happen next to Cromwell. Would he convince More to change his mind? Would he ever find a second wife? Would these ghosts ever stop appearing in front of him? Who would he marry his son off to (we didn’t get that far; it must be in the second book).

ALL of these questions are answered in history, yet I longed for Mantel’s perspective. I loved how she would add rich description to scenes, sum everything up with a brilliant sentence, and keep my interest in her novel far passed my bed time. This book? Definitely better than TV.

WHAT’S NEXT. I’ve started Attica Locke’s Black Water Rising. That’s #2 of the Orange Prize nominated books. Will I make the June 9th deadline, probably not. But maybe…

#19 – Solar

There’s little doubt in my mind that Ian McEwan is one of the English language’s greatest working novelists. If I’m not mistaken, almost every single one of his novels is on the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list (perhaps not all deservedly), and Atonement still stands in my memory as a near-perfect book. Maybe that’s why I’m willing to forgive the missteps in Solar. No, rather, maybe that’s why I expected so much more out of Solar, his latest novel. I enjoyed the last two McEwan novels, especially On Chesil Beach, which I liked maybe even more than Saturday, but I found Solar hard slogging. It’s a relatively short novel at just under 300 pages, yet it felt dense, convoluted in places, and even somewhat implausible.

The protagonist, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Michael Beard, bumbles his way through complete and utter moral corruption without any true sense of himself. As a man, he’s short, corpulent, and slovenly, but his apparent brilliance means he’s led a charmed life. Well, hard work and a sharp mind began a charmed life, and since winning the prize, Beard has essentially coasted off its fumes. From one marriage to the next, from one high-paying job to the next, from one meal to the next, Beard shows no remorse or even any kind of sustained thought over his actions. He’s a womanizer who has five failed marriages behind him; yet, at five-foot-three somehow remains ridiculously attractive to smart, accomplished women. Thus begins a number of somewhat implausible characteristics — that women would fall, nay, fight over such a man remains a little, well, unbelievable. A great mind only takes you so far, success only takes you so far — mushrooms growing out of your rotting apartment? That’s a sign you’re not fit for life amidst other humans.

Anyway, when the novel opens, Michael’s latest wife, Patrice, has just discovered he’s cheated, again. And yet, when she dares to step out on him, Beard can’t bear it. He wants his wife back. He loves her, he even goes so far as to confront her boorish lover (their contractor) who smacks him right across the face. It’s not as if Beard doesn’t have a cause to dislike the man (beyond the whole sleeping with his wife sitch), he did give her a black eye. And to get back at him for ruining his marriage, Beard does something so morally bankrupt it’s hard to believe the character could possibly ever redeem himself.

Yet, the novel isn’t about redemption. In fact, I’d argue that Michael never considers redemption. Even more so, he never really even considers he’s wrong. His mind functions on a level where he can convince himself in any manner that his actions were good and true to himself. He justifies anything if it sits in his mind long enough: lies become truth, outcomes absolve actions, and another woman inevitably lands in his bed. Even if, by the end of the novel, Beard seems to have finally gotten his just desserts, the fact remains that his moral core is unchanged. The man takes absolutely no responsibility for any of his actions and still he’s rewarded. The complete and utter collapse of his life, the no less than three times that happens throughout the book, has almost no lasting impact on him. In short, Michael Beard does not change, evolve or become even slightly more informed about himself by the end of this book. He’s simply not that kind of person. And maybe that’s the point.

Even so, McEwan keeps the narrative tight to his point of view. We learn little about him, snippets of his home life, of his failed relationships, of his childhood, but mainly what we follow is his career, of sorts. As the book opens, Beard is part of a collection of scientists working on climate change, specifically funding wind turbines that will become alternative sources of energy. The solar from the book’s title comes from the secondary science-related plot, the ideas of a young post-doc, Tom Aldous, who works with Beard who firmly believes they can harness the sun’s power to use as energy. Beard’s skeptical at first, and abjectly refuses to listen to the younger man’s theories, but as the novel progresses, he comes around to Aldous’s science. But what he does with it is despicable and ultimately leads to his downfall, if you can call it that.

The force of the novel felt weak to me, there’s not enough plot to drive the narrative along, which is why I felt the book was kind of sluggish to get through. The science is fascinating, relevant and so interesting. And Beard does interesting things, he’s invited to amazing parts of the earth, but nothing seems to have any impact on how he lives or what he feels about life. That was the most disappointing aspect of the novel. It’s hard to get behind a character that turns your stomach. I know that’s the point — an exploration of someone who gives to society for no reason other than personal gain (it’s the Heidegger was a Nazi argument: does someone’s personal philosophy, personal beliefs matter given the ultimate overarching contribution they’ve made to public thought). McEwan takes it further — is a man’s mind enough to redeem him for being utterly repugnant as a human being, and does one great act give you license to coast on said act for the rest of your life? It makes for an interesting moral debate and discussion but not a terrific plot for a novel.

All in all, I kind of feel as though even McEwan’s brilliant writing couldn’t save Solar from itself. I wanted so much more out of the novel, a different perspective, a reason for any of these women to actually fall in love with him, a realization that using your big old brain for manipulative purposes isn’t always the best use of your talents, something, anything that signified change in Beard. But, alas, nothing happens in the end. I suppose, the fact that Beard made any positive change in the world, contributed a measure of science (slipped by as an appendix) that fundamentally altered the way our world is perceived, remains his single best quality. Most people don’t even do that. Still, you hope that the people with the power to change the world, the ones who are working hard to protect our dying planet, are doing so from a position of good. What McEwan tirelessly points out with Michael Beard that’s just not a realistic view of the world.

However, some of the reviews that I’ve been reading have been noticing how, for the very first time, parts of this book have the reader in stitches. And there’s one scene in particular that involved a bag of crisps that did have me laughing, but the few laughs and light touches, the mocking nature the author has with his main character in the way he describes him, writes about him, suggests a bit of an ironic perspective. In some ways, just feeling that way while I was reading made it even worse.

Also, there’s my reader’s bias — I’m tired of reading books by middle-aged men who create middle-aged characters who are nothing more than a mid-life crisis on the page. McEwan hasn’t gotten to the stage of say a Rushdie or an Irving, other novelists in his class who have fallen into the same narrative pitfalls, because there’s still an acerbic nature to this book that’s missing from say Rushdie’s last few novels, but I guess I was really looking for a female character to appear as something other than a foil in this book. I was looking for an actual storyline that wasn’t tethered to a despicable man who fails every single person around him, except himself. I was tired of hearing about his Nobel Prize and seeing his bumbling ways. I was offended by his politics, his obsession with terrible food, his tepid alcohol abuse — in short, I just didn’t care for him, despite the bloody excellent writing that surrounded him.

#18 – Lost River

The blurb on my copy of Stephen Booth’s latest thriller, a Ben Cooper / Diane Fry mystery, says, “[a] modern master of rural noir,” The Guardian. For once, I readily agree with the blurb on the cover of a book. Set in the Peak District and in Birmingham (“Brum”) the book moves back and forth between the case that Cooper feels he should be working on (an accidental or so it’s been determined) drowning and Diane Fry’s own assault case.

Ben Cooper was off-duty when he noticed the body in the river. He raced into the water and tried to save the little girl, whose body was already blue with cold. All eyewitness accounts said the same thing, that the little girl, Emily Nield, slipped and hit her head on a rock. But Ben Cooper’s gut feels differently about the crime — he knows something else happened and he won’t stop until he figures it out.

In the other thread of the novel, Diane Fry’s dedicates the same kind of attention to her instinct. When the powers that be in Birmingham, where she was stationed before Derbyshire (doesn’t it make you think of Pride and Prejudice? All I kept seeing was the walking tour Lizzie takes with her aunt and uncle the whole time I was reading. Those huge trees. That lovely landscape.), tell her that her assault case (she was raped a few years back one night by more than one assailant) won’t be prosecuted, Diane sets out on her own to figure out exactly what happened. And what she uncovers tells her more about herself than she ever expected or wanted to know.

The most interesting aspect of both these characters and their stories is that they take place outside the usual police house. They’re not basic cases — a crime’s committed and the detectives (and the complex DS, DC, Acting DS, C, etc.) figure out what happened and make arrests. Both Diane and Ben go off the grid to an extent, look for truths they need to move their lives forward relating to both of these cases, and don’t necessarily escape unscathed. Booth’s a solid writer, one I’d be happy to read more from, and Lost River kept my interest (even if I figured out a twist or two early on) throughout. The pastoral setting of Ben’s crime balanced by the more urban, politicized setting of modern-day Birmingham worked well together to create a nice sense of tension.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: I got caught up in Hilary Mantel’s ridiculously addictive Wolf Hall, which I’m about three-quarters of the way through. I want to finish in and a number of other books this week, a few of those I’ve already started…

#67 – Little Black Book of Stories

Have you ever noticed I generally start all of my reviews with some long, rambling introduction? Today will be no different.

I’m reading about 4 different books right now (What Should I Do With My Life, The Law of Dreams, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life; can you sense a theme there?), including the only one I’ve finished so far, A.S. Byatt’s engaging short story collection, Little Black Book of Stories. Monday was spent in transit (doctor’s app’t, to and fro from work), which ensured I had a few spare moments to read (and by spare I mean an entire hour in the middle of the day waiting for the damn doctor).

We were at a birthday party this summer when the sister of a friend of mine was telling me the book that she had most enjoyed reading so far in 2009 was A.S. Byatt’s The Children’s Book. As I don’t have a copy that book in my possession, when I found this book just sitting on my shelf, I thought, “yes, that’s it for this week.” Because if you can’t have THE book why not at least try A book by one of the year’s most celebrated writers?

Comprised of five lengthy short stories, Byatt’s expansive imagination coupled with her never-ending quest to aptly describe human saddness (or longing, that might even be a better word), the book reminded me a little of Too Much Happiness. Every single character in the stories has been marred emotionally by their lives — happiness isn’t expected and nor is it gained. Life is rough, untidy, difficult and downright miserable in places. But because Byatt’s an exceptional writer, the undercurrents running through each story, the little bits of lives that exude joy, are there as well. She also has some lovely fantastical elements in each — the stories themselves tend a little toward fairy tales for adults.

My favourite of the five would have to be “Body Art”: an aging doctor released from an unhappy marriage but not his religious convictions finds himself entangled with a young (apparently almost-homeless) artist charged with “brightening” up the ward. Universal questions like how and why is art important to a life are, of course, raised, but the unlikely relationship between the two resonates even more. The central tale, “A Stone Woman,” has lovely fantastic elements, and “The Pink Ribbon” too — even if that story is achingly sad (it too reminded me of Munro, specifically, “The Bear Came Over the Mountain”).

On the whole, this collection was far more satisfying to read than Nocturnes. Because, holy cow, what a snoozer of a book that was.

READING CHALLENGES: Cleaning Out My Closet — a book from the dark corners of my bookshelf, for once. And because this book just feels so British (along with A.S. Byatt being born in England), I’m tagging it for Around the World in 52 Books too. My only reading challenge for next year? To keep up with all of my other reading challenges. Or maybe even finish one or two.

#48 – Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

Sometimes, you need a little lightness in your life. After a hard summer and an even harder year, I’m happy to say that there are a couple of things I’ve watched and read over the last couple weeks that just make me smile. Glee (Freaks and Geeks meets Fame meets Election) equals bliss and belly laughs, but it’s only one once a week. So over the last few weeks I was reading Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day only at the cottage and only before I went to sleep just to make it last that little bit longer.

I adored this novel.

Miss Pettigrew finds herself on Delysia Lafosse’s doorstep after a particularly trying last assignment as a governess. In fact, Miss Pettigrew has found herself sent off on a number of trying assignments as she attempts to make her way in the world. Plain (by her own standards), practical, and quite downtrodden, if this job doesn’t work out, Miss Pettigrew will find herself out on the streets. Only when Miss Lafosse opens up the door to usher Miss Pettigrew inside, there’s been a mixup — she’s not there to take care of any children but be a maid (of sorts) for the vivacious young actress/singer who finds herself in quite a pickle when it comes to her love life.

Over the course of the day Miss Pettigrew fixes, fiddles, meddles and generally makes herself indispensible to Delysia and her group of friends. She puts love affairs right, makes sure Miss Lafosse flies in the right direction and even spares some fun for herself. As the minutes and hours tick by, Miss Pettigrew evolves from the unconfident, unhappy, unsuccessful governess into a bright, witty, attractive woman who remains in charge of her station in life. It’s a simple Cinderella story in a way — but that doesn’t take away from the charm and utter bliss of this book.

When I was reading a little about the author, Winifred Watson, I learned that she wrote the majority of her first novel while working in an office as a sectretary. Her first books had darker themes and when she submitted Miss Pettigrew, her publisher rejected it (Lionel Shriver can relate). It’s a familiar story — publishers and agents rejecting books that find resonance, win prizes and get made into equally delightful Hollywood films (yes; I’ve seen the film version that starts Francis McDormand and Amy Adams). I’m so pleased that Persephone exists and a little ashamed that this is the first of their novels that I’ve read. It certainly won’t be the last.

READING CHALLENGES: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is one of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die, and while I did actually buy it vs pull it off my shelf, I’m counting it anyway. Also, high props to Rachel for recommending it to me. She’s a gem.

#36 – The Little Stranger

After finally (with a month-long struggle) finishing Sarah Waters’s The Little Stranger, I have to admit that I’m hit or miss with her books. I adored both Fingersmith and The Night Watch. But really didn’t like Tipping the Velvet. And I’m afraid I’ll have to add The Little Stranger to the cons side simply because the book just failed to grab me. No, wait, let me restate that, after the first 100 pages or so, I lost interest in the book entirely.

By fate and circumstance, a bachelor rural doctor becomes inextricably involved with the fading Ayers family (Mrs. Ayers, Caroline and Roderick), owners of Hundreds Hall, a decaying house that was once the centre of society for their corner of Warwickshire. The war has just ended, leaving the country and its young men wounded, and Roderick, the eldest son, suffers. Dr. Faraday, called out to the house in place of the Ayers’s regular doctor, soon finds himself an indispensible friend to the family.

With his frequent visits to Hundreds Hall, Dr. Faraday soon becomes embroiled in the myriad problems the family begins to have. First, it’s a terrible accident involving a family pet, a particular favourite of Caroline’s. Then, as Roderick suffers through emotional and physical difficulties, another terrible accident happens. Soon, the family, and even the servants, a young Betty and the older Mrs. Bazeley, feel as if all of the bad luck converging remains squarely the fault of the house itself.

This theme, of suspicious activity coupled with the belief that the house is haunted felt a little like The X-Files, the Ayers’s Mulder to Dr. Faraday’s Scully. In a fairly typical way, each occurance is dismissed by various members of the scientific community and yet life for the Ayers’s doesn’t seem to get any better. It’s almost as if Waters was watching far too many episodes of Most Haunted during the writing of this novel. But, mainly, for me, I couldn’t hang on to the main character — I found him staid, kind of boring and a little two predictable. I’m a huge fan of Waters, as I’ve said above, but this novel put me right to sleep, and despite one or two truly terrifying scenes, left me without the necessary chill required from a book that’s supposed to scare the pants off of you.

READING CHALLENGES: Nothing to see here.

WHAT’S UP NEXT: Summer is short: reading Dorothy Allison’s Trash. And I’ve got to finish a Canadian book this weekend to sum up my Canadian Book Challenge.

Word Power

I am about to head out into the garden to start giving our soil a lift. I’ve been reading Diana Athill’s excellent memoir, Somewhere Towards the End, all morning and wanted to share this:

Getting one’s hands into the earth, spreading roots, making a plant comfortable — it is a totally absorbing occupation, like painting or writing, so that you become what you are doing and are given a wonderful release from consciousness of self.

Considering I haven’t felt much like myself lately, maybe some time outside will give my mind a chance to make its way back. Last night, as I was lying on the couch watching television for the 100th day in a row, I decided I’ve lost my self-confidence. But I suppose that’s what trauma does, takes away the delicate balance between putting yourself out into the world and keeping yourself tied up tight, safe. My mother died in September. And it wasn’t an easy death. Like Athill says, she’s been spared the difficulty of death among her family members, quite a feat considering she’s in her 90s now. I envy her. But mainly I’m thankful for this wonderful little book she’s written that seems to be helping me today.

I’ve started a year-long countdown to what I think I might call The Year of Living Royalty. We’ll see how it goes.

#17 – The Believers

Before my head almost exploded from far too many rewrites of my latest Classic Start, I finished Zoë Heller’s excellent The Believers. Familiar in tone and even basic story to Mark Haddon’s similarly good A Spot of Bother, the novel begins with patriarch and left-wing lawyer Joel Litvinoff having a stroke in court. Rushed to the hospital, Audrey, Joel’s cranky, opinionated and almost unlikeable wife, joins her children in the vigil by his bedside. Heller uses the traumatic situation to explore the family dynamics between Joel and Audrey, their daughters Karla (married to Mike) and Rosa, and their son Lenny. Each suffering from their own particular brand of unhappiness, the novel pulls the family apart like stringy cheese before she melts them all back again for the final scenes.

Despite the fairly Ann Patchett-like twist that I felt was kind of unnecessary (and that I won’t spoil here), I can’t think of a book I enjoyed so thoroughly in the last few months. Family drama lends itself nicely to Heller’s voice and characterization. And she never shies away from conflict or uncomfortable situations in her novels, the kind of Sunday afternoon family dinners that can be so painful yet necessary are dissected with her clinical eye for weakness and exploited for their dramatic values throughout this novel.

Of the interwoven stories, I enjoyed Karla’s the most — a social worker dedicated to helping others and pleasing her union-boss husband (he wants to have kids; they’re trying; then perhaps adopting) — she begins an awkward, unlikely affair with the owner of the newspaper stand in the hospital where she works. The love affair with Khaled proves a catalyst for Karla to change her life and her evolution was the most satisfying. Not that Audrey’s acerbic, sharp-tongued personality wasn’t engaging, but it wasn’t until the novel explored how she came to love her troubled (drug addicted) son Lenny that she truly felt human to me. The opening parts of the book did a little to set up that side of her, but it was Heller’s unwavering honesty about Audrey’s maternal limitations that finally brought her into full colour. Rosa and Lenny (the former exploring religion; the latter tumbling back into his heroin habit) also had their time in the narrative sun but, by the end, I just felt Karla’s story was the most satisfying.

Annnywaay, small criticism for a book that does just what a literary novel should: create characters that challenge their environment, that evolve throughout the pages, that highlight the particular human problems that modern, Western families face today. A deep-seeded unhappiness guards their every move, despite their apparent affection for both each other (even if that’s hard to get at) and for their dying father. He’s larger than life, and they’re all just trying to escape from his high-afternoon shadow. And regardless of their particular beliefs, whether personal, political, religious or simply philosophical, not a single member of the Litvinoff family survives unscathed from Joel’s illness, and nor they should.

#72 – When Will There Be Good News

Having spent the last few days in the whirlwind of the holidays with the added spice of my father’s wedding on Xmas eve, of course I conked out with a touch of the flu yesterday. Spent the day in bed with Vicks on my chest and the added pressure of a hot water bottle keeping everything all warm and probably infected. Love the holiday flu. Spirits refused to be dampened as we trundled over to my cousin’s for our third, and final, Christmas. It was delightful. The nephew continues to be the funniest little fellow ever. Remember what it was like to just scream for joy at the top of your lungs?

Annnnywaaay, the not-sleeping from the prednisone is working in my favour because I’m getting a lot of reading done. Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News, the third novel to feature Jackson Brodie, kept me company well into Christmas eve when everyone should have been sleeping while awaiting a visit from ye old guy in the red suit. Another brilliantly paced, densely plotted, utterly readable novel from one of the most refreshing writers working in genre fiction today.

Kate Atkinson has a gift with voice. She manages to keep three distinct and different characters alive within the narrative without falling down once in terms of their particular stories. Jackson Brodie’s still bent, still broken, and still having trouble with women in this novel, but there’s an added tragedy that lands him in Edinburgh. This catastrophic event also causes him to land back into the life of DI Louise Munroe and she encounters him in the oddest of places, stuck in the oddest of situations. Tying them both together is Reggie, a sixteen-year-old girl who hasn’t had the easiest of lives, but she’s plucky, resourceful and kind of reminds me a little of Thebes.

As the story barrels along, their personal lives gets mixed up in the mystery, Reggie’s employer, a doctor who suffered an unspeakable tragedy when she was a young girl, goes missing. Reggie needs to convince DI Munroe that she’s actually been kidnapped and Jackson finds himself right smack in the middle after the young girl tears herself into his life. The central mystery in the novel is coupled with a disaster of epic proportions — a train crash — that muddles up identities, destroys lives and propels the action in ways that one wouldn’t expect. The way its described in the novel conjures up Unbreakable in so much as you can hear the metal as much as the terror in your mind as you read along.

Never trite or contrived, Atkinson’s endings are thought out in ways that ensure they’re as pragmatic as her prose. The characters don’t employ any kind of revolutionary change. They get on with life as life gets on with them and it’s Atkinson’s refreshingly unadorned style of writing that ensures the success of this novel.

READING CHALLENGES: For a moment I had thought that Atkinson was Scottish, which meant I could have added a country to the Around the World in 52 Books challenge. But as she’s British and I’ve already got England covered, that pipe dream gets washed away with the tide (how about a mixed metaphor for a lazy post-holiday Saturday?).

WHAT’S UP NEXT: From a previous post: “Here’s my stack: “A Christmas Carol, The Other Queen, The Given Day, The Plot Against America, Lush Life, Through Black Spruce, The Origin of Species, The Boys in the Trees, The Double, The Almost Moon and Middlemarch.” I’m not sure where I’ll go next, but it’ll be something from the above list.”

STRANGE ASIDES: My RRHB and I watched an old Albert Finney film the other day, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, which is mentioned in the book. Had we not seen it at the exact moment when we did (moments before crawling into bed with the book), I would have missed the reference completely. Thank you universe.